Martha Few is Assistant Professor of Colonial Latin American History at the University of Miami.
Review
"This is a significant intellectual contribution that has the additional merit of being thoroughly readable
and appealing to a broad audience .... The case studies are riveting, detailed with intensely personal, often sexually
and socially charged examples, and clearly integrated with Few's overarching theoretical and conceptual framework.
This is wonderful historical ethnographic material."
--Grant D. Jones, author of The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom
Publisher Web Site, July, 2003
Summary
Women Who Live Evil Lives documents the lives and practices of mixed-race, Black, Spanish, and Maya women sorcerers,
spell-casters, magical healers, and midwives in the social relations of power in Santiago de Guatemala, the capital
of colonial Central America. Men and women from all sectors of society consulted them to intervene in sexual and
familial relations and disputes between neighbors and rival shop owners; to counter abusive colonial officials,
employers, or husbands; and in cases of inexplicable illness.
Applying historical, anthropological, and gender studies analysis, Martha Few argues that women's local practices
of magic, curing, and religion revealed opportunities for women's cultural authority and power in colonial Guatemala.
Few draws on archival research conducted in Guatemala, Mexico, and Spain to shed new light on women's critical
public roles in Santiago, the cultural and social connections between the capital city and the countryside, and
the gender dynamics of power in the ethnic and cultural contestation of Spanish colonial rule in daily life.
Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1. Contested Powers: Gender, Culture, and the Process of Colonial Rule
Chapter 2. Society and Colonial Authority in Santiago de Guatemala
Chapter 3. Magical Violence and the Body
Chapter 4. Illness, Healing, and the Supernatural World
Chapter 5. Female Sorcery, Material Life, and Urban Community Formation
Chapter 6. Conclusion
