'This fascinating book presents the work of nine social historians who seek to reconstruct the elusive and highly personal private lives of colonial Latin Americans. The essays analyze a range of issues from sexuality marriage, divorce, and illegitimacy to sexual witch-craft, conceptions of sin, and confession...Uniformly engaging, provocative, and well-written, these essays represent some of the most interesting contemporary work on colonial Latin American society' - "Hispanic American Historical Review".'A very welcome contribution to the study of the hitherto little explored personal dimensions of the formation and reproduction of colonial society. The essays uncover a rich set of illuminating but until now largely neglected archival sources, throwing light not only on the shifting sexual politics of church and state, the evolution of sexual constraints, and the contradictions between institutional norms and individual practice but also on the private, personal aspects of relations between the sexes with special attention to the experience of women' - "Journal of the History of Sexuality".'" Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America" presents the best work on the subject so far' - "The Village Voice". Asuncion Lavrin is a professor of history at Arizona State University at Tempe. Her 1995 book, "Women, Feminism, and Social Change in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, 1890-1940", won the Arthur P. Whitaker Prize from the Middle Atlantic Council on Latin American Studies.