The Women Who Threw Corn - Witchcraft and Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Mexico

This book tells the stories of women from Spain, North Africa, Senegambia, and Canaries accused of sorcery in sixteenth-century Mexico for adapting native magic and healing practices. These non-native women - the mulata of Seville who cured the evil eye; the Canarian daughter of a Count who ate peyote and mixed her bath water into a man's mustard supply; the wife of a Spanish conquistador who let her hair loose and chanted to a Mesoamerican god while sweeping at midnight; the wealthy Basque woman with a tattoo of a red devil; and many others - routinely adapted Native ritual into hybrid magic and cosmology. Through a radical rethinking of colonial knowledge, Martin Austin Nesvig uncovers a world previously left in the shadows of historical writing, revealing a fascinating and vibrant multi-ethnic community of witches, midwives, and healers.

Product details

• Authors: Martin Austin Nesvig, Nesvig Martin Austin
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.07.2025
• EAN: 9781009550529
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0955052-9
• No. of pages: 322
• Dimensions: 160 mm x 235 mm x 26 mm
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Mexico, Social & cultural history, HISTORY / Latin America / General, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Social and cultural history, Social and cultural anthropology, Gender studies: women, Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700, History of the Americas, Witchcraft and wicca, Religious intolerance, persecution and conflict, Religious intolerance, persecution & conflict, Gender studies: women and girls, 16th century, c 1500 to c 1599, c 1500 to c 1600, Witchcraft & Wicca