The Church in Colonial Latin America. JOHN F. SCHWALLER (ed.): Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2000.

Abstract

The subject of Spanish missionary endeavor in the Americas, and the role of the Church in the overall process of adaptation and change between the colonizers and the colonized in the Spanish colonies, has attracted an ever-growing volume of thought-provoking writings. Throughout, the early, Ricardian thesis of the "spiritual conquest", a swift and successful conversion of the Indians to Christianity, has long been refuted. Moreover, the recent historiography on these themes has considerably enhanced our understanding of what the cultural encounter between Western-European-Christian world-views and those of the indigenous populations was all about. John F. Schwaller, the editor, was certainly facing a tough choice here in trying to select what was most suitable to include in such an anthology.