Why read Cacicas?

Book cover of Cacicas: The Indigenous Women Leaders of Spanish America, 1492-1825

Book description

The term cacica was a Spanish linguistic invention, a female counterpart to caciques, the Arawak word for male indigenous leaders in Spanish America. But the term's meaning was adapted and manipulated by natives, creating a new social stratum where it previously may not have existed. This book explores that transformation,…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Cacicas as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Susan Kellogg

Author

Cacicas were women who held high status, positions of political authority, and/or communally-significant economic or other responsibilities in colonial Spanish American native societies.

This book offers compelling portraits of how colonial women strategized to maneuver around patriarchal limitations of Spanish law, especially because they could not hold formal offices in the colonial governing hierarchy (though sometimes they actually did).

The individually-authored essays in this collection provide insightful portraits of individual women in a variety of circumstances across a wide range of geographic locations and types of communities across the Caribbean, Mesoamerica, and Central and South American societies.

The reader will…

From Susan's list on the history of Native women in Latin America.