Colonialism and its contradictions: Indians, blacks and social power in sixteenth and seventeenth century Mexico

This article examines patterns In the black/Indian relationship in Mexico during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It focuses on microlevels of society and on the practice of power in two pivotal domains, one centered on instances of labor coercion and civil control, and the other on what was labelled "witchcraft." The analysis suggests that Spanish colonialism embodied contradictions at its very foundations as it created sites of power for both blacks and Indians, who were alternately constituted as dominating and subordinated subjects vis-à-vis each other and the Spanish colonizers.