ABSTRACT
The compilations of letters written by women who participated in the process of conquest and colonization of Spanish America, and studies of these, are relatively recent.1 Many of these women addressed their letters and petitions to the Spanish king or his representatives in the Spanish administration of the Indies. Many of the studies have filled considerable gaps in our knowledge of letters authored by women within the legal framework.2 They provide evidence of women’s use of textual representations as a means of empowering themselves. However, much of their production remains still unknown or hidden in colonial archives. Given that individual letters are not chronicles or narratives and they rather create a series of textual displacements, their classification in the archive is difficult. Indeed, most of these documents are labeled as ‘miscellaneous’ and their discovery may occur at random. Repositories of letters from colonial Spanish America include documents that range from files containing traveler registries to those pertaining to affairs of different viceroyalties. When located, some letters and case files are incomplete, or do not follow a sequential order, producing the effect of lacunae or incomplete accounts, as Nina Scott has mentioned.3
