ABSTRACT

In the last two decades, race has emerged as a major topic in the field of colonial Latin American studies, but this predominantly historical scholarship has engaged in only limited ways with contemporary race theory. This chapter argues that more theoretical engagement would help to address a series of conceptual problems with how the field has understood race. After discussing three of these problems in relation to the concepts of periodization, domination, and mestizaje, the chapter models a theoretically informed analysis by considering the racialization of the “Indian” in the Jesuit José de Acosta’s influential missionary treatise De procuranda indorum salute (1588). Finally, it suggests that theoretical work on race could also benefit from recent scholarship on colonial Latin America.