ABSTRACT
The history of gender for colonial Spanish America remains rooted in the particulars of each city and region and the configuration of dominant forces present at any moment. A gendered history of colonial Spanish-American cities and towns reveals the difference between Mesoamerica's urbanization and commercial markets and Andean ceremonial centres and exchanges of goods motivated by kinship and imperial redistribution. Pre-Hispanic gender roles allowed women to fulfil specific local religious, political, market functions. From the 1500s to the 1700s, Iberian norms of behaviour and organization penetrated deeper into colonial society and even into rural towns. Indigenous and African women and their mixed-race descendants, termed castas by Spanish administrators, came to dominate markets, taverns and shops from the 1600s. Creating Spanish-American cities and cultures depended as much upon slavery as on Iberian immigration and Indian resettlement. In Peru and Mexico, blacks from Iberia and Africa or born in the Americas made up as large a group as Europeans and European creoles.
