The study of slaves and slavery in the Americas has a long and rich history. Scholars have examined slave labour, the demographics of slavery, slave families, rebellions and resistance, and the winding road towards abolition. In the last fifteen years, the historiography has broadened considerably, with important works being published not just on slaves and slavery, but also on the agency of Africans brought to the Americas, the connections between Africa and the Americas, and studies of regions previously considered to be marginal in the history of slavery and race in the Americas. Von Germeten's welcome new book helps to fill gaps in the literature on this last point, examining the widespread phenomenon of Afro-Mexican confraternities across many contexts in New Spain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It opens with two thematic chapters, on baroque religiosity and women in the brotherhoods, followed by chapters on black and mulatto/pardo confraternities in Mexico City, Valladolid and Parral. The final chapter further expands the geographic focus by looking at conflicts in black and mixed confraternities in more regions, including small villages and agricultural zones. Von Germeten uses a wealth of different sources to piece together a history of these organisations, incorporating wills, baptismal records, confraternity books, and other primary sources.

However, despite the importance of the topic, the thoroughness of the research, and the wealth of information in the book, the arguments of the study are somewhat unfocused and diffuse. The stated focus is the change in the confraternities from more African-centreed organisations on the periphery of colonial society to organisations more concerned with Hispanic society and norms and more engaged in the life of the colony. The author does a good job of demonstrating the latter point, especially in the case of Valladolid, where she examines individual cases of eighteenth century confraternity leaders such as the master architect Diego Durán, who struggled to raise the profile of the Rosary confraternity that he led. Yet she also, insightfully, demonstrates the limits of that interaction. Responding to the arguments of R. Douglas Cope, von Germeten demonstrates well that despite this higher level of articulation with creole society, race still played a role in the definition of identity in late colonial Mexico. For example, she demonstrates these limitations in her case of Diego Durán, who never was allowed to use the honorific don. The final chapter focuses on these limitations more directly by revealing the widespread perpetuation of racial conflicts in eighteenth century Mexico.

Where the author's argument does not work, however, is in the first part of her claim – that as confraternities moved more towards the centre of colonial society, they distanced themselves from more ‘African’ traits and practices. On the surface this argument is somewhat self-evident – by the eighteenth century there really were no Africans arriving in New Spain as slaves. The book, however, offers little real evidence offered to support the ‘African-ness’ of the organisations in their early days. One place where this argument is especially weak is in the chapter on women in the confraternities. Von Germeten claims that the presence of women in leadership positions in the confraternities in the seventeenth century is one of the clearest indicators of African customs being present in the organisations. Yet she offers no evidence of how this phenomenon related to any particular, or even general, practice in Africa, nor does she grapple with the work of Africanists who demonstrate the ways that African societies were profoundly patriarchal. In addition, she ignores evidence that some European confraternities, such as Rosary confraternities, also opened their doors to women. Further, the presentation of ‘African’ traits in the case studies only works for Mexico City, with her strong examples of the coronations of black kings and queens and the presence of a confraternity exclusively made up of members of the Zape nation. As the ratios of African born to American born blacks shifted in the second half of the seventeenth century, these practices faded away. Yet similar examples are not brought up for the other case studies. The author makes no claim that the monograph is a study of Atlantic World interactions, yet a more thorough examination of even secondary sources on Africa and on African traditions in confraternities elsewhere in the Americas would have strengthened the book's argument tremendously.

Another disturbing aspect of the study is contained in the first chapter which suggests that slaves in the confraternities accepted their slave status as demonstrated through their own emphasis in their documents of their humble status. This theme of humility then reoccurs throughout the text supporting again the earlier part of the argument (that confraternity members moved from this humble stance to a more active engagement with the larger society). Yet a reading between the lines of some of the evidence might have found a more ‘hidden transcript’ that cleverly used the language of humility popular in the Mexican baroque of the seventeenth century to further the quite conscious agendas of the black confraternities. A more nuanced reading of the documents, with comparisons to other studies from the Americas, may have revealed less African and Afro-Mexican accommodation than presented by the author.

A sub-theme running throughout the book is the wide variation that existed between confraternities in different regions in New Spain. Indeed, the author presents a dizzying array of different contexts using a wide variety of source material for each region. The variety is both a strength and weakness in the book. A narrower focus may have allowed the book to do a better job of presenting a tightly argued claim – clearly it is a difficult task for any historian to pull together a clear argument with such a broad geographic focus, relatively long chronological period, and variety of sources. Where the book does make an important contribution is opening the door for future, more detailed studies, of the important topic of confraternal life, especially among blacks and Indians, and its role in the larger society – a topic that has been largely overlooked and which this book helps to bring to the forefront of historical inquiry into the colonial past of Latin America.