100 books like Drinking, Homicide and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages

By William B. Taylor,

Here are 100 books that Drinking, Homicide and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages fans have personally recommended if you like Drinking, Homicide and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Enslaving Spirits: The Portuguese-Brazilian Alcohol Trade at Luanda and Its Hinterland, C. 1550-1830

David Carey Jr. Author Of Distilling the Influence of Alcohol: Aguardiente in Guatemalan History

From my list on alcohol in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Why am I passionate about this?

Raised on happy hours on Cape Cod, MA patios with my Irish-American relatives, I long have been fascinated by how alcohol can bring people together and facilitate bonds that traverse both hardship and joy. During my travels and research in Mexico, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, and Ecuador, I observed how alcohol could both render families asunder and unite communities. As addiction makes clear, alcohol could hold tremendous power over individuals. But it also marked the identities of even the most casual drinkers. Throughout my research on other topics—crime, gender, medicine—alcohol consistently emerges as a crucial avenue of inquiry. The books listed below offer innovative and insightful ways of centering alcohol in scholarly narratives. 

David's book list on alcohol in Latin America and the Caribbean

David Carey Jr. Why did David love this book?

By exploring the intertwined transatlantic trades of enslaved Africans and alcohol, Curto reveals how Latin American libations bested European stock in ways that altered the course of history.

West Africans’ taste for Brazilian cachaça (sugarcane brandy) dislodged Portuguese wine and liquor facilitating Brazilian merchants’ dominance in Western Africa and spawning a vibrant trade based out of Luanda. What impressed me most about this book was how Curto turned conventional wisdom on its head by demonstrating how a Latin American nation shaped trade and tastes across the globe.

Portuguese efforts to regain their privileged trading position by outlawing the sale of cachaça in Africa failed. The direct trade between Africa and Brazil that alcohol facilitated challenges traditional descriptions of the transatlantic triangle trade. 

By José C. Curto,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Enslaving Spirits as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This volume deals with imported alcohol at Luanda and its hinterland, where it was heavily used to acquire captives for the Atlantic slave trade. Aside from highlighting the complexities of this singular economic component of Atlantic slaving, its focus on changing West -Central African alcohol consumption patterns through the importation of foreign intoxicants reveals an important element of the social history of African societies before the modern colonial period.


Book cover of ¡Tequila! Distilling the Spirit of Mexico

David Carey Jr. Author Of Distilling the Influence of Alcohol: Aguardiente in Guatemalan History

From my list on alcohol in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Why am I passionate about this?

Raised on happy hours on Cape Cod, MA patios with my Irish-American relatives, I long have been fascinated by how alcohol can bring people together and facilitate bonds that traverse both hardship and joy. During my travels and research in Mexico, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, and Ecuador, I observed how alcohol could both render families asunder and unite communities. As addiction makes clear, alcohol could hold tremendous power over individuals. But it also marked the identities of even the most casual drinkers. Throughout my research on other topics—crime, gender, medicine—alcohol consistently emerges as a crucial avenue of inquiry. The books listed below offer innovative and insightful ways of centering alcohol in scholarly narratives. 

David's book list on alcohol in Latin America and the Caribbean

David Carey Jr. Why did David love this book?

With clear and engaging prose, Gaytan reveals the power dynamics that shaped tequila’s trajectory in Mexico and abroad.

She traces tequila’s meteoric rise past other agave-derived drinks like pulque and mezcal. I really appreciate how she approaches her study as a sociologist but does not eschew history in her analysis. Although ancient Mayas were among the first to produce and consume tequila, its association with modernity can be attributed, in part, to modern marketers disassociating tequila from indigenous inebriation.

Even as she firmly grounds tequila in lo Mexicano or being Mexican, Gaytan also explores tequila’s influence and popularity in the United States. Her book reminded me how different my experience of drinking tequila in the United States has been from my enjoyment of tequila in cantinas in Mexico. 

By Marie Sarita Gaytán,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked ¡Tequila! Distilling the Spirit of Mexico as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Italy has grappa, Russia has vodka, Jamaica has rum. Around the world, certain drinks-especially those of the intoxicating kind-are synonymous with their peoples and cultures. For Mexico, this drink is tequila. For many, tequila can conjure up scenes of body shots on Cancun bars and coolly garnished margaritas on sandy beaches. Its power is equally strong within Mexico, though there the drink is more often sipped rather than shot, enjoyed casually among friends, and used to commemorate occasions from the everyday to the sacred. Despite these competing images, tequila is universally regarded as an enduring symbol of lo mexicano.

!Tequila!…


Book cover of Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause

Rick Jervis Author Of The Devil Behind the Badge: The Horrifying Twelve Days of the Border Patrol Serial Killer

From my list on take readers on a journey to unknown lands.

Why am I passionate about this?

Since I was old enough to read and watch screens, I’ve been fascinated by the promise of adventurous journeys. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Huckleberry Finn, the Starship Enterprise, Star Wars – all occupied valuable real estate in my consciousness. That thirst for journey took me to Eastern Europe after college, where I worked as a freelancer, and to Baghdad and other Middle East cities, where I was a correspondent during and after the Iraq War. My sense of adventure continues today in my writing, drawing me to stories in colorful places, such as the U.S.-Mexico border, to try to make sense of the world and our place in it. 

Rick's book list on take readers on a journey to unknown lands

Rick Jervis Why did Rick love this book?

The history of rum is, in so many ways, the history of Cuba. Bacardi shows this about as good as any book I’ve seen. I’m a first-generation Cuban-American (my parents left Cuba in the early ‘60s as teens and resettled to Miami).

So, it was particularly moving to follow the generational story of the Bacardis, the family from Santiago de Cuba who not only created what became the world’s best-known rum but whose patriarchs participated in or funded every coup, uprising, or political lurch in Cuba stretching back to the Spanish-American War.

I loved how Gjelten shepherds the reader from the horrors of the 19th-century war to the Cuban exodus following Fidel Castro’s ascent to power. It transported me to Cuba’s past and, more importantly, deepened my understanding of my own roots.  

By Tom Gjelten,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this widely hailed book, NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten fuses the story of the Bacardi family and their famous rum business with Cuba's tumultuous experience over the last 150 years to produce a deeply entertaining historical narrative. The company Facundo Bacardi launched in Cuba in 1862 brought worldwide fame to the island, and in the decades that followed his Bacardi descendants participated in every aspect of Cuban life. With his intimate account of their struggles and adventures across five generations, Gjelten brings to life the larger story of Cuba's fight for freedom, its tortured relationship with America, the rise of…


Book cover of Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History

David Carey Jr. Author Of Distilling the Influence of Alcohol: Aguardiente in Guatemalan History

From my list on alcohol in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Why am I passionate about this?

Raised on happy hours on Cape Cod, MA patios with my Irish-American relatives, I long have been fascinated by how alcohol can bring people together and facilitate bonds that traverse both hardship and joy. During my travels and research in Mexico, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, and Ecuador, I observed how alcohol could both render families asunder and unite communities. As addiction makes clear, alcohol could hold tremendous power over individuals. But it also marked the identities of even the most casual drinkers. Throughout my research on other topics—crime, gender, medicine—alcohol consistently emerges as a crucial avenue of inquiry. The books listed below offer innovative and insightful ways of centering alcohol in scholarly narratives. 

David's book list on alcohol in Latin America and the Caribbean

David Carey Jr. Why did David love this book?

Smith traces the historical arc of rum from local colonial consumption to becoming a major export by the nineteenth century.

I am amazed at how much history Smith captures by focusing his study on one type of alcohol. With his attention to how European and African drinking habits shaped rum consumption, he demonstrates how rum cut across gender, class, and race relations.

With their knowledge of distillation and introduction of resources new to the Americas, Europeans increased alcohol’s potency. Alcohol took on political as well as economic significance when colonial officials used alcohol revenue to govern. Without displacing fermented drinks, distilled liquor introduced new dynamics in the production and consumption of alcohol.

I love that he emphasizes how common consumption spurred taverns and other drinking establishments, which facilitated socialization that frequently contravened social norms, such as elite men who conversed with poor and working-class women and African and mulatto drinkers…

By Frederick H. Smith,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Caribbean Rum as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Christopher Columbus brought sugarcane to the New World on his second voyage. By 1520 commercial sugar production was underway in the Caribbean, along with the perfection of methods to ferment and distill alcohol from sugarcane to produce a new beverage that would have dramatic impact on the region. Caribbean Rum presents the fascinating cultural, economic, and ethnographic history of rum in the Caribbean from the colonial period to the present.

Drawing on data from historical archaeology and the economic history of the Caribbean, Frederick Smith explains why this industry arose in the islands, how attitudes toward alcohol consumption have impacted…


Book cover of Urban Indians in a Silver City: Zacatecas, Mexico, 1546-1810

Allison Bigelow Author Of Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World

From my list on mining in colonial Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I became fascinated by the science, technology, and social landscape of mining during my time teaching English in the Cerro Colorado copper mine in the north of Chile. Listening to miners and their families speak to each other gave me a small sense of the knowledge embedded in the language of mining communities. The experience showed me just how little I knew about metals and how much they shape our world, from the copper wiring in phone chargers to expressions like “mina” (mine/woman). That curiosity led me to a PhD program and to write my first book, Mining Language.

Allison's book list on mining in colonial Latin America

Allison Bigelow Why did Allison love this book?

What Mangan’s work does for the Andes, Velasco Murillo’s scholarship does for Mexico. The book covers an astounding historical range, taking readers through the first silver strikes in Zacatecas under colonial rule until the edge of early nation-statehood. In telling this 250-year history of Zacatecas, Velasco Murillo demonstrates how Indigenous mining communities, their labor, and the capital they generated were critical to shaping – and were shaped by – emerging ideas of mestizo citizenship. It does so, moreover, by centering women and Indigenous miners in ways that other social histories of mining had not yet accomplished. Velasco Murillo shows definitively that the history of silver is not just underground – it is a story of women who prepare food, raise children, and form a political and economic community is life-giving, meaning-making ways across urban geographies and remote mining spaces. Readers looking for new ways to understand mining and revolution in…

By Dana Velasco Murillo,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Urban Indians in a Silver City as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the sixteenth century, silver mined by native peoples became New Spain's most important export. Silver production served as a catalyst for northern expansion, creating mining towns that led to the development of new industries, markets, population clusters, and frontier institutions. Within these towns, the need for labor, raw materials, resources, and foodstuffs brought together an array of different ethnic and social groups-Spaniards, Indians, Africans, and ethnically mixed individuals or castas. On the northern edge of the empire, 350 miles from Mexico City, sprung up Zacatecas, a silver-mining town that would grow in prominence to become the "Second City of…


Book cover of The Native Conquistador: Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Account of the Conquest of New Spain

Camilla Townsend Author Of Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs

From my list on the Aztecs by people who once knew an Aztec.

Why am I passionate about this?

Twenty-five years ago, I began to study Nahuatl, the language once spoken by the Aztecs—and still spoken today by more than a million Indigenous people in Mexico. This has opened up to me a world of great excitement. After the Spanish conquest, many Aztecs learned the Roman alphabet. During the day, they used it to study the texts presented to them by the Franciscan friars. But in the evenings, they used it to transcribe old histories recited for them by their parents and grandparents. Today we are beginning to use those writings to learn more about the Aztecs than we ever could before we studied their language.

Camilla's book list on the Aztecs by people who once knew an Aztec

Camilla Townsend Why did Camilla love this book?

Many people don’t realize that there were Indigenous people who chose to side with the Spaniards.

If they had reasons of their own to support the powerful outsiders, they sometimes did so. One such man had a great-great-grandson who became a writer in colonial Mexico. He took the family stories and did some research of his own, and then wrote this compelling account of the decisions his ancestor made and the actions he took.

I love his pride! (Warning: you have to like battle scenes to like this one.)

By Amber Brian (editor), Bradley Benton (editor), Pablo Garcia Loaeza (editor)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Native Conquistador as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For many years, scholars of the conquest worked to shift focus away from the Spanish perspective and bring attention to the often-ignored voices and viewpoints of the Indians. But recent work that highlights the "Indian conquistadors" has forced scholars to reexamine the simple categories of conqueror and subject and to acknowledge the seemingly contradictory roles assumed by native peoples who chose to fight alongside the Spaniards against other native groups. The Native Conquistador-a translation of the "Thirteenth Relation," written by don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl in the early seventeenth century-narrates the conquest of Mexico from Hernando Cortes's arrival in 1519…


Book cover of Cave Paintings of Baja California: Discovering the Great Murals of an Unknown People

Jennifer Silva Redmond Author Of Honeymoon at Sea: How I Found Myself Living on a Small Boat

From my list on nonfiction Baja that can transport you there.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up on Southern California beaches—Manhattan Beach, Venice Beach, Ocean Beach, La Jolla—but first experienced Baja as an adult. It was like a different world. Returning repeatedly over the next decade, I came to know the stunning shorelines and quiet bays of the peninsula’s midriff as intimately as my home state’s beaches. Swimming and diving Baja’s clear blue waters and hiking its dusty trails and palm-studded mountains, I have admired the many moods of this unique desert peninsula. A writer and editor, I have read extensively from the vast selection of books about Baja, both new and classic works.

Jennifer's book list on nonfiction Baja that can transport you there

Jennifer Silva Redmond Why did Jennifer love this book?

You cannot judge a book by its cover, especially this one.

I know it looks like a coffee table book—and it is a gorgeous book full of incredible photos of the cave painting sites and much more, all by the author—but it is so much more than that.

First off, it is an adventure story, and it quickly becomes a story of exploration and discovery. I found myself as gripped by it as by the plot of any mystery tale, and I am so grateful that the author taught me about, and inspired me to learn even more about, Baja’s amazing and mysterious cave paintings.

This book was truly an inspiration to me.

By Harry Crosby, Joanne H Crosby (illustrator), Lowell Lindsay (editor)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Cave Paintings of Baja California as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A full-color account of the great murals of a forgotten people. Depicts the author's discovery and documentation of a world-class archaeological region in remote central Baja.


Book cover of Collision of Worlds: A Deep History of the Fall of Aztec Mexico and the Forging of New Spain

Matthew Restall Author Of When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History

From my list on the Aztecs and Spanish Conquistadors.

Why am I passionate about this?

I spent a good part of my childhood in Spain and Venezuela while being educated in England, and early on I developed a fascination with the Spanish and Native American worlds. After traveling as a young man in Mexico and in Central America, I was hooked for life. With history degrees from Oxford and UCLA, for thirty years now I have been studying and writing books about the Aztecs and Mayas, Spanish conquistadors, and Afro-Mexicans—fascinating subjects from whom I continue to learn.

Matthew's book list on the Aztecs and Spanish Conquistadors

Matthew Restall Why did Matthew love this book?

To complement the perspectives of historians and art historians, Carballo’s book offers the viewpoint and skills of an archaeologist. But Collision of Worlds is far from being a field report from a dig. Instead, Carballo combines the sources and methods of historians and archaeologists to present a thorough and deep-rooted account of the two civilizations that met in Mexico five hundred years ago, giving the reader a more extensive background on the Iberian and Mesoamerican past than the other books I have selected. Like the other books I have chosen, this is recent work, and thus together these books all represent slightly different takes on the topic.

By David M. Carballo,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Collision of Worlds as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Mexico of five centuries ago was witness to one of the most momentous encounters between human societies, when a group of Spaniards led by Hernando Cortes joined forces with tens of thousands of Mesoamerican allies to topple the mighty Aztec Empire. It served as a template for the forging of much of Latin America and initiated the globalized world we inhabit today. The violent clash that culminated in the Aztec-Spanish war of 1519-21 and the new colonial order
it created were millennia in the making, entwining the previously independent cultural developments of both sides of the Atlantic.

Collision of Worlds…


Book cover of The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660–1720

Andrew Konove Author Of Black Market Capital: Urban Politics and the Shadow Economy in Mexico City

From my list on everyday life in Mexico City.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up hearing stories about Mexico City from my grandmother, who spent her childhood in the 1930s there after emigrating from the Soviet Union. I fell in love with the city’s neighborhoods during my first visit in 2006, and I am still mesmerized by its scale and its extremes. I am especially interested in the city’s public spaces and the ways people have used them for work and pleasure over the centuries. Those activities often take place in the gray areas of the law, a dynamic I explored in the research for my Ph.D. in History and in my book, Black Market Capital

Andrew's book list on everyday life in Mexico City

Andrew Konove Why did Andrew love this book?

Douglas Cope’s book is a wonderful work of social history that explores how issues of race and class impacted the lives of working people in colonial Mexico City. Cope shows that Spain’s so-called “caste system” was more ideal than reality. A person’s physical appearance, occupation, and social milieu shaped perceptions of their race and ethnicity far more than their lineage, which was not something most people documented in this era. The book combines quantitative and qualitative analysis to provide a rich description of everyday life, bringing readers into artisans’ workshops, market vendors’ stalls, and other spaces where people lived and worked in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

By R. Douglas Cope,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Limits of Racial Domination as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

     In this distinguished contribution to Latin American colonial history, Douglas Cope draws upon a wide variety of sources—including Inquisition and court cases, notarial records and parish registers—to challenge the traditional view of castas (members of the caste system created by Spanish overlords) as rootless, alienated, and dominated by a desire to improve their racial status.  On the contrary, the castas, Cope shows, were neither passive nor ruled by feelings of racial inferiority; indeed, they often modified or even rejected elite racial ideology.  Castas also sought ways to manipulate their social "superiors" through astute use of the legal system.  Cope shows…


Book cover of The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico

David Carballo Author Of Collision of Worlds: A Deep History of the Fall of Aztec Mexico and the Forging of New Spain

From my list on the Aztec-Spanish War.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an archaeologist at Boston University with a transatlantic family that spans Spain and Latin America.  My research has primarily focused on Mesoamerica, and prehispanic central Mexico more specifically, but the deep roots of these transatlantic entanglements have always fascinated me personally and as a historically minded scholar.

David's book list on the Aztec-Spanish War

David Carballo Why did David love this book?

A vivid account of life in the Aztec world and the tragic Aztec-Spanish War told by Indigenous scribes writing in Nahuatl during the decades following these events and the transformation to colonial New Spain. Mexican authors began publishing translations of Native-author sources in the late eighteenth century; yet, together with his former advisor, Ángel María Garibay, León-Portilla did more than any other twentieth-century scholar to elevate the voices and perspectives of Nahua peoples, the descendants of the prehispanic Aztecs. The Broken Spears was first published in Spanish in 1959 and translated to English in 1962. It has been translated into many other languages and revised versions since.  Its key sixteenth-century texts include portions of Book 12 of the Florentine Codex, compiled by the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún, and sections of the Annals of Tlatelolco. Within these composite sources, readers can sense the multivalence of the Native authors…

By Miguel León-Portilla,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Broken Spears as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For hundreds of years, the history of the conquest of Mexico and the defeat of the Aztecs has been told in the words of the Spanish victors. Miguel León-Portilla has long been at the forefront of expanding that history to include the voices of indigenous peoples. In this new and updated edition of his classic The Broken Spears, León-Portilla has included accounts from native Aztec descendants across the centuries. These texts bear witness to the extraordinary vitality of an oral tradition that preserves the viewpoints of the vanquished instead of the victors. León-Portilla's new Postscript reflects upon the critical importance…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in alcohol, Mexico, and Latin America?

Alcohol 14 books
Mexico 228 books
Latin America 122 books