“Austin accomplishes an innovative, ethnographic-based reevaluation of Spanish colonialism in the province of Paraguay during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. [He] identifies that a Guaraní-derived sociocultural framework of cuñadasgo laid the foundation for the embattled colony’s survival and proved a primary medium through which a wide spectrum of social relations in Paraguay evolved.”—Michael Huner, associate professor of history, Grand Valley State University