Exact, probing and original, Schwartz’s study of colonial “race” in Latin America reveals a very peculiar world of passing. Schwartz uses three groups to present “race” as an apparatus of hermeneutical suspicion and forged paperwork: Moriscos, conversos, and mestizos. Who actually belonged into these reified communities was extremely difficult to pin down, for colonial race in Latin America did not lie in the skin but in the ability to pay witnesses and insult neighbors. There is a lifetime of scholarship in this brilliant book.