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  • Forbidden Passages: Muslims and Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America by Karoline P. Cook
  • Judith Mansilla
Forbidden Passages: Muslims and Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America. By Karoline P. Cook. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016, p. 272, $45.00.

In this excellent study, Karoline Cook goes further than merely examining the lives of Moriscos and Muslims in the New World, as the tittle suggests. She analyzes the political and cultural impact these marginal members of Spanish society had on both side of the Atlantic World. She argues that the presence of Morisco and Muslim populations in the peninsula, along with the religious and political problems they represented, influenced the Crown's politics in the New World and shaped the understanding about Spanishness, belonging to Spanish nation, of both royal administrators and colonial subjects.

Cook shows that images of Moriscos in Spain were in constant change and subjected to debate throughout the sixteenth century. She reminds us that Muslim communities in Spain differed from each other. Many of them coexisted with Old Christians for generations and integrated to local communities. She explains that the Crown's politics of religious uniformity led to conflictive relations with the Granada Muslims, while the Crown also stressed the political and social treatment of Moriscos as outsiders. Although royal authorities initially had polarized views about Moriscos, they progressively associated their suspicions about Moriscos' conversion to a lack of political loyalty. Christianity became a distinctive feature that differentiated loyal vassals from disloyal ones, who were condemned to segregation and eventual expulsion from the body politic.

The author explains how this process of social and cultural categorization paralleled and influenced the establishment of Spanish colonial rule in [End Page 285] the new discovered territories. The Crown prohibited New Christians, of both Muslim and Jewish ascendance, from traveling to the Indies because it believed they would contaminate the new colonial setting and obstruct the conversion of Indian population. The establishment of Holy Office headquarters in the New World was part of this increasing process of protecting orthodoxy. The Crown had political reasons to ban the presence of Moriscos in the New World, because the evangelization of the natives justified and provided legitimacy to the conquering enterprise. Nevertheless, Moriscos were among the first settlers of the Americas, and they continued arriving even after the Crown enacted and increased immigration restrictions.

Moriscos' presence in the New World was ambiguous and problematic. Cook states that the New World offered Moriscos new spaces and activities to mingle among the diverse members of the colonial society, leaving behind their religious past or that of their ancestors, or concealing Muslim customary practices. Distance and overlapping jurisdictions obstructed the enforcement of royal regulations in the New World, allowing the arrival and settlement of Moriscos. Yet these opportunities decreased as royal dispositions restricting their presence in the New World exacerbated colonial authorities' and population's fears and distrust. During the initial decades of the New World's colonization, some Moriscos had even become royal officials, assuming roles of translators in the conquering expeditions, yet their loyalty was soon put under questioning. Images of Moriscos, which usually confused customary and religious practices, served colonial settlers to identify someone as such, even individuals who were Old Christians.

From the examination of several legal cases before secular, ecclesiastic, and inquisitorial authorities, Cook confirms an increasing suspicion of Moriscos towards the late sixteenth century, which paralleled the hardening of royal policies against Moriscos in the metropole. Cook's analysis of these legal cases shows that these representations of identity were far from static. Both accusers and those accused of being Morisco constantly redefined these representations at court and in everyday life. Colonial settlers, both Old Christians and new converts, contributed to define who was or not a member of the body politic. It became evident that belonging to the Christian community became essential to demonstrate loyalty to the Spanish king and to obtain membership in the body politic of the Spanish Monarchy. Muslim descendants defended their belonging to the body politic, justifying their repetition or use of certain Islamic practices as learned at a young age and emphasizing their will to reconcile with...

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