Paulina Numhauser. Mujeres indias y señores de la coca: Potosí y Cuzco en el siglo XVI. Madrid: Catedra. 2005. Pp. 407. €16.50

When the population of the mining city of Potosí swelled with indigenous inhabitants in the mid-sixteenth century, baskets of coca leaves followed. Fueled by the silver in Potosí's economy, Cuzco coca crowded out inferior leaves from other regions and fetched handsome prices for growers and vendors. The nexus between Potosí's silver and Cuzco's coca serves as the point of departure for Paulina Numhauser's book about the indigenous women who marketed coca and the Spanish men who owned coca farms.

Both the Andes del Cuzco and Potosí were infamous in the colonial era as sites of oppression. Indigenous laborers forced into lower climes to grow coca often sickened and died. Those who mined silver at the behest of Spanish rulers inside Potosí's famed Cerro Rico likewise risked illness and death. Rather than focus on the indigenous population in the Andes...