In a pioneering study of childhood in colonial Spanish America,
Bianca Premo examines the lives of youths in the homes, schools,
and institutions of the capital city of Lima, Peru. Situating these
young lives within the framework of law and intellectual history
from 1650 to 1820, Premo brings to light the colonial politics of
childhood and challenges readers to view patriarchy as a system of
power based on age, caste, and social class as much as gender.
Although Spanish laws endowed elite men with an authority over
children that mirrored and reinforced the monarch's legitimacy as a
colonial "Father King," Premo finds that, in practice, Lima's young
often grew up in the care of adults--such as women and slaves--who
were subject to the patriarchal authority of others. During the
Bourbon Reforms, city inhabitants of all castes and classes began
to practice a "new politics of the child," challenging men and
masters by employing Enlightenment principles of childhood. Thus
the social transformations and political dislocations of the late
eighteenth century occurred not only in elite circles and royal
palaces, Premo concludes, but also in the humble households of a
colonial city.