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The colonial period in Latin America was one of dynamic collision and convergence, drastic ruptures and surprising continuities. The several hundred years between the early invasions and Latin American independence are often dismissed as blank pages of Baroque stagnation, glacial change, and economic decadence. These assumptions, though, are misleading, for at the crossroads of the Atlantic and Pacific, Latin America was at the center of the early modern world. In this course, we investigate not only the violence of conquest and enslavement, but also how Indigenous and Afro-diasporic peoples adapted to new colonial realities. In so doing, we will see how the limitations (not dominance) of European influence defined the development of multiethnic societies in the hemisphere. Our timeframe covers from the consolidation of the Mexica and Inca empires in the early 1400s to the period just before the wars of independence in the early 19th century. We will also pay attention to the difficulty of defining (if at all possible) the “end” of the colonial period, and during the last weeks of the semester, we will consider the lingering presence of the colonial past in the 21st century. Overall, the course uses close analysis of primary- and secondary-source documents to examine the broader processes of invasion, religion, hierarchy, rebellion, liminality, and memory. In the evaluation of each topic, we will consider diverse perspectives, such as those of enslaved Africans, Indigenous intellectuals, women, mestizos, and Iberian newcomers.