This course examines Latin America from the initial encounters between Europeans and Native Americans to the early nineteenth century wars of independence. It focuses on interactions among Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans, tracing the evolution of a range of multiethnic, colonial societies in the Americas. Thus we will study the indigenous background to conquest as well as the nature of the settler communities, and the development of plantation slavery as well as village life. We will analyze overlapping structures of class, race, gender, and ethnicity in a colonial context and examine the complex processes by which identities were assigned and assumed. Finally, we will ask what permitted the survival of these colonial structures for over three hundred years, and what factors eventually led to the collapse of the colonial system.