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1. Introduction: Texts, Textures, and Water Marks -- 2. The Pacific Ocean as a Space of Freedom, Danger, and Economic Success for the Colonial Project in Verdadera descripción de la Provincia y Tierra de Las Esmeraldas -- 3. English and Irish Missionaries in New Spain: A Hydrocolonial Reading of Religion and Empire -- 4. On Paper Ships, Sailors, and Cosmographers: Spanish Maritime Narratives and Political Networks of an Imperial Project -- 5. Imagining a Multi-Modal Digital Corpus of Early Modern Maritime Texts -- 6. Alonso Ramírez’s Circumnavigation of the World (1675–1689) and the Universal Claim to the American Spirit in the Open Seas -- 7. Pantitlán or Desagüe: Technology and Secularization in Colonial Mexico City -- 8. “Water, Only Water on All Parts”: Re/imagining the Middle Passage in Teresa Cárdenas’ Mãe Sereia. Hydrocriticism and Colonialism in Latin America is organized around the critical and theoretical “turn” known as hydro-criticism, an innovative approach to the study of the ways in which bodies of water (oceans, seas, rivers, archipelagos, lakes, etc.) impact the study of history, culture, and society. This volume proposes a hydro-critical approach to issues related to the colonial period. The analysed texts demonstrate not only the presence of water and oceanic trajectories as metaphorical devices, but the inherent implication of navigation, ports, islandic territories, drainage systems, floodings and the like in configuration of collective imaginaries, from colonial times to the present. This book encompasses studies of the decisive role water played in the world view from/about the “New World” since the discovery, both for the monarchy and the church, and the impact of oceanic journeys for the advancement of colonization and slavery. In chapters that combine historical, linguistic, literary and ethnographic approaches, this volume constitutes an attempt to expand the scope and methodology of colonial studies. At the same time, the continuity of maritime perspectives reaches the analysis of contemporary literature, thus demonstrating the importance of this critical paradigm for the study of Caribbean cultures. In this respect, studies particularly illuminate the connection between popular beliefs and oceanic dimensions, as well as on issues of gender and ethnicity.
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