<div>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In this distinguished contribution to Latin American colonial history, Douglas Cope draws upon a wide variety of sources&mdash;including Inquisition and court cases, notarial records and parish registers&mdash;to challenge the traditional view of castas (members of the caste system created by Spanish overlords) as rootless, alienated, and dominated by a desire to improve their racial status.&nbsp; On the contrary, the castas, Cope shows, were neither passive nor ruled by feelings of racial inferiority; indeed, they often modified or even rejected elite racial ideology.&nbsp; Castas also sought ways to manipulate their social &quot;superiors&quot; through astute use of the legal system.&nbsp; Cope shows that social control by the Spaniards rested less on institutions than on patron-client networks linking individual patricians and plebeians, which enabled the elite class to co-opt the more successful castas.<br> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The book concludes with the&nbsp;most thorough account yet published of the Mexico City riot of 1692.&nbsp; This account illuminates both the shortcomings and strengths of the patron-client system.&nbsp; Spurred by a corn shortage and subsequent famine, a plebeian mob laid waste much of the central city.&nbsp; Cope demonstrates that the political situation was not substantially altered, however; the patronage system continued to control employment and plebeians were largely left to bargain and adapt, as before.<br> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A revealing look at the economic lives of the urban poor in the colonial era, <i>The Limits of Racial Domination </i>examines a period in which critical social changes were occurring.&nbsp; The book should interest historians and ethnohistorians alike.<br></div>