Refusing the Favor

This book unveils an unprecedented method for understanding how Mexico's northern territory later known as New Mexico came under the authority of the US and what role females played in this political takeover. By focusing on the crucial yet invisible population of 19th-century Spanish-Mexican women living in Santa Fe -- until the California Gold Rush the largest town west of the Mississippi -- Refusing the Favor situates gender issues squarely within contemporary debates about conquest and colonization.