Looking at the movement of ideas across borders and over time, this study identifies the European perception of the American body as an abject body, one that destabilizes system, identity, and order. It explores the relationship of body and space as a continuum of colonial discursive practices and strategic representations, focusing on the construction of identity, and the definitions of physical and cultural frontiers. This book goes beyond previous readings of the texts by suggesting new directions for the analysis and interpretation of spatiality, corporeality and agency in colonial Spanish America.