Traditional studies on pre-Enlightenment criollismo tend to place it between the simple adulation of Spanish power and the origin of a nationalist teleology that at the beginning of the 19th century will derive in the creation of the modern Spanish-American states. This volume has the merit of presenting through twelve specialised articles - coming from the pen of some of the most outstanding researchers of the 'colonial' period - a healthy renewal and a productive questioning of the previous readings on criollismo in the central cases of México and Perú. At the same time, it explores the usefulness and limitations of the English-speaking postcolonial lottery for knowledge of the broad and complex Spanish-American corpus, updating and expanding on one of the most pressing debates in the human disciplines related to the region.