"Millions have marched in the past years against corruption scandals in Latin America. Popular discontent and politicians have forced out the presidents of Brazil and Guatemala. The Mexican president also plunged deeply in the polls when sordid scandals became public. Amidst the backlash, new allegations of malfeasance hit the headlines of newspapers almost every day. At least in Mexico, many citizens have resigned themselves to thinking that corruption has pervaded their country since the Spanish conquest (1519-1521). These Mexicans are right in believing that there has always been some form of corruption in their country, just as in most other regions of the world. Yet the idea of corruption in the past differed markedly from today and has largely been forgotten. Corruption in Mexico's colonial period meant violating the proper finding of justice.

Judges who accepted bribes to alter judicial verdicts committed this crime, for example, and early modern people roundly condemned the injustice. At the same time, the concept of corruption changed slowly and grew beyond the judiciary in the period 1650-1755. The concept evolved to include several forms of self-advantage in the bureaucracy. Scholars of Latin America have overlooked this conceptual expansion from judicial to administrative corruption, as they have tended to ignore the subject in the past years. This book sets out to explore the enigma of historical corruption by studying fresh sources in Spanish and other, less consulted languages"--.