6In his seminal essay Discourse on Colonialism, Aim C saire asserts that colonization ultimately works to decivilize the colonizer, awakening baser, brutalizing, and dehumanizing instincts. In this crucial new study, Villate-Isaza explores the violent colonial history of the New Kingdom of Granada (modern-day Colombia and Venezuela) by examining three seventeenth-century historical accounts--Pedro Sim n's Noticias historiales, Juan Rodr guez Freile's El carnero, and Lucas Fern ndez de Piedrahita's Historia general--each of which reveals the colonizer's reliance on the threat of violence to sustain order. Despite their attempts to convey a narrative of European political, technical, and moral superiority, these accounts reveal tensions between the writers' social interests and personal identifications. As they attempt to reinforce the principal tenets of European civilization and Catholic Reformation orthodoxy, they also reveal contradictions that emerge when colonizers behave in barbaric ways.