Described by its intellectuals as a "sick continent," a racially handicapped people, a hysterical female body, or an unbalanced psychological subject, Latin America has materialized as a region in crisis. Disease has emerged as both a metaphor and a matter of fact for those trying to understand the region. Aiming to free this metaphor from its materiality, Benigno Trigo describes its complexity and development. He reads Latin American history and literature from a broad perspective of cultural studies. He traces race, gender, and disease as they materialize in changing spatial landscapes, critical bodyscapes, and in conflicting histories of the region. Trigo argues that sexual and racial differences emerge as threats in competing scientific, literary, and political discourses describing the colonial context of Latin America. Whether speaking of the mapping practices of Alexander Humboldt and Agustin Codazzi, the construction of a virulent subjectivity in the writings of Jose M. Samper and Jorge Isaacs, or the construction of anemia as an endemic disease by an intellectual elite, Trigo shows how theories about disease, race, and gender are central to the widespread perception of Latin America as a subject of crisis.