This book reconstructs the commercial and ritual activities of daily life in multi-ethnic Andean towns to show how colonial elites and commoners marked identities and status through what they produced and consumed. In the 1600s and 1700s, markets drew together Europeans, Africans, and the indigenous as they worked out how to provide for a rapidly expanding population in new ports, administrative capitals, and mining camps. Powered by indigenous labour, silver mining fuelled Spains imperial economy; we understand less well how petty commerce and the sale of food and stimulants made it possible for this imperial system to function. Workers needed food and drink, merchants needed outlets for goods, local markets needed buyers and sellers. Drawing upon archival evidence and a re-reading of the chronicles of the colonial coca leaf debate, this book explains how economic participation worked: how women tavern keepers, black and Indian beer brewers, and people accused of selling magic created an intersection of economic and cultural forces from which sprang new colonial meanings of alcohol, stimulants, and magic. How race and ethnicity are marked and debated today in the Andes began in the 16th and 17th centuries. Status and hierarchy shaped how ethno-cultural categories were introduced by colonisers, contested in markets, and linked to consumable products. Multi-ethnic Andean markets operated as sites where plebeians and elites created the petty commerce that allowed the silver-mining economy to develop. Wills, contracts, court cases, and licensing and tax records offer evidence of this transformative encounter. Ecclesiastic investigations reveal reliance on the occult and supernatural. Piecing together this intersection of cultural, economic, and political ethno-racial categorisation opens a window into how Spanish imperial rule was constructed through imposition and contestation.