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Using an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, at the intersection of literary criticism, cultural theory, and anthropology, this book-length project deals with several ethnographic, historical and literary narratives about identity transformation throughout Latin American cultural history. These are tales about colonial figures who face the predicament of becoming-other, suffering or enjoying their own collapse as they surrender themselves to other cultures. My study will show how colonial stories about civilized people becoming savages or, conversely, struggling not to go native, transcend the colonial period and become symbolic reservoirs for discussions about identity, nation building, cultural influence, and hybridity in the Americas. By examining cultural assimilation beyond the rhetoric of betrayal and alienation that sometimes permeates research around identity politics, this book will make a theoretical and anthropological argument about the ethics of identity formation.