NUNS, WITCHES, AND TESTATORS: WOMEN’S AGENCY AND
SPIRITUAL CAPITAL IN NEW SPAIN
_______________
A Thesis
Presented to the
Faculty of
San Diego State University
_______________
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
in
History
_______________
by
Moriah Gonzalez-Meeks
Summer 2014
iii
Copyright © 2014
by
Moriah Gonzalez-Meeks
All Rights Reserved
iv
DEDICATION
My parents cultivated my love of learning and reading (my endless reading),
necessary traits for a life-long student, historian, and now college instructor. Thank you for
your good example, your financial and moral support, and for lending me a sympathetic ear
when I needed it. Thank you to my husband and teammate for all that you have done (far too
much to list) these last nine years to help me achieve my academic goals and dreams; I do not
know what I would do without you. This thesis and my larger academic career would not
have been possible without the assistance, support, and love of my spouse, both sets of my
parents, my many and wonderful sisters, and my Amma and Nana; this thesis is dedicated to
you.
v
ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS
Nuns, Witches, and Testators: Women’s Agency and Spiritual
Capital in New Spain
by
Moriah Gonzalez-Meeks
Master of Arts in History
San Diego State University, 2014
Investigating spiritual institutions and practices provides one of the best methods for
analyzing the experiences and behavior of colonial Mexican women, as well as the avenues
of advancement that were available to women from different racial and economic groups.
Analyses of colonial Mexican women and spirituality also reveal how poor Spanish women,
mixed-race women called castas, African women, and indigenous women utilized sanctioned
and unsanctioned spiritual practices to advance their own interests. This thesis argues that
seventeenth and eighteenth-century colonial Mexican women consciously utilized a variety
of spiritual practices to empower themselves socially and economically: they wrote wills that
contained pious bequests and favored daughters as heirs, they became nuns or beatas, they
worked in convents, they converted to Catholicism, they performed love magic rituals, and
they practiced indigenous healing strategies in order to acquire spiritual capital and improve
their daily lives. Role, textual, and comparative modes of analysis will be utilized to
investigate the behavior and experiences of indigenous, Afro-Mexican, casta, and Spanish
women in Spanish and Mexican Inquisition trials, testaments, and religious biographies
called vidas. Textual and discourse analyses will be used to study the dominant religious,
political, and legal discourse found within Inquisitional edicts, Spanish law codes, and
treatises written by Inquisitors and Catholic clergymen.
This research will demonstrate that a variety of women from different racial and
social classes were active historical agents in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Mexico.
Women in colonial Mexico exercised agency and utilized different expressions of spirituality
to consciously improve their lives; however their gender, race, and class status influenced the
avenues of spirituality available to them. This research will challenge racist and gendered
stereotypes of Mexican women’s passivity and men’s machismo, both legacies of the Black
Legend. In addition, this research will demonstrate that despite the presence of strong,
patriarchal institutions, Mexican women were not completely subjugated in colonial society
and that many were able to utilize and navigate these institutions to their advantage. Finally,
this research will illustrate the crucial ties between Spanish and colonial Mexican
institutions, practices, and ideologies, especially as they pertain to women’s status and
avenues of spiritual expressions.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
ABSTRACT ...............................................................................................................................v
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................. ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................................x
CHAPTER
1
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................1
Women and Gender in Colonial Mexico: A Historiography ...................................3
Women’s History in the United States...............................................................4
Women in Early Colonial Mexican Histories ....................................................5
The Development of Women’s History .............................................................7
Women in Later Colonial Mexican Histories ....................................................9
Gender History .................................................................................................11
Gender in Colonial Mexican Histories ............................................................13
Sexualities History ...........................................................................................16
Sexualities in Colonial Mexican Histories .......................................................17
Patterns and Themes ........................................................................................19
Sources and Chapter Organization.........................................................................20
2
WOMEN’S ECONOMIC AND SPIRITUAL AGENCY IN EARLY
MODERN SPAIN ......................................................................................................22
Social Status of Women .........................................................................................22
Spanish Legal Codes ..............................................................................................29
Las Siete Partidas and the Legal Status of Women in Spain ................................31
Purity of Blood, Enclosure, and the Authority of Men in Las Siete
Partidas ..................................................................................................................33
Testamentary Practices in Spain ............................................................................36
Inquisition, Witchcraft, and Love Magic in Spain .................................................41
Conclusion .............................................................................................................46
3
NAHUA WOMEN’S STATUS AND AGENCY IN EIGHTEENTHCENTURY TOLUCA VALLEY TESTAMENTS ....................................................47
vii
Testaments .............................................................................................................47
The Status of Indigenous Women in Post-Classic Mesoamerica ..........................50
Mesoamerica to New Spain: Indigenous Women and Colonization .....................53
Women’s Status in New Spain ..............................................................................56
Indigenous Women’s Agency and Spanish Law ...................................................59
Indigenous Writing and Testaments in New Spain................................................62
Toluca Valley Nahua Women’s Testaments..........................................................68
Indigenous Women’s Testaments in New Spain ...................................................79
Conclusion .............................................................................................................81
4
SANCTIONED SPIRITUALITY AND ECONOMIC AGENCY: NUNS,
BEATAS, AND CATHOLIC PIETY ..........................................................................83
Recogimientos ........................................................................................................83
Recogimiento, Race, and Power.............................................................................85
Calidad, Honor, and Limpieza de Sangre ..............................................................86
Afro-Mexicans and Catholicism ............................................................................87
The “Equality of Souls” and Slavery ...............................................................88
Catholic Conversion and Marriage ..................................................................90
Confraternities..................................................................................................92
Blasphemy as Resistance and the Inquisition ..................................................93
Beatas and Beaterios..............................................................................................95
Indigenous Beaterios and Convents.......................................................................97
Spanish Convents ...................................................................................................99
Conclusion ...........................................................................................................104
5
UNSANCTIONED SPIRITUALITY AND ECONOMIC AGENCY:
CURANDERAS, LOVE MAGIC, AND SOCIAL HEALING .................................106
Historiography of Magic and Healing in Colonial Mexico .................................108
African Healing and Magic ..................................................................................112
Magical Syncretism in New Spain .......................................................................114
Witches, Curanderas, and the Inquisition ...........................................................117
Love Magic ..........................................................................................................125
Conclusion ...........................................................................................................131
6
CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................132
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................134
viii
APPENDIX
A
TERMS .....................................................................................................................143
B
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY TOLUCA VALLEY FEMALE TESTATOR ............147
ix
LIST OF FIGURES
PAGE
Figure 1. Testament heirs. ........................................................................................................70
Figure 2. House bequests. ........................................................................................................72
Figure 3. Land parcel bequests. ...............................................................................................73
Figure 4. Maguey plant bequests. ............................................................................................74
Figure 5. Saint icon bequests. ..................................................................................................75
Figure 6. Mass and prayer requests..........................................................................................77
Figure 7. Ethnicity of 47 Curanderas accused in New Spain (1613-1806)...........................122
Figure 8. Ethnicity of Curanderas in New Spain (1613-1806). ............................................122
Figure 9. Occupations of Curanderas in New Spain (1613-1806). .......................................123
Figure 10. Charges brought against Curanderas in New Spain (1613-1806). ......................123
x
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to Paula De Vos, Beth Pollard, Betsy Colwill, and Irene Lara for your
patience, your advice, and for making me a better historian and teacher. Thank you to my
mother Sharon Meeks for her tireless editing of my work.
1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The major foci of this work is seventeenth and eighteenth-century colonial Mexican
women and their participation in different avenues of spirituality, including Catholicism,
witchcraft, love magic, and healing; and that the goal of this participation was to improve
their social and economic status. While it is possible that some women participated in
spiritual activities unconsciously or merely because it was expected of them, this work finds
that seventeenth and eighteenth-century colonial Mexican women consciously utilized a
variety of spirituality avenues to empower themselves socially and economically.1 Women
from different social and racial groups acquired spiritual capital, both social prestige via piety
and material wealth, through the different forms of spiritual expression available to them.
Women acquired spiritual capital by writing wills that contained pious bequests, by favoring
their daughters as heirs, they became nuns or beatas, they worked in convents, they
converted to Catholicism, they performed love magic rituals, and they practiced indigenous
healing strategies in order to improve their lives socially and economically.
This research will demonstrate that a variety of women from different racial and
social classes were active historical agents in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Mexico; it
will also demonstrate how their gender, race, and class status influenced the avenues of
spirituality available to them. It is important to understand that women in colonial Mexico
exercised agency and utilized different expressions of spirituality to consciously improve
their lives. An aspect of the Black Legend that continues to persist is the concept of
machismo, that Spanish-descended and Mexican men as a whole are more sexist than men
from other ethnic groups.2 Conversely, Spanish-descended and Mexican women are often
1
My categorization of spiritual practices as either sanctioned or unsanctioned is similar to the frameworks
employed by Laura A. Lewis in her 2003 book Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft, and Caste in Colonial
Mexico and by Joan C. Bristol in her 2007 book Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches: Afro-Mexican Ritual
Practice in the Seventeenth Century.
2
The Black Legend refers to the characterization of Spanish colonization in the Americas as overtly cruel
2
represented as helpless, weak, or stupid for putting up with this behavior or “not knowing
any better.” This research challenges these racist and gendered stereotypes, a legacy of the
Black Legend. In addition, this research demonstrates that despite the presence of strong,
patriarchal institutions Mexican women were not completely subjugated in colonial society
and that many were able to utilize and navigate these institutions to their advantage. Finally,
this research demonstrates the crucial ties between Spanish and colonial Mexican institutions,
practices, and ideologies, especially as they pertain to women and spirituality.
The rise of Atlantic World programs and historians has resulted in an increasing
number of Spanish American trans-Atlantic histories; Maria Elena Martinez’ 2008 book
Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico is a
notable example. In it, Martinez argues that race, defined as a biologically inheritable set of
characteristics, was the underlying rationale for limpieza de sangre, or blood purity, in early
modern Spain and that this notion of race or raza was transmitted from Spain to Spanish
America and there transitioned into the sistema de castas or caste system. A similar approach
is utilized in this work, discussing religious institutions and spiritual practices in Spain and
their transmission and transformation within colonial Mexico.
The theoretical foundation for this analysis of women’s status and agency in colonial
Mexico is based on the Social and Feminist History theories of Asuncion Lavrin and Joan W.
Scott. This research also draws on Critical Race and Black Feminist theories as articulated by
Kimberle Williams Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins. Asuncion Lavrin argues that social
histories focusing on men are incomplete and ineffective historical accounts as they do not
include the role and experiences of women. Women make up approximately half of any
given population; consequently an understanding of their experiences is necessary in order to
form more complete and accurate historical analyses. With that said, it is important to note
that women are not a homogenous group; this was particularly true in colonial Mexico’s
highly stratified society. “Gender, race, and class (along with a multitude of other socially
constructed and historically specific categories of analysis) mutually constitute one another
and therefore should be studied concurrently. This type of intersectionality is most evident
and much more destructive than that of the English, French, or Dutch. These myths developed as Northern
Europeans began colonizing the Americas in the late-sixteenth century.
3
when analyzing the lives and experiences of women of color who have to operate under the
multiple oppressions of gender, race, and very often class…”3 This research will employ an
intersectional approach to determine the status and agency of different groups of women in
Spain and New Spain. In addition to theories of intersectionality, this research will employ a
variety of methodological approaches including: role, content, discourse, statistical, and
comparative modes of analysis.
WOMEN AND GENDER IN COLONIAL MEXICO: A
HISTORIOGRAPHY
The approaches to English-language histories of women in colonial Mexico have
shifted significantly over the last forty years. Trends within the historiography of gender and
women’s history in colonial Mexico reveal a shift in the kinds of questions being asked, the
sources and methods being employed, and the differing interpretations offered by Latin
Americanists focusing on women, gender, and sexualities in colonial Mexico. As the
English-language Latin Americanists discussed in this essay were all trained and employed in
the United States, this chapter will trace the development of women’s, gender, and sexuality
history within the United States and how the development of these fields influenced their
respective approaches and arguments.4 The contributions of Joan Scott were especially
influential as can be seen in the shift from analyses of women’s experiences to a combination
of women’s experiences along with analyses of gender and power, most notably the
exploration of the reciprocal nature of politics and gender within colonial Mexican history.
3
Moriah Gonzalez-Meeks, “‘Neltiz notlatol mochihuaz, ‘My statement is to be carried out and done’’:
Nahua Women’s Status and Agency in Eighteenth Century Toluca Valley Testaments” (unpublished paper,
2012), Microsoft word file.
4
Asunción Lavrin, Professor Emeritus of History at Arizona State University, received her Ph.D. from
Harvard University. Silvia M. Arrom, Jane’s Professor of Latin American Studies at Brandeis University,
received her Ph.D. from Stanford University. Patricia Seed, Professor of History at University of California,
Irvine, received her Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin, Madison. Steve J. Stern, Alberto Flores Galindo and
Hilldale Professor of History at University of Wisconsin, Madison, received his Ph.D. from Yale University.
Ann Twinam, Professor of History at University of Texas at Austin, received her Ph.D. from Yale University.
Susan Schroeder, France V. Scholes Chair in Colonial Latin American History at Tulane University, received
her Ph.D. from UCLA. Stephanie Wood, Adjunct Professor of History at University of Oregon, received her
Ph.D. from UCLA. Robert Haskett, Professor of History at University of Oregon, received his Ph.D. from
UCLA. Maria-Elena Martinez, Associate Professor of History and American Studies and Ethnicity at USC,
received her Ph.D. from University of Chicago.
4
Gender, sexuality, and women’s history scholarship focusing on colonial Mexico can
be divided into four main periods, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, from the mid-1980s
to the mid-1990s, from the mid-1990s to 2000, and finally from 2000 to the present. These
four periods correspond with larger trends found within gender and women’s historical
scholarship in the United States, a shift from women’s history to gender history to sexualities
history, beginning with the shift from the production of historical texts that foreground
women to texts focused on placing women’s experiences within their larger historical
contexts. The next interpretative shift moves away from the centrality of women’s
experiences to texts focused more on gender relations and how ideas about gender were
influenced and reified by institutions such as the church and state. The final interpretive shift,
from women and gender to gender and alternative sexualities, focuses on how these
sexualities developed, how they were gendered, and how they were used, viewed, and
regulated by those in power. This thesis bridges the third and fourth periods of the
historiography as it emphasizes the experiences of indigenous and Afro-Mexican women
while discussing women’s status under the law, their use of testaments, and their interaction
with the Catholic Church through both sanctioned and unsanctioned means.
Women’s History in the United States
Natalie Zemon Davis was and continues to be a leading women’s historian in the
United States. In her 1976 essay, “‘Women’s History’ in Transition: The European Case,”
Davis delineates and assesses the progression of women’s history, arguing that women’s
history in its most basic form, that of “Women Worthies,” or the history of “Great Women,”
originated with Plutarch during early Roman Antiquity. Davis argues that this historical
approach is very limiting as it removed women from their historical contexts, separating
them from the history of men.5 Davis states that biographies of individual women, while
more historically contextualized than “Great Women” accounts, still do not provide much
insight into how sex roles were constructed or how they operated. As a consequence, these
historical approaches, sometimes referred to as “add and stir,” have had very little influence
5
Natalie Zemon Davis, “‘Women’s History’ in Transition: The European Case,” Feminist Studies 3, no.
3/4 (Spring-Summer 1976): 83.
5
on conventional historical narratives.6 Davis posits that while social histories written about
women focused more on sex roles, through analyses of families and women as workers, the
majority essentialized women by analyzing them as a homogenous group.7 Davis goes on to
say that women’s history must focus on the history of both men and women, and the
“significance of the sexes, of gender groups in the historical past”; the goal of which is to
“discover the range in sex roles and in sexual symbolism in different societies and periods, to
find out what meaning they had and how they functioned to maintain the social order or to
promote its change.” Davis concludes by stating that women’s history should change the way
historians of every specialty think about history, that they should be thinking about how sex
roles operate in the same way they think about how class operates; and that this change in
thinking will lead to a reevaluation of “power, social structure, property, symbols, and
periodization” in history.8
Women in Early Colonial Mexican Histories
During the first period of the historiography, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s,
there was an increased focus on women’s history in Latin America, one that paralleled the
rise of women’s history and Women’s Studies as an academic field in the United States.
Historical approaches to Latin American women were largely absent, as the majority of
information concerning Latin American women, up until this point, was produced by
sociologists, anthropologists, and demographers.9 An attempt to remedy this dearth of
historical analyses, was Asunción Lavrin’s 1978 text, Latin American Women: Historical
Perspectives, which utilizes gendered, race, and class-based analyses of primarily elite and
conventual women, Spanish and indigenous, from the sixteenth to the early-twentieth
century, through an analysis of prescriptive literature, laws, Inquisitional documents, and
6
Joan Wallach Scott, introduction to Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1988), 3.
7
Davis, “‘Women’s History’ in Transition,” 84-5.
8
Ibid., 90.
9
Asuncion Lavrin, “Some Final Considerations on Trends and Issues in Latin American Women’s
History,” in Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives, ed. Asuncion Lavrin (Westport: Greenwood
Press, 1978), 302.
6
notarial records. Lavrin argues similarly to Davis, stating that biographies of individual
women are not representative of the majority of women’s experiences. Instead she argues
that proscriptive literature and laws should be compared to the actual behavior of women,
which is documented in Inquisitional documents and notarial records.10 Lavrin concludes her
book by stating that “the most important tasks for the future are the proper evaluation and use
of those sources [archival sources and women’s writings] and the development of an
awareness of the significance of women in the process of history.”11 Inquisitional sources,
notarial documents, conventual writings, wills, legal codes, and prescriptive literature remain
the best sources of knowledge concerning colonial Mexican women and are the evidential
foundation of this thesis.
Silvia M. Arrom’s 1985 book, The Women of Mexico City, 1790-1857, takes a similar
approach to that of Lavrin, combining a gender, race, and class-based analysis of
demographic patterns through census data, of women’s legal status through “laws and legal
commentaries,” of women’s employment through notarial records, and of marital relations
through “ecclesiastical divorce cases” in Mexico during that period.12 Arrom focuses on the
late colonial/early modern period of Mexican history; therefore print sources such as
newspapers, magazines, novels, and travelers accounts intended for the general public,
sources which illuminate the social values of the period, were used to supplement her other
primary sources.13 Arrom wanted to test the stereotypical portrayal of Mexican women as
wives and mothers trapped within the home and dominated by their husbands. She found that
as she had suspected women were not as narrowly confined within the home as the
stereotype had suggested, that Marianismo developed fully during the late-nineteenth
century, and that this valorization of women’s domestic responsibilities and the republican
reforms concerning women primarily benefited middle to upper-class women as working10
Lavrin uses this approach in her essay. Asuncion Lavrin, “In Search of the Colonial Woman in Mexico:
The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives, ed. Asuncion
Lavrin (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978).
11
Ibid., 320.
12
Silvia M. Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 1790-1857 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985),
13
Ibid., 12-13.
10.
7
class women either had no home to preside over or they had to leave their homes in order to
work.14 While Lavrin and Arrom focus on women as the primary historical actors they go
beyond essentialized depictions of women, demonstrating the salience of race and class in
determining the experiences of different women. In spite of this, Lavrin and Arrom focus
exclusively on the history of women in their attempt to remedy the dearth of historical
accounts concerning colonial Mexican women; this inadvertently marginalizes women’s
history as separate from, or in addition to, the broader historical narrative. Feminist historian
Joan W. Scott refers to this type of history as “her-story.”
The Development of Women’s History
In her 1988 book, Gender and the Politics of History, Joan W. Scott outlines a
trajectory for women’s history similar to that of Natalie Zemon Davis. Scott identifies three
main approaches, her-story, social history, and gendered analyses. Scott characterizes herstory approaches as representing women as historical agents, through a focus on “ordinary
women’s lives” and “women’s culture.”15 Scott argues that her-story is significant as it
demonstrates that women were historical actors, that “personal” history is as important as
political history, that political and personal histories inform one another, and it shows that
sex and gender need to be historically contextualized.16 Despite this significance, Scott asserts
that her-story often presents women as a separate topic of study, that women’s history is
separate from conventional history. In addition, while her-story does focus on gender as the
primary factor which constituted the different experiences of men and women, this approach
does not historically contextualize gender.17
Scott asserts that her-story developed alongside social history and utilized social
history methodologies and frameworks, including quantitative methods applied to “details
from everyday life” such as those used in “sociology, demography, and ethnography.” In
14
Ibid., 3-4, 267-68.
15
Joan Wallach Scott, “Women’s History,” in Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1988), 18-20.
16
Ibid., 20.
17
Ibid., 20-22.
8
addition, “family relationships, fertility, and sexuality” as well as “large-scale processes”
were seen as historical phenomena. This challenged the “great-man” model of political
history, which in turn led to a focus on, and the legitimization of, histories of non-elite
groups. Scott argues that social history approaches do not place enough emphasis on how
gender constituted women’s lived experiences, as it assumes that gender fits within existing
economic frameworks.18
Scott argues that gendered approaches examine the “social definitions of gender as
they were expressed by men and women, [how they were] constructed in and affected by
economic and political institutions, [and how they were] expressive of a range of
relationships that included not only sex but also class and power.”19 Gendered analysis
methods compare the experiences of women and men, implicitly or explicitly, for example,
through comparing women and men’s education and nature as described by priests and
Enlightenment thinkers or through analyzing proscriptive literature and experiences under the
law as they relate to women and men. Scott goes on to say that many of these gendered
analyses have focused on overtly political topics such as legal rights, legislation, citizenship,
and identity; and that this political focus is useful as it historically contextualizes gender,
thereby revealing how gender is socially constituted.
Scott argues that these different approaches are all useful and together have advanced
the field of women’s history. However, she argues historians need to “examine and redefine”
the “key terms of analysis…woman as subject, gender, and politics.”20 Scott states that
women do not constitute one monolithic group, but are constituted by multiple group
identities. Scott argues that if the “group or category ‘woman’ is to be investigated, then
gender-the multiple and contradictory meanings attributed to sexual difference-is an
important analytic tool.” She describes gender as an “important aspect of social
organization”, that it is socially constructed, and that gender differences “constitute and are
constituted by hierarchical social structures.”21 Scott advocates for a broader definition of
18
Ibid., 21-22.
19
Ibid., 23.
20
Ibid., 24.
21
Ibid., 25.
9
politics, one that views all “unequal relationships as somehow ‘political’” and that analyzes
“unequal distributions of power… [asking] how they were established, refused, or
maintained.”22 Scott argues that “the realization of the radical potential of women’s history
comes in the writing of histories that focus on women’s experiences and [which] analyze the
ways in which politics construct gender and gender constructs politics.” As a consequence,
this type of analysis exposes hidden and gendered power structures, allowing women’s
historians to effectively challenge dominant historical narratives, forcing a re-writing of
history as opposed to merely creating additions to the existing historical narrative. 23 Many
twentieth-century histories discussing women in colonial Mexico reflected stereotypical
notions of the Black Legend that women were terribly oppressed by Spanish patriarchal
institutions and had little to no power. This thesis refutes those notions, demonstrating that
colonial Mexican women’s participation in spiritual practices, both sanctioned and
unsanctioned, reveals that many used spirituality to effectively maneuver within these
patriarchal structures and to acquire spiritual capital.
Women in Later Colonial Mexican Histories
The second period of the historiography, from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, is
characterized by an emphasis on heterosexual sexuality, morality, and family relationships;
the texts are influenced primarily by discourse analysis as well as social and cultural
historical methods. Patricia Seed, in her 1988 book, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial
Mexico: Conflicts Over Marriage Choice, 1574-1821, discusses the importance of honor for
men and women, the changing views of love and choice in regards to marriage, and the role
of children, parents, and institutions such as the Church and State in establishing marital ties.
This is achieved through discourse analysis of the language found in prenuptial documents,
primarily marriage applications, as well as private and public religious literature, and secular
plays and writings from sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spain.24 Seed argues that there was
22
Ibid., 26.
23
Ibid., 27.
24
Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts Over Marriage Choice, 15741821 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 9-13.
10
a shift within institutions concerning the role of parents, from a paternalistic position that
prioritized the will/love of children over their parents’ wishes in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries to an authoritarian position that prioritized the interests of parents over
those of children in the eighteenth century. This change resulted in a shift from marriage
being regulated by the Church, who emphasized the will/love of the individuals being
married, to being regulated by the secular state, who prioritized the economic interests of the
parents and families over the will/love of the intended couple. In addition, the rise of
capitalism influenced the importance placed on furthering one’s economic interests,
contributing to a shift in ideas concerning honor, from being associated with one’s virtuous
behavior to being associated with one’s socioeconomic status.25
Another representative example from this period is Asuncion Lavrin’s 1989 text,
Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, which focuses on a wide range of sexual
behaviors and practices concerning marriage, combining existing social science data with a
more qualitative approach to create “a bridge between the individual and the institutional
aspects of sexual behavior and marriage.”26 Like Seed, Lavrin focuses on the relationship
between the secular and religious institutions which governed marriage and sexuality and the
individuals they governed. In addition, Lavrin’s text focuses on how individuals, and in some
cases how women in particular, navigated the regulations and prescriptions imposed on them
by institutions. This is achieved through a wide range of sources, existing demographic
information combined with inquisitional documents, notarial records, church records
concerning marriage and divorce, and confessional information. Similar to Seed, Lavrin
“suggests that the key for understanding the nature of the relationship between institutions in
charge of social control, such as the church, and the community at large is to decode the
terms of the dialogue,” the “language of the Church” is found within its prescriptions while
the “language of the community” is found within its actions.27 Lavrin argues that “premarital
sexual relations, consensuality, homosexuality, bigamy and polygamy, out-of-wedlock births,
25
Ibid., 227-231, 234-37.
26
Asuncion Lavrin, introduction to Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, ed. Asuncion
Lavrin (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 29.
27
Ibid., 8.
11
and clandestine affairs between religious and lay persons have been a common daily
occurrence since the sixteenth century.”28 While Lavrin mentions homosexuality as a
“common daily occurrence,” none of the case studies in her text focus on same-sex sexual
acts; the only reference made refers to the sinfulness of sodomy, which Lavrin defines as
either same-sex sexual acts or as “unnatural” sexual positions taken by heterosexual
couples.29 Both Seed and Lavrin’s texts focus on heterosexual marriage and sexual
expressions, or the “interaction of the genders in the colonial period. [Specifically] the
process that bound men and women in personal relationships before the formation of the
family, and the social and religious mechanisms that attempted to regulate them.”30 In this
period, there is an increasing focus on gender relations between women and men, as opposed
to the experiences of women, which extends and expands into the late 1990s.
Gender History
Joan W. Scott, in her highly influential 1986 essay, “Gender: A Useful Category of
Historical Analysis,” focuses on the importance of gendered forms of historical analysis and
develops a comprehensive definition of gender. Scott discusses current definitions and
theories of gender, finding them incomplete or impractical for historians as they attribute the
subjugation of women to one or more of the following factors: essentialized sex differences,
economic inequality relating to the sexual division of labor, or psychoanalytic sexual
differences. Consequently, Scott proposes a new multifaceted definition of gender as a
framework or “category of analysis”; that “gender is a constitutive element of social
relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes,” and that these perceived
differences are shaped by cultural symbols and the “normative concepts” used to interpret
them, such as a fixed binary opposition.31 These perceived differences are also informed by
28
Ibid., 2.
29
Asuncion Lavrin, “Sexuality in Colonial Mexico: A Church Dilemma,” in Sexuality and Marriage in
Colonial Latin America, ed. Asuncion Lavrin (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 51.
30
Asuncion Lavrin, preface to Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, ed. Asuncion Lavrin
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), vii.
31
Joan Wallach Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” in Gender and the Politics of
History, eds. Carolyn G. Heibrun and Nancy K. Miller (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 42.
12
what Scott refers to as a “subjective identity,” an identity that is socially, culturally, and
historically constructed, in addition to politics and social institutions. In other words, Scott is
arguing that,
…gender becomes a way of denoting ‘cultural constructions’ – the entirely social
creation of ideas about appropriate roles for women and men. It is a way of
referring to the exclusively social origins of the subjective identities of men and
women. Gender is, in this definition, a social category imposed on a sexed body.32
Early modern Spanish and colonial Mexican notions of gender and “appropriate” female
behavior limited the means with which women had to advance themselves. Consequently,
they often used piety, a trait lauded and valued in both women and men, as a means of
acquiring spiritual capital in the form of material wealth and social status.
The second part of Scott’s definition, that “gender is a primary way of signifying
relationships of power” refers to the ways in which “sex-related differences between bodies”
are used to rationalize or legitimize unequal power relations.33 Scott’s definition of gender is
significant because it provides a method for analyzing gender, as well as other socially
constructed categories, such as race and class. This definition is also significant because it
demonstrates how power operates, covertly or overtly, masquerading as fixed, essentialized
gender differences. Her argument is also significant because it exposes the reciprocal
relationship between politics and gender, which Scott posits mutually constitute one
another.34 Scott argues for the rejection of a fixed female/male oppositional binary, positing
instead that gender is socially constructed, and that these constructions are dynamic and
continuously formed. Scott states that if gender is socially constructed then historians must
analyze why and how gendered concepts are deployed, “invoked, and reinscribed.”35 In
addition, Scott argues that gendered analyses must be combined with those of class and
race.36 A combined analysis of gender, race, and class is significant because, while this type
32
Joan Wallach Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review
91, no. 5 (December 1986): 1056.
33
Ibid., 1068-9.
34
Ibid., 1070.
35
Ibid., 1074.
36
Ibid., 1075.
13
of intersectional analysis was advocated by women of color feminists, specifically black
feminist writers and theorists, it did not have a strong presence in mainstream (read elite,
white) feminist theories or histories.
Finally, Scott argues that gendered analyses are significant in that they prompt
historians to view new and existing histories, and the women within them, differently or with
new eyes. In other words, gendered analyses redefine and expand “traditional notions of
historical significance, to encompass personal, subjective experience as well as public and
political activities [and that] such a methodology implies not only a new history of women,
but also a new history.”37
Gender in Colonial Mexican Histories
The third historiographical period, from the mid-1990s to 2000, is characterized by
feminist theory, cultural history, and Joan Scott’s exhortation to focus on how gender is
constructed and its relationship to politics and power. Consequently, texts from this period
focus on the gendered roles of women and men, the relationship between gender and state
formation, gender and labor, differing notions of honor and expressions of sexuality,
(il)legitimacy, and bigamy. There is a great deal of continuity between the second and third
historiographical periods as many of the essays found in Lavrin’s Sexuality and Marriage in
Colonial Latin America were later turned into monographs by their authors, this essay will
discuss those produced by Twinam and Boyer. Richard Boyer’s 1995 book, Lives of the
Bigamists: Marriage, Family and Community in Colonial Mexico, uses cultural history
methods to analyze Inquisitional records concerning bigamy trials, focusing on how these
records reveal the daily lived experiences and family relationships of plebeians.38 Boyer
argues that bigamists took a second spouse, either intentionally or accidentally, in order to
improve their daily lived experiences, as in the case of women who were living the mala vida
(bad life) and ran away from their husbands. In addition, he argues that family and domestic
relations were a central part of plebeian life, which contributed to bigamists forming new
37
38
Ibid., 1054.
Richard Boyer, Lives of the Bigamists: Marriage, Family and Community in Colonial Mexico, 2nd ed.
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), 3-6.
14
connections and wanting them to be legitimized through marriage.39 Steve J. Stern’s book,
The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico, is similar
to that of Boyer’s as it uses a cultural history approach to uncover the daily lives of plebeians
in colonial Mexico. In addition to cultural history, Stern’s work is influenced strongly by
feminist theory, specifically Scott’s theory that politics and gender mutually constitute one
another.40 Stern focuses on gender roles amongst plebeians, including the indigenous who
were not exempt from secular prosecution, during the late colonial period through his
analysis of criminal court cases, specifically those involving violent crimes such as murder
and sexual/morality crimes such as rape, abduction, and adultery.41 Stern argues that “gender
was a bitterly contested arena of social power” and that the majority of violent crimes
resulted from gender-based conflict.42 Stern further argues that there were “deep interplays
between the politics of gender and the gendering of politics suffused popular culture”; that
gendered ideas of authority found within the family also found expression in how plebeians
viewed authority, either as good fathers or bad fathers, and that women mobilized publicly in
defense of the immediate family and their extended family or community. 43
Ann Twinam’s 1999 book, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality,
and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America, like those of Boyer and Stern, focuses on the
experiences and regulation of marriage and family formation, however Twinam focuses on
the experiences of elites in Mexico and within other regions of colonial Spanish Latin
America. In addition, she discusses the differing and gendered notions of honor amongst
elites, as well as how honor and legitimacy were regulated by individuals and by the state
during the colonial period; this was achieved through an analysis of gracias al sacar
depositions, notarial documents, and changing laws regulating marriage and family
39
Ibid., 29, 142, 158.
40
Stern argues that his book is “about the politics of gender and the gendering of politics,” however he
does not recognize in his text that this argument was articulated by Joan W. Scott in 1988. Steve J. Stern, The
Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1995), 21.
41
Ibid., 38.
42
Ibid., 299.
43
Ibid, 302-3.
15
formations.44 Twinam concludes that race and consequently status were fluid, that public
passing as it related to honor and race differed from private realities, and that when concerns
about racial ambiguity heightened in the eighteenth century “passing” became less possible,
causing wealthy families to buy honor and status for themselves or their children in the form
of gracias al sacar documents. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera and Lyman L. Johnson’s 1998 text, The
Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America, also focuses on honor,
but unlike Twinam it focuses on the multiple forms of honor as well as the gendered, class,
and race-based nature of honor during this period. Half of the essays in this text focus on
honor amongst plebeians and slaves, reflecting the emphasis placed on the experiences of
non-elite individuals by all of the authors from this period except for Twinam. Lipsett-Rivera
and Johnson argue that honor was an incredibly important issue for plebeians and slaves as
credit and community assistance could only be obtained if one had honor. Consequently,
plebeian women and men sought to preserve their honor, which for women was associated
with their sexual purity and for men was associated with their personal power and
masculinity. They attempted to preserve their honor-virtue through violence, threats, insults,
petitions, and lawsuits, as they were viewed by elites to be without honor-status in a society
that valued wealth and whiteness.45
Another text from this period is Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert
Haskett’s 1997 book, Indian Women of Early Mexico, which utilizes gender, race, and classbased analyses to discuss the experiences of indigenous women in pre-contact and colonial
Mexico. The authors utilize indigenous-language documents and codices as well as
reinterpretations of Spanish-language primary source documents and secular criminal
records.46 The editors conclude that “full equality for indigenous women in early Mexico
remained elusive…[however] some measure of mutuality, parallelism, or complementarity
existed before and after Europeans came on the scene, with regional and temporal
44
Ann Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial
Spanish America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 20-24.
45
Sonya Lipsett-Rivera and Lyman L. Johnson, introduction to The Faces of Honor: Sex Shame and
Violence in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), 10-13.
46
Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett, Indian Women of Early Mexico (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 3-4, 16-21.
16
variations.” In addition, they argue that while there were aspects of women’s lives in which
they were subordinated, before and after contact, that women were “rarely passive victims.
They worked hard [and] used whatever overt or hidden avenues to power [that] were
available…”47
Sexualities History
Sexualities-based histories have been heavily influenced by queer theory, feminist
theory, and gender history. Gender historians have become increasingly dissatisfied with the
gender binary of woman and man, especially as this binary negates the experiences of
individuals whose bodies or behaviors do not conform to the dominant paradigm of female or
male-sexed body → feminine or masculine gender → heterosexual sexual desire. Joan W.
Scott, in her 2008 essay “Unanswered Questions,” ( a contribution to the AHR forum
“Revisiting ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis’”) discusses the persistence
of the sex/gender binary in gendered analyses and addresses some of the other perceived
limitations of the gender definition that she proposed in 1986 in “Gender: A Useful Category
of Historical Analysis.” Scott argues that definitions of women and men as categories have
changed over time and that these gendered categories of analysis are less useful when they
are conflated with biology. Despite this, Scott believes that gender continues to be useful, but
“only as a question,” one that is historically, socially, and culturally specific.48 In her 2010
essay, “Gender: Still a Useful Category of Analysis?,” Scott continues to refine her approach
to gendered analyses by suggesting two approaches for disentangling the persistent
sex/gender binary. She argues that “gender” scholars need to analyze how sexual difference
is constructed rather than focusing on the roles assigned to different genders, and they must
understand that gender does not originate with sexed bodies but rather that sexed bodies are
constituted by gender. Scott states that,
…it is gender that produces meanings for sex and sexual difference, not sex that
determines the meanings of gender. If that is the case, then (as some feminists
have long insisted) not only is there no distinction between sex and gender, but
47
48
Ibid., 330.
Scott, “Gender,” 1053-1075; Joan Wallach Scott, “Unanswered Questions,” American Historical Review
113, no.5 (December 2008): 1422.
17
gender is the key to sex. And if that is the case, then gender is a useful category of
historical analysis because it requires us to historicize the ways that sex and
sexual difference have been conceived.”49
As evident in Scott’s analysis, the meanings associated with sex, gender, and sexuality are
socially constructed, mutually constitutive, and often conflated.
Queer theory has been described as “a postmodern interpretation of gender, sex and
sexuality.”50 As queer theory is a postmodern approach, it should not have a fixed definition
and by attempting to define it you make it “un-queer.” Despite the numerous descriptions and
the purposeful fluidity of the concept, Nikki Sullivan defines queer theory as “a sort of vague
and indefinable set of practices and (political) positions that has the potential to challenge
normative knowledges and identities.”51 Jane Pilcher and Imelda Whelehan describe queer
theory as “a provocative political and theoretical stance in that it foregrounds sexual identity,
pleasure, and desire, and their part in the construction of our knowledge of self.”52 This
challenge to dominant “knowledges and identities” as well as the primacy of sexual identity,
and by extension gender, characterize the sexualities histories written in the twenty-first
century.
Sexualities in Colonial Mexican Histories
The fourth historiographical period, from 2000 to the present, is characterized by a
focus on sexuality, primarily the same-sex sexual acts between men, but also on the “nonnormative” or “deviant” sexual behavior of women. Authors from this period used
Foucauldian understandings of sexuality, post-structuralism, and queer theory to analyze
indigenous-language sources and codices, Inquisitional sources, and seventeenth-century
Spanish writings. This shift in focus to what is now considered to be non-normative sexuality
reflects the rise of Foucauldian concepts and queer theory amongst feminist and gender
49
Joan Wallach Scott, “Gender: Still a Useful Category of Analysis?,” Diogenes 225 (2010): 10, 13.
50
Mimi Marinucci, Feminism is Queer: The Intimate Connection Between Queer and Feminist Theory
(London: Zed Books, 2010), 123.
51
Nikki Sullivan, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory (New York: New York University Press, 2003),
43-44.
52
Jane Pilcher and Imelda Whelehan, Fifty Key Concepts in Gender Studies (London: Sage Publications,
2004), 129.
18
historians and historians of sexuality. Pete Sigal is a leading author of colonial Mexican
sexualities histories. In his 2000 book, From Moon Goddesses to Virgins: The Colonization
of Yucatecan Maya Sexual Desire, Sigal uses Maya and Spanish-language sources to trace
the veneration of first the Moon Goddess and later the Virgin Mary, demonstrating how
Maya ideas concerning sex and gender were associated with these female figures and how
they shifted over time.53 In his 2003 book, Infamous Desire, Sigal states that several authors,
most notably Foucault, have argued that a homosexual identity did not exist before the midnineteenth century and that it was only existed in Western societies. Sigal argues against this
using Maya-language documents and indigenous and Spanish-language codices. Sigal
demonstrates that such an identity did exist in colonial Mexico as a consequence of precontact indigenous and syncretic practices concerning gender and power; powerful,
masculine men were the active participants in sodomy while weaker men were feminized in
the passive role.54
In 2007, Pete Sigal and John F. Chuchiak guest-edited a special edition of the journal
Ethnohistory, entitled “Sexual Encounters ⁄ Sexual Collisions: Alternative Sexualities in
Colonial Mesoamerica.” The articles in this special issue discuss “alternative and nonreproductive sexualities” using social and cultural history methods, philology, and textual
analysis to discuss same-sex sexual acts and the “deviant” sexual behavior of women.55 The
editors argue that “the topics broached here are just as important as political economy, social
organization, ethnicity, and gender” and that the history of sexualities should be included in
the “broader histories of this world.”56 Zeb Tortorici’s 2007 article, “Masturbation, Salvation,
and Desire: Connecting Sexuality and Religiosity in Colonial Mexico,” published in the
Journal of the History of Sexuality, also focuses on the importance of sexuality in people’s
53
Pete Sigal, From Moon Goddesses to Virgins: The Colonization of Yucatecan Maya Sexual Desire
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), 1-2.
54
Pete Sigal, “Gendered Power, the Hybrid Self, and Homosexual Desire in Late Colonial Yucatan,” in
Infamous Desire: Male Homosexuality in Colonial Latin America, ed. Pete Sigal (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2003), 10, 102.
55
Pete Sigal, and John F. Chuchiak IV, “Guest Editors' Introduction,” Ethnohistory 54, no. 1 (Winter
2007): 3, 5-6.
56
Ibid., 7.
19
daily lives.57 Tortorici demonstrates the connection between religion, masturbation, and
sexual fantasy in the life of Agustina Ruiz through the detailed records of her Inquisitional
trial in Mexico in the seventeenth century. Sexualities histories reveal the importance of
sexuality in people’s daily lives and the existence of numerous examples of alternative
sexualities ignored in most historical accounts of colonial Mexico.
Patterns and Themes
Women and gender were the focus of the first two periods of the historiography,
while gender and sexuality, first heterosexual and then alternative or non-reproductive, was
an overarching theme found within the second, third, and fourth historiographical periods
concerning women and gender in colonial Mexico. While Spanish language, Inquisitional,
and criminal records were used in all periods, these sources were increasingly used to
interpret the experiences of non-elites, particularly in the third and fourth periods of the
historiography. In addition, the use of indigenous language sources in the third and fourth
periods paralleled the rise and application of the New Philology. Overall, the progression
from women to gender to sexuality, and the increasing focus on non-elites and indigenous
histories, have resulted in the production of alternative histories, centering the experiences of
individuals occupying marginalized ethnic, class, gender, and sexuality locations.
This thesis focuses largely on how women from marginalized socio-economic and
ethnic groups, including poor Spanish, casta, African, and Native American women, were
able to utilize spirituality to improve their lives. It focuses on how women are significant
historical agents operating strategically within a largely patriarchal society, using a variety of
means to improve their social and economic status. In addition, it incorporates indigenouslanguage documents and draws heavily from Inquisition cases wherein the testimony of poor
and mixed-race women is recorded. Appendix A contains a definition of all of the ethnicitybased descriptors, the terms related to spiritual practices, as well as the Spanish words and
phrases referenced in the thesis.
57
Zeb Tortorici, “Masturbation, Salvation, and Desire: Connecting Sexuality and Religiosity in Colonial
Mexico,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 16, no. 3 (September 2007): 355-72.
20
SOURCES AND CHAPTER ORGANIZATION
This thesis analyzes and interprets a variety of primary and secondary sources related
to women’s spiritual practices in sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain and in seventeenth
and eighteenth century New Spain. Chapter 2 utilizes Spanish law codes, advice manuals,
religious texts, testimony from Spanish Inquisition trials, and love magic rituals to investigate
the Spanish antecedents of women’s legal and social status, the practices of love magic and
healing, and the potential consequences of these practices. This chapter also draws upon a
variety of secondary sources related to women’s status, their role in society, witchcraft,
magic, and healing in order to analyze the experiences of women in Spain. Chapter 2
demonstrates that medieval and early modern Spanish ideologies, laws, and practices both
restricted Spanish women and provided them with avenues of economic and spiritual agency,
which they consciously utilized to improve their everyday lives.
Chapter 3 analyzes eighteenth-century Nahua women’s use of testaments to empower
themselves socially and economically.58 The documents analyzed in chapter 3 are English
translations of Nahuatl-language testaments; the Nahuatl testaments were translated by
Caterina Pizzigoni in her 2007 book Testaments of Toluca that contains the testaments of
ninety-eight women and men. These Nahua testaments come from three Toluca Valley
altepetl or districts, Toluca, Tepemaxalco, and Calimaya, located approximately forty miles
west of Mexico City. The thirty-seven testaments analyzed in this chapter were created on
behalf of Nahua women and span an almost seventy-year period of time, from 1699 to 1763.
Chapter 3 also draws upon a variety of secondary sources focusing on: the role and status of
women in colonial Mexico before and after contact; indigenous testamentary practices;
Spanish legal institutions and practices; and Nahua, Maya, and Nudzahui (Mixtec) women’s
use of these institutions and practices. Chapter 3 finds that eighteenth-century Nahua women,
like their Maya and Nudzahui (Mixtec) counterparts, used testaments to demonstrate their
piety and by extension their social status, and to protect their property and that of their
children and relatives’, especially their female relatives.
58
Nahua refers to the Nahuatl-speaking peoples of central Mexico; most of whom were part of the Aztec
Empire prior to Spanish colonization.
21
Much of the scholarship concerning colonial Mexican women has focused on
Catholic institutions, the experiences of nuns and their autonomy within convents, and the
importance of wealthy convents, which often functioned as both bank and landlord within
their local communities. Consequently, chapter 4 focuses primarily on secondary sources that
discuss nuns and convents, beatas and beaterios, conversion and confraternities, the Mexican
Inquisition, and the use of blasphemy and alumbradismo (Catholic mysticism) as forms of
resistance and empowerment. Chapter 4 demonstrates that women were able to advance
socially, and in some cases economically, through Catholic spiritual practices and
institutions; however the degree of advancement was contingent upon their position within
the social hierarchy, with elite Spanish women having greater opportunities than poor
indigenous and Afro-Mexican women.
Finally, chapter 5 utilizes testimony from Mexican Inquisition trials, Inquisitional
edicts, and the writings of seventeenth-century Spanish friars to investigate how different
groups of Mexican women used love magic and healing to improve their lives. Love magic
and healing were considered to be forms of witchcraft as these practices contained spiritual
elements that conflicted with orthodox Catholic doctrine. These topics will be explored
further through secondary sources related to indigenous and African healing and magic, New
Spanish healers called curanderos, the practice of love magic, and the role of the Mexican
Inquisition in prosecuting these practices. Chapter 5 demonstrates that seventeenth and
eighteenth-century colonial Mexican female folk-healers called curanderas utilized
witchcraft, love magic, and folk healing to empower themselves socially and economically;
that love magic and folk healing as practiced by curanderas were both forms of social
healing; and that the Inquisition viewed folk healing and love magic as “superstitions” rather
than heresy.
This thesis focuses primarily on indigenous and Afro-Mexican women and their use
of spiritual practices to improve their lives socially and economically. An increasing amount
of work has been done in the last ten years focusing on the status and experience of
indigenous women in colonial Mexico but very little scholarship has focused on AfroMexican women. This thesis expands our understanding of the experiences of all colonial
Mexican women, not just elite, Spanish women, and their conscious efforts to improve their
lives, to whatever degree possible, through the use of spiritual practices and piety.
22
CHAPTER 2
WOMEN’S ECONOMIC AND SPIRITUAL
AGENCY IN EARLY MODERN SPAIN
Colonial experiences and institutions cannot be fully understood without an
appreciation of the various ideologies that shaped them. Following the circulation and
transmission of ideologies across the Atlantic World provides a useful framework for
analyzing colonial institutions and ideologies; in particular how they functioned, their
stability, and to what degree they were altered in new environments. To this end medieval
and early modern Spanish beliefs and practices will be analyzed in order to better understand
the experiences of women in the New Spanish context, which is addressed in subsequent
chapters. This chapter focuses on the social and legal status of women, the proliferation of
convents in the sixteenth century, the importance of testamentary practices, women and the
Inquisition in Spain, and the practices of love magic and healing through an analysis of
Spanish law codes, advice manuals, religious texts, Inquisition cases, and love magic rituals.
This chapter finds that medieval and early modern Spanish ideologies, laws, and practices
both restricted Spanish women and provided them with avenues of economic and spiritual
agency, which they consciously utilized to improve their everyday lives.
SOCIAL STATUS OF WOMEN
The social status of women in early modern Spain was shaped by a number of
ideologies, many of which were rooted in and rationalized by religious texts and the writings
of Christian clergymen. The most important of these ideologies include: the perceived moral
and physical “weakness” of women, limpieza de sangre or purity of blood, and the enclosure
of women. These ideologies are reflected in numerous sixteenth-century advice manuals
dictating the appropriate behavior and desired qualities for women in Spanish society; one of
the most popular and longest enduring advice manuals was Fray Luis de Leon’s La Perfecta
23
Casada or The Perfect Wife, published in 1583.59 The behaviors and qualities enumerated in
advice manuals like La Perfecta Casada include: purity, piety, chastity, modesty, reserve,
silence, honesty, thrift, diligence, cleanliness, obedience and fidelity to one’s husband and to
God, remaining within one’s home, attending church, praying earnestly, and nursing one’s
children.60,61 As is true with all prescriptive literature, these were the ideals that women were
supposed to aspire to as opposed to the reality they experienced. Despite these limitations,
prescriptive literature is useful in understanding dominant ideologies that dictated the form of
many women’s lives. To this end, Leon’s La Perfecta Casada, in conjunction with JudeoChristian religious texts, will be used to explore how beliefs concerning the “weakness” of
women, purity of blood, and the enclosure of women shaped the lives and opportunities
available to Spanish women, and later to colonial Mexican women.
The belief that women were morally and physically weaker than men provided a
rationale for women’s subordination to men. This belief stemmed from interpretations of
Judeo-Christian religious texts by Christian clergymen including Paul of Tarsus, Thomas
Aquinas, and Luis de Leon. The dominant version of the Judeo-Christian creation story
found in Genesis 2:21-23 states that God put Adam to sleep, removed one of his ribs, and
fashioned it into a woman. In this version of the creation story, woman (Eve) is created after
man (Adam); she is formed from one of his ribs, and is created by God to provide him with a
companion. This version of the creation story dominates despite there being two different
versions of women’s creation found within Genesis. This version provides one rationale for
the physical inferiority of women, as women are literally a part of men and therefore are
subordinate to them. In Part One, Question Ninety-Two, “The Production of the Woman” in
Summa Theologica, thirteenth-century theologian Thomas Aquinas interprets Genesis 2:22 in
the following manner:
59
Fray Luis de Leon was a sixteenth century Spanish friar, theologian, and professor. Leon’s writings
focused primarily on translating parts of the Bible into Spanish and on his interpretations of certain biblical
passages. La Perfecta Casada is Leon’s interpretation of Proverbs 31, in which he argues “God perfectly
portrays a virtuous wife with all of her characteristic qualities.” Leon wrote La Perfecta Casada as an advice
manual for newly married women. Luis de Leon, The Perfect Wife, trans. Alice P. Hubbard (Denton: The
College Press, Texas State College for Women, 1943), 5.
60
Ibid., 16, 20-21, 32, 39, 43-44, 51, 68-71, 73-74, 77-78, 86, 88-89.
61
Lavrin, “Colonial Woman in Mexico,” 23-9.
24
It was right for the woman to be made from a rib of man. First, to signify the
social union of man and woman, for the woman should neither use authority over
man, and so she was not made from his head; nor was it right for her to be subject
to man’s contempt as his slave, and so she was not made from his feet.62
Aquinas argues that God created woman from man’s rib as opposed to his head since she was
meant to be subordinate to man.
The moral and intellectual inferiority of women was rationalized using Genesis 3:1-6,
which states how woman (Eve) succumbed to the temptation of the devil, ate from the tree of
knowledge, and shared the fruit with man (Adam). Clergymen argued that as a consequence
of Eve’s weakness and her tempting Adam to eat the fruit, she was responsible for the
existence of sin and the suffering of the entire human race. The perceived inferiority of
women was used to justify their subordination to men. In 1 Corinthians 11:3, 8-9, Paul of
Tarsus argues that:
…the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the
head of Christ is God…For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the
man. For the man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man.63
Likewise in 1 Timothy 2:11-14, the author argues:
Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to
teach, nor to use authority over the man: but to be in silence. For Adam was first
formed; then Eve. And Adam was not seduced; but the woman being seduced,
was in the transgression.64
Various interpretations of these biblical passages were used to rationalize women’s
subordinate status, from the Ancient to the Modern period, and for the purposes of this study,
within early modern Spain.
Leon references many of these biblical passages in La Perfecta Casada, reiterating
the commonplace belief in women’s inferiority. He states in numerous passages that women
are physically, morally, and intellectually “weaker” than men and are subordinate to them.
62
Thomas Aquinas, “Question XCII. The Production of the Woman.” In Part I. QQ. LXXV.-CII., The
"Summa Theologica" of St. Thomas Aquinas Vol. 4, trans. by Fathers of the English Dominican Province,
(London: Burns Oates and Washbourne Ltd., 1922.), 272-274.
63
64
1 Cor. 11:3, 11:8-9 (Douay-Rheims Version).
1 Tim. 2:11-14 (Douay-Rheims Version). While both 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy have traditionally
been attributed to Paul of Tarsus, biblical scholars presently believe that 1 Timothy was not written by Paul of
Tarsus, but by an unknown author.
25
Leon argues that women are “…lacking [in] physical strength, and limited in endurance…”
and “by nature [they] are weaker and more fragile than any other creature, and both by habit
and disposition are frail and capricious…”65 He goes on to discuss their moral inferiority,
warning women not to be idle as this will result in them making “even less of themselves
than they already are…understand[ing] that their nature is the nature of women, and that
idleness of itself vitiates this nature. Let them not add one thing to another, nor make
themselves women twice over.”66 Leon addresses women’s intellectual inferiority, arguing
that because God created women to have children and to take care of their homes, that a
woman’s “understanding [was] circumscribed, and, in consequence, her words and
arguments limited.”67 In several passages, Leon states that a wife is subordinate to her
husband. He argues that “…as in all else the husband is the head [or authority]…”, that man
is “the brains and master, and the sole good example of his home and family…”, and that
“the status of a woman, in comparison with that of her husband is a lowly one...”68 Women’s
perceived inferiority aggravated fears concerning purity and led to the implementation of
enclosure for women.
Limpieza de sangre or purity of blood was a Spanish ideology in which Old
Christians, or those whose ancestors had “always” been Christian, were considered to have
pure blood. During this period it was believed that characteristics, both positive and negative
were passed through blood and other bodily fluids such as semen and breast milk. Old
Christian concerns over purity of blood stemmed from the belief that heresy could be
transmitted to subsequent generations by New Christians, also referred to as Conversos and
Moriscos. Conversos were Jews and Moriscos were Muslims whose ancestors had converted
to Christianity within the last three generations. In theory, impurity of blood could be
removed from one’s bloodline after three generations of marriage to Old Christians. In
reality, issues of blood impurity were more fluid and could be used or ignored by authorities
to limit or increase the rights and privileges of certain individuals. Issues of legitimacy,
65
Leon, The Perfect Wife, 13, 18.
66
Ibid., 42.
67
Ibid., 70.
68
Ibid., 24-25, 70.
26
lineage, and limpieza de sangre were considered to be vital in maintaining the calidad,
literally the quality, and honor of one’s family.69 Impurities could only enter the bloodlines
via its female members; a woman could not allow her children to be breastfed by a New
Christian woman and she could not marry or have an affair with a New Christian man.
Consequently, women were strongly encouraged to breastfeed their children and were to
remain enclosed within their homes in order to protect them from their weak nature and from
other men.
In La Perfecta Casada, Leon addresses several passages to the importance of a wife’s
honor and her duty to breastfeed her children. Leon argues that the “suspicion [that a wife is
not honest] is enough for her honour, bandied about from tongue to tongue, to come out
besmirched and even lost.” He further states that “…if a wife is without honour, she is not a
wife, but a treacherous harlot, the vilest mire, a reeking refuse-heap, and of all beings the
most despicable.”70 The ease with which honor can be lost, through mere suspicion, and the
harsh language that Leon uses to discuss wives without honor, emphasizes the importance in
sixteenth- century Spain of a woman’s honor, and by extension the honor and purity of her
family. Leon also discusses the importance of a woman breastfeeding her children. He states
that:
…the perfect wife cannot, indeed, be perfect unless she herself suckles her
children; and that the obligation she is under, by virtue of her maternity, to make
them good, is that which compels her to nurse them at the breast…I assert that all
the good and all the evil to be found in her, from whom the milk is received, the
child takes in and converts into his very substance and nature…In the same way,
the foster mother who nurses the child gives him her blood, for her milk is the
same as blood…71
In this passage, Leon expresses commonplace Spanish beliefs about characteristics
being passed through breast milk. He goes on to argue that a woman who does not breastfeed
her children makes them bastards through not providing them with her own character and
morals, but rather those of another woman. He concludes his exhortation to women stating
69
Maria Helena Martinez, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial
Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 57.
70
Leon, The Perfect Wife, 16, 85.
71
Ibid., 77-78.
27
that a mother should transfer “her piety, her sweetness, her good sense and modesty, and
rectitude, with all those other admirable qualities with which we have endowed her…into his
body with her milk, [and] through the medium of eyes and looks she is to begin to impress
them on his tender little soul.”72 It is clear from these passages that purity of blood was vital
to the perceived honor of Spanish men and their families, and that Spanish women
constituted a potentially serious threat to this honor. Women were considered to be the
conduit of both purity and impurity; consequently women and their behavior needed to be
controlled and regulated.
The primary strategy used to control and regulate the behavior of women was through
the enclosure of women. The majority of Spaniards considered women to be morally weak
and therefore more susceptible than men to the influence of the devil. They were also
considered to be a source of temptation for men. These beliefs, in concert with concerns over
purity of blood, resulted in the practice of confining or enclosing women, either within the
home or within institutions called recogimientos.73 Recogimiento is defined by historian
Nancy E. Van Deusen in three distinct ways: as a “theological concept, a virtue, and an
institutional practice.” Recogimiento as a theological concept became popular in late fifteenth
and early sixteenth-century Iberia and focused on a physical separation from the world; for
ordinary women and for professed nuns this was usually achieved through enclosure. It also
focused on a denial of self, similar to the aestheticism practiced by Franciscan friars and
discalced orders of nuns.74 This definition of recogimiento is important as it characterized the
expectations and goals that male clergy members had for nuns both in Spain and New Spain.
Recogimiento was also an institutional practice; recogimientos were institutions, including
convents, beaterios, schools, hospitals, prisons, orphanages, and houses of refuge in which
women called recogidas were enclosed, voluntarily or involuntarily. Finally, recogimiento
was a “fundamental virtue employed throughout the early modern Hispanic world to denote
72
Ibid., 81.
73
In order to avoid confusion I use the term enclosure to refer to the practice of enclosing women and the
term recogimiento to refer to the actual institutions that women were enclosed in.
74
Nancy E. Van Deusen, Between the Sacred and the Worldly: The Institutional and Cultural Practice of
Recogimiento in Colonial Lima (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), xi.
28
modest, controlled behavior, enclosure in an institution or the home… [and it] assumed that
women’s bodies, sexuality, and social freedoms should be controlled.”75 Recogimiento as a
virtue is the most important aspect of this concept as it influenced how women lived their
lives on a daily basis and the expectations they were subject to. The importance of
recogimiento during the sixteenth century is evident in the Council of Trent76 canons and
decrees; one of the decrees issued during the twenty-fifth session states that all nuns should
be strictly and permanently enclosed, that if needed convents should be formed for this
purpose, and that both religious and secular authorities were required to enforce these
decrees.77 It was considered necessary to enclose all women, both “brides of Christ” and those
married to actual men.
In La Perfecta Casada, Leon argues that the enclosure of women is natural and
appropriate. He states that it “is a wife’s natural calling to safeguard her home [and that a]
woman who roams the streets distorts her very nature…So it is with the perfect wife: from
her front door in, she is to be quick and light of foot; from her front door out, she may be
considered as maimed in body, and perverted in soul.” He goes on arguing that “As men
were meant to mix in public, so women were made for retirement; and as it pertains to men
to go out, and to engage in discussions, so it behooves women to seek seclusion, and to
withdraw from observation.”78 Essentially, Leon is arguing that a woman’s natural role is
domestic and therefore she should remain in her natural place, the home. He goes on to say
that the enclosure of women is vital to the preservation of their honor and he underscores this
point by comparing women who do not remain in their homes to prostitutes. Leon’s
75
Ibid., xii.
76
The Council of Trent took place between 1545 and 1563 and was a series of council meetings divided
into 25 sessions. It was attended by high-ranking Catholic clergy who discussed theological concerns and means
of strengthening Catholic practices and doctrine through the passage of canons and decrees. The Council of
Trent was an integral part of the sixteenth-century Catholic counter-reformation.
77
“Chapter V, Provision is made for the enclosure and safety of Nuns,” twenty-fifth session of the Council
of Trent, December 3-4, 1563, in Rev. J. Waterworth, trans., The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and
œcumenical Council of Trent: Celebrated Under the Sovereign Pontiffs, Paul III, Julius III and Pius IV,
(London: Dolman, 1848), 240-241,
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Canons_and_Decrees_of_the_Sacred_and.html?id=mTGDxEkmB8C (accessed May 16, 2014).
78
Leon, The Perfect Wife, 73-74.
29
exhortations for women to remain in their homes are problematic as non-elite women were
often required to leave their homes in order to earn an income. While he believes that it is
appropriate and desirous for women to labor within their homes, he makes no mention of the
realities of peasant women working outside of their homes. These omissions highlight the
ways in which women’s reputations were tied to their class status; by not acknowledging the
legitimate need that peasant and working-class women had to be outside of their homes, he
impugns their honor by implying that they are prostitutes. In addition to influencing women’s
social status, Spanish ideologies concerning women’s inferiority, purity of blood, and
enclosure also shaped their legal status.
SPANISH LEGAL CODES
While Spanish legal codes reflected dominant ideologies concerning women’s
inferiority, purity of blood, and the resulting enclosure of women, they also guaranteed the
rights and privileges of women in Spanish society. Spanish women had greater independence
and freedom than women from other Western European countries as a consequence of more
egalitarian property ownership and inheritance laws. Spanish women’s legal right to own
property and to bequeath it to their chosen heirs, many of whom were female, or to the
church resulted in a greater degree of financial independence and the acquisition of spiritual
capital in the form of material wealth and social prestige. Spanish legal codes were later
implemented in colonial Mexico, providing Spanish-descended, indigenous, casta, and free
Afro-Mexican women with these same rights and opportunities.
Spanish law codes were shaped by a variety of traditions and practices, a result of the
successive waves of migration and conquest in the Iberian Peninsula. The most influential of
these were the Romans in the second century BCE, the Visigoths in the fifth century CE, the
Moors in the eighth century, and the Christians from the ninth to the fifteenth century. The
basis of sixteenth-century Spanish inheritance practices are found in the Visigothic law code
Forum Judicum Book Four, Title Two, which discusses inheritance rights and ownership of
property. Law one states that daughters and sons inherit equally while laws nine and ten state
30
that women and men in the “same degree of affinity” to the deceased inherit equally.79
Visigothic laws concerning inheritance and property ownership remained intact and women
were not restricted from owning land as they were in most of Western Europe. This occurred
as a consequence of the Christian Reconquista or re-conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, which
led to the development of a religious warrior ethos in Spain through which successful
military leaders became powerful nobles. During this period farming was primarily
associated with peasants while socially appropriate occupations for nobles consisted of
fighting holy wars of conquest and raising the cattle necessary to support the soldiers who
were fighting. Another factor that contributed to women gaining greater legal rights and
independence during the Reconquista was the creation of local legal codes called fueros.
These equitable legal codes encouraged women to settle into towns in newly conquered
territories; this was crucial as women were central to establishing productive and functioning
communities, particularly in frontier towns where men were often gone for extended periods
fighting.80 Law codes varied by town and region and different Spanish monarchs attempted to
codify their kingdom’s laws in the twelfth and thirteenth century; the Castilian monarch
Alfonso X was one of these.
In the mid-thirteenth century Alfonso X commissioned a uniform Castilian law code,
named Las Siete Partidas, which took numerous scholars approximately ten years to
complete. Las Siete Partidas is a compilation of Roman law, Visigothic law, Church law,
maritime law, and local fueros, as well as Judeo-Christian scriptures, the writings of church
leaders, and the arguments of Roman jurists, which were used to justify the various legal
positions taken.81 Las Siete Partidas is divided into seven parts: Church or canon law, laws
concerning government, property law and those governing social order, family law, financial
and maritime law, inheritance law and those governing testaments, and criminal law.82 The
79
Jean A. Stuntz, Hers, His, and Theirs: Community Property Law in Spain and Early Texas (Lubbock:
Texas Tech University Press, 2005), 1-2.
80
Ibid., 10-13.
81
Charles Sumner Lobingier, introduction to Las Siete Partidas, trans. Samuel Parsons Scott (Chicago:
Commerce Clearing House, 1931), liv-lvi.; Stuntz, Hers, His, and Theirs, 15-16.
82
The name of the law code reflects its organization; Las Siete Partidas is literally the seven items or
entries. Las Siete Partidas, Part 1, Title 1; Part 2, Introduction; Part 3, Introduction; Part 4, Introduction; Part 5,
31
law code was initially intended to serve as a model for how laws should be formed and how
the legal system should function throughout Castile. It remained unofficial until the end of
the fifteenth century when Spain became united politically through the marriage of Isabella
of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. In their marriage contract Isabella insisted on the
preeminence of Castilian laws and customs and that Ferdinand would follow them. This
resulted in Castilian law becoming Spanish law in Iberia and later in New Spain.83
LAS SIETE PARTIDAS AND THE LEGAL STATUS OF
WOMEN IN SPAIN
The rights, privileges, and protections that Spanish women and men had within Las
Siete Partidas were predicated on them being “honorable” rather than infamous. A person
could be considered infamous through a variety of circumstances or actions. Infamous
persons included those who were illegitimate, thieves, sodomites, usurers, and those who had
a bad reputation and were reproved publically by their father or a church or public official. In
addition, women who were caught committing adultery, widows who married within a year
of their husband’s death, and women who acted as procuresses were considered to be
infamous.84 Essentially, women who did not or could not conform to Spanish notions of
womanhood and female “honor” were not protected under the law and could not exercise
their rights within it. Under Spanish law, women and men were subject to patria potestas, the
authority of the father. Children were considered to be legal minors until the age of twentyfive or until they were emancipated by their fathers before a judge. A woman was responsible
for raising children ages three and under, while a man was responsible for raising children
ages four and over. 85 A widow could legally control her children if her husband or a judge
named her as their guardian and if she remained unmarried; a widow lost guardianship of her
children and her control over their inheritance if and when she remarried.86 Single women
Introduction; Part 6, Introduction; Part 7, Introduction; Samuel Parsons Scott, trans., Las Siete Partidas
(Chicago: Commerce Clearing House, 1931).
83
Stuntz, Hers, His, and Theirs, 9.
84
Scott, Las Siete Partidas, Part 7, Title 6, Laws 3, 4.
85
Ibid., Part 4, Title 18, Law 17; Part 4, Title 19, Law 3.
86
Ibid., Part 3, Title 18, Law 95.
32
and men remained legally subject to parental control until the age of twenty-five; as a
consequence of economic dependence, many who reached the age of maturity remained
under the control of their parents. In particular, unmarried women remained dependent on
their fathers or appointed guardians who had to approve financial and legal transactions,
while the legal and financial transactions of married women were subject to the approval of
their husbands.87
Women could choose their own marriage partners, however the approval of the
woman’s family was crucial. In addition, a woman had to consent to all betrothals and
marriages initiated by her family and could not be coerced into marriage by them.88 Once
married, a woman was subject to her husband’s authority and required his permission to
carry out most legal transactions. Women were able to create testaments without their
husbands’ approval and were able to be heirs and inherit independently of them.89 Legally,
women could not be forced to act against their will, they retained ownership of their dowries
and separate property, and their consent was necessary if their husbands wished to sell their
property.90 In reality, women could be compelled to act against their own interests if they
were being threatened or coerced by their husbands.91 Separation was possible as a result of a
spouse’s heresy, adultery, or entry into a religious order, however neither spouse could
remarry. An annulment was possible but women had to prove that husbands were impotent or
frigid.92 Remarriage was only possible after an annulment or if one’s spouse died. Marriage
was considered to be a holy sacrament and a permanent state that could only be ended by
God through death; consequently courts and judges strove to reconcile husbands and wives.
87
Ibid., Part 4, Title 11, Law 14.
88
Ibid., Part 4, Title 2, Law 15; Part 4, Title 3, Law 5.
89
Ibid., Part 6, Title 1, Law 14; Part 6, Title 3, Law 4.
90
Ibid., Part 4, Title 11, Law 17.
91
This is made evident by the existence in Spanish America of numerous exclamaciones, which were legal
documents created to dispute the validity of possible future legal documents. Spanish legal structures and
notaries travelled to Spanish colonies in the Americas, remaining largely unchanged. The majority of these
exclamaciones were filed by women who stated that they were either being forced into, or feared that they
would be forced into, authorizing a legal transaction against their will and usually at the behest of their spouse.
Kathryn Burns, Into the Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru (London: Duke University Press, 2010),
112.
92
Scott, Las Siete Partidas, Part 4, Title 8, Laws 2, 7; Part 4, Title 10, Law 2.
33
Many women chose not to separate from their husbands as they were not able to financially
support themselves.93
Economic security was one of the primary functions of marriage for women. Fathers
were obligated to provide a gift of money or property, called a dowry, to their daughters.94 A
dowry was used to ensure the financial success of the marriage and the financial security of
the woman; a woman retained ownership of her dowry and it was returned to her on the death
of her husband. While a woman was married her dowry and any arras or financial gifts given
to her by her husband were managed and used by him; while he had free use of these funds
he was legally obligated to maintain their full value and could be brought to court by his wife
if she thought that he was squandering her dowry.95 Widows who were financially secure
enough to remain unmarried had the greatest degree of legal and social autonomy. Widows
took control of their dowries and arras, up to one-third of their husband’s estate, and they
often administered their children’s inheritance. This often resulted in widows controlling
more wealth and property than their children.96 Widows had to remain single and maintain a
good reputation in order to maintain control of their property and to retain guardianship and
custody of their children. If widows engaged in sexual activity or remarried before the yearlong waiting period, they were considered to be dishonorable and infamous and would lose
their arras, their inheritance, and their children.97
PURITY OF BLOOD, ENCLOSURE, AND THE AUTHORITY
OF MEN IN LAS SIETE PARTIDAS
Spanish concerns over the sexual behavior of women, lineage, and purity of blood are
evident in several laws. Concerns over purity of blood are evident in the laws prohibiting
Christian women from having intercourse with either Jews or Moors. Jewish and Moorish
men who had sex with Christian women were put to death while the woman would lose half
93
Lavrin, “Colonial Woman in Mexico,” 35-6.
94
Mothers were not required to provide dowries but they could if they wanted to. Scott, Las Siete
Partidas, Part 4, Title 11, Law 9.
95
Ibid., Part 4, Title 11, Laws 1, 7, 17, 29.
96
Ibid., Part 4, Title 11, Law 1.
97
Ibid., Part 4, Title 12, Law 3.
34
of her property for the first offense and would be put to death for the second offense.98 All of
the female-specific ways that a person could become infamous revolved around a woman’s
disloyalty to her husband and the sexual impurity of herself or other women.99 The most
prevalent of these concerns is that a woman not marry within a year of her husband’s death in
order to remove any doubts about her loyalty to her husband and to determine the parentage
of any children that she might have.100 In order to be considered legitimate, children could not
be born earlier than seven months after marriage took place or more than ten months after the
father had died. Relatives of the deceased husband were advised to take precautions with
pregnant widows in order that she not defraud them by presenting another’s child as his
heir.101 In addition, women who could not conceive and presented other people’s children as
those of her husband could be charged with deceit; the punishment for deceit was banishment
and forfeiture of one’s property.102 Secular laws concerning adultery also demonstrate
Spanish concerns with purity and lineage. Sexual acts were only considered to be adulterous
if a married woman was involved; consequently, married men could have affairs with
unmarried women and this was not considered to be a crime. Men found guilty of adultery
were subject to death while women were publicly scourged, confined to a convent, declared
infamous, and stripped of their dowry and arras.103
In Las Siete Partidas, the authors describe the relationship between the King, his
family, and his subjects. While these laws specifically address the consequences of
dishonoring the Queen and the King’s daughters, they can be used to illustrate Spanish views
concerning the marital fidelity and sexual purity of women. The authors discuss adultery,
stating that it “…will cause her to lose the honor which she formerly possessed, by making
her liable to the worst insult which can be offered to a woman” and by placing the “origin [of
98
Ibid., Part 7, Title 24, Law 9; Part 7, Title 25, Law 10.
99
Ibid., Part 7, Title 6, Laws 3, 4.
100
Ibid., Part 6, Title 3, Law 5.
101
Ibid., Part 4, Title 23, Law 4; Part 6, Title 6, Laws 16, 17.
102
Ibid., Part 7, Title 7, Laws 3, 6.
103
Men could accuse their wives of adultery but women could not accuse their husbands. Ibid., Part 7,
Title 17, Laws 1, 15.
35
her children] in doubt…” In addition, the authors liken dishonoring a woman to killing her,
arguing that “…he who causes her to commit wickedness by means of her person, deprives
her of her good reputation, and causes her to be of evil report and to lose the opportunity of
marriage, and therefore he should be put to death just as if he had killed her.”104 These
passages demonstrate the importance of Spanish women’s reputations, as well as their honor
and purity, and how their honor reflects on that of their family. Spanish women’s reputations
were considered to be very important but were easily impugned; therefore a law was drafted
that warned men away from socializing, tempting, and harassing women of good repute.105
Sex with virgins, widows, and nuns was against the law with the punishments varying
according to class: wealthy men would lose half of their property, poor men would be
publicly scourged and banished for five years, and enslaved men would be burned to death.
Rape of virgins, widows, and nuns was also against the law and was punishable by death; all
of the rapist’s property would go to the woman who was raped or to her convent.106 The
importance of honor is also clear when you look at the laws concerning homicide; murder is
not considered to be a crime when a man “finds another attempting to violate his daughter,
his sister, or his wife…and kills him at the time when he finds that he is causing him
dishonor.”107 This law illustrates that when a woman was dishonored through rape, the men in
her family were also dishonored and could seek redress. Concerns over lineage and women’s
sexual purity resulted in the enclosure of women and the separation of “good women” from
the company of unrelated men. This belief is evident in a passage explaining that “it would
not be proper for women to go into court…and be compelled to resort to places where many
men are assembled, and to do things which might be contrary to chastity, or opposed to the
good customs which women should observe.”108
In Las Siete Partidas, the authors reiterate the dominant interpretation of the creation
story which states that woman was created and given to man to be his companion and to
104
Ibid., Part 2, Title 14, Laws 1, 2.
105
Ibid., Part 7, Title 9, Law 5.
106
Ibid., Part 7, Title 19, Laws 1, 2; Part 7, Title 20, Laws 1, 3.
107
Ibid., Part 7, Title 8, Law 3.
108
Ibid., Part 5, Title 12, Law 2.
36
procreate with him, and that God married them in the Garden of Eden in order that they love
and remain faithful to one another.109 The authors use language which suggests women’s
inferiority to men, stating that God made woman and gave her to man. Likewise, the authors
confirm the inferiority of women in Spanish society in several passages arguing that women
are naturally weaker than men, that a woman’s social status is dependent on that of her
husband, and that “the condition of a man is superior to that of a woman in many things and
in many respects, as is clearly shown in the laws of the Titles of this our book…”110 While
Spanish law codes like Las Siete Partidas reinforced Spanish ideologies concerning women’s
inferiority, purity of blood, and enclosure, they also provided women with the ability to
commission notarial contracts and statements, to own property, and to bequeath and inherit
property independently of their husbands and fathers.
TESTAMENTARY PRACTICES IN SPAIN
The initial function of testaments in Spain was to allocate property to one’s heirs. The
creation of a will was considered to be prudent as the testator’s property would be secured, it
would remove any “discord which might arise among [the testator’s] relatives,” and it would
“without doubt and without contention, descend to their heirs.”111 Women were able to
independently create testaments, designate or disinherit heirs, and bequeath property.112
Women, like men, were also able to be heirs unless they were heretics, apostates, children of
forbidden unions such as incest, or had been banished.113 A testator’s children or
grandchildren, both female and male, were their primary heirs; this is indicated in laws
stating that wills would be invalid if they did not mention all of a testator’s children as either
heirs or as disinherited persons, and in laws stating that the property of those who died
109
Ibid., Part 4, Introduction.
110
Ibid., Part 4, Title 2, Law 7; Part 4, Title 23, Law 2; Part 7, Title 33, Law 12.
111
Ibid., Part 6, Introduction; Part 6, Title 1, Law 1.
112
All women who were sound of mind could create a will, except for nuns without children as their
property belonged to their religious order. Ibid., Part 6, Title 1, Laws 13, 17; Part 6, Title 7, Law 2; Part 6, Title
9, Law 10.
113
Ibid., Part 6, Title 3, Laws 2, 4.
37
intestate would be divided amongst their children and grandchildren, both male and female.114
These laws resulted in the institution of bilateral inheritance practices, inheriting from one’s
mother and one’s father, and partible inheritance practices, the equal distribution of wealth to
female and male heirs, in medieval and early modern Spain.
While written wills were initially legal documents concerned with the allocation of
property, they increasingly acquired a religious function in twelfth and thirteenth century
Spain. The Catholic Church had an agenda in bringing testamentary documents under their
purview and in emphasizing the role of a testament to one’s salvation, as this gave them a
degree of control over the administration of estates and provided them with income through
church burials, masses, and donations to clergy members and religious institutions. This
agenda is most evident when analyzing the fourteenth century Synod of Zaragoza’s
declarations. Within the Catholic Church, a will was thought to be necessary to ensure one’s
salvation; in 1357 the Synod of Zaragoza declared that those dying intestate in Spain could
be denied a Christian burial.115 Those without property could be excused from drafting a will,
however despite their declaration of poverty they or their relatives were still required to
donate money to the church for masses and burial. In addition, those who did draft a
testament were often denied burial until the church received all monies that were bequeathed
to them.116 A will and its pious bequests, confession of sins, last rites, masses, and a Christian
burial in consecrated ground were all rituals which were considered to be integral to escaping
purgatory and reaching heaven and salvation. Consequently, testaments functioned as both
legal and religious documents in early modern Spain. Testaments offered women in Spain,
and later in colonial Mexico, the ability to provide financially for their children and as a
means of expressing their piety through funerary rights and bequests to the church.
The vast majority of Spanish testaments were drafted by a notary at the behest of the
testator, some of whom were healthy but more often by those on their deathbeds. The notarial
114
Ibid., Part 6, Title 1, Law 20; Part 6, Title 13, Laws 1, 3.
115
These restrictions were not limited to Zaragoza; similar restrictions were enacted in other regions of
Spain.
116
Carlos M. N. Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth Century Spain
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 19-22.
38
occupation and the legal documents that they drafted were highly regulated by law.
Consequently, the majority of Spanish wills followed a formulaic pattern. The contents of a
will were discussed in Las Siete Partidas and were supposed to include the following
information: the testator’s identity and soundness of mind were confirmed, spiritual bequests
“for the benefit of his soul,” burial details, debts the testator owed, and any sins committed
against others that needed to be righted as well as instructions on how to right these
wrongs.117 After this the testator was to list their heirs, the property being bequeathed to the
heirs, any children that were to be disinherited, and the reason for their disinheritance.
Following this, the testator was to appoint the executers of their will as well as guardians for
any children under the age of majority and to assert the validity of their will. Notaries were
required to state the date and location where the will was drafted and to include the names
and signatures of the witnesses118 who were present.119 In addition to the secular components
listed in Las Siete Partidas, historian Carlos Eire states that most of the testaments from
sixteenth century Madrid contained numerous spiritual components including: the invocation
of God, the testator’s profession of faith in the teachings of the Catholic Church, and a
confession of their sins.120
Testaments were created for approximately twenty-five to forty-eight percent of
the population in sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain, however many of these
documents have been lost or destroyed.121 Carlos Eire conducted a study of the
remaining testaments from sixteenth century Madrid, and in so doing located a
corpus of approximately sixteen hundred testaments from sixteenth century
Madrid; four hundred and thirty-six testaments from this group were selected as a
broad representative sample. Within Eire’s sample, forty-three percent of testators
were women and fifty-seven percent were men; this ratio is similar to that of the
larger corpus wherein women comprised forty percent and men comprised sixty
percent of the testators. The social status of both female and male testators was
117
Eire states that funerary rites were often mentioned including the testator’s burial location and garb and
the instructions for their funeral procession. Pious bequests listed by testators often included masses, alms for
the poor, and donations to churches. Eire, Madrid to Purgatory, 35-39.
118
Women, along with men who were heretics, criminals, or who were insane, were not able to act as
witnesses. Las Siete Partidas, Part 6, Title 1, Law 9.
119
Ibid., Part 3, Title 18, Law 103.
120
Eire, Madrid to Purgatory, 35-39.
121
Ibid., 21.
39
difficult to determine, especially in the earlier half of the sixteenth century. It was
difficult to determine the social status of most female testators since the majority
were referred to solely in relation to their male relatives as either their wives,
daughters, or sisters. Widow was the only social group that was listed for women;
widows comprised twelve percent of female testators from the sample group.122
In addition to patterns concerning the gender and social status of the testators,
patterns concerning burial location and garb are found within Eire’s sample. An average of
eighty-seven percent of the testators in the sample specified their desired burial location and
rites. All but one of the four hundred and thirty-six testators requested that they be buried
inside a church; fifty-four percent requested to be buried in parish churches, twenty percent
in monasteries, four percent in convents and hospitals, and twenty-two percent did not
specify what church they wished to be buried in.123 Testators’ requests for burial within a
church were most likely a result of the fact that there were no outdoor cemeteries in Madrid
in the sixteenth century. However, even in Spanish cities that did have outdoor cemeteries,
the Catholic Church insisted on church burials due to the concern over potentially heretical
Converso and Morisco funerary practices taking place in cemeteries. In addition to requests
for burial within a church, the majority of testators stated that they wished to be buried either
with their family members or next to a particular saint’s shrine or altar.124 Burial garb was
another decision made by the vast majority of testators. Testators could choose to be buried
in either “a linen shroud, a habit from a religious order, or a confraternity tunic.” Many
testators thought that being buried in a religious habit would make them more pious or would
secure the intercession of a particular saint, thereby reducing the amount of time that they
would spend in purgatory. The Franciscan habit was the most requested type of funerary garb
in sixteenth century Madrid and throughout Spain in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.125
122
Ibid., 54-58.
123
According to Las Siete Partidas, individuals should be interred in their local churches, unless they
request another church in order to be buried with their relatives or for another compelling reason. Scott, Las
Siete Partidas, Part 1, Title 13, Law 5.
124
Eire, Madrid to Purgatory, 91-95, 100-102.
125
Ibid., 105-110.
40
Pious bequests were considered by the Spanish to be holy works that were meant to
ensure the testator’s salvation. Most pious bequests consisted of prayers and masses said on
behalf of the testator’s soul; up to one-fifth of the testator’s estate could be used for these
bequests. Masses were required by law; consequently every testament includes them.
However, the number of masses requested by testators demonstrates the reality of purgatory
for sixteenth century Spaniards as well as their concerns about reaching heaven and
achieving salvation.126,127 Masses, including prayers and the celebration of the Eucharist, were
considered essential in moving a soul from purgatory into heaven; official Catholic doctrine
suggested that only the most holy individuals entered heaven directly after death, while the
majority of believers would enter either purgatory or hell after death. 128 While hell was a
permanent destination, purgatory was considered to be a temporary location for the soul, and
one that could be escaped with enough holy works, before and after death. In the midsixteenth century, the Council of Trent reaffirmed the existence of purgatory and the efficacy
of masses and other pious works in aiding souls trapped there. They also admonished clergy
members to teach and spread this doctrine, to perpetuate these practices, and to collect funds
allocated for these pious works.129 A variety of individual masses could be requested by
testators including: the low mass or misa rezada in which the liturgy is recited by one clergy
member, the high mass or misa cantada in which the liturgy is chanted or sung by multiple
clergy members, the requiem mass or misa de requiem which is a high mass with a liturgy
specifically for funerals, and the perpetual mass or misa perpetuas which are annual feast day
masses said in honor of the testator, in theory until the end of time. In addition to these
126
Eire states that during the 1520s there was an average of ninety masses per testator, rising to an average
of seven hundred and seventy-seven per testator during the 1590s. This increase in the amount of masses
requested is not limited to Madrid. In God in La Mancha: Religious Reform and the People of Cuenca, 1500–
1650, historian Sara Nalle argues that there was an increase in the number of masses requested by testators from
a variety of social classes in Cuenca; Sara T. Nalle, God in La Mancha: Religious Reform and the People of
Cuenca, 1500-1650 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).
127
Eire, Madrid to Purgatory, 176-177.
128
Ibid., 168-171.
129
“Decree Concerning Purgatory,” twenty-fifth session of the Council of Trent, December 3-4, 1563, in
Waterworth, Council of Trent, 232-233,
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Canons_and_Decrees_of_the_Sacred_and.html?id=mTGDxEkmB8C (accessed May 16, 2014).
41
individual masses, testators requested various cycles or series of daily masses; usually these
were a series of nine, ten, or thirty masses.130 The belief in the efficacy of masses is evident in
a passage from Las Siete Partidas discussing “the sacrifices which the priests who say mass
make”; in it the authors argue that “those who are living in this world ought to pray for the
souls of the dead, for, on account of the good deeds which they do here on their behalf, God
mitigates the punishment of those who are in hell, and liberates the sooner those who are in
Purgatory, and conducts them into Paradise…”131 It is clear from Eire’s case study of
sixteenth century Madrid and from passages concerning wills in Las Siete Partidas that
testaments in early modern Spain functioned as both legal documents used to regulate the
distribution of property and as religious documents used to ensure the salvation of the testator
and the financial security of the Catholic Church. The Spanish Catholic Church also
regulated spiritual expression and piety through the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the
Inquisition.
INQUISITION, WITCHCRAFT, AND LOVE MAGIC IN SPAIN
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, hereafter referred to as the
Inquisition, was established in Spain in 1478 by Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand. The
Inquisition was established in Spain in order to combat the perceived heresy and apostasy of
Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity, referred to hereafter as Conversos and Moriscos
respectively. While the primary focus of the Inquisition was on Conversos and Moriscos,
referred to collectively as New Christians, it was also used to ensure the practice and
preservation of Catholic orthodoxy amongst Old Christians, those whose family and
ancestors were Christian. Witchcraft cases comprised a small percentage of the total cases
brought before the inquisition. From 1560-1800, 140 of the total 2,203 cases in the Santiago
court in Galicia related to charges of witchcraft and superstition.132 In addition, the majority
of individuals accused of witchcraft and related charges were women, many of whom were
130
Eire, Madrid to Purgatory, 196-197.
131
Scott, Las Siete Partidas, Part 1, Title 4, Law 42.
132
Joseph Perez, The Spanish Inquisition: A History, trans. Janet Lloyd (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2005), 82.
42
poor Spanish women, Conversas, or Moriscas. Women were the primary group accused of
witchcraft and love magic. In Cordova, 74 out of 79 individuals accused of love magic were
women.133 Widespread witchcraft trials and persecution like those found in Northern Europe
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not occur widely in Spain and were limited to
the northern regions of Spain, most notably in the Basque Country for short periods at the
beginning of both the sixteenth and the seventeenth century.134 Behar describes this type of
witch-hunt craze as a rural phenomenon, arguing that the use of love magic was more
prevalent in Spain’s urban centers and that witchcraft in general was perceived by officials as
“ignorance rather than heresy.”135 In addition, Spain had a high concentration of Conversos
and Moriscos who were seen by the Church and the crown as a more imminent threat to
heterodox Catholicism than “witches.”136
Despite the limited nature of witchcraft prosecution in Spain, women were
disproportionately represented amongst the accused. Women, more than men, were
associated with witchcraft as they were considered to be weaker than men and therefore more
susceptible to the temptation of magic and the lures of the devil. In Toledo, from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth century, seventy-five percent of those tried for witchcraft were
women, most of whom were charged with practicing love magic; these records demonstrate
the association, real or perceived, between women and witchcraft, specifically women and
love magic.137 The women involved or implicated in witchcraft in both Spain and northern
133
Ibid., 83.
134
Allyson M. Poska and Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, “Redefining Expectations: Women and the Church in
Early Modern Spain,” in Women and Religion in the Old and New Worlds, ed. Susan E. Dinan and Debra
Meyers (New York: Routledge, 2001), 37; Gustav Henningsen, The Witches' Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and
the Spanish Inquisition, 1609-1614 (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1980), 22-23.
135
Ruth Behar, “Sexual Witchcraft, Colonialism, and Women’s Powers: Views from the Mexican
Inquisition,” in Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, ed. Asuncion Lavrin (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1989), 181-2.
136
Poska and Lehfeldt state that “prosecutions for crimes involving superstition and witchcraft accounted
for only 7.9 percent of the total number of cases between 1540 and 1700.” In addition, they note that women
were brought before the inquisition primarily on charges of heresy, either as false mystics or practitioners of
Judaism or Islam. Poska and Lehfeldt, “Redefining Expectations,” 37-38.
137
Maria Helena Sanchez Ortega, “Woman as Source of Evil in Counter-Reformation Spain,” in Culture
and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain, ed. Anne J. Cruz and Mary Elizabeth Perry (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 197.
43
Europe were from marginalized social groups, however the composition of these groups
varied. In northern Europe, witchcraft was often associated with “old, ugly, and poor
women,” while in central Spain women involved with witchcraft and magic “were usually
young unmarried women, widows, wives abandoned by their husbands, or women living in
casual unions with men, they were maids and servants, sometimes prostitutes, and in
southern Spain often Moriscas, women of mixed Spanish and Moorish blood.”138 The women
in most of these categories were independent and had to support themselves by choice or due
to circumstance.139 Love magic could provide women with a source of income if necessary
and was also “a relatively lucrative profession freely chosen by many.”140 While love magic
was used by women from all levels of society, women from marginalized groups were
usually the purveyors of the ingredients and knowledge required to perform love magic.
Practitioners of love magic and healers were often marginalized women who were able to
gain either prestige or notoriety and power within their communities as a result of their
occupation. In addition, practitioners charged and were paid for their services.141 This
livelihood facilitated the independence of women practitioners, many of whom were single
or widowed, as they were able to financially support themselves.142 In addition, many love
magic practitioners and clients in Spain were prostitutes or women engaged in “illicit” affairs
with priests or married men; women in these situations could realize material gains and
security through the successful deployment of love magic.143 Love magic in Spain functioned
to subvert patriarchal power, while at the same time it empowered practitioners by providing
them with an income as well as prestige and respect within their communities.144
138
Behar, “Women’s Powers,” 183.
139
Lisa Vollendorf, “Single Women: The Price of Independence,” in The Lives of Women: A New History
of Inquisitional Spain (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005), 165-167.
140
Ortega, “Counter-Reformation Spain,” 197.
141
Perez, The Spanish Inquisition, 83.
142
Maria Helena Sanchez Ortega, “Sorcery and Eroticism in Love Magic,” in Cultural Encounters: The
Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World, ed. Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1991), 60; Joan C. Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches: Afro-Mexican
Ritual Practice in the Seventeenth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007), 188.
143
Ortega, “Love Magic,” 84; Ortega, “Counter-Reformation Spain,” 197.
144
Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches, 170, 188; Javier Villa-Flores, “Talking Through the
44
The predominant form of magic practiced by women in Spain was “love magic,” the
goal of which was to secure the positive feelings, treatment, or attention of another person,
usually one in a position of power over the client, such as a husband, lover, or owner. These
positive feelings could be either sexual, to secure the sexual desire or love of another, or nonsexual, to improve the treatment women received from those in power over them. In addition,
love magic practitioners were sought out by sick men who had been cursed; often men went
to the same practitioner who had cursed them for a cure.145 Love magic was generally
considered to be an effective method of influencing or “cursing” as well as healing. Love
magic was achieved through divination, the use of sympathetic magic, and the practitioner’s
invocation. Divination was achieved through a variety of means including “beans, cards, a
sieve, scissors, or other similar instruments,” and through the use of “alum” or salt thrown
into a fire, rosaries, and oranges.146 Sympathetic magic refers to the use of various powders,
herbs, animals or animal parts, or symbolic objects usually in conjunction with an object,
hair, or bodily fluid belonging to the recipient of the spell or the client or both.147 The vast
majority of incantations, some of which invoked saints or demons, were made in order to
gain or retain the interests of a man, to get a man to visit, to gain a man’s love and material
support, to appease him and discourage violence, or to get revenge against a neglectful or
abusive man.148
Women who practiced love magic were healers who were sought out by their clients,
mainly other women, in order to help them alleviate their troubles and reduce their suffering.
In this context, love magic functioned as a form of social healing in which practitioners
mended the social and physical ailments afflicting their clients with varying degrees of
success. The practitioner/healer listened to her clients’ problems, divined the source or cause
of the problem, and provided her clients with instructions, materials, and incantations
Chest: Divination and Ventriloquism among African Slave Women in Seventeenth-Century Mexico,” Colonial
Latin American Review 14, no. 2 (December 2005): 301, 306.
145
Ortega, “Counter-Reformation Spain,” 203; Ortega, “Love Magic,” 58.
146
Ibid., 60.
147
Ortega, “Counter-Reformation Spain,” 199; Ortega, “Love Magic,” 81.
148
Ibid., 60-61, 83.
45
necessary to solve their problems. Spanish love magic incantations demonstrate how love
magic was used by practitioners to heal the physical, social, psychological, and material
“ailments” suffered by themselves or their clients. A common Spanish invocation, “Let the
heart of (man’s name) come, bound, captured, and enamored,” demonstrates the ultimate
goal of acquiring and keeping a man, while another popular chant, “With two I watch you,
with three I toss, with five I captivate you. Quiet, fool, I’ll bind you, you will come to me
humble as the sole of my shoe,” demonstrates the need to appease and control a man once he
has been acquired.149 This was especially true if the man was angry or violent; the following
chant and others like it were employed in an attempt to stop or lessen the severity of
domestic violence, “Furious you come to me, furious you come to me, as strong as a bull, as
hot as an oven, you will be as subject to my will as the hairs of my cunt are to me.” Another
popular incantation, “So that you love and esteem me and give me gifts, so that you give me
all you have and tell me what you know,” and its many variations, reveals the explicit goal of
many love magic clients, the material support of a man acquired through love, sex, and of
course magic.150
Two inquisition cases from seventeenth century Spain demonstrate the different uses
of love magic. The first case relates to a practitioner, Isabel Lopez, who convinced her
neighbor to sew bags of powder that Lopez provided into her husband’s clothes because it
“would spare herself [the wife] vexations.” The husband, Roque Fernandez, testified that he
felt dizzy and unwell as a consequence of these bags of powder. He further testified that
Isabel Lopez made him sick and would not cure him until he resumed their love affair.151 In
the first case, love magic was used to cause sickness in an attempt to make a lover return,
while the second case concerns curing impotence. In the second case, another practitioner
named Maria Estevan details an impotence remedy that she made for one of her clients. The
remedy involved a black hen, holy water, a sword, green ribbon, attendance at mass,
recitations of the Apostle’s Creed, and a walk around the church.152 It is evident from these
149
Ibid., 64, 69.
150
Ibid., 67, 85.
151
Ortega, “Counter-Reformation Spain,” 198-199.
152
Ibid., 203-204.
46
incantations and inquisition cases that love magic in Spain functioned as a form of healing,
both directly, through the healing of physical illnesses, and indirectly, as a means of
providing women with control, economic support, and security, thereby improving their lives
and well-being.
CONCLUSION
The belief in women’s inferiority and concerns with purity of blood and the enclosure
of women shaped how many Spanish women lived and how they were perceived. While
these Spanish ideologies limited the rights and freedoms of women, legal codes
institutionalized a quasi-independent legal status for married women and an independent
legal status for widows and single women over the age of twenty-five. Spanish legal codes
also established women’s right to own property, to bequeath property, and to inherit property.
All adult women, regardless of marital status, were able to independently create a will and
distribute their property to heirs whom they designated. This allowed women to consciously
exercise economic agency and to demonstrate their pious nature through spiritual bequests
and burial rites. Women were also able to consciously exercise economic and spiritual
agency through the use of love magic; both practitioners and clients were able to wield
informal power through these spiritual rites. Practitioners were able to earn an income and
improve their social status within the community, while clients were able to exercise control
in personal relationships, the goal of which was often to secure better treatment and financial
support from men. Women in early modern Spain were subject to patriarchal institutions and
ideologies; despite this they were able to exercise limited spiritual and economic agency
through the creation of testaments and through the use of witchcraft and healing. These
processes occurred in early modern Spain and in Spanish American colonies beginning in the
sixteenth century. This transfer of ideologies and institutions resulted as a consequence of
Spanish colonization; and while much continuity remained the colonial context modified the
implementation and form that these institutions and ideologies took in Spanish America.
47
CHAPTER 3
NAHUA WOMEN’S STATUS AND AGENCY IN
EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY TOLUCA VALLEY
TESTAMENTS
In colonial Mexico pre-contact bilateral inheritance practices combined with Spanish
bilateral and partible inheritance practices, resulting in a significant number of indigenous
women acting as testators and heirs. The duel function of testaments as both economic and
religious documents resulted in a large number of wills being drafted for indigenous persons,
even for those who were so poor that they had little or nothing to bequeath. This chapter
analyzes the eighteenth-century testaments of indigenous Nahua women and how they used
testamentary practices to acquire spiritual capital. The status and agency of Nahua women is
evident through their use of Spanish laws and legal institutions to protect their property;
through their creation of testaments in order to protect the inheritance of their children,
particularly their daughters; through their bequests and heir selection, which favored
daughters over sons; and through the expressions of personal piety found in testaments,
namely religious donations, masses, choice of funerary garb, and church burials. This chapter
finds that eighteenth-century Nahua women, like their Maya and Nudzahui (Mixtec)
counterparts, used testaments to demonstrate their piety and by extension their social status,
and to protect their property and that of their children and relatives’, especially their female
relatives.
TESTAMENTS
While testaments followed a generally standard legal formula, a great deal of
information can be discerned about a woman from her testament, including her desires
concerning burial and masses, the saints she venerated, and the scope and type of religious
charity she wished to provide, in sum her religious beliefs as well as her general piety and its
manifold expressions. Information about a woman’s family and her feelings toward them is
also evident in testaments. Women often discussed their spouses, their children, their parents,
48
as well as any “irregular” circumstances concerning their births such as being an orphan or
being illegitimate. As historian Asuncion Lavrin states so pithily, “before the finality of
death, all had to be bared.”153 In addition, women provided an accounting of their property
and the heirs who would inherit it as well as an accounting of their debts and the loans and
payments owed to them; this information can occasionally be used to determine a woman’s
occupation.154 When analyzed together, testaments contain a wealth of information relating to
inheritance patterns, women’s legal status, which material items were valued, pious
expressions, land tenure, and gender norms, allowing an analysis of an entire community or a
comparative analysis of multiple communities.
Testaments constitute a major genre within Mesoamerican indigenous-language
writing, consequently a number of indigenous-language testament volumes have been
translated and published in the last fifty years.155 The documents analyzed in this study are
English translations of Nahuatl-language testaments; the Nahuatl testaments were translated
by Caterina Pizzigoni in her 2007 book Testaments of Toluca, which contains the testaments
of ninety-eight women and men. These Nahua testaments come from three Toluca Valley
altepetl or districts, Toluca, Tepemaxalco, and Calimaya, located approximately forty miles
west of Mexico City. The thirty-seven testaments analyzed in this essay were created on
behalf of Nahua women and span an almost seventy-year period of time, from 1699 to 1763;
153
Asuncion Lavrin, “Lo femenino: Women in Colonial Historical Sources,” in Coded Encounters:
Writing, Gender, and Ethnicity in Colonial Latin America, eds. Francisco J. Cevallos-Candau, Jeffrey A. Cole,
Nina M. Scott, and Nicomedes Suarez-Arauz (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 169-170.
154
155
Ibid., 171-172.
Publication of indigenous testaments has increased substantially in the last twenty years as a
consequence of the rise of New Philology methodologies amongst Latin American historians. The New
Philology school emphasizes the use of sources written by, and in the language of, the group being studied. The
Indigenous testament volumes and studies that have been published to date include nine Nahuatl volumes from
Central Mexico dating from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century; the testaments are drawn from the
tlaxilacalli or villages of Culhuacan, Tlateloloc, Pochtlan, Tepemaxalco, San Esteban (Coahuila), Toluca, and
Calimaya. In addition, one Guatemalan Cakchiquel Maya and three Yucatec Maya volumes have been
published. The Maya testaments date from the seventeenth and eighteenth century and are from the villages of
Ixil, Ebtun, and Cuncunul in Yucatan and from Sacatepequez in Guatemala. Only one Mixtec volume has been
published, which focuses on seventeenth-century testaments from the puebla of Teposcolula in Mixteca Alta,
Oaxaca; Susan Kellogg and Matthew Restall, introduction to Dead Giveaways: Indigenous Testaments of
Colonial Mesoamerica and the Andes, eds. Susan Kellogg and Matthew Restall (Salt Lake City: University of
Utah Press, 1998), 3; Caterina Pizzigoni, Testaments of Toluca, ed. and trans. with commentary and an
introductory study by Caterina Pizzigoni (Stanford: Stanford University Press; Los Angeles: UCLA Latin
American Center Publications, 2007), vi-viii.
49
see Appendix B for a full list of the female testators.156 This group of testaments was chosen
because they were written during the eighteenth century, a period of time that has been given
less consideration than the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries.157 In addition, when
this chapter was written in 2012 no monograph had yet been published analyzing these
testaments. Subsequently, a monograph by Caterina Pizzigoni has been published analyzing
the aforementioned testaments, both men and women’s, in addition to testaments from
another Toluca Valley district called Tenango del Valle. Pizzigoni’s monograph, The Life
Within: Local Indigenous Society in Mexico's Toluca Valley, 1650-1800, is a microhistory
focusing on indigenous life in the eighteenth-century Toluca Valley. While she discusses
similar data such as heirs and plot bequests, she does not address women’s use of testaments
as a means of empowering themselves and their daughters socially and economically.158
156
Pizzigoni includes the testaments of 38 women in her text Testaments of Toluca, however one
testament, that of Maria Salome, was written at a very early date compared with others in the corpus.
Consequently, this testament will not be included in the analysis. Maria Salome was from San Pablo
Tepemaxalco in Tepemaxalco and her testament was created in 1654. Pizzigoni, Testaments of Toluca, 134-138.
157
The most notable studies of sixteenth-century testaments from central Mexico are S. L. Cline and
Miguel Leon-Portilla’s The Testaments of Culhuacan (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center
Publications, 1984); Sarah Cline’s Colonial Culhuacan, 1580-1600: A Social History of an Aztec Town
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986); Susan Kellogg’s “Aztec Inheritance in SixteenthCentury Mexico City: Colonial Patterns, Prehispanic Influences,” Ethnohistory 33, no. 3 (Summer 1986): 313330; Susan Kellogg’s “Aztec Women in Early Colonial Courts: Structure and Strategy in a Legal Context,” in
Five Centuries of Law and Politics in Central Mexico, eds. Ronald Spores and Ross Hassig (Nashville:
Vanderbilt University Publications, 1984), 25-38.
158
Caterina Pizzigoni, The Life Within: Local Indigenous Society in Mexico's Toluca Valley, 1650-1800
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013). Pizzigoni discusses how many plots of land male and female
testators had, with men having on average 1-2 more plots of land than women. She also discusses how the
average number of plots, 3.5-4 plots, held by women and men in the Toluca Valley remained constant prior to
and during the eighteenth century. Pizzigoni states that while daughters made up the majority of female
testators’ heirs and received the most bequests from their mothers in all of the sub-regions except for Tenango
del Valle, that overall male heirs were favored over female heirs due to their receiving larger volumes of land
from testators. Pizzigoni states that sons received an average of 24.13 quahuitl versus daughters who received
an average of 18.43 quahuitl of land. The size of land plots is often omitted, incomplete, or ambiguous within
the testaments, consequently Pizzigoni determined the average quahuitl for sons and daughters using only the
testaments that included plot sizes. It is difficult to determine how representative her findings are in regards to
land plot size as she does not state how many testaments included plot sizes. In addition, she does not
distinguish between male and female testators when discussing the size of land plot bequests. Pizzigoni’s
analysis of the testaments from the Toluca, Tepemaxalco, and Calimaya sub-regions of the Toluca Valley
confirms this chapter’s findings. She states that Toluca Valley female testators favored daughters over sons in
the number of plots bequeathed; she states that an average of 1.37 plots of land per daughter versus 1.33 plots of
land per son were bequeathed. With that said, female testators favored daughters over sons in the total number
of plots bequeathed in all of the sub-regions except for Tenango del Valle where daughters made up six of the
twenty-four heirs and received an average of 0.58 plots of land compared to sons who made up eighteen of the
50
Finally, there are published studies of eighteenth-century indigenous women’s testaments
from other regions; these studies provide the opportunity for a cross-ethnic comparison of
women’s testaments and their experiences within a similar Spanish colonial system.159
Comparing the experiences of indigenous women from distinct cultures and geographic
locations provides an understanding of how Spanish laws and documents were utilized by
women from different ethnic and class groups. Before an analysis of indigenous women’s
status and agency in the colonial period can be made, it is necessary to discuss their status
prior to European contact, as well as the changes wrought by Spanish colonization, the status
of women in New Spain during the colonial period, and the history of indigenous testament
writing in New Spain.
THE STATUS OF INDIGENOUS WOMEN IN POST-CLASSIC
MESOAMERICA
In Mesoamerica gender played a significant role during the Post-classic period, the
four-hundred year period immediately preceding contact with Iberians. The status of women
within Nahua, Nudzahui (Mixtec), and Yucatec Mayan societies varied widely, and while
varying degrees of gender complementarity existed within all of these cultures, this did not
result in gender equality or in the absence of gendered hierarchies. In its simplest form
gender complementarity is a practice and belief system that views women and men as two
halves of a whole. The more complex meaning of this practice is that when these halves (as
twenty-four heirs and received an average of 1.47 plots of land. Unfortunately, the Tenango del Valle
testaments cannot be consulted and incorporated into this study as they were not published in the 2007
Testaments of Toluca book or in the newly published 2013 monograph. Perhaps the more remote location of
Tenango del Valle explains the sub-regional differences in heir and land plot distribution; Tenango del Valle is
the southernmost altepetl of the four and the furthest from Toluca, approximately 25 kilometers to the south.
159
Several studies utilizing testaments have been conducted on different groups from eighteenth-century
Mexico. Matthew Restall focuses on Yucatec Maya in his books Life and Death in a Maya Community: The Ixil
Testaments of the 1760s (Lancaster: Labyrinthos, 1995) and The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and Society,
1550-1850 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). Kevin Terraciano’s analysis of Oaxacan Mixtec
testaments is included in his book The Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca: Nudzahui History, Sixteenth through
Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). Asuncion Lavrin and Edith Couturier focus
on Spanish women’s testaments in their essay “Dowries and Wills: A View of Women's Socioeconomic Role in
Colonial Guadalajara and Puebla, 1640-1790,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 59, no. 2 (May 1979):
280-304. In this essay Lavrin and Couturier discuss the status of Spanish women in very general terms and do
not include data concerning heir selection and property bequests. Consequently, it will not be used in the
comparison of eighteenth-century New Spanish women’s testaments.
51
well as what they represent and their labor) are combined they form more than their sum
parts; they are enhanced and improved by one another. Consequently, the social roles and
labor of both women and men are seen as necessary and are valued; however they are not
necessarily valued equally, resulting in gender inequality and gendered hierarchies favoring
men over women.
Post-classic Nahua society practiced both gender complementarity and gender
parallelism. Gender parallelism, or “parallel lines of authority and institutionalized positions
of leadership held by women and men,” grew amongst Nahuas under Aztec rule as a
consequence of the highly stratified and hierarchical organization of Aztec society.160 As a
consequence of this parallelism, local women leaders ruled over women within their
jurisdiction as did men over other men; this parallel leadership structure applied to both
secular and religious positions however women were denied access to the highest levels of
leadership. During this period warfare was highly valued; men gained status as warriors who
took captives in battle while women gained status in childbirth, their field of battle, “taking
captives” by giving birth to healthy children. In addition, women and men died honorably
while “doing battle” during childbirth and warfare. Women were responsible for preserving
home and hearth while men were responsible for preserving the safety of the larger
community and by extension the empire; these gendered responsibilities are reflected in the
birth ritual of burying a girl child’s umbilical cord under the house while a boy child’s
umbilical cord was buried under a battlefield. Despite the practices of gender
complementarity and parallelism, Post-classic Nahua women lived in a highly militaristic
society, one in which the act of conquering was gendered; the defeated were represented as
female while the victors were represented as male.161
Gender parallelism did not exist in Nudzahui society as it did amongst the Nahuas;
however elite Nudzahui women were able to rule over their own kingdoms and lands and did
so frequently. While there was a preference for sons to inherit leadership positions, daughters
160
Susan Kellogg, Weaving the Past: A History of Latin America’s Indigenous Women from the
Prehispanic Period to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 7.
161
Ibid., 23-30.
52
often inherited these positions from both their mothers and their fathers.162 Elite Nudzahui
women held greater positions of power than both elite Nahua and Yucatec Maya women;
however the gender parallelism practiced within Nahua society created more positions of
leadership for female leaders than was available to either Nudzahui or Maya women. Maya
women rarely held leadership positions and were usually represented by their family,
communal, and regional patriarchs; these patriarchs could be their fathers, husbands, or
brothers, as well as local male leaders and kings. Despite this circumscribed role, Maya
women from larger and more powerful towns were valued as wives and the labor of all
women was valued, especially their textile production, as textiles were used as currency to
pay tribute and to barter with.163
Despite the limited access most indigenous women had to institutionalized power,
women were seen as equal contributors to their children’s bloodlines, and children gained
status through their elite mother’s lineage. In addition, women played a key role in household
and communal economies by raising livestock, through food cultivation and preparation, and
through alcohol and textile production. Finally, Nahua, Nudzahui, and Maya women were
able to hold and bequeath property independently of men to varying degrees; elite Nudzahui
women bequeathed valuable property and high-ranking leadership positions, elite and nonelite Nahua women were able to own and bequeath a wide range of property, and Maya
women were able to bequeath personal property such as tools or textiles, but not land or
houses which usually remained in the possession of the family patriarch or his male heir.164 In
other words, Mesoamerican indigenous women’s status prior to contact with Europeans
varied as a result of regional and cultural traditions practiced by different indigenous groups;
as a consequence Nahua, Nudzahui, and Maya women negotiated the changing colonial
environment differently.
162
163
164
Ibid., 30-35.
Ibid., 37-40.
Ibid., 25, 27, 34, 40.
53
MESOAMERICA TO NEW SPAIN: INDIGENOUS WOMEN
AND COLONIZATION
The late-fifteenth century arrival of Iberians in the Caribbean, their subsequent
colonization of present-day Mexico, and their colonization of Central and South America in
the early-sixteenth century, put into motion a process of acculturation that is still evident in
Latin America almost five hundred years later. This uneven and unequal process of
acculturation drew on the cultures and practices of diverse peoples from three continents,
including Africans, Iberians, and indigenous Americans. Iberians sought to impose, with
varying degrees of success, their religious and cultural beliefs on both the enslaved Africans
that they brought with them to the Americas, as well as on the different indigenous groups
already present there. In addition, the Iberians wished to benefit economically from the
enslavement and forced labor of these groups.165 Despite the unequal power relations present
in New Spain, Africans and indigenous Americans embraced the aspects of Spanish society
that they found useful or expedient, rejected those which were not, and in the process
transferred many aspects of different African and indigenous American cultures into Spanish
society.
Another consequence of this acculturation process was an immense indigenous
demographic collapse; this collapse was a result of multiple virgin soil epidemics, which
along with forced labor, warfare, and religious persecution, contributed to the deaths of
hundreds of thousands of Indigenes in both central Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula.166 The
decline of the indigenous population of central Mexico occurred from the early-sixteenth to
the mid-seventeenth century; population estimates demonstrate a rapid decline of over
ninety-five percent, from one-and-a-half-million persons in 1519, to three hundred twenty-
165
Thomas Benjamin, The Atlantic World: Europeans, Africans, Indians and their Shared History, 14001900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 125-128, 165-166, 181-182, 186.
166
A virgin soil epidemic refers to a circumstance in which a population has not previously been exposed
to a disease and consequently has not developed any immunity to it. Indigenes in the Americas had not been
exposed to European and African diseases prior to the arrival in the Caribbean, consequently communicable
diseases such as smallpox, typhus, influenza, and measles were especially deadly. Stephanie Wood,
Transcending Conquest: Nahua Views of Spanish Colonial Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
2003), 5.
54
five thousand in 1570, to seventy thousand in 1650.167 This immense population decline made
more land available to indigenous epidemic survivors; as a consequence indigenous women
were able to assume care and ownership of land previously unavailable to them or not
directly under their control with very little resistance from indigenous men or local leaders.
Central Mexico’s indigenous population began to recover during the late-seventeenth and
early-eighteenth century; estimates state that the population more than doubled from one
hundred twenty thousand persons in 1724 to two hundred seventy-five thousand persons in
1800.168 This population recovery, in addition to Spanish colonists’ encroachment during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,169 created a strain on indigenous land and resources,
which I argue contributed to eighteenth-century Nahua women’s use of testaments and
Spanish courts170 as a means of protecting their property and that of their children. Despite
this strain on resources, it is important to note that while the indigenous population more than
doubled during the eighteenth century, it remained well below that of mid-sixteenth century
levels.
While there was an immense population decline during the first half of the colonial
period, indigenous groups greatly outnumbered Iberians, Africans, and castas or mixed-race
peoples in New Spain. Indigenous Mesoamerican groups negotiated with and were impacted
by Iberian contact and colonization differently, likewise indigenous women and men from
the same language group and region experienced colonization differently as a consequence of
their gender and class status. Many indigenous women, both elite and non-elite, procreated
with Spanish men as a result of rape and willing or unwilling concubinage or marriage; these
unions along with those of Spanish men and African women formed the foundation of what
167
Benjamin, Atlantic World, 320.
168
Ibid., 140, 145, 174-175, 320.
169
Wood, Transcending Conquest, 135, 148.
170
Colonial Spanish society was divided into two republics, one for Spaniards and one for Indigenes,
consequently Indigenes had their own courts and were accorded rights and protections under Spanish law.
Despite these protections, Indigenes were not considered to be equal to Spaniards and were treated with varying
degrees as legal minors. I would argue that indigenous use of and reliance on Spanish legal systems had both
positive and negative effects; utilizing a system in which you are not considered to be equal serves to reinforce
this status, however using the courts and legal documents to protect property and land rights helped preserve
indigenous autonomy. This is especially true for eighteenth-century Nahua women, as their rights and autonomy
were often at risk within their own communities. Benjamin, Atlantic World, 293-294.
55
would eventually become Mexico’s predominately mixed-race society.171 The motivations
and factors contributing to these unions varied greatly but a significant degree of coercion
must have existed that influenced indigenous women. This coercion could have taken many
forms, either direct or indirect; indirect coercion resulting from marriage as a means of
cementing political alliances or as a way of securing financial stability would have occurred
frequently during this period. Direct coercion also occurred frequently, manifesting through
kidnappings, the threat of violence, and rape in its many forms, including the “gifting” of
women from one man or group to another, as well as forced concubinage and marriage.172 In
addition, non-elite indigenous women were subject to heavy tribute burdens and often had to
provide for their families without the assistance of their husbands who were often forced to
work in distant mines or on construction projects or who had died in battle or from overwork.
As a consequence, non-elite indigenous women were forcibly made to work for Spanish
colonists and priests as weavers, domestic servants or slaves, or as agricultural laborers on
haciendas.173
Throughout the colonial period, but particularly during the first century and a half,
indigenous women were highly vulnerable to sexual and labor exploitation as a consequence
of their gender, race, and for the most part, their class status. As previously stated, indigenous
women experienced colonization differently than men as a consequence of their gender, and
because they were indigenous they were not afforded the same protection and respect that
“honorable” Spanish women were seen to deserve. Elite indigenous women were afforded
some protection from the worst exploitation as a consequence of their class status and their
connections to Spaniards; consequently some were able to retain ownership of their property,
maintain control of their territories, and continue to receive tribute in the form of goods and
labor. In addition, a small number of women were granted encomiendas, or land-grants
coupled with the rights to the labor, usually forced, of a particular group of Indigenes. It is
important to note that the majority of indigenous women were non-elites without recourse
171
Peter Wade, “Race and Sex in Colonial Latin America” in Race and Sex in Latin America, ed. by Vered
Amit and Jon P. Mitchell (New York: Pluto Press, 2009), 71-73, 80-81.
172
Benjamin, Atlantic World, 438-443; Kellogg, Weaving the Past, 57-63.
173
Benjamin, Atlantic World, 443.
56
apart from their pronounced participation in violent uprising and revolts, sabotage, and in
some cases suicide. Overall I would argue that the status of indigenous women, while
varying based on language group, region, and class status, declined to varying degrees as a
result of colonization; specifically as a result of increased vulnerability to sexual exploitation,
increased labor demands, and the exploitation of labor amongst other factors.
WOMEN’S STATUS IN NEW SPAIN
Spanish legal codes were implemented in colonial Mexico in the sixteenth century
following Spanish colonization. As discussed in chapter two, many of these laws were
concerned with the family and delineated patriarchal control over both wives and children.
Single women, either those who had been emancipated by their fathers or those who were
widowed had greater legal freedoms than married women and daughters who were
dependents. While women’s legal rights were limited by age and marital status, women were
able to own and inherit property independently of men. As a consequence bilateral
inheritance, or children inheriting from both their mothers and their fathers, was practiced in
colonial Mexico.174 This practice was incredibly important to the economic future of young
adults who often had to divide the remainder of their father’s property equally amongst all of
his children. Maternal inheritances were often crucial in securing the financial security and
prosperity of young adults; bilateral inheritance could have resulted in the improvement of
women’s status, as a consequence of the higher regard and respect children would have had
for their mothers.175 In addition, women were often named as the executors of their husbands’
estates and as guardians of their children, giving them a great deal of control over money,
property, and their children.176
As regarding children and inheritance, Lavrin argues that there was no preference
given to male over female children, but that both sexes were able to inherit and inherited
equal shares, and that dowries and educational expenses were subtracted from women and
174
Asuncion Lavrin and Edith Couturier, “Dowries and Wills: A View of Women's Socioeconomic Role
in Colonial Guadalajara and Puebla, 1640-1790,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 59, no. 2 (May
1979): 286.
175
Ibid., 287.
176
Ibid., 287.
57
men’s share of their parents’ estates. While legally children were supposed to inherit equal
shares, testators could bequeath a mejora, one-fifth to one-third of their wealth, to a favorite
child or to their spouse in order to maintain the economic status of the family. Testators
could also make a mejora for the purpose of establishing a chantry, a fund for reciting masses
for the deceased’s soul in order that they reach heaven, or endowing an altar or chapel for
this purpose, either for themselves or another relative; these expressions of piety served to
reinforce the individual’s and the family’s social status.177 Spanish family law protected
women’s inheritance and accorded them a degree of power within their families.
Many women in New Spain were actively involved in operating businesses and
conducting legal transactions, either with their husbands or independently. Women “bought
and sold property, founded chantries, freed slaves, borrowed money, and took part in legal
suits.”178 Urban women could own houses, land, or stores which provided them a greater
degree of independence than rural women.179 In addition, Spanish widows of men engaged in
a trade (artisans) were often able to take over and continue running their husbands’ business;
occupations included “hog dealers, gilders, owners of card factories, music teachers, money
lenders” and small stores. While most Spanish women who ran businesses were widows,
some were married or single women who owned “sugar mills, mines, cattle estancias, textile
sweatshops (obrajes), wine shops (vinaterias), and wax and cigar factories.”180 Casta and
Indigene women in urban and rural areas “engaged in a variety of occupations: they had
stalls in the markets and sold almost anything from food to used clothing. They worked as
maids, wet nurses, cooks, washerwomen, and peddlers” supporting themselves and their
families. Afro-Mexican women worked in sugar mills and mines and as domestics and
personal servants. Obrajes were purported to have brutal working conditions and operated on
the forced labor of indigenous and Afro-Mexican women and men.181 In addition to working
as businesswomen and laborers, free women in New Spain were able to own land.
177
Ibid., 286.
178
Lavrin, “Colonial Woman in Mexico,” 30.
179
Ibid., 42.
180
Ibid., 41.
181
Ibid., 42.
58
Women from all ethnic groups owned and controlled land through inheritance,
marriage, and entail, and while many women were illiterate they could use notaries and
lawyers to assert their claims to property and water rights before the colonial courts. In
Tlaxcala between 1712 and 1716, sixteen percent of women were landowners whose holding
represented seventeen percent of the real estate value in the area. During the same period in
Huichapa, nine out of ninety-two landowners were women however the combined real estate
value of these nine properties was almost fifty percent of the entire area. 182 Nunneries also
owned land (usually in rural areas) and houses (in both urban and rural areas) and acted as
banks providing loans to elites; some also owned “haciendas, ranches, sugar and flour mills,
sheep herds, and cattle.”183 In addition to land, buildings, and livestock, women’s property
also included clothing, jewelry, furniture, household items, and religious art amongst other
things, demonstrating that they also played an integral role within the economy as
consumers.
Lavrin argues that economic power is not just about earning a salary but relates to
one’s access to wealth and property, in which case elite Spanish women who were the
heiresses to large estates and who were nuns in affluent convents had considerable economic
power.184 This same argument is true for less affluent women in that their ownership of
material goods and property afforded them with more power and autonomy than they would
otherwise have had. A woman’s control over her dowry and arras, and a widow’s control
over these as well as half of her husband’s estate and her children’s inheritance, gave her
more economic power than most people attribute to women in colonial Mexico.185 Less
affluent women in New Spain did not usually have dowries or arras, however they were still
able to own and bequeath their property as they wished and many utilized Spanish
inheritance laws and legal institutions to protect these rights.
182
Ibid., 42-44.
183
Ibid., 44-45.
184
Ibid., 41.
185
Ibid., 46-7.
59
INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S AGENCY AND SPANISH LAW
Nahua women began using the Spanish legal system in the mid-sixteenth century
during the same period when written testaments were first produced. Latin Americanist
Susan Kellogg argues that the sixteenth-century Mexico City court cases discussed in the
ramo de Tierras are useful in analyzing indigenous “legal behavior and strategies in the early
colonial period.” 186 These cases are also useful in determining whether Spanish laws were
applied to Nahua women in the same way they were applied to Spanish women. The fiftyfive court cases analyzed by Kellogg demonstrate that a significant number of Nahua women
were actively utilizing the Spanish legal system, in particular defending property rights and
creating wills; a number of wills were used as evidence in these trials and the majority,
eighteen of twenty-nine wills, were made by women.187 In the sample, the number of
plaintiffs and defendants are almost equal in terms of gender, however more women than
men sued their family members. Kellogg argues that the wills women used in these cases
demonstrates a concern for protecting the property of daughters and granddaughters and, I
would argue, sisters as well. All eighteen testaments analyzed in the study included house
behests, nine willed houses to thirteen daughters, four willed houses to thirteen
granddaughters, and four willed houses to four sisters; female relatives were the recipients of
thirty-one of forty-nine total house behests. Nine of the eighteen testaments included behests
of land and twenty of the forty-seven total land behests made by women were to their
daughters and granddaughters. It is possible that these trends reflect attempts by female
testators to counteract the Nahua propensity for the eldest male sibling to “manage” their
other siblings’ inheritance.188 Pre-contact Nahua residence groups extended beyond the
nuclear family and often included parents, grown children, and siblings living in different
houses, or calli, surrounding a common courtyard or in nearby housing complexes.189 Within
186
Kellogg, “Early Colonial Courts,” 25.
187
Ibid., 26, 29.
188
Kellogg, “Sixteenth-Century Mexico City,” 317-318, 323.
189
Historian James Lockhart says the following regarding Nahua households, “It is perhaps best to think
of a calli as simply a building, the only definite expectations being, in this context, that it is primarily destined
for human residence and has an independent doorway onto a patio.” He further states that multiple calli can
surround a common patio or courtyard and can be owed either individually or collectively by those residing
60
Nahua inheritance practices female and male siblings received equal shares of property,
although it often took different forms; women more often were bequeathed houses or
movable goods while men more often received agricultural land.190 Kellogg argues that
inheritance practices reflected Nahua ideas concerning gender “equivalence” or
complementarity, an equivalence that she argues is evident in other aspects of Nahua culture,
for example leaders were referred to as the mothers and fathers of the people, childbirth and
war had similar social status for women and men, and descent was traced through female and
male ancestors.191 Kellogg argues that property rights amongst Tenochtitlan/Mexico City
Nahuas focused on sibling groups as heirs192; this practice provided a pre-contact basis for
“women’s assertion of property rights” while Nahua women used new legal forms, namely
Spanish inheritance laws, to defend these pre-contact practices and their rights.193 In theory,
indigenous women were considered to be legal minors under Spanish law.194 However in
practice, indigenous women had legitimate standing within the Spanish legal system and
were able to act as guardians of their children and grandchildren, they were able to inherit
and bequeath property, and they were able to bring lawsuits against those who usurped their
there. James Lockhart, The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central
Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 61.
190
Kellogg, “Sixteenth-Century Mexico City,” 326.
191
Kellogg, “Early Colonial Courts,” 31-32; Kellogg, “Aztec Inheritance in Sixteenth-Century Mexico
City,” 323.
192
Sarah Cline examined a larger sample of late-sixteenth century indigenous testaments from Culhuacan
and did not find a similar pattern of bequeathing property to sibling groups as did Kellogg in her study of latesixteenth century testaments from Tenochtitlan/Mexico City. Cline and Leon-Portilla, The Testaments of
Culhuacan, 302.
193
194
Kellogg, “Early Colonial Courts,” 34-36.
Almost all women were considered to be legal minors under the protection of their male relatives; the
diminished legal status of indigenous women manifested itself in three ways. Most court case witnesses were
men and if women did act as witnesses they were almost always widows. In addition, the marital status of
indigenous women was noted in the majority of cases while the marital status of men was almost never
mentioned. Another indication of this diminished status is found in indigenous testaments; in the late-sixteenth
century Nahua women frequently acted as testament witnesses as evidenced in the Culhuacan testaments.
However, by the mid-eighteenth century there are almost no women recorded as testament witnesses, as seen in
the Toluca Valley testaments.
61
property, regardless of whether the defendant was female or male, indigenous or Spanish, a
neighbor or kin.195
During the pre-contact period indigenous women had access to communal land; after
Spanish colonization, land opened up as a result of the sixteenth -century demographic
collapse and women were able to acquire greater amounts of land. Women farmed their own
land and used the income they earned from producing and selling pulque and surplus crops to
support themselves and their children.196 As previously stated, indigenous women’s rights to
ownership and inheritance of land was a feature of multiple Post-classic Mesoamerican
groups; these rights were protected under Spanish law and indigenous women used these
laws to protect their property and to will it to their children and other relatives as they saw fit.
The protections women had under Spanish law were especially important for women in the
Toluca region during the mid-eighteenth century as population increases in the area made
land a scarce and therefore valuable commodity. Men tried to limit the access of their female
relatives to land, whether they purchased or inherited it. Local ideas about who could access
communal lands changed in relationship to the supply of land.197 When the population
recovered and land became scarce, women and outsiders were restricted from accessing
communal land which was given instead to indigenous men native to the village, and who
conducted themselves well. Indigenous women, unlike indigenous men, did not have an
automatic guarantee of access to communal land. In addition, the local village council or
República which was comprised entirely of men, did not assist women in retaining their land,
however the Spanish courts did, especially as many of these women were widows with
dependents.198 Consequently, Nahua women used testaments to protect their heirs’
inheritance, especially those of their female relatives and in particular those of their
195
Kellogg, “Early Colonial Courts,” 29-30.
196
Deborah E. Kanter, “Native Female Land Tenure and Its Decline in Mexico, 1750-1900,” Ethnohistory
42, no. 4, (Autumn 1995): 607.
197
198
Ibid., 611-612.
Historian Deborah E. Kanter argues that after independence from Spain in the early-nineteenth century,
women’s rights to property and their protection under the law decreased. Due to the absence of a “protective
judiciary,” women held almost no land tenure in Toluca by the late-nineteenth century. Kanter concludes that
“the few rights and privileges held by indigenous women during the colonial period were lost during the
nineteenth century, leaving them with neither autonomy nor outside protectors.” Ibid., 607-609, 613-614.
62
daughters. Testaments were often used as evidence of one’s claim in land or property
disputes, consequently many of these documents have been preserved. In addition, testaments
can reveal a great deal about the status and autonomy of female testators and those from their
communities, information not available in other document types, allowing one insight into
the life and experiences of women, in this case eighteenth-century Nahua women from the
Toluca Valley. Written testaments were not indigenous to central Mexico, rather they were
introduced by Spanish friars in the early colonial period and developed into a widespread
practice amongst Nahua-speaking peoples in the eighteenth century
INDIGENOUS WRITING AND TESTAMENTS IN NEW SPAIN
Pre-contact Mesoamerican indigenous groups utilized pictographic writing systems,
evidence of which has been found on pottery and buildings, in caves, and in codices, rather
than the alphabetic writing used by Spaniards.199 Pre-contact Nahua testaments are thought to
have been part of an oral tradition spoken in front of witnesses.200 Written indigenous
testaments or wills were first created in southern and central Mexico in the sixteenth century,
within a generation of contact with the Spanish. Indigenous-language testaments have only
been found in areas of Mesoamerica with dense pre-contact populations and complex
societies; after contact these were the regions that had a larger Spanish population and
therefore a greater degree of acculturation.201 Testaments reveal certain aspects of indigenous
199
The majority of pre-contact codices were destroyed during Iberian colonization as a consequence of
war and evangelization; numerous indigenous codices were destroyed by priests who thought they were
heretical and by Indigenes who feared being denounced and punished as heretics if they were found possessing
these documents. Codices demonstrate pre-contact pictographic writing systems; however there is some debate
about the degree to which they are reflective of the pre-contact period as several were commissioned by
Europeans or written alongside Europeans after contact. Karttunen, “Change in Mesoamerica,” 421-422, 424.
200
The expressions “no one is to claim any of it from them” and “that is all” are phrases commonly found
in many Nahuatl testaments, but not in Spanish testaments. These expressions indicate that there was a precontact oral tradition of testament creation and witnessing. James Lockhart, “Between the Lines,” in Of Things
of The Indies: Essays Old and New in Early Latin American History, ed. Standford (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1999), 260, 265.
201
Pre-contact indigenous Andeans did not develop a written language system; rather they used a complex
system of knotted cords called quipu with which to keep records. Consequently, indigenous Andean testaments
are Spanish-language documents. Due to the lack of written indigenous language documents in the Andes, there
was not a proliferation of indigenous-language studies and document collections published for this region
between the 1970s and the 1990s as there was for Mesoamerica. Despite this, there have been a few essays
written which focus on Andean testaments including Burkitt (1978), Salomon (1988), Zulawski (1990), and
63
property rights and inheritance practices, but they do not solely reflect indigenous sentiments.
Instead, indigenous testaments reflect the larger acculturation process that was taking place
in colonial society. Many of the New Philology authors, namely Sarah Cline, Susan Kellogg,
and Stephanie Wood, who use testaments as sources argue that while pre-contact cultures and
practices “did not disappear overnight, on the individual level Spanish property and
inheritance law, alphabetic writing, and demographic decline shaped responses to the new
realities of the colonial era.”202
Testaments were a document type introduced by Spanish religious personnel and
taken up by indigenous elites. Elite indigenous boys were taught alphabetic writing, amongst
other subjects, by Franciscan priests who established schools for them in Mexico City and in
Merida. Efforts to establish schools for elite indigenous women failed as Spanish notions of
women’s roles did not coincide with those of indigenous elites.203 Consequently, very few
women would have been trained in alphabetic writing. Latin Americanist Sarah Cline argues
that no evidence of female notaries working in central Mexico has been found thus far. In
addition, she states there is no evidence to suggest that indigenous women in this region were
literate.204 Conversely, indigenous male escribanos or writer-notaries began producing local
records in indigenous-language alphabetic writing as early as the 1530s and increasingly as
the sixteenth century progressed.205 Mesoamerican linguist and historian Frances Karttunen
argues that these elite indigenous men went on to work as interpreters, notaries, and
evangelists’ assistants and that in these capacities they carried indigenous-language
alphabetic writing into the communities to which they belonged; these men either assumed
the traditional role of “tlahcuiloh, the creator and interpreter of written records” or they
trained other men to do so. She further argues that “within two or three decades, indigenous
towns all had officials, now usually designated escribanos” who kept local records in
Rappaport and Cummins (1994); Kellogg and Restall, introduction to Dead Giveaways, 2, 4, 7.
202
Ibid., 5-6.
203
Van Deusen, Sacred and the Worldly, 31-32.
204
Sarah Cline, “Fray Alonso de Molina’s Model Testament and Antecedents to Indigenous Wills in
Spanish America,” in Dead Giveaways: Indigenous Testaments of Colonial Mesoamerica and the Andes, eds.
Susan Kellogg and Matthew Restall (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1998), 31. Footnote 16.
205
Ibid., 13-15.
64
alphabetic writing. Escribanos, hereafter referred to as notaries, produced legal documents
including “testaments, land transfers, complaints, petitions, suits, and countersuits.”206 Most
indigenous-language documents were produced for a local audience; however these
documents were also public records used to support indigenous claims and could be brought
to Spanish courts if necessary. Consequently, the majority included the “stock legal formulas
either translated, left in Spanish, or composed in some combination of the two.” Karttunen
argues that while some elements of indigenous pictorial languages are evident in legal
documents and records, for the most part this type of writing is abandoned during the
colonial period. In addition she states that the writing of sixteenth-century indigenous
notaries demonstrates that they had difficulty completely mastering Spanish. She goes on to
say that this mastery is achieved as the colonial period progressed and that from the mideighteenth century to independence was the high period for indigenous writing.207 The
proliferation of indigenous notaries and their evolving mastery of Spanish language and
legalities made legal documents, and therefore legal recourse, available to a wider segment of
the indigenous population including women and non-elites.
As previously discussed, testaments functioned as both legal and religious documents
and this dual function was transmitted to Spanish and indigenous testament writing in New
Spain.208 Catholic clergy members had a vested interest in teaching and promoting the
production of testaments and in providing a model for doing so, as this would enable the
church to receive more land and wealth from converted Indigenes than they otherwise would
have. The only known sixteenth-century testament guide written for an indigenous audience
was created by a Franciscan friar named Alonso de Molina and included in a bilingual
Nahuatl-Spanish 1569 confessional manual entitled, “Confesionario mayor en lengua
206
Karttunen, “Change in Mesoamerica,” 425.
207
Ibid., 426, 428, 434.
208
In this light, testament writing in New Spain represents a facet of the larger acculturation process that
took place during the colonial period. Latin Americanist Sarah Cline argues that religious syncretism, or the
blending of distinct religious beliefs and practices, was a normative practice in pre-contact Mesoamerica
resulting from the long history of inter-ethnic conflict in the region. Cline, “Spanish America,” 13-14, 16.
65
mexicana y castellana.” Manuals like this were created for priests by other clergymen in an
attempt to establish uniformity in the execution of Catholic religious duties and rituals.209
In Molina’s confessional manual, the section on testament writing consists of a model
testament as well as a series of instructions that the priest was supposed to convey to the
notary. The notary was the one who actually wrote the testament and interacted with the
testator; the priest did not need to be present during the testament writing, but was only to
convey the directions to the notary who once trained was thought to be fairly autonomous.210
Molina’s instructions to the notary included what he believed to be the notary’s four primary
duties. The first of these duties was to ascertain whether or not the testator was capable of
communicating and understanding what was happening, as testators who were not lucid were
not considered fit to make a testament. The notary’s second duty was to procure witnesses for
the testament making. These witnesses were not supposed to be neighbors or family
members, they had to live a distance away from the testator, they had to be mature men (not
young and not old), and the number of witnesses should be six, eight, or ten. In addition,
family members were not allowed to be within earshot so as not to pressure the testator or
limit what they wanted to say. While Molina’s model stated that family and heirs should not
be present during the making of a testament, many indigenous witnesses were in fact family
members and heirs. In addition, women were often testament witnesses; occasionally women
comprised the majority of witnesses, while the wife of the testator was almost always
present.211
The third duty of the notary was to ask the testator, either a man or a woman, a series
of questions concerning what property they owned, whether they owed or were owed money,
and if they had borrowed from another or if someone had borrowed from them.212 These
209
Ibid., 16-17.
210
Ibid., 17-18.
211
Women were often witness in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Nahua testaments, however by the
eighteenth century women were almost never witness. Instead testament witnesses from the later colonial period
were usually elite local men, as is the case with almost all of the testaments from the eighteenth-century Toluca
Valley analyzed in this essay. Cline, “Spanish America,” 19-20.
212
The notary was to address the testator directly, as brother if the testator was a man and lady if the
testator was a woman. This implies that both men and women could make testaments and Cline states that
gender representation appears to be equal amongst indigenous testaments. Ibid., 20-21.
66
questions are gender neutral which reflect that women were able to “own property, contract
debts and extend credit, and lend and keep goods” and Cline argues that indigenous women’s
testaments reflect these activities. Two of the questions included in the guide are not gender
neutral and presume that the testator is a man, these include a question concerning the size of
a wife’s dowry and the existence and composition of illegitimate children; women were
assumed not to have illegitimate children. The notary’s fourth and final duty was to oversee
the division of the testator’s property amongst their chosen heirs. The guide distinguishes
between legitimate children, those born within a church-ordained union, and illegitimate
children, those born outside of this type of union. An individual’s illegitimate children, no
matter how many there were, could only receive one-fifth of their estate, while the rest of
their property was to be divided amongst their legitimate children. If the testator had no
children, then a spouse or parent would usually be designed as the heir. Cline argues that this
aspect of testament creation is important as indigenous notaries advising testators concerning
the choice of heirs can provide indications of pre-contact inheritance patterns, information
which has not been found in other pre-contact sources. Cline further argues that the large
percentage of female heirs and testators implies a continuation of pre-contact inheritance
practices extending into the colonial period.213
Molina’s guide did not include specific instructions regarding donations to the
church; however his model testament included a number of options that would have resulted
in some of the testator’s estate going to the church. For example, Molina includes a church
burial, masses and vigils to be conducted on behalf of the testator’s soul, as well as donations
made for church decorations, ministers’ needs, and for the poor and the sick in his sample
testament. These examples demonstrate the religious and social function that testaments
played in colonial Mexico, as piety was highly valued and pious acts were thought to
contribute to the salvation of one’s soul. Cline argues that the amount of religious language
in testaments mostly likely reflects the judgment calls made by notaries; elite testaments
would be seen by a larger number of people than those of ordinary people and consequently
would have included more religious expressions. In addition, elites would most likely have
213
Ibid., 21-23.
67
been buried in the church, had a significant number of masses said for their souls, and made
donations to the needy because they would have been able to afford these “expressions” of
piety. Cline argues that the poor might have made testaments despite their meager wealth, in
order to increase their social status through similar pious actions. Testaments combine both
religious and legal concerns; this combination of interests is most evident in the section
which discusses the allocation of property. This section of the testament is the richest as it is
not formulaic like that of the opening profession of faith; consequently it provides indications
of the individual testator’s life, experiences, and desires.214
Indigenous testaments, like Spanish, began with a standard and formulaic statement
concerning the testator’s soundness of mind and a profession of their Catholic faith. Nahuatl
testaments name the testator’s altepetl or “local ethnic state which is now reorganized
somewhat as a municipality” as well as the smaller regional group to which the testator
belonged called the calpolli. In addition, Indigenes included their first names, which were
very often common Christianized Spanish names like Juan or Maria. Pre-contact Nahuas
usually had only one name, however women had ordered names like Maria Tiacapan or
Maria the Eldest and Maria Xoco or Maria the Youngest. Men had last names more often
than women did, and if a last name was used they were usually taken from the local saint, for
example a testator’s name could be Juan de San Francisco or simply Juan Francisco. The
section identifying the testator’s community affiliation and name was followed by a section
discussing the dispersal of property and the identification of heirs.215 Following this section,
there was a list of the witnesses present at the creation of the testament; either a large group
of neighbors or a group of community elders, all of whom were men. The testament
concludes with a statement made by the notary, which included the notary’s name, their
verification of the document’s authenticity, as well as the location and date wherein the
testament was created.216 All of these different sections were usually included in the
testaments of both indigenous men and women, reflecting the standardized nature of
214
Ibid., 24-25.
215
Lockhart, “Between the Lines,” 256-259, 261.
216
Ibid., 266-267.
68
testaments in New Spain. As previously stated, within testaments the section that provides
the most personal information about individual testators is located within the dispersal of
property and naming of heirs section. Consequently, this section of the testamentary
documents will be the focus when analyzing the testaments of Nahua women from the
eighteenth-century Toluca Valley.
TOLUCA VALLEY NAHUA WOMEN’S TESTAMENTS
Eighteenth-century Nahua women in the Toluca Valley comprised a significant
percentage of testators; in Caterina Pizzigoni’s Testaments of Toluca thirty-eight of ninetyeight testators, or thirty-nine percent, were women. This percentage is similar to other
indigenous Mexican testamentary studies in which women were anywhere from one-third to
one-half of the testators.217 As stated previously, one of the thirty-eight testaments is not
included in the following analysis of eighteenth-century testaments as it was written in 1654.
A second testament was written in the seventeenth century however it was produced in 1699;
due to its proximity to the early-eighteenth century testaments located in the corpus I have
included it my analysis. While class differences amongst the testators are an important
consideration when analyzing bequests and estate division, I have attempted to ameliorate
these differences by analyzing the number of bequests made and to whom as opposed to the
value or size of the bequests. In addition, determining the class status of a testator is difficult
considering the limited information available to the researcher.218 In sum, the following
section will analyze thirty-seven Nahua women’s testaments, produced in three Toluca
Valley altepetl or districts, Toluca, Calimaya, and Tepemaxalco, written from 1699 to 1763.
Four interrelated points of inquiry formed the basis of the following analysis of
Nahua women’s status and agency. The first was what were women’s motivations for writing
testaments? I identified three general motivations, the guardianship of small children, estate
217
218
Pizzigoni, Testaments of Toluca, 8.
The class status of testators is difficult to determine; for example, it seems obvious that a woman
bequeathing large amounts of land and money is wealthy. However, there are also testaments wherein a testator
bequeaths very little property, but requests, and one assumes, is able to afford elaborate burial rites. It is unclear
whether this woman is from a wealthy family but does not herself own very much property, or if she assumes a
family member will pay for her burial fees.
69
division, and burial instructions. These factors were often interrelated with many testators
indicating two or in some cases, all three motivations in their wills. Designating guardians for
one’s small children was a feature in seven of the women’s testaments; a relative was
designated as each child’s guardian and was either given part of the testator’s property
outright, to hold in trust for the child, or a combination of both. I would argue that property
bequests made to guardians were used by female testators as incentives to care for their
children, as a way to protect their children’s inheritance, and as a means of subsidizing the
cost of raising their children. Like guardianship, estate division was also a matter of female
testators providing for and protecting their children, in particular their daughters. Being a
good mother was one of the primary duties women were expected to perform in colonial
Mexico; one that is demonstrated through both guardianship and estate division.
Estate division relates to the second question posed in this analysis, namely who did
female testators designate as heirs? Estate division and the designation of heirs was a feature
found within twenty-nine of the thirty-seven testaments. Within these twenty-nine
testaments, seventy-four heirs were named; daughters and daughters-in-law, hereafter
referred to jointly as daughters, comprised the majority of total heirs, demonstrating that
female testators were concerned with preserving and protecting their daughters’ inheritance.
Daughters numbered twenty-two of seventy-four heirs or thirty percent of the heirs while
sons and sons-in-law, hereafter referred to jointly as sons, made up fourteen of seventy-four
heirs or nineteen percent. Grandsons and god-sons made up the next largest group of heirs,
eight of seventy-four heirs or eleven percent. Each of the remaining heir groups comprises
less than ten percent of the total heirs (see Figure 1).
The third question posed in this analysis was what property did women own and will
to others? In order to answer the third question, what did women will to their heirs, four
categories of property bequests were analyzed including calli (houses), land parcels, maguey
plants,219 and saint icons. These property categories were selected because all female testators
219
Maguey plants were one of the only crops listed in the Toluca Valley testaments. Several testaments
referenced cultivated fields but did not specify what crops were grown on them. This pattern is similar to one
noted by Lockhart, wherein land is mentioned more frequently than crops in central Mexican Nahua testaments.
Lockhart, Conquest, 236-243.
70
25
20
15
10
5
0
daughter/daughter-in-law
Number of Heirs
22
son/son-in-law
14
spouse/spouse for child
3
sister/sister-in-law
2
grandaughter/god-daughter
3
grandson/god-son
8
niece/female cousin
6
nephew/male cousin
7
unknown female
4
unknown male
4
unknown gender
1
Figure 1. Testament heirs. Out of thirty-seven testaments, eight did not
designate heirs. The remaining twenty-nine wills designated a total of seventyfour heirs. Thirty-seven heirs were female, 36 were male, and 1 was of
unknown gender. Within the twenty-nine testaments, eleven designated both
female and male heirs, ten designated only male heirs, and eight designated
only female heirs.
71
who had property bequeathed one or more of these property types. In addition, due to the
vagueness and lack of uniformity amongst the testaments it is difficult to quantify property
based on size or quantity. Consequently, the number of house, land, maguey, and saint icon
bequests made to different relative groups has been calculated in Figures 2-5, pg. 74-79.
There were a total number of nineteen house bequests made, of those nineteen, eleven or
fifty-eight percent were bequeathed to daughters. Bequests to all remaining groups comprise
ten percent or less of the total bequests made (see Figure 2). Similarly, daughters are also the
group who received the majority of land bequests, receiving twenty-seven out of seventy-two
or thirty-eight percent of the total land bequests. Sons, grandsons, and god-sons combined
total twenty-five and a half out of seventy-two or thirty-five percent of the total land
bequests. The six remaining groups combined total twenty-seven percent of the total land
bequests (see Figure 3).
Maguey plants were cultivated in order to produce pulque, an indigenous alcoholic
beverage often sold by indigenous women from their homes or in larger markets.220 Most
villages produced pulque for local consumption; Toluca, Calimaya, and Tepemaxalco appear
to follow this trend as evidenced by the number and maturity of the maguey plants referenced
in testaments.221 A total of twenty-eight maguey plant bequests were made, nine bequests
were made to daughters and eight and a half were made to sons, equating to thirty-two and
thirty percent respectively. The eight remaining groups comprise thirty-eight percent of the
total maguey bequests (see Figure 4). As with land and house bequests, daughters received
the most maguey bequests, although their margin over sons in this property category is slight.
Like maguey plants, saint icons were another form of property that was frequently
bequeathed in indigenous testaments during this period. Saint icons were usually statues or
figurines, but occasionally they were paintings. Saint icons signified piety, through one’s
devotion to the saints, and economic status,222 and can be regarded as items of great personal
220
Maguey plants could also be used to produce fiber for cloth and as a source of food.
221
William B. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1979), 52-54.
222
Pascuala de la Cruz, a 1739 testator from Calimaya, valued one of her saint icons at six pesos. In order
to establish the relative value of the icon, I compared it to a piece of land in Toluca measuring two by three
quahuitl (approximately twenty by thirty feet), which was valued at 4 pesos by Vicenta Teresa’s in her 1737
72
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
daughter/daughter-in-law
son/son-in-law
spouse/spouse for child
grandaughter/god-daughter
grandson/god-son
nephew/male cousin
Number of House Bequests
11
1
2
1
2
2
Figure 2. House bequests. Out of thirty-seven testaments, seven did not list property.
The remaining thirty wills contained a total of nineteen house bequests. Of the
nineteen house bequests, twelve were given to women and seven were given to men.
importance to the testator; each altepetl (district), tlaxilacalli (village), and calli (house) had
one or more patron saints.223 Consequently, many icons stayed with a house or a piece of
property when they were bequeathed while others were listed and bequeathed to heirs
separately. Those listed separately in the testaments will be included in this analysis. The
will. Using this information, a piece of land approximately three by four and one-half quahuitl or thirty by fortyfive feet would be of equivalent value to the saint icon listed in Pascuala de la Cruz’ testament. Caterina
Pizzigoni, Testaments of Toluca, 26, 88, 214. In addition, historian Stephanie Wood states that one-third of the
Tolucan female and male testators who bequeathed saint icons were some of the more wealthy members of their
communities. Stephanie Wood, “Matters of Life at Death: Nahuatl Testaments of Rural Women, 1589-1801,” in
Indian Women of Early Mexico, eds. Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 177.
223
Lockhart argues that widespread indigenous devotion to saints began to take root in the earlyseventeenth century. The Toluca Valley testaments confirm that the practice of devotion to multiple saints was a
common feature in most households in the eighteenth century. Lockhart also argues that saint devotion became
widespread amongst the Nahuas as a consequence of religious syncretism; the pantheon of Nahua deities and
Catholic saints were merged by indigenous devotees. Lockhart, Conquest, 236-243.
73
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
daughter/daughter-in-law
son/son-in-law
spouse/spouse for child
sister/sister-in-law
grandaughter/god-daughter
grandson/god-son
niece/female cousin
nephew/male cousin
unknown male
Number of Land Parcel Bequests
27
13
3.5
1
1
12.5
3
7
4
Figure 3. Land parcel bequests. Out of thirty-seven testaments, seven did not list
property. The remaining thirty wills contained a total of seventy-two land parcel
bequests. Of the seventy-two land parcel bequests, thirty-two were given to women
and forty were given to men. A bequest was sometimes shared by two people,
resulting in half of a bequest.
total number of saint icon bequests was twenty-seven; daughters received twelve of the
twenty-seven bequests or forty-four percent of the total saint icon bequests while sons
received five of twenty-seven or nineteen percent of the total saint icon bequests. The four
remaining groups comprise thirty-seven percent of the total saint icon bequests (see
Figure 5).
In all property categories, daughters are the majority group; daughters represent the
largest heir group and they are the group to receive the most land parcel, house, maguey
plant, and saint icon bequests. As a consequence of daughters being favored over sons, and
74
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
daughter/daughter-in-law
son/son-in-law
spouse/spouse for child
sister/sister-in-law
grandaughter/god-daughter
grandson/god-son
niece/female cousin
unknown female
unknown male
unknown gender
Number of Maguey Plant Bequests
9
8.5
0.5
1
1
3
1
1
2
1
Figure 4. Maguey plant bequests. Out of thirty-seven testaments, seven did not list
property. The remaining thirty wills contained a total of twenty-eight maguey plant
bequests. Of the twenty-eight maguey plant bequests, thirteen were given to women,
fourteen were given to men, and one was given to a person of unknown gender. A
bequest was sometimes shared by two people, resulting in half of a bequest.
every other heir group in their mothers’ testaments, I would argue that one of the primary
motivations for Nahua women to produce wills was in order to provide for their daughters
and to guarantee their inheritance.
The third factor that motivated female testators to produce wills was their desire to
provide instructions for their funeral and burial. Funerary rights of this region and period
conformed to the Mexican Catholic tradition. All of the rites performed and the burial itself
75
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
daughter/daughter-in-law
son/son-in-law
sister/sister-in-law
grandson/god-son
nephew/male cousin
unknown male
Number of Saint Icon Bequests
12
5
2
1
6
1
Figure 5. Saint icon bequests. Out of thirty-seven testaments, seven did not list
property. The remaining thirty wills contained a total of twenty-seven saint icon
bequests. Of the twenty-seven saint icon bequests, fourteen were given to women and
thirteen were given to men.
had to be paid for, consequently less wealthy testators chose to omit certain rites or to
stipulate less expensive rites to be performed whereas elite testators almost always stipulated
the performance of elaborate funerary rites. Testators’ wills included some or all of the
following aspects, a responsory prayer, a low mass, a high mass, a burial shroud, burial on
the church grounds or in the church near a saint, a donation to the Jerusalem Fund, and bell
ringing.
The fourth point of inquiry, through what means was personal piety reflected in
women’s testaments, is evident through the women’s choices concerning burial locations,
shrouds, and prayers and masses.224 Twenty-one testators requested shrouds, most modeled
224
Bell-ringing was specific to testators from Toluca and did not occur in the wills of either poor or more
affluent testators from Tepemaxalco and Calimaya; therefore it shall not be used as a point of comparison.
Likewise, donations to the Jerusalem Fund, a fund originally established to secure Jerusalem for Christians,
were made by almost all testators and appear to be uniform in amount, one real in Calimaya and Tepemaxalco
and one-half of a real in Toluca; consequently the Jerusalem Fund donations will not be included in the analysis
76
on the habit of Saint Carmen, while twenty-four testators requested burial inside the church,
either next to a particular saint or to an already deceased relative. High, low, and undefined
masses and responsory prayers were the most commonly requested funerary rite, included in
thirty-three of the thirty-seven testaments, consequently they will be the focus of the analysis
concerning testators’ piety (see Figure 6).225 A high mass was listed in Isabel Maria’s 1731
testament as costing four pesos226 while an undefined mass was listed in Juana Francisca’s
1699 testament as costing three pesos. In contrast, the cost of burial inside the church was
listed in Vicenta Teresa’s 1737 testament as costing two reales, or one-sixteenth the cost of a
high mass.227 Salvadora Josefa’s testament provides a more complete picture of the costs
associated with funerary rites, she says “my burial is 3 pesos, my mass 3 pesos, 1 peso for
my priest to come get me [wearing] a cape, and 4 reales for my vigil which makes 7 pesos
and 4 reales as the portion of my priest.”228 Spouses, children, or grandchildren were often
designated as those responsible for paying the funerary costs, either in exchange for their
inheritance or because the testator herself was too poor to pay. The number and type of mass
and prayers requested is as follows: In Toluca there were eight requests for a high mass, one
for a low mass, and three requests for an undefined mass. In Tepemaxalco and Calimaya
there were fifteen requests for a mass with a responsory prayer, seven requests for an
of testators’ piety.
225
Within Catholicism, masses and prayers for the dead are thought to assist the soul in reaching heaven;
this could account for the large percentage of testators who requested masses and prayers in their testaments.
There are no descriptions within the testaments of the different masses and the responsory prayers requested by
the testators. High mass is the original form of Catholic mass so it is possible that references to undefined
masses are in fact references to high masses, however as there is no way to prove this definitively undefined
masses will be listed separately. High masses usually include the chanting or singing of the mass text and the
use of candles and incense, making this form of mass more time-consuming and more expensive than low
masses, during which the mass text is read and incense is not normally used. Responsory prayers could possibly
refer to the Catholic prayer called “Responsory of the Dead,” which is a call and response prayer sung or
spoken on behalf of the deceased, asking God for mercy and guidance.
226
Spanish currency, including tomins/reales and pesos, were being used by Nahuas as early as the midsixteenth century. One peso is the equivalent of eight reales or tomins (the name originally used to refer to
reales). Cacao beans were a form of pre-contact currency that remained in use after contact as change for
Spanish currency. Lockhart, Conquest, 178.
227
Pizzigoni, Testaments of Toluca, 56, 61, 88.
228
Pizzigoni, The Life Within, 190-191.
77
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
High Mass
Number of Mass and Prayer
Requests
8
Low Mass
1
Undefined Mass
10
Mass+Responsory Prayer
15
High Mass+Two Responsory
Prayers
1
Figure 6. Mass and prayer requests. Out of thirty-seven testaments, four did not
include mass or prayer requests. The remaining thirty-three wills contained a total of
thirty-five mass and prayer requests.
undefined mass, and one request for a high mass with two responsory prayers.229 Masses and
prayers were commonly requested but expensive rites (by indigenous standards), which I
argue demonstrates the religious piety and devotion of the testators.
Eighteenth-century Nahua women from the Toluca Valley created testaments for
three main purposes, to select the funerary rites to be performed upon their death, and to
protect their children through guardianship and estate division. Nahua women used
testaments and bilateral inheritance as a means of protecting their children, and in particular
their daughters, who constituted the primary heir group and who were also the majority
group to inherit land plots, houses, maguey plants, and saint icons. While it is possible that
these female-driven inheritance practices were a result of the death of other children or local
229
Two testators requested multiple prayers resulting in a total of thirty-five mass and prayer requests for
thirty-three testators.
78
practices in different tlaxilacalli, this seems unlikely when you look at the list of surviving
heirs in the Toluca Valley testaments, namely that eleven of twenty-nine or thirty-eight
percent of testators who left property to female relatives also had living male relatives listed
as heirs. This would indicate a regional practice of indigenous women bequeathing property
to female relatives despite the existence of available male heirs. Typically, individuals were
only listed in wills if they were spouses, heirs, or were minors in need of a guardian.
Consequently, it is impossible to know from these sources whether or not the heirs listed
were the testators’ only living relatives. For example, eight of twenty-nine testators or
twenty-eight percent bequeathed their property solely to female heirs; it is uncertain whether
or not female heirs were chosen over male heirs or if there were no available male heirs to
leave property to. The same question can be applied to the ten of twenty-nine or thirty-four
percent of testators who designated only male heirs. Regardless of this uncertainty, it is
certain that the majority of female Toluca Valley testators left a sizable portion of their
property to female heirs despite the existence of male heirs.230 The preference for female heirs
and the high number of property bequests made to daughters were practices that extended
beyond the Toluca Valley; similar practices are evident when you analyze heir and property
division in eighteenth-century Nudzahui and Maya women’s testaments.
230
Stephanie Wood’s 1997 article, “Matters of Life at Death: Nahuatl Testaments of Rural Women, 15891801,” is based on some of the same women’s testaments as is this analysis. A complete list of testators was not
provided by Wood, consequently it is unclear how many of the same testaments are included in both studies.
Despite this, Wood does make reference in her footnotes to eight of the thirty-seven testators included in this
analysis. In addition, she references at least ten women’s testaments that are not included in Caterina
Pizzigoni’s Testaments of Toluca, and are consequently not reflected in this analysis. Wood’s essay is based on
testaments from fifty-nine female testators, spanning a period of over two hundred years, from the late-sixteenth
century to the very early-nineteenth century, although she states that most are from the eighteenth-century. In
addition, the tlaxilacalli that the testators hail from is unknown in most cases. Consequently, it is unclear
whether or not Wood’s findings directly contradict those made within this essay, or if her findings demonstrate
inter-regional or temporal variation within heir selection. Wood finds that sons were favored over daughters in
both women and men’s testaments, however daughters are designated as heirs in mother’s wills more than in
their fathers’ and she states that a pattern of land bequests from mothers to daughters is evident in the
testaments. Despite this, she argues that her data demonstrates that there is less of a gender disparity than has
previously been thought, and that this is evidenced by the large number of female heirs and by the general
equivalence of property held by women and men in these testaments. Wood, “Life at Death,” 166, 169, 171,
181.
79
INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S TESTAMENTS IN NEW SPAIN
In his 1997 book, The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550-1850,
historian Matthew Restall analyzes mid-sixteenth to mid-nineteenth century Yucatec Maya
testaments, from the districts or cahob of Cacalchen, Ebtun, Tekanto, and Ixil. Restall’s
conclusions regarding Ixil testaments will be used for purposes of comparison as these
testaments were produced in the mid-eighteenth century, and like the Toluca Valley
testaments were drawn from a substantial number of testators, fifty-one, within a
concentrated geographic region. Twenty of these fifty-one testators were women; Restall
argues that “in Ebtun, Ixil, and Tekanto women tended to favor female kin...”231 This
argument is supported by the raw data compiled by Restall in which sixty-five of the total
one hundred and fifty-two bequests were made to daughters; daughters comprise forty-three
percent of the total heirs and are the largest heir group followed by sons to whom forty-one
of one hundred and fifty-two or twenty-seven percent of bequests were made.232 Another
eleven bequests were made to mixed-gender, daughter and son groups, nine of these were for
land. The nine land bequests made to mixed-gender groups, out a total of twenty-two,
comprise forty-one percent of the total land bequests made; mixed-gender daughter and son
groups are tied with sons, who also had nine bequests, as the largest land bequest heir
group.233 In addition to land bequests, Restall includes information about plant, animal, and
housing bequests, which amount to a total of twenty bequests; more portable items such as
furniture, clothing, cloth, and valuables, comprise the majority of bequests, one hundred out
of one hundred fifty-two. Restall speculates that sons received more land and house bequest
than daughters as a result of the Yucatec Mayan practice of male heirs “representing their
dependents or nuclear family members,” namely women and children; consequently the
individual ownership granted to sons was in fact a form of multiple-gender property
231
Matthew Restall, The Maya World, 129.
232
Restall argues that Yucatec Maya testators, like their Nahua and Spanish counterparts, preferred their
children as heirs over other kin, practiced bilateral inheritance, and that parents or other kin acted as guardians
holding property in trust for small children. I would further argue that the Mayan practice of Cetil, or the equal
distribution of property amongst heirs, was also practiced by Nahua, Nudzahui, and Spanish testators. Ibid.,
112, 119.
233
Ibid., 358.
80
ownership.234 This practice of multiple-gender property ownership, especially of land, is
further evinced in the large number of land bequests made to mixed-gender groups.235 While
land bequests were made to more male individuals than female, multiple-gender joint
ownership of land, both explicitly stated and implied, was the predominant practice making
women’s ownership of land more prevalent than one might initially surmise when analyzing
testamentary data. In addition, the Ixil majority heir group was comprised of daughters who
outnumbered sons by almost twenty percent. This preference, of female testators for female
heirs, is similar to the pattern found within the analysis of eighteenth-century Toluca Valley
testaments discussed above, as well as in the studies of sixteenth and seventeenth-century
Nahua women’s testaments from Culhuacan and Mexico City, conducted by S.L. Cline and
Susan Kellogg respectively.236
Like Restall, historian Kevin Terraciano analyzes indigenous testaments, in this case
from the late-sixteenth to late-eighteenth century Nudzahui, or as they are more commonly
known the Mixtec, in his book, The Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca: Nudzahui History,
Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries. The testaments he analyzes are drawn from the
Mixteca, a region falling within the western third of present-day Oaxaca, the southwestern tip
of Puebla, and the eastern edge of Guerrero. Terraciano draws from a total sample of one
hundred and twenty-eight testaments divided into three categories; twenty are from the yya
dzehe and yya or female and male hereditary rulers, thirty-three are from the toho dzehe and
toho or female and male nobility, and the remaining seventy-five are from the Nandahi or
commoners.237 Terraciano asserts that “preferences for same-sex bequests are not apparent,
though it was not unusual for women without children to favor female dependents.”238 The
author elaborates, stating that female and male testators divided their property equitably
between their heirs, favoring those who physically lived in their households, and like Nahua
234
Ibid., 110-111, 116-117.
235
Ibid., 358.
236
Cline makes this argument concerning land bequests. Cline, Colonial Culhuacan, 82. Kellogg makes
this argument concerning house and movable goods bequests. Kellogg, Aztec Culture, 142-144.
237
Kevin Terraciano, The Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca: Nudzahui History, Sixteenth through Eighteenth
Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 134-140, 214-219.
238
Ibid., 220.
81
testators, they preferred children, biological or adopted, and grandchildren as heirs over
spouses, siblings, and other kin. Terraciano concludes that a greater degree of gender equality
existed amongst the Nudzahui as evidenced by the near parity of property owned by women
and men.239 Unfortunately, Terraciano does not provide charts or graphs illustrating the data
found within these testaments nor does he discuss this data at length; consequently it is
difficult to make an informed comparison. In addition, his testamentary analysis appears to
be much more class than gender-based, resulting in very few conclusions concerning gender
and testaments.
Despite these source limitations, Terraciano’s assertion, that there was greater gender
equality amongst the Nudzahui, is useful in that it raises two related questions. Firstly, was
the prevalence amongst Yucatec Maya and Nahua women to leave property to female kin, in
particular daughters, due to the less than egalitarian position of women in Mayan and Nahua
society; a circumstance made worse for Nahua women by the increasing scarcity of land in
the mid-eighteenth century? Secondly, was the lack of female testator-female heir preference
amongst the Nudzahui a consequence of greater gender equality amongst the Nudzahui? I
would argue that yes, Nahua and Maya women used testaments to protect their interests and
those of their daughters and female relatives. As for Nudzahui women, due to the lack of
detailed gender-based testamentary information available, I will provisionally argue that
Nudzahui women did not have to use testaments to protect their interests as a consequence of
the greater gender parity that existed within Nudzahui society.
CONCLUSION
Pre-contact Nahua, Mayan, and Nudzahui societies practiced bilateral inheritance,
which emphasized children and grandchildren over other kin, and amongst their children they
practiced, for the most part, an equitable, gender-equivalent allocation of property. Precontact inheritance practices coupled with Spanish laws promoting bilateral inheritance
fostered a tradition of indigenous female ownership of property in colonial Mexico.
Population increases in eighteenth-century Mexico resulted in challenges to this tradition of
239
Ibid., 220-224, 354.
82
female ownership of property; consequently Nahua women used testaments to protect and
maintain these pre-contact traditions and the autonomy and economic security that
accompanied them. In addition, Nahua women used testaments to ensure the well-being of
their children and relatives, in particular their daughters, and to publicly demonstrate their
religious devotion and piety. Like Nahua women, Maya women used testaments to protect
their daughters’ property, while Nudzahui women did not favor their daughters over their
sons due to the greater gender equality found within Nudzahui society. Consequently, while
Spanish colonization decreased indigenous women’s status overall, Spanish laws and
testamentary practices helped protect and increase their status during the colonial period, a
status which declined again, along with Spanish legal institutions, during the nineteenth
century.
The research on this topic would be furthered by a more in-depth, gender-focused
analysis of Nudzahui women’s testaments, as well as an analysis of Andean women’s
testaments, focusing on women’s use of testaments as a means of protecting their property
and that of their daughters, and as a means of expressing personal piety. Finally, an
investigation of the possible correlation between bequests and witchcraft accusations
suggests itself, much in the vein of Carol Karlsen’s 1989 book Devil in the Shape of a
Woman. Indigenous persons were supposed to be exempt from the Inquisition, however
many indigenous women were accused of being witches. Proving a correlation between
inheritance and witchcraft accusations would require an analysis of court cases concerning
property disputes, the testaments of those engaged in said disputes, and Inquisitorial records
detailing those who were accused of and tried as witches. I would argue within the limited
scope of this thesis, that targeting indigenous and non-Spanish women as witches, and
denying them profession as nuns until the eighteenth century, was a consequence of race and
religion rather than inheritance.
83
CHAPTER 4
SANCTIONED SPIRITUALITY AND ECONOMIC
AGENCY: NUNS, BEATAS, AND CATHOLIC
PIETY
In colonial Mexico, women were able to acquire spiritual capital through the various
practices and institutions of the Catholic Church including: convents, beaterios,
recogimientos, confraternities, the Inquisition, mysticism, marriage, and religious conversion.
The extent of spiritual capital one could acquire, and the avenues available through which to
acquire it, were limited by a woman’s position within the social hierarchy. For most nonSpanish women the spiritual capital that could be acquired was primarily that of social
prestige gained through varied expressions of piety. Many Spanish women were able to
acquire both forms of spiritual capital, social and economic, by becoming beatas (holy
laywomen) and nuns. Elite Spanish women were able to gain (indirectly) the most economic
wealth and influence through their management of wealthy, calced convents. The influence
wielded by beatas and nuns was checked by male confessors, the Inquisition, and church
policies like vida comun (life in common or the common life). The “common life” reforms
were imposed on calced convents starting in the 1770s and aimed to make them more like
austere, discalced orders and to enforce enclosure more rigidly.
RECOGIMIENTOS
Recogimientos were institutions, including convents, beaterios, schools, hospitals,
prisons, orphanages, and houses of refuge in which women called recogidas were enclosed,
voluntarily or involuntarily. The composition of recogidas in colonial Mexico varied
according to the established purposes of the different recogimientos and the perceived needs
of the Spanish communities in different regions and periods. However, most seem to be
established for Spanish, indigenous, and mestiza women and were founded in regions of
Mexico with Spanish urban centers. Patrons and founders of recogimientos varied but were
usually powerful members of society including town council members, high ranking
84
clergymen, elite Indigenes, and wealthy individuals, many of whom were women.240 In
addition, recogimientos were usually established in response to a perceived need within the
community, which again varied according to the period and location. Some of these
perceived needs included the education of elite indigenous women and mestizas, the
rehabilitation of prostitutes and female criminals, and as a place to keep poor women,
divorced women, or women whose husbands were away for significant periods of time.241
During the early periods of Spanish colonization in Mexico City (1524-1550) the
education and acculturation of elite indigenous peoples was, along with religious conversion,
the primary mandate of the Catholic clergy in the Americas. The education of indigenous and
mestiza women was usually executed by pious lay women called beatas, most of whom lived
together in beaterios. Consequently, the majority of recogimientos from this period were
established to house, educate, and Hispanicize elite indigenous and mestiza women, and to
house their Spanish educators, beatas.242 This focus shifts during the latter half of the
sixteenth century, from the education of indigenous women to that of mestiza women, as
education for indigenous women was often rejected by elite Indigene families and was
eventually considered to be unsuccessful by Spanish clergy and secular officials.243
During the late sixteenth century through the mid-seventeenth century increasing
numbers of Spanish, indigenous, and Afro-Latina women were present in Mexico.
Consequently, while recogimientos continued to act as schools for mestiza women during
this period, they increasingly functioned as hospitals and orphanages,244 as well as houses for
female divorcees and prostitutes. In Mexico City, beaterios began to be established in the
early to mid-sixteenth century while convents began to be established during the mid to late
240 Luis Martin, Daughters of the Conquistadores: Women of the Viceroyalty of Peru (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1983), 172, 295; Asuncion Lavrin, “Female Religious,” in Cities & Society in
Colonial Latin America, eds. Louisa Schell Hoberman and Susan Migden Socolow (Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press, 1986), 169-71.
241
Van Deusen, Sacred and the Worldly, xii.
242
Ibid., 26, 44.
243
Ibid., 31-2.
244
During this period in Peru “orphaned” mestizo children were usually the products of Spanish male and
Indigene female unions and were taken from their mothers after their fathers had died, usually by clergy, to be
raised as Spaniards.
85
sixteenth century. Beaterios and convents continued to be established in New Spain
throughout the seventeenth century and began to taper off during the first half of the
eighteenth century.245 At the same time, convents for elite Indigene women began to be
established in colonial Mexico during the early eighteenth century and continued into the
early nineteenth century.
RECOGIMIENTO, RACE, AND POWER
Within Spanish culture women were considered to be morally weak and therefore
more susceptible than men to the influence of the devil. This belief, in concert with concerns
over purity of blood, resulted in the practice of confining or enclosing women, either within
the home or within recogimientos.246 Indigenous enclosure manifested itself through
segregating indigenous groups in different parts of the city or in their rural villages. Mestiza
women were often educated and Hispanicized in recogimientos established for that purpose
by their Spanish fathers during the early periods of colonization in colonial Mexico. AfroMexican women were not viewed as weak or feminine according to dominant Spanish
conceptions of race and therefore were not, as a group, subject to enclosure. Cultural
anthropologist Laura Lewis argues that early interactions between Afro-Mexicans and
Indigenes reinforced dominant race and gender-based associations in which indigenous
women and men were seen as weak, passive, and feminized, while Afro-Mexican women and
men were considered to be strong, violent, and masculine.247 In addition, this type of
enclosure was not deemed necessary for Afro-Latina women as many were the slaves or
servants of elite Spaniards. Women who were enslaved and those of low socio-economic
status were required to leave their “enclosures,” either their home or their master’s home, in
order to work. Consequently, they were considered to have less honor and purity than women
from higher socio-economic groups who were able to remain enclosed.248 Spaniards
245
Van Deusen, Sacred and the Worldly, 169-172.
246 In order to avoid confusion I use the term enclosure to refer to the practice of enclosing women and the
term recogimiento to refer to the actual institutions that women were enclosed in.
247
Laura A. Lewis, Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft, and Caste in Colonial Mexico (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2003), 24.
248
Ibid., 60-2.
86
employed the racialized and gendered ideologies described above in order to maintain
existing power structures and social hierarchies; Spaniards were located at the top of the
social hierarchy while Afro-Latinos were located at the bottom. Afro-Latina women were
considered to be strong (not a positive trait for a woman in this time and place) and lacking
many if not all of the “feminine” qualities attributed to Spanish women. These views
rationalized Afro-Mexican women’s position at the bottom of the social hierarchy and their
consequent enslavement and workload.
Women who did not choose to or who were not able to conform to the dominant
Spanish ideals of femininity, being chaste, pure, pious, and obedient, were considered
deviant and in need of rehabilitation. Many of these women were “rehabilitated” or
imprisoned in recogimientos which were most often run or overseen by nuns or male clergy.
Some recogimientos were even converted into convents after their members, usually
prostitutes, were “rehabilitated.”
CALIDAD, HONOR, AND LIMPIEZA DE SANGRE
In Spanish society, one’s position within the larger social hierarchy influenced their
perceived calidad or “quality” and honor; at the top of this hierarchy were wealthy
individuals of Spanish descent while Afro-Mexicans were usually at the bottom of the
hierarchy. In practice, the hierarchical structure was not absolute; however racial categories
were more fluid than those of class. Generally speaking, the more Spanish blood one had the
higher their position in the hierarchy but this was mitigated by issues of class. Gender also
influenced one’s position in the social hierarchy. While elite Spanish women occupied a
higher position in the social hierarchy than men of other classes and races, this did not
necessarily equate to greater personal autonomy. As a consequence of these intersecting
oppressions, Afro-Mexican women occupied the lowest position in the social hierarchy.
Historian Joan C. Bristol argues that an individual’s calidad was based on “skin
color, clothing, occupation, personal relationships, cultural practices, status as slave or free,
and limpieza de sangre, or purity of blood.”249 Calidad was very much influenced by gender
249 Spanish ideologies concerning calidad remained consistent throughout Spanish America, however
different aspects of calidad were focused on in different areas. For example skin color might not be as
87
and whether one performed one’s proscribed gender well had significant bearing on whether
one was considered to have honor. Women who enacted dominant Spanish ideals of
femininity including chastity, purity, piety, and obedience to men and God were considered
to have greater calidad and honor than women who did not.
An individual’s honor was determined in two ways, through their personal virtue and
character (honra), and through their legitimacy of birth and lineage (honor). Issues of
legitimacy, lineage, and limpieza de sangre were considered to be vital in maintaining the
calidad and honor of one’s family.250 As a consequence, women were enclosed and vigilantly
“protected” from their weak nature and from other men.
The limpieza de sangre or purity of blood, of individuals and families was a crucial
aspect of social status and honor in Spanish society. In colonial Mexico, non-Spaniards and
racially-mixed individuals were considered to have “impure” blood, or blood that was tainted
by mixed descent, heresy, and religious practices that were not Catholic. It was also generally
assumed that all people of mixed descent, referred to as castas, were illegitimate despite the
existence of marriage records for this population. As a consequence of these beliefs, nonSpaniards were perceived to be without honor but “could gain honra by exhibiting courage,
skill, generosity, and other traits.”251 One of the principle traits that could gain honra for
Afro-Mexicans, especially Afro-Mexican women, was Catholic piety.
AFRO-MEXICANS AND CATHOLICISM
For the most part, Afro-Latino women have lacked visibility in conventual histories
as most focus on Spanish and indigenous women; the exceptions to this are three AfroLatinas, Leonor de los Angeles, Ursula de Jesus, and Juana Esperanza de San Alberto.
Historian Ben Vinson III discusses the treatment of Afro-Latinos in Latin American
scholarship arguing that there is a general lack of focus on the Afro-Latino experience and
significant in an area with powerful indigenous elites as it might be in an area with less powerful indigenous
elites. Joan C. Bristol, “Patriarchs, Petitions, and Prayers: Intersections of Gender and Calidad in Colonial
Mexico,” in Women, Religion, and the Atlantic World (1600-1800), eds. Lisa Vollendorf and Daniella Kostroun
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 183.
250
Martinez, Genealogical Fictions, 57.
251
Bristol, “Patriarchs, Petitions, and Prayers,” 183.
88
that when they are discussed, Afro-Latinos are not centered in the analysis but are discussed
as intermediaries, operating between the Spanish and indigenous populations. Vinson
advocates the use of a “Black Diaspora paradigm [the purpose of which] is to compel
scholars to conceive of black populations as valid subjects of study in their own right… [and]
to write histories that foreground black roles.”252 Black diasporic paradigms focus on the
economic, social, political, and cultural experiences and influences of Afro-descended
peoples, which resulted as a consequence of their forced migration to the Caribbean and the
Americas as slaves. Accordingly, this section of the chapter is extensive and will analyze
how Afro-Latinos, with a specific focus on Afro-Mexicans and Afro-Mexican women253,
used Catholic institutions and practices to increase their autonomy and improve their lives
socially and economically, albeit with varied degrees of success.
The “Equality of Souls” and Slavery
Catholicism functioned in contradictory ways for Afro-Mexicans, simultaneously
restrictive and potentially liberating. Catholicism and Catholic institutions were restrictive in
that slavery and Spanish imperialism were rationalized using the religious “logic” of the
“Christianizing mission” while at the same time it provided Afro-Mexicans with avenues of
resistance, agency, and freedom. The “Christianizing mission” refers to the forced conversion
of Africans and Indigenes in Africa and the Americas to Catholicism. Colonization and
slavery were rationalized by the conversion of “heathens” and “heretics.” A passage by midfifteenth century Portuguese chronicler Gomes Eannes de Azurara exemplifies this notion,
“their enslavement was for the ‘greater benefit [of the Africans]…for though their bodies
were now brought into some subjection, that was small matter in comparison with their souls,
which would now possess true freedom forever more.’” 254 In other words, slavery was of
252
Ben Vinson III, introduction to African-Black Diasporic and Latin American History, in Black Mexico:
Race and Society From Colonial to Modern Times, eds. Ben Vinson III and Matthew Restall (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 2009), 13.
253
Most of the analyses focusing on Afro-Latinos focus on Afro-Mexicans in particular as “Mexico City
was home to the largest African population in the Americas” by 1570. Herman L. Bennett, Colonial Blackness:
A History of Afro-Mexico (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 4.
254 Nicole Von Germeten and Javier Villa-Flores, “Afro-Latin Americans and Christianity,” in Religion
and Society in Latin America: Interpretive Essays from Conquest to Present, eds. Lee M. Penyak and Walter J.
89
more benefit to Africans and Afro-Mexicans than to Europeans as it “saved their eternal
souls.” The contradictory nature of this reasoning is evident if one considers that the bodies
of Africans and Afro-Mexicans were enslaved, while their souls were considered to be equal
to those of Europeans. The Catholic Church’s recognition of Afro-Mexicans, as possessing
souls and personhood and their spiritual equality before God, laid the foundation for AfroMexican bids for corporeal equality. Enslaved Afro-Mexican women and men could gain
their freedom in a variety of ways, many of which were outlined in the Spanish law code Las
Siete Partidas. Afro-Mexicans could gain their freedom in the following ways: masters could
free their slaves, slaves could buy themselves, and third parties could purchase and free
slaves. In addition, the children of slaves followed the “condition of their mother,” which
prompted many enslaved black men to marry free indigenous women.255
Scholars argue that there were approximately 6 million slaves shipped to Latin
America and that 2 million of those were sent to Spanish America between the early
sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. 256,257 In many regions the Afro-Latino population
outnumbered the Spanish population. In mid-seventeenth century colonial Mexico, the AfroMexican population outnumbered the Spanish population two to one, approximately 280,000
Afro-Mexicans to 140,000 Spaniards.258,259 Population statistics differ widely among scholars;
it is estimated that free Afro-Mexicans made up fifteen to seventy percent of the AfroMexican population by the mid-seventeenth century. While estimates of the free population
differ widely it is generally agreed upon that most were mixed-race, either individuals with
African and Spanish ancestry called mulattos, or individuals with African and indigenous
ancestry called zambos.260
Petry (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2009), 83-4.
255
The Siete Partidas was a seven-part document containing almost 3000 different laws, which functioned
as the definitive legal code used in Iberian kingdoms and territories. Lewis, Hall of Mirrors, 21.
256
Von Germeten and Villa-Flores, “Afro-Latin Americans and Christianity,” 83.
257
Bennett, Colonial Blackness, 18.
258
While exact numbers are difficult to determine due to the inconsistent use of racial labeling,
approximations are possible.
259
Lewis, Hall of Mirrors, 34, 199.
260
Bennett, Colonial Blackness, 5.
90
Afro-Mexican women, both free and enslaved, had very little social, economic, or
gender-based power due to their low status and calidad. Despite this, many were able to
improve the material conditions of their lives and challenge the authority of slaveholders
using Catholicism. Afro-Mexican women were able to achieve these things through
conversion to Catholicism, through marriage and membership in confraternities, and by
invoking the Inquisition to mediate disputes between themselves and their masters. In other
words, some Afro-Mexican women used their piety and class status to prove their good
character or calidad and consequently raise their status, while others used threats of
blasphemy to mitigate the treatment they received from their masters.261
Catholic Conversion and Marriage
In Spanish society, possessing honor was vital to one’s social status and calidad and
was impossible to attain if one was not Catholic. An individual’s religious piety or lack
thereof, played a significant role in whether one was perceived to have good or bad calidad.
This correlation between Catholic piety and social status encouraged Afro-Mexicans to
incorporate Catholic practices into their existing religious cosmology or to “convert” to
Catholicism. Historians Nicole Von Germeten and Javier Villa-Flores argue similarly in their
2009 essay, “Afro-Latin Americans and Christianity,” that “Catholic authorities frequently
reported on the facility and eagerness with which Africans converted to Christianity, and this
should be understood as a desire to partake in the religious power of the colonizers’ gods and
not as a decision to abandon their own beliefs.”262
Under Catholicism, married individuals were seen as legitimate social adults who
were connected to one another permanently through God. Consequently, free and enslaved
Afro-Mexicans who were married in the Catholic Church became “people” with
responsibilities to their spouse. For enslaved Afro-Mexicans, marriage was a bond which
interfered with that of the slave owner. As a result, married slaves were considered less
efficient or useful than those who were unmarried and slave owners attempted to stop slaves
261 Lewis analyzes Afro-Mexican women’s strategies during Inquisition trials of witchcraft. Similar
strategies are used by Afro-Mexican women generally to gain status. Lewis, Hall of Mirrors, 2.
262
Von Germeten and Villa-Flores, “Afro-Latin Americans and Christianity,” 83.
91
from marrying.263 In his 2009 book Colonial Blackness: A History of Afro-Mexico, historian
Herman L. Bennett analyzes thousands of late sixteenth to mid-seventeenth century marriage
petitions, or informaciones matrimoniales, of free and enslaved Afro-Mexicans from the
central parishes of Mexico City.264 Bennett focuses on the spousal selection of AfroMexicans265 and from this data it is apparent that 458 enslaved Angolans filed for marriage
between 1595 and 1650 in central Mexico City and that 409 or 89.2% of these petitions were
for marriage to other African slaves.266 He further argues that Afro-Mexicans utilized canon
or religious law to claim “personhood” in order to circumvent civil or secular law which
defined them as non-persons and chattel.267 Bennett utilizes church records (marriage,
baptismal, and death records), which he argues provides the closest glimpse of AfroMexicans’ humanity and illustrates the importance of the Catholic Church in the formation of
black communities in Mexico City during the seventeenth century.268 Christianity and the
Catholic Church were instrumental in fostering Afro-Mexican identity and community, while
concepts of individuality and liberty were the consequence of the lived experience of slavery,
being “simultaneously constituted [as] chattel, vassals of the Spanish king, and persons with
souls.”269 As “persons with souls” under canon law, enslaved Afro-Mexicans claimed rights
as “Christians…as husbands and wives [and as] individuals with free will…”270 Catholic
practices and institutions including marriage and confraternities fostered an increased
awareness of individual rights and the struggles for those rights as well as the development of
Afro-Mexican communities.
263
Lewis, Hall of Mirrors, 21.
264
Bennett, Colonial Blackness, 61.
265 Bennett does not discuss whether the spouse who filed the marriage petition is male or female. It is
assumed, in light of Spanish patriarchal structures, that the spouse filing the petition is male. Consequently, the
spouse selection data reflects the desires of male Afro-Mexicans.
266
Bennett, Colonial Blackness, 79.
267
Ibid., 1.
268
Ibid., 216.
269
Ibid., 1-2.
270
Ibid., 6.
92
Confraternities
Religious confraternities existed throughout Latin America and were religious groups
of women and men that either formed around the veneration of a Catholic saint or holy figure
for whom they constructed an altar, or who focused on reenacting part of the Passion of
Christ (the events leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus) during religious processions.
Confraternities mirrored the larger social structure and were often organized around a
group’s status. Afro-Latinos formed confraternities and while these varied in membership,
most admitted both free and enslaved individuals and men and women. Most Afro-Latino
confraternities were led by men, however some were led by women and Afro-Latino women
played a significant role in the activities undertaken by confraternities.
In colonial Mexico, confraternities were called cofradias. Afro-Mexican cofradias
began to be formed around the turn of the seventeenth century with approximately sixty
being formed during the colonial period.271 Many Afro-Mexican cofradias focused on
reenacting the suffering of Jesus, the men through self-flagellation while women and children
carried lit candles and the images of saints. These processions occurred during holy week and
were a means of publicly displaying their piety, humility, and religious devotion. Von
Germeten describes this contradictory process in the following way, “…individuals of
African descent in New Spain [colonial Mexico] actively chose to celebrate their victimized
position in the lowest rungs of society to gain status and respect in their locales…”272 Public
displays of piety functioned to improve one’s perceived calidad and social status as piety was
a highly regarded quality in colonial Mexico.
In addition to their activities during religious processions and festivals, confraternities
fostered a sense of community within the Afro-Mexican population and provided numerous
services to their members, including purchasing enslaved members, caring for members who
became sick, providing funerary garments and rites for deceased members, attending the
funerals and funerary processions of deceased members, and saying prayers for deceased
271
272
Von Germeten and Villa-Flores, “Afro-Latin Americans and Christianity,” 88-9.
Nicole Von Germeten, “Colonial Middle Men?: Mulatto Identity in New Spain’s Confraternities,” in
Black Mexico: Race and Society From Colonial to Modern Times, eds. Ben Vinson III and Matthew Restall
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009), 152.
93
members (so that their souls might leave purgatory and ascend to heaven.)273 Confraternities
also functioned as sites of rebellion and resistance to Spanish authority. In 1611, it was
reported that 1500 Afro-Mexicans belonging to the confraternity of Nuestra Senora took to
the streets of Mexico City after an enslaved Afro-Mexican woman was killed by her owner.
The crowd carried the dead woman’s body past the main government buildings and later
threw rocks at the home of her owner. It was later reported by Portuguese traders that several
Afro-Mexican confraternities were planning to overthrow the Spanish government. As a
consequence of this report, the purported leaders, thirty-five Afro-Mexicans, were hung and
killed, seven of whom were women. Another consequence of this report was the attempted
dissolution and banning of Afro-Mexican confraternities in Mexico, which proved to be
unsuccessful. While it is not possible to know whether the Portuguese merchants uncovered a
real plot to overthrow the Spanish government in Mexico City, it is possible to know that
confraternities provided a powerful community in which individuals could band together to
protest the treatment of their members.274
Blasphemy as Resistance and the Inquisition
Afro-Mexicans exercised agency in attempting to ameliorate their circumstances
through bringing the behavior of their owners and employers to the attention of the
Inquisition. This was achieved by confessing their own blasphemy or renunciation of faith,
caused by their master’s cruelty, or by reporting their owner or employer’s blasphemy. In her
2009 essay, “Patriarchs, Petitions, and Prayers: Intersections of Gender and Calidad in
Colonial Mexico,” Joan C. Bristol analyzes three Inquisition cases from the seventeenth
century in which Afro-Mexicans utilized the Inquisition in an attempt to improve their
circumstances and alleviate the abuse they were subject to. Two of these focus on AfroMexican women, a slave named Esperanza and a mulatta servant named Gertrudis de
Escobar, who had renounced their faith. The third case deals with the mistreatment of slaves
at the hands of an Inquisition official whose behavior fell under the purview of the
Inquisition. Bristol notes that during the seventeenth century over one hundred and fifty cases
273
Ibid., 88-9.
274
Ibid., 92-3.
94
involving Afro-Mexicans and religious renunciations occurred and that “these cases reveal
the extent of Afro-Mexicans’ abilities to draw on ideas about Christian morality and their
understandings of the colonial religious and social structures.”275 Afro-Mexicans used the
threat of blasphemy when they perceived they were being poorly treated by their owners or
employers as a strategy to mitigate the severity of their treatment or abuse. When this threat
did not modify the behavior of their employer or owner, Afro-Mexicans invoked the power
of the Inquisition. Bristol utilizes Steve J. Stern’s theory “pluralizing the patriarchs” in her
analysis of these blasphemy records. She argues that the Afro-Mexicans from these cases
studies, most of whom were women, used the Inquisition (a patriarchal figure) in an attempt
to control or modify the behaviors and abuses that they were subject to from their immediate
patriarchal figure, their owners and employers.276 Afro-Mexican women also invoked the
authority of the Inquisition as a strategy when they felt they were being mistreated by their
owners. Bristol discusses the case brought by Magdalena de la Cruz, an enslaved AfroMexican woman who accused her owner, an Inquisitorial official, of mistreatment (for the
third time). She eventually won the suit, in large part due to the testimony of two European
men who corroborated her story, but by the time the case was concluded she had died.277
Afro-Mexicans invoked the threat of renunciation and when that failed they invoked
the authority of the Inquisition as a strategy to mitigate the abuse they experienced as slaves
and servants with very little status. The Afro-Mexican women described in these trials
deployed issues of calidad, gender, and honor through their interpretation of events in order
to increase their calidad and appear legitimate before the courts.278 Despite these strategies,
their lack of status and perceived calidad worked against them during the trials, especially if
it was the word of an Afro-Mexican against that of a Spaniard, and this was further
complicated when it was the word of a woman against that of a man. This reflects the
275
Bristol, “Patriarchs, Petitions, and Prayers,” 180.
276
Ibid., 188-197.
277
Ibid., 188.
278
Ibid., 190. The cause of Magdalena de la Cruz’s death is not discussed by Bristol.
95
dominant social hierarchy in which Spaniards and men were considered to have greater
calidad than Afro-Mexicans and women.
Afro-Mexican women won very few of these cases and when they did it did not
necessarily improve their material conditions or the abuse they were subject to. In many
cases their abuse increased as they were subject to the punishment meted out by the
Inquisition as well as to their owner’s possible revenge. Despite this strategy’s lack of
“success,” Afro-Mexican women’s manipulation of Catholic beliefs and practices and their
strategic use of language emphasizing piety and submission, reveal the deep understanding
that they had of social structure and power in colonial Mexico and how they deployed piety
and religiosity in an attempt to improve their lives.
BEATAS AND BEATERIOS
Beatas, or pious lay women, played an integral role in the “spiritual conquest” or
Christianizing mission enacted by Spaniards in sixteenth century Mexico. Most beatas
discussed in Spanish archival documents and secondary sources were Spanish, with some
references made to indigenous women working as beatas. However, there was no mention of
the existence of Afro-Mexican beatas. I would attribute this omission to a lack of
documentation on the subject rather than the complete absence of Afro-Mexican beatas
during the colonial period.279
Beatas worked as spiritual and cultural educators and healers, ministering to women
and girls in recogimientos and within their communities. In other words, beatas were actively
involved in “charitable enterprises in public, non-enclosed settings.”280 Many beatas were too
poor or lacked the required blood purity and were therefore unable to profess in convents.
279
I was unable to locate any secondary sources discussing Afro-Mexican beatas which I would argue is
due to a lack of documentation rather than a complete lack of Afro-Mexican women working in this capacity.
This lack of documentation can be attributed to one or both of the following factors. Afro-Mexican beatas
would not have been able to join Spanish beaterios and most likely would not have been allowed to work as
beatas in Spanish cities because of their low social status. Despite these factors, Catholicism played a strong
role in the lives of many Afro-Mexicans. I would suggest that a small number of Afro-Mexican women could
have functioned as beatas in rural or maroon communities, acting as spiritual educators and healers, as well as
caring for orphans and the sick.
280
Van Deusen, Sacred and the Worldly, 35.
96
Others were unwilling to profess or were married but felt that they had a religious calling. 281
Beatas could live alone, with or apart from their husbands, together as a group in a beaterio,
or in recogimientos. Beatas were usually highly regarded within their communities and
supported themselves through the collection of alms and through donations made by patrons;
Stacey Schlau argues that “attaining recognition could mean increased status. Certainly,
religious notice brought a host of other, more material rewards.”282 While the collection of
monies facilitated beatas’ pious activities in the community, they also provided these women
with an income and a means of supporting themselves honorably, which some scholars argue
was the primary factor motivating poor women to become beatas.283 Through their work as
beatas, poor women were able to acquire both social and economic spiritual capital.
Some beatas were mystics who ascribed to the teachings and example of the famous
sixteenth-century Spanish mystic and nun Teresa de Avila. Many of these mystics reported
having visions and dreams in which God or saints communicated with them as well as
experiencing physical suffering and torment from illness or through receiving the stigmata.
While beatas were highly regarded within their communities they were often viewed with
suspicion by religious authorities and were considered to be more dangerous than nuns who
reported similar experiences.284 This attitude was influenced by the lack of official profession
and enclosure, and therefore the lack of control that clergymen could exert over beatas, as
well as the influence that beatas were perceived to have over the members of their
communities. This attitude was also influenced by the social location of most beatas as many
were from lower socio-economic groups and were therefore perceived to have a calidad
inferior to that of nuns.285 Historian Nora E. Jaffary argues that these women “challenged the
281
Jacqueline Holler, “Escogidas Plantas”: Nuns and Beatas in Mexico City, 1531-1601 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2005), 96-7.
282
Stacey Schlau, Gendered Crime and Punishment: Women and/in the Hispanic Inquisition (Boston:
Brill Publishers, 2013), 67.
283
Nora E. Jaffary, False Mystics: Deviant Orthodoxy in Colonial Mexico (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 2004), 13.
284
Asuncion Lavrin, “Female Visionaries and Spirituality,” in Religion in New Spain, eds. Susan
Schroeder and Stafford Poole (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007), 160, 172-3.
285 Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau, “Thin Lines, Bedeviled Words: Monastic and Inquisitional Texts by
Colonial Mexican Women” in Estudios Sobre Escritorias Hispanicas en Honor de Georgina Sabat-Rivers, ed.
97
colony’s social, intellectual, and spiritual hierarchies…[as they were] humble people who
gained social power, either symbolically or practically, through their spirituality.”286 This
included women who had challenged heterodox Catholic theology, going beyond the
accepted purview of the female religious. As a consequence of these perceptions and the
challenge to the existing social hierarchy, many beata mystics were brought before the
Inquisition, tried for heresy or alumbradismo, and were convicted of being “false mystics.”287
Female mystics attempted to empower themselves by creating a public space for
women in their communities and by increasing their social status and calidad through their
piety, religious work, and visions. Feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray argues similiarly, that
mysticism is an empowering avenue for women as it is the “only place in the history of the
West in which woman speaks and acts so publicly.”288 Despite this potential, these efforts to
acquire spiritual capital were mitigated by the Inquisition, who determined which women
were “legitimately” religious, and therefore, which would have access to the income and
social prestige available to beatas.
INDIGENOUS BEATERIOS AND CONVENTS
Another example of the prerogative and authority of the Catholic Church is found in
the competing views held by different male clergy members and officials who discussed and
represented indigenous beatas in both positive and negative ways. Consequently, indigenous
beaterios were banned in New Spain289 while in Peru some of the first beaterios were
established in order to educate and house elite indigenous women and mestizas. By the midseventeenth century there were a total of nine beaterios in two parishes in Cuzco. Seven of
these beaterios were established for indigenous women and almost all were founded and
funded by indigenous patrons; these patrons ensured that indigenous beaterios became fixed
Lou Charnon-Deutsch (Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1992), 39-40.
286
Jaffary, False Mystics, 5, 8, 107.
287
Ibid., 17.
288 Jean Franco, Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1989), xvi.
289
Holler, “Escogidas Plantas”, 100-1.
98
institutions in Cuzco.290 Indigenous beaterios provided elite Peruvian women with leadership
positions as abbesses, positions unavailable to them in convents where they could only be
lower-status, white veiled nuns.291 While indigenous patrons and confraternities founded the
indigenous beaterios in Peru, many admitted non-indigenous women and required that
indigenous women pay more than Spanish women. This, in turn, prompted indigenous elites
to petition for their daughters’ acceptance into beaterios using arguments of limpieza de
sangre, that they had a pure, elite, indigenous lineage, and therefore had purity of blood.292
Similar arguments concerning the limpieza de sangre of elite Indigenes were
deployed successfully in colonial Mexico in the early eighteenth century, and lead to the
formation of the first indigenous convent, Corpus Christi, which was established in 1724.293
In total, four indigenous convents were established in New Spain, in 1724, 1734, 1774 (a
thirty year process initiated in 1744), and 1811 (attached to a school for indigenous girls
established in 1759). The first two convents only permitted cacicas or elite indigenous
women to profess. The third convent permitted cacicas and mestizas to profess, while the
fourth convent did not limit which indigenous women could profess.294 Despite the creation
of four indigenous convents, the “fitness” of Indigene women as models of religious piety
and their ability to govern and lead themselves, continued to be questioned well into the
eighteenth century.295 As a consequence, indigenous women were not initially able to hold
leadership positions in the first two convents that were established in colonial Mexico.
Despite petitioning for decades to have the Spanish nuns removed from their convents,
conflicts over leadership continued until the deaths of both Spanish abbesses in the 1770s, at
which point indigenous abbesses were appointed to replace them. Mexico is the only region
290
Kathryn Burns, “Andean Women in Religion: Beatas, ‘Decency,’ and the Defense of Honour in
Colonial Cuzco,” in Gender, Race, and Religion in Colonization of the America, ed. Nora E. Jaffary
(Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), 83, 85-7.
291
Ibid., 88.
292
Ibid., 90-1.
293
Monica Diaz, “The Indigenous Nuns of Corpus Christi: Race and Spirituality,” in Religion in New
Spain, eds. Susan Schroeder and Stafford Poole (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007), 179.
294 Asuncion Lavrin, Brides of Christ: Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2008), 255-57, 268.
295
Ibid., 258, 264.
99
of Spanish America where distinct indigenous convents were established, however two
beaterios were created for the exclusive use of noble Indigene and mestiza women; the
Beaterio de Nuestra Senora de Copacabana, established in Lima in 1691296 and the Beaterio
de Nuestra Senora del Rosario in Guatemala City in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth
century.297
Indigenous women in New Spain were able to gain social prestige and recognition of
their superior calidad through their positions as nuns. In addition, during the latter half of the
eighteenth century they were able to act in leadership positions within their convents.
Information on the levels of economic success achieved by indigenous convents in colonial
Mexico is unavailable; however the first two indigenous convents in colonial Mexico and the
indigenous beaterio established in Lima were all populated by the daughters of wealthy
Indigenes. The indigenous beaterio in Lima earned 4,400 pesos annually from its real estate
returns in the 1730s and can perhaps hint at the financial status and economic success of
colonial Spanish convents.298
SPANISH CONVENTS
The situation and composition of convents varied in colonial Latin America,
according to the region and period. Keeping this in mind, the commonalities and differences
between Spanish convents in New Spain and Peru help to reveal how power worked in these
societies, how it was replicated in convents, resulting in limiting the autonomy of the
different groups of women who lived and worked within them. By Spanish convents, I refer
to convents that were either comprised entirely of Spanish nuns or were controlled by
Spanish nuns. However, while the leadership and most of the nuns were Spanish, the
majority of convent populations consisted of the nuns’ servants and slaves.
Convent hierarchies reflected the secular social hierarchy, meaning that elite Spanish
women with limpieza de sangre were higher-ranking, black-veiled nuns; they comprised
296
I would argue that the absence of separate indigenous convents in Peru is related to the inclusion of
elite Indigene and mestiza women into Spanish convents. Van Deusen, Sacred and the Worldly, 172.
297
Lavrin, “Female Religious,” 188.
298
Martin, Daughters of the Conquistadores, 295.
100
convent leadership and they actively participated in convent elections and the economic
activities that supported and sustained the position of convents within their communities.
Black-veiled nuns each had a suite of rooms (of varying sizes and composition) called a cell,
which was purchased for them by their families and in which they lived, slept, and spent their
leisure time; in addition they had an annual stipend provided by their families.299 Most blackveiled nuns had a good deal of leisure time and many spent that time engaged in intellectual
pursuits; including writing vidas [religious autobiographies], religious tracts, comportment
manuals, poetry, songs, and plays.300 Most had their own personal servants or slaves who
dressed, cooked, and cleaned for them. Black-veiled nuns’ rooms were usually quite opulent
and housed the personal objects and clothing used by the nuns. Convents were able to
reconcile the vows of poverty taken by nuns with these opulent lifestyles, as the cells were
purchased by the nuns’ families for a certain duration of time before ownership reverted back
to the convent in question.
White-veiled were immediately below black-veiled nuns in the convent hierarchy. In
colonial Mexico white-veiled nuns were almost always non-elite Spanish women; a few
exceptions were made for elite indigenous women in the early colonial period. White-veiled
nuns were considered to be of good calidad and enjoyed some of the same benefits that
black-veiled nuns did, however these benefits were contingent upon the economic and social
status of the nuns’ families. In addition, they were usually not able to participate in convent
politics or economic activities and were required to engage in manual labor. Due to the class
restrictions and limpieza de sangre requirements, most indigenous women and all AfroLatino women who wished to dedicate their lives to God within colonial Mexican convents
were only able to do so as the pious servants, or donadas, of professed nuns or as community
servants in convents.
Donadas served as intermediaries between the nuns and the rest of the servants and
slaves, and like nuns would remain enclosed and serve within their convents for life. While
they performed functions of both nuns and servants, donadas were able to gain status and
299
Lavrin, “Female Religious,” 174, 177.
300
Ibid., 185-6.
101
increase their calidad through their religious piety and devotion.301 Three Afro-Latina
women, Leonor de los Angeles302 and Juana Esperanza de San Alberto in colonial Mexico,
and Ursula de Jesus in colonial Peru, were famous donadas whose vidas were written and
distributed during the seventeenth century. Leonor de los Angeles was “given” to her convent
by her Spanish father after her close brush with death, Juana Esperanza was a donada who
was allowed to profess as a nun on her deathbed, while Ursula de Jesus was manumitted by a
nun in her convent and later became a donada. These women were lauded for their pious
actions and were able to gain some individual autonomy as a result; some of these pious
actions included patience, humility, fasting, extensive prayer, self-mortification, and religious
visions.
Lewis argues that these Afro-Latina women were esteemed publicly in their
communities and that nuns and clergymen initiated the writing and publication of their vidas
in order to demonstrate the competence and piety of the nuns who taught the donadas. These
vidas also served as examples of attainable piety; in essence if Afro-Latina women can
become holy and close to god than so too can an individual higher in the social hierarchy.
Despite this esteem, they were considered to be and depicted as exceptions within the larger
group of non-pious Afro-Latinos, thereby reinforcing the dominant social hierarchy and
limiting the corporate autonomy that Afro-Latinos could gain as a consequence of their
piety.303
The majority of Afro-Latino and indigenous women in convents were either the
servants or slaves of individual nuns or they worked for the community.304 Servants and
slaves usually comprised anywhere from one-half of the convent population in the less
affluent, discalced orders, to two-thirds of the convent population in the affluent, calced
orders.305 Convents provided shelter from the outside world, housing, food, and respectable
employment opportunities for non-elite, working-class, and casta women. However, the
301
Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 33, 251.
302
Ibid., 33.
303
Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches, 23-4, 50-1.
304
Martin, Daughters of the Conquistadores, 182-92.
305
Van Deusen, Sacred and the Worldly, 173-5.
102
benefits of working in convents were mitigated by the lack of pay (usually servants only
received room and board), the relatively low status of servants and slaves within convents
and in the secular world, and consequently, the poor treatment and long work hours that they
were subject to.306
Convents were widespread and numerous in Spanish colonial cities; the first convents
were established in the mid-sixteenth century and continued to be built in large numbers
throughout the seventeenth century.307 In New Spain, there were fifty-seven convents founded
between 1550 and 1811, with the larger of these housing approximately one hundred nuns
and two to three hundred servants and slaves.308 In Lima, there were thirteen convents
established between 1561 and 1746 and three in Cuzco between 1558 and 1673. 309 Discalced
orders usually housed no more than thirty nuns as most did not require dowries while calced
orders usually housed anywhere from fifty to one hundred nuns during the seventeenth
century.310 Six of the convents in Lima and two in Cuzco were considered to be conventos
grandes, a colloquial term referring to large convents that housed approximately three
hundred nuns and six to seven hundred servants and slaves. Consequently, convents in Lima
occupied one-fifth of the land in the city and housed one-fifth of the total female
population.311
Conventos grandes were calced orders that housed elite Spanish women. As a
consequence of the large dowries required to profess in calced orders as well as the
continued financial backing of many of the nuns’ wealthy families, conventos grandes were
very wealthy institutions and became incredibly powerful within their communities. Affluent
convents in Mexico City, Lima, and Cuzco reflected the economic status of these cities
whereas convents in less prosperous cities were consequently less affluent. The influence and
306
Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 160-1, 165.
307
Lavrin, “Female Religious,” 167.
308
Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 1; Lavrin, “Colonial Woman in Mexico,” 40.
309
Kathryn Burns, Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru (London: Duke
University Press, 1999), 2-3.
310
Lavrin, “Female Religious,” 175.
311
Martin, Daughters of the Conquistadores, 171-2.
103
power wielded by convents, specifically by black-veiled nuns, stemmed from their function
as both bank and landlord within their communities.312,313 The role of convents as both bank
and landlord necessitated interaction between nuns and the outside world and interfered with
the religious ideology and practice of enclosure known as recogimiento.
The numerous interactions between nuns and the secular world, and I would argue the
power and influence wielded by nuns, were seen as threatening by high-ranking clergymen as
well as detrimental to the spiritual growth and purity of nuns. Consequently, throughout the
eighteenth century church leadership attempted to control the activities of nuns with limited
success. These attempts culminated in a series of reforms enacted by church leadership in
New Spanish and Peruvian convents in the late-eighteenth century and were met with strong
resistance, sometimes violent, by nuns in calced orders in both New Spain and Peru. These
reforms included severely curtailing the number of servants and imposing aspects of the
“communal life,” shared sleeping quarters, meals, prayers, and work, similar to that practiced
in discalced orders. A compromise was reached in which all new nuns would profess to live
a communal life while existing nuns would continue living as they had originally professed
to.314
Nuns were also subject to the constraints placed on them by male orders, such as the
Franciscans and the Dominicans, or by high ranking clergymen who directly oversaw their
convents.315 In addition, each nun had a male confessor to whom she would be required to
confess all of her “sins.” In their role as spiritual advisors and teachers, many confessors
asked nuns to write about their thoughts, feelings, and dreams with the aim of evaluating
their piety or sinfulness. Confessors evaluated a nun’s confession and writings and would
then determine the appropriate penance, usually some kind of self-mortification; in some
cases the confessor would report a nun’s activities to his superiors or to the Inquisition.316
312
Lavrin, “Female Religious,” 179-82.
313 Karen Vieira Powers, Women in the Crucible of Conquest: The Gendered Genesis of Spanish American
Society, 1500-1600 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 166-7.
314
Lavrin, “Female Religious,” 183-4.
315
Powers, Crucible of Conquest, 171.
316
Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 315-7.
104
Consequently, a nun’s relationship with her confessor was intimate and often coercive, in
some cases physically or sexually abusive.317
Convents offered a wide range of women different avenues and degrees of autonomy
reflecting their varied positions in the conventual hierarchy. In spite of these differences,
historian Asuncion Lavrin argues that convents provided women with “an environment of
their own, away from direct male authority, in which they could rule themselves, be creative
in their own manner, develop their own personalities, and, to some extent, free themselves
from some of the encumbrances which burdened the female sex in colonial Spanish
American society,” namely husbands and children.318 Lavrin goes on to argue that “convents
were the only known institutions that women ran by themselves… [in which] religious
women assumed positions of responsibility which they would perform following their own
sensibilities as women.”319 Finally, Latin Americanist Stephanie L. Kirk describes conventual
life as “a space where women engaged authoritarian controls and patriarchal discourse to
create communities, alliances, and friendships on their own terms.”320 In other words, nuns in
all regions and periods were subject to the patriarchal authority of the Catholic Church. At
the same time, they were also the most autonomous group of women in colonial Latin
American while conventual life itself fostered a potentially liberating, woman-centered
community.
CONCLUSION
Colonial Mexican women were able to acquire spiritual capital through the various
practices and institutions of the Catholic Church including: convents, beaterios,
recogimientos, confraternities, the Inquisition, mysticism, marriage, and religious conversion.
The extent of spiritual capital one could acquire, and the avenues available through which to
317
Powers, Crucible of Conquest, 99, 110; Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 219-221.
318
Lavrin, “Female Religious,” 191.
319
Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 123.
320 Stephanie L. Kirk, Convent Life in Colonial Mexico: A Tale of Two Communities (Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 2007), 178.
105
acquire it, were limited by a woman’s position within the social hierarchy. Women’s efforts
to acquire spiritual capital were not always successful and not without risk, as they could be
censured and punished by their masters, confessors, or by the Inquisition. While Spanish
women were able to gain material wealth through their status as nuns, the majority of nonSpanish women supported themselves economically through unsanctioned forms of
spirituality that deviated from orthodox Catholic practices.
106
CHAPTER 5
UNSANCTIONED SPIRITUALITY AND
ECONOMIC AGENCY: CURANDERAS, LOVE
MAGIC, AND SOCIAL HEALING
In colonial Mexico, only elite Spanish women were able to become black-veiled nuns
and less elite Spanish women were able to become white-veiled nuns. Elite indigenous
women were finally able to profess in the eighteenth century but they did not wield the same
economic power and consequent influence within their communities as did Spanish calced
orders. Consequently, castas, non-elite indigenous women, Afro-Mexican women, and poor
Spanish women utilized unsanctioned forms of spiritual expression in order to acquire
spiritual capital. This chapter argues that seventeenth and eighteenth-century colonial
Mexican female folk-healers called curanderas utilized witchcraft, love magic, and folk
healing to empower themselves socially and economically. The majority of curanderas were
mixed-race women from lower socio-economic groups who supported themselves financially
through healing, magic, midwifery, cooking, domestic work, and/or prostitution.321 In
addition, this chapter argues that love magic and folk healing as practiced by curanderas
were both forms of social healing. Social healing refers to the improvement of an
individual’s overall status; the improvement of interpersonal relationships such as those
between spouses, lovers, friends, family members, and between masters and slaves or
masters and servants; and the healing of social ailments such as poverty, violence, and
unequal power relations. Finally, this chapter argues that the Inquisition viewed folk healing
and love magic as “superstitions” and not as forms of heresy. Consequently, the punishments
321
A representative example of these multiple and overlapping occupations, is found in the Inquisition
records of a castiza woman from seventeenth-century Mexico named Isabel Montoya who was trained as a
healer by her grandmother, mother, and aunt and who later supported herself through cooking, through making
and selling medicine, through midwifery, and through prostitution. Amos Megged, “Magic, Popular Medicine
and Gender in Seventeenth-Century Mexico: The Case of Isabel de Montoya,” Social History 19, no. 2 (May
1994): 194-195.
107
curanderas faced were usually less harsh than those meted out to heretics; this explains why
so many women continued to utilize curanderismo as a strategy of economic survival despite
the threat of the Inquisition.322
Investigating spiritual institutions and practices provides one of the best methods for
analyzing the experiences and behavior of colonial Mexican women, as well as the avenues
of advancement that were available to women from different racial and economic groups.323
Analyses of colonial Mexican women and spirituality also reveal how poor Spanish women,
mixed-race women called castas, African women, and indigenous women utilized sanctioned
and unsanctioned spiritual practices to advance their own interests. Role, textual, and
comparative analyses are used to explore the behavior and experiences of Afro-Mexican,
casta, and poor Spanish curanderas found within seventeenth and eighteenth-century
Mexican Inquisition trials, demonstrating that curanderas were from lower socio-economic
groups and that the purpose of love magic was to facilitate social healing. Textual analyses of
dominant religious and political discourses found within Inquisitional edicts and treatises,
demonstrate that Inquisitors and Catholic clergymen viewed magic, divination, and
indigenous and African folk-healing practices as forms of superstition, not heresy, resulting
in less harsh punishments for curanderas.324
322
Curanderas are female and male folk-healers from Latin America who combine indigenous, African,
and Spanish healing practices. Curandera is derived from the Spanish verb curar meaning to heal. Folk-healing
refers to the practice of traditional healing usually performed by unsanctioned or unlicensed healers. Folkhealers approach illness and healing in a holistic manner often utilizing herbal, homeopathic, and religiospiritual remedies. In indigenous American and African worldviews healing is part of traditional religious
practices and “fulfill[s] the same functions as science in the Western world: explanation, prediction, and
control.” Elizabeth Isichei, The Religious Traditions of Africa: A History (Westport: Praeger, 2004), 7. Bernard
R. Ortiz de Montellano argued similarly in his book Aztec Medicine, Health, and Nutrition (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1990), that within Aztec medicine there is no difference between medical and
spiritual practices and procedures.
323
The lack of other available sources concerning women, especially those from lower socio-economic
groups, makes Inquisitional documents and analyses of spiritual practices and colonial religious institutions so
valuable.
324
The Inquisition was a Catholic religious tribunal or court whose goal was to stop the spread of heresy,
apostasy, and immoral acts through secret trials and public punishments. The practice of magic, witchcraft,
various forms of divination, and idolatry were part of a category of crimes called Superstitions which the
Inquisition considered to be crimes against Christian morality. The Inquisition also tried individuals for heresy,
speech or action that contradicted or opposed orthodox Catholic doctrine, and apostasy, when a Catholic
individual renounced or rejected Catholicism. Witchcraft refers to the use of magic for “evil” or harmful
purposes. Inquisition documents use the terms brujería (witchcraft), hechicería (sorcery), and maleficio (hex or
108
The predominant form of magic practiced by women in New Spain was “love magic,”
the goals of which were economic stability and to secure the positive feelings, treatment, or
attention of another person, usually one in a position of power over the client or practitioner,
such as a husband, lover, or owner. Love magic was achieved through divination, the use of
sympathetic magic, and the practitioner’s invocation.325 Love magic worked to subvert
patriarchal power, regardless of the client’s intent, as it provided both client and practitioner
with a means of subverting authority. The empowerment available to female clients through
love magic has been the focus of several studies concerning women, witchcraft, and power in
Early Modern Spain and colonial Spanish America.326 Consequently, this chapter will focus
on the practical power that love magic provided female practitioners as a means of income as
well as a vehicle for garnering prestige and respect within their communities. This chapter
will also focus on the role of love magic practitioners as healers who with varying degrees of
success mended the social ailments (poverty, domestic violence, unequal power
relationships, etc.) afflicting themselves or their clients.
HISTORIOGRAPHY OF MAGIC AND HEALING IN
COLONIAL MEXICO
This chapter addresses two interrelated components, healing and magic in colonial
Mexico. There is a wide range of English-language scholarship focusing on different aspects
evil spell) when referring to witchcraft.
325
Magic is defined as the use of spells, incantations, charms, herbs, potions, and deities or saints in order
to understand or change events, actions, and/or behaviors. A practitioner is a person who uses or performs
magic either for themselves or for a client. Not all practitioners were curanderas, but there was often a great
deal of overlap between these groups. Divination is a form of magic used to determine things that have or will
happen; it is often used by folk-healers to determine the cause of, length, and remedy for illnesses. Sympathetic
magic refers to magic achieved through incorporating items belonging to either the client, the target, or to both.
Examples of items used in sympathetic magic include hair, bath water, and bodily fluids such as sweat, saliva,
and menstrual blood.
326
Behar, “Women’s Powers,” 178-206; Maria Helena Sanchez Ortega, “Sorcery and Eroticism in Love
Magic,” in Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World, ed. Mary Elizabeth
Perry and Anne J. Cruz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Joan C. Bristol and Matthew Restall,
“Potions and Perils: Love-Magic in Seventeenth-Century Afro-Mexico and Afro-Yucatan,” in Black Mexico:
Race and Society from Colonial to Modern Times, ed. Ben Vinson III and Matthew Restall (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 2009); and Susan M. Deeds, “Subverting the Social Order: Gender, Power,
and Magic in Nueva Vizcaya,” in Choice, Persuasion, and Coercion: Social Control on Spain's North American
Frontiers, ed. Jesús F. de la Teja and Ross Frank (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005).
109
of these components as previous scholarship has treated love magic and healing as disparate
phenomena. In addition, this scholarship has emphasized the influence of Spanish and
indigenous healing and magic while omitting the African influence on colonial Mexican
healing and magic practices.327 The Spanish-language scholarship, most notably by historian
Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, has taken a more comprehensive and inclusive approach to
discussions of magic and healing, discussing them together instead of as separate practices,
and discussing the African, Spanish, and indigenous influences on these practices. The
seminal work in this field is Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran’s 1963 book, Medicina y Magia: El
Proceso de Aculturacion en la Estructura Colonial; unfortunately most of his case studies
focus on male healers and practitioners.
The analysis of healing in colonial Mexico necessitates a discussion of the syncretic
nature of indigenous, African, and Spanish healing practices, sanctioned medical practices,
and folk-healers called curanderos. Sherry Fields’ 2008 book, Pestilence and Headcolds:
Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico discusses indigenous and Spanish healing
philosophies and how they interacted in New Spain during the colonial period.328 Brad R.
Huber and Alan R. Sandstrom’s 2001 edited volume, Mesoamerican Healers focuses on the
pre-contact indigenous healing traditions of Nahua-speaking peoples in central Mexico and
how the position of curandera/o formed during the process of Spanish colonization in the
region. The authors focus on the Spanish and indigenous contributions to these practices,
neglecting the African influence on healing practices and the development of the occupation
curandera/o. Noemí Quezada’s 1991 essay, “The Inquisition’s Repression of Curanderos”
focuses on how curanderas/os were regarded by the Inquisition, the types of punishment that
were meted out, the accusations that were made against them, and the racial make-up of
those accused. Quezada provides a wealth of primary source information in the form of
327
In his book Aztec Medicine, Health, and Nutrition (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990),
Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano argued that within Aztec healing there is no difference between medical and
magical or spiritual practices. Ortiz de Montellano did not discuss the influence that African traditions had on
colonial healing and magic nor did his work focus on female healers or curanderas.
328
Sherry Lee Fields, Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2008).
110
charts, which document the names, dates, region, accusations, race, and punishments for each
curandera/o.329
Presently, there is no comprehensive discussion of African healing practices in
Spanish America. A related work is James Sweet’s 2011 book, Domingos Alvares, African
Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic, which focuses on the experiences of an
African male healer in the Portuguese colony of Brazil, who was accused of being a sorcerer
and was brought before the Inquisition several times.330 Sweet argues that Alvares was a fully
trained vodun priest from Dahomey who was attempting to reestablish his religious
community in Brazil. Another related text discussing African healing in the Americas (in
addition to indigenous and European healing) is Rebecca J. Tannenbaum’s 2012 book Health
and Wellness in Colonial America, which focuses on how these healing traditions came
together in the colonial U.S. and on the “magical” nature of indigenous and African healing
and religious practices.331
The practice of magic and its prosecution by colonial authorities in colonial Mexico
have generated a varied body of scholarship focusing on love magic, witchcraft, and the
Mexican Inquisition. Richard E. Greenleaf’s 1969 book, The Mexican Inquisition of the
Sixteenth Century, is a series of essays focusing on different phases of the Mexican
Inquisition during the sixteenth century.332 Only a small portion of the text deals with the
Inquisition after it became institutionalized and more highly regulated in 1569. It focuses
primarily on the more common cases and crimes tried by the Inquisition such as bigamy and
heresy while discussing the use of magic and accusations of sorcery very briefly. Overall,
Greenleaf argues that the Inquisition was much less repressive than had been previously
thought.
329
Some men did practice love magic, but not to the degree that women did. In addition, most men who
were accused of being curanderos were not accused of practicing love magic.
330
James Sweet, Domingos Alvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic (North
Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).
331
332
Rebecca J. Tannenbaum, Health and Wellness in Colonial America (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2012).
Richard E. Greenleaf, The Mexican Inquisition of the Sixteenth Century (Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press, 1969).
111
More recent works, such as Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World
(1999), edited by Mary E. Giles, 333 focus entirely on women but like Greenleaf’s book
covers the more common crimes prosecuted by the Inquisition rather than magic
practitioners. Women in the Inquisition focuses on cases of alumbradismo (Catholic
mysticism), bigamy, blasphemy, as well as the possible heresy and apostasy of Conversos.
Ten of the fourteen articles focus on Inquisition cases in Spain while the remaining four
focus on Inquisition cases in colonial Mexico. Ruth Behar’s 1989 essay, “Sexual Witchcraft,
Colonialism, and Women’s Powers: Views from the Mexican Inquisition,” remains one of
the most important works concerning women’s use of love magic in colonial Mexico. In it,
Behar demonstrates the connections between Spanish and colonial Mexican practices and
emphasizes the indigenous and Spanish contributions to these practices. Behar argues that
magic and witchcraft were associated with women from marginalized racial groups,
Moriscas in Spain and castas and Indigene women in New Spain.334 She asserts that love
magic traveled from Spain to New Spain, but does not discuss the connection between the
practice of love magic and divination and folk healing in Spanish, indigenous Mesoamerican,
or African traditions. Behar argues that magic transmitted via food consumption was
common in both Spain and pre-contact Mesoamerica. Consequently, love magic in New
Spain combined elements from both Spanish and indigenous cultures.335 While I agree that
Spanish and indigenous ideas concerning magic formed a new syncretic understanding in
colonial Mexico, I would argue that African spiritual practices and ideologies influenced this
new understanding just as profoundly.
To summarize, this chapter fills English-language research lacunae through its
emphasis on the healing function of love magic, the benefits of magic for the female
practitioner, and by including a fuller discussion of the role and influence of African healing
and magic in colonial Mexican magical practices.
333
Mary E. Giles, Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World, (Baltimore: John Hopkins
University Press, 1999).
334
Behar, “Women’s Powers,” 193-4.
335 Matthew Jewel Alschbach, “Misogyny, Women, and Witchcraft: The Curandera in Mexico Before and
After the Conquest” (master’s thesis, San Diego State University, 2008), 62-7; Behar, “Women’s Powers, 180,
183.
112
AFRICAN HEALING AND MAGIC
Slaves in Mexico originated from different regions of West and West-Central Africa
during different periods; however it is difficult to know whether the ethnicities they assumed
or were assigned reflected their actual place of birth or the region of Africa where they were
shipped from.336 In the sixteenth century approximately eighty percent of slaves shipped to
Mexico came from a region of the West African coast called Upper Guinea, part of modernday Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). In the
seventeenth century the majority of slaves arriving in Mexico came from Angola on the
West-Central African coast; “eighty-four percent of slave[s]” arriving in Veracruz and “over
ninety-five percent of slave ships docking in Campeche” were from Angola.337 In the
eighteenth century the majority of slaves were “Kongos…and Lucumis (Yoruba);” the
Kongos were located in northern Angola, the Republic of the Congo, and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC) while the Yoruba were located in southwestern Nigeria.338
Consequently Afro-Mexican ideas concerning magic, specifically sorcery, witchcraft,
divination, and healing were influenced by a variety of African traditions. Kongo and Yoruba
beliefs concerning witchcraft, sorcery, and healing will be discussed in order to demonstrate
how distinctly African concepts of magic are present in colonial Mexican magical practices.
The Yoruba believe that spirits and the use of sorcery (particularly curses) cause
illness and disease, while the Kongo believe that diseases caused by magic users are “an
extreme manifestation of tensions and conflict. Diseases are cured by rectifying the social
ailment that caused the illness and healers charge for their services; in this way Kongo
female and male healers (banganga) are very like love magic practitioners and curanderas in
colonial Mexico.339 Sorcery provides a similar function in Yoruba society as it is primarily
336
Herbert S. Klein and Ben Vinson III, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2nd ed. (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 136-137.
337
Ibid., 136.
338
Jane Landers, “The Central African Presence in Spanish Maroon Communities,” in Central Africans
and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora, ed. Linda M. Heywood (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), 235-239; Klein and Vinson III, African Slavery, 139.
339
David Westerlund, African Indigenous Religions and Disease Causation: From Spiritual Beings to
Living Humans (Boston: Brill, 2006), 115-117, 167, 176, 186.
113
used when there is conflict related to wealth or interpersonal relationships. A Kongo healer
(nganga) practices divination and healing through the use of magical charms called nkisi
(called “fetishes” by the Portuguese), which were composed of plant material and animal
parts believed to have particular properties, and through spirit receptacles called kitekes
(called “idols” by the Portuguese). Kongo kitekes practices were similar to Mexican Catholic
Saint Icon veneration. Kongo healers exercise power in their communities due to their
influence over rainfall, agricultural harvests, and health.340 There are several forms of Yoruba
divination, many of which are limited to men such as Ifá divination. Sixteen cowries
divination is similar to Ifá as they both “read” sixteen items (Ifá uses kola nuts and sixteen
cowries uses cowry shells), but sixteen cowries is practiced by both women and men. Yoruba
diviners are also herbalists, and sixteen cowries practitioners are “paid” in the food, items,
tools, and/or money that constitute the sacrifice made to the given deity. The amount of
money included in a sacrifice is determined by the number of shells that are “cast facing
mouth up.”341 Yoruba divination is similar to colonial Mexican forms of divination
employing maize kernels and cacao beans, which like kola nuts and cowry shells were food
staples and forms of currency respectively. Yoruba sorcery employs human body parts and
“substances from victims, such as hair and clothing;” these magical elements are often
combined with “herbal medicines” and religious practices, as the Yoruba consider them to be
interrelated.342 This combination of magic (especially the use of magical charms or amulets),
formal religion, and herbal remedies is very similar to that used by Kongo healers and by
curanderas and love magic practitioners in colonial Mexico. In the late fifteenth century, the
Portuguese arrival in Central West Africa initiated the process of religious acculturation in
Angola, resulting in an Afro-Catholic religio-magical tradition similar to what develops later
in colonial Mexico.
340
Linda M. Heywood and John K. Thorton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the
Americas, 1585-1660 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 63, 66, 79, 111, 175-178.
341
William Bascom, Sixteen Cowries: Yoruba Divination from Africa to the New World (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1980), 21, 29.
342
Westerlund, Religions and Disease Causation, 183, 185.
114
MAGICAL SYNCRETISM IN NEW SPAIN
Marginalized women in New Spain, specifically Afro-Mexican, Indigene, casta, and
poor Spanish women, worked as love magic practitioners and curanderas.343 Healing in both
indigenous and African-based cosmologies is inextricably tied to spiritual and religious rites
and ceremonies, as the physical and the spiritual/supernatural were seen to coexist and
influence one another.344 In this context, healing is broadly defined and includes activities
focused on repairing more than just one’s physical body; this reflects the more holistic
approach of indigenous American and African cultures, which viewed health as not only
physical, but spiritual and psychological. Consequently, the healing methods practiced by
curanderas and love magic practitioners, in particular Indigenes and Afro-Mexicans, were
often considered by Spanish authorities to be superstitions, specifically magic and sorcery or
witchcraft.345
In New Spain, love magic rituals combined Spanish, African, and Indigene
ideologies, meanings, and ingredients. As previously stated, the purpose of love magic was to
heal social ailments, improving the client or practitioner’s economic status and how they
were perceived and treated by those close to them. In New Spain this included Afro-Mexican
slaves wanting their owners to treat them better, in addition to women wanting their
husbands or lovers to treat them better and individuals wanting to attract the attentions of a
desired partner.346 New Spanish love magic rituals, like those from Spain, included
divination, invocations, and the use of sympathetic magic through symbolic “ingredients,”
however the manner of divination, the invocation wording and the saints, spirits, and gods
343 Out of fifty-six curanderas listed, eighteen are Mulatas and Negras, seventeen are Indias and Mestizas,
and twelve are Españolas; the race of the remaining nine women is unspecified. Noemí Quezada, Enfermedad y
Maleficio: El Curandero en el Mexico Colonial (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1989),
31.
344 Hernado Ruiz de Alarcon, introduction to Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions That Live Among the
Indians Native to This New Spain, 1629, trans. and ed. J. Richard Andrews and Ross Hassig (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1984), 3-36.
345
Noemí Quezada, “The Inquisition’s Repression of Curanderos,” in Cultural Encounters: The Impact of
the Inquisition in Spain and the New World, eds. Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1991), 38.
346
171.
Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches, 165-170; Bristol and Restall, “Potions and Perils,” 168-
115
called to, as well as the ingredients used in the rituals reflect New Spain’s multicultural
milieu.347
Divination methods identified amongst indigenous practitioners in New Spain
included the ingestion of peyote or other hallucinogens and the resulting visions, measuring
of hands and arms, interpreting flames in a fire, the patterns created when throwing maize
(similar to the Spanish use of beans and the West African use of cowrie shells and kola nuts),
and the floating or sinking of maize in water.348 A divination technique utilized by AfroMexican women called “‘talking through the chest’ or sternomancy,” involved the woman in
question channeling a spirit or demon whose voice appeared to come out of the woman’s
chest.349 Oral divination and the use of mediums as “divinatory vehicles” have a long history
in West African societies. West African diviners were responsible for “making known hidden
forces…identifying the causes of misfortune and the allocation of responsibility, and in
directing afflicted clients to relevant solutions.”350 The duties of a West African diviner
closely paralleled those of pre-contact indigenous healers and colonial Mexican curanderas
and love magic practitioners. In addition to being diviners, West African and indigenous
Mexican women, played a prominent role in the cultivation of medicinal plants and as
healers.351
347
Love magic was usually achieved through the administration of a substance to the intended individual’s
food or bed, through the use of a charm bag, or through various divination techniques. Items used in these
rituals included various plants and animal parts, as well as human saliva, hair, semen, vaginal fluid, blood, and
bones. Plants and animals were associated with certain meanings and particular properties. Similarly, different
human “ingredients,” as described above, were associated with certain purposes and would be combined with
different plants and/or animals to produce the desired effect.
348
Hernado Ruiz de Alarcon, “Fifth Treatise: About the Seers and Superstitions of the Indians as Regards
Divination,” in Treatise On The Heathen Superstitions That Live Among the Indians Native to This New Spain,
1629, trans. and ed. J. Richard Andrews and Ross Hassig (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984), 143155.
349
Villa-Flores, “Talking Through the Chest,” 301.
350
Ibid., 304.
351
Londa Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2004), 231; Powers, Crucible of Conquest, 36; Judith A. Carney and Richard N.
Rosomoff, In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2009), 112.
116
Indigenous practitioners utilized different expressions and called to different gods and
spirits in their invocations than did practitioners from Spain; however the goal of certain
invocations, especially those to placate anger, to attract or inspire affection, and to cure
diseases caused by love affairs, parallel those of Spanish and colonial Mexican love magic.352
Spanish-style invocations did travel to New Spain as evidenced in a 1639 Inquisitional case
from Campeche; the invocation is recorded as follows, “On two I see you, on five I take you,
I break your heart, I drink your blood, by the peace of the queen of the angels and her
precious son, you are with me.”353 This invocation is very similar to a spell used by
seventeenth-century Spanish practitioners, “With two I watch you, with five I bind you, your
blood I drink, your heart I rend.”354 Indigenous plants figured predominately in New Spanish
love magic remedies and spells, in particular copal, maize, tobacco, pulque, “ololiuhqui
(ground morning glory seeds),” cacao beans, chocolate (a thick hot drink made from cacao),
atole (a thick drink made from maize), peyote, and puyomate (root).355 Divination was often
achieved through the use of peyote or other hallucinogenic substances and the Inquisition
considered the visions that practitioners had to be the work of the devil. A 1620 Inquisitional
edict demonstrates this concern,
Seeing that the use of the herb or root called Peyote has been introduced in these
provinces in order to divine and discover lost goods, and to divine or predict other
things and future occurrences and other occult matters, we take it as a
superstitious action…Being that it is impossible that the said herb and any other
herb can have the virtue or natural property that they ascribe to it for the stated
effects nor can any herb cause imaginary illusions, phantasms, and other
representations in which are based the foundation of such said predictions and
divinations, and when using them the person sees them out of suggestion and with
the assistance of the devil, the chief author of these vile illusions, who uses them
in order to introduce and trick the simple minds of these Indians to their natural
inclination toward idolatry and, by this way, deceive many other persons who are
little fearful of God and the faith, and with these excesses this herb and its vice
have taken root and occur with the frequency that has been seen…under the
penalty of Major Excommunication…and many other penalties both fiscal and
352
Alarcon, “Fifth Treatise,” 131-139.
353
Bristol and Restall, “Potions and Perils,” 166.
354
Ortega, “Love Magic,” 68.
Alschbach, “Misogyny, Women, and Witchcraft,” 120-124.
355
117
corporal that from here onward no person of any status or condition whatsoever
can use, grow, or make use of the said herb of Peyote.356
As a consequence of this edict, curanderas who used peyote or other hallucinogens in their
magical practices usually received harsher punishments than those who did not.
Love magic practitioners also used hair, sweat, bath water, and menstrual blood in the
remedies, similar to Spanish practitioners. The methods for applying love magic potions and
remedies were very similar in Spain, West Africa, and New Spain; potions were usually
placed in proximity to or ingested by the target of the spell.357 While the love magic methods
employed in New Spain varied as a consequence of cultural syncretism, the goals of love
magic, healing the social ailments of the client or practitioner, remained the same.
WITCHES, CURANDERAS, AND THE INQUISITION
In New Spain (1526-1569) religious crimes were first tried by the Dominican order
and later by the archbishops of Mexico, Juan de Zumárraga and his successor Alonso de
Montúfar. The Dominican order oversaw the Inquisition in New Spain from 1526-1536,
presiding over twelve cases concerning idolatry and sacrifices and four cases of witchcraft
and superstitions. Zumárraga headed the Inquisition from 1536-1543, presiding over twentythree cases of witchcraft and superstitions and fourteen cases of idolatry and sacrifice.358 The
Tribunal of the Inquisition was officially established in New Spain in 1569 by King Philip II
of Spain in order to limit the spread of heresy and to regulate and systematize the prosecution
of religious crimes in New Spain.359 Spain’s concern with heresy and the Inquisition’s
prosecution of religious crimes were products of the Iberian reconquista and the reformation
356
Inquisitors of New Spain Tribunal, “Edict of Faith Concerning the Illicit Use of Peyote, Mexico City,
1620,” in The Inquisition in New Spain, 1536-1820: A Documentary History, trans. and ed. John F. Chuchiak
IV (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 113-114.
357 Ortega, “Love Magic,” 81-82; Bristol and Restall, “Potions and Perils,” 166; Deeds, “Subverting the
Social Order, 108.
358
John F. Chuchiak IV, “The Holy Office of the Inquisition in New Spain (Mexico): An Introductory
Study,” in The Inquisition in New Spain, 1536-1820: A Documentary History, trans. and ed. John F. Chuchiak
IV (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 9-10.
359
Patricia Lopes Don, “Franciscans, Indian Sorcerers, and the Inquisition in New Spain, 1536-1543,”
Journal of World History 17, no. 1 (2006): 27-28.
118
and counter-reformation that were taking place in Europe during this period. Philip II’s royal
decree establishing the Inquisition in New Spain states that,
…because those who are outside the obedience and devotion of the Holy Roman
Catholic Church, obstinate in errors and heresies, always strive to pervert and to
separate from our Holy Catholic Faith, the faithful and devoted Christians, and
with their malice and passion work with all effort to attract them to their wicked
beliefs, communicating their false opinions and heresies, popularizing and
spreading diverse condemned and heretical books; and the true remedy consists
in turning aside and excluding all communication by the heretics and
suspicious persons, castigating and extirpating their errors, shunning and
obstructing what causes great offence to the holy faith and Catholic religion
in those parts; and the natives there are perverted with the new, false, and
reprobate doctrines and errors: the apostolic inquisitor general in our kingdoms
and realms with the agreement of those of our Council of the General Inquisition
and, consulting with us, ordered and decided that the Holy Office of the
Inquisition will be established and seated in those provinces [Caribbean and
Spanish Americas]…360
The strategy employed by the Inquisition to combat heresy is clearly stated, that one
should publicly denounce heretics as well as reject, impede, and destroy heresy in all its
forms. It is also clear from this passage that there was serious concern over the spread of
heresy generally and in particular amongst the indigenous populations in Spanish colonies.
While the crown was concerned with the spread of heresy amongst indigenous peoples they
viewed natives as religious “minors” or children who were under their protection.
Consequently, in Inquisitor General Diego de Espinosa’s 1570 instructions concerning the
establishment of the Inquisition in New Spain he specifically states in regulation thirty-four
that,
…we advise you that by virtue of our powers you cannot proceed against the
Indians of your district, because for now and until something else is ordered, it
is our will that you should only use your powers against old Christians and
their descendants, and against other people against whom cases are made in
these kingdoms of Spain.361
360
King Philip II of Spain, “Royal Order Issued by King Philip II Establishing the Foundation of the Holy
Office of the Inquisition in the Indies, Madrid, January 25, 1569,” in The Inquisition in New Spain, 1536-1820:
A Documentary History, trans. and ed. John F. Chuchiak IV (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012),
81-82.
361
Diego de Espinosa, “Instructions of the Illustrious Lord Cardinal Don Diego De Espinosa, Inquisitor
General, for the Establishment of the Inquisition in New Spain, Madrid 1570,” in The Inquisition in New Spain,
119
While those who were considered to be fully indigenous were legally exempt from
Inquisitorial prosecution, the Inquisition in New Spain received accusations made against
indigenous people and in some cases prosecuted them. In addition, the Inquisition received
accusations made against those who were Spanish-descended, those who were Africandescended, and those who were mixed-race or castas; in short anyone who was not
considered to be fully indigenous could be legally prosecuted by the Inquisition. Activities
that the Inquisition deemed criminal were announced through the public reading of edictos de
fe (edicts of faith) which stated the official position that the Inquisition took on a variety of
practices. Those who were found guilty of violating these edicts were announced at autos de
fe (acts of faith), which were the public penance rituals and sentencing hearings of those
convicted by the Inquisition. In 1576 one of the first edicts was published in New Spain
explaining the process of denunciation, what activities and behaviors were considered to be
crimes, and the penalty for failing to denounce crimes. The edict stated,
We issue this edict and require that all people of any state, class, or condition,
both ecclesiastics and seculars, within the present confines of this Kingdom of
New Spain should come forth and denounce any and all crimes against the faith
committed by them or another. Because it is our duty to ensure the spiritual health
of the faithful entrusted to us, we exhort and order that all people who know
anything about any of the crimes mentioned here in this edict should come forth
and denounce them during the stated period of fifteen days…if you should know
about any person who uses spells, incantations, charms, or conjures up
spirits, or commits any other type of superstitious enchantments, or uses any
other type of witchcraft, even if they are medicinal curers, or if anyone
should have a copy of any type of book of spells or other superstitions or any
other type of prohibited book, they should be denounced…If you do not
denounce what you know about these things within this time [fifteen days], you
will be taken and considered as apostates, rebels, and heretics, and we will
proceed against you and each and every one of you who may have secret
knowledge of these public sins.362
This edict was the first of several published that enumerated the activities that were
considered to be “superstitions,” activities that were frequently undertaken by healers,
1536-1820: A Documentary History, trans. and ed. John F. Chuchiak IV (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2012), 89.
362
Dr. Pedro Moya de Contreras, “Edict of Faith Issued by Inquisitor Dr. Pedro Moya de Contreras,
Mexico City, October 10, 1576,” in The Inquisition in New Spain, 1536-1820: A Documentary History, trans.
and ed. John F. Chuchiak IV (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 108-110.
120
diviners, midwives, and sorceresses in New Spain. This edict also demonstrates the
Inquisitional policy of punishing those with knowledge of crimes but who did not denounce
them; this can perhaps account for the high number of accusations made to the Inquisition as
compared to the actual number of Inquisitional cases related to superstitions.
The Inquisition in New Spain tried people for a variety of crimes from the more
serious crimes of apostasy and heresy to the less serious crimes of clerical solicitation and
superstitions. Superstitions were considered to be “crimes against Christian morality” and
included magic, witchcraft, various forms of divination, and idolatry. A 1616 Inquisitional
edict describes a variety of prohibited superstitious practices and how women were
considered to be especially susceptible to these practices,
…others have come to exercise the arts of necromancy, geomancy, hydromancy,
pyromancy, onomancy, chiromancy, using spells, enchantments, incantations,
auguries, witchcraft and magic, characters, and other invocations of demons,
having an expressed pact with them, or at least a tacit pact with them, by whose
means they are able to divine the said future things to come, or the things in the
past …many people, and especially women, are easily given over to
superstitions which gravely offend God, Our Lord, and it is no doubt that
through them they make a certain adoration of the devil, in order to know things
that they wish, offering him a certain type of sacrifice, burning candles, and
burning incense, and other odiferous things like perfumes and using certain
unctions and ointments on their bodies, and invoking and adoring the Angel of
Light [Lucifer], and waiting for answers from him, or using images and
representations of what they pretend, for all of these reasons the said women at
other times go out into the fields during the day and at all hours of night, and they
drink certain drinks of herbs and roots with which they grow drunk and dull
their senses and have illusions and fantastic representations that they have
there, and they ponder on them and speak of them publicly as if by
revelation or a sure notice of what is to come.363
Of the Inquisition trials in New Spain (1571-1800), approximately eight percent were
for crimes that fell under the superstitions category.364 Most curanderas who were brought
363
Inquisitors of New Spain Tribunal, “Edict of Faith That Requires All to Denounce the Practitioners of
Astrology, Necromancy, Geomancy, Hydromancy, Pyromancy, and Chiromancy, as Well as Anyone Who
Possesses Books on These Themes,” in The Inquisition in New Spain, 1536-1820: A Documentary History,
trans. and ed. John F. Chuchiak IV (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 112.
364
Chuchiak IV, “Inquisition in New Spain (Mexico),” 6-7.
121
before the Inquisition were tried for superstitions.365 Noemí Quezada published information
concerning a group of seventy-one New Spanish curanderos against whom delations
(reported offenses) and denunciations (criminal accusations) were made to the Inquisition
from 1613-1806. Forty-seven of these curanderos were women from a variety of castes;
thirteen were Mulatas (28%), nine were Españolas (19%), seven were Mestizas (15%), seven
were Indias (15%), four were S/cons. (9%) three were S/con.(6%), two were Castizas (4%)
and two were Negras (4%), (See Figure 7 and Figure 8).366 These women were primarily
healers; thirty-one were curanderas (66%), seven were both curanderas and midwives
(15%), seven were midwives (15%), and two were sorceresses and diviners (4%), (See
Figure 9). Sixteen of these curanderas were accused of being superstitious healers, nine were
accused of being sorceress healers, nine were accused of being evil healers, six were accused
of being divining healers, fourteen were accused of being midwives (either superstitious,
evil, or sorceress), two were accused of forming a pact with the devil, and three were accused
of other crimes (See Figure 10).367 Afro-Mexican women (Mulatas and Negras) made up 32%
of the women who were reported to the Inquisition. Some of the women who were
associated with or accused of witchcraft were not practitioners but were accused as a
consequence of their marginalized status,368 in particular Afro-Mexican, indigenous, and casta
women in New Spain.369
365
Quezada, “Repression of Curanderos,” 42-45.
366
S/con. and S/cons. are abbreviations for either sin contestar meaning unanswered or sin consignar
meaning unrecorded.
367
Quezada, “Repression of Curanderos,” 42-45.
368
The sistema de castas (caste system) privileged Iberian-descended persons over mixed-race castas,
Afro-Mexicans, and indigenous Mesoamericans who were seen to be without limpieza de sangre (purity of
blood); consequently these groups were associated with heresy, devil-worship, and witchcraft in colonial
Spanish America. In addition, women were associated with witchcraft more as they were considered to be
weaker than men and therefore more susceptible to the temptation of magic and the lures of the devil. Maria
Helena Martinez, “The Black Blood of New Spain: Limpieza de Sangre, Racial Violence, and Gendered Power
in Early Colonial Mexico,” The William and Mary Quarterly 61, no. 3 (July 2004): 511.
369
An Afro-Mexican woman, Beatriz de Padilla, was accused of having used her menstrual blood to
poison her lover. Padilla testified that she was asked repeatedly “by means of what charms or love potions she
was able to attract such admirers,” as it was assumed that a woman of her status would not have been able to do
so legitimately. Solange Alberro, “Beatriz de Padilla, Mulatta Mother and Mistress,” in Colonial Spanish
America: A Documentary History, eds. Kenneth Mills and William B. Taylor (Wilmington: Scholarly
Resources, Inc., 1998), 181-182.
122
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Mulata
Española
Mestiza
India
S/cons.
S/con.
Castiza
Figure 7. Ethnicity of 47 Curanderas accused in New Spain (1613-1806).
S/con.
6%
Negra
Castiza 4%
4%
Mulata
28%
S/cons.
9%
India
15%
Mestiza
15%
Española
19%
Figure 8. Ethnicity of Curanderas in New Spain (1613-1806).
Negra
123
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Healer
Healer & Midwife
Midwife
Diviner/Sorceress
Figure 9. Occupations of Curanderas in New Spain (1613-1806).
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Figure 10. Charges brought against Curanderas in New Spain (1613-1806).
124
Of the seventy-one curanderos accused, thirty-six of the cases were initially
dismissed as not relevant. Of the remaining thirty-five cases, twenty-one curanderos (twelve
women and nine men) went to trial and were incarcerated while fourteen cases warranted
attestations (formally witnessed statements) but no trials. Fourteen of the curanderos who
were tried received a public or private reprimand, two were publicly humiliated, one
participated in an auto de fe, and one was exiled. While the physical punishments for
curanderos were typically not severe, they were imprisoned for the length of their trial which
averaged three to five years and were required to pay for the costs associated with their
incarceration, anywhere from one hundred to four hundred pesos.370 Most curanderos were
given private reprimands because Inquisitors thought that “no other punishment was
applicable, since ‘because of their backwardness they cannot be charged with any heretical
intention,’ or because they had committed the offenses ‘without malice, only in order to
avoid working and to swindle innocent people.’”371 This attitude demonstrates that Spanish
officials believed most curanderismo (folk healing) to be the action of less intelligent,
superstitious, and/or lazy people. The intentions and knowledge of the individuals being tried
mattered a great deal to inquisitors and determined whether one’s sentence was lenient or
harsh.
Public punishment usually consisted of being paraded through the streets while one’s
offenses were called out. Public punishment also included being whipped in a central
location or plaza and either imprisonment or forced labor in places like hospitals or mines
depending on the penitent’s gender, ethnicity, and the severity of the crime. Two curanderas
from this group were punished publicly; their crimes were announced, they were whipped
twenty-five times, with one assigned to work in a hospital for six months while the other was
imprisoned for one year. When the crimes were considered to be more severe, as in the case
of curandera Agustina Rangel, penitents were stripped to the waist and wore penitential garb
370
Quezada, “Repression of Curanderos,” 41, 48; Inquisitors of New Spain Tribunal, “Relation of the
Auto-da-fé That Was Celebrated in the City of Mexico in the Major Plaza on the Second Sunday of Advent,
Mexico City, December 8, 1596,” in The Inquisition in New Spain, 1536-1820: A Documentary History, trans.
and ed. John F. Chuchiak IV (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 167-169.
371
Quezada, “Repression of Curanderos,” 50.
125
(a conical hat and noose) while they were paraded through the streets on a mule and their
crimes were announced. They would receive a greater number of lashes and would be forced
to work for a longer period of time than those who had committed lesser crimes; in Rangel’s
case she received two hundred lashes and was forced to work in a hospital for two years.372
The Inquisition viewed folk healing and love magic as “superstitions” not as forms of heresy,
consequently the punishments curanderas faced were usually less harsh than those meted out
to heretics. Curanderas were employed by all castes in colonial New Spain due to the lack of
Spanish-trained medical personnel. Despite this, the Inquisition made it clear that Spanishstyle healing was the only acceptable form of healing through their prosecution of
curanderas who sought to heal using spiritual or supernatural means and those who used
peyote and other hallucinogens to heal. In addition, the Inquisition punished curanderas who
used Catholic religious icons and prayers to heal and those who used divination to diagnose
ailments, determine cures, and predict patient recovery.373
LOVE MAGIC
The cultural syncretism evident in the methods employed and the different races of
the women involved in love magic, as well as the parallel goals of love magic in (New)
Spain, to attract a man, to keep a man (and his money), and to control a man,374 are evident in
an eighteenth-century Mexican love magic case. Father Felipe de Calderon, a Jesuit priest
living in the northern territories of Nueva Vizcaya, testified before the Inquisition that he had
instigated a sexual relationship with a married Spanish woman named Cristina de Villanueva.
While the affair was going on Calderon stated that Villanueva fed him a potion in a cup of
chocolate. He stated that he tried to break up with her and realized that she had made him
impotent (ligado or tied), using her pubic hair wrapped around a lizard, and that she had also
given him intestinal problems. The priest accepted a number of cures offered by Villanueva
372
Ibid., 51.
373
Ibid., 53.
374
Noemí Quezada, “Comovision, Sexualidad, e Inquisicion,” in Inquisicion Novohispana, eds. Noemí
Quezada, Martha Eugenia Rodriguez, and Marcela Suarez (Cuidad Universitaria: Universidad Nacional
Autonoma de Mexico, 2000), 85.
126
for his stomach problems, which he stated were ineffective. The cures that Villanueva and
the Indian and mixed-race curanderas sold to Calderon, “ended up costing him several
hundred pesos;” demonstrating that women profited financially from their occupations as
love magic practitioners and curanderas.375 Isabel de Montoya, like Cristina de Villanueva,
was another love magic practitioner who profited financially through her use of magic.
Montoya lived in Mexico City in the mid-seventeenth century and was brought before the
Inquisition on charges of hechicería. It was noted in the Inquisition records that Montoya
was paid by different clients with a combination of chocolate, food, and money; one client
paid her with chocolate “for having tamed a man ‘que era como un león’ (who was like a
lion),” another client paid her with two reales worth of chocolate, one real worth of sugar,
and one of bread for “tying a man to his lover,” and a third client paid her with money and
chocolate.376 Isabel Duarte de la Cruz, another seventeenth-century woman accused of
practicing love magic, was paid by one of her clients with a hen in exchange for locating a
missing silver knife, which she attempted to do using divination practices involving water,
maize kernels, and a candle. Duarte was also accused of soliciting clients and asking for
payment in exchange for spells.377
Love magic was used to acquire economic security, either through raising money
directly or through finding a lover or spouse who could provide economic assistance and
support. The goals of love magic were explicitly stated both by seventeenth-century magic
practitioners and clergyman alike. Isabel de Montoya stated that she used magic for two
purposes, “1) to attract, bring back, or tame an indifferent, negligent, or violent sexual
partner, and 2) for good fortune, especially in earning a living…”378 Similarly, Franciscan
Friar Alonso de Benavides discusses how indigenous Pueblo women in the far northern
375
Deeds, “Subverting the Social Order,” 108-109.
376
Schlau, Gendered Crime and Punishment, 133.
377
Fray Diego Muñoz, “Report to the Holy Office of the Inquisition of this New Spain against Isabel
Duarte, the bulrush, for sorcery [1614],” in Forgotten Franciscans: Works from an Inquisitional Theorist, a
Heretic, and an Inquisitional Deputy, trans. and ed. Martin Austin Nesvig (University Park: The Pennsylvania
State University Press, 2011), 94, 97.
378
Schlau, Gendered Crime and Punishment, 131.
127
territories of Nueva Mexico utilized magic to acquire material goods and wealth from men.
In 1634 Benavides wrote,
The idolatry of the wicked women is amazing and ridiculous. When they are
fat and lusty, if the men do not look on them and give them blankets, which is
their main desire, they go into the fields, and at a suitable spot they put up a
stick or a stone, the very first thing they find that resembles a figure. This they set
up as an idol, and to it they offer some small feathers, meal, and other things.
Then they commence to fast and flagellate themselves and to drink the juice of an
herb which they call palmilla [soapweed yucca], which upsets their stomachs and
makes them vomit violently. When they are so emaciated and feeble that they can
hardly stand on their feet, then, resembling the devil himself, they reenter the
pueblo, consoled and confident that every man who beholds them will crave
them and give them many blankets and other presents. The devil has so
ensnared and blinded them that, although they know by experience that not only
do they not look inviting, but that men laugh at them, and oftentimes they die
from this, not even then do they mend their ways.379
Despite the Friar’s negative tone and his depiction of these women as lascivious and
superficial, he reveals that the aim of these women was to gain the admiration of men and in
so doing, to receive valuable and numerous gifts, primarily in the form of blankets. He goes
on to describe how indigenous women actively worked to achieve their goals, through the
use of plant-based [soapweed yucca] divination, most likely after they had entreated a god or
spirit to aid them. This passage by Benavides illustrates the magic practitioners’ desire for
economic security (gained through a male partner) as well as the methods they employed
(plant-based magic and divination) in order to achieve their goals.
Obtaining economic wealth and a reliable male partner and the use of love magic to
achieve these goals is also illustrated in the following love magic incantation from
seventeenth-century New Spain, as recorded in the Inquisition trial of Isabel de Montoya,
Marta Martilla,
senor compadre,
que la comadre
me embie dineros.
y al hombre que quisiere bien,
que para veer si es verdad
379
“Martha, little Martha
Mister Godfather
Ask the Godmother
To send me money.
and for the man whom I love well,
so that I may see if it’s true
Alonso de Benavides, Fray Alonso de Benavides' revised Memorial of 1634: With numerous
Supplementary Documents Elaborately Annotated, trans. and ed. Frederick Webb Hodge, George P. Hammond,
and Agapito Rey (Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 1945), 43-44.
128
que ladren los perros
y cante un gallo
y el diablo cojuelo [h]ara
esto por mi (f. 97v/19v)”
may the dogs bark
and may a rooster crow
and may the devil on two sticks do
this for me”380
The Martha referred to in this incantation is most likely the Catholic Saint Martha, the sister
of Lazarus. In the New Testament, Martha is recorded as preparing a meal for Jesus and his
followers at her home. Consequently, she is the patron saint of cooks, food servers,
“housewives,” and domestic workers; many of the same occupations held by colonial
Mexican women from lower socio-economic groups. The references to godfathers and
godmothers reflect the extended kinship and patronage systems at work in colonial Mexico.
The requests for money and a desirable partner are straightforward and reflect the economic
concerns of the practitioner or client. The last five lines of the incantation are meant to
invoke the devil’s assistance and to determine the efficacy of the spell. A similarly worded
incantation, also from seventeenth-century colonial Mexico, again demonstrates wealth as the
desired outcome of magic practitioners,
“En el nombre del senor
de la calle,
senor compadre,
me des riquecas.
y para ver si esto es verdad,
me deas una sena;
ladre un perro,
cante un gallo,
passe un cavallo,
o llamen una puerta. (189)”
“In the name of the ruler
of the streets
Mister Godfather
give me wealth
and to see if this is true,
give me a sign;
let a dog bark,
let a rooster crow,
let a horse go by,
or let someone knock on the door.”381
These incantations demonstrate that the goal of love magic was to secure financial security;
for women in lower socio-economic groups this meant securing a reliable male partner who
contributed to the household economy.
Securing a reliable male partner was the primary goal of love magic practitioners and
is evident when analyzing the one hundred and seventy-one love magic cases in seventeenthcentury New Spain. Of these, fifty-six cases were concerned with the love of either their
380
Schlau, Gendered Crime and Punishment, 135.
381
Ibid., 138.
129
husband or a good man or men (la quisiera el marido y la quisiera bien uno o varios
hombres); women in thirty-two cases were concerned with taming either their husband or a
man (amansar al marido y amansar el hombre); while women in twenty-one cases were
concerned with attracting a man or men (atrear a un hombre o a muchos) and keeping a man
or husband (conservar o retener y hacer que vuelva el marido). In total, women in 109 out of
171 cases (64%) were concerned with these common themes, those of attracting, keeping,
and controlling a man.382
The goal of economic security and success is evident in the 1616 Inquisitional edict’s
description of divination practices that include,
…making predictions…concerning future things, successes or other fortunes, or
actions that depend on divine will or upon the free exercise of men; and others
make predictions over the births of people through divinations…and concerning
events and occurrences that they have had in the past or will have in the future,
and they advise people about the path that their children should take or
concerning dangers, disgraces, or other things concerning health, sicknesses,
losses, or the gaining of great wealth, or advise them about the roads that they
should take, or tell them about the manner in which they will die or other similar
things they divine concerning future or past events.383
Another section from this 1616 Inquisitional edict describes sortilege and love magic
practices and their goals in the following manner,
As well as others who use various objects to cast fortunes, such as beans, wheat,
corn, coins, other seeds, and similar things, mixing the sacred with the profane,
such as combining these divinations with sayings from the Gospels, the Agnus
Dei, Ara Consagrada, Holy water and other things, and sacred vestments that
they bring with them to use and which they give to other people who bring with
them certain cédulas, documents, and other printed things that had prayers or
other superstitious words, with other circles, lines, and other types of similar
spells, making known that with these things they can stop a violent death, or
protect themselves from their enemies, or enable them to have success in battle or
in business or trade or in marriage, or enable men to reach and gain many
women and women to reach men whom they desire or to make sure that their
husbands and friends treat them well and do not grow jealous with their
wives or female friends or to “tie” a man to a woman such as to make sure to
impede the generative act of the man with anyone except for the woman who
382
Quezada, “Comovision, Sexualidad, e Inquisicion,” 85.
383
Inquisitors of New Spain Tribunal, “Edict of Faith That Requires All to Denounce,” 111.
130
cast the spell, or to make and cause other damages and evils to persons, bodily
members, or someone’s health. As well as those who use for these same results
certain vain prayers, or superstitions, invoking in them God Our Lord and his
Holy Virgin Mother and all of the saints, with a mixture of other invocations and
other indecent words…384
This edict demonstrates the importance of economic success either through business,
trade, or marriage. Economic success for women, particularly those from lower socioeconomic groups, was largely contingent on acquiring the economic support of a male
partner (husband, lover, etc.) who had access to a wider range of higher-paying jobs than
women from the same group had. Historically, the decision to marry or cohabitate has been
largely motivated by economic considerations. Consequently, women used love magic spells
to acquire a lover or spouse, and once acquired to secure his good treatment. In addition,
women used love magic spells to retain the interest and loyalty of men, in many cases to the
exclusion of all other women by making them impotent. A woman’s ability to control a
man’s actions or feelings and his ability to engage in sexual acts was considered to be
“unnatural” as this subverted the God-given authority that men had over women.385
Consequently, women’s use of love magic worked to subvert patriarchal authority in colonial
Mexico.
Scholarship concerning women’s use of magic differs as to whether these practices
were beneficial to the women employing them or if they ultimately served to bolster Spanish
hegemony in colonial Mexico. Laura Lewis’s 2003 book Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft,
and Caste in Colonial Mexico argues that women’s use of unsanctioned spirituality (of which
magic is a part) did not effect a permanent improvement in women’s status, consequently the
use of magic was not truly empowering for women. In contrast, authors such as Ruth Behar
argue that the use of magic was empowering for women as it provided a means of asserting
themselves over the men in their lives. This paper demonstrates that women could achieve
real material gains through the practice of magic and healing. While these improvements
were localized and temporary they provided colonial Mexican women from lower socio-
384
Inquisitors of New Spain Tribunal, “Edict of Faith That Requires All to Denounce,” 112.
385
This Spanish attitude was discussed extensively in Chapter 1.
131
economic groups with a means of supporting themselves apart from or in addition to less
desirable occupations such as domestic or prostitute. In addition, the use of magic provided
both the female clients and the practitioners with more control over their own lives and
sought to equalize the very unequal social hierarchy of colonial Mexico. Finally, the use of
magic although prohibited was not severely punished by the Inquisition, if punished at all.
Consequently, the occupation of love magic practitioner and curandera provided poor, lowstatus women with a potentially lucrative, low-risk occupation.
CONCLUSION
Love magic occurred in both Spain and New Spain, however analyses of Mexican
Inquisition cases demonstrate the significant influences of both indigenous and African
religious and healing practices in colonial Mexican love magic rituals. In New Spain, love
magic acted as a form of healing, both directly, through the healing of physical illnesses, and
indirectly, by healing spiritual or social ailments. Consequently, love magic practitioners and
folk healers occupied an overlapping role, that of a physical, spiritual, social, and
psychological healer. Female love magic practitioners served as traveling or communitybased advisors, psychologists, and physicians; through their work these women were able to
financially support themselves and their families, thereby gaining independence and
economic security.
132
CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSION
Seventeenth and eighteenth-century colonial Mexican women utilized different
spiritual practices including: Catholicism, testament writing, love magic, and healing. The
goal of these spiritual practices was to acquire spiritual capital, thereby improving their social
and economic status. The preceding chapters have demonstrated the agency of colonial
Mexican women and how they consciously utilized expressions of spirituality to acquire
spiritual capital; they wrote testaments containing pious bequests, they favored their
daughters as heirs, they became nuns or beatas, they worked in convents, they converted to
Catholicism, they performed love magic rituals, and they practiced indigenous healing
strategies in order to improve their lives socially and economically. Women from different
social and racial groups acquired spiritual capital, both social prestige via piety and material
wealth, through the different forms of spiritual expression available to them; a woman’s
gender, race, and class status dictated the avenues of spirituality available to her. This thesis
demonstrates that Mexican women were not completely subjugated in colonial society and
that many were able to utilize and navigate these institutions to their advantage, despite the
presence of strong, patriarchal institutions.
This thesis focused primarily on non-elite women and demonstrated that women from
marginalized socio-economic and ethnic groups, including poor Spanish, casta, African, and
Native American women, were able to utilize spirituality to improve their lives. To this end,
indigenous-language testaments and Inquisitional records were utilized, wherein the words
and testimony of indigenous, poor, and mixed-race women were recorded. In addition, this
thesis demonstrated the influence of African spiritual practices and beliefs on colonial
Mexican curandismo.
A trans-Atlantic approach was utilized to demonstrate the transmission of Spanish
institutions, laws, and spiritual practices to colonial Mexico and how they transformed within
the colonial environment. This research also demonstrates the crucial ties between Spanish
and colonial Mexican institutions, practices, and ideologies, especially as they pertain to
133
women and spirituality. The persistence and influence of the Spanish institutions, practices,
ideologies, and laws (discussed in chapter 2) greatly impacted colonial Mexican society and
the status and rights of women in particular. Chapter 2 demonstrated that medieval and early
modern Spanish ideologies, laws, and practices both restricted Spanish women and provided
them with avenues of economic and spiritual agency, which they consciously utilized to
improve their everyday lives. While Spanish society was largely patriarchal, women had
rights and the means to improve their lives, primarily through spiritual practices like
testament writing, Catholicism, magic, and healing (discussed in chapters 3 through 5).
Chapter 3 found that eighteenth-century Nahua women, like their Maya and Nudzahui
(Mixtec) counterparts, used testaments to demonstrate their piety and by extension their
social status, and to protect their property and that of their children and relatives’, especially
their female relatives. Chapter 4 argued that women were able to advance socially, and in
some cases economically, through Catholic spiritual practices and institutions; however the
degree of advancement was contingent upon their position within the social hierarchy, with
elite Spanish women having greater opportunities than poor indigenous and Afro-Mexican
women. Finally, chapter 5 demonstrated that seventeenth and eighteenth-century colonial
Mexican female folk-healers called curanderas utilized witchcraft, love magic, and folk
healing to empower themselves socially and economically; that love magic and folk healing
as practiced by curanderas were both forms of social healing; and that the Inquisition viewed
folk healing and love magic as “superstitions” rather than heresy.
Taken together, the importance of spirituality in colonial Mexico, and its ability
empower women cannot be understated. Different forms of spiritual expression were
available to women, however one’s position within the larger social hierarchy influenced the
form that this spiritual expression would take and the degree of spiritual capital that one
could acquire through it; an elite, Spanish woman living in a convent was able to acquire
more spiritual capital than a poor Afro-Mexican woman working as a curandera.
134
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APPENDIX A
TERMS
144
Afro-Latinos: General term for African-descended individuals in Latin America; this
includes enslaved and free mulattos and Africans.
Afro-Mexicans: General term for African-descended individuals in Mexico; this includes
enslaved and free mulattos and Africans (the majority of which came from West and WestCentral Africa).
Apostasy: Renunciation or rejection of Catholicism.
Beatas: Pious lay women or women who were religious but who could not or chose not to
become a nun; many worked as teachers and healers and prayed for their communities.
Beaterios: Institutions that housed beatas.
Black Veiled Nuns: Nuns, almost always elite Spanish women, who paid a substantial
dowry to their convents and who were therefore able to vote and hold positions of authority
within their convent.
Calced: It literally means shod and refers to less rigorous religious orders in which nuns
wore shoes, did not enact the vow of poverty as strictly as discalced orders did, and did not
focus on the “denial of self” like discalced orders.
Castas: General term for individuals of mixed blood or lineage.
Chinas: Women from the continent of Asia.
Conventos Grandes: A colloquial term referring to large convents, most of which housed
over one thousand women, including nuns and their servants and slaves.
Creoles: Individuals of Spanish descent born in the Americas.
Curanderas/os: Female and male folk-healers from Latin America who combine indigenous,
African, and Spanish healing practices. From the Spanish verb curar meaning to heal.
Discalced: Refers to more rigorous religious orders in which nuns went barefoot, wore
uncomfortable clothing, slept very little, and practiced self-flagellation.
Divination: A form of magic used to determine things that have or will happen. Often used
by folk-healers to determine the cause of illnesses.
Donadas: Pious servants working in convents; most often castas, Indigene women, or AfroLatino women.
Enclosure: The practice of confining women, either within the home, the convent, or within
recogimientos (see recogimientos).
145
Folk-healing: The practice of traditional healing, usually performed by unsanctioned or
unlicensed healers. Folk-healers approach illness and healing in a holistic manner, often
utilizing herbal, homeopathic, and religio-spiritual remedies.
Heresy: Anything that contradicts or opposes orthodox Catholic doctrine.
Indias: Indigenous women
Indigenes/indigenous: Individuals native to the Americas.
Indios: Indigenous men
Inquisition: A Catholic religious tribunal or court whose goal was to stop the spread of
heresy, apostasy, and immoral acts through secret trials and public punishments.
Love Magic: Achieved through divination, the use of sympathetic magic, and the
practitioner’s invocation of either a spell or a deity. The goal of which was to secure the
positive feelings, treatment, or attention of another person, usually one in a position of power
over the client, such as a husband, lover, or owner.
Magic: The use of spells, incantations, charms, herbs, potions, and deities/saints in order to
understand or change events, actions, and/or behaviors.
Mestizas: Women of mixed Indigene and Spanish blood.
Mestizos: Men of mixed Indigene and Spanish blood.
Mulattas: Women of mixed African and Spanish blood or mixed African and Indigene
blood.
Mulattos: Men of mixed African and Spanish blood or mixed African and Indigene blood.
Peninsulares: Individuals of Spanish descent born in the Iberian Peninsula.
Practitioner: A person who uses/performs magic either for themselves or for a client. Not all
practitioners were curanderas/os, but there was often a great deal of overlap between these
groups.
Recogidas: Women and girls enclosed in recogimientos.
Recogimientos: The practice of enclosure for religious purposes or to maintain a woman’s
virtue, and the actual institutions that women were enclosed in (see enclosure).
Social Healing: refers to the improvement of an individual’s overall status; the improvement
of interpersonal relationships such as those between spouses, lovers, friends, family
members, and between masters and slaves or masters and servants; and the healing of social
ailments such as poverty, violence, and unequal power relations.
146
Spanish/Spaniards: Individuals of Spanish descent, including Peninsulares and Creoles
Superstitions: Crimes against Christian morality which included magic, witchcraft, various
forms of divination, and idolatry.
Sympathetic Magic: Magic achieved through incorporating items belonging to either the
client, the target, or to both. Examples include hair, bath water, and bodily fluids like sweat,
saliva, and menstrual blood.
Vida: Religious biography or autobiography of an individual considered to be especially
pious, most often those of nuns or clergymen; used as inspirational and/or instructional texts.
White Veiled Nuns: Nuns with less rights and privileges as compared with black veil nuns.
They were either elite indigenous women (not in New Spain) who paid a substantial dowry to
their convents but were denied full rights because they were indigenous OR Spanish women
who paid a smaller dowry than black veil nuns. Both groups were excluded from political
and economic activities, were unable to hold positions of authority within their convents, and
were required to perform a small amount of physical labor.
Witchcraft: Is the use of “magic” for evil or negative purposes. Inquisition documents use
the terms brujería (witchcraft), hechicería (sorcery), and maleficio (hex or evil spell) to refer
to witchcraft.
147
APPENDIX B
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY TOLUCA VALLEY
FEMALE TESTATOR
148
Name
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Juana Francisca
Ana Maria
Pascuala Melchora
Maria de la Encarnacion
Isabel Maria
Maria Ana de Morales
Elena de la Cruz
Maria Hernandez
Maria Josefa
Vicenta Teresa
Maria Ines
Tomasa Gertrudis
Melchora Maria
Mauricia Josefa
Polonia Maria
Maria Salome *not included*
Maria Micaela
Lucia Maria
Ana Teresa
Marcela Maria
Pascuala Maria
Juana Maria
Josefa Trinidad
Ignacia Cristina
Dominga Melchora
Year
1699
1716
1717
1733
1731
1707
1711
1737
1737
1737
1703
1738
1737
1732
1710
1654
1762
1731
1759
1759
1762
1760
1752
1759
1701
Area/Altepetl
Pueblo/Tlaxilacalli
Toluca
San Luis
Toluca
San Luis
Toluca
San Juan Bautista
Toluca
San Juan Evangelista
Toluca
Santa Clara Cozcatlan
Toluca
San Miguel Aticpac
Toluca
San Miguel Aticpac
Toluca
San Miguel Aticpac
Toluca
Toluca
San Miguel Aticpac
San Francisco
Calixtlahuaca
Toluca
San Sebastian
Toluca
Toluca
San Sebastian
San Bartolome
Tlatelolco
Toluca
No location given
Tepemaxalco
San Pablo
Tepemaxalco,
Pasiontitlan
San Pablo
Tepemaxalco
San Pablo
Tepemaxalco
Tepemaxalco
San Lucas Evangelista
Tepemaxalco
San Lucas Evangelista
Tepemaxalco
Tepemaxalco
San Lucas Evangelista
Santa Maria de la
Asuncion
Santa Maria de la
Asuncion
Santa Maria de la
Asuncion
Santa Maria de la
Asuncion
Calimaya
Calimaya, Pasiontitlan
Tepemaxalco
Tepemaxalco
Tepemaxalco
Tepemaxalco
Tepemaxalco
149
Name
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
Fabiana de la Cruz
Martina Maria
Lorena de Subersa
Maria Clara
Juana de la Cruz
Josefa Encarnacion
Pascuala de la Cruz
Antonia Espinosa
Rosa Francisca
Antonia Maria
Dominga Maria
Antonia Rufina
Leonor Maria
Year
1758
1751
1759
1763
1758
1759
1739
1759
1760
1759
1759
1759
1760
Area/Altepetl
Pueblo/Tlaxilacalli
Calimaya
Calimaya
San Pedro Calimaya
San Pedro Calimaya,
Pasiontitlan
San Pedro Calimaya,
Pasiontitlan
San Pedro Calimaya,
Pasiontitlan
San Pedro Calimaya,
Tlamimilolpan
San Pedro Calimaya,
Tlamimilolpan
Calimaya
Tlamimilolpan
Calimaya
Teopanquiyahuac
San Pedro Calimaya,
Teopanquiyahuac
Calimaya
Calimaya
Calimaya
Calimaya
Calimaya
Calimaya/Tepemaxalco Santa Maria Nativitas
Calimaya/Tepemaxalco Santa Maria Nativitas
Calimaya/Tepemaxalco Santa Maria Nativitas
Calimaya/Tepemaxalco Santa Maria Nativitas