Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America PDF
Preview Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America
Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America Edited by Zeb Tortorici UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America Edited by Zeb Tortorici UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2016 by Th e Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Tortorici, Zeb, 1978– editor. Title: Sexuality and the unnatural in colonial Latin America / edited by Zeb Tortorici. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifi ers: lccn 2015037516 | isbn 978-0-520-28814-0 (cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 978-0-520-28815-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) | isbn 978-0-520- 96318-4 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Sex—Latin America—History. | Sex and law—Latin America—History. | Sex—Latin America—Religious aspects— History. | Sex crimes—Latin America—History. | Latin Americans— Sexual behavior—History. Classifi cation: lcc hq18.l29 s497 2016 | ddc 306.7098—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015037516 Manufactured in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures Natural, a fi ber that contains 30% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper). To María Elena Martínez, whose work has pushed the boundaries of queer historical scholarship in radical and imaginative ways. contents Foreword, by Asunción Lavrin ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Unnatural Bodies, Desires, and Devotions 1 Zeb Tortorici part i. unnatural heresies 1. A rchival Narratives of Clerical Sodomy and Suicide from Eighteenth-Century Cartagena 23 Nicole von Germeten 2. Sacred Defi ance and Sexual Desecration: María Getrudis Arévalo and the Holy Offi ce in Eighteenth-Century Mexico 43 Nora E. Jaff ary 3. Th e Devil or Nature Itself? Desire, Doubt, and Diabolical Sex among Colonial Mexican Women 58 Jacqueline S. Holler 4. Female Homoeroticism, Heresy, and the Holy Offi ce in Colonial Brazil 77 Ronaldo Vainfas and Zeb Tortorici part ii: unnatural crimes 5. Experimenting with Nature: José Ignacio Eyzaguirre’s General Confession and the Knowledge of the Body (1799–1804) 95 Martín Bowen Silva 6. Prosecuting Female-Female Sex in Bourbon Quito 120 Chad Th omas Black 7. Sodomy, Gender, and Identity in the Viceroyalty of Peru 141 Fernanda Molina 8. I ncestuous Natures: Consensual and Forced Relations in Mexico, 1740–1854 162 Lee M. Penyak 9. Bestiality: Th e Nefarious Crime in Mexico, 1800–1856 188 Mílada Bazant Epilogue: Unnatural Sex? 213 Pete Sigal Contributors 225 Index 227 foreword Asunción Lavrin Zeb Tortorici’s request of a foreword for this volume led me to delve into my own “archeological” memory as a historian. Although most of the time I am reluctant to engage in that exercise, I have to confess that in this instance it has proven more interesting than I anticipated. It has brought up dusted personal memories and engaged me in assessing my own generation’s contribution to the shaping of a fi eld of studies that is fl ourishing today. In the early 1980s, historians of colonial Latin America tentatively began to write on topics of sexual behavior, and in 1989 I published my own anthology, Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, the fi rst English-language edited collection dedicated to the topic. Not long ago, Zeb told me that this anthol- ogy, along with the work of Pete Sigal, served as inspiration for him to enter the fi eld of sexuality in colonial Latin America and expand it—as Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America certainly does. Whether or not my own volume had an equally stimulating eff ect on others is not for me to judge; as I remember, I was not planning to do more than open a dialogue. When I called on colleagues to help put together that volume, I did not see myself as a revolution- ary person in the fi eld of gender and sexuality, but simply as someone who wished to extend the fi eld of women’s studies in ways that historians in other fi elds were already doing and to respond to some of the questions posed by research materials with which I was acquainted. It was important for me to link the con- cepts in the title—sexuality and marriage—and make clearer their existential bond. First there was sexuality: marriage came aft er that. It was not a revolution- ary concept. Rather, it refl ected the reality that others and I were fi nding in the colonial archives. ix
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