Women's Negotiations and Textual Agency in Latin America, 1500-1799 1138225045, 9781138225046

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of tables
List of contributors
Introduction: Uncovering women’s colonial archive
Mediation, ‘delegated writing’, and agency
Colonial women speak in the archive
Notes
Bibliography
PART I: Censorship and the body
1. Divine aspirations: Beatas, writing, and the Inquisition in late seventeenth-century Lima
Beatas and spiritual advisors
Beatas under the ecclesiastical scrutiny
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
2. Covert Afro-Catholic agency in the mystical visions of early modern Brazil’s Rosa Maria Egipçíaca
A close reading of Rosa’s visions
Yorùbá spirit possession and mounting
Afro-Catholic practice
Rosa before the Portuguese Inquisition
Rosa’s agency, hybrid identity and counter-Catholic discourse
Rosa’s reframed vision
Notes
Bibliography
3. ‘In so celestial a language’: Text as body, relics as text
The language of celestial spheres: Luisa Melgarejo de Sotomayor
Hidden voices of divine knowledge: Angela Carranza
Conclusion: women’s bodies and the communication of the ineffable
Notes
Bibliography
PART II: Female authority and legal discourse
4. In the shadow of Coatlicue’s smile: Reconstructing indigenous female subjectivity in the Spanish colonial record
Medusa meets Coatlicue
A pre-European female voice in the oral tradition: Macuilxochitl
Early contact narratives in the Caribbean: Anacaona
Reading/reconstructing female subjectivity in a Oaxacan legal case
A powerful female ruler along the Florida Atlantic coast: María Meléndez
Seeking voices beyond the chronicles
Notes
Bibliography
5. Inca women under Spanish rule: Probanzas and informaciones of the colonial Andean elite
Probanzas and informaciones as textual genres
Coyas, ñustas and señoras naturales
Huayna Capac’s daughter: Doña Inés Huaylas Yupanqui
The coya of Vilcabamba and Cuzco: Doña María Cusi Huarcay
The daughter of the last Inca of Vilcabamba: Doña Magdalena Mama Huaco
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
6. The bonds of inheritance: Afro-Peruvian women’s legacies in a slave-holding world
Naming oneself in freedom
Unstable terrain: wealth, marginality, and the limits of manumission
Deathbed manumission: balancing legacies
Conclusion: defining freedom in a culture of slavery
Notes
Bibliography
PART III: Private lives and public opinions
7. Letters from the Río de La Plata: Agency and identity in colonial women’s petitions
Letter writing: a brief overview
On the foundation of Santa Fe and Buenos Aires: Isabel de Becerra y Mendoza
Petitioning favors, benefits and rewards: María de los Cobos
Fidelity discourse and the pacification of tyrants and Indians: Doña Mariana Osorio de Narváez
Conclusion: writing spatiality
Notes
Bibliography
8. Women’s voices in eighteenth-century Spanish American newspapers
Women and the Enlightenment
Mercurio peruano: fashioning the female subject
‘It is dangerous alike to believe or to disbelieve’: sensibility and rational love in Primicias de la cultura de Quito
Concluding remarks: women as cultural participants
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Women’s Negotiations and Textual Agency in Latin America, 1500–1799

Even though women have been historically underrepresented in official histories and literary and artistic traditions, their voices and writings can be found in abundance in the many archives of the world where they remain to be uncovered. The present volume seeks to recover women’s voices and actions while studying the mechanisms through which they authorized themselves and participated in the creation of texts and documents found in archives of colonial Latin America. Organized according to three main themes, ‘Censorship and the Body’, ‘Female Authority and Legal Discourse’, and ‘Private Lives and Public Opinions’, the essays in this collection focus on women’s knowledge and the discursive traces of their daily concerns found in various colonial genres. Herein we consider women not only as agents of history, but also as authors of written records produced either by their own hand or by means of dictations, collaborations, or rewritings of their oral renditions. Inhabiting the territories of the Iberian colonies from Peru to New Spain, the women studied in this volume come from different ethnic and social backgrounds, from African slaves to the indigenous elite and to those who arrived from Iberia and were known as ‘Old Christians’. Finally, we have prepared this volume in the hope that readers will find a particular appeal in archival sources, in lesser-known documents, and in the processes involved in the circulation of knowledge and print culture between the 1500s and the late 1700s. Mónica Díaz is Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies and History, and Director of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies at the University of Kentucky, USA. Rocío Quispe-Agnoli is Professor of Hispanic Studies at Michigan State University, USA.

Women and Gender in the Early Modern World Series editor: Allyson Poska, University of Mary Washington, USA and Abby Zanger

The study of women and gender offers some of the most vital and innovative challenges to current scholarship on the early modern period. For more than a decade now, Women and Gender in the Early Modern World has served as a forum for presenting fresh ideas and original approaches to the field. Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary in scope, this Ashgate series strives to reach beyond geographical limitations to explore the experiences of early modern women and the nature of gender in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa. We welcome proposals for both single-author volumes and edited collections which expand and develop this continually evolving field of study. Recent titles in this series: Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France Edited by Lewis C. Seifert and Rebecca M. Wilkin Maternity and Romance Narratives in Early Modern England Edited by Karen Bamford and Naomi J. Miller Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World Edited by Alison Weber

Women’s Negotiations and Textual Agency in Latin America, 1500–1799

YORK YORK

Edited by Mónica Díaz and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli

~~o~;J~n~~~up

LONDON LONDON LONDON

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 selection and editorial matter, Mónica Díaz and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Mónica Díaz and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-22504-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-40102-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Taylor & Francis Books

A Violeta, quien conoce el archivo de mi vida (M. Díaz) For Steve, the boldness of your brush ... emboldens my quill (R. Quispe-Agnoli)

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

List of tables List of contributors Introduction: Uncovering women’s colonial archive

ix x 1

MÓNICA DÍAZ AND ROCÍO QUISPE-AGNOLI

PART I

Censorship and the body 1

Divine aspirations: Beatas, writing, and the Inquisition in late seventeenth-century Lima

17 19

STACEY SCHLAU

2

Covert Afro-Catholic agency in the mystical visions of early modern Brazil’s Rosa Maria Egipçíaca

38

RACHEL SPAULDING

3

‘In so celestial a language’: Text as body, relics as text

62

NANCY E. VAN DEUSEN

PART II

Female authority and legal discourse 4

In the shadow of Coatlicue’s smile: Reconstructing indigenous female subjectivity in the Spanish colonial record

83 85

JEANNE GILLESPIE

5

Inca women under Spanish rule: Probanzas and informaciones of the colonial Andean elite SARA VICUÑA GUENGERICH

106

viii 6

Contents The bonds of inheritance: Afro-Peruvian women’s legacies in a slave-holding world

130

KAREN B. GRAUBART

PART III

Private lives and public opinions 7

Letters from the Río de La Plata: Agency and identity in colonial women’s petitions

151 153

YAMILE SILVA

8

Women’s voices in eighteenth-century Spanish American newspapers

177

MARISELLE MELÉNDEZ

Index

200

Tables

6.1 Afro-Peruvian wills from Lima’s archives, 1565–1666

134

Contributors

Mónica Díaz is Associate Professor in the Department of Hispanic Studies and History, and Director of Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of Indigenous Writings from the Convent: Negotiating Ethnic Autonomy in Colonial Mexico (2010). Her research has been funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ministry for Cultural Cooperation between Spain and the United States, the Newberry Library, the Lilly Library, and Fulbright–García Robles. Jeanne Gillespie is Professor of Spanish and Executive Director of the Institute for Collaborative Research and Engagement at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her current research investigates the documentation of plant materials and healing practices in indigenous Mexican narratives – especially poetic and dramatic texts – as well as the accounts of violence against women that permeate Aztec narratives of hegemony. She is the author of Saints and Warriors: Tlaxcalan Perspectives on the Conquest of Tenochtitlan (2004) and co-editor of Women’s Voices and the Politics of the Spanish Empire (2009). She recently served as guest editor for the Summer 2014 issue of the Southern Quarterly: ‘And We Are Still Here’. This volume collects essays examining the history, archaeology, cultural heritage, and artistic contributions of indigenous communities in the Coastal South. Karen Graubart is Associate Professor of Colonial Latin American History at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of With Our Labor and Sweat: Indigenous Women and the Formation of Colonial Society in Peru, 1550–1700 (2007), which was awarded the Ligia Parra Jahn prize from the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies in 2008. She has published articles in Hispanic American Historical Review, Colonial Latin American Review, Slavery and Abolition, and The William and Mary Quarterly, among others. Her work has received generous support from numerous foundations, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, Fulbright, the American Association of University Women, the Kellogg Institute, and the John Carter Brown Library.

List of contributors

xi

Sara Vicuña Guengerich is Associate Professor of Spanish at Texas Tech University. She specializes in the literatures, cultures and history of Colonial Spanish America. Her fields of expertise include the study of representations and often-ignored discursive productions of indigenous women in early colonial Spanish America, especially in the context of the Spanish conquest and colonization of Peru. Her research also explores the narrative of people of African descent in the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic world, material culture in colonial discourses and ecocritical approaches to colonial texts. Her research has been supported by the Humanities Center at Texas Tech, the Newberry Library and numerous travel grants to conduct archival research in Spain and Peru. Mariselle Meléndez is Professor of Colonial Spanish American literatures and cultures and Conrad Humanities Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Her research focuses on issues of race and gender in colonial Spanish America with special interest in the eighteenth century, the cultural phenomenon of the Enlightenment, and notions of spatiality, as well as visual studies. She is the author of Deviant and Useful Citizens: The Cultural Production of the Female Body in Eighteenth-Century Peru (2011); Raza, género e hibridez en El lazarillo de ciegos caminantes (Race, Gender, and Hibridity in El lazarillo de ciegos caminantes, 1999), and co-editor of Mapping Colonial Spanish America: Places and Commonplaces of Identity, Culture, and Experience (2002). Her articles have appeared in journals such as Colonial Latin American Review, Hispanic Review, and Dieciocho, among others. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled The Cultural Geography of Spanish American Ports in the Age of the Enlightenment. Rocío Quispe-Agnoli is Professor of Colonial Latin American Studies at Michigan State University. She is the author of La fe andina en la escritura (The Andean Faith in the Script, 2006), Durmiendo en el agua (Sleeping Under Water, 2008), co-editor of Women’s Gaze: Feminine Narratives of the Visual (2014) and Mirrors and Mirages: Women’s Gaze in Hispanic Literatures and Visual Arts (2015). Her latest book, Nobles de papel (Nobles on Paper, 2016) studies the 250-year journey of ten generations of the Uchu Inca family in Peru and Mexico. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos de Sevilla, the Newberry Library, the Lilly Library, and the MSU-Humanities and Arts Research Program. Stacey Schlau is Professor of Spanish at West Chester University. She is the author of Viva al Siglo, Muerta al Mundo: Selected Works by María de San Alberto (1999), Spanish American Women’s Use of the Word (2001), Gendered Crime and Punishment: Women and/in the Hispanic Inquisition (2012), and co-editor of Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works (1989, 2010), Approaches to Teaching the Works of Sor Juana Inés de la

xii

List of contributors Cruz (2007), and Mujeres Alborotadas: Early Modern Women and Colonial Women’s Cultural Production (2009).

Yamile Silva is Associate Professor of Spanish and Director of Latin American Studies at the University of Scranton. She is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence Award in Advancing Global Learning. Her research has been funded by grants from American Association of University Women and the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain and the United States. She has published articles and book chapters on seventeenth- and twentieth-century Spanish women writers. She is co-editor of Palabras: Dispatches from the Festival de la Palabra, and is currently working on two projects: a critical edition of Relación del descubrimiento del Río Amazonas by Gerónimo de Ypori, and a co-edited collection of documents and studies on petitions written by women between 1500 and 1700. Rachel Spaulding is an Assistant Professor of Spanish and English in the department of English, Modern Languages and Journalism at Emporia State University, where she teaches courses on literatures of the early modern period in the Ibero-Atlantic. Her work focuses on the textual productions and mystical experiences of early modern African women and how their texts foster a reading of transformation from slave subjects to mystical agents and how they may be interpreted as a camouflage for African during the Baroque Counter-Reformation. She has been a recipient of the Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Fellowship. Nancy van Deusen is Professor of Colonial Latin American and Atlantic World History at Queen’s University. She is the author of Between the Sacred and the Worldly: The Cultural and Institutional Practice of Recogimiento among Women in Colonial Lima (2001) and The Souls of Purgatory: The Spiritual Diary of a Seventeenth-Century Afro-Peruvian Mystic (2004). She specializes in the histories of slavery in the early modern Iberian world, and gender relations and female Catholic spirituality in colonial Peru. Her most recent book, Global Indios (2015), examines slaves labeled as indios who pressed for their freedom in Spanish courts in the sixteenth century. She is currently completing another book, Spiritual Pathways, about distinct expressions of female spirituality in seventeenth-century Peru.

Introduction Uncovering women’s colonial archive Mónica Díaz and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli

The study of women’s cultural production in early modern Iberia and the colonial Americas has evolved significantly in the last thirty years. Many unforeseen findings in archives and special collections have contributed to expanding the corpus of works under consideration and have reaffirmed the importance of research in these repositories. Recent scholarship from various disciplines has brought to the forefront discussions about archival research, the constitution of the archive, and the challenges of delving into these repositories and making sense of them.1 A recent edited volume by historians Nupur Chaudhuri, Sherry Katz, and Mary Elizabeth Perry engages directly with the recovery of women’s voices found in archives. The authors question the ‘objectivity of traditional archives’ and make evident that even though women had been historically underrepresented in these repositories, ‘their voices are sometimes found in abundance’.2 Building on this premise, our volume not only seeks to recover women’s voices and actions, but also the mechanisms through which women authorized themselves and participated in the creation of texts and documents found in archives. The essays in this collection focus on women’s knowledge and the discursive traces of their daily concerns found in various colonial genres. Herein we consider women not only as agents of history, but also as authors of written records produced either by their own hand or by means of dictations, collaborations, or rewritings of their oral renditions. The contributors to this volume use the concepts of ‘voice’ and ‘text’ almost interchangeably since both, as Nancy van Deusen notes in her essay included in this volume, are highly polysemic.3 For the purpose of this volume, we benefit from that ample understanding of ‘voice’ and ‘text’ to encompass a wide range of women’s participation in the culture of their times. We refer to ‘voices’ to signal the intention and participation of female agents in producing texts that, in many occasions, were put into writing by a scribe, as in the cases of the women under Inquisitorial scrutiny, the Afro-Peruvians who left wills, and the poetry of native women in Pre-Hispanic times. However, we also refer to ‘texts’ that represent women’s cultural production and that have not received sufficient scholarly attention, as with the cases of women who penned letters and those who contributed to newspapers.

2

Mónica Díaz and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli

Inhabiting the territories of the Iberian colonies from Peru to New Spain, the women studied in this volume come from different ethnic and social backgrounds. Some were former African slaves. Others belonged to the indigenous elite. Still others, known as ‘Old Christians’, arrived from Iberia. Although this volume is thematically organized, we also intended to reflect a chronological development of events covering Pre-Columbian times to the 1700s in order to illustrate the ways in which women participated and were affected by the developments in the colonial enterprise. At the time of Columbus’s first voyage to the Indies, a Catholic religious fervor that sought territorial unification deeply influenced the Iberian Peninsula, especially after the last Reconquest victory against the Muslims and the expulsion of Jews. The prevailing ‘purity of blood’ ideology also operated as a particularly potent force, affecting understandings of race and gender, while also directly impacting one’s social status. Proof of purity of blood was required in order to enter prestigious schools and religious institutions, as well as to hold public office. The obsession with blood purity led the Inquisition, or Holy Office, to begin an aggressive campaign to identify false converts.4 Conventional understandings of gender nonetheless operated in the background. The statutes of purity of blood, for example, fed into other traditional gendered ideas, such as that of honor, which stressed chastity for unmarried women, and, for those women who were married, fidelity and ‘proper’ conduct. Modeled after the Virgin Mary, Counter-Reformation ideas privileging women’s enclosure and virtue came to control and enhance women’s sexuality. Although men were considered morally superior to their female counterparts, women in the Iberian Peninsula still enjoyed greater legal rights than those in other parts of Europe. The laws of inheritance, for example, depended on legitimacy and not on gender, as was the case with owning, buying, selling, and donating property. In short, with the exception of the mayorazgo (primogeniture) and entails, Iberian women possessed the same basic legal rights as men.5 For instance, an essay in this volume considers Spanish women’s letters sent from Rio de la Plata. These particular letters illustrate the ways in which such women understood the legal codes of their time and made use of their knowledge to demand the same rights that male colonizers possessed. Isabel de Becerra y Mendoza, María de los Cobos, and Mariana Osorio de Narváez arrived from the Iberian Peninsula with their parents and/or husbands to colonize the newly found territories. Familiar with the legal codes of their time, these women petitioned for the benefits that should have been conferred on them for their services rendered to the crown in the so-called New World, and they did so by using epistles as legal documents. Much like their European-born counterparts, women in Amerindian societies occupied clear roles depending on their social status.6 Most native societies maintained a class-based structure with a social hierarchy that allowed elite women to exercise political and religious power in their communities, a situation similar to that of noble European women. An important pantheon of powerful female and male deities legitimized the participation of both genders

Introduction 3 in the public sphere. Scholars have referred to this model as one of parallelism and complementarity.7 However, this paradigm did not foster equality. The prominence of women in the public sphere was limited to the nobility, yet even still, dominant gender norms prevented noble women from attaining positions in the priesthood, in spite of the fact that they could receive tribute from their subjects and enjoy a position of governance alongside their husbands.8 Pre-Hispanic beliefs regarding sexuality and marriage differed from those influenced by Catholic ideology. Many Amerindian societies, for example, practiced polygamy as well as premarital sexual relations. Several other instances testify to the participation of women in the political and cultural spheres of their societies. The female poet Macuilxochitl (born circa 1453), for example, recounts in her poem, which is studied in this volume, the performances of Matlazinca women during a battle in central Mexico. While Amerindian women’s cultural production, as seen in these and other examples, evidence the capacities of Amerindian women, they also bring to light the changing views of race, ethnicity, and gender that emerged during and after the Conquest. The European invasion brought about a new set of rules, values, and institutions that altered the lives of Amerindians in dramatic ways. Europeans also introduced an African population, both freed and enslaved, that impacted the ways in which people defined and understood race and ethnicity in the colonial world.9 Society was organized in two republics: one for Spaniards, and one for natives (whom the Europeans called ‘indios’). ‘Indio’ came to serve as a legal category with certain privileges, such as being exempt from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, as well as certain obligations, such as paying tribute. However, since Spanish tradition understood nobility as an innate condition of one’s social standing, the colonial system likewise recognized native nobility along similar lines, thus granting noble ‘indios’ certain privileges. Indigenous nobles were exempt from paying tribute and, in some instances, nobles or caciques could retain their property and even receive tribute from the natives living and working on their land. The cases of some of the descendants of Inca rulers in colonial Peru, Inés Huaylas Yupanqui, María Cusi Huarcay, and Magdalena Mama Huaco – all of which are illustrated in this volume – showcase the ways in which the Castilian legal system was transplanted into the Americas and put into practice by these noble women who sought compensation for their losses during the conquest. In Lima, one of the two Spanish viceregal capitals in the Americas, we also find the written records in the forms of wills, left by several women of African descent. Once Afro-Peruvians received their carta de libertad, or document granting their freedom, they held the power of writing wills. This demonstrates yet another instance in which women actively produced texts. Wills authored by Afro-Peruvian women in the Spanish colonies, either formerly enslaved or descendants of slaves, allow us to view the complex relationships established between race, gender, and the European legal practices transplanted to American territory. The Roman Catholic Church, together with the Crown, stood at the apex of colonial life in the Americas. The value system of the Church permeated all

4

Mónica Díaz and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli

aspects of life and greatly influenced the ways in which people of all sectors of society defined and understood gender roles. While religious institutions sought to control the lives of people (particularly of women), the Church also opened spaces wherein women could achieve certain degrees of autonomy and power. Convents, however, were not the only areas were women could take part in religious life. Other institutions such as missions, beaterios (houses of lay holy women), cofradías (confraternities), and schools all provided close contact with the values and practices of Catholicism. Beatas, lay holy women, increasingly became targets of the Inquisition concerned with orthodoxy. The restrictions on entering convents in Latin America forced many women, like the indigenous elite in Cuzco and many poor descendants of Europeans who could not prove a pure lineage, to live the life of devout laywomen in beaterios or recogimientos.10 Beatas were an integral part of colonial life. In Lima, for example, one beata became the first canonized saint in the Americas, Rosa de Santa María, otherwise known as Rosa of Lima. Two of the chapters included here focus on the texts produced by beatas in seventeenth-century Peru. In addition, these chapters also detail the processes that ultimately led to their inclusion in the colonial archive, such as an inquisitorial trial, the transcription of the oral rendition of a mystic in a trance, or through the materiality of their own bodies. Luisa Melgarejo de Soto, Angela Carranza, and María Jacinta de Montoya, for example, refrained from adhering to what was considered an ideal religious behavior, yet they were able to inscribe themselves in the historical record in unorthodox ways. In a different part of Latin America, another woman, a former slave, also found empowerment in the Church through unorthodox religious practices that included elements from her native country in Africa. Brazil attained a strong African-slave presence that was forced to work in plantations and in the mines. However, Spanish and Portuguese laws allowed for slaves to buy their own freedom. As a result, large numbers of freed blacks constituted an important sector of the population by the eighteenth century in places like Minas Gerais, where an African woman by the name of Rosa María Egipcíaca arrived at age fourteen. As in other parts of Latin America, religious institutions in Brazil established norms that deeply influenced social conventions. In spite of the patriarchal nature of these institutions as well as the dominant racial hierarchies that prevailed, some women of African descent nonetheless found opportunities in religious practices and language to empower themselves. For instance, after gaining her freedom, Rosa María Egipcíaca became a visionary and attained considerable popularity. Her celebrity, however, raised the suspicions of the Church. Eventually, Inquisitional authorities summoned her to Portugal, where she was interrogated for her alleged unorthodox religious practices. The documents that remain from these trials and from Rosa’s own writings, which for the most part were burned, exist as some of the few remnants of African women’s voices in colonial Latin American archives. During the eighteenth century, Latin American societies formed their own understandings of Enlightenment ideals. Women, along with men, participated in the creation of new epistemologies that circulated both orally and in print,

Introduction 5 such as in newspapers. Evident by the second half of the eighteenth century were the effects of the rationalized agenda of the Bourbon monarchy, which led to the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767. Some of the changes brought about with the Bourbon reforms affected gender roles, among other social conventions, since they emphasized the importance of acquiring an education and the wellbeing of all citizens. Learned women and men participated in these debates with their own ideas.11 Women in late-colonial Quito and Lima, for example, wrote to the newspapers Mercurio peruano and Primicias de la cultura de Quito proposing to change European enlightened ideas about women’s roles in society, while also discussing the social and intellectual limitations of men. These cases illustrate the need to pay particular attention to the ways in which women negotiated with the lettered culture of their time in order to achieve their goals. These negotiations include, but are not limited to, their access to rhetorical strategies to communicate their concerns, as well as their implicit acceptance of the mediators’ textual agency. Mediators such as scribes, notaries, and clergy, among others, acted as official keepers of knowledge.12 Some women were able to express themselves with their own handwriting, although many usually did so under the close supervision and censorship of male individuals.13 Others turned their private experiences into matters of public knowledge with the participation of male intermediaries. Both scenarios reveal the dynamic ways in which women of colonial Latin America used writing to record their concerns and actively participate in the creation of colonial archives. In looking at the negotiations between women’s agency and the creation of texts, it is important to focus on issues of authority and representation. Rather than reducing women’s authority to a question of men’s presence in these negotiations, as Martha Vicente and Luis Corteguera have argued, we should analyze women’s representation in these texts in addition to the inherent history of women’s language and their textual expression.14

Mediation, ‘delegated writing’, and agency Since the late 1960s, a number of feminist scholars have dedicated their efforts to finding a distinctive women’s language, one that could express a female identity and at the same time authorize women to challenge male domination.15 Most of these cases have been found in women’s mystical writings of medieval and early modern periods. In recent years, literary scholars and historians of colonial Latin America have worked in collaboration to locate and analyze the rhetorical strategies of religious women and their writings.16 Working with a corpus of female Hispanic religious writers of the early modern period, Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau underscore how these authors cleverly interpreted the rules promulgated by the Council of Trent regarding women’s silence, knowledge, and even the canonical gospels. Religious women writers, state Arenal and Schlau, exercised authority by using the ‘mother tongue’, that is, by utilizing a language of domesticity and reproducing speech following the example of Spanish Carmelite nun Teresa of Avila.17 Furthermore, Alison Weber identified

6

Mónica Díaz and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli

not only a feminine language in Teresa of Avila, but, more importantly, what she terms ‘rhetoric of femininity’.18 In short, the language and rhetorical strategies that religious women writers employed generally placed them and their textual production in sharp contrast to that of their male counterparts. Scholars such as the aforementioned Arenal and Schlau, together with Dorothy Schons, Kristine Ibsen, Stephanie Kirk, Kathryn McKnight, Stephanie Merrim, and Kathleen Myers, among others, have explored the writings of religious women who produced spiritually themed texts under the threat of their male confessors’ censorship vis-à-vis other women who challenged Church rules, such as seventeenth-century Mexican writer Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. For their part, foundational works on the history of convent life in Mexico by historians Asunción Lavrin and Josefina Muriel opened the possibilities for the now vibrant subfield of conventual studies. This scholarship also provided evidence of the relatively few colonial women intellectuals who enjoyed being regarded as literary writers in their time. Women recognized as authors by the canon of Latin American studies, like Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in Mexico and the anonymous writers Clarinda and Amarilis in Peru, composed and published their works in spite of the obstacles they faced during their lifetime. These women authors and their ability to write texts that were accepted as literary still stand out as exceptional cases demonstrating the dynamism and intellectual capacity that characterized female authorship in colonial Latin America. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, for example, reached the pinnacle of Baroque artistic expression and was widely recognized for her talents when her works were published in Spain. At the same time, however, Sor Juana’s fame exposed her subordinate position, especially before ecclesiastical officials, that stemmed in large part from her gender. The cloistered women who produced knowledge shared certain rhetorical strategies and a particular language that the aforementioned studies have identified. However, when we begin to expand the scope of female cultural production to women from different ethnic, social, and cultural backgrounds, and various geographical regions, we recognize a corpus of potential sources that women composed under the influence and/or with the intervention of men. The use of language as a variable to identify their strategies to claim authority in these cases proves challenging. We can still witness female agents who chose one or another vehicle of communication, with different degrees of male influence, in texts such as wills, Inquisitorial and judicial trials, business records, medical texts, chronicles, and many other documents, all of which historians have studied while literary scholars find them problematic for their multiple filters and lack of a singular authorial female voice. A more nuanced and encompassing approach to male–female collaborations that recognizes a combination of textual strategies in which male language and female rhetoric is used or vice versa, will ensure scholars a better understanding of the range of women’s presence and influences in all spheres of society during the Early Modern period. In order to make a significant contribution to the field of women’s writings in colonial Latin America, we move away from the study of cloistered women and

Introduction 7 instead explore secular and unorthodox religious texts produced by women from the mid-1500s to the late 1700s. The women’s voices and stories that we examine in this volume differ from those produced by religious and educated women who excelled in the spiritual and literary knowledge of their period. We focus on women from different social strata and with varying levels of education. In spite of their differences, however, all of these women engaged with colonial institutions, which allowed them to insert their record in the archive, often after lengthy negotiations with scribes, government officials, and notaries. We make evident that non-religious women also wrote, either by their own hand or by means of a mediator in order to achieve their goals. To this day, most of these women are still not considered to have an authoritative voice in the official matters of public discourses and, as a result, they are not studied as ‘authors’ under the lens of literary or historical tradition of the West. Ultimately, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds and geographical origins, and their social and economic position, the patriarchal ideology that prevailed subordinated women to their male counterparts. Women were considered inferior because of their gender, and on occasion also because of their race and ethnicity. This patriarchal context informs the ways in which women engaged with the colonial institutions and the mediators that permitted the preservation of their narratives in various archives. In order to study women’s discursive production, we look at the ways in which women managed to leave their marks in the documentary corpus, transform their textual usage, and imprint their opinions about their societies. In addition, we look at these women as producers of written records either by their own hand or by means of ‘delegated writing’, which included dictations, collaborations, or rewritings of their oral renditions.19 In this context, we believe it is plausible to affirm that the person who initiated the production of a given text may in fact be recognized as the original source of the text – a feature associated with the idea of ‘authorship’ – and, furthermore, that women in colonial Latin America actively produced texts and documents that were recorded and kept in the archives.20 Scholarship on religious women’s writings has also revealed the crucial move to look at the apparently empty spaces left by absent – or rather invisible – non-religious women writers. Such scholarship identifies these spaces that were merely filled by a patriarchal and male-driven organization of knowledge.21 We contend that in those spaces, traditionally considered empty, we can in fact grasp women’s actions. Scholars can piece together those actions through careful assessment and analysis of many documents presently found in archives. We follow the productive methodology that Bianca Premo proposes in her study of eighteenth-century lawsuits initiated by women against husbands and lovers.22 In contrast to the way historians have traditionally studied lawsuits, Premo proposes that, rather than limit our investigation to the narrative itself, we should instead examine the historical events surrounding the discourses found in legal sources; more importantly, she suggests that scholars remain wary of equating the presence of women in legal dramas with evidence of women’s

8

Mónica Díaz and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli

agency.23 This methodological move allows for a more careful appreciation of women’s intentions in the resulting narratives of legal, inquisitorial, and epistolary processes by taking into consideration women’s engagement with colonial institutions and by identifying the context from which these narratives emerge. What’s more, this methodological framework allows scholars to better interrogate what exactly were the intended goals of these women’s actions. We can approach women’s will to actively participate in colonial life and to leave a visible trace of their thoughts and positions in their documents in terms of ‘agency’. Sherry Ortner states that agency functions as an indispensable theoretical category concerned with ‘conscious intentions and embodied habitus, between conscious motives and unexpected outcomes’.24 It is difficult to assert the level of consciousness of historical subjects, yet women’s actions and the written evidence we find in various archives allow us to interpret these writings as intentional actions that these women most likely undertook without their having a clear idea of the outcomes. Women’s agency, then, can be traced from their textual performances recorded and kept in archives, which can be also understood as mediated locus, or place of enunciation, from and in which women spoke and certainly expected to be heard.25 With this approach we aim to listen to the voices of women, observe their forms of self-representation in a given time and according to specific intentions, and study their oral and written performances in various textual repositories of both the colonial Latin American word and world.

Colonial women speak in the archive We have organized this book according to three main themes: ‘Censorship and the Body’, ‘Female Authority and Legal Discourse’, and ‘Private Lives and Public Opinions’. The section devoted to ‘Censorship and the Body’ comprises three chapters that engage with the authority that lay women employed through the embodiment of powerful religious experiences, in addition to the ways in which they translated these experiences into narratives. The presence of uncloistered women in the colonial religious milieu proved highly problematic for male officials, who therefore routinely censored the voices of these women. In ‘Divine aspirations: Beatas, writing, and the Inquisition in late seventeenthcentury Lima’, Stacey Schlau posits the Inquisition in Lima, Peru, as an important mechanism in the bureaucratic vigilance by which ecclesiastic and secular officials supervised daily life. One subset of the population that received a great deal of attention from the Holy Office were beatas, non-cloistered religious women, some whom were considered saints by their communities. One of these secular holy women, Jacinta de Montoya, a mestiza and wife of an indigenous beato, sponsored the publication of her husband’s biography after his death at the same time that she recorded her own visions in notebooks. In 1701, she denounced herself to the Inquisition as an ilusa (false visionary), and her writings were transcribed into the records of the Holy Office. Documents pertaining to Jacinta de Montoya’s trial constitute the basis of this essay, which examines

Introduction 9 relationships among women and their support of each other’s spiritual methods and goals. Rachel Spaulding’s ‘Covert Afro-Catholic agency’ analyzes inquisitorial records of Brazil’s first woman writer, African lay holy woman Rosa Maria Egipçíaca. In 1763, Rosa’s miraculous performances caused public scandal and caught the attention of the Portuguese Inquisition. In her testimony, mediated by Churchmen officials, she manipulated the Church space of enunciation to express herself. Spaulding contends that the beata used an overtly orthodox voice to belie a covert heterodox agenda. In addition, her performance revealed her agency and hybrid identity as an Afro-Catholic. Next, in ‘“In so celestial a language”’, Nancy van Deusen pays attention to female voices that are hidden within the words printed on the page and to women who intended to use their bodies as carriers of signs and meaning. Her work considers written descriptions of im/material matter recorded in two seventeenth-century texts in Peru about beatas: Luisa Melgarejo’s rendering of Rosa de Lima’s words after her death in 1617, and the consumption of Angela Carranza’s body parts as healing devices. In the first case, Melgarejo used her body as a text to the extent that she could ‘speak’ the voice of Rosa, which was then recorded in writing. In the case of Carranza, the Lima populace created a female text in the form of a list documenting Carranza’s discarded hair, nails, bodily fluids, and bits of clothing because of their holy and healing powers. Van Deusen argues that we can access Carranza’s hidden historicity by probing the ‘voices’ contained within the Inquisition’s records. The chapters in the second section, ‘Female Authority and Legal Discourse’, explore women’s powerful presence in political affairs, as well as their understanding of and participation in the legal system. Jeanne Gillespie’s ‘In the shadow of Coatlicue’s smile’ examines four different sources in which women’s voices have been recorded: a poetic Nahua text, accounts of the earliest Euro–American encounters on the island of Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haití), a Nahuatl–Spanish legal document about a cross-cultural land dispute, and a letter from a powerful Timucua female leader of La Florida to the Spanish crown. Each of these sources provides evidence of women’s involvement in public affairs even before European explorers encountered the Americas. Gillespie analyzes in detail such interactions by establishing a research model to unearth other examples of Amerindian women’s voices in colonial archives. Sara Vicuña Guengerich’s ‘Inca women under Spanish rule’ complements Gillespie’s work by seeking to uncover the voices of female eyewitnesses of the Spanish conquest in the Andes through the analysis of several probanzas de nobleza (proofs of nobility) and probanzas de méritos (proofs of merits) from 1538 to 1618. The numerous probanzas made by the indigenous and mestizo descendants of the Inca elite, and many noblewomen among them, reveal a wealth of information regarding their prominent social and economic roles during the emerging colonial state. Through her study, Vicuña Guengerich questions the transparency of these women’s discourses and focuses on the ways in which they denounce, resist, and reinterpret the Spanish conquest.

10

Mónica Díaz and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli

The last chapter of this section analyzes the elaboration of wills by sixteenthand seventeenth-century Afro-Peruvian women. In ‘The bonds of inheritance’ Karen Graubart focuses on Afro-Peruvian women’s fifteenth-century wills, which are housed in Lima’s archives, to understand how these women viewed the institution of slavery. Focusing on the decisions these women made by authoring a will at the time of their death, Graubart pieces together a complex web of relationships that highlight a disconnect that existed between freed and enslaved Afro-Peruvians. This chapter seeks to understand how these legal documents functioned as instruments to protect the personal, familial, and social interests as defined by the female testators. The last section of the volume, ‘Private Lives and Public Opinions’, includes two essays that study cases of women’s writings and their successful insertion, not only in the colonial archive, but also in the public affairs of their time. Yamile Silva’s ‘Letters from the Río de La Plata’ offers an initial reflection on the difficult task of locating women’s writings in archives due to insufficient cataloguing of women’s documents, which are classified for the most part as miscellaneous. Silva’s essay analyzes three seventeenth-century unpublished letters of women’s authorship, sent from Río de la Plata to Spain in order to petition for rewards for their services to the Crown. Together with their husbands, these women claimed to have been some of the first settlers and pacifiers of the Amerindians of the land, declaring that they endured great trials for their king. Silva describes these letters as ‘textual agencies’, thereby affirming how letter writing operated as an empowering practice that allowed their agents to assume positions as carriers of knowledge. The last essay of this collection, ‘Women’s voices in eighteenth-century Spanish American newspapers’ by Mariselle Meléndez, brings our attention to women’s cultural production during the Enlightenment. Newspapers in colonial Latin America have been studied as public media intended to inform and educate the population, but little has been discussed in terms of their importance as cultural artifacts vital for the emergence of a public voice. Meléndez studies newspaper articles published about (and by) women in four newspapers that serve as discursive tools allowing us to better understand women’s relationship to the local epistemologies and transnational exchanges that took place during the eighteenth century. These newspapers include Gaceta de México (1728–1742), Mercurio peruano (1791–1795), Papel periódico de la Ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá (1791–1797), and Gazeta de Guatemala (1797–1816). Newspapers engaged in a project to educate their citizens by focusing on key themes of the Enlightenment, including the ideas of progress, education, utility, and the well-being or pursuit of happiness of its citizens. Within this context, Meléndez explores how women contributed to those debates and how they perceived the role of the newspaper as an epistemological tool par excellence to make possible the dissemination of knowledge about their roles as productive members of their societies. Distinctive cases of women with public interests and public voices have been usually characterized as the efforts of individuals who told mainly – and sometimes exclusively – personal stories, as with the cases of the Spaniard Isabel de

Introduction

11

Becerra y Mendoza who participated in the colonization of the Río de la Plata, the Inca elite women who were key witnesses of Spanish–Indian land disputes in early colonial Peru, and the criollo women who shared their concerns and opinions about gender social expectations in the late eighteenth-century newspapers. The perceived personal and private nature of their narratives excludes them from consideration as authoritative voices in public and official matters, thus relegating their textual production to the category of ‘corpus’ (story) rather than ‘canon’ (literature, history).26 While ‘corpus’ extends to mean ‘body of works’ it also presupposes the understanding of a body of works that does not circulate and that is rarely read. At the same time, ‘corpus’ implies an inclusive and more flexible space of textual production. The studies carried out by specialists in colonial Latin American women writers illustrate the opening towards texts that are part of the corpus but not necessarily parts of the canon for various reasons. First, those women who have been recognized by the canon as literary authors have been described as exceptional. Second, recent studies of colonial women’s writings considered both texts that are part of the canon of literary studies and also texts that are part of what Mignolo defines as corpus. In fact, only until fairly recently have scholars regarded women’s textual production in the colonial archive as a serious object of literary and historical study, in contrast with the long-standing view which considers it as corpus. In light of this reflection, we propose here to look once again at the archive to find more evidence of this corpus of Latin American women’s negotiations with colonial institutions. Some chapters analyze women’s participation in the making of the early colonial and ecclesiastical archives. In this group we read about: Spanish and indigenous women who requested awards for their merits in the Spanish conquest (Gillespie); Inca elite women who provided eyewitness testimony to support claims to nobilty by their male relatives (Vicuña Guengerich); Afro-Peruvian women who wrote their wills using the services of notaries (Graubart); and beatas (lay holy women), whom church officials perceived as suspicious vessels of the devil and who were then subjected to interrogations by Inquisition officials in Peru (Schlau) and Brazil (Spaulding). Among these women, beatas merit particular attention since they interacted with the written word in different ways. In some cases, they wrote their experiences in notebooks that were later destroyed by the Inquisition, while in other cases they claimed to incarnate the voice of another holy woman that ought to be recorded (van Deusen). Other chapters analyze the private and public writings of colonial women in the form of personal letters (Silva) or articles in newspapers (Meléndez). While the former produced texts to be circulated only between them and their intended addressee, the second took advantage of the influx of Enlightenment notions that provided the possibility for female subjects to express their thoughts and opinions in their own hands, albeit through the mediation of the newspaper editor. While many of the traces that contain women’s experiences were deposited in archives, they remain on the periphery of Latin American canonical letters. The documents of this corpus showcase the performance of women of different

12

Mónica Díaz and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli

ethnicities, social classes, age, and civil statuses. Their performances posit these women as carriers of knowledge who put into writing their active presence in the conquest of the Americas, its subsequent colonization, and the ensuing societal transformations across three centuries. Diverse issues faced and addressed by women of colonial Latin America include social accommodation, ethnic pride, economic power, family concerns, religious beliefs, and expectations of female behavior and their transgressions, all of which set the groundwork to forge, confirm, or transform female identities in the colonial space. To achieve a glimpse at the representations of women, this volume considers the rhetorical as well as the semantic dimensions of the texts, examining the discursive genres that these women learned to use and the ways in which they used them for their desired outcomes. From these texts, we can begin to understand the relationships established among women, and how, despite their usual subaltern position vis-à-vis male agents of the written word, they were active participants and viable members of the emerging Latin American colonial society. While the women we study here may not have had sufficient access to the literacy tools and rhetorical devices used in the writing of legal, political, and ecclesiastical discourses that regulated their textual genres, they were nonetheless mindful of their importance in achieving their personal goals. In sum, we have prepared this volume in the hope that the readers will find a particular appeal in archival sources, in lesser-known documents, and in the processes involved in the circulation of knowledge and print culture between the 1500s and the late 1700s. Moreover, we also hope to contribute to the interest in searching and studying women’s writings housed in the many archives of the world where their voices remain to be uncovered.

Notes 1 Kathryn Burns focused her work on agency and writing in the colonial archives of Peru, reminding us that archives are historical artifacts and not transparent sources from where to learn facts about the past. Kathryn Burns, Into the Archive (Durham, NC, 2010), p. 15. See also Roberto González Echevarría, Myth and Archive (Durham, NC, 1998 [1990]); Natalie Davis, Fiction in the Archives (Stanford, 1987); Carol Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (New Brunswick, NJ, 2002), and Ann L. Stoler, Along the Archival Grain (Princeton, NJ: 2010). 2 Nupur Chaudhuri, Sherry Katz, and Mary Elizabeth Perry, Contesting Archives (Urbana, IL, 2010), p. xiv. 3 In her essay, Nancy van Deusen uses Roger Chartier’s study on history, language, forms and interpretations, to reflect on the concepts of voice and text. 4 For a complete study of the statutes of blood in the Americas see María Elena Martínez, Genealogical Fictions (Stanford, 2008). 5 Susan Socolow, The Women of Latin America (Cambridge, 2000), p. 9. 6 Karen Graubart has studied the production of legal texts by indigenous women of local elites in colonial Peru, where different expectations for women, depending on social status, become clear. See Karen Graubart, With Our Labor and Sweat (Stanford, 2007). 7 See Karen Vieira Powers, Women in the Crucible (Albuquerque, 2005). 8 Ibid., p. 21.

Introduction

13

9 In a similar process, immigrants from Asia also formed an important part of the population and many of them, particularly from the Philippines, were absorbed into Indian towns. 10 For a detailed study of beatas in colonial Cuzco see Kathryn Burns, ‘Andean Women in Religion: Beatas, “Decency” and the Defence of Honour in Colonial Cuzco’, in Nora E. Jaffary (ed.), Gender, Race and Religion in the Colonization of the Americas (Burlington, VT, 2007), pp. 81–91; and for colonial Lima, Nancy van Deusen, Between the Sacred and the Worldly (Stanford, 2001). 11 For Spain, see Elizabeth Lewis, Women Writers in the Spanish Enlightenment, (Burlington, VT, 2004). For Mexico and Peru, see Josefina Muriel, Cultura femenin a novo hispana (Mexico City, 1982), and Mariselle Meléndez, Deviant and Useful Citizens (Nashville, 2011) respectively. 12 Stephanie Merrim refers to the male-controlled world of learning as the ‘City of Knowledge’. Early Modern Women’s Writing and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Nashville, 1999), p. 194. 13 For women’s education and literacy in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain and Spanish America, see Teresa Howe, Education and Women in the Early Modern Hispanic World (Burlington, VT, 2008), and Anne Cruz and Rosilie Hernández (eds.), Women’s Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World, (Burlington, VT, 2011). 14 Martha Vicente and Luis Corteguera (eds), Women, Texts and Authority (Burlington, VT, 2003), p. 3. 15 Ibid., p. 1. 16 Jean Franco, Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico (New York, 1989). For conventual writing in Spain, see Elizabeth Lehfeld, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain (Burlington, VT, 2005). 17 Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau (eds), ‘Introduction’, Untold Sisters (Albuquerque, 1989), pp. 15–17. 18 Alison Weber,Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity (Princeton, NJ, 1996), p. 11. 19 ‘Delegated writing’, a term proposed by Armando Petrucci to refer to the representation of someone’s actions and intentions, was brought to our attention by Kathryn Burns’s Into the Archive. In her study of notarial records of colonial Cuzco, she uses the term to refer to the notary’s ventriloquism in the making of legal documents. Ibid., p. 126. 20 We draw on Michel Foucault’s ideas in ‘What is an Author?’ (New York, 1984), pp. 101–120. 21 In her ‘Introduction’ to Latin American Women’s Narrative, Sara Castro Klarén explains the impact of uncovering and studying such religious women’s writings as a key step to studying women’s agency in Latin America (Madrid, 2003), p. 22. 22 Bianca Premo, ‘Before the Law: Women’s Petitions in the Eighteenth Century Spanish Empire’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 53.2(2011): 263. Kathryn Burns investigates notarial documents of petitioners, many by women, in colonial Cuzco. Similarly to Premo, Burns concludes with the necessity to look at the context in which each case was examined. Burns, Into the Archive, pp. 124–147. 23 Premo cautions against mistakenly reading those narratives as ‘spontaneous words that express common people’s understandings of gender relations’. Ibid., pp. 265–266. 24 Sherry Ortner, ‘Specifying Agency: The Comaroffs and Their Critics’, Interventions 31.1(2001): 77. 25 We build on Margarita Zamora’s definition of ‘textual agency’. In Zamora’s words, the agency of a historically subordinated subject can be traced when an individual makes his or her voice heard through a text with the intention of provoking a reaction from his or her addressee. Margarita Zamora, ‘“If Cahonaboa learns to speak”’, Colonial Latin American Review 8.2(1999): 191. 26 Walter Mignolo, ‘Second Thoughts on Canon and Corpus’, Latin American Literary Review 20.40(1992): 66–69.

14

Mónica Díaz and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli

Bibliography Arenal, Electa, and Stacey Schlau (eds), Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works. Amanda Powell (trans.) (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010 [1989]). Burns, Kathryn, Colonial Habits. Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999). Burns, Kathryn, ‘Colonial Habits. Andean Women in Religion: Beatas, “Decency” and the Defence of Honour in Colonial Cuzco’, in Nora E. Jaffary (ed.), Gender, Race and Religion in the Colonization of the Americas (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 81–91. Burns, Kathryn, Colonial Habits: Into the Archive (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). Castro-Klarén, Sara, ‘Introduction: Feminism and Women’s Narrative: Thinking Common Limits/Links’, in S. Castro-Klarén (ed.), Latin American Women’s Narrative: Practices and Theoretical Perspectives (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2003), pp. 9–38. Chaudhuri, Nupur, Sherry Katz and Mary Elizabeth Perry (eds), Contesting Archives: Finding Women in the Sources (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010). Cruz, Anne and Rosilie Hernández (eds), Women’s Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011). Davis, Natalie Zemon, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987). Foucault, Michel, ‘What Is an Author?’, in P. Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984), pp. 101–120. Franco, Jean, Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989). González Echevarría, Roberto, Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American Narrative (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998 [1990]). Graubart, Karen, With Our Labor and Sweat: Indigenous Women and the Formation of Colonial Society in Peru, 1550–1700. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007). Howe, Teresa, Education and Women in the Early Modern Hispanic World (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008). Ibsen, Kristine, Women’s Spiritual Autobiography in Colonial Spanish America (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999). Kirk, Stephanie, Convent Life in Colonial Mexico: A Tale of Two Communities (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007). Jaffary, Nora (ed.), Gender, Race and Religion in the Colonization of the Americas (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007). Lavrin, Asunción (ed.), Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978). Lavrin, Asunción, Brides of Christ: Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). Lehfeld, Elizabeth, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005). Lewis, Elizabeth, Women Writers in the Spanish Enlightenment (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004). Martínez, María Elena, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). McKnight, Kathryn, The Mystic of Tunja. The Writings of Madre Castillo 1671–1742. (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997).

Introduction

15

Meléndez, Mariselle, Deviant and Useful Citizens. The Cultural Production of the Female Body in Eighteenth-Century Peru (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011). Merrim, Stephanie, Early Modern Women’s Writing and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999). Mignolo, Walter D., ‘Second Thoughts on Canon and Corpus’. Latin American Literary Review 20. 40(1992): 66–69. Muriel, Josefina, Conventos de monjas de la Nueva España (Mexico City: Editorial Santiago, 1946). Muriel, Josefina, Cultura femenin a Novo Hispana (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1982). Myers, Kathleen Ann, Word from New Spain. The Spiritual Autobiography of Mother María de San José (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1993). Myers, Kathleen Ann, ‘Crossing Boundaries: Defining the Field of Female Religious Writing in Colonial Latin America’. Colonial Latin American Review 9. 2(2000): 151–165. Myers, Kathleen Ann, Neither Saints Nor Sinners. Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Ortner, Sherry, ‘Specifying Agency: The Comaroffs and Their Critics’. Interventions 31. 1(2001): 76–84. Powers, Karen Vieira, Women in the Crucible of Conquest: The Gendered Genesis of Spanish American Society, 1500–1600 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005). Premo, Bianca, ‘Before the Law: Women’s Petitions in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish Empire’. Comparative Studies in Society and History 53. 2(2011): 261–289. Schlau, Stacey, Viva al siglo, muerta al mundo. Obras escogidas by María de San Alberto (New Orleans, LA: University Press of the South, 1998). Schlau, Stacey, Viva al siglo, muerta al mundo: Gendered Crime and Punishment. Women and/in the Hispanic Inquisitions (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2012). Schons, Dorothy, ‘Some Obscure Points in the Life of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’. Modern Philology 24. 2(1926): 141–162. Socolow, Susan, The Women of Colonial Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Steedman, Carolyn, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002). Stoler, Ann Laura, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). van Deusen, Nancy, Between the Sacred and the Worldly: The Institutional and Cultural Practice of Recogimiento in Colonial Lima (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001). Vicente, Marta and Luis R. Corteguera (eds), Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003). Weber, Alison, Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). Zamora, Margarita, ‘“If Cahonaboa Learns to Speak”. Amerindian Voices in the Discourse of Discovery’. Colonial Latin American Review 8. 2(1999): 191–205.

This page intentionally left blank

Part I

Censorship and the body

This page intentionally left blank

1

Divine aspirations Beatas, writing, and the Inquisition in late seventeenth-century Lima Stacey Schlau

In colonial Lima, known as the City of Kings, church and state worked together – in tandem and at times in tension – to ensure the economic, political, religious, and social functioning of the viceroyalty. Through its bureaucratic vigilance of daily life, the Inquisition functioned as one important mechanism for eliminating the peril that ecclesiastical officials perceived, that they were losing control of religious practice. As part of this concern, clerics throughout the early modern Spanish empire, most particularly in Lima, paid a great deal of attention to the proliferation of beatas, those lay holy women considered saintly by the denizens of the urban spaces of all classes, ordinary people and influential citizens.1 When, for instance, the Jesuit priest Juan Muñoz denounced Luisa Melgarejo de Soto, one of the most famous of the early seventeenth-century Lima beatas, to inquisitors in July 1622, he identified her as one of many false (female) visionaries in the city: ‘haviendo tanto numero de mugeres que muy desordenadas se suelen arrobar y aun alguna bolar en esta ciudad de Lima’ [there is such a large number of women who, creating a tumult, are accustomed to going into trances and some even fly in this city of Lima].2 In sum, nowhere was the preoccupation with eradicating holy laywomen’s ‘dangerous’ influence more prevalent than in this viceregal city, the political, economic, and cultural capital of Peru.

Beatas and spiritual advisors Women of varying classes and races established themselves as spiritual advisors and exemplars throughout the colonial period. At times, they interacted with each other. These semi-religious women of all races and classes often did not live and work in isolation, but rather availed themselves of networks that supported each other’s spiritual methods and goals. The most renowned beata of colonial Lima was, of course, Rosa de Santa María de Lima (1586–1617), who was canonized in 1671 as Saint Rose of Lima, America’s first patron saint, who participated in a spiritual community of primarily women.3 Her followers, who pursued similar interests, were not judged as leniently as she. Five of Rosa de Lima’s disciples were tried in 1624, just a few years after her death.4 In the latter part of the seventeenth century, the concern with lay holy women attracted even greater ecclesiastical attention. Among the many beatas active during that

20

Censorship and the body

period, Angela Carranza remains one of the most notorious.5 But she was far from alone; of the many, two others – Angelita de Olivitos and María Jacinta de Montoya – gained similar fame for their activities, including writing.6 We know of and can access aspects of their lives and experiences through the extant archive of records kept by the Inquisition, also known as the Holy Office or the Holy Tribunal. Focusing primarily on the case of María Jacinta de Montoya, in this essay I argue for a contextualized understanding of women’s efforts to re-create themselves as religious models for the urban community in which they lived and worked. During the seventeenth century, Lima underwent great economic, political, and social changes, all of which created social instability. Of a population of more or less 40,000 inhabitants, more than 60 percent were women,7 and of the men, approximately 4,000 were clerics. Of the 6,000 Spanish men who lived there, 2,500 were monks.8 Indians and Blacks were also a significant portion of the population: in 1696, for instance, 12,500 African slaves were brought to the city.9 Racial complexity deepened social struggles, especially between those of European origin and native peoples. Besides, since its beginnings, the city had attracted a large number of unemployed, who lived on the margins of law and society.10 Economic and social insecurity largely defined the zeitgeist of the period. The seventeenth century brought renewed emphasis on women’s religious role, especially in terms of reclusion. Approximately 16 percent of the Spanish women of Lima lived in convents in 1614; the female religious population increased greatly from 1625 to 1650, and then remained constant during the rest of the century, although the number of secular women and servants increased significantly after 1660. Between 1589 and 1691, approximately twenty-three religious and secular institutions for women were founded; in one hundred years, the number of convents increased from three to ten, and the number of beaterios (houses for lay holy women) increased from none to ten. In addition, refuge houses and hospitals for women also opened.11 The number of beatas was closely tied to the kind of religiosity propounded in sermons and through other means, such as biographies of those deemed exemplars, which emphasized virtuous behavior rather than miracles. In this historical period, when books that recounted saints’ lives were extremely popular and art inspired miracles and ecstasies, for women in particular saintly behavior required certain additional prescribed elements, among which were humility and obedience to (male) religious authority. Further, because rational knowledge was viewed as masculine, only divinely communicated or inspired information might accrue to the female of the species. Indeed, women were considered to be more susceptible to perceptual intuition.12 Yet the impulse to seek transcendence via spiritual autonomy could easily slide into perceived heresy. Inherent to the formulated doctrinal beliefs in women’s closer association than men with the world, the flesh, and the devil, was the generally accepted notion that they were incapable of using reason. Consequently, ilusa, literally ‘false visionary’, came to serve as a catch-all term

Beatas, writing, and the Inquisition

21

that described a wide range of transgressions related to women’s thoughts and behaviors. One of its common features derived from the paradox of the ecstatic’s search for a sense of self, her desire for independence and individuality, while at the same time experiencing intimate connection with divine and sacred figures. The most acceptable model of spirituality necessitated self-knowledge through prayer and imitation of Christ.13 Those considered extraordinarily pious became the heroes of the moment. Sometimes they gained as followers such fervent believers that church officials, considering certain folk idols dangerous, exerted great effort to eliminate their cults. Given societal unrest and the religious climate, however, any attempt to suppress popular devotion had limited success. While beatas constituted an integral component of the collective religious temperament of seventeenth-century colonial Spanish America, they needed to balance the expression of trances and ecstasies with the religious virtues deemed appropriate for the period.14 Correct behavior counted far more than miracles.15 Ecclesiastical determination of false religiosity was based on theological tracts such as Diego Pérez de Valdivia’s Aviso de gente recogida (Advice to the Recollect, 1585) and Miguel Godínez’s Practica de la theologia mystica (The Practice of Mystical Theology, 1682). Nora Jaffary notes that qualificators based their decisions on two explicit standards cited by these authors: neither a vision that left a soul ‘in a state of agitation or disobedience’ nor one that contradicted doctrine could be considered a true mystical experience.16 Because of the hegemonic gendering of expression, for women especially the act of writing itself intensified the fear of being considered heterodox. Even with the imprimatur of ecclesiastical authorities such as confessors, assertions in notebooks, journals, and accounts of spiritual experiences could become suspect if the wrong person read them. There were no guarantees of orthodoxy; definitions shifted with time, place, and personnel. One could attempt to defend, justify, explain, rationalize, or reinterpret declarations made with ink on parchment (and most did), but one could hardly deny them. The Tribunal employed clergymen considered experts in doctrine (qualificators) to judge the acceptability of words deemed possibly suspicious; these officials too, influenced by the underlying ideological constraints of their society, utilized gendered criteria in their pronouncements, even if they did so unconsciously.

Beatas under the ecclesiastical scrutiny When a text was deemed contrary to doctrine, the most frequent ritualized response of the Holy Office was to burn the document in question. Part of the pedagogical intent of the institution, the use of the spectacle of fire reinforced the notion that the Church was all-powerful, able to return wayward sheep to the fold and stamp out all manifestations of ‘the Devil’.17 Both the burning of human bodies (or effigies of deceased or escaped persons) and the incineration of books, notebooks, pamphlets, and other writing became visual teaching aids. When the most notorious beata in Lima during the last years of the seventeenth century, Angela Carranza, was brought to trial in 1694, inquisitorial

22

Censorship and the body

officials collected and destroyed hundreds of her notebooks. These included not only accounts of her visionary life, but also treatises defending the Immaculate Conception.18 The woman who had for decades been a sought-after spiritual exemplar became a prisoner who was so ostracized by the public that after her sentencing she had to be moved to her permanent place of reclusion at night, to prevent potential violence against her.19 Burning the notebooks enhanced the visual image of her downfall and reinforced the vision of her subsequent reconciliation to the Church, completed with her abjuration and reclusion. Among Angela Carranza’s recorded visions was one in which she affirmed that she had seen a friend in heaven, accompanied by Jesus, angels, and many souls who had been in purgatory. The subject of this revelation, the extremely popular siervo de Dios (servant of God) Nicolás Ayllón, alias Nicolás de Dios (d. 1677), indigenous tailor and neighborhood saint, had gained such acclaim that after his death, the Jesuit Bernardo Sartolo authored a biography, then published the vida (Life) in Madrid, in an attempt to motivate the start of a process to beatify the Indian holy man. María Jacinta de Montoya, alias María Jacinta de la Santísima Trinidad, a mestiza and Ayllón’s wife, companion, and helpmate, aided the endeavor.20 The Holy Office denounced his cult and gathered all copies of the book, in order to burn them, primarily because it contained Carranza’s vision.21 This story demonstrates how networks of secular people considered extraordinarily pious – almost always anchored by women – functioned to support each other’s activities and exemplarity. The extant remnants of María Jacinta de Montoya’s life and writings, along with the actions and motivations that they reflect, exemplify the yearning for spiritual transcendence so prevalent in late seventeenth-century Lima. Set against the backdrop of a network of supporters from a range of economic, ethnic, religious, and social circumstances, her case offers a useful perspective on how and why the colonial archive was produced. Regarding María Jacinta de Montoya, the Church looked askance at her actions, especially or at least partly because of her status as Nicolás Ayllón’s companion and helpmate. Indeed, many questions in her interrogation concerned their marriage, the declarations she had made regarding his visionary life, and the written account of his saintliness, to which she had contributed. Inquisitors’ concern with nipping in the bud his apparently still-active cult is obvious in the number and kind of questions posed to his widow. Their interest in removing any sign of his exemplarity becomes clearer as the hearings continue. The narratives related to his ‘miracles’ and ‘saintliness’ needed to be erased from the page but also from ordinary people’s consciousness; Montoya’s first of all. Thus, her notebooks and other writings gained prominence partly because of her husband’s post-mortem potential impact on the spirituality of his neighbors. Factional church politics played an important role in defining Ayllón’s saintliness after his death. His popularity as a spiritual exemplar (the title, ‘siervo de Dios’ indicated earned merit, at least in the popular imagination) was widespread, across races and classes. Both civil and religious authorities successfully

Beatas, writing, and the Inquisition

23

pressured the Vatican to open a proceeding for his canonization. The Lima city council requested that the Spanish king support the endeavor, because ‘because his elevation to sainthood was expected to produce the total extirpation of the superstitious paganism that persisted among the Andeans’.22 Inquisitional officials in Lima, however, successfully derailed the effort, at least partly because of his association with Angela Carranza. Announcement that the process was suspended came in 1703, although in 1706 some Peruvians demanded its continuation; the Protector of the Indians presented that petition in 1709.23 But the case never proceeded further. Ayllón’s (and Montoya’s) ethnic profile must have played a role in ecclesiastical disquiet about their religious practices: he was indigenous and she, mestiza.24 Despite their concerns, however, church and secular officials did promulgate cults of non-white urban saints with specific characteristics. Francisco de Avila, secular priest and mestizo, for instance, wrote a vida (spiritual autobiography) of a mulata Franciscan tertiary, Estefanía de Joseph, at the request of the Franciscan chronicler Diego de Córdova y Salinas, in which he emphasized her humility and ability to influence her social superiors. Córdova revised the manuscript so that she became ‘a template of nonwhite holiness for the castas of the city’.25 She and another holy woman whose biography appears in the chronicle, Isabel Cano, were good models for blacks, urban Indians, and castas for several reasons. They helped the sick, assumed poverty of dress, practiced penance constantly, and displayed extreme humility. In addition, they participated actively in the sacraments and liturgical activities of the church, and they spent much of their time working under the auspices of church institutions.26 María Jacinta de Montoya, on the other hand, worked fairly autonomously, and in a position of leadership. After her husband’s death, she continued to create and re-create active religious community among ordinary people. Primarily, she continued the work begun with Ayllón, running a religious house for young girls. She imposed and enforced as much as possible strict rules of conduct, based on her understanding of readings and the transmission of popular religious knowledge. She had, for instance, heard that Saint Teresa of Avila’s Constitution created for the reformed Carmelites prohibited any woman or girl who had lived in another convent to be admitted to hers, a misunderstanding of the Carmelite founder’s rules and intent that led to her refusing such applicants (fol. 15v). Also, one of the charges in the trial record involved the treatment of her spiritual daughters, which, according to the archbishop, was unnecessarily harsh. Still, Montoya aspired to recognition as a holy person in her own right (not simply as her husband’s widow). She recorded those aspirations in writing, and thereby became the author of her own spiritual life, including visions. In numerous notebooks, she attempted to provide an account of the inner workings of her religiosity. Nevertheless, in 1701, at her confessor’s urging, she denounced herself to the Inquisition as an ilusa (false visionary).

24

Censorship and the body

As part of the investigation, the Holy Office confiscated and subsequently destroyed her writings. Some excerpts were transcribed into the trial record. They include: two notebooks recounting spiritual and mystic episodes, a selfdenunciation, and a few miscellaneous statements. These fragmentary texts are mediated, insofar as they were copied by ecclesiastic secretaries into the records of the Holy Office.27 Since the transcriptions cannot be compared to the originals, their accuracy cannot be determined. While we know that ecclesiastical secretaries were charged with faithful copying, mistakes were inevitable. Of course, the process of selection of excerpts itself constituted a form of editing that at least some of the time distorted the original meaning. Nevertheless, they reflect in significant ways the means Montoya used to assert her desire to be known as a spiritual exemplar, despite her encounter with the Tribunal. Hers was a common ambition in the time and place in which she lived, when religious exemplarity represented an opportunity for success especially for those of the lower classes and ‘othered’ ethnicities and women. Documents pertaining to Jacinta de Montoya’s trial constitute an archive not only of (mediated) texts she authored, but also of the responses from those who commanded the machinery of Church and state, including the list of charges and her responses to them, as well as another document in which the archbishop provides some commentaries about those of her notebooks that he had ordered confiscated and then read. Together they offer a great deal of information about how the colonial regime functioned, as well as how ordinary people, especially women, maneuvered within the system in order to make their way through life. At issue throughout the case record is the act of writing itself: the self-accused defendant addressed this concern several times. That Tribunal functionaries chose to include these passages indicates their importance. An extract from her notebook, for instance, affirmed that she asked God prevent her to writing ‘cosa que fu[e]se para daño mío’ (anything that might harm me); he answered, ‘no temas que yo lo dispongo assi’ [3 r] (don’t worry, I will make it so). It is as though Montoya is patently aware of the dangers of putting pen to page, of allowing spontaneous eruptions of thought and feeling to be given permanency, as well as of the need to assert the divinity’s approval and protection. The trope of apparently avoiding responsibility for authorship, of shifting author-ity, recurs in early modern religious women’s writing, even in those judged orthodox, such as Saint Teresa of Avila.28 A common rhetorical strategy, it evinces the possibility of articulation at the same time that it reassures readers of the writer’s adherence to gendered norms of obedience. One of the key documents in the Montoya trial record is a self-denunciation. This text belongs to a sub-genre of the exhaustive spiritual examination required of the penitent in the confessional during the early modern period, with one major difference: the latter was carried out through spoken language. Entailing a calculated risk, the self-denunciation might be seen to pre-empt the charge of a possible transgression, thus alleviating its force and consequently the punishment, should there be one. While seeming to invite transparent honesty and a rigorous, systematic recounting of the individual’s thoughts, feelings, and

Beatas, writing, and the Inquisition

25

behaviors, the self-denunciation also lent itself to a rhetoric of self-justification. The author sought to gain approval and the stamp of orthodoxy from her ecclesiastical readers/judges at the same time that she needed to provide a detailed reckoning of the state of her religious consciousness. The two conflicting goals of apparent sincerity and self-justification meant that the narrator/ author needed to maintain a delicate balance of attributing cause and effect. The voice of the speaker/writer demanded a level of authority about one’s spiritual state that lent authenticity to the narrative at the same time that deference of tone and attitude to one’s superiors in the Church (confessors, archbishop, and inquisitional judges especially) remained compulsory. In the self-denunciation, Montoya asserted that responsibility for her writing belongs to her confessors. She had begun writing a notebook, titled ‘God’s Mercies’, upon being ordered to do so by one. After that confessor showed the notebook to another priest, he insisted that she continue writing (fol. 7r); subsequently, several other priests read (and, by implication, approved) the recording of her visionary life (fol. 10r). Later, a new (Jesuit) confessor, Juan Yañez, commanded her to begin a new notebook as well. But when Angela Carranza’s writings were confiscated by the Holy Office, Montoya became concerned, and sought reassurance as to her own orthodoxy: [T]emiendo no fuese engañada embie a llamar a mi padre Juan Yañez y le dije que esos escritos lo quería quemar que pudiera ser que yo hubiese escrito alguna cosa de yerro y su Reverendisma me los pidio y despues de algunos días me los bolvio y me dijo los guardase que no tenia que temer, y con esto so segue y se los entregue a mi amada compañera Gregoria María que ya es difunta y le dije lo que me avia dicho el padre y ella los guardo y no los vimos asta que los embio a pedir el señor Arzobispo mi Padre y Prelado. (fols 9v–10r) [[F]earing that I was deceived, I sent for my Father Juan Yañez and told him that I wanted to burn those writings, because it was possible that I had written something [doctrinally] incorrect. The Reverend Father asked for them and a few days later, returned them to me, saying that I should put them away, that there was nothing to fear, and so I calmed down. And I gave them to my beloved companion Gregoria María, who is now deceased, and told her what the Father had told me and she put them away and we did not see them again until the Archbishop, my Father and Prelate, asked for them.] In contrast, only her confessors have read the second notebook, whose content included what was happening ‘en lo interior de mi alma’ (fol. 10r) [inside my soul]. But then, she cut out some blank pages of a book and began to write a third notebook – without authorization. Montoya recognizes her error: ‘[E]n esto hize muy mal y en dicho quaderno empese a sentar algunas cosas que me

26

Censorship and the body

pasaban de sueños y visiones y otras cossas, y tanbien esta en este quaderno mi testamento…’ (fol. 10r) [[I]n that I acted very badly; in that notebook I began to put things that were happening to me in dreams and visions and other things, and my last will and testament is also in that notebook …]. The renewed activity of writing led to the beginning of the end; the archbishop examined her writing and a priest came several times to conduct a spiritual examination. On November 21, 1701, she received a letter saying that ‘estaba ilusa y engañada en mis revelaciones, sueños y hablas interiores y escritos y que me delatase al Santo Tribunal’ (fol. 11r) [I was a false visionary and deceived in my revelations, dreams, and interior speeches and writings, so I should denounce myself to the Holy Office]. She followed orders – in writing, because her confessor prohibited her from leaving home. Written correspondence substituted for face-to-face confrontation. Montoya positioned herself as an obedient daughter of the Church, expressing a fervent desire to present herself to the inquisitional judges, but unable to countermand direct orders to maintain seclusion. Further, her confessor had not responded to the memorial she sent him, so that she lacked spiritual guidance. Consequently, she requested another confessor of the archbishop (through an intermediary): ‘era necesario que yo tuviese quien guiase mi alma’ (fol. 12r) [it was necessary that I have someone to guide my soul]. She concluded this section by affirming that she has articulated a desire to submit and obey: ‘para que Vuestras Hmas se sirban de conoser la voluntad con que e estado de presentarme en este Santo Tribunal y haser esta mi denunsiasion’ (fol. 12r) [so that Your Graces may know the desire I have had to present myself before this Holy Office, to denounce myself]. Acquiescing to church dictates, she rhetorically bows before confessors, archbishop, and inquisitional officials, all deemed necessary spiritual advisors. Thereupon ensues Montoya’s response to a brief version of the sixteen charges against her. Using writing to defend her writing, she genders the defense with claims of women’s weakness of intellect and will. In answer to the first charge, for instance, she notes that not only does her memory not serve her well, but also, ‘[S]eria alguna grande tentasion de que me deje llevar como miserable mujer’ (fol. 13r) [[I]t would be a great temptation to allow myself to lose control, as a miserable woman]. To the second charge, she responds that because of her pride, ‘me devi de meter a letrada siendo una pobre ormiga’ (fol. 13r) [I must have seen myself as an educated person, instead of the poor ant that I am]. Lowest of the low, in other words, her pride deceived her into thinking that she was important. Now she knows better. It is the conversion, the submission to hegemonic norms, the act of contrition that counts. The third charge transcribes a passage from her notebook that demonstrated Montoya’s absolute belief in her own spiritual exemplarity, as well as the special place she held in God’s pantheon: Postrada en tierra y pegado mi rostro con el suelo pedia a Dios que no permitiese que yo escriviese cosas que fuese para daño mio sino para gloria

Beatas, writing, and the Inquisition

27

suya; y entendi que me desia el Señor no temas que yo lo dispongo asi, y lo que escrivieres es mio y de todo sere servido. (fol. 13v) [Prostrated on the ground and with my face against the floor I would beg God to ensure that I not write anything that would hurt me but rather serve His glory; and I understood that He said to me, ‘Do not worry, for I shall make that happen, and whatever you write is mine and in everything I will be served.’] The double meaning behind daño mio – that her writing be judged orthodox and therefore not hurt her, and that her writing not be harmful – is hard to miss. Nevertheless, the visual impact of the described acts of contrition and humility cannot outweigh the sense of pride emanating from the tale of the divinity’s willingness to claim her words as his. In responding to this accusation, Montoya notes that she used to prostrate herself, ‘temerosa de coger la pluma para escrivir las misericordias que yo entendia hasia Dios a mi alma’ (fol. 13v) [afraid of taking up the pen to write down the mercies that I understood that God performed in my soul]. Montoya attempts to prove extremely pious behavior, which also serves as the reason for having written erroneous declarations. She has failed, she affirms in answer to the thirteenth charge, because: ‘[D]e los ayunos y penitencias que yo hasia en aquellos tiempos, tendria la cavesa desvanecida, y esta seria la causa de haver escrito en los quadernos esta razones’ (15v) [[M]y mind must have been confused from the fasts and penitence that I carried out at that time, and this must have been the cause of writing these declarations in the notebooks]. With this assertion, she cannot lose, either ideologically or rhetorically, since both her obedience and asceticism conform to the orthodox model of conduct. In an era in which excessive emphasis on life outside of the Church was seen as negative except insofar as it offered active proof of piety as defined by clerics, Montoya would likely have assumed that her assurances of conforming to the practices of fasting and penitence would help her case. The performance of suffering, especially deprivation of the material body, was enacted through voluntary self-denial of food, sleep, personal vanity, and all forms of bodily comfort, in combination with obedience to dogma and priests, as well as completing external rituals such as attending mass. The defendant admits to another error, one that reflects her friendship and religious connection with Angela Carranza. She confesses that she had told a confessor, Don Dionisio, that a revelation in her notebook was hers, when it really belonged to Angela [Carranza] (fol. 19v). Further, she transcribed several of Carranza’s visions into her notebooks, but, she hastened to assure the judges, not subsequent to her friend’s arrest by the Tribunal (fol. 22v). The plagiarism and borrowing of visionary life revealed here speak to the close connection between the two women. Operating at the same time in the same place, in a city notorious for its religious atmosphere, they not only knew of each other,

28

Censorship and the body

but, as we have seen, became something more than acquaintances. Even more importantly, there is evidence of mutual support. At the very least, Montoya makes it clear in her writing that she and Carranza had maintained a friendship, a brave stance considering the latter’s fate. Montoya’s self-denunciation continues with a series of admissions having to do with exaggeration. She notes, for example, that she embroidered descriptions (fol. 20r); when recounting a miracle, ‘mi culpa es el ponderarlo y añadir razones para adornar el dicho o hechocomo lo hize en el quaderno y escritos que tiene el Excelentísimo Arzobispo mi Prelado’ (fols 19v–20r) [I am guilty of thinking about it and adding statements that embellish what is said or done, as I did in the notebook and the documents that His Excellency the Archbishop, my prelate, has]. Although the baroque elaboration of the theme of saintliness corresponds precisely to the intent to attribute supernatural powers to her husband – and by extension to herself – this admission casts into doubt the veracity of the assertions of innocence as well as her legitimacy as a spiritual figure. Continuing, she declares that she had previously written that Nicolás Ayllón had done some planting in the garden in name of the Holy Trinity and that he had cured those who were ill. In the self-denunciation, she admits to not having seen this personally, but having based the story on hearsay. Also, she admits to having had family pride because she affirmed that Ayllón was ‘ilustrado desde niño’ (fol. 21 r) [wise from childhood] and her son, Bonifacio, ‘resplandesia como un lusero entre las estrellas’ (fol. 21r) [shone as brightly as Venus among the stars] – a manifestation of maternal immodesty. Indeed, she declared, having shared her notebooks reflected her ‘amor propio y Banagloria’ (fol. 24r) [self-love and vanity]. Because her confessor informed her that other writings contain errors, in this text she assures her readers that she remains ready to be ‘corregida y enseñada’ (fol. 24r) [corrected and taught], thereby opening herself to possible redemption. Montoya’s spirituality manifested primarily through inner visions, corporeal or imaginative (fol. 30v), affirming her exemplarity and role as a direct conduit to divine providence.29 The revelations offered warnings, often in the form of diabolical figures, or they provide a visual space for ecstasy. Two visions involving devils recur in the various documents. Charge 15 refers to folio 8 of her notebook, in which she had written that she saw a woman who had gone astray after ten virtuous years, surrounded by demons. Further, she argued, her confessor had deceived her. The woman’s face was so flushed and ugly that Montoya took pity on her. She summed up: ‘Es grande molestia vivir con un alma que no teme a Dios’ (fol. 16r) [It is very difficult to live with a soul that does not fear God]. But, she hastened to add, ‘Conozco que obre mal en aver escrito lo referido, y lo que digo de que si que la rodeaban demonios, respondo que no lo vi con los ojos corporales, sino que me paresio aca interiormente y creo que fue ilusión’ (fol. 16r) [I know I behaved incorrectly in writing this down, and what I say about her having been surrounded by devils. I answer that I did not see it with my bodily eyes, but it seemed to me, within, and I think it was a false vision].

Beatas, writing, and the Inquisition

29

At times, Montoya places herself in the category of ilusa. After a lengthy review of her visionary life, shaped by the written interrogation to which she responds point by point, she asserts that her apparently divine revelations must be rejected: ‘[M]e tengo por ilusa en todas las visiones y revelaciones y hablas interiores que se contienen en todos mis papeles que por mi ignoransia y miseria me paresieron sobrenaturales y de buen espiritu’ (fol. 21v) [I judge myself an ilusa for all the visions and revelations and interior speech recorded in my papers, which because of my ignorance and misery appeared to me to be supernatural and sacrosanct]. The self-denunciation document ends, however, with Montoya’s request that her papers be returned (fol. 24r) – a clear sign that she continued to see the written record of her spiritual life as important and truthful, despite protestations to the contrary, self-accusations, and rhetoric of humility. A culture of vigilance required enacting orthodoxy on the most mundane, quotidian level. Marginalization and regulation of conduct defined as untoward might have severe consequences. On the other hand, for many it was clearly worth the risk. In Montoya’s case, affirmations of knowledge of what constitutes orthodox behavior accompany admissions of guilt. She infers an understanding of the elements of good conduct (‘conocer el bien’), which include hearing mass, listening to priests, and adoring the Holy Sacrament, as well as fasting and penitences. Inappropriate comportment, on the other hand, consists of ‘[C]ojer alguna cosa escondida, mentir y hablar algunas palabras como suelen los niños en esta edad y otras cosas a este modo’ (fol. 19r) [[To] hold onto something hidden, lying, and saying some words that children tend to at this age, and other such things]. The emphasis on behavior reflects the post-Tridentine concern with externals that marked a ‘good’ Catholic in the Hispanic world. Both spoken and written words, gestures, and actions defined one’s acceptability in the Church. Non-conformity might be deemed as having pacts with the devil. In the Response, answering the sixteenth charge against her, Montoya notes that she has seen demons, in the form of monkeys and spider monkeys, attempting to grab her (fol. 16r). The Devil himself asserted, ‘a su pesar le e de arrancar y me dio a conocer que en aquella ventana se significaba esta alma’ (fol. 16r) [in spite of her I will pull her out and he let me know that the window was my soul]. Indeed, elsewhere she notes that the archbishop told her that ‘estaba ilusa y engañada … efectos de estimacion propia y vanagloria’ (fol. 31r) [she was a false visionary, deceived … the effect of self-aggrandizement and vanity]. The same official wrote a commentary critiquing Montoya’s writing. In that document, he challenged her authority, as well as her penchant for judging herself to be an exemplar and expert in religious behavior. A rhetoric of inadequacy and humility contradicts the sense of special dispensation that Montoya appears to enjoy at times. Throughout the trial record, a baroque array of tropes of suggestive imagery enacts her transformation from the lowest of the low to the specially favored by God: the stated self-deprecation becomes self-praise. Thus, Montoya declares at one point, in a proposition judged heretical by the Tribunal:

30

Censorship and the body Considerandome un tronquillo sin provecho para cosas desta vida vil e inutil solo bueno para el fuego; y estando assi humillada, y aniquilada en la divina presencia; conosi que su Magestad mandava que se levantase del suelo aquel tronquillo y que teniendole en sus manos lo convertia en una joia muy rica de oro y que luego la iba su Magestad esmaltando con presiosisimas piedras y que se la ponia en el pecho como el tuson de el Rey, y conosi claro que me deçia, ves hija, como puedo yo haser mucho desta pajuela y tronco inutil que eres tu en ti y por ti hare yo otras tales que se conoscan son mias, y por ellas sere glorificado. (fols 35r–35v) [I considered myself an unproven log, not good for anything in this awful and useless life and only good for the fire. And on my knees in prayer, drowning in the divine presence, I knew that His Majesty ordered that the log rise from the floor and holding it in His hands He transformed it into a fine piece of gold jewelry that He then began enameling with precious stones. He put it on his chest like the king’s shield. And I clearly heard Him say to me, ‘You see, child, how I can make something of this toothpick and useless log that you are in you and for you I will make other similar ones that will be known as mine, and through them I will be glorified’.]

The imagery in this paragraph recalls daily life, the need for fuel to cook with and to keep warm. Its very homeliness drives home the point that not only can God facilitate a conversion of such monumental proportions – from firewood to precious gold jewelry – but that the ecstatic herself is the one transformed by God’s will, designated explicitly as belonging to him. At once precious and in proximity to the divine presence, then, Montoya overcomes her humble origins and lowly place in the rigid class structure that was her expected fate, to accept the riches that her heavenly interlocutor bestows on the neighborhood saint. In attributing her exemplarity to God, she no doubt hopes to avoid the sin of pride – an unsuccessful strategy, as she would later learn. A bit later, she notes that although she considers herself an earthworm, God again performs an act of transformation that moves her from literally below the surface of the earth to his side, presumably in heaven: Considerandome un gusanillo de la tierra me paresio que mandava el Señor que le presentasen aquel guzanillo, y vi y conosi que lo ponian en una salvilla de oro, y se lo presentaban al Señor, y su Magestad le tomaba, y asi que llego a sus manos, se conviritio en una perla persiossossima [sic] y se la ponia el Señor en el pecho, y la manifestaba a todos los bienaventurados, y entendi que su Magestad me desia con mucho cariño, hija mia yo te anido? Y enrriquesere de mis bienes y seras poderosa para conmigo y todo el mundo pondra a tus pies y seras dueño de todas mis cossas. (fol. 35v)

Beatas, writing, and the Inquisition

31

[Considering myself a little earthworm, it seemed to me that God ordered that the earthworm be introduced to Him, and I saw and knew that it was put in a gold basin, and presented to Him. And His Majesty took it, and as soon as it reached his hands, it was transformed into a most precious pearl. God put it on his chest, and showed it to all the blessed people, and I heard His Majesty tell me affectionately, My daughter, should I make you a nest? And I will enrich [you] with all my possessions and you will be powerful with me and everyone will put themselves at your feet and you will have whatever I own.] Of course the trope of the worm derives from Saint Teresa of Avila, who herself, as Alison Weber so brilliantly demonstrated, refashioned an old motif into a personal expression of self-deprecation that hid self-assertion.30 Here, its extraordinary efficacy in bettering the environment hides like a palimpsest in the wealth that she receives from the godhead. The use of precious metals and stones literally embellishes the narrative, providing a visually evocative scenario with which to understand the speaker’s exemplarity. Similarly to several other visionary women of her time and place, in Montoya’s visions, Jesus calls her mother (fol. 32r). Other signs of her special relationship with divine figures are catalogued and answered: for instance, when she was three years old, she dreams that Jesus is saying mass (fol. 33r); God makes her a promise (fol. 33r); and during an intellectual vision, she ‘sees’ an acquaintance known as a saint after her death. In addition, God gives instructions about how to treat her charges in the retreat house: es muy de mi este corto rebaño, y assi las as de mirar y cuidar como a hijas y suplir sus faltas como madre y las as de / amar como a hermanas, y las as de corregir y governar como prelada y enseñar como maestro y celar con vigilansia como pastor. (fols 34v–35r) [This small herd is very much mine, and so you should look after and take care of them like daughters and correct their mistakes as a mother would and love them like sisters, and you should correct and govern as a prelate and teach as a teacher and watch over them like a shepherd.] Again and again, especially Jesus, but also his mother and God, reiterate Montoya’s special place in the pantheon of holy figures. Not, of course, a divinity, but clearly favored by the most sacred of godly personages, she maintains what in the twenty-first century might be called a strong sense of self. In the passage above, for instance, she is not simply a mother and sister, but also a leader inflected with masculinity. The declaration attributed to God, reasserting Montoya’s role as prelate and teacher, may, however, have overstepped the boundaries of acceptable utterance.

32

Censorship and the body

The desire for autonomy extends to public speaking. In another place in the text, she alludes to the Church’s prohibition against women preaching, a difficulty that she surmounts through writing: Ofresioseme que ya que no podia predicar, ni avisar a los mortales sus daños escriviese una carta en un pliego de papel con algunas razones que el Señor me dicto y assi lo hize, y con mucho secreto se pusieron en lo mas publico de la plaza, y de esto y de todo no se hizo casso … (fol. 35r) [It came to me that since I could not preach, nor warn others about their sins, I should write a letter on a piece of paper with some thoughts that the Lord dictated to me and so I did. And in great secret, they were placed in the most public part of the plaza, and this and everything was ignored …] Such a bold statement, implicitly critiquing not being permitted to preach must have caused controversy. The matter-of-fact declaration that she has found another way to express herself, in writing, must have occasioned great consternation among religious officials. Montoya finds other ways to comment on the society in which she lives. For instance, among the false propositions of which she is accused, one pertains to excessive materialism: ‘Tantos pecados y tiranias los causa la insaciable codisia y avarisia que esta apoderada de los / corazones de todos los mas deste reyno; y assi como los yndios an pagado su pecado de Idolatria que tanto siglos tubieron y embio Dios a los españoles para su castigo’ [fols 33v–34r] [So many sins and such tyranny is caused by the insatiable greed and stinginess that governs the hears of most in this country; and thus, as the Indians have paid for their sin of idolatry, the beliefs they held for so many centuries, with God’s having sent the Spaniards to cause their suffering]. Daringly, Montoya implies a parallel between indigenous sin (and the Spaniards’ brutality as an example of their punishment) and colonial urban sins of acquisition and possession, to be punished in a like manner. The notion of the Spanish conquest as a punishment is strikingly charged: although Christianity is assumed to be the best, the only religion, the brutality of the conquest – predestined though it is – surfaces. Her judgment reflects an innate awareness, even if unconscious, of the dynamics of the encounter between the two worlds. Starkly bold, the declaration highlights an implied warning to the powerful, who could not have been pleased that a humble mestiza scolded and threatened them with divine retribution. The archbishop remarks numerous times on María Jacinta de Montoya’s excessive pride and repeated distortions of the truth. He also criticizes her for living too public a life, for too harshly disciplining the beatas in her retreat house, and for having false visions (probably caused by fasting). Summing up, he points to three key moments of her life: (1) as a child, her visions reflected an imbalance of humors, leading to the exercise of too much imagination (and thinking the visions were real); (2) as a penitent, she

Beatas, writing, and the Inquisition

33

fasted too often, leading to faintness and a false belief in the veracity of her visions; and (3) currently: [C]omo se colige de sus escritos es de entendimiento cavesudo, tenax y profiado, y que se agrada mucho de lo que dise, piensa e imagina y de sujetos de esta calidad advierten los doctores esclesiasticos y misticos se deve tener mucha sospecha si dixeren tener revelasiones, porque los favores y regalos de Nuestro Señor no se hisieron para naturales duros deseos y porfiados, sino para los rendidos, blandos, dociles, obedientes, y de corason humildes. (fol. 46v) [[A]s may be seen in her writings, she is stubborn, tenacious, and obstinate, and well–pleased with what she says, thinks, and imagines. And church doctors and mystics warn of such people, saying one should be very suspicious of those who say they have revelations, because Our Lord’s favors and gifts were not granted to those of a nature that has strong desires and is stubborn, but rather for those who are submissive, soft, docile, obedient, and of humble heart.] The summary quoted above serves well to illustrate the remarkably gendered dominant ideology and perspective on beatas in colonial Lima. Key to understanding her transgression in the archbishop’s eyes is his perception that she violates hierarchy, gender role expectations, and the discursive space of theology and mysticism. As we have seen, María Jacinta de Montoya takes up the challenge, although she is careful to try to remain within established perimeters of acceptable behavior for her class, gender, and race. Clearly, those with the most power in the ecclesiastical hierarchy wished for a pliant population, ready to subsume its desires to those of the Church.

Conclusion The phenomenon of beatas limeñas, examined along with hegemonic responses to their words and works, becomes a lens through which to view in a more complex manner women’s cultural production in the colonies. By studying these cases, we may gain a more nuanced understanding of how and why people, especially those with little access to structural power, shaped their own lives (within certain constraints). Documents pertaining to María Jacinta de Montoya’s trial constitute a record of social and cultural negotiation: her authorial voice has as its counterbalance the voice of those who commanded the machinery of Church and state. Analysis of the case record, which contains a list of charges accompanied by her itemized defense, as well as a document detailing some of the commentaries made by the Archbishop about those of her notebooks that he had confiscated and read, reveals the complex relationship between textual power and hegemonic definitions of orthodoxy. In her actions, but especially in

34

Censorship and the body

her writing, María Jacinta de Montoya exemplifies the intent to find a safe place – with some recognition from those who wielded power – within the religious community of believers, while at the same time exerting some control over shaping her life and environment. In deciphering the texts discussed here, the modern reader may draw useful conclusions about how the colonial regime functioned, as well as how ordinary people, especially women, maneuvered within the system in order to achieve transcendent status. Their attempts to realize their dream of being recognized for spiritual exemplarity ultimately constituted a divine aspiration, the hope for an eternal life favored by the ecclesiastical officials and sacred figures of early modern and colonial Catholicism.

Notes 1 Although in the minority, some men were also designated popular saints; later in this essay I refer to one of the most famous, Nicolás Ayllón. While their rhetorical strategies were for the most part similar to women’s, the results often differed. In this essay, I focus on the gendering of women’s rhetoric and ecstatic experience, and the inquisitional response to their efforts. 2 The testimony appears in the trial record: ‘Traslado del proçesso de testificaciones que se han Rdo. en el Sto. Officio de la Inqon. Del piru que reside en la çiudad de los Reyes contra Doña Luisa de Melgarejo muger del Dor. Julio de Soto abogado de la Rl. Audia. Desta dicha çiudad. Sobre y en raçon de los arrobos extasis y rebelaçiones y otros favores que ha tenido y tiene de N. Sr.’ Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid, Inquisición, legajo 1647, no. 5, fol. 2r. In this essay, all translations from Spanish to English are mine. 3 Nancy Van Deusen has coined the useful phrase ‘circuits of knowledge’ to describe networking and sharing of information among women in colonial Lima for spiritual purposes. See her ‘Circuits of Knowledge Among Women in Early Seventeenth-Century Lima’, in Gender, Race and Religion in the Colonization of the Americas, ed. Nora E. Jaffary (Burlington, VT, 2007), pp. 137–50. 4 See, for instance, chapter 2, ‘Dangerous Spiritualities: Beatas, Illuminism, and False Religiosity’, in Stacey Schlau, Gendered Crime and Punishment: Women and/in the Hispanic Inquisitions (Leiden, 2013), pp. 65–94. See also, Stacey Schlau, ‘Flying in Formation: Subjectivity and Collectivity in Luisa Melgarejo de Soto’s Mystical Practices’, in Allison Weber (ed.), Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World (New York, 2016). 5 Angela Carranza has been the subject of many scholarly studies. Among them, see: Rocío Quispe-Agnoli, ‘De la virtud al vicio: Mujer santa y hereje en el discurso colonial hispanoamericano’, Cuaderno Internacional de Estudios Humanísticos y Literatura 3–4 (2004–2005): 50–62; Ana Sánchez, ‘Angela Carranza, alias Angela de Dios’, in Gabriela Ramos and Henrique Urbano (eds), Catolicismo y extirpación de idolatrías. Siglos XVI–XVIII (Cuzco: Centro Bartolomé de Las Casas, 1993), pp. 236– 92; and Stacey Schlau, ‘Género sexual y comodificación religiosa: El caso de Angela Carranza’, in Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel and Mabel Moraña (eds), Nictímene sacrílega: Estudios coloniales en homenaje a Georgina Sabat-Rivers (México DF, 2003), pp. 111–33. 6 René Millar Carvacho discusses the three women as a group in ‘Falsa santidad e Inquisición: Los procesos a las visionarias limeñas’, Boletín de la Academia Chilena de la Historia 108–109 (2000): pp. 277–305. 7 Sánchez, p. 264. 8 Luis Miguel Glave, ‘Santa Rosa de Lima y sus espinas: La emergencia de mentalidades urbanas de crisis y la sociedad andina (1600–1630)’, in Clara GarcíaAyluardo

Beatas, writing, and the Inquisition

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22

23 24 25

26 27

28

35

and Manuel Ramos Medina (eds), Manifestaciones religiosas en el mundo colonial Americano (México DF, 1993), p. 110. Sánchez, p. 264, fn. 2. Ibid., p. 264. Nancy van Deusen, ‘Instituciones religiosas y seglares para mujeres en el siglo XVII en Lima’, in Clara GarcíaAyluardo and Manuel Ramos Medina (eds), Manifestaciones religiosas en el mundo colonial americano (Mexico DF, 1993), pp. 207–208. René Millar Carvacho, ‘Falsa santidad e Inquisición: Los procesos a las visionarias limeñas’, Boletín de la Academia Chilena de la Historia 108–109 (2000): 293. Sánchez, p. 275. As René Millar Carvacho notes in Inquisición y sociedad en el virreinato peruano (Santiago, 1998), p. 113, nine beaterios were founded in Lima alone between 1669 and 1691. Sánchez, p. 274. Nora E. Jaffary, False Mystics: Deviant Orthodoxy in Colonial Mexico (Lincoln, NE, 2004), p. 83. For a useful analysis of the visual impact of autos de fe, see Maureen Flynn, ‘Mimesis of the Last Judgment: The Spanish Auto de fe’, Sixteenth Century Journal 22.2(1991): 281–97. See Stacey Schlau, ‘Angela Carranza, Would-Be Theologian’, in Jeana Del Rosso, Leigh Eicke, and Ana Kothke (eds),The Catholic Church and Unruly Women Writers (New York, 2007), pp. 69–85. See Relación de la causa de Angela Carranza, alias la Madre Angela de Dios, Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid), Inquisición, Tribunal de Lima, Relación de Causas de fe, Libro 1032, fols 271r–373r. ‘Proceso de fe contra María Jacinta de Montoya, alias María Jacinta de la Santísima Trinidad’, Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid), 1696/1713, Inquisición, legajo 1649, expediente 51, no. 1, fol. 1r. Hereafter, all citations and references to the manuscript will be followed by fol. numbers in parentheses. Carranza had by this time been condemned and abjured de vehementi. The edict prohibiting Sartolo’s biography specifically mentions her vision. Celia L. Cussen, ‘The Search for Idols and Saints in Colonial Peru: Linking Extirpation and Beatification’, Hispanic American Historical Review 85.3(2005): 446. For further discussion of the Ayllón case, see also Juan Carlos Estenssoro Fuchs, Del paganismo a la santidad: La incorporación de losindios del Peru al catolicismo 1532–1750, trans. Gabriela Ramos (Lima: Institut Français d’Etudes Andines, 2003), pp. 468–98; and Fernando Iwasaki Cauti, ‘Vidas de santos y santas vidas: Hagiografías reales e imaginarias en Lima colonial’, Anuario de estudiosamericanos 51.5(1994): 57–59. Iwasaki Cauti, p. 59. In the inquisitional record she is called mestiza. Iwaski Cauti, however, asserts that Montoya was criolla (58). For an extended discussion of this text, see Cussen, pp. 432–36. The vida appears in Diego de Córdova y Salinas, Corónica de la religiosíssima provincia de los doze apóstoles del Peru de la orden de nuestro seráfico P. S. Francisco de la Regular Observancia (Lima, 1651), pp. 519–23. Avila’s manuscript account is located in the Archivo Franciscano de Lima, Registro 17, fols 569–75. Cussen, p. 437. For a discussion of this mediation, see Rocío Quispe-Agnoli, ‘Reecribiendo a los ángeles caídos: Las iluminadas perunanas y la Inquisición española’, in Jennifer L. Eich, Jeanne Gillespie, and Lucia G. Harrison (eds), Women’s Voices and the Poitics of the Spanish Empire (New Orleans, 2008), pp. 144–45. See Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau (eds), Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns In Their Own Works, 2nd edition (Albuquerque, 2010), as well as the now-classic study by Alison Weber, Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity (Princeton, NJ, 1990, 1996).

36

Censorship and the body

29 Codified primarily by Saint Augustine and Saint Teresa of Avila, the Catholic Church accepts three categories (corporeal, imaginative, and intellectual). Corporeal visions are ‘a supernatural manifestation of an object to the eyes of the body’. This may happen in two ways: ‘a figure really present strikes the retina and there determines the physical phenomenon of the vision, or an agent superior to man [sic] directly modifies the visual organ and produces in the composite a sensation equivalent to that which an external object would produce’. Imaginative visions, on the other hand, are characterized by ‘the sensible representation of an object by the act of imagination alone, without the aid of the visual organ’. See ‘Visions and Apparitions’, Catholic Encyclopedia. 30 See Alison Weber, 1996.

Bibliography Primary sources Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid, ‘Proceso de fe contra María Jacinta de Montoya, alias María Jacinta de la Santísima Trinidad’. Inquisición, legajo 1649, expediente 51, n. 1. 1696/1713. Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid, ‘Relación de la causa de Angela Carranza, alias la Madre Angela de Dios’. Inquisición, Tribunal de Lima, Relación de Causas de fe, Libro 1032, fols 271r–373r. Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid, ‘Traslado del proçesso de testificaciones que se han Rdo. en el Sto. Officio de la Inqon. del piru que reside en la çiudad de los Reyes contra Doña Luisa de Melgarejo muger del Dor. Julio de Soto abogado de la Rl. Audia. Desta dicha çiudad. Sobre y en raçon de los arrobos extasis y rebelaçiones y otros favores que ha tenido y tiene de N. Sr.’ Inquisición, legajo 1647, no. 5.

Secondary sources Cussen, Celia L., ‘The Search for Idols and Saints in Colonial Peru: Linking Extirpation and Beatification’, Hispanic American Historical Review 85. 3(2005): 417–448. Estenssoro Fuchs, Juan Carlos, Del paganismo a la santidad: La incorporación de los indios del Peru al catolicismo 1532–1750. Gabriela Ramos (trans.). (Lima: Institut Français d’Etudes Andines, 2003). Flynn, Maureen, ‘Mimesis of the Last Judgment: The Spanish Auto de fe’, Sixteenth Century Journal 22. 2(1991): 281–297. Glave, Luis Miguel, ‘Santa Rosa de Lima y sus espinas: La emergencia de mentalida desurbanas de crisis y la sociedad andina (1600–1630)’, in Clara García Ayluardo and Manuel Ramos Medina (eds), Manifestaciones religiosas en el mundo colonial Americano. (México DF: Centro de Estudios de Historia de México Condumex, 1993), pp. 109–128. Iwasaki Cauti, Fernando, ‘Vidas de santos y santasvidas: Hagiografías reales e imaginarias en Lima colonial’, Anuario de estudios americanos 51. 5(1994): 47–64. Jaffary, Nora E., False Mystics: Deviant Orthodoxy in Colonial Mexico (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2004). Millar Carvacho, René, ‘Falsa santidad e Inquisición: Los procesos a las visionarias limeñas’, Boletín de la Academia Chilena de la Historia 108–109(2000): 277–305. Millar Carvacho, René, Inquisición y sociedaden el virreinato peruano (Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile, 1998).

Beatas, writing, and the Inquisition

37

Quispe-Agnoli, Rocío, ‘De la virtud al vicio: Mujer santa y hereje en el discurso colonial hispanoamericano’, Cuaderno Internacional de Estudios Humanísticos y Literatura 3–4(2004–2005): 50–62. Quispe-Agnoli, Rocío, ‘Reecribiendo a los ángeles caídos: Las iluminadas perunanas y la Inquisición española’, in Jennifer L. Eich, Jeanne Gillespie, and Lucia G. Harrison (eds), Women’s Voices and the Poitics of the Spanish Empire (New Orleans, LA: University Press of the South, 2008), pp. 135–155. Sánchez, Ana, ‘Angela Carranza, alias Angela de Dios. Santidad y poder en la sociedad virreinal peruana (s. XVII)’, in Gabriela Ramos and Henrique Urbano (eds), Catolicismo y extirpación de idolatrías. Siglos XVI–XVIII (Cuzco: Centro Bartolomé de Las Casas, 1993), pp. 236–292. Schlau, Stacey, ‘Angela Carranza, Would-Be Theologian’, in Jeana Del Rosso, Leigh Eicke, and Ana Kothke (eds), The Catholic Church and Unruly Women Writers (New York: Palgrave, 2007), pp. 69–85. Schlau, Stacey, ‘Dangerous Spiritualities: Beatas, Illuminism, and False Religiosity’, in Gendered Crime and Punishment: Women and/in the Hispanic Inquisitions (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 65–94. Schlau, Stacey, ‘Flying in Formation: Subjectivity and Collectivity in Luisa Melgarejo de Soto’s Mystical Practices’, in Allison Weber (ed.), Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World (New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 133–151. Schlau, Stacey, ‘Género sexual y comodificación religiosa: El caso de Angela Carranza’, in Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel and Mabel Moraña (eds), Nictímene sacrílega: Estudios coloniales en homenaje a Georgina Sabat-Rivers (México DF: Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2003), pp. 111–133. van Deusen, Nancy E., ‘Circuits of Knowledge Among Women in Early SeventeenthCentury Lima’, in Nora E. Jaffary (ed.) Gender, Race and Religion in the Colonization of the Americas (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 137–150. van Deusen, Nancy E., ‘Instituciones religiosas y seglares para mujeres en el siglo XVII en Lima’, in Clara García Ayluardo and Manuel Ramos Medina (eds), Manifestaciones religiosas en el mundo colonial americano (México DF: Centro de Estudios de Historia de México Condumex, 1993), pp. 207–230. ‘Visions and Apparitions’, Catholic Encyclopedia. www.newadvent.org/cathen/15477a.htm Weber, Alison, Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).

2

Covert Afro-Catholic agency in the mystical visions of early modern Brazil’s Rosa Maria Egipçíaca Rachel Spaulding

On June 4, 1765, Rosa Maria Egipçíaca (circa 1719–1771), a forty-six year old woman of West African origin, ex-prostitute, freed Brazilian slave, beata (lay religious), popular saint, and Brazil’s first known female author of a theological manuscript, testified for the last time before the Holy Office of the Portuguese Inquisition Tribunal in Lisbon. Rosa was no novice in defending herself from Catholic Inquisitors. In 1749, she had been detained, interrogated and publicly whipped in Minas Gerais, Brazil (fol. 64v).1 In 1762, she had suffered imprisonment and interrogation again by the Bishop of Rio de Janeiro.2 From 1763 to 1765, she had endured five sessions of interrogations before the Portuguese Inquisitors in Lisbon. During this last session, the Inquisitor Jeronimo Rogado Carvalho e Silva asked Rosa ‘se [é] lembrada de mais alguma coisa, que haja de declarar a respeito do progresso da sua vida’ (fol. 36r) [if she recalls anything more to declare with respect to her life’s story].3 Rosa had no way of knowing that this testimony on June 4, 1765 would be the last time her voice would be registered into the official archive. Nonetheless, she used this session, like all her previous ones, to describe her religious practice and bolster her position as a visionary mystic and a devout Catholic. She never renounced her faith or admitted to the crimes for which she stood accused: an accomplice to fraud, witchcraft and sorcery. Her testimony reveals her own words about the supernatural voices she heard and the celestial images she saw. Overtly, her descriptions rework the tropes of the female visionary mystic and the repertoire of female sanctity.4 Covertly, the beata’s visions may foster a reading of her religious practice as syncretic, incorporating Afro-religious imagery, which, as I suggest, reveals her agency and hybrid identity as an Afro-Catholic. This essay examines the ways in which Rosa ‘writes/rights’ her story with her own hybrid voice. Rosa’s visions function in seemingly opposite directions: She transforms her pain and suffering as a subjected individual in her society to represent the early modern hegemonic standard of Christian suffering and includes Afro-religious imagery. Her testimony illustrates the unique composite of a hybrid Afro-Catholic baroque voice. Importantly, it highlights the ways in which she intervenes in her own historical trajectory, suggesting how the beata responds to conditions not of her own making. Her visions facilitate a reading

Mystical visions of Rosa Maria Egipçíaca

39

in which she manipulates Catholic religious space to secure access to societal resources and practice her own syncretic understanding of religious worship. In mid-eighteenth-century Portuguese-America, the freed slave Rosa Maria Egipçíaca de Vera Cruz5 became a popular holy woman in the Catholic communities near Mariana (present day Santa Rita Durão), Minas Gerais and in the neighborhood of São Sebastião, Rio de Janeiro. Her story emerges in fragments throughout her Inquisitional testimony. She was transported from the port of Ouidah (present-day Benin) to Rio de Janeiro in 1725 when she was six years old. Upon her arrival, she was sold and officially baptized Catholic.6 She lived in the Freguesia de Candelária until she was fourteen. She testified that her abusive owner ‘a deflorou’, a euphemism for rape, and then sold her to Dona Ana Garçês de Morais of the Freguesia de Inficcionado, Minas Gerais, around 1733.7 In the mines, she was exploited as a prostitute. In 1748, Rosa renounced her life as a prostitute and became a devout Catholic practitioner. She testified to her experiences of physical suffering and possession of a malignant spirit.8 To combat this possession, she continually submitted to exorcism rites and confessed her mystical visionary experiences to her spiritual directors. In this way, the beata constructed her identity as a suffering religious servant. Rosa testified that during a mystical experience she was instructed by a celestial voice emanating from a vision of a dove to learn to read and write.9 By 1752, she had become literate, crafting letters with her own pen.10 While infrequent and rarely documented for women of her calidad (racial/ethnic status) – African born – this type of education was not uncommon for female religious in the early modern period on both sides of the Atlantic.11 Claiming supernatural intervention, Rosa was permitted by her spiritual director Frei Agostinho de São Jose to write a religious manuscript titled, A Sagrada Teologia do Amor de Deus Lus Brilhante das Almas Peregrinas, which outlined Christian doctrine and religious instruction for salvation.12 Rosa testified that her spiritual director later burned this manuscript.13 However, two pages remain and are archived with the beata’s Inquisition testimony along with her personal correspondence in the National Archive of Torre do Tombo in Lisbon, Portugal.14 Not only did Rosa garner an education based on her claims of divine intervention, she secured the construction of a lay religious house where she and other women could live and worship under religious protection.15 Perhaps, for Rosa, the construction of this religious house became a concrete symbol of support for her visionary practice. Rosa’s visions, specifically, those of the Holy Family’s sacred hearts,16 solidified her position as mystic in her religious community’s members’ minds. The construction of the lay religious house, the Recolhimento de Nossa Senhora do Parto, was under way by 1754; it was erected next to the Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Parto.17 Furthermore, as a precursor to the Recolhimento’s construction, Rosa’s various visions of the hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and later those of Jesus’ parents, Saint Anne and Saint Joachim, convinced her director Frei Agostinho to commission the fabrication of an icon in likeness to her vision and placed it in a chapel to be worshipped.18

40

Censorship and the body

Rosa’s religious practice developed in tandem with her movement throughout the Ibero-Atlantic. Her life’s trajectory was typified by constant migration, sometimes by her own choice but primarily by force. She was uprooted from the coast of Ouidah, Africa, and transported to the New World. She lived with various masters in Rio and Minas Gerais, before coming to live alongside other women from different castas (social classes) and calidades (racial/ethnic statuses) within the Recolhimento de Nossa Senhora do Parto. For Rosa, this continual movement may have ignited the desire to establish a permanent home – a space where she could be assured of both her physical survival and a place to worship. In the Recolhimento, her religious practice pushed the boundaries on orthodoxy. Based on her mystical visions and her devout Catholic practice, she became a popular holy woman in her colonial Brazilian Catholic community in Rio de Janeiro. Through this religious practice, she gained access to shelter, education, influence and, eventually, religious popularity. However, it was this popularity, or rather notoriety, that eventually placed her under Inquisitorial surveillance. She was denounced, imprisoned and transported to Lisbon, Portugal in 1763. Rosa’s Inquisition case was never closed and a sentence was never dispensed. She remained locked in its secret cells until she was found dead on its kitchen floor in October of 1771.19 Rosa used the Inquisitorial process as a platform to narrate her life’s story, albeit couched in the form of a confession.20 However, her experiences of leaving West Africa and living in colonial Brazil are not limited to own her testimony. Rosa’s spiritual confessor and exorcist, Padre Francisco Gonçalves Lopes, who was tried as an accomplice to fraud, blasphemy, witchcraft and sorcery, narrated another side to the beata’s story.21 Rosa’s emancipator, Pedro Rodrigues Arvelos, his wife and his daughters submitted their versions of her story. Fearing reprisal from Portuguese Inquisitors, and disobeying her husband, Senhora Maria Theresa de Jesus Arvelos turned over to the Inquisition the correspondence between her family and Rosa.22 These letters document the Arvelos family’s relationship to Rosa and disclose her intimate thoughts, opinions, visions and spiritual instructions for her spiritual sons and daughters. As the beata’s letters indicate, she included Senhor and Senhora Arvelos among her spiritual children. For over a decade, Rosa sent numerous letters to the Arvelos family that detailed her daily religious practices and her routine negotiations as a freed female slave and her rise to popular sainthood in the Catholic community of São Sebastião, Rio de Janeiro. The letters that Senhora Arvelos gave to the Inquisitors tell one version of Rosa’s story; the letters Maria Theresa chose not to include surely tell another version. In addition to these letters, Rosa’s 1762 Rio de Janeiro declaration is archived at the end of her Inquisition testimony alongside depositions of the various witnesses who were called to testify as to their knowledge of the beata’s suspicious religious practices. This essay departs from close textual analysis of Rosa’s Inquisition testimony in which she describes her religious practices, to uncover traces of her hybrid Afro-Catholic voice. On February 20, 1762, during her deposition in Rio de Janeiro, she described her vision of a ‘White Tree’, which housed the ‘Sacred

Mystical visions of Rosa Maria Egipçíaca

41

23

Hearts of the Holy Family’. Importantly, by the time the beata testified about this supernatural experience in Lisbon, she had reworked the vision’s details.24 This re-articulation points towards the freed slave’s awareness of her vision’s more heterodox aspects. I interpret this vision’s reframing as a marker of Rosa’s hybrid identity. Her visions remix images from the trope of the female visionary mystic and behaviors from the repertoire of female sanctity, incorporating Afro-religious, specifically Yorùbá, symbols.25

A close reading of Rosa’s visions During her deposition in Rio de Janeiro, the beata detailed one of her many visions of the Sacred Hearts, which included the image of a white tree which was regarded as a symbol of an African altar. Moreover, in this vision, Rosa reworked these polysemic religious images, placing herself at the powerful center. This negotiation of religious symbology may signal her Afro-Catholic cosmology. In the following excerpt, she positions herself engaged in the Catholic practice of mental prayer within the official church space. Employing traditional Catholic behavior, alongside other Catholic practitioners, she lies prostrate and recites the Acts of Faith, when she experiences an interior vision: [Q]uandoela, ré, está jácom algumas recolhidas na casa da Igreja do Parto, estando fazendo a oração mental, chegando à quele ponto em que se faz o Ato de Fé, crendo – se que se está na presença de Deus, prostrando – se todas. E ela, ré, viu uma iluminação muito clara no entendimento com que viu distintamente. E lhe figurou uma árvore muito grossa de cor branca com folhas miúdas, por uma parte verdes epela outra brancas. Em cuja árvore estavam os cinco corações que ela, depoente, tinha visto na missa. E em cima desta árvore, estavauma figura coberta com um véu branco, masmuito rico e luzido, que a encobria, e dela estava aquel sexto coração que se lhe representou a ela, ré, no altar de Nossa Senhora na Igreja de Santo Antônio. Porémcom a diferença de que nesta ocasião, e nas maisem que viu, nãotinha divisa alguma. Porémdesta vez, se lhe representou no péda que la árvore e estava com três cravos neleprega dos, e comuma seta trespassado. E deste coração brotava a que le árvore em que estavam os cinco corações. (proc. 9065, fols 72r–72v) [When [Rosa], the accused, was with just a few recolhidas in the [Recolhimento], practicing mental prayer, coming to the point in which one makes the Act of Faith, believing she was in the presence of God, lying on the ground prostrate herself and the others, [Rosa], the accused, distinctly saw a very clear illumination in her mind. It appeared as a very thick white tree with young, small leaves in which some parts were green and others white. In this tree there were five hearts which she, the accused, had seen at mass, and on top of this tree was a [female] figure covered with a white veil, so rich and shiny, that it enveloped [the figure]. And from [this figure]

42

Censorship and the body came the sixth heart which [the figure] showed to [Rosa], the accused, at the altar of Our Lady in the Church of Santo Antonio, but with the difference that on that occasion, and the others that she [had seen], the [heart] didn’t have an insignia, but this time [the heart] presented itself at the foot of the tree and three nails were driven through it, and an arrow piercing it, and, the tree with the five hearts, welled up out of this sixth heart.]

While the symbol of the tree can be interpreted to have Catholic roots in the image of the Tree of Jesse,26 it is important to consider the Afro-religious symbology of the White Tree within the Brazilian Yorùbá religious practice. The image of the tree takes on sacred form, especially when it serves for the ascension of a divinity within Brazilian Yorùbá practice.27 Divinities, or godheads, within the Yorùbá religion, specifically, in Brazil, are known as Orishás. The term Orishá carries a two-fold meaning as ‘part nature spirit’ and ‘part deified hero’.28 In Rosa’s vision, the shiny, veiled figure in white is placed on top of the White Tree. In Brazil, the tree species gameleira branca bleeds white latex when it is cut.29 The thick White Tree is the centerpiece of the beata’s vision. Near Ouidah, her West African homeland, ‘[O cultoàs arvores] … [é] considerado o segundo ‘fetiche’ em importância’. [The tree cult] … is considered the second most important fetish].30 For Yorùbá practitioners in Brazil, one of the main Orishás is the tree dwelling spirit Iroko. Moreover, the gameleira branca, known as the ficus doliaria, or more specifically, the ficus gomelleira, grows in the Mata Atlântica where Rosa lived. This species is widely regarded as the Iroko tree, the ‘only Ficus species that serves as Candomblé’s cosmic tree’.31 The beata’s vision of the White Tree that houses the Sacred Hearts may be interpreted as a reference to this Orishá Iroko. Additionally, her vision employs the image of the green and white folhas miúdas, small leaves. The Orishá of leaves is known as Ossâim and in one of the Yorùbá creation myths the leaves change from white to green.32 Leaves play a central role in Brazilian Yorùbá worship.33 I interpret Rosa’s inclusion of the image of the leaves as an indirect reference to this Afro-religious creation myth and transformation process. Moreover, her vision conflates the Catholic and the African altar spaces, which may reveal the syncretic nature of her religious practice. Importantly, this particular syncretic vision is linked to her series of Sacred Heart visions. To discern the hybrid voice that circumvents Catholic authorial control, it is imperative to understand the chronology of Rosa’s visions. I read Rosa’s sequencing and staging of her visions as an example of her agency as an Afro-Catholic. The beata’s vision, cited above, comes from her deposition testimony in Brazil in 1762. Significantly, this deposition hearing was not her first tangle with ecclesiastical authority in Brazil. She had been imprisoned, judged and punished in Minas. Later in Rio, she had been involved in scandals that resulted in her expulsion from the Recolhimento. However, she had overcome these struggles and had been reincorporated into the Catholic community and permitted to re-enter the Recolhimento. I suggest that at the time of her 1762 deposition, Rosa had every reason to expect that she would work herself

Mystical visions of Rosa Maria Egipçíaca

43

through this sanctioning process, based on her previous experiences with religious Catholic authorities in Brazil, and that therefore her descriptions may be read as more overtly syncretic than the versions she presented during her Inquisition trial in Lisbon. Rosa’s deposition reveals one vision linked to a chain of visions of the Sacred Hearts. Her initial revelation is overtly orthodox. In her Inquisition testimony on January 10, 1764, the beata described that in 1754, during the Recolhimento’s construction, she experienced her first mystical vision of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.34 As I mentioned before, she recounted this vision to her confessor, Frei Agostinho, who ordered the fabrication of an ornate icon of the Three Sacred Hearts and placed it in the chapel in the Convent of San Antonio in Rio de Janeiro.35 Rosa effected an immediate change in her surroundings: her vision had secured her a special place within the church to worship an image made in the likeness of her own vision. Perhaps spurred by this vision’s success, she revealed another Sacred Hearts vision, this time more ambiguous and potentially subversive. Rosa claimed that she informed her confessor of her subsequent vision of six Sacred Hearts. She revealed that the three additional Sacred Hearts belonged to Saint Anne, Saint Joachim, and a sixth, undesignated person.36 Incredulously, she testified that upon relating this vision to her confessor, he instructed her to ask God directly to whom the sixth heart belonged. She informed him that, according to the voice of God, it was not important to whom the last heart belonged because it could represent the Pope, the King of Portugal, her confessor, or even herself.37 Importantly, the beata underscored that she only dared to ask God directly about the significance of the additional sixth Sacred Heart in accordance with her confessor’s authorization.38 In this way, she never broke the ecclesiastical chain of command. Her testimony illustrates how she negotiated within the conventions of the Catholic hierarchical structure to circumvent this same authority and covertly include herself as a possible candidate for symbolic representation alongside a litany of powerful Catholic players. Moreover, her testimony underscores her ability to communicate directly with the Godhead. Presumably, her spiritual director thought her capable of this power since he ordered her to ask God directly as to whom the sixth Sacred Heart belonged. Here, it may be possible to read her repositioning of herself as God’s mouthpiece in alignment with Yorùbá religious practice. As I describe below, the beata’s deposition suggests she employed contemplative prayer, a Catholic practice that skirts the boundary between divine and demonic possession. In this essay, I do not discuss the Catholic practice of spirit possession for early modern women.39 However, it is important to note that the process to establish a normative Catholic experience for spirit possession was contentious and amorphous during this time. This contention may have provided an aperture for Rosa’s conflation of the developing Catholic standard for spirit possession and Yorùbá possession practice. The following discussion details Rosa’s hybrid Afro-Catholic practice that intertwines Catholic worship and divine possession with Yorùbá spirit worship, or mounting.

44

Censorship and the body

Yorùbá spirit possession and mounting While the beata’s visions in which she speaks for God are overtly read as Catholic, they may also covertly embed Afro-religious meaning. In Yorùbá worship, women usually occupy the role of priestess. The priestess functions as medium between this world and the next. In the body, or literally, the head of the medium, the priestess transforms as her Orishá spiritually mounts, or takes possession of, the devotee.40 Becoming a priestess is a long and elaborate process, not unlike learning the Catholic practice of infused contemplative prayer. As part of the process, devotees undertake initiations to prepare themselves to install, or seat, the Orishá on their heads, so as to be able to house the Yorùbá deity’s spirit and interpret his or her messages. It is significant that this process uses the image of housing the deity’s spirit. In the beata’s visions, she routinely sought the construction of a house for the Sacred Hearts. Additionally, priestesses are referred to as ‘wives’ of their Orishá. This may add a level of meaning for Rosa’s marriage to Christ, her divine spouse, which she described in her writing.41 In the spirit possession experience, their Orishá mounts the priestesses. This image of mounting comes from the image of the Yorùbá-Oyo ancestors who were great horsemen that mounted and controlled their subjects.42 In the possession trance, the Orishá is ‘said to mount the devotee and, for a time, that devotee becomes the [Orishá]’.43 Significantly, the priestesses ‘master [the Orishá] … and turn its power to their own advantage’.44 The animating spirit of the Orishá temporarily displaces the ‘spirit’ of the medium being mounted. This union or spirit mediumship is one of the central and foundational roles of the Yorùbá priestess, whose principal function is to become the perfect vessel or mouthpiece for her Orishá. By becoming filled with this spirit, the priestess obtains authority to interpret divine messages to instruct her devotees or perhaps spiritual children as to how to maintain balance within their lives. The practice of this Afro-religious spirit possession could be considered alongside Rosa’s visions of the Sacred Hearts in which she was positioned as the mouthpiece and representative of God’s message in accordance with eighteenth-century Catholic practice.

Afro-Catholic practice Throughout her testimony, Rosa recounts that her visions occurred during times of meditation and internal prayer, as well as during times of contemplation. During her deposition, she employs the terms oração mental (mental prayer) and contemplação (contemplation),45 signaling her awareness of distinctive Catholic religious practices. Contemplative order members practiced meditative or silent prayer. Importantly, meditative prayer was not mystical because it was under the control of the practitioner and included a visualization of an event from Christ’s life or Passion.46 However, contemplação is mystical because it is non-discursive and non-visual and, supposedly, relates how the ‘soul stands in a

Mystical visions of Rosa Maria Egipçíaca 47

45

state of suspension’. Teresa of Ávila described this type of mystical prayer in terms of ‘no pensar nada’ (think of nothing).48 These repetitive religious behaviors are grounded in and linked to observations and understandings of exemplary religious models. Rosa constructed her identity as a devout Catholic by repeating and reframing exemplary Catholic behavior. Like other iconic Catholic religious women, such as Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–1690), who first beheld the image of the Sacred Hearts of Mary and Jesus, the beata engaged in mental prayer and contemplation. Through the descriptions of her visions and ecstatic unions, community members perceived her as a mystical visionary. Specifically, Rosa’s ecstatic unions were interpreted within her Catholic religious community as demonic possession, thus the need for continual submission to the exorcism rite. Examples of iconic Catholic women’s mystical experiences, in their various permutations, were diffused within the Ibero-Atlantic world based in part on the dissemination and popularity of the literary genre known as the vida, as previously indicated. Additionally, religious texts about the practice of spiritual devotion, contemplation and the divergent types of mental, or internal prayer, were outlined, debated, translated and circulated. These texts became integral in religious instruction for myriad religious orders.49 For example, a translation of the work Espelho da perfeiçam (Mirror of Perfection, 1533) was ‘referred to or even recommended in the context of the paths of affective devotion’ by Franciscans, Dominicans, Hieronymites, and Carmelites.50 In this way, various religious orders during the Counter Reformation used multiple religious texts in an attempt to reach a standard for women’s religious practice. Rosa was educated under the guidance of her Franciscan spiritual confessors. Franciscan religious practice included dedication to the poor, service to the community, and a focus on the development of an internal prayer life. These practices are comparable to Carmelite reformers, who relied on the writings of Teresa of Ávila to guide their own religious practice. As I discuss next, it is not beyond the realm of the possible that the beata may have had access to these types of religious texts as well as other religious treatises that discussed ways of religious devotional practice and mysticism. Perhaps, these written works as well as the imagery of female saints in colonial Brazil served as models and as impetus for Rosa’s own syncretic religious practice. Such practices in eighteenth-century Brazil can be linked to preceding mystical and theological discussions. Importantly, in the final years of the seventeenth century, Carmelite mystics developed a way to differentiate between infused contemplation and acquired contemplation. This suggests that the latter resulted from human efforts to reach such a degree of spiritual growth where meditation would lose its usefulness and leave the practitioner unfulfilled. In this way, this type of contemplation advanced the practitioner toward the higher state, known as infused contemplation, in which divine grace would complete the spiritual ascent by bestowing infusion into the soul.51 Such contemplation had the advantage in that it decreased the danger of demonic temptation because, during the slow learning process of contemplative prayer, the practitioner learned to discern

46

Censorship and the body

‘interior movement and resist pitfalls’.52 The Afro-Brazilian beata’s Catholic practice can be situated within this process of learning infused contemplative prayer and most likely was informed by Franciscan as well as Carmelite works. Her words as recorded in her Inquisitional testimony were carefully chosen. Rosa employed stock Catholic phrases, or sentence constructions that were repeated throughout various religious texts. In this way, she may have felt capable of defending her religious practice and the accusations of demonic interference. Significantly, contemplative prayer was perceived as demonic possession in some instances and divine possession in others. Within a Catholic paradigm, the beata’s religious practice walked the line between the boundaries of demonic and divine possession. Her testimony underscores the various physical afflictions she experienced during her visions: the sensation of hot air pouring over her body like boiling water,53 the rigidity in her limbs and face while contemplating an image of the Virgin Mary,54 the feeling of the wind slamming her against an invisible cross,55 and the loss of her senses while being spiritually transported, or bilocated, to various Catholic churches.56 Rosa’s testimony illustrates the degree to which she actively worked to make herself seem similar to other Catholic visionary mystics. I suggest that she reworked Catholic practices to juxtapose and incorporate her syncretic practice into the Catholic visionary mystic repertoire. For example, Marie de l’Incarnation, ‘never let up in prayer’.57 Similarly, the beata employed this same practice of ejaculatory prayer (spontaneous vocalized prayer).58 She also engaged in other numerous Catholic practices, such as spiritual writing, continual confession and frequent partaking of communion. Importantly, she related that often her visions and the voices she heard during these visions came to her while consuming Holy Communion. The accompaniment of mystical experiences during moments of Eucharist is a leitmotif for female religious.59 Women’s religious practice in the Ibero-Atlantic world was prescriptive and at the same time divergent and individuated. Yet, there were limits to divergence and individuality. For African and Afro-descendant religious women, not unlike Rosa, conventional, or at least ostensibly orthodox, Catholic religious practice was the path to exemplarity. For example, Úrsula de Jesús was an Afro-Peruvian mystic whose spiritual journal detailed her experiences in the Santa Clara convent of Lima, in colonial Peru.60 Like Úrsula, María de San Juan was a criolla black religious servant, or donada. She labored in the convent of Jesús María in colonial Mexico.61 Also, Juana de Esperanza de San Alberto was West African born and worked as a slave in the Discalced Carmelite convent of San José in colonial Puebla, Mexico.62 Additionally, Sister Theresa Juliana de Santo Domingo, also known as Sor Chicaba, was an enslaved African woman who became a Dominican tertiary, the religious order’s lower servant class, in the convent of Saint Mary Magdalene of Penitencia in Salamanca, Spain.63 While the descriptions of these African and Afro-descendant women’s experiences have become the focal point for examining identity construction in the IberoAtlantic, it is important to signal that these women’s worship practices were classified as exemplary in their own time.

Mystical visions of Rosa Maria Egipçíaca

47

This is not the case for Rosa; her worship practice appeared Catholic – enough for a while but ultimately it was categorized as too unconventional and thus it was perceived as a threat to the imperial project. Rosa’s practice appeared heterodox to some, hence her arrest, trial and detainment by Inquisitorial officials. Rosa’s religious trajectory permits the tracking of her practice as hybrid, a religious practice that displays both Catholic and Yorùbá markers. The African-women who lived in the cloistered settings in official convents of Spain and Spanish America, like Rosa, eventually gained their freedom through their submission to conventional Catholic practice. In Esperanza’s case, for example, her freedom was granted shortly before she died, however, like Úrsula and Chicaba, these African-women met their deaths while enclosed within the walls of these regulated institutions. It is exactly because Rosa was not confined to this type of institution that permits a reading of her hybrid, Afro-Catholic practice. Rosa had been a slave and prostitute. She lived much of her life outside the walls of a religious house. Within the walls of the Recolhimento, Rosa carried out her daily routines communally with other women from disparate castas and calidades.64 Furthermore, Rosa moved freely inside and outside the walls of the Recolhimento. Perhaps, it was Rosa’s high degree of visibility within her community that first brought her religious practice under the scrutiny of Catholic inquisitors. Cloistered life for female religious in the early modern period has been re-examined and is now understood to be more ‘porous’ and less restrictive than previously surmised.65 However, this is not the case for the aforementioned exemplary Afro-religious women. Their quotidian lifestyle was far more constrained than their European and criollo counterparts. Due to the difference in calidad, these African-women were held to a rigid guideline for behavior within the convent. This makes their religious practice appear more congruent to orthodox Catholic worship. Rosa, living and working in the Recolhimento de Nossa Senhora do Parto in Colonial Brazil, was not as vigilantly tracked, at least initially. Beyond this difference in religious settings – Spanish and Spanish American convents as opposed to Brazilian lay religious houses – tracing the disparate compositions of the enslaved and freed slave populations in the urban settings in Spanish America and Brazil supports a reading Rosa’s hybrid Afro-Catholic religious practice. For example, in the case of Juana de Esperanza de San Alberto, mentioned above, she belonged to an Afro-Mexican community primarily composed of second- and third-generation New World born Afro-descendants because the slave trade had reached its peak in colonial Mexico by the midseventeenth century.66 In contrast, Brazil did not stop importing African slaves until the nineteenth century. Significantly, the populations of Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro were mainly Afro-descendant and African. Large-scale mining operations and the associated industries required to feed, clothe and house miners created a demand for a steady influx of African slaves.67 Rosa’s society was composed of a higher concentration of recently arrived Africans as well as first-generation Afro-Brazilians. Rosa’s hybrid Afro-Catholic practice evolves in this space. She lived, labored, traveled and worshiped in these regions.

48

Censorship and the body

Accordingly, it is possible that she had been exposed to many forms of Afroreligious practice, specifically, Yorùbá worship. In contrast to the exemplary Catholic African women, like Úrsula, Chicaba, Juana de Esperanza and María de San Juan, whose Catholic practice evolved within the cloister under restrictive constraints, Rosa’s Afro-Catholic hybrid practice developed alongside the practice of other Africans in colonial Brazil. In her Inquisitional testimony, the beata was identified as Courana.68 Yorùbá speakers are documented in the region of Minas Gerais in a 1748 census as ‘Courana’ (Kuramu) slaves.69 Interestingly, another enslaved, ‘Courá’ (also Kuramu) woman, Maria Josefa from Paracatú, Minas Gerais, was prosecuted by the Inquisition in 1747 for Afro-religious practice.70 It is not unlikely, given Rosa’s high degree of autonomy while working as a prostitute and a slave in Minas Gerais, that she would have had connections to many other slave and freed slave populations in colonial Brazil. Given the continuous forced migrations of West African peoples to Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, African peoples’ religious practice was at the very least syncretic and, to some degree, influenced Yorùbá and variants of Yorùbá culture. While Rosa’s position as an African woman who lived, worked and worshiped within the Catholic religion is not singular, her life story is distinct from her Spanish and Spanish American counterparts. The cloistered women of Afrodescent within the Spanish and Spanish American convents shared more than a similar calidad, or ethnic heritage. Their stories were appropriated by the religious status quo and embedded within hegemonic discourse as examples of the transformative power of religious piety. The texts that reveal the details of the lives of these African and Afro-descendant women are highly mediated, perhaps with the exception of Úrsula’s spiritual journal, which was not written by Catholic male clergy – as her vida was – to represent her religious piety. These women’s stories were represented as positive examples for behavior. For early modern religious biographers, their objectives were to represent and remember these women’s exceptional Catholic religious practice, which trumped their negative calidad.71 In contrast to these lauded women’s stories in Spain and Spanish America, the documentation of Rosa’s religious practice as represented in her Inquisition testimony is not framed as positively exemplary but rather as negatively so. Unlike the stories of African and Afro-descendant women that credit and sustain the mission of the Crown and Church in the colonies, Rosa’s account offers a counter-, and a hybrid narrative that disrupted the European hegemonic discourse about African women. When compared with the stories of other African beatas or religious women in the New World, Rosa’s account is unconventional. She lived, worked and learned alongside myriad religious persons, including a quasi-familial relationship with her spiritual director and exorcist, Padre Francisco Gonçalves Lopes. This priest was the uncle of Senhor Arvelos, Rosa’s emancipator and ‘spiritual son’. Most assuredly Padre Francisco had amassed a collection of texts that treated exorcism rites and possession experiences. In Rio de Janeiro, with the approval and assistance of her spiritual director, Frei Agostinho, the future beata was

Mystical visions of Rosa Maria Egipçíaca

49

placed under the tutelage of Maria Teresa do Sacramento and José Gomes.72 Her education was based on the reading and copying of prayers and creeds, the Holy Scriptures, and various sermons, as well as the lives of the saints.73 Rosa had more than a dozen different spiritual confessors involved in her Catholic indoctrination.74 Importantly, it is Rosa’s transformation from popular holy woman to notorious heretic within her Catholic communities that becomes the point of departure for examining her hybridity and her Afro-Catholic religious practice. Rosa was a highly visible community member. She wore the Franciscan habit75 as she moved about freely within her religious neighborhood of São Sebastião. Her comings and goings from the Recolhimento de Nossa Senhora do Parto in Rio de Janeiro and her regular missal attendance in various churches in the city did not help her keep a low profile. This may have perturbed the elite status quo and sparked her encounters with the social network of Inquisitors in colonial Brazil. As the Arvelos family’s letters document,76 Rosa and her exorcist Padre Francisco became embroiled in scandal. The beata’s religious practice in the Recolhimento de Nossa Senhora do Parto came under question as a result of gossip. As noted, Rosa’s highly visible presence within her religious community made her a target of public scandal. While a great degree of heterodox religious and social practice was tolerable in eighteenth-century Brazil, it was the gossip generated about a certain action, whether it was true or not, that created more social disorder than the sinful or criminal behavior itself.77 The talk surrounding Rosa’s religious practice would recast her role as popular holy woman. Her religious practice seemed to contradict divine law. ‘Inquisitions [functioned] as an institution for the policing of political-theology. In a theistic society, heresy, because it violates divine law, also violates civil law’.78 In this way, the Portuguese Inquisition was used by Brazilian and Portuguese elite to control religious heterodoxy and foster social homogeneity. It is in this political setting that Rosa’s story intersects with the Inquisitorial powers of the Portuguese comissarios, or commissioners, in colonial Brazil.

Rosa before the Portuguese Inquisition As stated above, Rosa was no novice in dealing with inquisitorial judges. She had managed to withstand punishment in Mariana, Minas Gerais, and from 1751 to 1762 her life in Rio de Janeiro had been fraught with different forms of ecclesiastical intervention. Her dead body found in the kitchen of the secret cells of the Portuguese Inquisition begs the questions: What happened between her final interrogation session in Lisbon in 1765 and her death in 1771? Why was her case not closed? All of her previous encounters with ecclesiastical authority had culminated with a resolution. What made this encounter different? To begin to answer these questions, it is important to review the cultural milieu. Her story unfolds and coincides with a shift in emphasis and function of Inquisitorial power. In Brazil, her testimony exemplifies the power of the Portuguese

50

Censorship and the body

Inquisition as a sanctioning tool to maintain social order in mid-eighteenth-century in Brazil. Yet, the Inquisition process and, by extension, the presence of the Ecclesiastical Judge in Rio de Janeiro did not solely work to solidify religious power per se, but also to shore up the power of the Crown.79 The Crown under the Padroado, ancient concessions from the Pope, controlled the Holy Office of the Inquisition and the Catholic Church.80 At the time of Rosa’s trial in Lisbon, Pombaline Enlightenment reform had begun its process of limiting the Church’s power. For example, the Crown targeted Jesuits and eventually curtailed the Inquisition’s power to sentence individuals during the latter half of the eighteenth century. While the ecclesiastical authority worked as an agent of the Crown to solidify its absolute power and stamp out superstitious practice in colonial Brazil, at the same time, in Portugal, its power was becoming limited as the monarchy outwardly moved toward a more ‘enlightened’ political stance by delimiting the authority of its Inquisition. Rosa’s entrance into the inquisitorial archive may be read as a sign for her hybrid religious practice and her exit may be interpreted as a marker of political turmoil. Rosa’s life and her death occurred during the time in which the Crown began to extricate itself from its conjoined powers with the Catholic Church.81 The Inquisition was not a monolithic religious notion. There was never an official seat of the Holy Office in Brazil.82 The bishops that represented the intentions of the Holy Office in Brazil were agents of a vast social network, which functioned as a tool of the monarchy and served as the judicial and executive arm of Portuguese authority in Portuguese-American society.83 Rosa’s encounter with the Portuguese Inquisition illustrates the degree to which the Church may have perceived her practices as threatening, and her unclosed case may be a result of the limitations the Crown placed on ecclesiastical jurisdiction. By charging her with false-sainthood and heresy, the Inquisitors categorized her behaviors as detrimental to its authority. Ironically, we may read Rosa’s unclosed case as an example of Pombaline efforts to reform the juridical powers of its Inquisitors. Or, perhaps, during her trial in Lisbon, Rosa’s descriptions of her religious practice and her mystical visions were Catholic enough for some of her Inquisitors but not for all of them. While her transcripts produce a reading of her religious practice as heterodox, more importantly, some community members perceived her practices as scandalous.84 Significantly, it was these same scandalous religious practices that initially fostered her local fame and identity as a popular mystic.

Rosa’s agency, hybrid identity and counter-Catholic discourse A close reading of Rosa’s testimony fosters an interpretation of her religious practice as syncretic: she fused overtly Catholic imagery with Yorùbá religious symbolism. Her mystical experiences of the vision of the White Tree and the Sacred Hearts signal her social agency and her hybrid identity: they illustrate the ways in which she actively chose to intervene in her own historical trajectory by reframing the trope of the female visionary mystic and reinventing the

Mystical visions of Rosa Maria Egipçíaca

51

repertoire of female sanctity to include African religious imagery. This reading, which attempts to uncover her hybrid, Afro-Catholic voice, is tentative. Her words cannot be unchained from their baroque context since, as we know, baroque texts are inherently multiplicitous.85 However, in a way similar to Stephanie Merrim’s discussion of Sor Juana’s use of the Mexican Archive in her reading of the Divino Narciso, this essay uncovers the indirect, intertextual references in Rosa’s testimony, which offer another textual meaning. Her use of Afro-Catholic images is rarely explicit. She reworked Christian theology and conflated it with African cosmology to reinvent her own AfroCatholic religious mysticism and revelatory practices. Her testimony, as we have seen, displays her maneuvering of hegemonic ecclesiastical discourse to produce meanings that challenge Iberian Imperial rhetoric. Her descriptions of her multiple ostensibly Catholic visions as well as her possession experiences secured her freedom and gained her access to both an education and physical shelter inside a lay religious house. In this way, Rosa’s religious practice may be understood as an overt placation of Catholic practice that belies a covert manipulation of male clergy. By playing the role of the suffering servant, aligning herself to Franciscan practice and employing standard Catholic behaviors and leitmotifs, Rosa obtains the support of her spiritual confessors and her Catholic emancipators. In this way, her story opposes the dominant Catholic structure that frequently denies access to and prevents many women of Rosa’s calidad from the protection, security and societal advantages that a position within the Catholic religious space could offer – most importantly, an access to education. Specifically, I read her description of the vision of a dove in which the voice of the Holy Spirit commanded her to learn to read and write as a circumvention of patriarchal control. In her 1762 deposition, the beata’s inclusion of the image of the White Tree in which the Sacred Hearts appear, repositions Catholic religious imagery in a dependent and subordinate location to African religious practice. I interpret Rosa’s use of Yorùbá imagery as an example of counter-Catholic discourse and read it as an example of textual marronage. This critical literary tool facilitates the analysis of the utterances of hybrid speech in colonial texts and is a discursive strategy that reveals the hybrid voice.86 As a tool, it provides ways to read the heterogeneity of early modern texts and illuminates how the hybrid individual disrupts notions of cultural homogeneity and fixity, the false basis of imperial discourse. As a discursive strategy, textual marronage evidences cultural hybridity, which goes beyond the mere fusion of two cosmologies. The image of the White Tree, which, from an Africanist perspective, carries an overt reference to the Orishá Iroko, penetrates Rosa’s vision and takes the central position. As such, these Yorùbá meanings may be read as an undermining of the dominant Catholic discourse. Rosa’s testimony blends Catholic and Yorùbá religious paradigms to structure the meaning of her religious practice as an Afro-Catholic. Importantly, hybridization occurs over time through a series of quotidian experiences. These experiences are typified by numerous and varied interactions, transactions and cultural exchanges between individuals ‘implicated in cross-cultural relations’.87

52

Censorship and the body

In this way, hybridity marks the ways that individuals deploy disparate subject positions to address situations of asymmetrical power differentials.88 Rosa’s story can be read along these lines. To accommodate and resist both religious paradigms at different times, the beata negotiated between various aspects of these seemingly contradictory Catholic and Yorùbá religious reference points. Importantly, her testimony not only reveals how she negotiated between these two religious paradigms, it also highlights how she responded to the asymmetrical power differences between herself, the members of the Arvelos family, her spiritual confessors, and her Inquisitors. Her religious practice within the Catholic tradition of female mystics walked the fine line between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. At times, her hybrid religious practice was perceived as suspicious, bordering on superstitious, thus falling under the jurisdiction of the Portuguese Inquisition. Her vision of the White Tree and the Sacred Hearts of the Holy Family may be analyzed from both a Catholic and an Africanist perspective. To highlight the hybrid nature of her voice, below I trace next how her vision evolved. Her modification of this vision from the time of her deposition in Rio de Janeiro in February of 1762 to her last session with the Portuguese Inquisitors in June of 1765 illustrates her negotiation of asymmetrical power relations. Although her visions of the Sacred Hearts convinced her spiritual confessors in Brazil, her syncretic images may not have withstood the Inquisitional gaze of religious officials in Lisbon. She replaced the more heterodox Afro-religious references with orthodox Catholic imagery during her testimony in the metropolis. While Rosa’s reframed vision eliminates the more suspicious references, it deployed Catholic imagery that underscored her role as God’s mouthpiece and intermediary.

Rosa’s reframed vision The beata’s vision of the White Tree and the Sacred Hearts, as disclosed during her 1762 deposition, placed her at the base of the tree. This may be read as a symbol of her own position as spiritual medium, the one who facilitated communication between the natural and supernatural realms. The sequencing of her visions permits the interpretation in which the sixth heart would symbolize her role in her Afro-Catholic worship and simultaneously would criticize Catholic authority. Rosa staged her vision at the base of the White Tree, enshrouded in small white and green leaves, and incorporated a shiny figure veiled also in white who revealed to Rosa the significance of the sixth Sacred Heart. This figure is overtly a reference to the veiled Holy Mother; however, another interpretation suggests that this figure may be the Orishá Oxalá, the great sky god and creator signified by ‘whiteness’.89 Oxalá preferred lofty locations, such as a tree, and was generally conflated with the image of Jesus Christ.90 This image of the veiled figure in white had multiple meanings and could be interpreted as both overtly Catholic, covertly Afro-religious, or, more aptly, as hybrid AfroCatholic. Yet, the central image of this vision is the sixth Sacred Heart located at the base of the tree, the figurative altar in Rosa’s vision.

Mystical visions of Rosa Maria Egipçíaca

53

Rosa testified that up until this particular vision, the sixth heart was without designation or insignia. However, in this account of her experience, she described the heart with three nails and an arrow. This image is an older version of the Sacred Heart and a single nail connotes contriteness.91 Thus, the heart in the beata’s vision may be interpreted to experience remorse and guilt. An overtly Catholic interpretation is that the heart would belong to Rosa, the penitent sinner. However, her previous visions reveal that the heart could have belonged to the Pope, the King, or her confessor: a group that spans a large gap in the early modern social hierarchy. Perhaps in one way, the beata may be implying that either one or all of these three individuals should feel convicted. This may be the most covert circumvention of authorial control. Yet from another perspective, all the other hearts and the tree flow up out of this sixth heart in the vision, thus leading to the interpretation that it, in fact, does belong to Rosa. This interpretation places her at the center of the powerful syncretic image. Furthermore, it seems likely that she was, in fact, imbuing her visions with Afro-religious imagery because in her testimony before the Inquisitors in Portugal in 1764, she effectively reframed the 1762 version of this vision, sanitizing it of the most heterodox references: Disse mais, que em um dia, em 1755, estando ela, ré, emoração diante de um oratório que tinhanacela do dito recolhimento, viu uma árvore branca e sobre ela uma vulto como de menino de seis meses, coberto com um pano branco, muito cândido, e, nos ramos da mesma, cinco corações e um abaixo nos pés, como os quais o dito vulto brincaba ficando muito mais cândido quando os largava da mão e se punha emcima de um deles, que era grande, como corão de espinhos. (proc. 9065, fols 18r–v). [[Rosa] further states, that on a day in 1755, while she, the accused, was in prayer in front of a small chapel in the cell of the recolhimento, she saw a white tree and above it an image of six-month-old boy, covered with a white cloth, very innocent, in the branches of the tree, five hearts and one below [the boy’s] feet, about which the mentioned image bounced playfully becoming even more innocent. Then he stretched out his hand towards them and he pricked himself on top [of the heart’s] very large crown of thorns.] In this Inquisitorial version of her vision, the White Tree remains but Rosa’s image of the shining, veiled white figure is removed and replaced with an innocent, semi-nude baby boy, who is positioned standing directly above the sixth heart. The child, who is playing with the hearts, carelessly pricks himself on the crown of thorns and becomes the centerpiece of the experience. The beata’s most syncretic version of the vision describes the natural forest setting where the thick, White Tree with green and white leaves contextualizes the images and insignias of the various hearts, including the central importance of

54

Censorship and the body

contrite and powerful sixth heart at the base of the tree. The baby boy, an image of the Christ Child, replaces Rosa in her own vision. This modification suggests a reading in which the beata was keenly aware of the heterodox nature of her visions. This awareness illustrates the degree to which she consciously worked to negotiate her Afro-Catholic identity and reframed this vision in front of the Inquisitors in Lisbon so as to deflect persecution. Based on her visions and the specific way in which she divulged them to her spiritual confessors, Rosa obtained an education and learned to read and write. She secured the construction of the Recolhimento in which she lived, worked and worshipped. Her experiences prompted the fabrication of a unique icon in likeness of the Sacred Hearts and the construction of a chapel in their honor. Rosa’s testimony illustrates how she manipulated her spiritual confessors to gain power and generate her own fame within her community and, at the same time, it shows how the African beata laid the foundation for the re-articulation of Catholic imagery and the inclusion of African religious symbols with respect to her visions of the Catholic Sacred Hearts. Her first vision of the six Sacred Hearts, in which she directly asked God to whom they belonged, facilitates an interpretation of Rosa’s religious practice as syncretic. This vision may be read as her negotiation of the role of the Catholic visionary mystic and the Yorùbá priestess or spiritual medium. It also fosters an interpretation in which Rosa would have seen herself functioning as an intermediary, not only between the natural and the supernatural realms, but also between the Catholic and the African religious spaces. Thus, in a sense, the beata’s testimony at this point may be read as the most revelatory of her understanding of her own religious role as an Afro-Catholic. Rosa’s testimonies reveal also her narrations of mystical visions, which demonstrate a conflation of Catholic and African imagery and beliefs, as well as a negotiation between these cosmologies. A reading of her words facilitates an interpretation in which she consciously constructs an identity as a mystic to exert control over conditions that otherwise she would not control. Under the umbrella of the Brazilian baroque cultural paradigm, Rosa’s Afro-Catholic religious practice enabled her to circumvent her ascribed status as an African woman and enslaved person. Thus, we may interpret her words as a response to the constraints of her society. Her hybrid voice articulates various and often contradictory points of enunciation that reveal her roles as a woman, as an enslaved person, as an African and as a Catholic and most importantly, as a survivor in colonial Brazil.

Notes 1 Information from Inquisition documents in National Archive of Torre do Tombo, Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 9065. 2 Ibid., fol. 64r. 3 Unless otherwise indicated, all translations to English are mine, 4 I employ the term ‘trope of the visionary female mystic’ to describe the images and motifs associated with the representations of exemplary female religious icons, saints

Mystical visions of Rosa Maria Egipçíaca

5

6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16

55

and mystics. These motifs pervaded early modern society in literary forms, like the hagiographic genre, and also in oral, aural and pictorial representations. The hagiographic genre inundated early modern society with notions of revered female mystical practice. These representations highlighted and reinforced certain religious behaviors and attitudes of exemplary life and composed the repertoire of female sanctity in the Ibero-Atlantic. These images and behaviors were diffused within the Catholic world based on the popularity, prominence and circulation of hagiographic literature, especially in the Spanish American colonies, where printing presses were established by the late sixteenth century. See Evonne Anita Levy and Kenneth Mills, Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque: Transatlantic Exchange and Transformation (Austin, 2013), p. 123. There is extensive scholarship that discusses women’s religious practices as tied to the construction of this genre and literacy in the early modern Ibero-Catholic world, such as Anne Cruz and Rosilie Hernández (eds), Women’s Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World (Burlington, VT, 2011); Marta Vicente and Luis R. Corteguera (eds), Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World (Burlington, VT, 2003); Ronald J. Morgan, Spanish American Saints and the Rhetoric of Identity 1600–1810 (Tucson, 2002); Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau (eds), Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their own Works (Albuquerque, 2010); Daniella J. Kostroun and Lisa Vollendorf (eds), Women, Religion, and the Atlantic World (1600–1800) (Toronto, 2009). There is no documentation as to the origin of Rosa’s name; however, she did recognize Saint Mary of Egypt as her namesake (Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 14316, fol. 60v.). Perhaps she was named by one of her spiritual confessors or perhaps she chose it herself. One may suspect as much based on the similarities between Rosa’s historical trajectory, her African origins, her maritime voyage, her experience as a prostitute, her brusque religious conversion, and her commitment to religious penance, all of which parallel the legend and life story of the Catholic Saint. See David William Foster, Christian Allegory in Early Hispanic Poetry (Lexington, 1970), p. 108. Ibid., proc. 9065, fol. 77r. Ibid., proc. 9065, fol. 78r. Ibid., proc. 9065, fol. 78v. Ibid., proc. 9065, fol. 16r. Ibid., proc. 14316, fols 56r–56v. Darcy Donahue, ‘Wondrous Words: Miraculous Literacy and Real Literacy in the Convents of Early Modern Spain’, in Anne Cruz and Rosilie Hernández (eds), Women’s Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World (Burlington, VT, 2011), p. 106. Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 9065, fols 16v, 73r. Ibid., proc. 9065, fol. 73r. Ibid., proc. 14316, fols 59r–60v. Ibid., proc. 14316, fol. 17r. Devotion to the physical heart of Jesus began in the Middle Ages and stems from the cult of the Wound in the Side (of Christ). Saint John Eudes (1601–1680) was first to provide a theological and liturgical foundation for this devotion. The cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus gained momentum in the seventeenth century primarily as a result of the Visitandine nun, Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–1690), who developed a devotional practice based on her own visionary experiences. See Frank Leslie Cross and Elizabeth S. Livingstone, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford, 2005), p. 1447. Likewise, the twin devotion to the Sacred Hearts, those of both the Blessed Virgin Mary and her son Jesus, branched off from the devotion to the physical heart of Jesus. The central devotional belief of the cult of the Sacred Hearts is the mystical unity of purpose and love shared by Mary and Jesus. Mary and Jesus are bound in their shared suffering for the redemption of humanity and

56

17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30

Censorship and the body their common love for human beings. For the practitioner devoted to the Sacred Hearts, the focus is to unite her own heart to those of Mary and Jesus. Additionally, followers of the cult of the Sacred Hearts emphasize the role of intense internal private prayer life and commitment to service, Donna Spivey Ellington, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul: Understanding Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Washington DC, 2001), pp. 260–62. Rosa’s visions of the Sacred Hearts are the first known appearance of this devotion in Brazil. Perhaps the beata’s visions of the Sacred Hearts were a reinvention of the European devotional practice unique to her own experiences. Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 14316, fol. 17r. Ibid. Ibid., proc. 18078. Inquisition testimony falls within the category of women’s writing known as the vida because it was grounded in the philosophy of the confessional act. See Kathryn J. McKnight, The Mystic of Tunja: The Writings of Madre Castillo, (Amherst, 1997), p. 40. As a genre, the vida is understood as spiritual biographies and autobiographies. Importantly, the visionary experience became a theme of the vida for American-born religious women writers. The unverifiable nature of these visions and the hybridity of the vida genre itself – a fusion of religious model rhetoric and personal experience descriptions – opened up a more malleable point of enunciation for religious women in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The vida’s rhetorical hybridity provided a path to challenge Spanish Counter-Reformation hegemonic discourse. See Kristine Ibsen, Women’s Spiritual Autobiographies in Colonial Spanish America (Gainesville, 1999), p. 13. Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 2901. Ibid., proc. 14316. Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 9065, fols 72r–72v. Ibid., fol. 18r. Yorùbá, in part, describes peoples concentrated near present day Bight of Benin and Nigeria who were dispersed throughout the New World. The terms Lucumí in Spanish America and Nago in Brazil refer to the Yorùbá people. There is some evidence of Lucumí peoples in seventeenth-century Peru and hard evidence of Yorùbá passing through Slave Coast ports before 1660 and after 1713, David Eltis, ‘The Diaspora of Yoruba Speakers, 1650–1865: Dimensions and Implications’, in Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs (eds),The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World (Bloomington, 2002), p. 253. The term Yorùbá includes those from the Oyo, Ife and perhaps Ijebu geopolitical groupings, Paul E. Lovejoy, ‘Ethnic Designations of the Slave Trade and the Reconstruction of History of Transatlantic Slavery’, in Paul E. Lovejoy and David V. Trotman (eds), Trans-Atlantic Dimensions of Ethnicity in the African Diaspora (London, 2002), p. 41. Importantly, while the Yorùbá were never a solidified geopolitical nation or kingdom, nor did they function as a cohesive ethnic group in the early modern period, the term gains cohesion as a moniker of identity referring to a people with a common cosmology, religious practice and identity in diaspora, Toyin Falola, The African Diaspora: Slavery, Modernity, and Globalization (Rochester, 2013), p. 125. Pamela Sheingorn, ‘Appropriating the Holy Kinship: Gender and Family History’, in Carol Neel (ed.), Medieval Families: Perspectives on Marriage, Household, and Children (Toronto, 2004), p. 274. Ibid. Johnson, Paul C., Secrets, Gossip, and Gods the Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé (New York: 2002), p. 65. Robert A. Voeks, Sacred Leaves of Candomblé: African Magic, Medicine, and Religion in Brazil, (Austin, 1997), p. 163. Pierre Verger, Notas Sobre O Culto Aos Orixás e Voduns na Bahia de Todos os Santos, no Brasil, e na Antiga Costa dos Escravos, na África (São Paulo, 1999), p. 520.

Mystical visions of Rosa Maria Egipçíaca

57

31 Robert A. Voeks and John Rashford, African Ethnobotany in the Americas (New York: 2013), p. 315. 32 Robert A. Voeks, Sacred Leaves of Candomblé: African Magic, Medicine, and Religion in Brazil (Austin, 1997), p. 117. 33 Ibid. 34 Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 9065, fol. 17r. 35 Ibid., fol. 17v. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid., fols 17v–18r. 39 Moshe Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago, 2007), p. 98. 40 James L. Matory,Sex and the Empire That Is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion (New York, 2005), p. 145. 41 Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 14316, fol. 59r. 42 Matory, p. 74. 43 Margaret T. Drewal, Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency (Bloomington, 1992), p. 182. 44 Ibid, p. 183. 45 Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 9065, fol.71r. 46 Sluhovsky, p. 110. 47 Ibid, p. 101. 48 Teresa of Ávila is recognized as a saint and doctor of the Catholic Church. Her writings on prayer and her mystical experiences formed the backbone of religious practice for women during the Catholic Reformation, Gillian T. W. Ahlgren, Teresa of Avila and the Politics of Sanctity (Ithaca, 1996). 49 José Adriano de Freitas Caravalho, ‘Traditions, Life Experiences and Orientations in Portuguese Mysticism’, in Hillaire Kallendorf (ed.), A New Companion to Hispanic Mysticism (Leiden, 2010), pp. 45–46. 50 Ibid. p. 45 51 Ahlgren, p. 93. 52 Ibid., p. 102. 53 Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 9065, fol. 4v. 54 Ibid., fol. 16v. 55 Ibid., fol. 4v. 56 Ibid., fol. 8v. 57 Mali, Anya Mali, Mystic in the New World: Marie de l’Incarnation (1599–1672) (Leiden, 1996), p. 137. 58 Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 9065, fol. 75r. 59 Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, CA, 1987), p. 59. 60 Nancy van Deusen introduces and situates Úrsula’s spiritual journal and describes the unique corporeal identity Úrsula created for herself in her writings, Nancy van Deusen, The Souls of Purgatory: The Spiritual Diary of a Seventeenth-century Afro-Peruvian Mystic, Ursula De Jesús (Albuquerque, 2004), p. 52. 61 Asunción Lavrin, Brides of Christ: Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, 2008), p. 169. 62 Joan Cameron Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers and Witches: Afro-Mexican Ritual Practice in the Seventeenth Century (Albuquerque, 2007), p. 24. 63 Kathryn McKnight and Leo Garafalo (eds), Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550–1812 (Indianapolis, 2009), p. 219. 64 Carole A. Myscofski, Amazons, Wives, Nuns and Witches: Women and the Catholic Church in Colonial Brazil, 1500–1822 (Austin, 2013), pp. 98–101; Nancy van Deusen,

58

65 66 67

68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

87 88 89 90 91

Censorship and the body Between the Sacred and the Worldly: The Institutional and Cultural Practice of Recogimiento in Colonial Lima (Stanford, 2001), p. xii. Elizabeth Lehfeld, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: The Permeable Cloister (Burlington, VT, 2005). Joan C. Bristol, ‘Afro-Mexican Saintly Devotion in a Mexico City Alley’, in Sherwin K. Bryant, Rachel Sarah O’Toole and Ben Vinson, III (eds), Africans to Spanish America: Expanding the Diaspora (Urbana, 2012), p. 123. Mariana L. Dantas, ‘Humble Slaves and Loyal Vassals: Free Africans and Their Descendants in Eighteenth-Century Minas Gerais, Brazil’, in Andrew B. Fisher and Matthew D. O’Hara (eds), Imperial Subjects: Race and Identity in Colonial Latin America (Durham, 2009), p. 118; Kátia M. Queirós de Mattoso, To Be a Slave in Brazil, 1550–1888 (New Brunswick, 1986), p. 13. Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 9065, fol. 64r. João José Reis and Beatriz Gallotti Mamigonian, ‘Nago and Mina: The Yoruba Diaspora in Brazil’, in Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs (eds), The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World (Bloomington, 2002), p. 78. Ibid. Vicente and Corteguera, p. 3. Ibid, p. 256. Ibid, p. 265. Luiz Mott, Rosa Egipciaca: Uma Santa Africana no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1993), p. 257. Ibid, p. 310. Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 14316. 3r–3v. Donald Ramos, ‘Gossip, Scandal and Popular Culture in Golden Age Brazil’, Journal of Social History 33.4(2000): 887–912. Jonathan Schorsch, Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge, 2004), p. 11. Elizabeth W. Kiddy, Blacks of the Rosary: Memory and History in Minas Gerais, Brazil (University Park, 2005), p. 68. Max Savelle,Empires to Nations: Expansion in America, 1713–1824 (Minneapolis, 1974), p. 159. P. G. M. Muniz, ‘Cruz e Coroa: Igreja, Estado e conflito de jurisdições no Maranhão colonial’, Revista Brasileira de Historia 32(2012): 39–58. David G. Sweet and Gary B. Nash (eds), Struggle and Survival in Colonial America (Berkeley, 1981), p. 156. Laura de Mello e Souza, The Devil and the Land of the Holy Cross: Witchcraft, Slavery, and Popular Religion in Colonial Brazil (Austin, 2003), p. 181. Ramos, pp. 887–912. Stephanie Merrim, ‘Sor Juana Criolla and the Mexican Archive: Public Performances’, in Ralph Bauer and José Antonio Mazzotti (eds), Creole Subjects in the Colonial Americas: Empires, Texts, Identities (Chapel Hill, 2009), p. 199. Margaret Olsen, ‘Africans and Textual Marronage in Seventeenth-Century Colonial Discourse’, in Raúl A. Galoppe and Richard Weiner (eds), Explorations on Subjectivity, Borders, and Demarcation: A Fine Line (Lanham, 2005), pp. 163–78. Néstor García Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity (Minneapolis, 1989), p. 9. Ibid. Paul C. Johnson, Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé (Oxford, 2002), p. 37. Voeks, p. 81. Gloria Fraser Giffords, Sanctuaries of Earth, Stone and Light: The Churches of Northern Spain, 1530–1821 (Tucson, 2007), p. 335.

Mystical visions of Rosa Maria Egipçíaca

59

Bibliography Primary sources National Archive of Torre do Tombo, Maria Theresa de Jesús de Arvelos, Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 14316. National Archive of Torre do Tombo, Francisco Gonçalves-Lopes, Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 2901. National Archive of Torre do Tombo, Rosa María Egipçíaca, Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 9065. National Archive of Torre do Tombo, Holy Office Tribunal, Lisbon Inquisition, proc. 18078.

Secondary sources Ahlgren, Gillian T. W., Teresa of Avila and the Politics of Sanctity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996). Arenal, Electa, and Stacey Schlau (eds), Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works. Amanda Powell (trans.) (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010 [1989]). Bristol, Joan C., ‘Afro-Mexican Saintly Devotion in a Mexico City Alley’, in Sherwin K. Bryant, Rachel Sarah O’Toole and BenVinson, III (eds), Africans to Spanish America: Expanding the Diaspora (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012). Bristol, Joan C., Christians, Blasphemers and Witches: Afro-Mexican Ritual Practice in the Seventeenth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007). Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). Cross, Frank Leslie and Elizabeth A. Livingstone (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Cruz, Anne and Rosilie Hernández (eds), Women’s Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011). Dantas, Marian L. R., ‘Humble Slaves and Loyal Vassals: Free Africans the Their Descendants in Eighteenth-Century Minas Gerais, Brazil’, in Andrew B. Fisher and Matthew D. O’Hara (eds), Imperial Subjects: Race and Identity in Colonial Latin America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). Drewal, Margaret T., Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). Donahue, Darcy, ‘Wondrous Words: Miraculous Literacy and Real Literacy in the Convents of Early Modern Spain’, in Anne Cruz and Rosilie Hernández (eds), Women’s Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011). Ellington, Donna Spivey, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul: Understanding Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 2001). Eltis, David, ‘The Diaspora of Yoruba Speakers, 1650–1865: Dimensions and Implications’, in Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs (eds), The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002). Falola, Toyin, The African Diaspora: Slavery, Modernity, and Globalization (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2013).

60

Censorship and the body

Foster, David William, Christian Allegory in Early Hispanic Poetry (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1970). García Canclini, Néstor, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989). Giffords, Gloria Fraser, Sanctuaries of Earth, Stone and Light: The Churches of Northern Spain, 1530–1821 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007). Ibsen, Kristine, Women’s Spiritual Autobiographies in Colonial Spanish America (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999). Johnson, Paul Christopher, Secrets, Gossip and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Kiddy, Elizabeth W., Blacks of the Rosary: Memory and History in Minas Gerais, Brazil (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005). Kostroun, Daniella J. and Lisa Vollendorf (eds), Women, Religion, and the Atlantic World (1600–1800) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009). Lavrin, Asunción, Brides of Christ: Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). Lehfeld, Elizabeth, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: The Permeable Cloister (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005). Levy, Evonne Anita and Kenneth Mills, Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque: Transatlantic Exchange and Transformation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013). Lovejoy, Paul E., ‘Ethnic Designations of the Slave Trade and the Reconstruction of History of Transatlantic Slavery’, in Paul E. Lovejoy and David V. Trotman (eds), Transatlantic Dimensions of Ethnicity in the African Diaspora (London and New York: Continuum, 2002). Matory, James L., Sex and the Empire That Is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). Maxwell, Kenneth, Pombal, Paradox of the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). McKnight, Kathryn J., The Mystic of Tunja: The Writings of Madre Castillo (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997). McKnight, Kathryn and Leo Garafalo (eds), Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550–1812 (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2009). Merrim, Stephanie, ‘Sor Juana Criolla and the Mexican Archive: Public Performances’, in Ralph Bauer and José Antonio Mazzotti (eds), Creole Subjects in the Colonial Americas: Empires, Texts, Identities (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). Morgan, Ronald J., Spanish American Saints and the Rhetoric of Identity 1600–1810 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002). Mott, Luiz, Rosa Egipcíaca: uma santa africana no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand, 1993). Muniz, P. G. M., ‘Cruz e Coroa: Igreja, Estado e conflito de jurisdições no Maranhão colonial’, Revista Brasileira de Historia 32(2012): 39–58. Myscofski, Carole A., Amazons, Wives, Nuns and Witches: Women and the Catholic Church in Colonial Brazil, 1500–1822 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013). Olsen, Margaret, ‘Africans and Textual Marronage in Seventeenth-Century Colonial Discourse’, in Raúl A. Galoppe and Richard Weiner (eds), Explorations on Subjectivity, Borders, and Demarcation: A Fine Line (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005).

Mystical visions of Rosa Maria Egipçíaca

61

Queirós de Mattoso, Kátia M., To Be a Slave in Brazil, 1550–1888 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986). Ramos, Donald, ‘Gossip, Scandal and Popular Culture in Golden Age Brazil’, Journal of Social History 33(2000): 887–912. Reis, João José and Beatriz Gallotti Mamigonian, ‘Nago and Mina: The Yoruba Diaspora in Brazil’. in Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs (eds), The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002). Savelle, Max, Empires to Nations: Expansion in America, 1713–1824 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1974). Schorsch, Jonathan, Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Sheingorn, Pamela, ‘Appropriating the Holy Kinship: Gender and Family History’, in Carol Neel (ed.), Medieval Families: Perspectives on Marriage, Household, and Children (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). Sluhovsky, Moshe, Believe Not in Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Souza, Laura de Mello, The Devil and the Land of the Holy Cross: Witchcraft, Slavery, and Popular Religion in Colonial Brazil (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003). Sweet, David G. and Gary B. Nash (eds), Struggle and Survival in Colonial America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). van Deusen, Nancy E., Between the Sacred and the Worldly: The Institutional and Cultural Practice of Recogimiento in Colonial Lima (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). van Deusen, Nancy E., The Souls of Purgatory: The Spiritual Diary of a Seventeenthcentury Afro-Peruvian Mystic, Ursula de Jesús (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004). Verger, Pierre, Notas Sobre o Culto Aos Orixás e Voduns na Bahia de Todos os Santos, no Brasil, e Na Antiga Costa dos Escravos, na África (São Paulo: EDUSP, 1999). Vicente, Marta and Luis R. Corteguera (eds), Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003). Voeks, Robert A. and John Rashford, African Ethnobotany in the Americas (New York: Springer, 2013). Voeks, Robert A., The Sacred Leaves of Candomblé African Magic, Medicine and Religion in Brazil (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997). Wadsworth, James E., Agents of Orthodoxy: Honor, Status, and the Inquisition in Colonial Pernambuco, Brazil (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007).

3

‘In so celestial a language’ Text as body, relics as text1 Nancy E. van Deusen

What comes to mind when we think of texts produced by women in the early modern period are the life writings, literary or artistic creations of Teresa of Ávila, María de Zayas, or Sophonisba Anguissola. As many of us are aware, however, the texts produced by or even about women are limited. Over the decades historians, anthropologists, art historians, and literary scholars have developed specific methodologies for culling out female voices, especially of those who were in some way disenfranchised and whose voices are severely compromised.2 As feminist scholars of the early modern, we search for the ‘contours of affirmation’, trying to circumnavigate what has been lost and peel away the absences, or decode the opaque male-generated references hovering in these records.3 As we navigate available texts, we find ourselves having to redefine the contours of autobiographies or biographies, determine the parameters of the confessor–confessee relationship, and detect the voice of a woman facing Inquisition authorities.4 We search for the gendered spaces of contestation or dialogic interventions where we might find distinct narrative stratagems. Some of us locate female voices in the spiritual vidas (life writings) of nuns or literary works by gaining an understanding of context, discursive power dynamics, or by considering the symbolic integrity within a document. We are constantly struggling to give the voices of women an audible, narrative weight. And so, given our ‘mission’, how might we think about new ways to probe new kinds of texts, and locate voices that transcend literal speech on a written page? How might we grasp early modern sensibilities and the ways subjects appropriated female-generated, non-literary texts? With those questions in mind, I would like to turn to the main focus of my chapter and consider two different texts created in seventeenth-century Lima, Peru. The first contains the words spoken by a mystic while in an ecstatic trance and the other is a list of relics of a woman condemned as a false mystic. In each I will consider the relationship between female voice and the creation, transmission, and reception of texts. I will probe the multivalent meanings of ‘voice’, which included the body engaged in mystical rapture or fragmented into physical objects labeled as relics. I argue that both were readable texts, following the arguments made by historian Roger Chartier. Texts, as he posits, ‘did not necessarily come in book form: some were orally produced works, or visions

Text as body, relics as text

63

which were then rendered into a narrative structure using language and symbols to invite interpretation and appropriation’.5 Both the form of transmission (orally, in writing, or through a visual performance) and reception (how the ‘language’ of that text was received by means of the senses) are key to understanding early modern ideas about how mystical language was transmitted and how different kinds of texts, the subject of this essay, were created. In the early modern period, according to Michel de Certeau, spiritual practices created new spaces (texts) from which Spirit could speak and from where different utterances were rendered knowable.6 Integral to our understanding of what comprised a text, and particularly a mystical text, in the early modern period is how information was transmitted and received by the senses.7 For readers or those individuals appropriating a given text, what was written, oral, or visual fulfilled the same expressive and communicative functions.8 Given that texts transcended written language and that ‘readers’ could appropriate information in a variety of ways, how can we think about the kinds of ‘texts’ women generated, the material conditions under which they were produced, and how they were transmitted and ‘read’? I will argue that the female body involved in mystical discourse produced different forms of ‘writing’, and that the five senses were actively engaged in the transmission and reception of messages that were believed to be divinely inspired. In turn, ‘readers’, both male and female, appropriated the word of God by means of the bodies of female mystics. They too were actively engaged with the senses in their collaborative or meditative communication of that knowledge.

The language of celestial spheres: Luisa Melgarejo de Sotomayor The first text is a transcription of the words spoken by a female mystic named Luisa Melgarejo (1578–1651) while in an ecstatic trance in 1617 in Lima, Peru. She and others were present at the deathbed of the future saint, Rosa de Santa María (1586–1617), who was canonized in 1671. The words spoken by Melgarejo were recorded and then included within the deposition of Gonzalo de la Maza who spoke at Rosa’s 1617–1618 beatification proceedings. Both de la Maza and his wife, María de Usástegui, parental figures to Rosa who had housed her and allowed spiritual conventicles with other beatas (lay pious women) to take place in their home, witnessed Rosa’s death and Melgarejo’s ecstatic trance (fols 54r–56v).9 María de Usástegui testified that as she attended to the body of Rosa around two in the morning she noticed that doña Luisa Melgarejo had entered a deep state of ecstasy – not an unusual occurrence. Melgarejo began communicating with the recently deceased Rosa de Lima, about ‘cosas admirables’ (fol. 102r) (‘admirable things’).10 When the members of the grieving but captive audience, including another witness, Juan Costilla de Benavides, realized the import of what was being said, they garnered ink and paper and began recording Melgarejo’s words, including the inflections and pauses she made. When one person tired, another stepped in to write, ‘y habiendo escrito como tiempo de una hora, pareciéndole al padre Fray Francisco Nieto de la Orden de

64

Censorship and the body

Santo Domingo que estaba presente, que este testigo se cansaba … tomó asimismo tinta y papel, y a una mano fueron continuando; hasta que la dicha doña Luisa Melgarejo acabó’ (fol. 334r) [and having written for about an hour, it seemed to the friar, Father Francisco Nieto of the Dominican Order who was present that this witness [Costilla] was getting tired … He [Nieto] [then] took the ink and paper, and in one hand continued [writing] until the said doña Luisa Melgarejo finished].11 Uzástegui later commented that Melgarejo spoke so rapidly at times that it was impossible to capture everything she said. In his deposition, Costilla de Benavides reported that while Melgarejo ‘se quedó suspensa y elevada en éxtasis ‘(fol. 334r) [remained suspended and elevated in a state of ecstasy], she had begun to speak of ‘la Gloria de que estabagozando el alma de la dicha Rosa bendita Rosa’ (fol. 334r) [the glory that the soul of the said blessed Rosa was enjoying]. In an intellectual vision that involved language and images, Melgarejo saw Rosa as a Queen wearing a crown filled with precious gems (fol. 54v).12 Over the course of her ecstasy, Melgarejo observed a number of ‘celestial events’ that took place as Rosa ascended into heaven. Melgarejo spoke for nearly four hours, and when she had finished, Costilla de Benavides and another male witness compared and corrected their two versions. The completed text followed Rosa’s ascension into heaven in a temporal and progressive manner, but it was also heavily laden with Catholic symbolism. There were precious gems, crowns, roses, and a grand banquet. Christ was there to welcome her. Even though the contents of this document are scripted because of expectations surrounding Rosa’s eventual path toward sainthood, and although they are filled with contemporary tropes related to sanctity and notions of the afterlife, I argue that this recording of a mystic speaking while in an ecstatic trance is still an extremely rare and valuable text for several reasons. For one, the body/voice of Melgarejo was considered a legitimate and acceptable text which could ‘read/ speak’ her own voice and the absent-but-present ‘voice’ of Rosa that was then recorded in writing. Luisa’s body served as a somatic vessel through which divine knowledge could be transmitted, written, and then read by the self and by others through a system of signs registered both inside and outside the body. Through her senses an historic event – Rosa’s ascension into heaven – could unfold in the presence of others who witnessed it. Her body contained multiple voices: her own, Rosa’s, God’s and other divine beings. Moreover, she was communicating something beyond language which was transformed into a written text by the act of naming. As Fernando Bouza has argued, writing, as a sort of painting, transmitted a ‘reflection of an absent image or an echo of an absent voice … it was understood as a faithful copy of that which is oral or visual.’13 Witnesses truly believed that Melgarejo was speaking and writing the language of the celestial spheres. A fragment extracted from Melgarejo’s lengthy testimony read as follows: Alas de buenas obras, esmaltadas con la sangre de Jesucristo, os dieron para volar y qué vuelo, y qué vuelo, y qué vuelo, vuelo para gozar lo que

Text as body, relics as text

65

ojo no vio ni oreja no oyó ni corazón pudo pensar, quién lo puede comprender, quién entender, quién entenderá a Dios incomprensible … ? (fol. 54v)14 [Wings of good works, enameled with the blood of Jesus Christ, they gave you to fly, and what flight, and what flight, and what flight, a flight in order to enjoy what the eye did not see, the ear did not hear, nor the heart was able to think. Who could comprehend it, who could understand, who will understand the incomprehensible God … ?] This passage refers to Rosa’s winged flight to heaven, and the difficulty Melgarejo had in expressing in language what it was like to witness her friend in the presence of the divine, or what the heart was not able to think, or conceptualize. The text is also important because it bridges the domains of orality and written speech, of mystical seeing and communicating with and without language. Here I am concerned less with the contents of the text but rather with the manner of transmission and reception of knowledge, through discursive spaces and channels of communication considered at the time to be authentic and viable under the right circumstances. Understanding how individuals read and then comprehended religious doctrine was directly related to early modern notions of sense perception, adapted from Galenic and Aristotelian notions. Most theologians and scientists believed that the body contained the lower to higher forms of the vegetative, sensitive (which contained the perceptual faculties of the external and internal senses) and intellective souls, and that each successively higher form of the soul contained the lower form(s).15 Employing the external senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, and the internal senses of cognition, memory, fantasy, imagination, and common sense within the sensitive soul, an individual could perceive absent sense objects, including language. Thus, when Luisa read Rosa de Lima, she experienced her through her senses, which were equipped to receive the sensible forms of images of material objects – to be distinguished from their substantial or specific forms – without the associated matter.16 An aerated fluid called spiritus (known as the ‘first instrument of the soul’) carried the perceived sensation contained within the object to the phantasy or imagination, which then sent the image to the heart, which could accept or reject it.17 In Spanish, this action of perceiving objects through sensory mechanisms was called sentimiento, or more literally, understanding through or imprinting on the senses.18 The body of Luisa Melgarejo was involved in the production of Rosa’s visual text, based on her sensations, and her ability to speak (read: read) a text she experienced through an intellectual vision, complete with symbols, images and perhaps language. Throughout the process, Melgarejo’s body was never completely absent or eliminated. Although she experienced a suspension of her external senses, which allowed Rosa’s celestial presence and ‘voice’ to emerge, Melgarejo still had to receive the message and register a vocalized discourse that had been pronounced. She then reproduced the disembodied voice in another

66

Censorship and the body

form through her interior senses.19 Those present heard, saw, and felt (sintieron) the text being vocalized as it entered their bodies through their eyes and their ears. Then they recorded the language of spiritual sensation as it spilled forth onto the page. Here a gendered collaboration occurred as the men present copied the texts and then corroborated their two versions. Thus the text produced involved ‘embodying’ the transmission or reading of the absent voice of Rosa first inscribed on Melgarejo, then registering the discourse in the bodies of the listeners/readers, and then re-copying the ‘text’ onto vellum. Thus, for our purposes, the process of creating a ‘text’ – the transcribed and corrected version integrated into Rosa’s beatification hearing – is just as relevant to our understanding of ‘voice’ as the end result: words recorded on a page. What we have here are texts within texts, all there for the scholar to ‘see’. From the rich scholarship on the body in medieval and early modern spiritual discourse, including the work of Carolyn Walker Bynum, Mary Giles, Walter Simons, Barbara Mujica, and Allison Weber, to name but a few, we know that the bodies of sensitive women blessed by God served as texts of ‘experiences of mystical transport that spoken or written language did not and could not articulate’.20 Many visionaries received God’s word in language, images, or sensorial impressions while experiencing rapture or arrobamiento, described in orthodox texts as a type of trance where a loss (enajenación) of the senses occurred.21 Witnesses used terminology and employed an interpretive gendered framework to read the external signs of female bodies enduring physical torture in imitation of Christ.22 Despite the Inquisition’s continued suspicion that raptures were only the provenance of crazy and arrogant women, descriptions and sightings of arrobos (raptures) not only pervaded contemporary hagiographies; they were common parlance among Lima’s inhabitants.23 Within such a fertile urban landscape where inward piety was promoted, healers, nuns, and lay pious women called beatas operated along a continuum where the boundaries between life and death, the quotidian and the esoteric were not readily distinguishable. Archival evidence also suggests that many limeños considered ecstatic trances to be orthodox, acceptable and accessible public practices. Confessors charged with carefully observing the conduct of their protégées actually encouraged and praised their arrobamientos as a superior method of prayer and as a sign of sanctity.24 Thus, in some contexts, spiritual ecstasy was viewed as an acceptable means of transmitting and garnering information from and about the beyond. Melgarejo’s legendary ability to enter a meditative trance easily caused the wellknown Franciscan chronicler Diego Córdova y Salinas to make this observation about her: Los que desseaban su conversación, escusaban de hablarle del amor divino, porque luego quedaba [Luisa] arrobada en Dios en la postura que le cogía, de que yo soy testigo varias veces que le visité, que perdí su conversación dejándola arrebatada y absorta, fuera de sus sentidos, con no pequeño desconsuelo mío, cuando por descuido le hablé de Dios. (970)

Text as body, relics as text

67

[Those who desired her conversation tried not to speak about divine love because then she [Luisa] would [immediately] enter a state of rapture in whatever posture she was in at that moment. I am a witness to this. Many times when I visited her I would lose her conversation, leaving her enraptured and absorbed, outside her senses, with no small disconsolation on my part, when carelessly I spoke with her about God]. But Melgarejo was certainly not the only one who communed with Rosa after her death. Not only did María de Uzástegui witness Luisa’s state of rapture, but she also was present when the words of María Antonia, another ecstatic woman in the room, were recorded and included in with Gonzalo de la Maza’s deposition (fols 56v–57v).25 Uzástegui later commented under oath that on another occasion a certain unnamed ‘spiritual person’ had relayed a conversation she had had with the deceased Rosa. The person had asked Rosa, as though they had chanced upon one another on the street, ‘“My Sister, how did it go?” to which Rosa replied, “How else could it go, sister, having such a husband, who with his infinite compassion and mercy carried me directly to heaven without entering purgatory?”’ (fol. 103r).26 Through ecstatic rapture, mystics ‘became engaged with God in an act of inscription’.27 While in this state, which should, according to authorities, only occur after years of careful preparation and mental prayer, mystics were able to access and then ‘read’ the internal domain of their spiritual senses, which received and processed the information sent from the beyond, in this case, from the disembodied form of Rosa. At the same time, observers could note (read) the subtle changes registering on the physical body as the divine exchange occurred.28 Thus, the body could ‘speak’ as Teresa de Ávila called it, ‘in so celestial a language,’ by registering ‘texts’ received both inside and on the body.29 Melgarejo once wrote in one of her spiritual notebooks that, que en los raptos los sentidos menos necessarios se pierden totalmente como es el del tacto, vista, y gusto, y en estos tres que se pierden ai más y menos conforme la abundancia de la gloria que se recibe y los dos que es el oído y olfato no se pierden totalmente aunque algunas veces faltan algo en su entereça.30 [during the state of rapture the least necessary senses of touch, sight and taste are lost completely, and the amount of sensation that is lost is relative to the abundance of glory that one receives. The two senses of hearing and smell are not completely lost, although at times they are not completely there]. The somatic senses of smell, touch (tocados) and taste (gustos), in particular, served as metaphors and tropes to describe the soul’s progressive union with God: felt and tasted, as Teresa of Ávila once described, ‘in delightful conjunctions’.31 While Melgarejo’s spiritual senses of hearing and sight were most actively

68

Censorship and the body

engaged in the creation of the text of Rosa’s ascension, she also employed her spiritual sense of smell. It was as though she could detect the different scents emanating from the ‘eternal garden’ and the fragrance of the countless roses surrounding Rosa. Luisa experienced the ‘text’ of Rosa by means of her delicious scent, the true rose. As one of the instruments of the soul, Luisa sensed the aroma of Rosa’s purity and what would become the symbol of her sanctity and then tried to explain it in words. She watched her friend and then murmured, ‘Rosa amantísima y cómo goza la rosa, de esa fragancia olorosa, oh la Rosa, oh como gozaya lo que no se le acabara’ (fol. 54v)32 [Dearly loved Rosa, and how you enjoy the rose, of this delectable fragrance, oh the Rosa, how you now enjoy what will never cease]. Luisa was a spectator at a mystical event – Rosa’s ascension into heaven – where she was both an observer and a participant. Rosa never directly spoke any words that Melgarejo repeated in the course of her four-hour trance, although clearly they were conversing in celestial-speak through Luisa’s enraptured body. Included in Melgarejo’s long monologue were snippets of a conversation Luisa had once had with Rosa. At one point Melgarejo said, ‘bien os lo decía yo, bien os lo decía yo hermana mía, que aquellas mortificaciones, os las habían de pagar muy bien, bien os lo decía yo, oh que favores eternos ya sabéis a lo que saben Rosa, Rosa’ (fol. 54v)33 [I did tell you, I did tell you my sister, that those mortifications would serve you very well, [very] well I did tell you, oh what eternal favors. Now you know what they [already] know, Rosa, Rosa]. Here past exchanges or texts entered the present as Melgarejo referred to once telling Rosa how her continual mortifications would be met with grace in heaven. As Melgarejo witnessed Rosa in the garden of heaven, at a celestial banquet, surrounded by angels, she had moments of self-reflection, saying to herself: ‘tengo que vivir muriendo, si para vivir’34 [I have to live dying in order to live]. But then, there was a last wish for Rosa, a very human wish: ‘concédame lo que ospedí, y a todos hermana mía; ya que porahora no nosdanotras alas, Rosa, volemos con éstas’ (fol. 55r)35 [concede to me what I asked of you, and for everyone, sister of mine, even though now we have no other wings, Rosa, [because] we fly with these]. After a pause Melgarejo seemed to reflect on her own flesh-and-blood state when she added, ‘las alas de acá, son la altísima contemplación de ese Dios grande, increado; de ese Dios sin principio, de ese ser incomprensible de ese abismo de deleites …’ (fol. 55r)36 [the wings [we have] here are the highest contemplation of this great God, without beginning, [they are what we have] of this incomprehensible being, of this abyss of delights]. A remembered dialogue, an act of self-reflection, and one-half of a ‘conversation’ occurring between the two mystics, gives us pause to think about how ‘voice’ was conceptualized in this given documentary context. ‘Voice’ was, at once, an act of inscription on Luisa’s spiritual senses, a registering in the spiritual and ordinary senses of smell, sight, and hearing, and messages transmitted through language and received and read by those present in the room with Melgarejo and the deceased Rosa. ‘Voice’ was tangible and intangible, but pronounced and perceived. In this internal dwelling the ‘world’ of the body

Text as body, relics as text

69

produced a discursive space from which language and images could be read, communicated, and received.37 Luisa Melgarejo’s body was a vessel through which the celestial spheres could speak and she could ‘see’ her beloved spiritual sister, Rosa, one last time. What can we take away from this example? It asks to re-examine our contemporary understandings of voice as it was expressed through spoken language in the early modern period and to pay closer attention to other interrelated forms of knowledge transmission. Clearly other channels of communication for disembodied ‘voices’ – including speech and the other senses – were acceptable at the time. Sensitivity to these sensorial processes will enable us to ‘see’ the layered, gendered processes of mediation, collaboration and transmission of texts within texts as they were read by the senses.38

Hidden voices of divine knowledge: Angela Carranza The second text to address in this chapter is a broadside generated by the Inquisition Tribunal of Lima in December 1694 and disseminated throughout the viceroyalty. The edict ordered all members of the Lima community and other cities within the district to turn in any objects, which had once pertained to or were associated with the beata Angela Carranza, recently condemned by the Inquisition as a false mystic. The list included any, cuentas, rosarios, medallas, campanillas, cencerros, espadas, dagas, pañuelos, y vendas mojadas en su sangre, y retazos de sus enaguas, retratos, uñas, cabellos, firmas, quadernos, originales de su letra u de otros, copias, y trasumptos, y otras qualesquier cosas, que le pertenescan, y guarden , y avian guardado, como reliquias suyas.39 [beads, rosaries, medals, small and large bells, swords, daggers, handkerchiefs and bandages dipped in her blood, remnants from her petticoats, portraits, fingernails, hair, signatures, notebooks, either original copies, translations or transcripts of her writings, and any other things that belong to her, or have been kept as her relics.] The edict prohibited the reading, copying, translating, publishing, tearing off a portion, burning, or referencing by memory any of the contents of her writings. Limeños (natural or resident of Lima) were given nine days to come forward and present these objects to the Tribunal de la Inquisición (Inquisition Commission). Images and relics revered and cherished for decades were now flung out like garbage; the dismembered parts of Angela condemned. Curled shoes, tattered threads, rosary beads, furniture, portraits, liquid-filled vials, nail clippings, swords, and bells filled an entire room in the Inquisition Tribunal, impressing even the hardboiled inquisitor, José del Hoyo, who was there to record the extraordinary event to which he referred in an account of Carranza’s auto de fe.40

70

Censorship and the body

Over the course of twenty-three years in Lima, Angela Carranza generated quite a following and was considered by many to be a living saint. As scholars Stacey Schlau, and Ana Sánchez, among others, have argued, she quickly gained fame for her theological precepts, visions, prognostications and ability to heal.41 Angela ‘defended herself through fragmentation’: by dispersing and selling bits of herself in Lima and other provincial cities.42 Devotees could gaze at her portraits, or cling to bits of nails or blood stored in a vial or on a cloth – consuming Angela in an abstracted manner. As part of the ritualistic pulse of life and death, limeños, including the Augustinians who considered her to be their ‘saint’, appropriated the potentia (spiritual energy) of Angela’s portraits or relics through their five senses. Her body parts provided a venue through which they could express their hopes and fears; and miracles did happen. Such was the extent of her cult that Lima’s Audiencia judge, Don Miguel Núñez de Sanabria, mocked the excessive adoration of Angela in his forward to José del Hoyo’s account of the auto. He wrote: esperavan casi todos, verla colocada sobre los Altares; y no satisfechos con la infeliz devocion a tan abominable original , passaron a darle culto … a muchos retratos suyos, ornados de sacrilegas insignias, y divisas, que debían a la ficcion del pincel sus colores naturales, y muchos sobrenaturales mysterios al pincel de su ficcion. (no fol. number) [Nearly everyone hoped to see her [Angela] placed on the Altars; and not satisfied with the unhappy devotion of such an abominable original, they decided to develop a cult … around her portraits [which were] decorated with sacrilegious and divisive insignia, which owed its natural coloring to the fiction of the paintbrush and [owed] many supernatural mysteries to the paintbrush of her fiction]. As a living reliquary Angela was expected to work wonders, but clearly her persuasive and healing powers did not endure. She had made too many enemies, with too many questionable theological assertions. By 1694, she was condemned as a false mystic; her hair, cloth remnants, blood, images – bits of her that had once been sacred – were now discarded, burned or left to disintegrate into particulates. All that was once Angela disappeared. Popular lore claimed that following her auto de fe she went mad while secluded in a recogimiento (house of reclusion). By the time I read the 1694 edict, I had already examined the 124 folio-long relación de causa (account) that lasted from 1688 until 1694 and involved 130 witness depositions. The thematically organized summary provided by Inquisitor Francisco Valera to the Supreme Council in Madrid included excerpts from the thousands of folios of Angela’s spiritual notebooks, which were subsequently burned, in addition to summaries of witness depositions and the audiences the accused had had with the tribunal.43 Thus the little we know about Angela

Text as body, relics as text

71

comes through a severely mediated Inquisition report. It nevertheless provides rich details on the veneration of objects associated with Carranza and why Lima’s people had decided that such a cult was exceedingly dangerous. What piqued my curiosity about the 1694 broadside, the document under consideration in this article, was the extensive list of objects confiscated by Inquisition authorities. I began to think about the fact that for twenty-three years numerous and sundry relics were texts appropriated by scores of limeños, and that perhaps I might find the ‘voices’ of Angela Carranza in these relics. I realized that they were symbols invested with meaning and that perhaps I should think more deeply about the ways they had been appropriated. What, I asked myself, had been the manner of transmission and reception of divine knowledge, and how was it that Angela’s ‘voices’ and channels of communication by means of these objects were considered to be authentic and viable representations of divine knowledge? How, in other words, could I access Angela’s hidden voices, albeit mediated by male Inquisition authorities, by exploring the historicity of the very objects that contained her? While we normally assume that relics and reliquaries belong to the dead, such was not the case with Angela.44 Before her Inquisition trial she was seen as a container of fragmented sacred body parts, each of which ‘spoke’ to the individual who consumed her and created narrations of her ‘voice’. Like many reliquaries, Angela ‘housed’ the tissue and effluvium that would become sacred to those who consumed her.45 The living, breathing woman who claimed to be a doctor of theology was both container and contents, a performing and perceiving body, and Lima’s public made her so.46 Like Luisa Melgarejo, Angela’s body served as a vehicle through which the word of the divine could speak.47 But in Angela’s case, rich and poor, viceroy and beggar considered her to be a consecrated, efficacious vessel that could access the incommensurable and ineffable mystical body and then transmit sacred energy or power to others. Her relics – here defined as fragments of her holy body and the objects associated with her – were continually appropriated in different ways through the five senses.48 She imparted her ‘voice’ – felt, touched, or gazed upon, not spoken – by means of these objects. In the early modern period, images and relics were intricately related. For instance, clients believed that by touching, listening, or gazing at the painted portraits or bronze laminate depictions of Angela’s lovely face they had purchased, they could ‘possess’ the divine held within her and be psychically healed, protected, or cleansed. They could re-inscribe their own meanings and projected fantasies into the disembodied parts of her – whether nails, blood, or hair.49 They created texts of these objects, attaching meaning to each of them. They understood her body and body parts through a kind of somatic literacy that gave meaning to how bodies operated as both spirit and flesh. They heard Angela’s voice, since she had related stories about the transformation of chairs, shoes, and cloth into holy objects to her clients. Thus, what seemed on the surface to be a simple edict containing a list of condemned items, or the end of a fascinating story, might provide clues of Angela’s transmission and reception as a reliquary.

72

Censorship and the body

But context is always important when considering an edict issued in 1694. By the time Angela arrived in Lima in 1665 the city was already renowned as a holy site that held the sacredness of the invisible realm of heaven within its urban confines. As each saintly figure demonstrated miracles and signs of incorruptibility, Lima became holier and more venerated.50 In April of 1669 the entire city swelled with pride as it celebrated the arrival of the papal bull beatifying Rosa of Lima. So sacrosanct was the piece of paper that it was carried in a procession under a pallium to the cathedral.51 By the time Rosa was canonized in 1671, several generations of limeños had venerated her as a saint and had collected and passed on her relics to their heirs. Relics were an essential aspect of Lima’s culture, something Angela understood quite well. It was commonly believed at the time that places visited by saintly beings retained some of their divine power. Wherever Angela’s flesh touched water, the fluid essence of life, some of her virtus remained. She claimed that she bathed frequently in public places to cool her body of the tremendous heat of God’s love that coursed through her heart and veins. A devotee could go to the spot where she had bathed and bow her head in wishful prayer. She could dip her hands into the holy water, dab a little on her forehead, make the sign of the cross, and then collect a small amount in a vial.52 For holy water could cure an unrelenting fever; it could induce miracle healings through the intervention of a revered beata like Angela.53 Holy water collected in a vial was a text that spoke of different sensitivities to mystical power and authority. Discarded shoes, padded slippers, undergarments, petticoats of coarse cloth, corsets, even fleas from her bedding placed in small containers were considered loci of corporeal and mystical commingling, and for our purposes, ‘voices’ that contained different narratives about Angela’s power, about the desire to consume the divine, and about faith in how divine knowledge was transmitted. Items that had grazed or hugged Angela’s skin were believed to relieve inflammation or pain. A mere touch of her bodice or dress (like the tassel from Jesus’s garment) could work wonders. Left in a dank room of the Inquisition tribunal in 1694, Angela’s dresses, shoes, and petticoats had once held special value as contact relics. These objects had meaning because of the stories that went along with them. Angela told her clients that she frequently ascended to heaven in her undergarments, and when she did she was told to sit in the middle of the throne of the Blessed Trinity to receive her lesson. God would tell her that her discarded dresses could serve as bandages and be applied directly to any injured parts of the infirm. Especially useful were the petticoats with which she had shrouded the Lord on one of her celestial visitations.54 Angela attributed the power of her shoes (available for purchase) to a vision where she once loaned the barefoot Virgin a pair she was wearing. In return for her generosity the Virgin determined that from then on Angela’s shoes would have the virtue of creating miracles. In fact many of the venerated contact relics involved ‘visitations’ between Angela and her spiritual guides. Usually Angela traveled to heaven but occasionally God and company paid their respects to her. In one vision the Lord,

Text as body, relics as text

73

accompanied by the Virgin, angels and saints entered Angela’s room. God looked around and then said: ‘porque no me poneis sillas en el banco donde todos se sientan; no hemos de sentar nosotros? No aveis de tenerrespeto?’55 [Why don’t you put cushions on the bench where everyone sits: Are we not to sit? Do you not have any respect?]. Once everyone was comfortably settled, the lesson proceeded. But then, when word of the holy ‘bench’ (and cushions) spread throughout Lima (and Angela was very good at disseminating that information), it became so venerated that the Audiencia (royal court) judge, Doctor Don Gaspar de la Cuba y Arce, acquired it for himself and then bequeathed it to his son-in-law.56 For many, Angela was a mysterious character who helped render the unknown known, and the unfamiliar familiar. The locus of this action was her body.57 As a part of the larger body politic – the corpus mysticum – of Lima, the ‘parts’ of Angela were metonymic, representing something bigger, but each ‘part’ was also venerated for the saintly essence that it possessed.58 Anyone who kissed her hands would remain chaste and free from lust.59 Limeños swarmed her to touch her habit, or her hair; but they always wanted to appropriate more of her. Angela was pressed (and was pleased) to relegate some of the more intimate parts of herself. What was inside became outside; the reliquary began to offer relics. Her extracted molars, her fingernails stored in pear-shaped ampoules were prized on earth and in heaven. It was said that, on one occasion, the Lord had cut her hair and then distributed it to the angels to retrieve souls in purgatory.60 Although defecation and urination – the natural elimination of superfluous items resulting from eating and drinking – helped maintain the body’s humoral balance, a woman conducting her ‘business’ in public was considered scandalous. But Angela did just that and was even somewhat cheeky about it. When an abashed onlooker questioned her behavior she replied: ‘para que me dio Dios el Tal?’61 [What did God give me this for?]. In fact, Angela asserted that her urine had the power to penetrate the earth’s soil like a drill: spiralling down to the center of Hell, where the pungent caustic holy water would drip on the demons and cause them to jump about because it burned them.62 When she strolled about in public, people hovered about, like flies, to collect the precious specimens. Then there were the handkerchiefs with dried blood, or vials of the prized substance. Blood was a ‘fragile’ relic, more easily subject to decay and corruption than bones or teeth.63 But it was the most precious and holy substance on earth and readily associated with Christ’s bleeding body. Blood possessed a different sort of virtus than the detritus of fingernails, hair, or feces. It was considered the most important of the four humors of the body and Galenic medical philosophy insisted that the release of sometimes large quantities of excess blood would encourage a return to humoral balance.64 In the phlebotomies that Angela occasionally received, she would lie still while the venal blood spurted and then dripped into a dish. Her clients would then line up with handkerchiefs and small bandages and dip them into the scarlet substance. Any object spattered or bathed in her blood gained instant notoriety. One of her confessors, Don

74

Censorship and the body

Ignacio de Hijar, considered a handkerchief soaked in Angela’s blood to be his most precious relic.65 Blood, urine, teeth, nails, or a chair, a petticoat that had shrouded Christ, shoes worn by the Virgin, bath water, or a portrait – each relic contained different narratives consumed in different ways by Angela’s clients. Her ‘voice’ included her bodily substances, her contact relics, her virtus, and the stories she relayed of her journeys to heaven. In turn, these objects that ‘contained’ Angela were the media by which spiritual knowledge was transmitted to her willing supporters. As Angela’s clients appropriated her through their senses, they employed a somatic literacy – knowledge of her im/material body parts – to grasp the meanings they associated with each text. Although eventually some saw her stories as wildly fantastic and even dangerous, for many years she was revered as a spiritual authority, vested with divine power, and assumed to be a text that could be both consumed and read.

Conclusion: women’s bodies and the communication of the ineffable In the end, understanding Angela’s transmission of knowledge and her clients’ appropriation of her relics as texts helped me to see the historicity of a 1694 edict, and why ‘matter matters’.66 On a larger level, I came to understand that Angela Carranza’s and Luisa Melgarejo’s bodies, whether fragmented into relics or engaged in rapture, were considered acceptable, dare I say, normal vehicles for communication of the ineffable. The consumption of the voices of Angela and Luisa by others was a manifestation of the human desire to know and feel connected to the divine and to achieve an inkling of commensurability with God. And they were not alone. Angela and Luisa are but two of many other spiritually gifted women who were actively engaged in this process of transmitting and appropriating texts through their bodies, and who were constituted with spiritual power by the early modern faithful. Considering how women gained and lost authority in a prescribed maledominated ecclesiastical community is and will continue to be important. We cannot deny the gendered power dynamics endowed in different texts, especially those generated by male authorities. We cannot ignore the Inquisitorial apparatus or the confessor when we examine how written texts were scripted and circumscribed. Both Rosa de Lima’s voice ‘heard’ during Luisa Melgarejo’s ecstasy and then recorded by de la Maza, and a list of Angela Carranza’s relics, as noted by Inquisitorial authorities, were mediated in different ways. But thinking about women’s ‘voices’ in non-literary forms of communication, thinking about the cultural manifestations of faith and belief among wealthy and commoner Spanish and Portuguese vassals, and thinking about the involvement of the senses in the creation, transmission, reception, and appropriation of divine knowledge, are also key to deepening our understanding of female authority embedded in distinct texts. In our struggles to give the voices of women an audible, narrative weight, we can seek the ‘absent presence’: the discursive spaces within mystical discourse or a list of relics. Expanding these horizons

Text as body, relics as text

75

will allow us to reflect on how textual production occurred, and will allow us to ‘see’ new kinds of texts and new interpretive possibilities for the voices contained within a portrait, the body, or a vial filled with liquid.

Notes 1 I would like to thank Mónica Díaz, Rocío Quispe-Agnoli, Amanda Rodríguez, Susanne Seales, and Preston Schiller for their comments on and support for this chapter. 2 Ula Taylor, ‘Women in the Documents: Thoughts on Uncovering the Personal, Political, and Professional’, Journal of Women’s History 20.1(2008): 187–96. 3 Carolyn Steedman, ‘Intimacy in Research: Accounting for It’, History of the Human Sciences 21.4(2008): 17–33. 4 Tess Coslett, Celia Lury and Penny Summerfield (eds)Feminism and Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods (Routledge, 2000); Mary Elizabeth Perry, ‘Finding Fatima, a Slave Woman of Early Modern Spain’, Journal of Women’s History 20.1(Spring 2008): 151–67. 5 Roger Chartier, ‘Texts, Forms and Interpretations’, in Robert Chartier (ed.), On the Edge of the Cliff: History, Language, Practices (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 97. 6 Michel de Certeau, Heterologies, Discourse on the Other (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), pp. 81–83. 7 Nicky Hallett, The Senses in Religious Communities, 1600–1800: Early Modern ‘Convents of Pleasure’ (Burlington, VT, 2013). 8 Fernando Bouza, Communication, Knowledge, and Memory in Early Modern Spain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 8. 9 All translations to English are mine. Hernán Jiménez Salas (ed.), Primer proceso ordinario para la canonización de Santa Rosa de Lima (Lima: Monasterio de Santa Rosa de Santa María de Lima, 2002), pp. 81–87. In the citations, I have included page numbers to the Jiménez Salas text as well as the original folios of the transcribed document. 10 Ibid., p. 137. 11 Ibid., p. 423. 12 Ibid., p. 82. 13 Bouza, pp. 8, 23. 14 Jiménez Salas, p. 82. 15 Fray Luis de Granada, ed. José María Balcells, Introducción del símbolo de la fe (Salamanca: Herederos de Matías Gast, 1583) (Madrid, 1989), pp. 457–58. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., p. 431; Katherine Park, ‘The Organic Soul’, in Charles B. Schmitt (ed.), Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 466–69; Owsei Temkin, Galenism: Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy (Ithaca, 1973), p. 142. 18 Granada, pp. 451–52; Real Academia Española, Diccionario de autoridades (Madrid [1726–1739] 1963), vol. 5, p. 83; Joan de Corominas, Diccionario crítico-etimológico castellano é hispánico (Madrid, 1980–1991), vol.4, pp. 190–91. 19 ErminiaMacola, ‘El “no sé que”,comopercepción de lo divino’, in Manual Criado de Val (ed.), Santa Teresa y la literatura mística hispánica (Madrid, 1984), p. 42. 20 Walter Simons, ‘Reading a Saint’s Body: Rapture and Bodily Movement in the Vitae of Thirteenth–Century Beguines’, in Sarah Kay and Miri Ruben (eds), Framing Medieval Bodies (Manchester, 1994), p. 13; Mary Giles, ‘The Discourse of Ecstasy: Late Medieval Spanish Women and their Texts’, in Jane Chance (ed.), Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages (Gainesville, 1996), pp. 306–30.

76

Censorship and the body

21 Allison Weber, ‘Between Ecstasy and Exorcism: Religious Negotiation in SixteenthCentury Spain’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 23.2(1993); Josefina López, ‘Oralidad, místicismo y espiritualidad en Santa Teresa de Jesús’, in Josefina C. López (coord.), Los cinco sentidos del convento: Europa y el Nuevo Mundo (Caracas, 2010), pp. 64–71. 22 Caroline Bynum, ‘The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later Middle Ages’, in Michel Feher (ed.), Fragments for a History of the Human Body (New York, 1989), pp. 161–209. 23 Weber, p. 222; ‘Deposition of Luisa de Santa María’, ArchivoHistórico Nacional de Madrid (henceforth AHNM), Inquisición, Lima, 1030, 225v. Inquisition authorities continued to discipline false mystics, whose ecstatic states and visions were suspected to be disreputable. More recent works on this subject include: Stephen Haliczer, Between Exaltation and Infamy: Female Mystics in the Golden Age of Spain (Oxford, 2002); Kathleen Myers, Neither Saints Nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish America (Oxford, 2003); Andrew W. Keitt, Inventing the Sacred: Imposture, Inquisition, and the Boundaries of the Supernatural in Golden Age Spain (Leiden, 2005); and Nora E. Jaffary, False Mystics: Deviant Orthodoxy in Colonial Mexico (Lincoln, NE, 2004). For a discussion of the receptivity of female mystical visions among Lima’s populace see Nancy E. van Deusen, ‘Circuits of Knowledge among Lay and Religious Women in Early Seventeenth-Century Peru’, in Nora E.Jaffary (ed.),Gender, Race, and Religion in the Colonization of the Americas (Burlington, VT, 2007), pp. 137–51. 24 Jiménez Salas, p. 58 (fol. 33v); Diego de Córdova y Salinas, Crónica franciscana de las provincias del Perú [1651] (Washington, DC, 1957), p. 865. 25 Jiménez Salas, pp. 86–87. 26 Ibid., p. 138. 27 Macola, p. 36. 28 Gillian Ahlgren, Teresa de Ávila and the Politics of Sanctity (Ithaca, 1996), p. 376; Richard Kieckhefer, ‘Holiness and the Culture of Devotion: Remarks on Some Late Medieval Male Saints’, in Renate Blumenfeld–Kosinski and Timea Szell (eds), Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, 1991), pp. 288–305; Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘… And Woman His Humanity’: Female Imagery in the Religious Writing of the Later Middle Ages’, in Caroline Walker Bynum (ed.), Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols (Boston, 1986), pp. 257–88; Michael Camille, ‘The Image and the Self: Unwriting Late Medieval Bodies’, in Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (eds), Framing Medieval Bodies (Manchester, 1994), p. 79. 29 Bárbara Mujica, ‘Corpus sanus, mens sana, spiritussanus: Cuerpo, mente y espírituen las cartas de Teresa de Jesús’, in Josefina C. López (coord.), Los cinco sentidos del convento: Europa y el Nuevo Mundo (Caracas, 2010), pp. 13–23. 30 AHNM, Inquisición (Lima, 1647) 5, fol. 5r. 31 Henryk Ziomek, ‘El uso de las percepciones sensoriales en la obra de Santa Teresa’, in Manuel Criado de Val (ed.),Santa Teresa y la literatura mística hispánica (Madrid, 1984), p. 72. 32 Jiménez Salas, p. 82. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., p. 83. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Certeau, p. 90. 38 New scholarship is focusing on the gendered collaboration between male and female religious as scribes, illuminators and printers in the production of written manuscripts, including life histories or vidas. See, for example, Melissa Moretón, ‘Nuns’ Book Production in Fifteenth and Sixteenth-Century Italy’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 2013.

Text as body, relics as text

77

39 Tribunal de la Inquisición (Lima, 1694), no fol. number. 40 José del Hoyo, Relación completa, exacta del auto público de fe que se celebró en esta ciudad de Lima a 20 de diziembre de 1694 (Lima, 1695), fol. 18v. 41 Angela Carranza quickly became a causa célèbre (celebrity) during her lifetime and has been the subject of various studies over the centuries. For different scholarly studies that emphasize distinct aspects of her theology, politics, and feminism see, Ana Sánchez, ‘Angela Carranza, alias Angela de Dios. Santidad y poderen la sociedadvirreinal peruana (s. XVII)’, in Gabriela Ramos y Henrique Urbano (eds.), Catolicismo y extirpación de idolatrías. Siglos XVI–XVIII (Cuzco, 1993), pp. 236–92; Stacey Schlau, ‘Angela de Carranza, Would-Be Theologian’, in Jeannadel Rosso, Leigh Eicke, Ana Kothe (eds), The Catholic Church and Unruly Women Writers (New York, 2007); Stacey Schlau, ‘El cuerpo femenino y la Inquisición colonial: dos casos ejemplares’, in Prohal Monográfico, Revista del Programa de Historia de América Latina I (2008); Fernando Iwasaki Cauti, ‘Angela de Dios, La sacadora de ladillas, de la virtud del exhibicionismo’, Inquisiciones peruanas (Madrid, 1997), pp. 81–85; María Emma Mannarelli, ‘Fragmentos para una historia posible: escritura/crítica/cuerpo en una beata del siglo XVII’, in Moises Lemlij and Luis Millones (eds.) Historia, memoria, y ficción (Lima, 1996), pp. 266–80; Rocío Quispe-Agnoli, ‘Reescribiendo a los ángeles caídos: las iluminadas peruanas y la Inquisición española’, in Jennifer Eich, Jeannie Gillespie and Lucia Harrison (eds), Women’s Voices and the Politics of the Spanish Empire (New Orleans, 2008), pp. 136–54. 42 Madeleine Caviness, Visualizing Women in the Middle Ages: Sight, Spectacle, and Scopic Economy (Philadelphia, 2001), p. 131. 43 Stacey Schlau, ‘El cuerpo femenino y la Inquisición colonial: dos casos ejemplares’, Prohal Monográfico, Revista del Programa de Historia de América Latina I.1 (2008), p. 12. 44 Helen Hills, ‘Nuns and Relics: Spiritual Authority in Post-Tridentine Naples’, in Cordula van Wyhe (ed.), Female Monasticism in Early Modern Europe: An Interdisciplinary View (Burlington, VT, 2008), pp. 11–38. 45 David Freedburg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, 1989), pp. 93–95. 46 Catherine Bynum and Paula Gerson, ‘Body-Part Reliquaries and Body Parts in the Middle Ages’, Gesta, 36 (1997), pp. 3–4; Hans Belting, ‘Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology’, Critical Inquiry (Winter 2005), pp. 305–307. 47 Peter Brown, Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1981), p. 88; André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA, 1997), pp. 433–39. 48 Defining the term ‘relic,’ is not without its problems. For a discussion of the variability of the term and its usage see Elizabeth Robertson and Jennifer Hahner, ‘Introduction’, in Elizabeth Robertson and Jennifer Jahner (eds), Medieval and Early Modern Devotional Objects in Global Perspective: Translations of the Sacred (New York, 2010), pp. 2–3. 49 Henceforth ‘Relación’. AHNM, Lima 1032, fols 312r, 346r. 50 Rafael Sánchez Concha Barrios, Santos y santidad en el Perú virreinal (Lima, 2003). 51 JosepheMugaburu and Francisco Mugaburu, Chronicle of Colonial Lima, 1640–1697 (Norman, OK, 1975), p. 140. 52 ‘Relación’ 1032, fols 349v–350r. 53 del Hoyo, fol. 43v. 54 ‘Relación’, 1032, fols 302v, 312r; del Hoyo, fol. 15r. 55 ‘Relación’, 1032, fol. 327r. 56 Ibid., fol. 327r. 57 Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 117. 58 David Hillman and Carla Mazio, The Body in Parts (London and New York, 1997).

78

Censorship and the body

59 Gregorio Quesada y Sotomayor, ‘Dictámenes varios sobre diversos causas, de la mayor importancia que dio al santo tribunal de la ynquisicion de la ciudad de Lima’, Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, Ms. 4381, no date, fol. 67v. 60 Del Hoyo, fol. 15v. 61 ‘Relación’, fols 350r–350v. 62 Ibid., fol. 321v. 63 Caroline Bynum, Wonderful Blood (Philadelphia, 2007), p. 141. 64 Laqueur, p. 35. 65 ‘Relación’, fols 276r, 312v, 348v. See also José Lastres, Historia de la medicina peruana: vol. 2, La medicina en el virreinato (Lima, 1951), p. 166. 66 Peter Stallybrass, ‘Afterward: Persons and Things’, in Elizabeth Robertson and Jennifer Jahner (eds), Medieval and Early Modern Devotional Objects in Global Perspective: Translations of the Sacred (New York, 2010), p. 251.

Bibliography Manuscript sources Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid. ‘Relación de la causa de Angela Carranza, alias la Madre Angela de Dios’. Inquisición, Tribunal de Lima, Relación de Causas de fe, Libro 1032, fols 271r–373r. Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid. Gregorio Quesada y Sotomayor, ‘Dictámenes varios sobre diversos causas, de la mayor importancia que dio al santo tribunal de la ynquisicion de la ciudad de Lima’, Ms. 4381 [no date].

Printed primary sources Córdova y Salinas, Diego de, Crónica franciscana de las provincias del Perú (Lima, 1651), Fascímile Lino G. Canedo (ed.) (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1957). Granada, Fray Luis de, Introducción del Símbolo de la Fe (Salamanca: Herederos de Matías Gast, 1583), José Maria Balcells (ed.) (Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 1989). Hoyo, José del, Relación completa, exacta del auto público de fe que se celebró en esta ciudad de Lima a 20 de diziembre de 1694 (Lima: Joseph de Contreras, 1695). Jiménez Salas, Hernán, Primer proceso ordinario para la canonización de Santa Rosa de Lima (Lima: Monasterio de Santa Rosa de Santa María de Lima, 2002). Mugaburu, Josephe and Francisco Mugaburu, trans. Robert R. Miller, Chronicle of Colonial Lima, 1640–1697 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975). Proceso de beatificación de fray Martín de Porres, Proceso diocesano, años 1660, 1664, 1671 (Palencia: Secretariado ‘Martín de Porres,’1960). Tribunal de la Inquisición. Edicto para recoger los cuadernos, retrato, cuentas (Lima, 1694).

Secondary sources Ahlgren, Gillian T., Teresa of Ávila and the Politics of Sanctity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996). Belting, Hans, ‘Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology’, Critical Inquiry 31. 2(2005): 302–319.

Text as body, relics as text

79

Belting, Hans, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Bouza, Fernando, Communication, Knowledge, and Memory in Early Modern Spain, Sonia López and Michael Agnew (trans.) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). Brown, Peter, Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). Bynum, Caroline Walker, ‘… And Woman His Humanity: Female Imagery in the Religious Writing of the Later Middle Ages’, in Caroline Walker Bynum (ed.), Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), pp. 257–288. Bynum, Caroline Walker, ‘The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later Middle Ages’, in Michel Feher (ed.), Fragments for a History of the Human Body (New York: Urzone Inc., 1989), pp. 181–238. Bynum, Caroline Walker, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Bynum, Caroline Walker and Paula Gerson, ‘Body-Part Reliquaries and Body Parts in the Middle Ages’, Gesta 36(1997): 3–19. Camille, Michael, ‘The Image and the Self: Unwriting Late Medieval Bodies’, in Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (eds), Framing Medieval Bodies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), pp. 62–99. Caviness, Madeleine H., Visualizing Women in the Middle Ages: Sight, Spectacle, and Scopic Economy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). Certeau, Michel de, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). Certeau, Michel de, Heterologies, Discourse on the Other (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986). Chartier, Roger, ‘Texts, Forms and Interpretations’, in Robert Chartier, On the Edge of the Cliff: History, Language, Practices, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), pp. 81–89. Corominas, Joan de, Diccionario crítico-etimológico castellano e hispanico (6 vols, Madrid: Gredos, 1980–1991). Cosslett, Tess, Celia Lury and Penny Summerfield (eds), Feminism and Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods (London: Routledge, 2000). Freedburg, David, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). Giles, Mary E, ‘The Discourse of Ecstasy: Late Medieval Spanish Women and their Texts’, in Jane Cance (ed.), Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996). Haliczer, Stephen, Between Exaltation and Infamy: Female Mystics in the Golden Age of Spain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Hallett, Nicky, The Senses in Religious Communities, 1600–1800: Early Modern ‘Convents of Pleasure’ (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013). Hillman, David and Carla Mazzio, The Body in Parts (London and New York: Routledge, 1997). Hills, Helen, ‘Nuns and Relics: Spiritual Authority in Post-Tridentine Naples’, in Cordula van Wyhe (ed.), Female Monasticism in Early Modern Europe: An Interdisciplinary View (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 11–38. Jaffary, Nora E., False Mystics: Deviant Orthodoxy in Colonial Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004).

80

Censorship and the body

Iwasaki Cauti, Fernando, ‘Angela de Dios, la sacadora de ladillas, de la virtud del exhibicionismo’, in Inquisiciones peruanas (Sevilla: Editorial Renacimiento, 1997), pp. 81–98. Keitt, Andrew W., Inventing the Sacred: Imposture, Inquisition, and the Boundaries of the Supernatural in Golden Age Spain (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005). Kieckhefer, Richard, ‘Holiness and the Culture of Devotion: Remarks on Some Late Medieval Male Saints’, in Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell (eds), Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 288–305. Laqueur, Thomas, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990). Lastres, Juan B., Historia de la medicina peruana: vol. 2, La medicina en el virreinato (5 vols, Lima: Imprenta Santa María, 1951). López, Josefina C., ‘Oralidad, místicismo y espiritualidaden Santa Teresa de Jesús’, in Josefina C. López (coord.), Los cinco sentidos del convento: Europa y el Nuevo Mundo (Caracas: Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, 2010), pp. 64–71. Macola, Erminia, ‘El ‘no sé que’, comopercepción de lo divino’, in Manuel Criado de Val (ed.), Santa Teresa y la literatura mística hispánica (Madrid: EDI-6, 1984), pp. 33–43. Mannarelli, María Emma, ‘Fragmentos para una historia posible: escritura/crítica/cuer poen una beata del siglo XVII’, in Moises Lemlij and Luis Millones (eds), Historia, memoria, y ficción (Lima: Biblioteca Peruana de Psicoanálisis; Seminario Interdisciplinario de Estudios Andinos, 1996), pp. 266–280. Moreton, Melissa, ‘Nuns’ Book Production in Fifteenth and Sixteenth-Century Italy’, Ph.D. Dissertation (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2013). Mujica, Bárbara, ‘Corpus sanus, men’s sana, spiritussanus: Cuerpo, mente y espírituen las cartas de Teresa de Jesús’, in Josefina C. López (coord.), Los cinco sentidos del convento: Europa y el Nuevo Mundo (Caracas: Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, 2010), pp. 13–24. Myers, Kathleen, Neither Saints nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Park, Katherine, ‘The Organic Soul’, in Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy. Charles B. Schmitt (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 464–485. Perry, Mary Elizabeth, ‘Finding Fatima, a Slave Woman of Early Modern Spain’, Journal of Women’s History 20. 1(2008): 151–167. Quispe-Agnoli, Rocío, ‘Reescribiendo a los ángeles caídos: las iluminadas peruanas y la Inquisición española’, in Jennifer Eich, Jeannie Gillespie and Lucia Harrison (eds), Women’s Voices and the Politics of the Spanish Empire (New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2008), pp. 136–154. Real Academia Española (RAE), Diccionario de autoridades. Facsimile edition (6 vols, Madrid: Editorial Gredos [1726–1739] 1963). Robertson, Elizabeth and Jennifer Hahner, ‘Introduction’, in Elizabeth Robertson and Jennifer Jahner (eds), Medieval and Early Modern Devotional Objects in Global Perspective: Translations of the Sacred (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2010), pp. 1–10. Sánchez, Ana, ‘Angela Carranza, alias Angela de Dios. Santidad y poderen la sociedad virreinal peruana (s. XVII)’, in Gabriela Ramos and Henrique Urbano (eds), Catolicismo y extirpación de idolatrías. Siglos XVI–XVIII (Cuzco: Centro Bartolomé de Las Casas, 1993), pp. 236–292. Sánchez Concha Barrios, Rafael, Santos y santidad en el Perú virreinal (Lima: Vida y Espiritualidad, 2003). Schlau, Stacey, ‘Angela de Carranza, Would-Be Theologian’, in Jeanna del Rosso, Leigh Eicke and Ana Kothe (eds), The Catholic Church and Unruly Women Writers (New York: Palgrave, 2007), pp. 69–85.

Text as body, relics as text

81

Schlau, Stacey, ‘El cuerpo femenino y la Inquisición colonial: dos casos ejemplares’, in Prohal Monográfico, Revista del Programa de Historia de América Latina I. 1 (University of Buenos Aires, 2008), pp. 1–21. Simons, Walter, ‘Reading a Saint’s Body: Rapture and Bodily Movement in the Vitae of Thirteenth-Century Beguines’, in Sarah Kay and Miri Ruben (eds), Framing Medieval Bodies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), pp. 10–23. Stallybrass, Peter, ‘Afterward: Persons and Things’, in Elizabeth Robertson and Jennifer Jahner (eds), Medieval and Early Modern Devotional Objects in Global Perspective: Translations of the Sacred (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan Press, 2010), pp. 256–259. Steedman, Carolyn, ‘Intimacy in Research: Accounting For It’, History of the Human Sciences 21. 4 (2008): 17–33. Taylor, Ula Y, ‘Women in the Documents: Thoughts on Uncovering the Personal, Political, and Professional’, Journal of Women’s History 20. 1(2008): 187–196. Temkin, Owsei, Galenism: Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973). van Deusen, Nancy E., ‘Circuits of Knowledge among Lay and Religious Women in Early Seventeenth-Century Peru’, in Nora E. Jaffary (ed.), Gender, Race, and Religion in the Colonization of the Americas (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 137–150. Vauchez, André, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, Jean Birrell (trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Weber, Allison, ‘Between Ecstasy and Exorcism: Religious Negotiation in SixteenthCentury Spain’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 23. 2 (1993): 221–234. Ziomek, Henryk, ‘El uso de las percepciones sensoriales en la obra de Santa Teresa’, in Manuel Criado de Val (ed.), Santa Teresa y la literatura mística hispánica (Madrid: EDI-6, 1984), pp. 67–73.

This page intentionally left blank

Part II

Female authority and legal discourse

This page intentionally left blank

4

In the shadow of Coatlicue’s smile Reconstructing indigenous female subjectivity in the Spanish colonial record Jeanne Gillespie

Feminist philosopher Hélène Cixous uses Medusa as a metaphor for the powerful female voice that can carve a place for l’écriture féminine, a writing by women that subverts or rejects the ‘phallologocentrism’ of European literary discourse. In The Laugh of the Medusa, as Jennifer Rich signals, Cixous argues that ‘within a male (phallologocentric) paradigm of writing, a woman has no voice’.1 Rich unpacks the term ‘phallologocentric’, explaining that this neologism derived from Derrida and Lacan identifies writing in which ‘the Symbolic’ is organized from a paternal structure that privileges the male (represented by the phallus) and the male spoken word (logos). According to Cixous’s theory, while operating within this phallologocentric structure, a woman’s voice cannot be heard ‘as a woman’s voice’ because she does not enjoy the privilege of logos nor is she able to write her body since she does not possess a phallus.2 Applying Cixous’s discussion of the phallologocentrism of European discourse to writings from the Spanish chronicles of the exploration and conquest of the Americas, Rima de Vallbona identifies similar characteristics in the chroniclers’ records of European encounters in America.3 According to Vallbona, the Spanish chroniclers, including Bartolomé de las Casas and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, only mention women when the events they record represent elements in complete contrast to European norms or in the instance of women’s value in the negotiations of wealth or pleasure. Vallbona explains that: Esto es prueba suficiente que el discurso falologocéntrico de la conquista manipulaba la escritura, no mencionando los nombres de las plebeyas, o incluyéndolas entre la mercancía, o como si fueran sólo objectos de mercadeo o de placer. (196) [This is sufficient proof in the chronicles that the phallologocentric discourse of the conquest manipulated writing, not mentioning the names of the common women, or including them in as chattel, or as if they were merely objects of commerce or pleasure.]

86

Female authority and legal discourse

In an examination of the chronicles specifically related to the European exploration and colonization of Florida and the Southeastern United States, historian Charles Moore uses Vallbona’s phallologocentric frame to scour the Spanish archival sources for evidence of women’s participation and women’s voices in colonial enterprises. Moore’s work identifies both European and Amerindian women who contributed substantially to various campaigns throughout what is today the US Southeast; however, he confirms Vallbona’s critique that women’s efforts form only a small portion of the official narratives.4 As we seek discourses produced by Amerindian women capturing their experiences in the Spanish archive, we do find narrative accounts of women who enjoyed success in positions of power even in the chronicles. As Vallbona signals, many of these women are perceived or treated as ‘extraordinary’ or ‘different from the normal’ in the chronicles, but is that because they actually represent rare occurrences or because the chroniclers were not accustomed to or perhaps not interested in female power brokers? In the essay ‘Women in Texts: From Language to Representation’, Marta Vicente and Luis Corteguera examine the connections between language and authority for early modern Iberian women. Vicente and Corteguera explain that the relationship between ‘women’s language and their authority has a history, and that this history can be revealed through an analysis of women’s representation in texts’. These scholars explain that the representations of women ‘changed over time and varied depending on political, social, and cultural contexts’. Further, these representations of Iberian women developed within the ‘complex interrelations between [Iberian] women and complex models of femininity’.5 While Vicente and Corteguera are concerned with how women in early modern Iberia engaged with various models of femininity, this essay seeks to examine the representation of Amerindian women as power brokers and to examine the archive in search of their words. Like their European counterparts, Amerindian women’s participation in socio-political discourse could have been written or performed, and while the ideal evidence would clearly recreate the words used in the discursive event, an adequate accounting of women participating actively in conversations between Amerindians and Europeans could also possibly offer evidence of their agency and perhaps subjectivity. For the purposes of this analysis, I am seeking evidence of participation by Amerindian women in representing and negotiation their own authority and/or status in the colonial situation. This quest for Amerindian women’s subjectivity will examine four very different sources, including a Nahuatl text from the document known as the Cantares mexicanos, several versions of the earliest Euro–American encounters on the island of Hispaniola, testimony from a Nahuatl–Spanish legal document about a cross-cultural land dispute, and a letter from a powerful Timucua leader to the Spanish crown. Each of these sources provides elements that recorded women participating in a discursive event and negotiating for political favor. With close analysis of these events and the texts generated to recount them, perhaps we can hear those voices and their constructions of subjectivity despite the perceived patriarchal constraints of the colonial archive.

Coatlicue’s smile

87

Not only did Amerindian women negotiate and translate between their communities and the Europeans, they also fed, clothed, and nurtured the newcomers. Amerindian women’s sexual unions with European men produced mestizo children who would continue to negotiate between Amerindian and European modes of discourse. The chronicles composed by these children often privilege their mothers’ cultures while attempting to negotiate the realities of the colonial order. Even though most of these mestizo chroniclers were male, this discourse might also be studied as examples of l’écriture féminine because there is an attempt to privilege the narratives of the mothers’ cultures. For this study, however, we will limit our examination to the search for female voices. So, contrary to the perception that women’s voices are not present in the archive, their works and words (as well as Amerindian voices in general) can be identified in colonial records and documents; however, they have not been present in the academic study of the archive. To return to the ‘phallologocentric’ organizing principle of the archive as signaled by Vallbona, for Cixous and Derrida, European historiographical discourse privileges the spoken because the written is subject to interpretation.6 While the archive frequently commits spoken word to written text, a Cixousian analysis further complicates an analysis of Amerindian women’s words. While Derrida and Cixous specify that the phallologocentric privilege of Western cultures marked the male spoken word above the written, scholars trained in those cultures have often held a bias against Amerindian histories. In a discussion about the reliability of Amerindian narrators in the opinions of European historians and cultural scholars, Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra explains that some sixteenthcentury European historians like Francisco Hernández and Diego de Durán relied heavily on the Amerindian narratives, even when these sources contradicted European versions of events or when informants deliberately offered misinformation.7 Franciscans like Bernardo de Sahagún and Toribio de Benavente ‘Motolinía’ also trusted Amerindian informants and valued their authority in both oral and pictorial accounts, especially when the Amerindians were recounting historical events. However, the value Franciscan writers assigned to these sources became more complicated with indigenous religious accounts and the documentation of native healing practices that may have been influenced by ‘demonic’ or ‘pagan’ forces.8 As Cañizares-Esguerra explains, the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas also communicated an ambiguity toward Amerindian reliability: ‘Las Casas defended the rationality of Amerindians against those who sought to portray them as examples of Aristotle’s natural slaves’. At the same time, Las Casas considered the Amerindians ‘“barbarians” because they lacked “writing”’.9 Contemporary scholars like Walter Mignolo have struggled with this complicated attitude in European historiography that assumes that the Spanish colonial administration did not value the Amerindian voice. According to Mignolo, the Spanish did not perceive that Amerindian people practiced historical thought. While European historiography practices, especially since the eighteenth century, may reflect this attitude, the colonial archive houses extensive collections of native accounts,

88

Female authority and legal discourse

testimonies, petitions, letters, documents, and other attempts by native Mexicans to participate in the discourse of their communities. Similar reflections have been made with regard to the participation and the value of women’s voices in Western historiography. In seeking evidence of women’s words in the Spanish colonial archive the question then becomes, is it possible to actually ‘hear’ women’s true voices, especially Amerindian women’s voices? The collections of ethnographic materials compiled under the auspices of Sahagún, especially, as well as many Amerindian-produced maps, genealogies, and testimonies, do include narratives that are expressed in women’s voices. If we are to work from an American perspective in an analysis of the archive for female discourse, we must also privilege the ‘American’ nature of the discourse. Cañizares-Esguerra identifies the 1790–1792 excavation in Mexico City of the Aztec Sun Stone and the massive sculpture of Coatlicue as the turning point in Mexico for the incorporation of the value of Amerindian knowledge into historiography. While European critics considered this sculpture evidence that the Aztecs ‘had a poor command of aesthetic principles’, Antonio León de Gama realized that this stone was a composite of hieroglyphic representations exquisitely carved from stone without metal tools.10 Further investigation into Mesoamerican sources would confirm that this sculpture represented the chthonic divinity from Anahuac (the Valley of Mexico), now known as Coatlicue. For the purposes of this investigation, I would suggest that Coatlicue stand in solidarity with Medusa to represent the female power to inscribe Amerindian feminine subjectivity. This fierce Amerindian female divinity is not without the baggage of cultural heritage, as we will see in further analysis, nor does Coatlicue represent the Caribbean cultures or those of Florida well; however, her representation does offer us a matrix to investigate an Amerindian female subjectivity.

Medusa meets Coatlicue In Cixous’s The Laugh of Medusa, the gorgon Medusa represented the creative power that deconstructs the binary of phallologocentric discourse. Her snake hair represents ‘a plethora of phalluses’ that allow space for a woman (or a man) to inscribe her ‘true voice’ using feminine writing.11 If a Minoan snake divinity filtered through Greek mythology can become a power symbol producing wry, self-expressing laughter for French feminists, a Mesoamerican divinity often represented with two serpents for a head and interlaced serpents as a skirt should offer an acceptable American organizing principle for this conversation. For clarification, the name Coatlicue means ‘serpent skirt’ or ‘serpent-her-skirt’ in Nahuatl, and she is the mother of the Aztec tutelary divinity, Huitzilopochtli. With serpents as her head and her clothing, Coatlicue exhibits a multi-phallic countenance. Similar to Medusa,12 the Aztec goddess’s principal signifier is the snake. While the Greeks appropriated Medusa from pre-Hellenic matriarchal cultures, the Aztecs appropriated Coatlicue from an earlier regional power.13 Like Medusa, whose blood gave birth to Pegasus and Chrysaor upon her

Coatlicue’s smile

89

decapitation, Coatlicue gave birth to the warrior Huitzilopochtli at the moment of her violent death. Coatlicue conceived her youngest son after a feather ball floated into her bodice. Huitzilopochtli’s sister and nemesis, Coyolxauhqui (She of the Jinglebells), and brothers, the Mimixcoa (Four Hundred Southerners) attacked their mother when they perceived the threat of her pregnancy. Huitzilopochtli was ripped fully-grown and in complete armor from Coatlicue’s womb, killing her instantly. He then decapitated and dismembered his sister and defeated his four hundred brothers. In the same way that the violent decapitation of Medusa and her incorporation onto Athena’s sword was appropriated for Greek, and later Roman, military success, this violence and appropriation by Huitzilopochtli of his mother’s and sister’s powers and bodies represents very well the war-obsessed Aztec cultural frames. As Cixous attempts to identify a European female subjectivity by reclaiming Medusa, perhaps we can also reconstruct an Amerindian female subjectivity represented by the Aztec goddess, and then, like the laughing Gorgon, Coatlicue may also smile.

A pre-European female voice in the oral tradition: Macuilxochitl We do have evidence of elite females who were active artistically and politically in the pre-Hispanic political order. Miguel León-Portilla identified the name of one female poet: Macuilxochitl (born circa 1435), the daughter of the Aztec power broker Tlacaelel (1397–1487).14 The Nahuatl-language narrative attributed to Macuilxochitl describes a battle between the Aztec warrior, Axayacatl, and the multi-ethnic Matlazinca community in the Valley of Toluca. While the document containing this text was recorded in the mid-sixteenth century as part of the corpus of the Cantares mexicanos, Macuilxochitl was a contemporary of Axayacatl (and his niece). Since the warrior died several years after this battle in 1481, we can assume that some elements of this text predated the conquest. The fact that this story remained in the performance canon for more than 70 years after the event indicates that Mesoamerican communities continued to perform it and it remained part of oral tradition. Macuilxochitl’s text would have been performed in an elite setting. Women in the Nahua elite were familiar with and trained in the complex and honorific discourses and the oral performance traditions that documented and recreated these types of accounts. One of the best known of these elite women who managed high-level multilingual, cross-cultural discourse is Cortés’s translator Malintzin. In his essay ‘De-Colonizing Malintzin’, Geoffrey McCafferty postulates that Malintzin was noble-born to a Nahua-speaking family and trained to serve as an intermediary between powerful rulers.15 While Macuilxochitl lived several generations before Malintzin, the female rhetorical codes McCafferty described are also evident in this text. In this example, we will examine details of the narrative to determine if it narrates women’s subjectivity either in the voice of the narrator or in the actions and voices of the Matlazincan women who appear in the text.

90

Female authority and legal discourse

Macuilxochitl’s composition opens with: ‘I raise my songs, I, Macuilxochitl, with these I gladden the Giver of Life, / May the dance begin!’16 This is a call to the performance with stage directions. As Richard Haly describes, these are rhetorical devices used to call attention to the performance and to introduce the work.17 In this invocation, the poetic voice (who self-identifies as Macuilxochitl) calls on ‘the Giver of Life’ in the first line. This line establishes the divinity responsible for authorizing the performance. This is normally assumed to be an avatar of a pre-contact divinity; many point to Quetzalcoatl. In other texts in the collection of the Cantares mexicanos, the colonial era compositions cultivate a link between Quetzalcoatl and Jesus Christ. This link communicates an association encouraged by the Catholic missionaries sent to convert the communities of Anahuac. In any case, the function of this invocation is to call on a higher authority to validate the communication. The following statement locates the performance in a sacred space and time and repeats the call for the dancers to begin their performance: ‘There Where-inSomeway-One-Exists, to His house, are these songs carried? / Or only here are your flowers? / May the dance begin!’18 The dance will serve to recreate the event in support of the narrative. In some texts from this manuscript, the paintings on the walls of the performance venues are also invoked to validate the narrative, as are the voices of the drums that accompany the piece. In Mesoamerican signifying practices, oral, performance, and pictorial narratives repeat and reinforce the rhetorical constructions. Once the place, authority, and performance details have been established, the historical narrative unfolds. This structure is characteristic of most of the texts in the Cantares mexicanos, whether they are performed in female or male voice. The narrative voice directs the discourse to the Aztec warrior Axayacatl, who has defeated the Matlazinca (Otomí) warriors, but the narrative seeks to cast a specific Otomí warrior, Tlilatl, as a noble opponent who fought valiantly in combat. First the narrative expresses the bravery and valor of each of the defeated Matlazinca communities in an address to the Aztec conqueror: ‘The Matlazinca, you well deserve these people, Lord Itzcoatl, / Axayacatzin,19 you have conquered the city of Tlacotepec! / … with this we rejoice’.20 Next, the poetic voice enumerates specific battles: ‘The Matlazinca are in Toluca, in Tlacotepec … / They have shown themselves fearless … / On every side, Axayacatl made conquests, / in Matlazinco, in Malinalco, in Ocuillan, in Tequaloya, in Xohcotitlac’.21 Then, the narrative signals the prowess of the ethnically-Otomí warrior, Tlilatl: ‘From here he went forth there in Xiquipilco was Axayacatl / wounded in the leg by an Otomí, his name was Tlilatl’.22 The narrative confirms that Axayacatl summoned this worthy adversary to appear before him: ‘And Axayacatl called out: ‘Bring me the Otomí/who wounded me in the leg’. / The Otomí was afraid, he said: ‘Now truly they will kill me!’ / Then he brought a large piece of wood and a deerskin, / with these he bowed before Axayacatl’.23 Finally, the women of Matlazinco address Axayacatl to seek his favor for their warrior: ‘He was full of fear, the Otomí, / but then his women made supplication for him to Axayacatl’.24

Coatlicue’s smile

91

As we see in Macuilxochitl’s narrative, we do find traces of a woman’s participation in the discourse of power in Anahuac before the arrival of the Europeans. Not only do we have the named female composer identified in the piece, but the Matlazinca women also perform before their conqueror Axayacatl to advocate for their defeated warrior. Since this interaction is commemorated in a performance narrative that is still part of the culture text in the mid-sixteenth century (more than 70 years after the actual battle), we can consider whether the inclusion of this text in the document was an anomaly – similar to the instances signaled by Vallbona and Moore – or if it represents a regular type of event for which these women would have been trained and would have practiced, as McCafferty has signaled.25 We do have evidence that Nahua women, like men, attended schools to learn to serve the various divinities and to perform cultural and political roles.26 Although the voice of Macuilxochitl narrates the participation of women in a communicative structure that may be specific to their gender, it does not comment specifically on these women’s situation as women, so, while we do hear women’s voices, we do not have a concrete example of subjectivity. At this juncture, Macuilxochitl is not practicing feminine writing; she is a woman participating in the discourses of the patriarchy. Because this narrative reflects a transcription of a performance text, we can consider that the discourse was, however, logocentric, an artifact of an oral tradition. Nevertheless, we must seek female subjectivity elsewhere if we are to amuse Coatlicue.

Early contact narratives in the Caribbean: Anacaona From the text by Macuilxochitl we have evidence of women’s voices in sociopolitical discourse, at least in a performative venue, from an event that occurred well before the arrival of the Europeans. Women’s participation in and performance of important socio-political events also occurred in the Antilles. The first contact narratives from the Caribbean suggest not only the presence of female rulers, but also an acknowledgement in several instances of their voices and their roles as leaders in colonial endeavors. The earliest accounts of female rulers’ discourse in the Americas occurred on the island of Aiyti (Haiti), which Christopher Columbus named Hispaniola (Española, today Dominican Republic and Haiti). The cacica (female ruler/leader) Anacaona hailed from the province of Jaragua, the farthest west of the cacicazgos (chiefdoms).27 Anacaona, whose name means ‘golden flower’ in Arawak, occupies significant narrative space in the earliest encounters. Several early accounts of Spanish exploration and colonization of the Caribbean documented Anacaona’s participation in colonial conversations as well as her violent death in the aftermath of the Massacre of Jaragua. As we seek subjectivity in Anacaona’s discourse, we will examine three accounts from the Spanish record: De Orbe Novo (1530) by Pedro Mártir de Anglería, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s Historia general y natural de las Indias (1526), and the Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias (1551) by Bartolomé de las Casas.

92

Female authority and legal discourse

When Bartolomé Colón visited Haiti to negotiate tribute in 1496, the Tainos staged an extraordinary performance called an areito for the pleasure of their guests. The areito was a Taino performance narrative of historical or sometimes personal content that was accompanied by instrumentalists and dancers. Mártir de Anglería generalizes about this genre from a pattern of cultural inheritance that privileges masculine (and European) discourse: Your Beatitude will no doubt ask with astonishment how it comes that such uncivilised men, destitute of any knowledge of letters, have preserved for such a long time the tradition of their origin. This has been possible because from the earliest times … wise men have trained the sons of the caciques, teaching them their past history by heart. In imparting their teaching they carefully distinguish two classes of studies; the first is of a general interest, having to do with the succession of events; the second is of a particular interest, treating of the notable deeds accomplished in time of peace or time of war by their fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and all their ancestors. Each one of these exploits is commemorated in poems written in their language. These poems are called arreytos.28 In Mártir de Anglería’s passage, we can certainly detect the privilege of the phallus in the colonial discourse as he characterized the tradition as a male activity. If we are to trust this analysis, it appears that historic transmission in the Americas for Mártir de Anglería could occur only through male discourse. We also see that Mártir de Anglería has categorized the Taino as uncivilized because they do not possess a tradition of written discourse. As Serge Gruzinski unpacks Mártir de Anglería’s fascination with the discoveries and cultures of the Americas, he explains that Mártir de Anglería exhibited a tendency to construct his own interpretations of other cultures with frames that reflected a much more European context than an Amerindian one.29 Not only is Mártir de Anglería’s discourse itself Euro- and phallocentric, but also because his work was translated and disseminated so profusely throughout Europe, his problematic analytical voice would be replicated in the scholarship of the Americas for the next 500 years. While Mártir de Anglería’s commentary represented a fascination with and an appreciation of the ‘discovery’ of the peoples of Haiti and their cultural practices, the epistemological frames we have used to translate, teach, and study the chronicles follow this model to construct the concepts of inheritance and communication in the Americas as male-to-male. In contrast to the male-dominated areito tradition described by Mártir de Anglería, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo described the performance of an areito for Spanish governor Nicolas de Ovando composed and produced by Anacaona. En el tiempo que el comendador mayor don frey Nicolás de Ovando gobernó esta isla, hizo un areito antél Anacaona, mujer que fue del cacique o rey Caonabó (la cual era gran señora), e andaban en la danza más de trescientas doncellas, todas criadas suyas, mujeres por casar; porque no

Coatlicue’s smile

93

quiso que hombre ni mujer casada (o que hubiese conocido varón) entrasen en la danza de un areito.30 [In the time when … Nicholás de Ovando governed the island … Anacaona … made an areito and more than three hundred virgins participated in the dance, all her servants, women to be married, because they did not want a man or a married woman (or one who had known a man) to participate in the dancing of an areito.] Contrary to Mártir de Anglería’s assertions about the transmission of cultural heritage in the Caribbean, as Fernández de Oviedo described Anacaona’s compositions, the chronicler felt the need to identify both a male and a female precedent for composing and telling stories or histories through song and performance. Fernández de Oviedo remarked that oral compositions were popular throughout Europe as in the Antilles, and that even in Spain and the Low Countries both men and women participated it this type of composition. [E]n algunas partes de España en verano, con los panaderos hombres y mujeres se solazan; y en Flandes he yo visto la mesma forma de cantar, bailando hombres y mujeres en muchos corros, respondiendo a uno que los guía o se anticipa en el cantar, segund es dicho.31 [[I]n some parts of Spain in the summer … men and women amuse themselves, and in Flanders I have seen it myself the same form of singing, dancing, men and women in great choirs, responding to one who guides them.] It appears that Fernández de Oviedo is struggling with the patriarchal archive, perhaps trying to carve a space where Anacaona can access the privilege to compose oral histories as a woman. While Fernández de Oviedo endeavors to make the point that both men and women participate in these discursive practices, as we examine both Fernández de Oviedo’s and Mártir de Anglería’s accounts of the areito and Anacaona in more detail, we see in more instances of Eurocentric attitudes to Amerindians, and especially Amerindian women. Mártir de Anglería further comments on the Tainos’ passion for the areito as a performance medium: As with us the guitar player, so with them the drummers accompany these arreytos and lead singing choirs. Their drums are called maguay. Some of the arreytos are love songs, others are elegies, and others are war songs; and each is sung to an appropriate air. They also love to dance, but they are more agile than we are; first, because nothing pleases them better than dancing and, secondly, because they are naked, and untrammeled by clothing.32 In this description, Mártir de Anglería exhibits the influence of Aristotle’s discourse on the laws of natural slavery that would continue to permeate

94

Female authority and legal discourse

conversations about the role of Europeans in the Americas. The belief that nakedness, cannibalism, human sacrifice, and the lack of a written record gave evidence that the subjugation of Amerindians by Europeans was part of a natural order, and, eventually, a Christian responsibility to ‘civilize’ them marked conversations about the role of conquest and evangelization throughout the colonial era. While Fernández de Oviedo did document Anacaona’s power and leadership as well as the prevalence of women as composers of areitos, his account also reflects a specific agenda similar to that of Mártir de Anglería regarding the European gaze upon Amerindian women. As we consider the spectacle of 300 dancing ‘virgins’ performing for the European political elite, we must also consider the motivation for such an event. While Fernández de Oviedo may have been impressed by the performers’ virginity, this may not be the entire message that the Taino desired to communicate. What would be the benefit of staging such a performance? In his examination of dancing practiced in the Americas, Paul Scolieri suggests that the areito in Jaragua offers an example of Anacaona’s attempt at political control since the spectacle was staged before Anacaona and Behechio were scheduled to negotiate with the Spanish authorities. Scolieri postulates that the Tainos used this spectacle to sway the negotiations in their favor by ‘leveraging Indian sexuality’ for economic benefit.33 For Scolieri, this event represents an attempt to win favor with the new power brokers rather than the purity of the performers as intimated by Fernández de Oviedo. Whether to use sexuality to attain political and economic gains, or to merely entertain and offer pleasure for their guests, this message is literally communicated with and about women’s bodies. While we do not have the lyrics of the areito, the discourse is cast and performed as feminine writing. Bartolomé de las Casas’s treatment of Anacaona represents a divergent attitude to the cacica. Las Casas was an eyewitness to the horrific treatment of Anacaona and her people by the Spanish administration. The Spanish governor of Española, Nicholas de Ovando, had summoned Taino dignitaries and their retinues to a meeting. With the dignitaries inside, Ovando ordered the structure where they had gathered to be burned, killing many of the attendees. Anacaona and some of her entourage escaped, but they were hunted, captured and executed for crimes against the Spanish government. This event served as one of the cornerstones of Las Casas’s condemnation of the Spanish encomienda system and the cruelty of European interactions with the Amerindian communities. Las Casas summarizes the event: Aquí llegó una vez el gobernador que gobernaba esta isla con sesenta de caballo y más trecientos peones, … llegáronse más de trescientos señores a su llamado … de los cuales hizo meter dentro de una casa de paja muy grande los más señores por engaño, e metidos les mandó poner fuego y los quemaron vivos. A todos los otros alancearon e metieron a espada … e a la señora Anacaona, por hacerle honra, ahorcaron.34

Coatlicue’s smile

95

[Here when the governor who governed this island arrived with 70 on horseback and more than 300 on foot … 300 leaders arrived upon his summons … of those he made those of the highest rank enter into a large thatch structure by deceit, and once inside, he ordered that it be set on fire and burned them alive. All the others were killed with lances or put to the sword … and for the leader Anacaona, to show her honor, they hanged her.] The honor mentioned by las Casas in hanging Anacaona appears as a striking contrast to Fernández de Oviedo’s treatment of the same incident. Fernández de Oviedo used the comportment of Anacaona and the Taino women as the justification for Ovando’s violent massacre of the Taino leaders: Esta fué una mujer que tuvo algunos actos semejantes a los de aquella Semíramis, reina de los asirios, no en los grandes fechos que cuenta Justino, ni tampoco en hacer matarlos muchos con quien se ayuntaba, ni en haçer traer á sus doncellas paños menores en sus vergonzozas partes, como de aquella reyna escribe Johan Bocaçio … fué, como tengo dicho, absoluta señora e muy acatada de los indios; pero muy deshonesta en el acto venéreo con los cristianos, e por esto e otras cosas semejantes, quedó reputada y tenida por la más disoluta mujer que de su manera ni otra hobo en esta isla.35 [This one, she was the woman who had several similar acts like that Semiramis, queen of the Assyrians, not in the great deeds that Justinian tells, nor in the ordering the killing of many with whom she had intercourse, nor in making her maidens wear small handkerchiefs in their shameful parts like that queen as written by Boccaccio … she was, as I have said, absolute [female] ruler and very respected by the Indians; but very dishonest in the venereal act with the Christians, and for this and for similar things, she was renowned and taken for the most dissolute woman that could be found on the entire island.] Fernández de Oviedo’s assumption that the dancers were virgins and Anacaona’s motivations for producing the spectacle may have opened the door for some chroniclers to condemn the sensual power of the female voice privileged by Cixous. As the reference to Boccaccio indicates, for Fernández de Oviedo, Anacaona’s lack of sexual control, like that of her North African counterpart Semiramis, directly caused the downfall and suffering of her people. Julia Holderness outlines Boccaccio’s treatment of Semiramis: Boccaccio paints Semiramis as almost but not quite manly – an example of military and political virtù, undone in the end by her innate feminine licentiousness. Coming right after the story of Eve (the first of Boccaccio’s ‘remarkable women’), the story of Semiramis is that of a second Fall, again prompted by feminine frailty.36

96

Female authority and legal discourse

Aldo Albònico explains that many historians have adopted Fernández de Oviedo’s misogynist attitude to Anacaona, inferring that the libidinous acts of the women of Jaragua caused the downfall of the Taino power structure rather than the Taino’s protest because of their dissatisfaction with the machinations of the governor, Ovando, that las Casas details.37 If the areito was offered as an expression of female sexuality as Fernández de Oviedo indicates, perhaps it communicated Anacaona’s invitation to the Spaniards to join with the Taino community and to share in the political and socio-cultural bounty that was Haiti. Intermarriage has been a common strategy in many cultures to consolidate political power and wealth. We will see in a later section that the practice of intermarriage between Amerindian elite females and Spanish colonists was more successful socio-politically in Saint Augustine, Florida, than in this encounter. The phallocentric structures of the Greco-Roman world privileged male power and discourse, as we have seen referenced in the application of the ‘laws’ of natural slavery from classical times to the early sixteenth century. Nevertheless, while Amerindians did not ‘theoretically’ merit the right to autonomy or access to power from a European perspective, the archive cites numerous accounts of events and negotiations where male and female Amerindians did actively participate in their political and social negotiations with the European administrators. These events sometimes resulted in success, and sometimes in failure, as is characteristic of any interaction. While Anacaona captured the fascination of early chroniclers and historians, she was most certainly not an anomaly. While for Cixous and Derrida the male privilege is exerted in the spoken word as ‘logos’, for many scholars studying the accounts of the Americas, the ability to create a ‘written’ form of expression supposedly marked European discourse as superior. While the archive does provide examples of women communicating their power and negotiating with the spoken word, Amerindian women have accessed the logos. Nevertheless, the phallocentric discourse that shuts out expressions of feminine writing are prevalent in the archive. So rather than ‘phallologocentric’ as proposed by Vallbona, these narratives are better characterized as Euro-phallocentric. While we find traces of female voices and perhaps even evidence of a composition inscribed with or on female bodies to gain access to power, we have not yet found the actual utterances.

Reading/reconstructing female subjectivity in a Oaxacan legal case Like their counterparts in Mexico and the Antilles, women in Oaxaca also interacted with the colonial authorities. From the emergence of ruling lineages and major cities in the Valley of Oaxaca, elite Nahua, Mixtec, and Zapotec polities negotiated power and territory by intermarrying, by establishing alliances with neighboring communities, and sometimes by conquering their neighbors. Before the arrival of the Europeans, indigenous conquered towns often provided women in tribute to the polities that defeated them, as did communities wishing to establish alliances. In Mesoamerica and the Antilles, women served

Coatlicue’s smile

97

as cultural intermediaries and participated in political negotiations. As we have seen in the Nahuatl-language narrative of Macuilxochitl, some accounts of military conflict were presented in women’s voices. The tocotín genre in Nahuatl reflected a formula invoking a divine authority, a political authority, and a female narrative voice.38 Other documents in the archive reflect this type of Mesoamerican communicative technique, including a land title offered as evidence in a dispute between Mixtec and Zapotec communities in the Valley of Oaxaca. This title ‘transcribed’ the testimony of a Zapotec woman who invoked the authority of Hernán Cortés to validate the legality of a land claim by her descendants. In 1688, a Nahuatl-language document dated 1525 was presented in the land dispute between the residents of the Mixtec community of San Juan Chapultepec, the Mixtec cacique of Cuilapan, and the Zapotec community of San Martín Mexicapan. The Mixtec community provided a Mixtec-language document also dated to the 1520s and the Zapotec community also offered another Nahuatllanguage document dated 1602. This conflict lasted for several generations and control of the land fluctuated as evidence was examined and analyzed. While the 1525 Nahuatl document exists as a land title in a legal case, it reflects a similar narrative structure and many of the same characteristics as Macuilxochitl’s tocotín. As the performance text by Macuilxochitl commemorated the Matlazinca women’s petitions to Aztec tlatoani Axayacatl, the ‘testimony’ of the Zapotec noblewoman captured a performed narrative describing the defeat of Mixtec forces by the Aztecs who had come to the aid of the Zapotecs. The narrative also invokes the involvement of Cortés in the conflict. Interestingly, this discourse is not offered in Zapotec (the noblewoman’s native tongue) but in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. This is particularly striking because it indicates, as McCafferty has postulated, that Mesoamerican women studied appropriate cross-cultural linguistic codes as part of their socialization.39 The noblewoman claimed that she gave the land in question to the Mexica [Aztec] warriors after they defeated her Mixtec neighbors. She also claimed that she encouraged them to commemorate this act on paper and that she conveyed to the ownership of this land with the approval of Cortés and the European authorities. The descendants of these Aztec warriors, now integrated into the Zapotec community, use this narrative to support their petition. In a close reading of the testimony in comparison to the poetic text of Macuilxochitl, we can detect similarities between the poetic performance text and this ‘testimony’. The texts begin in a similar fashion, with an announcement of the identity of the voice and the name(s) of those that have ‘authorized’ the speaking: I, the Noblewoman of the Zapotec, went to ask the Great Ruler of the Children of the Sun named Cortés about the people who hate me, make war on me and all my children, and want to steal my land and property. It is true that I went before our Great Ruler of the Children of the Sun named Cortés, and asked him to assist me by sending his people against the Mixtec people. When our Great Ruler of the Children of the Sun named

98

Female authority and legal discourse Cortés heard [our request], he sent seven of his children, who perished. The second time he sent four more, who helped me.40

For Macuilxochitl, the authority was ‘the Giver of Life’ and she went to ‘There Where-in-Someway-One-Exists, to His house’, to authorize or ‘carry’ her songs. The Zapotec noblewoman goes to Cortés, ‘the Great Ruler of the Children of the Sun’. This very clearly illustrates that the Amerindian communities under Spanish rule learned quickly how to adapt their discourse to the new hegemon. This text reflects practices of the pre-Hispanic Nahua oral tradition that has adjusted to incorporate the information of the European presence in the Americas, so it may have been composed in the early part of the sixteenth century and remained in the oral tradition until it was transcribed in or around 1688. According to the narrative, Cortés responded to the Zapotec noblewoman’s pleas and sent aid to her cause. Interestingly, the noblewoman mentions that the four warriors who accompanied her on the second (and successful) campaign were ‘Tlacahuepantzin, … [his] brother, Tonalyeyecatzin, and [his] two cousins, Chimalpopoca and Axayacatzin’.41 Three of these four warriors are important Aztec military leaders. We have already heard of the prowess of Axayacatl in Macuilxochitl’s narrative. Chimalpopoca (d. 1427) was Axayacatl’s great-uncle, and Tlacahuepantzin, who died in battle with the Huexotzinca at Atlixco in 1490, was Axayacatl’s son. If Tonalyeyecatzin was also Axayacatl’s son, we can find no mention of him in the texts we have studied. Obviously Cortés could not have dispatched any of these warriors to aide the Zapotec noblewoman, but these types of narratives often use invocations of previous rulers and heroes to fortify forces about to do battle. During the rise of the Aztec Empire, as the Aztecs (to whom the noblewoman refers as ‘the Mexican people’ in this translation) and their allies conquered new territories, they set up colonies to govern their new conquests. Conflict between the Zapotec and Mixtec communities in the Valley of Oaxaca was common, and when the Aztecs conquered the Mixteca, they established an outpost to control their new territory. The Zapotec woman asserts that the colonists received the land they settled near her from the defeated Mixtecs: The Mixtec people who waged war on me surrendered because they [the Mexican people] defeated them. It is true that they surrendered, for the Mexican people will tell you in stories how they were given a place for their children to settle. It is true that when these people helped us, we asked if they would settle next to us. None of the Mixtecs wanted to accept them [the Mexican people], so they gave them a portion of their land, called Acatepetl, to settle.42 In a later stanza, we see that not only is this evidence present in the oral tradition, but written documentation – at the noblewoman’s request – also supports the claim:

Coatlicue’s smile

99

It is true that the Mexican (Aztec) people, likewise, will know of my story. It is true that I gave them and their children a place to settle, so that no one would make war on their children. It will be their property. Thus, I advised the Mexican people to write on paper exactly how it was given to them, because they won it.43 Perhaps because she knew the power of the written word in the colonial administration, the noblewoman expressed the need for written documentation to support the title in this performance. These are only a few stanzas of this fascinating text that includes mock battles and multiple voices. The noblewoman goes on to describe in detail the battles and the forces involved in much the same way that Macuilxochitl described the account of the Matlazinca. From the stanzas above, we also see that the performative aspects of the narrative continue to offer important contexts for the narrative. While this oral narrative does describe an event that had to have taken place before 1541 when Cortés left Mexico, the legal account that contains this testimony was filed in 1688. While the oral tradition is strongly reflected in this narrative, as well as a preponderance of the need for written confirmation of the event – which this title seems to offer – the actual title and several of the other documents offered in the legal case are problematic in their authenticity. Terraciano and Sousa contend that the Nahuatl document dated 1602 seems to have been penned in the same hand as the 1525 title.44 These texts incorporated Spanish loan words and anachronistic elements, including the fact that Nahuatl was not written in Roman script as early as 1525. It is possible that the testimony of the Zapotec noblewoman was transcribed in the early part of the seventeenth century, at the same time as the other document, but Terraciano and Sousa cite linguistic and paleographic evidence that does suggest that these are probably fakes.45 Can we detect subjectivity from this text? The speaker does identify herself and she is lobbying for her benefit. We can surmise that some version of this oral text continued to be performed into the seventeenth century, perhaps passed down from generation to generation or that it was patterned after a similar account that continued in the repertoire. While the written document cannot corroborate an authentic voice, we have an illustration of the awareness of a need for written documentation – addressing the Eurocentric construction of the value of the written word – as well as an ‘eyewitness’ testimony by the noblewoman. The case itself supports the potential for a female self-referential subject, a logocentric discourse, and the awareness of the power of the written word as appropriate support of the land title. Coatlicue may not be smiling, but she is certainly amused by this bodacious text.

A powerful female ruler along the Florida Atlantic coast: María Meléndez We have seen aspects of women’s subjectivity and perhaps their agency, but we have not been able to authenticate a historical female speaker and her words in

100

Female authority and legal discourse

the same narrative. So far the archive has provided a pre-Hispanic woman’s voice narrating an Aztec military event that included women’s petitions for a fallen warrior. We have examined reports of an Amerindian woman’s attempt to gain political advantage with invaders and colonizers in Haiti, and most recently we have investigated the documentation of a nearly 150-year-old claim to lands offered orally in an indigenous language by a female power-broker as evidence in a civil dispute in Oaxaca. We will now examine the letter from a cacica in Florida to the king of Spain from 1598. On April 21, 1513, Juan Ponce de León touched land on the east coast of what he would call ‘La Florida’. While that expedition ended in failure, intrepid would-be colonists made several other unsuccessful attempts to explore and colonize this region. Despite these setbacks, by the late sixteenth century, Saint Augustine, Florida, was a thriving colony, thanks in part to the powerful Amerindian communities that lived around the outpost. One of the most supportive of these communities was a Timucua-speaking polity, near the Franciscans’ Nombre de Dios Mission, that practiced matrilineal inheritance and matriarchal governing paradigms. The Timucuan cacica María Meléndez inherited the chiefdom from her mother, who was one of the first Amerindians baptized by the Franciscans and who had worked closely with the Spanish administration. After assuming her role as cacica, Meléndez chose to marry a Spanish soldier, Clemente Vernal. Scholars like Kathleen Deagan postulate that Meléndez’s marriage to Vernal – with whom she had several children – contributed to Meléndez’s success, assuring European support for her endeavors.46 Meléndez continued the pro-Catholic stance of her mother, supporting the missionary enterprise, and she worked to spread Catholicism to Amerindian communities throughout the southern Atlantic coast. Meléndez exercised her agency when wrote a letter to the Spanish king ‘humbly’ requesting compensation to support the colony. Your Majesty: My poverty and the frequency with which the Indians, both Christians and infidels, gather at my home to be instructed in matters concerning their conversion, and other important things concerning the good Government need with the Governor of these Provinces, places me under the necessity of asking your Majesty to assist me in the expenses I am obliged to incur with the Indians, as is certified to by the report accompanying this letter which implores your Majesty to assist and see to this need, since from it will result the coming of the Indians with more heartiness to become Christians and in this way guard the faith. Your Royal Highness being merciful. That I may do in all the above mentioned what is just and right, I also implore your Majesty to send me a letter of friendship that the Indians may see the good feeling which exists between your Majesty and ourselves. God grant you may have all graces. Florida, February 20th, 1598.47 Rather than erase or coopt the cacica’s voice, the governor of Florida, Gonzalo Méndez de Canzo also wrote to the king on her behalf:

Coatlicue’s smile

101

The cacica Doña María is a good Christian Indian, and is married to a Spaniard … She and her subjects always comply with everything they are ordered to do. Doña María’s residence serves as an inn for all the other caciques and Indians who come to Saint Augustine, and she provides them with gifts from her own meager possessions in order to bring them into Your majesty’s obedience. Furthermore, Doña Maria’s mother was also a very good Indian. She too proved a loyal ally in every situation or emergency that occurred in this presidio. In consideration of all this, Doña Maria is most deserving of any financial support that Your Majesty can offer to help cover her expenses. Moreover, she would be extremely appreciative if Your Majesty would send a royal decree offering gratitude for her services. Meléndez received a reply to her request as well as the compensation that she requested. Her efforts in negotiating the Spanish administrative system seemed to have been successful. By 1604, Meléndez and the Amerindian communities she commanded had dominated not only Timucua settlements, but also other ethnic groups including the Tacatacuru as far north as Cumberland Island off the Georgia coast. Francisco Luca asserts: ‘Doña Maria’s example lends support to the thesis that native women frequently served as agents of acculturation and were largely responsible for the confluence of cultures that resulted from the “many tender ties” established through their relationships with male colonists.’48 From Meléndez we have written evidence from a female leader who appropriated the phallocentric discourse of the Spanish administration for her own purposes and succeeded in accomplishing her objective. The king actually responded to her request in writing and with the material goods she requested. In addition, through her marriage to a Spanish soldier and interactions with the administration, Meléndez was able to further her own status as the ruler of a large expanse of the Atlantic coastline. Meléndez’s communication is logocentric and she exemplifies women’s agency both in choosing her marital partner and in amassing power and territory for her political and economic needs. The archive confirms that this Timucua woman negotiated the phallo-Eurocentric and sometimes logocentric world of the Spanish American colony with aplomb and intelligence. Coatlicue flashes a wide grin.

Seeking voices beyond the chronicles The academic and historical discourses of the Americas have centered on the words of a select group of elite males and a larger cadre of male administrative officials whose job was to report back to higher authority their successes and the potential for economic and religious expansions throughout the newly explored, resource-rich lands. We have seen evidence of the phallocentric and Eurocentric discourses that privileged the words and deeds of European men for a European male audience. We have also seen that Western scholars have been comfortable with this type of material because it was easily accessible,

102

Female authority and legal discourse

reasonably ‘reliable’, and widely distributed. A significant portion of what we understand about the non-Europeans in the Americas derived directly from a narrowly inscribed administrative record and from an equally narrowly inscribed academic practice that in most cases discounted the authority and the veracity of Amerindian narratives, especially about information before the arrival of the Europeans. Similarly, the participation of women in the conversations and political processes of colonial America has also been discounted. Nevertheless, in the vast process of documenting the Americas for the Spanish administration, scribes and administrators collected a substantial corpus of Amerindian texts, documents, testimonies, accounts, and communications. If we delve more deeply into the archive, now with access to many more archival materials through electronic, searchable technologies, it becomes easier to find materials that offer evidence of women’s participation, including Amerindian women, in conversations about their own situations and their communities. This study has offered only a tiny sample of the materials that are available, but we have seen that from the Mexican highlands, the Caribbean, Oaxaca, and the Florida peninsula, women’s discourses have shaped the political and cultural spheres of influence in ways that have only been hinted at until recently. As we examine the local records of settlements and interactions throughout the Spanish colonies, we do find numerous examples of Amerindian rulers, a substantial number of them female, participating in the discourse of the administration of their communities. We hear the participation of women in political negotiations in all four of the examples presented here. Each has identifiable aspects of the role of women in cultural survival or the preservation of power structures that specifically highlighted these women’s authority to participate in the discourse. In the first two examples, women also participated in the performance of the texts. In the third example, the plaintiffs in the legal suit built their case on the authority of the testimony of the Zapotec noblewoman and her negotiations with both Cortés and the Aztec elite. In the final example, the female ruler requested and received support for her political goodwill from the Spanish authority directly. While this is not writing the body in the manner Cixous was seeking when she described feminine writing as the Medusa’s laugh, we do hear rational women’s words and voices, and we do find significant examples of women throughout the colonies who created and composed narratives to communicate their wants, needs, desires, and situations. Coatlicue is smiling on feminine discursive privilege and agency as exhibited by Amerindian women in the Spanish colonies.

Notes 1 Jennifer Rich, An Introduction to Modern Feminist Theory (UK, 2007), p. 39. 2 Rich, p. 40. 3 Rima de Vallbona, ‘El papel de la mujer indígena en algunas culturas precolombinas’, Alba de América: Revista Literaria 22.41/42(2003): 195–223.

Coatlicue’s smile

103

4 Charles Moore, ‘La imagen variable de la mujer en las crónicas de la exploración y conquista españolas del sureste de Norteamérica 1513–1600’, Filología y Lingüística 32.2(2006): 55. 5 Marta Vicente and Luis Corteguera (eds), Women, Texts, and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World (Burlington, 2004), p. 3. 6 Rich, p. 39. 7 Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World (Stanford, 2001), pp. 60–65. 8 Cañizares-Esguerra, p. 65. 9 Ibid., p. 68. 10 Ibid., pp. 268–79. 11 Rich, p. 40. 12 See Susan Bowers, ‘Medusa and the Female Gaze’, NWSA Journal 2.2(1990): 217–35. For more on pre-Greek origins of Medusa, Charlotte Currie, ‘Transforming Medusa’, Amaltea: Revista microcrítica 3(2011): 16–81. 13 See, for example, Jeanne Gillespie, ‘Sex, Love, and Culture in Mesoamerica’, in William Burns (ed.), The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship, and Sexuality: The Medieval Era (Westport, 2008). 14 Miguel León Portilla, Fifteen Poets of the Aztec Empire (Norman, 2000), pp. 175–76. 15 Geoffrey McCafferty, ‘De-Colonizing Malintzin’, in Peter Bikoulis, Dominc Lacroix and Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown (eds), Postcolonial Perspectives in Archaeology (Calgary, 2009), pp. 183–92. 16 León Portilla, p. 184. 17 Richard Haly, ‘The Poetics of the Aztecs’, New Scholar 10(1986): 85–6. 18 León Portilla, p. 184. 19 Izcoatl is the Axayacatzin’s grandfather, addressed as a revered ancestor. The name ‘Axayacatzin’ adds the Nahua reverential phoneme ‘–tzin’ to the name of Axayacatl. 20 León Portilla, p. 184. 21 Ibid., p. 185. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 McCafferty, p. 185. 26 See for example documents produced under the direction of Spanish friar Bernardino de Sahagún in Alfredo López Austin (ed.), Educación mexica: antología de documentos sahaguntinos (Mexico City, 1985). 27 The term cacica (female chief) is a Hispanicized form of the Arawak term cacique that the Spanish colonial enterprise employed as a common descriptor for female indigenous elite, especially those who exerted power or control of communities or regions throughout the Americas. See for example Manuel Alvar Ezquerra, Vocabulario de indigenismos en las Crónicas de Indias (Madrid, 1997), pp. 66–72. 28 Pedro Mártir de Anglería, De Nove Orbo, in The Project Gutenberg EBook of De Orbe Novo, vol. 1, trans. Francis Augustus MacNutt, Decade III, Book VII. 29 Mártir de Anglería, p. 16. 30 Fernández de Oviedo, Historia General de las Indias, p. 60. 31 Ibid., p. 127. 32 Mártir de Anglería, Decade III, Book VII. 33 Paul Scolieri, Dancing the New World: Aztecs, Spaniards, and the Choreography of Conquest (Austin, 2013), pp. 29–30. 34 Bartolomé de las Casas, Las Obras del obispo D. Fray Bartolome de las Casas, o Casaus [1551] (Barcelona, 1646), f. 9r. 35 Fernández de Oviedo, pp. 132–33. 36 Julia Simms Holderness, ‘Boccaccio, Christine de Pizan, and Louise Labé’, Essays in Medieval Studies 21(2005): 97.

104

Female authority and legal discourse

37 Aldo Albònico, ‘Anacaona, reina de Jaraguá, en las crónicas del descubrimiento y en la literatura ocho centista’, Caribana 1(1990): 21, n. 10. 38 For more on the tocotín, see Haly, ‘The Poetics of the Aztecs’, 85–133, and Jeanne Gillespie ‘Amerindian Women’s Voices in Aztec Society and the Spanish Colony’, Cuaderno internacional de estudios humanisticos y literatura 5(2005): 59–68. 39 McCafferty, p. 85. 40 Lisa Sousa and Kevin Terraciano, ‘The Original Conquest of Oaxaca: Mixtec and Nahua History and Myth’, Ethnohistory 50.2(2003): 360. 41 Ibid., p. 361. 42 Souza and Terraciano, p. 360. 43 Ibid., p. 360. 44 Ibid., p. 374. 45 Ibid., p. 357. 46 Kathleen Deagan, ‘Sex, Status and Role in the Mestizaje of Spanish Colonial Florida’, Doctoral dissertation (Gainesville, 1974). 47 María Meléndez, ‘Doña Maria Menéndez [sic], Cacique, Writes the King Asking Aid in Meeting the Expenses of Instructing the Indians in Christianity and Good Government’, in A. M. Brooks (ed.) and Annie Averette (trans.), The Unwritten History of Old St. Augustine: Copied from the Spanish Archives in Seville, Spain (n.d.), pp. 32–33. 48 Francisco Luca, ‘Re-Interpreting’ the Role of the Cultural Broker in the Conquest of La Florida 1513–1600’, www.kislakfoundation.org/prize/199901.html#. See also Sylvia Van Kirk, Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur Trade Society, 1670–1870 (Norman, 1980).

Bibliography Manuscript sources Academia Real de la Historia de Madrid. Alvarez Chanca, Diego, Relación al Cabildo de Sevilla. 1494. Ms.

Printed primary sources Casas, Bartolomé de las, Las Obras del obispo D. Fray Bartolome de las Casas, o Casaus, obispo que fue de la ciudad Real de Chiapaen las Indias [1551] (Barcelona: Casa de Antonio Lacaualleria, 1646). Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo, Historia general y natural de las Indias (Toledo: Ramón Petras, 1526).

Secondary sources Albònico, Aldo, ‘Anacaona, reina de Jaraguá, en las crónicas del descubrimiento y en la literatura ocho centista’, Caribana 1(1990): 13–23. Alvar Ezquerra, Manuel, Vocabulario de indigenismos en las crónicas de Indias (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1997). Bowers, Susan, ‘Medusa and the Female Gaze’, NWSA Journal 2. 2(1990): 217–235. Currie, Charlotte, ‘Transforming Medusa’, Amaltea: Revista microcrítica 3(2011): 169–181. Brunstetter, Daniel, Tensions of Modernity: Las Casas and His Legacy in the French Enlightenment (London: Routledge, 2012).

Coatlicue’s smile

105

Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge, How to Write the History of the New World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001). Cixous, Hélène, ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, Signs 1. 4(1976): 875–893. Deagan, Kathleen, ‘Sex, Status and Role in the Mestizaje of Spanish Colonial Florida’, Doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, 1974. Gillespie, Jeanne, ‘Amerindian Women’s Voices in Aztec Society and the Spanish Colony’, Cuaderno Internacional de Estudios Humanísticos y Literatura 5(2005): 59–68. Gillespie, Jeanne, ‘Sex, Love, and Culture in Mesoamerica’, in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship, and Sexuality: The Medieval Era. William Burns (ed.) (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008). Gruzinski, Serge, Images at War: Mexico from Columbus to Blade Runner (1492–2019). Heather MacLean (trans.) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). Haly, Richard, ‘The Poetics of the Aztecs’, New Scholar 10(1986): 85–133. Holderness, Julia S., ‘Boccaccio, Christine de Pizan, and Louise Labé’, Essays in Medieval Studies 21(2005): 97–108. León Portilla, Miguel, Fifteen Poets of the Aztec Empire (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 2000). López Austin, Alfredo (ed.), Educación mexica: antología de documentos sahaguntinos (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1985). Luca, Francisco, ‘Re-“Interpreting” the Role of the Cultural Broker in the Conquest of La Florida 1513–1600’. www.kislakfoundation.org/prize/199901.html# Mártir de Anglería, Pedro, De Nove Orbo. In The Project Gutenberg EBook of De Orbe Novo, vol. 1, Francis Augustus MacNutt (trans.) Decade III, Book VII. http://archive. org/stream/deorbenovovolume12425gut/12425-8.txt McCafferty, Geoff, ‘De-Colon-izing Malintzin’, in Peter Bikoulis, Dominc Lacroix and Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown (eds), Postcolonial Perspectives in Archaeology: Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Chacmool Archaeological Conference (2006) (Calgary, Canada: University of Calgary Press, 2009), pp. 183–192. Meléndez, María, ‘Doña Maria Menéndez [sic], Cacique, Writes the King Asking Aid in Meeting the Expenses of Instructing the Indians in Christianity and Good Government’, in A. M. Brooks (ed.) and Annie Averette (trans.), The Unwritten History of Old St. Augustine: Copied from the Spanish Archives in Seville, Spain (n.p., n.d.), 32–33. Moore, Charles, ‘La imagen variable de la mujeren las crónicas de la exploración y conquista españolas del sureste de Norte américa 1513–1600’, Filología y Lingüística 32. 2(2006): 55–73. Rich, Jennifer, An Introduction to Modern Feminist Theory (Humanities E-Books.co.uk, 2007). Scolieri, Paul, Dancing the New World: Aztecs, Spaniards, and the Choreography of Conquest (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013). Sousa, Lisa and Kevin Terraciano, ‘The Original Conquest of Oaxaca: Mixtec and Nahua History and Myth’, Ethnohistory 50. 2(2003): 349–399. Vallbona, Rima de, ‘El papel de la mujer indígena en algunas culturas precolombinas’, Alba de América: Revista Literaria 22. 41/42(2003): 195–223. Van Kirk, Sylvia, Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur Trade Society, 1670–1870 (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980). Vicente, Marta and Luis Corteguera, ‘Women in Texts: From Language to Representation’, in Marta Vicente and Luis Corteguera (eds), Women, Texts, and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).

5

Inca women under Spanish rule Probanzas and informaciones of the colonial Andean elite Sara Vicuña Guengerich

When the Spanish Crown established its state apparatus on the colonized subjects of the Americas, indigenous people were considered legal minors and they needed legal advocates called ‘protectors of the Indians’ (legal supervisors) to access the Spanish colonial justice system. This de jure status, however, did not translate into social or legal reality for all Amerindians at the same time. In the Andes, Inca women continued to present themselves before the Spanish courts to claim individual and kinship rights to titles and resources throughout the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth. Still, it took the notary’s mediation to turn their requests and actions into legally valid records.1 The documents from which these women’s voices emerge are heavily mediated indeed, but they exist because they register specific intentions. As Vicente and Corteguera have argued, the analysis of women’s representations in textual sources, including legal documents, should be threefold: to examine the language used by women according to their own identities, intentions and purposes; to find the subtle ways in which these women let their voices be heard using all sorts of rhetorical skills; and to understand that some of these women needed to use common sense with their words (11). Following these analytical tools, this chapter examines the probanzas de méritos y servicios (certified proofs of merits and services) and informaciones (judicial inquiries) of three women of the Inca nobility as sources of their textual self-representations. However, as the production of legal documents implied more than a two-way contact process, we must reconfigure the concept of the ‘contact zone’2 by exploring the intercultural, social and gender differences that affected their content. Probanzas and informaciones are heavily mediated documents. They do not present a transparent rendition of the Andean past. Yet, they constitute a means of memory transmission through the written word. Besides functioning as juridical tools for these Inca women and their descendants, the probanzas and informaciones I examine in this essay constructed highly politicized narratives of family genealogies and intrigues that came to dominate the legal discourse over gender and status.

Probanzas and informaciones as textual genres Spanish legal reports generally classified as probanzas are further divided into various subgenres that include probanzas de méritos y servicios (certified proofs

Inca women under Spanish rule

107

of merits and services), probanzas de nobleza (certified proofs of nobility) and the subsequent probanzas de limpieza de sangre (certified proofs of purity of blood). Each was preceded by the petitioner’s información (judicial inquiry) and was filed prior to the actual investigation process.3 The probanzas de méritos y servicios emerged from a medieval courtly tradition of mutual obligations between the kings and their subjects, and the emphasis on a rule of law and justice. They would include any work or heroic deed performed for a superior as well as the famous deeds of one’s ancestor, which could be inherited and claimed by their descendants.4 The probanzas de nobleza, and its prior informaciones ad perpetuam rei memoriam (judicial inquiry for the perpetual memory of this matter) were different types of reports to state noble lineage based on the worthiness of a person’s bloodlines. Some were used as supplements in lawsuits for nobility, others were provided after the negative outcome of another kind of legal suit or the neglect of the authorities to honor the rights of a noble person.5 This legal tradition was transplanted to Spanish America where Spanish conquistadors, soldiers and settlers used them to request support in the form of a pension, an encomienda6 or other rewards and privileges. In the course of the sixteenth century, and as a result of the debate about the treatment of the Indians between Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in Valladolid (1550–1551), the Spanish Crown recognized the rights of the native communities, their social organization and hierarchical distinctions. Thus, numerous descendants of pre-Hispanic rulers who claimed their noble status filed probanzas and informaciones as necessary legal steps to be exempt from tribute and personal services, as well as to receive additional compensation for their services to the Spanish Crown. To be recognized as noble Incas in the colonial order, the native petitioners needed to state their Christianity, demonstrate their services to the king, and prove their genealogical ties to the former rulers. The fact that no colonial legislation dealt systematically with the Inca nobility as a whole required that each royal lineage would keep their own copies of probanzas and royal decrees to present them to the local Spanish officials in the event that their privileges were questioned.7 These documents were then passed down through generations with the same purpose: to support claims of native nobility. The Castilian legal discourse of the probanzas labeled the pre-Columbian lineages as noble houses. In addition, it emphasized the importance of private property and gave preference to the direct male line.8 However, the very rhetorical formulae of these documents also allowed native elites to become participants in the production of their own history, in dialogue with the Spanish colonial administration. In fact, as we can see in the cases that I discuss next, Inca elite probanzas and informaciones provided a subtle and alternative history of pre-Hispanic and early colonial Peru. They revised the events of the conquest, and denounced Spanish exploitation and abuse in the New World. Examples of legal discourses that shaped Peruvian colonial history and law are found in the probanzas and informaciones of Inés Huaylas Yupanqui, María Cusi Huarcay and Magdalena Mama Huaco, surviving descendants of

108

Female authority and legal discourse

the former Inca rulers. These Inca noblewomen, as well as their ancestors, were protagonists of key historical moments of the conquest and colonization of Peru: the encounter between Atahualpa and Pizarro in 1531–1533, the early native rebellions against the conquistadors, and the negotiations between Spaniards and the rulers of the Neo-Inca state of Vilcabamba (1536–1572), and Viceroy Francisco de Toledo’s reforms (1568–1580).

Coyas, ñustas and señoras naturales Inés Huaylas Yupanqui, María Cusi Huarcay and Magdalena Mama Huaco claimed to be direct descendants of Huayna Capac, the last pre-Hispanic Inca ruler. Although they were partially related to each other through blood ties, they occupied different ranks in Inca nobility and belonged to different ethnicities.9 Doña Inés Huaylas Yupanqui was the daughter of Inca Huayna Capac and a female chief of Huaylas in the central Peruvian highlands. The documents of the period also designate her as ñusta, which Gonzáles Holguín [1608] defines as ‘a woman of royal blood’.10 Ñusta was also a Quechua term that accompanied the regional origin of Inés’s mother.11 After the conquest, her Quechua name (Quispe Sisa) was changed to Inés Huaylas Yupanqui. ‘Huaylas’ referred to her ethnic affiliation (the Huaylas Indians of Central Andes) and ‘Yupanqui’ indicated her Inca lineage. Doña María Cusi Huarcay was Huayna Capac’s granddaughter, born in Vilcabamba (the site of the Neo-Inca state) to Manco Inca and Catalina Taypichisque, a noble Aymara woman. Her full name in several documents includes the title of coya, a Quechua term attributed only to women of Inca royalty. Julien has explained that the term coya was usually given to noble Inca women who married an Inca ruler (35). This was Cusi Huarcay’s case. She married her half-brother, Sayri Tupac, according to Inca custom. Doña Magdalena Mama Huaco was, in turn, Huayna Capac’s great granddaughter. She was also born in Vilcabamba to Manco Inca’s younger son, Tupac Amaru and Pilco Huaco, who was also a descendant of the royal Inca lineage. Doña Magdalena’s probanza identified her with the title of ynga, a direct reference to her royal origins. In addition, her Quechua name ‘Huaco’ referred to the legendary Mama Huaco, the first Inca queen, who was depicted as a fearsome warrior. Mama Huaco participated, along with her siblings, in the conquest of the valley of Cuzco in the 1200s, and she married her brother, Manco Capac, the first Inca ruler. Her name was also linked to the fertility of the land and the forces of the inner world, and she was recognized as the true originator of the Inca dynasty.12 As noted by Alaperrine-Bouyer, Tupac Amaru may have named his daughter Mama Huaco as the Vilcabamba Incas had not lost hope of regaining their empire.13 The titles of these women, ñusta, coya, ynga, and the reference to their ancestor Mama Huaco, were included in their probanzas and informaciones, but so was that of señoras naturales (local noblewomen).14 According to witnesses in these documents, these women were treated as such by their people, and the

Inca women under Spanish rule

109

Spaniards had to recognize their noble status, at least symbolically. Therefore, the Spanish term doña (lady), a highly respected designation for important citizens in Spanish society, was added to their Christian and Andean names.15 At the time of the conquest and throughout the colonial period, numerous native noblewomen were married to Spanish conquistadors and other lesser Spanish officials. This was also the case of Doña Inés, Doña María and Doña Magdalena. Although the unions of Inca noblewomen and Spanish men led to a decline of the Andean native nobility, the Spanish Crown still recognized their pre-Hispanic lineages and tried to ensure that their blood and legacy would continue to have a privileged place within the colonial order.16 This acknowledgement of pre-Hispanic nobility enhanced the concern with genealogy and purity of blood among these women and their descendants. Their notion of purity of blood turned the courtroom into a space of creation of colonial legal and political battles, and eventually delineated a new Spanish American customary law17 that included both gender and social status. In the next pages I pay attention to Doña Inés’s, Doña María’s and Doña Magdalena’s use of notarial rhetoric to ensure a privileged position in Inca royalty and in the early Spanish American social order.

Huayna Capac’s daughter: Doña Inés Huaylas Yupanqui Doña Inés was probably born in 1520 in the province of Huaylas, and was named Qespi Sisa. Contarguacho, her mother, had been the first daughter of Pomapacha, curaca (local ruler) of Jatun-Anan Huaylla, and she had been a key player in the consolidation of political alliances between Incas and huayllinos.18 Eventually Contarguacho became a secondary wife of Huayna Capac, and was accorded certain privileges that included land, yanaconas (laborers), and the right to live in Cuzco.19 Thus, for the first years of her life, Doña Inés and her mother lived in the capital city of the Inca empire until Huayna Capac’s death in the late 1520s, after which they returned to Huaylas.20 Years later, in 1532, Doña Inés was part of Atahualpa’s entourage in Cajamarca where the Inca ruler met Francisco Pizarro and his men. To explain her presence in Cajamarca at this time, Espinoza Soriano suggests that she and the huayllinos may have sided with Atahualpa against the Incas of Cuzco in his quest for the title of Sapa Inca (Inca ruler).21 Upon the arrival of the Spaniards, Atahualpa offered Qespi Sisa to Pizarro with the intent to establish alliances with the newcomers. The Spanish conquistador accepted the young woman and had her baptized as Doña Inés, in honor of his sister, Doña Inés Rodríguez de Aguilar. The couple lived together in a marriage-like relationship for a few years. They had two children named Francisca and Gonzalo Pizarro Yupanqui.22 Both were recognized as legitimate children of the conquistador, but they were separated from their mother at an early age and raised by a paternal aunt who fully introduced them into Spanish life. By 1537, Pizarro and Doña Inés were no longer together. However, after they separated, he provided her with a dowry that included plots of lands,

110

Female authority and legal discourse

vineyards located near the Santa Ana church, and a house across from the church of La Merced in Lima.23 Pizarro himself arranged her marriage to his former page, Francisco de Ampuero, who also received encomiendas in Yauyos, Huarochirí and Canta.24 Together, they had three children named Martín, Isabel and Juan de Ampuero. At Contarguacho’s death, the Marquis (Pizarro) adjudicated the encomienda of Huaylas to himself, and later on, he granted a large portion of it to Doña Francisca Pizarro, his daughter, omitting Doña Inés in this succession. This omission triggered a long legal battle between Doña Inés, Francisco de Ampuero and their children with the legal advisors of her daughter, Doña Francisca, and the encomenderos Vasco and Gerónimo de Guevara. The process began in 1538 with a preliminary información about Doña Inés’s identity, her relationship with Ampuero and her services to the Spanish Crown. Twenty years later, in 1557, the couple received an authorization to elaborate their probanza. The 1538 información seems to have been Ampuero’s sole effort to initiate this dispute. The eleven witnesses were Spanish men, many of them temporary residents of Lima. They had to declare who was Doña Inés, whether she and Ampuero were married, what kind of services she had rendered to the Spanish Crown, and state that she was a good Christian. According to these witnesses, Doña Inés was a very religious woman. Some even stated that they saw her going to mass and doing Christian charity work. Although her alleged conversion occurred just very few years before the elaboration of this document, the 1538 información proclaimed that she sided with the ‘Christians’ (as the Spanish conquistadors called themselves) to defeat the Inca army led by Manco Inca in 1536. Some witnesses also confirmed that, following Doña Inés’s Christian example, many other Indians became Christians too: ‘se an tornado cristianos mucha multitud de yndios e yndias a los que ha mandado y an estado debajo de su señorio’ [crowds of Indians have converted to Christianity, particularly those that have been under her lordship].25 The witnesses also declared Doña Inés’s decisive role in ensuring Spanish victory during the Great Inca Rebellion (1536–1537) by stating: ‘la d[ic]ha doña Inés dando muchos avisos al señor gobernardor don Francisco Pizarro de yndios de guerra que venyan … por su causa y tener ella aviso dello fueron ellos [los cristianos] prebenidos … [y] se evito mucha mortandad’ [Doña Inés warned the governor Don Francisco Pizarro many times about the Indian warriors that were coming … and they [the Christians] took precautions … and many lives were spared].26 Her representation as a collaborator of the Spanish Empire is enhanced by her decision to remain loyal to Pizarro rather than to her Inca relatives. The report included an episode in which Doña Inés had one of her sisters apprehended and killed when she tried to gather information about the Spaniards: una hermana suya que hera gran señora en esta tierra benia a visitarla para s[ab]er de que suerte estaba esta tierra y que cristianos abia en ella y que manera podia tener para matar todos los cristianos e tomar la tierra e dio

Inca women under Spanish rule

111

abiso dello al señor gobernador e benido a su noticia ser la berdad la mando matar secretamente. [a sister of hers (Doña Inés) who was a noblewoman in this land, used to visit her to find out how was this land organized, who were the Christians who were here and what would be the best way to kill them all to regain the land. Then, she told the governor about her, and when he [Pizarro] found out this was true, he ordered that this woman be killed secretly.]27 Keeping in mind that Doña Inés’s words were mediated by Spanish scribes and witnesses, the purpose of reporting this fratricide in the 1538 información was to reinforce Doña Inés’s representation as an ally of the Spanish faction. In addition to her loyalty to Pizarro and his men during the early years of the conquest, Doña Inés’s información portrayed her as a woman whose royal lineage and merits deserved acknowledgement and proper reward. In this way, she was depicted by her husband, Ampuero, as a noble lady who owned the land of the Huaylas Indians: [Doña Inés] es y a sido señora de la d[ic]ha probincia de guaylas y como tal señora a poseydo e tenido e mandado la d[ic]ha probincia porque le biene de herencia de sus antepasados lo qual es publico … por tanto como despues de sus dias [de su madre] le biene a la dicha mi my muger por quanto [su madre] no tiene otra hija ni hijo que la pueda heredar si no es ella porque como es costumbre entre los yndios que en muriendo la madre la herede la hija.28 [[Doña Inés] is and has been the ruler of the said province of Huaylas and, as such, she has possessed and owned the said province because it comes to her as an inheritance from her ancestors, and this is publicly known … therefore, after the passing of her mother, my wife should have inherited [it] because her mother has no other daughter or son but her, and because it is the custom among the Indians that when the mother dies, her daughter inherits her estate.] As in any información, the purpose of Ampuero’s statement was to position Doña Inés in a privileged social place of power. Such positioning was, perhaps, more than what she may have deserved in pre-Hispanic Inca society. For once, her mother had been the ruler of Huaylas, not Doña Inés; yet, none of the witnesses whose voices were recorded in the información mentioned Contarguacho’s name. In addition, Spanish officials rapidly asserted that the Andean inheritance rules were comparable to the Castilian ones in which the surviving children inherited property from their parents. While this información overstated Doña Inés’s nobility rights and merits, it reached the court of Lima even though it remained unattended for several years. The turbulent political scenario driven by the civil wars between different factions of conquistadors that unfolded in 1537 prevented any further action at that time. In 1541 Francisco Pizarro was assassinated by his Spanish enemies and a

112

Female authority and legal discourse

period of Spanish rebellions against the royal government, in which Ampuero was also involved, continued for more than 15 years. The enactment of the New Laws in 1542 and their amendments in 1546 hindered the rise of a powerful encomendero aristocracy in the colonies. No new encomiendas would be granted, they could not be inherited, and those who even held minor royal office were not to be encomenderos.29 In addition, the New Laws intended to penalize those who had participated in the Peruvian civil wars, that is, most of the encomenderos, including Ampuero and Doña Inés. By 1554, the period of Spanish civil wars in Peru came to an end. Antonio de Mendoza, who had been a successful reorganizer of New Spain, was appointed viceroy of Peru in 1551. He had been pivotal in the systematization of probanzas submitted by the descendants of pre-Hispanic rulers in New Spain while aiming to construct a colonial social and symbolic order based on descent and territoriality.30 Once in Peru, and along with other colonial authorities, he aimed to craft a political identity for the emerging state that would include, at least symbolically, the descendants of the pre-Hispanic nobilities and their families. The Spanish accounts written in this period (1550s) tied together Inca and Spanish colonial histories hoping to promote a political mestizaje and employing a rhetorical strategy of concern for the indigenous population.31 In this social and political context, Ampuero and Doña Inés produced their 1557 probanza. A comparison of their 1538 información and the 1557 probanza show significant changes related to Doña Inés’s textual agency that became notoriously present as plaintiff in the latter document. Along with Ampuero and following Castilian civil procedures, Doña Inés must have prepared questions whose answers would address the importance of her gender within Andean hereditary rules. Such questions dealt with Huayna Capac’s splendor, his lawful union with Contarguacho, Doña Inés’s Andean rights to inherit the tributaries of Huaylas, and her services to the Spanish Crown. Ten witnesses were gathered to respond to the questionnaire of the probanza. This group included senior conquistadors and other participants of the expedition to Cajamarca, principal caciques of Huaylas and surrounding towns, ladino Indians, and non Spanishspeaking natives. All witnesses testified in front of a judge, and occasionally answered in unexpected ways, adding useful information on their own. The probanza began with an improved rendition of Contarguacho as a señora natural (natural Lady). She was identified as the wife of Huayna Capac, a noble Andean woman, ‘[quien] fue mujer del dicho Guayna Caua y por tal fue habida y tenida y revenrenciada del dicho Guayna Caua y de los caciques principales, indios, ingas orejones destas provincias del Peru’ [who was the wife of the said Huayna Capac, and as such was revered by the principal caciques, Indians and Ingas orejones32 of these provinces of Peru].33 According to the probanza, Contarguacho bore Doña Inés Yupanqui to Huayna Capac, and she was known and respected as the Inca ruler’s daughter, ‘su hija natural y ligítima según la costumbre de la tierra. Y en tal veneración y estima y reputación fue habida y tenida por todos los caciques principales destos reinos’ [his natural and legitimate daughter, according to the custom of the land, and [she was

Inca women under Spanish rule

113

held] in such reverence and esteem, [and she] was revered by all the principal caciques of these kingdoms].34 However, in the context in which the probanza was written, the comparison of Huayna Capac and Contarguacho’s union with that of a ‘marriage’ in the Spanish sense as well as Doña Inés’s status as a ‘legitimate’ daughter proved to be problematic for both natives and Spanish witnesses. For example, witness Gómez Caravantes de Mazuelas stated that Contarguacho was ‘una de las [mujeres] que [Huayna Capac] tenía’ [one of the several [wives Huayna Capac] had].35 Thus, he referred to Doña Inés as Huayna Capac’s ‘hija natural’ (illegitimate daughter), omitting the ‘y legítima’ (and legitimate), a phrase suggested in the questionnaire and used to interrogate Mazuelas. Likewise, Pedro, an Indian from the repartimiento of Tumbez, declared that Contarguacho was not the only wife of the Inca, but one among others, ‘una de las mujeres que tovo el dicho Guayna Capac’ [one of the women that Huayna Capac had].36 And he avoided labeling Doña Inés as either the legitimate or natural daughter of this couple. The opposite happened with Don Antonio Poma’s testimony, which not only recognized Doña Inés as ‘hija legítima’ [legitimate daughter] of Huayna Capac and Contarguacho, but also described the relationship between the Inca king and the native local chief in different terms. He stated that Huayna Capac fell in love with the chief of Huaylas, ‘[el Inca] se había enamorado della e que dél parió un hijo varón que morió del e luego a la dicha Doña Inés’ [[the Inca] had fallen in love with her [Contarguacho] and she bore him a son who died and then, the said Doña Inés].37 Poma, a nephew of Contarguacho through his mother’s side, was the only witness to ascribe sentiment to the relationship between the parents of Doña Inés; therefore, he considered this a lawful marriage. The variety of assertions about Contarguacho and her daughter in this probanza shows evidence of this document as a complex contact zone, as Mary L. Pratt proposed for the works of colonial Indian and mestizo writers. In this text, former views of various pre-Hispanic native groups, colonial Incas, and Spanish witnesses regarding ‘legitimacy’, ‘preeminence’ and ‘sentiments’ coexisted with, if not confronted, each other. The theme of the Huaylas alliance with the Spaniards extended clearly from Doña Inés to Contarguacho in the 1557 probanza. During Manco Inca’s siege of Lima in 1536, while her daughter was Pizarro’s partner, she led troops of Huaylas Indians to the Spanish city to repel the Inca army. In doing so, said the Spanish witnesses, Contarguacho and Doña Inés played a pivotal role in the Spanish victory: ‘[hubo] notables provechos y por ello se escusaron muchas muertes de españoles’ [[there were] notable benefits for which many deaths of Spaniards were avoided].38 Interestingly, there is no reference to the death of Doña Inés’s sister in this document. Instead, the 1557 deponents declared that Contarguacho used to send her messengers to Doña Inés and she would report to Francisco Pizarro about the movements of the Inca army. Contarguacho’s daughter would tell ‘al dicho marques de muchas cosas que los indios hacian de noche e de dia en el cerco que tenian puestos en esta ciudad’ [to the said

114

Female authority and legal discourse

marquis of the many things the Indians did day and night when they had sieged this city].39 Thus, the 1557 probanza reinforces the portrayal of both Doña Inés and her mother as essential agents of the Spanish triumph over Manco Inca’s army in Lima. In the midst of these depositions, and in particular, in reference to Doña Inés’s rights to the territories and people of Huaylas, more interesting ideas emerged. The witnesses were asked whether Huayna Capac had given Contarguacho and Doña Inés the province of Huaylas so that they would use it and avail themselves of the items it yielded such as clothes, herds and foodstuffs during his lifetime and after his death. The next question asked if both women were considered and obeyed as señoras naturales until Francisco Pizarro entered and conquered the land.40 Two native witnesses, Don Martín and Don Pedro Cinchica, avoided giving details about whether the province of Huaylas should be considered Doña Inés’s inheritance. But Don Antonio Poma made an interesting case. He asserted that Huayna Capac distributed the tributaries of Huaylas equally between Contarguacho and Azarpay, mother of Don Paullu Inca, another son of Huayna Capac who collaborated with the Spaniards since their arrival in Peru. Thus, he argued that Doña Inés deserved to keep her assigned portion just as Don Paullu did.41 On the other hand, Don Pedro Sullca, a lesser cacique of Huaylas, declared that both Contarguacho and Doña Inés were revered by the huayllinos, but when Pizarro seized the land in favor of his daughter, Francisca, the cacique of Huaylas accepted it with great joy, con mucho regocijo y con buena voluntad decía ‘agora somos todos de su hija de doña Inés Yupangue, doña Francisca, e hija del dicho marques que es apo, que quiere decir señor desta tierra, e a ella le habemos de obedecer e acudir con los tributos’. E todos consintieron en ello e se holgaron.42 [with much rejoicing and good will (he) said ‘now we all belong to doña Inés’s daughter, doña Francisca, daughter of the marquis who is the apo, which means lord of this land. We will now obey and pay our tributes to her’. And everyone agreed and rejoiced.] The contradictory versions of the native witnesses reveal the ambiguous position of the Huaylas Indians with regards to Inca laws, and this did not go unnoticed by the Spanish attorneys and judges. It is important to note that in spite of underlying issues of pre-contact succession rules, which were completely unfamiliar to the Spanish, the dispute between the Huaylas Indians, Incas, and Spaniards was of considerable importance to the colonial authorities. Such litigation about territories and labor had an impact on the privileges of noble Andeans, and allowed a glimpse into the role that Inca women played in the pre-Hispanic logic of succession and inheritance. Thus, I argue that cases such as Doña Inés’s and her husband’s información and probanza set a precedent for the Spanish legislation that was later used to regulate the possession of the cacique’s office, a main arena of colonial indigenous politics.43

Inca women under Spanish rule

115

In 1572, the judges of the Lima audiencia decided that it was Doña Inés, not her husband, who should receive an encomienda in compensation for the Huaylas lands she had lost in the past. However, since Ampuero was already in possession of a large grant, the value of Doña Inés’s future encomienda should be adjusted accordingly.44 Upon Doña Inés’s death around 1575, her son Don Martín de Ampuero, the principal heir of this couple, received the right to his parent’s encomiendas, and like his father, he occupied an important role in colonial politics. Inés’s younger son, Don Juan de Ampuero, also became an important colonial official.45 Apparently, both enjoyed the recognition of her mother’s royal background and her services to the Spanish Crown.

The coya of Vilcabamba and Cuzco: Doña María Cusi Huarcay Cusi Huarcay was one of the daughters of Manco Inca who took refuge in Vilcabamba (80 miles west of Cuzco) since the unsuccessful Indian rebellion and siege of Cuzco and Lima in 1536, described above. She was addressed by the term coya because she married her half-brother, Sayri Tupac, who had been proclaimed Inca king in their exile. In 1558, years after Manco Inca’s death, negotiations between the Spanish authorities and the Incas of Vilcabamba progressed. Sayri Tupac agreed to surrender and leave the Inca exile in Vilcabamba, and accepted the promised encomiendas of Yucay, Jaquijaguana, Gualaquipa and Pucara near Cuzco, which yielded an annual income of 10,000 to 20,000 pesos.46 These encomiendas were granted as perpetual holdings to him and his descendants. As the Inca royal couple and their young daughter, Beatriz Clara Coya, established themselves in Cuzco, an ecclesiastical dispensation allowed them to marry under the guise of the Catholic Church. Upon their marriage they were baptized as Doña María Manrique Cusi Huarcay and Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza Sayri Tupac. Soon after they moved to the valley of Yucay, Sayri Tupac fell sick, and during his illness he ordered a will to secure financial stability to Doña Beatriz and Doña María, who was expecting a second child.47 Nonetheless, he recovered and lived until 1561. That year he died, possibly murdered by one of his detractors. According to Doña María Cusi Huarcay, it was the curaca of Yucay, Pedro Chilche, who poisoned her husband, but no records of any proceedings regarding this accusation have been found.48 With the sudden death of Sayri Tupac, the very young Doña Beatriz Clara inherited his estate and became one of the richest women of early colonial Peru. In 1563, when she was only five or six years old, she was taken from her mother’s side to be raised in the Santa Clara convent in Cuzco.49 Meanwhile, out in the siglo (‘secular’ to refer to the world outside the convent), Cusi Huarcay was left financially disadvantaged. In this situation, she found an ally in the mestizo Juan Arias Maldonado. Together, they planned the secret marriage of Beatriz Clara and Cristobal Maldonado, his younger brother. In order to make this union possible, Cusi Huarcay kidnapped Beatriz from the Santa Clara convent, and both remained at the Maldonado household for a few

116

Female authority and legal discourse

months. Juan Arias Maldonado promptly tried to engage Beatriz to his brother as rumors spread that Cristobal had raped the girl to enforce his claim on her and her property. However, this union was unacceptable to the Spanish royal officials, as it would have brought together the most powerful and richest encomiendas of Cuzco.50 After this event, Doña Beatriz was hastily returned to the convent, while the Spanish authorities planned a convenient strategy that would place her at the center of peace negotiations in Cuzco.51 While the authorities devised a plan between Incas and Spaniards, Doña María Cusi Huarcay filed her Informaciones ad perpetuam rei memoriam (judicial inquiry for the perpetual memory of this matter). The purpose of this document was to address the Spanish neglect of her rights as an Inca royal woman and the dismissal of the agreement they had established with her late husband. On January 13, 1567, accompanied by her attorney Gonzalo Rodríguez, the widow approached the public notary Sancho de Orúe to register her complaints in legal writing. As required by law, she began her petition by granting power of attorney to Gonzalo Rodríguez to represent her in her legal battles. However, the document clearly stated that Rodriguez could not take any action unless he consulted with her first: [Que] [Rodríguez] no pueda responder ni responda a ninguna demanda ni pedimento que nuevamente se me haya puesto, ni se oponga sin que primero se me notifique a mi en persona y para que en razon dello … pueda parecer y parezca ante su magestad y señores de sus reales audiencias y chancillerias y ante quien otros cualquier autoridad y justicias eclesiasticas…para responder, negar, conocer, defender … y ejecutar testimonio.52 [[Rodríguez] should not respond to any lawsuit or request recently imposed against me, nor he would oppose without first notifying me in person so that … I would appear before Your Majesty, the authorities of the royal court, chancellors or any other chief magistrate or ecclesiastical judge in order to declare, deny, acknowledge, defend and execute any deposition.] Thus, the document granted Rodríguez the handling of her legal affairs, but not the ability to make decisions on her behalf. Ten witnesses provide significant details of Cusi Huarcay’s claims. They included the chronicler Diego de Trujillo, Manso Sierra de Leguizamo, one of the first conquistadors, and several Spanish vecinos (permanent residents) and Incas principales (members of the high Inca nobility), The elaboration of this document, as the previous one, sets the courtroom as a space of colonial negotiations and rewriting of past histories, a place where several worldviews intersected. The questionnaire prepared to collect responses from the witnesses showed evidence of Cusi Huarcay’s construction of her own genealogy, her expectations of living as a woman of the Inca royalty, the restrictions that the Spanish officials attempted to inflict on her, and the ways

Inca women under Spanish rule

117

she understood the functioning of the Spanish colonial order vis-à-vis its confrontations with the Vilcabamba Neo-Inca state. With regard to Cusi Huarcay’s genealogy, the witnesses were asked whether they knew her and could confirm that she was a direct descendant of the Inca kings, ‘por línea recta y descendencia de padres y abuelos y bisabuelos … [ella] es señora natural hija de señores de este reino y de los que mandaron y gobernaron y tuvieron y poseyeron por suyo’ [[she] descended in a direct line from her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents and she is a local noblewoman, daughter of the lords of this kingdom who reigned, governed and possessed [this kingdom] as it belonged to them].53 All of the Spanish witnesses asserted that Doña María was Manco Inca and Catalina Taypichisque’s daughter, and that her ancestors were Huayna Capac and Topa Inca Yupanqui, father and grandfather of Manco Inca and Atahualpa. In contrast to the answers given by Spanish deponents, native witnesses went beyond this mere assertion. Many of them had met the people mentioned in the información, some even had known Huayna Capac or had seen Topa Inca Yupanqui’s mummy. While the Castilian proofs of nobility typically investigated whether the petitioner descended from a direct male line to prove his or her worth, Cusi Huarcay’s información requested the deponents to talk about both her paternal and maternal lineages. Through the testimonies of several native witnesses, the Spanish officials were able to learn about the social status of Cusi Huarcay’s ancestors. For example, Gaspar Aycha and Felipe Uscamayta, two orejones (members of Inca royalty) of Cuzco, declared that Manco Inca had ordered that Cathalina Taypichisque be brought from the Aymara town of Guanuni to be his ‘legitimate wife’ because of her exceptional beauty.54 However, Don Felipe Caritopa, an Inca nobleman by privilege, contradicted this testimony, saying that Manco Inca ‘tuvo por su mujer con las demas mujeres que tenia a la dicha doña Cathalina Taypichisque en la cual hubo por su hija a la dicha doña María Manrique’ [had other women besides Cathalina Taypichisque with whom he had doña María].55 Likewise, Don García Quispe Guara asserted that Manco Inca had another wife named Huarcay56 and indicated that Catalina was not the only one. Regardless of whether Taypichisque was Manco Inca’s principal wife, most of the native witnesses in Cusi Huarcay’s informaciones accepted her Inca nobility. For the Spaniards, despite an overarching patrilineal trend, legitimacy, parental recognition and the social rank of an Indian played a role in determining his or her social status. For example, Diego de Trujillo, one of the first conquistadors of Peru, commented on the social standing of Doña María Manrique Cusi Huarcay, ‘en su aspecto parece ser señora natural y por tal es habida y tenida en este reino y ciudad’ [she looks like a local noblewoman and as such is respected in this kingdom and in this city].57 Other Spanish witnesses such as Mansio Sierra de Leguízamo, Juan de Pancorbo, Cristobal Ximenez, Diego Segura and Sancho de Lecanda pointed out that the meager rent she received was not enough for a woman of her important lineage.58 In fact, Cusi Huarcay’s annual rent after she left Vilcabamba was originally set at 3,000 pesos, which

118

Female authority and legal discourse

allowed her to afford Indian servants, stewards, and ladies in waiting. With this rent, she could also feed and dress crowds of natives who came from Vilcabamba to Cuzco. However, upon the death of her husband and her daughter’s entrance to the convent of Santa Clara, reads the información’s questionnaire, 2,000 pesos were deducted from her rent to pay for related expenses. This deduction, she and her witnesses claimed, left her in poverty. She could barely buy her own food, and much less wear fine clothes.59 For the noble Indian witnesses in this report, the coya’s situation was an insult to the colonial Incas as a whole. Gaspar Aycha added that ‘aun las yndias que trabajan para los españoles se visten mejor que la dicha Cusi Guarcay’ [even the Indian women that work for the Spaniards dress better than Cusi Huarcay].60 This, he added, was ‘motivo de vergüenza entre los yngas orejones’ [cause of shame among the Incas orejones].61 Don Diego Chala, a native of Cuzco, also declared that since Cusi Huarcay could no longer feed her yanaconas (indian servants), they were returning to Vilcabamba.62 Yet, many of her servants and the couple who attended her as stewards remained with her. Both Juan Paucar and Felipe Topa Yupanqui declared that they would accompany the coya everywhere, although it was not known how much they were still paid, ‘estos indios asalariados la acompañaban a todas partes, pero que no saben estos testigos cuanto les paga o que ropa reciben de la dicha Cusi Guarcay’ [these wage-earning Indians accompanied her everywhere, but no one knows how much they were paid or how many clothes they would receive from her].63 In spite of her poverty, many Indians continued recognizing Cusi Huarcay as a señora natural, not because they received something from her, but because she was a direct descendant of the former Incas. Taking advantage of her merits as Sayri Tupac’s wife, the coya used this document to communicate to the Spanish authorities an important message: Either she would receive the promised financial restitution or her brother, Don Diego Cusi Titu, who had rebelled and fled to Vilcabamba, would not come out in peace.64 The conquistador Manso Sierra de Leguizamo confirmed this statement and said that he heard from Diego Cusi Titu that he would come to Cuzco to assist his sister in need, Como [Diego Cusi Titu] queria que saliese de paz .. .pues a su hermana doña María lo hacian tan mal con ella los españoles que vivia en casa alquilada y pasaba muchas necesidades y que los indios que habian dado al dicho don Diego Sayre Tupa, su hermano, marido de la dicha doña María, no la servian y que la tasa que [le] daban se le iba en humo que no gosaba nada de ello.65 [how would it be possible that he [Diego Cusi Titu] come out in peace … as the Spaniards mistreated his sister Doña María who lived in a rented house and was in need; and the Indians that have been promised to his brother, Don Diego Sayri Tupa, the brother and husband of the said Doña María, did not serve her, and the rent they [the Spanish officials] give her vanishes into thin air, and she does not enjoy any of it.]

Inca women under Spanish rule

119

Some native witnesses ratified Manso Sierra de Leguizamo’s statement and indicated that Diego Cusi Titu’s opinion was well known among all the Indians of Cuzco. While Cusi Titu’s warning, as announced by the witnesses of this información, could have constituted a real threat for the Spaniards, the governor’s solution was to temporarily ignore Cusi Huarcay’s requests. Instead, with the arrival of viceroy Toledo and the capture and execution of Inca Tupac Amaru in 1572, Cusi Huarcay was forced to marry an obscure Spanish soldier, Juan Fernández de Coronel, who would continue pursuing the longed-for financial restitution. This forced marriage, however, did not change the coya’s attitude to her claims. Her quarrels with viceroy Toledo about her relegated position in colonial society were well known. During his government in Peru, this viceroy ordered the production of a series of portraits of Inca royalty family that would accompany his own informaciones about the Inca kings. When the portraits were ready, he asked members of the Inca royalty in Cuzco, Cusi Huarcay among them, to look at these images and confirm their accuracy in the representation of Inca royal lineage. Cusi Huarcay is reported to have disagreed with some aspects of the series of portraits and allegedly said, ‘And how can it be borne that the father of Don Carlos [Paullu] and he are in a more prominent place, and his sister, being bastards than my father [Manco] and I, being legitimate’, to which Toledo responded, ‘Don’t you see, Doña María, that Don Carlos and his father always served the king, and your father and brother have been tyrants and have remained hidden in the mountains?’66 Toledo had conveniently forgotten that the Spanish Crown had recognized the rights of Cusi Huarcay and Sayri Tupac as Inca sovereigns in favor of his campaign against the Andean memory of Inca history. Viceroy Toledo was very successful in reorganizing the Andean population to serve the interests of the Spanish crown. In doing so, he clearly wanted to deactivate all sources of Inca legitimacy that did not align with those selected by the Spanish government. The descendants of the Inca kings, like Cusi Huarcay, had to fend for themselves to have their status ratified or respected. In 1580, Fernández de Coronel, her Spanish husband, added overly loaded statements to the informaciones on her behalf regarding his own ‘hidalguía’ status and Cusi Huarcay’s Christian example.67 Four witnesses declared on the ‘honradez’ (honesty) of Fernández de Coronel, although they did not answer anything concerning his supposed noble status.68 None of the witnesses seem to have been comfortable adding details about Cusi Huarcay’s Christian example, which seemed to be contradicted by some of her actions.69 Yet, they did not hesitate to state how the Spanish authorities had not restituted her according to her merits.70 While the trail of documents following these informaciones has been lost, it seems that at least Cusi Huarcay’s descendants received the longed-for compensation. Her son, Don Martín Fernández Coronel Inga, received an encomienda in Yauri, which had been part of Paullu Inca’s possessions.71 He was also a captain and an important vecino of Cuzco who in 1645 requested a

120

Female authority and legal discourse

funerary chapel inside the Santo Domingo Church to place the bodies of Cusi Huarcay and Sairy Tupac to perform acts of prayer for their souls.72 In the highly fragmented and contentious political arena of colonial Cuzco, Doña María Coya Cusi Huarcay’s case exemplifies the struggles of the Inca descendants to remain as a relatively privileged group against the encroachments of Spaniards, mestizos and even lesser Andean nobilities. While Inca sovereignty lay in a distant past, Inca history remained alive, ever more expanding through narratives that referred to the role of women, of which royal officials needed to take into account for the delineation of colonial customary laws.

The daughter of the last Inca of Vilcabamba: Doña Magdalena Mama Huaco Magdalena Mama Huaco was a great granddaughter of Huayna Capac.73 She was born in Vilcabamba around 1569 to Tupac Amaru and Catalina Pilco Huaco, both from royal Inca blood. Tupac Amaru, brother of Sayri Tupac and Diego Cusi Titu, and son of Manco Inca, had been the last sovereign ruler among the Incas of Vilcabamba. Pilco Huaco was the daughter of (García) Inguill Topa, a brother of Tupac Amaru. According to Doña Magdalena’s 1617 probanza, her parents ‘habian sido casados de acuerdo a su ley y usanza’ [had been legitimately married under the authority of their [Inca] law and custom].74 Not only was she born of two Inca elite lines in the Vilcabamba refuge, but also her name, Mama Huaco, evoked the Inca dynastic origins and emphasized their oral history. In 1572, the capture and beheading of Inca Tupac Amaru destroyed the hopes of his people and brought the demise of the Incas of Vilcabamba. Captain García de Loyola, under the command of viceroy Francisco de Toledo, brought the last Inca ruler in chains to Cuzco. Mama Huaco was only three years old when she and her siblings were captured, along with their parents, and escorted to Cuzco. Diego Quispe Condor, an Indian who had witnessed Tupac Amaru’s beheading in the public plaza, declared that before he was executed, Mama Huaco and her sister climbed the scaffold and the Inca embraced them saying they were his children and recognized them as such, and he requested (the Spanish authorities) to take care of them.75 While Quispe Condor is the only witness who provided this information in the probanza, other sources of the period also suggest Mama Huaco was indeed present at her father’s murder. For instance, the Jesuit chronicler, Bernabé Cobo, states that he met Mama Huaco and her sister (Juana) Pilco Huaco when they were brought to Cuzco at the time their father was imprisoned.76 Upon her father’s death, she was named Magdalena Mama Huaco and was taken to the house of Doña Teresa de Vargas, which served as a recogimiento77 for other orphaned noblewomen in Cuzco.78 Later on, her aunt Doña María Cusi Huarcay requested the legal custody of Magdalena, and the girl was relocated to her house. There, says the document, she was raised as an Inca noblewoman, ‘criada y alimentada como hija legitima de don Diego Topa Amaro y como sobrina de doña María

Inca women under Spanish rule

121

Cusiguarcay quien la crio como a hija de Incas y la hija de tal Inca’ [raised and fed as the legitimate daughter of don Diego Topa Amaro and niece of Doña María Cusi Huarcay, nurtured and instructed according her status as descendant of Inca rulers, and for being the daughter of such Inca].79 Growing up with Cusi Huarcay, a woman bound to the traditions of her people after having spent a few years at a recogimiento, Magdalena learned to negotiate Inca and Spanish ways of living in early colonial Peru. Similarly to Doña Inés Huaylas Yupanqui’s documents, Doña Magdalena’s 1617 probanza de nobleza is indeed a contact zone that attests to her hybrid thinking and her perception of colonial society. In this document, using the first person, she claimed her legitimacy as a full-blooded Inca noblewoman, but abided by the authority of the Spanish Crown. Her Inca nobility derived from the ‘legitimacy’ of her parents’ marriage according to pre-Hispanic customs. Yet, at the same time, she had been raised among Spaniards and ‘other people of calidad’.80 For this reason, she considered herself ‘muger de buen entendimiento y capacidad y de mucha rrazon criada entre españoles y que cabe muy bien en ella qualquier merced que su magestad y sus gobernador [sic] en su rreal nombre se sirvan de hacerle’81 [a woman of good understanding, capacity and much reason, raised among Spaniards and worthy of any favor that your Majesty and his governors in the royal name would be pleased to grant her]. Thus, using a legal discourse with some different rhetorical choices from those employed by Doña Inés Huaylas and Doña María Cusi Huarcay, Doña Magdalena Mama Huaco requested an annual rent of 4,000 pesos to be paid by the Spanish government. The existent document does not include previous informaciones related to Doña Magdalena’s claims, but attests that the viceroy Don Francisco de Borja, Prince of Esquilache, authorized her to file her probanza de nobleza in 1617. The actual probanza may have been written that year, but it was not filed before Spanish authorities until 1618. Her nineteen witnesses included Spaniards such as Pedro de Nocedo, friars Juan de Velasco and Pedro Carranza, the mestizo Rui Diez de Betanzos, son of the chronicler Juan de Betanzos and Doña Angelina Yupanqui, and nine Indian men who declared to be seventy years and older. While most of the Indian witnesses required the interpretation of Lucas Gutierrez de Mello, Doña Magdalena was competent in the Spanish language. Yet, following the law interposed by Spanish authorities, she accepted the legal representation of Bartolomé Montero de Espinoza, protector of the Indians. The structure of Doña Magdalena’s probanza follows the conventions of this legal genre. It begins by describing her genealogy, continues by stating her worthiness, and ends by presenting her petition to the king. Claiming her legitimacy in Inca terms, she identified herself as the daughter of Pilco Huaco, sister-wife of Tupac Amaru. Her parents were both legitimate children of Manco Inca. Thus, she traced her genealogy back to Huayna Capac and all the way to Yahuar Huaca, seventh Inca ruler of the dynasty and a key figure in the process of Inca emergence as a political and economic power in the pre-Hispanic Andes.82 Most of the probanza’s native witnesses attested their familiarity with her parents and expressed their knowledge of Huayna Capac, but none of them

122

Female authority and legal discourse

could add anything about Yahuar Huaca or other Inca kings. While linking her lineage to Inca Yahuar Huaca may have seemed a discursive strategy to sustain the Inca noblewoman’s claims, the main leitmotiv of her probanza is the statement that refers to the execution of her father at Toledo’s hands. As an Inca noblewoman living in the sixteenth century under the protection of Cusi Huarcay, her aunt, Mama Huaco was probably aware of viceroy Toledo’s sweeping efforts to prove the Incas’ tyranny, which ultimately had the purpose of excluding any colonial descendants of Inca rulers from political power. But she also knew that Philip II had opposed some of Toledo’s actions, particularly those related to the killing of her father. In an effort to demand justice, the text of her probanza strategically asked the witnesses whether they knew about this episode, ‘el virrey don Francisco de Toledo mando cortar la cabeza de [mi padre Topa Amaro] lo qual [el] Rey don Phelipe segundo nuestro señor con su santo y piadoso pecho no se dio por servido’83 [viceroy Toledo ordered the beheading of [my father Topa Amaro] which our King Philip II, with his saintly and pious heart, did not approve]. The constant reminder of this hapless event in Doña Magdalena’s probanza may have resonated among those present, setting the stage to hear how the death of Mama Huaco’s father forced her to live an austere life as an orphan. As an impoverished noble Inca, she requested a royal restitution by legal means. Her reasons were well stated and strategically planned. After all, she was a native elite indeed; at least as deserving of attention and rewards as her cousin Doña Beatriz Clara Coya, whose descendants became part of the highest nobility of colonial Spanish America. Nonetheless, she had grown up as an orphan, and according to a witness, ‘se sostenía con su trabajo’84 [she had to sustain herself with her work]. Although manual labor in itself did not result in scorn in her case, earning one’s living by this means was not compatible with the expected behavior and ideals to which the Inca nobility aspired at this time. Ironically, in a society eager for economic power, it is possible that penniless Doña Magdalena Mama Huaco had a better life than many other Inca noblewomen, who had been sought after by greedy Spanish men only because of their dowries. Her probanza reveals that she had a daughter born out of wedlock with a man named Felipe de Manari ‘cuando ambos eran solteros y libres sin ser atados por matrimonio ni religion’85 [when both were single and free, neither subject to marriage nor religion]. They could have married freely, says the document, but they did not. Their daughter, Doña María Manari Ñusta, was the result of this seemingly placid romance, and she herself bore another illegitimate child with Nicolás Pinelo. In fact, a strong motivation for Mama Huaco’s probanza was to obtain some kind of retroactive financial restitution, and then transfer it to her granddaughter Doña Feliciana Pinelo. In order to strengthen this case Doña María Manari Ñusta also presented an información ad perpetuam (judicial inquiry for the perpetual memory of this matter) to the major of Cuzco, Rodrigo de Esquivel. In this document, Doña María identified herself as the ‘hija natural’ [illegitimate daughter] of Doña Magdalena Mama Huaco and stated that any favor granted by the royal

Inca women under Spanish rule

123

authorities to her and her family would be transferred to Doña Feliciana Pinelo, Magdalena’s granddaughter. It is possible, then, that the latter received the expected restitution for which she had petitioned. The fame and influence of her Inca relatives, as well as the fact that by 1617 Mama Huaco was one of the few people who could still prove themselves to be a direct descendant of Manco Inca, whom the Spaniards had recognized as legitimate and sovereign king of the Incas.

Conclusion The probanzas of Doña Inés Huaylas Yupanqui, Doña María Cusi Huarcay and Doña Magdalena Mama Huaco are part of the discussion regarding the treatment of native elites in Spanish America as well as of the transformations of Spanish laws and Inca customs and history. As other surviving members of the Inca elite in their times, these women were participants in the colonial system and used what they had at their disposal: paid legal advocates who could help them with Spanish juridical tools and produce appropriate legal documents to build written records. Such texts that remain in the colonial archive of Spanish America were used in their favor to have their social status ratified and respected. While the contents of these documents do not present a transparent rendition of the Andean past or the colonial context, these written records still function as evidence of Andean memory transmission, particularly regarding the agency of historical female actors, which have been obscured in Spanish American colonial history. The life narratives, genealogical information, and historical importance of these women, as well as the compensations they or their descendants obtained, show how they reconfigured the notion of Inca nobility to fit the Spanish expectations of lineage and inheritance, particularly in a period in which Spanish authorities used the courtroom as a space to delineate customary laws. The texts produced by Doña Inés Huaylas Yupanqui, Doña María Cusi Huarcay, and Doña Magdalena Mama Huaco can be also understood as textual contact zones, spaces that include complex issues of ethnic, social and gender differences that coexisted and/or confronted each other within the colonial order. The apparent inconsistencies one may read in their documents reflect this very space of liminality between the Andean and the Spanish worlds of these women. Overall, Inca noblewomen’s probanzas and informaciones not only provide a version of their life stories, but also uncover the stories of the people around them, namely their Spanish partners and their mestizo children. They too aspired to become part of these women’s noble lines and contributed to the production of alternative histories of the conquest and colonization of the Andes. In spite of the cultural, linguistic and gendered mediation present in the construction of this archive, the voices and textual agency of these women emerge to reveal their engagement with the historical and cultural processes of colonial Spanish America.

124

Female authority and legal discourse

Notes 1 For a compelling study on notaries as intermediaries of colonial discourses, see Kathryn Burns, Into the Archive (Durham, 2010), pp. 1–19. 2 Mary Louise Pratt has coined the term ‘contact zone’ to treat the interactive and asymmetrical dimensions of colonial encounters, and defines it as ‘the space in which people geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict’. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes (New York, 1992), p. 6. 3 María Elena Martínez, Genealogical Fictions (Stanford, 2008), p. 17. 4 Murdo McLeod, ‘Self-Promotion: The Relaciones de Méritos y Servicios and Their Historical and Political Interpretation’, Colonial Latin American Historical Review 7.1(1998): 25–42. 5 Vicente Cadenas y Vincent, Heráldica, genealogía y nobleza en los editoriales de “Hidalguía” (1953–1993). (Madrid, 1993), p. 223. 6 This was the case of grants of Indian towns to the conquistadors, which allowed them to demand taxes and labor in return for military protection and religious instruction. 7 David Garrett, ‘Los Incas borbónicos: la elite indígena cuzqueña en vísperas de Tupac Amaru’, Revista Andina 36(2003): 11. 8 Carolina Jurado, ‘“Descendientes de los primeros”. Las probanzas de méritos y servicios y la genealogía cacical. Audiencia de Charcas, 1574–1719’, Revista de Indias 74.261(2014): 390, 415. 9 The complexity of Inca genealogy and the affiliation to the lines of Huayna Capac and his sons, Atahualpa, Huascar and Manco Inca, cannot be established in this article. However, pieces of information that stemmed from the testimonies of these women in their respective probanzas provide a glimpse in their family ties. For an excellent overview of Inca genealogy see the work of Catherine Julien, Reading Inca History (Iowa City, 2000). 10 Vocabulario de la lengua general de todo el Peru llamada lengua Qquichua o lengua del Inca [1608]. Ed. Raúl Porras Barrenechea (Lima, 1952). 11 Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales de los Incas [1616] (1976, book. 1, chapter 26). 12 Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno [1615], (Madrid, 1987), p. 81; Brian Bauer, ‘Legitimization of the State in Inca Myth and Ritual’, American Anthropologist 98.2(1996): 328. 13 Monique Alaperrine–Bouyer, ‘Fille de Roi et Mendiante: Mamahuaco Coya, 1617’, Langues NeoLatines 89.294(1995): 11. 14 The term señor natural has been defined as ‘a lord who, by inherent nature of superior qualities, goodness, and virtue, and by birth of superior station, attains power legitimately and exercises dominion over all within his lands and justly and in accord with divine, natural, and human law and reason, being universally accepted, recognized, and obeyed by his vassals and subjects and acknowledges by other lords and their peoples as one who rightfully possesses his office and rightfully wilds authority within his territory’. See Robert Chamberlain, ‘Repartimiento–Encomienda’, Hispanic American Historical Review 19(1939): 130. 15 According to Lockhart, the term ‘Doña’ more so than the term ‘Don’ experienced a rapid devaluation in Spanish Peru, but there were still some limits. Throughout the colonial period, he argues, it remained unthinkable that an obvious plebeian should use the title. James Lockhart, Spanish Peru (Madison, 1994), p. 173. 16 In referring to the mestizos who were the offspring of a noble Andean women and a Spaniard, the Spanish jurist Solórzano y Pereyra recommended that they should not be deprived of a cacicazgo (regional lordship). See Juan Solórzano y Pereyra, Política indiana [1647] (Madrid, 1972), L.427 and vols 37–39.

Inca women under Spanish rule

125

17 Renzo Honores, ‘A Legalistic Society: Lawyers, Procutators and the Making of a Colonial Legal Culture in Lima and Potosí, 1550–1670’, Ph.D. dissertation, Florida International University, 2007. 18 Marina Zuloaga, ‘Las encomiendas y el poder colonial en Huaylas’, Diálogo Andino 37(2011): 69. See also Rafael Varón Gabai, Francisco Pizarro and His Brothers (Norman, 1997), p. 214. 19 Waldermar Espinoza Soriano, ‘Las mujeres secundarias de Huayna Capac’, Revista del Museo Nacional XLII(1976): 258. 20 The sudden death of Huayna Capac and his probable heir, Ninan Cuyuchi, are in fact very important for the later development of individual agendas among the rest of the Inca offspring in the colonial period. The Incas were divided among themselves, an issue that would only worsen in the colonial period. Upon the death of the Sapa Inca (Inca ruler), a fraticidal civil war broke out between the most visible Inca leaders, Huascar and Atahualpa. Each counted with the support of different Andean people, but other natives also deprecated them. The accounts of Inés Huaylas, María Cusi Huarcay and Magdalena Mama Huaco suggest the continuation of these internal differences. 21 Espinoza Soriano, p. 258. 22 Francisca (1534–1598), known in her time as ‘the first mestiza of Peru’, lived a long life in Peru and later in Spain. She married her uncle, Hernando Pizarro, with whom she had five children. Her younger brother, Gonzalo, died in 1546 when he was 11 years old. 23 María Rostworowski, Doña Francisca Pizarro 1534–1598: Una ilustre mestiza (Lima, 2003), p. 32. 24 José Antonio Del Busto, Diccionario histórico-biográfico de los conquistadores del Perú (Lima, 1986), vol. 1, p. 130. 25 Archivo General de Indias, Lima, 204, N.5, fols 2r–2v. 26 Ibid, fol. 2v. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., fol. 3r. 29 Lockhart, p. 5. 30 Martínez, p. 125. 31 Karen Graubart, ‘Indecent Living: Indigenous Women and the Politics of Representation’, Colonial Latin American Review 9.2(2000): 220. 32 Spanish for ‘big ears’, the name given to those wearers of golden ear spools that distinguished them as members of Inca royal nobility. Julien, Reading Inca, p. 29. 33 Espinoza Soriano, p. 273. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., p. 280. 36 Ibid., p. 281. 37 Ibid., p. 282. 38 Espinoza Soriano, p. 274. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Paullu Inca, a son of Huayna Capac, had received important encomiendas from Francisco Pizarro. His lordship over traditional possessions and Indian laborers was recognized through his maternal lineage, although he was also an Inca who shared political power with the Spaniards. See Ana María Lorandi, Spanish King of the Incas (Pittsburgh, 2005) and Gonzalo Lamana, Domination Without Dominance (Durham, 2008). 42 My emphasis; Espinoza Soriano, p. 286. 43 To govern over the Incas, the Spanish Crown recognized some members of the Inca elite as caciques, a non-Quechua term that was actually adopted from the Spanish colonization of Taíno chiefdoms in the Caribbean. Thus, Spanish government

126

44 45 46 47 48

49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

Female authority and legal discourse focused on understanding and regulating what they called cacical offices. The Spanish jurist Solórzano y Pereira, for example, implied that cacicas (women chiefs or Inca noblewomen) occupied a cacicazgo only where this custom had been established and regularly observed. Política indiana (Madrid, 1972), vol. 37, p. 409. Kerstin Nowack, Lebensformen im Umbruch (Bonn, 2007), p. 316. Ibid., p. 317. Kerstin Nowack, ‘Las mercedes que pedía para su salida’, in David Cahill and Blanca Tovías (eds) New World, First Nations (Portland, 2006), p. 67. Guillermo Lohmann, ‘El testamento inédito del Inca Sayri Tupac’, Historia y Cultura 1(1960): 17. There is no further reference to Sayri Tupac’s second child, because of which I assume he died at birth. Edmundo Guillén, La guerra de reconquista Inka (Lima, 1994), p. 34. Pedro Chilche, however, had been charged with several acts of misconduct. He was a cañari Indian who had frequently switched factions according to his own interests. In 1552, he claimed a significant part of the lands of Yucay for himself. See Susan Niles, The Shape of Inca History (Iowa City, 1999), p. 28. Kathryn Burns, Colonial Habits (Durham, 1999), p. 27. Roberto Levillier, Gobernantes del Peru, cartas y papeles, siglo XVI (Madrid, 1921), vol. 3, p. 156 The extent of Doña Beatriz Clara Coya’s case would not be possible to address in this essay. However, the events surrounding her case have been examined in numerous works. See for example Ella Dunbar Temple, ‘El testamento inédito de doña Beatriz Clara Coya’, Revista Nacional de Lima 7.78(1950): 109–22, and Marie Timberlake, ‘The Painted Colonial Image’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29.3(1999): 563–98. Horacio Villanueva Urteaga. ‘Doña María Manrrique Coya: Información Ad Perpetuam dada en 13 de enero de 1567’, Revista del Archivo Histórico 13(1967): 153. Note that the question does not specify the ‘male’ line. Archivo Regional del Cuzco, Papeles de la Casa de Betancur, N.9, fol. 144r. Ibid., fol. 147v. Ibid., fol. 140r. Villanueva Urteaga. ‘Doña María Manrique’, p. 161. Ibid., pp. 155, 157, 159, 162, 164, 166. Ibid., p. 152. Ibid., fol. 142r. Ibid., fol. 142v. Ibid., fol. 141v. Papeles de la Casa de Betancur, N.9., fol. 142r. Villanueva Urteaga, p. 152. Ibid., fol. 168r. Quoted in Catherine Julien, Reading Inca History, p. 78. Villanueva Urteaga, p. 176. Ibid., pp. 178–81. In 1587, Cusi Huarcay approached the new viceroy, Conde del Villar, offering to reveal him the locations of Inca gold and silver mines in a region near Vilcabamba. See Roberto Levillier, Gobernantes del Peru (Madrid, 1925), p. 235. Villanueva Urteaga, pp. 178–80. See José de la Puente Brunke, Encomienda y encomenderos del Perú (Sevilla, 1992), 497, and David Garrett, Shadows of Empire (New York, 2005), p. 104. Ambrosio Morales, ‘Documentos para la historia del Cuzco’, Revista del Instituto Americano de Arte 1.3(1944): 14–16. Irene Silverblatt has identified another woman of Cuzco by the name Magdalena Mama Huaco, who along with her daughter, Doña Paula Mama Huaco, claimed to be a descendant of Topa Inca and possessed the lands of Callispuquio. This suggests that ‘Mama Huaco’ was a name usually associated with the Andean nobility.

Inca women under Spanish rule

127

74 Edmundo Guillén, ‘Un documento para el estudio de Thupa Amaro’, Revista del Museo Nacional 46(1982): 547. 75 Ibid., p. 549. 76 Bernabé Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo [1653], (Madrid, 1956), Lib. XII, p. 107. 77 Nancy van Deusen has examined the meaning and importance of recogimientos, places of seclusion, controlled behavior and enclosure where many young colonial women, often orphans, grew up. See Nancy van Deusen, Between the Sacred and the Worldly (Stanford, 2001). 78 The fate of her sister Juana Pilco Huaco is uncertain. According to some of the witnesses, she died at a young age. However, according to the chronicler Pedro de Sarmiento, a Juana Pilco Huaco married José Gabriel Condorcanqui, the curaca of Surinama (1907, 230). 79 Guillén, ‘Un documento’, p. 555. 80 Calidad represented one’s social body as a whole, which included references to skin color, purity of blood, honor, integrity and place of origin. See Magali de la Carrera, Imagining Identity in New Spain (Austin, 2003), p. 6. 81 Archivo General de Indias, Lima, 472, N.8, fol. 198v. 82 Julien, Reading, p. 260. 83 Archivo General de Indias, Lima, 472, N.8/1620–1622, fol. 193r. 84 Guillén, ‘Un documento’, p. 549. 85 Ibid., p. 548.

Bibliography Manuscript sources Archivo General de Indias de Sevilla, Justicia, 1088, N.4. ‘Información hecha ante la Audiencia de los Reyes a pedimento de Francisco de Ampuero, como marido de doña Inés Yupanqui, 1557’, transcribed in Espinoza Soriano, 1976. Archivo General de Indias de Sevilla, Lima, 204, N.5. ‘Informaciones de oficio y parte: Francisco de Ampuero, vecino de Lima, 1538’. Archivo General de Indias de Sevilla, Lima, 472, N.8/1620–1622. ‘Probanza de Doña Magdalena Mama Huaco Ynga’. Archivo Regional del Cuzco (Perú) Papeles de la Casa de Betancur, N.9. ‘Informacion ad perpetuam rei memoriam perteneciente a Doña María Manrrique’. Genealogía de la Casa, Ascendencia y Descendencia de Don Diego Sayri Tupac, L.4. ‘Testimonios en la información de Juan Fernández de Coronel, segundo marido de doña María Cusi Huarcay’, transcribed in Villanueva Urteaga, 1970.

Printed primary sources Cobo, Bernabé, Historia del Nuevo Mundo [1653], Luis Pardo (ed.) (Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1956). Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca, Comentarios reales de los Incas [1616], Aurelio Miró Quesada (ed.) (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1976). Gonzales de Holguín, Diego, Vocabulario de la lengua general de todo el Peru llamada lengua Qquichua o lengua del Inca [1608]. Raúl Porras Barrenechea, ed. (Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1952). Guamán Poma de Ayala, Felipe, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno [1615], John V. Murra, Rolena Adorno and Jorge Urioste (eds) (Madrid: Historia 16, 1987).

128

Female authority and legal discourse

Sarmiento, Pedro de, History of the Incas. Baltasar de Ocampo (ed.), Clements Markham (trans.) (Cambridge: Hakluyt, 1907). Solórzano y Pereyra, Juan de, Política indiana [1647], L.427 and vols 37–39 (Madrid: Compañía Iberoamericana de Publicación, 1972).

Secondary sources Alaperrine-Bouyer, Monique, ‘Fille de Roi et Mendiante: Mamahuaco Coya, 1617’, Langues Neo Latines 89. 294(1995): 9–16. Bauer, Brian, ‘Legitimization of the State in Inca Myth and Ritual’, American Anthropologist 98. 2(1996): 327–337. Burns, Kathryn, Colonial Habits (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999). Burns, Kathryn, Into the Archive (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). Cadenas y Vincent, Vicente, Heráldica, genealogía y nobleza en los editoriales de “Hidalguía” (1953–1993) (Madrid: Ediciones Hidalguía, 1993). Carrera, Magali M. de la, Imagining Identity in New Spain (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003). Chamberlain, Robert, ‘Repartimiento-Encomienda’, Hispanic American Historical Review 19(1939): 372–379. Del Busto Duthurburu, José Antonio, Diccionario históricobiográfico de los conquistadores del Peru (Lima: Ediciones Studium, 1986). Dunbar Temple, Ella, ‘El testamento inédito de doña Beatriz Clara Coya de Loyola’, Fénix. Revista Nacional de Lima 7. 78(1950): 109–122. Espinoza Soriano, Waldemar, ‘Las mujeres secundarias de Huayna Capac’, Revista del Museo Nacional XLII(1976): 247–298. Garrett, David, Shadows of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Gauderman, Kimberly, Women’s Lives in Colonial Quito (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003). Graubart, Karen, ‘Indecent Living: Indigenous Women and the Politics of Representation in Early Colonial Peru’, Colonial Latin American Review 9. 2(2000): 213–235. Graubart, Karen, With Our Labor and Sweat (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007). Guillén, Edmundo, ‘Un documento para el estudio de la descendencia de Thupa Amaro Inka’, Revista del Museo Nacional XLVI(1982): 545–565. Guillén, Edmundo, La guerra de reconquista Inka (Lima: E. Guillén, 1994). Honores, Renzo, ‘A Legalistic Society: Lawyers, Procutators and the Making of a Colonial Legal Culture in Lima and Potosi, 1550–1670’. Doctoral. dissertation, Florida International University, 2007. Julien, Catherine, ‘History and Art in Translation: Los Paños and Other Objects Collected by Francisco de Toledo’, Colonial Latin American Review 8. 1(1999): 61–89. Julien, Catherine, Reading Inca History (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000). Jurado, Carolina, ‘“Descendientes de los primeros”. Las probanzas de méritos y servicios y la genealogía cacical. Audiencia de Charcas, 1574–1719’, Revista de Indias 74. 261 (2014): 390–422. Lamana, Gonzalo, Domination Without Dominance: Inca–Spanish encounters in early colonial Peru (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). Levillier, Roberto, Gobernantes del Peru, cartas y papeles, siglo XVI: Documentos del Archivo de Indias (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1925), vol. 3.

Inca women under Spanish rule

129

Lockhart, James, Spanish Peru, 1532–1560: A Social History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994). Lohmann Villena, Guillermo, El señorío de los Marqueses de Santiago de Oropesa en el Peru (Madrid, 1948). Lohmann Villena, Guillermo, ‘El testamento inédito del Inca Sayri Tupac’, Historia y Cultura 1. 1(1965): 13–18. Martínez, María Elena, Genealogical Fictions (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). McLeod, Murdo, ‘Self-Promotion: The Relaciones de Méritos y Servicios and Their Historical and Political Interpretation’, Colonial Latin American Historical Review 7. 1(1998): 25–42. Morales, Ambrosio, ‘Documentos para la historia del Cuzco. Tumbas de los incas Sayri Tupac, D. Felipe Tupa Amaru a quien mandó cortar la cabeza el señor D. Francisco de Toledo, y de la coya doña María Cusihuarcay. Información jurídica para la fundación de una capellanía de misas, 1645’, Revista del Instituto Americano de Arte 1. 3 (1944): 13–21. Niles, Susan, The Shape of Inca History (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999). Nowack, Kerstin, ‘Las mercedes que pedía para su salida’, in David Cahill and Blanca Tovías (eds), New World, First Nations (Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2006). Nowack, Kerstin, Lebensformen im Umbruch: Ynes Yupangui Zwischen Inkareich und spanischer Kolonialherrschaft in Peru. (Bonn, Germany: Americanistik Studien, 2007). Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992). Puente Burke, José de la, Encomienda y encomenderos en el Peru (Sevilla: Diputación Provincial de Sevilla, 1992). Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, María, Doña Francisca Pizarro 1534–1598: Una ilustre mestiza (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2003). Silverblatt, Irene, Moon, Sun and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987). Timberlake, Marie, ‘The Painted Colonial Image’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29. 3(1999): 563–598. Vicente, Marta and Corteguera, Luis (eds), Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003). Varón Gabai, Rafael, Francisco Pizarro and His Brothers (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997). Villanueva Urteaga, Horacio, ‘Doña María Manrrique Coya: Información ad Perpetuam dada en 13 de enero de 1567’, Revista del Archivo Histórico 13(1967): 149–184. van Deusen, Nancy, Between the Sacred and the Worldly: The Institutional and Cultural Practice of Recogimiento in Colonial Lima (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001). Zuloaga, Marina, ‘Las encomiendas y el poder colonial en Huaylas’, Diálogo Andino 37 (2011): 6–86.

6

The bonds of inheritance Afro-Peruvian women’s legacies in a slave-holding world1 Karen B. Graubart

Catalina de Ysásaga, described as a morena libre or free Afro-Peruvian woman, on what she took to be her deathbed in 1578 articulated her final desires before a notary: to be buried in the church of San Agustín, accompanied by her parish priest from San Marcelo and her brothers and sisters from the cofradía of Santa Ana, and memorialized by seven masses that same day and others on days to follow, indefinitely through the establishment of a capellanía.2 This outpouring of support would be financed with the proceeds of her estate, which was substantial for an Afro-Peruvian woman in the sixteenth century: she owned a set of houses in the San Marcelo neighborhood where she lived; 100 pesos in silver, held for her by a Spanish merchant; some furniture, clothing, and housewares; and a slave, Juana Zape, whom she had previously purchased with her own funds in a notarized sale.3 Her will does not explain where her wealth came from, nor much else about her life prior to that moment: it does not state where she was born, whether she was ever enslaved, or the names of her parents. Our only clue about who she was comes from the long list of charitable bequests – in addition to the religious services and the capellanía mentioned above, she left gifts to ten different cofradías (lay religious sodalities), to the church of San Sebastián, and for the redemption of Christians captured in Muslim lands. A Limeño Catholicism was central to her sense of self, and one which she intended to memorialize through her final written instructions. I introduce Catalina de Ysásaga’s last will and testament to begin a conversation about how women either formerly enslaved or descended from the enslaved – whom I describe as Afro-Peruvians – conceived of wealth, slavery, and their obligations in early colonial Lima. Ysásaga decided to sell Juana Zape at auction as part of her estate rather than to offer her even incremental freedom, while she bestowed largesse upon the city’s Catholic institutions as part of a public funerary display. Her refusal of the common Catholic strategy of gracious manumission – the freeing of a slave as an act demonstrating the testator’s benevolence, clearing a path towards heaven – was not due to a lack of piety.4 But hers was not an unusual choice among free people of African descent. While very few Afro-Peruvian women wrote wills with Lima’s notaries in the first century after conquest, those who did so mostly owned slaves and did not

Afro-Peruvian women’s legacies

131

often grant them gracious manumission, preferring to treat them as part of their estate, to be inherited or liquidated at auction. In this chapter I argue, from these sparse documents, that such decisions reflected a careful weighing of the economic forces that confronted free women of color in this period, but also an equally considered strategy to distance themselves from the slavery that always threatened them and their families. Ysásaga’s failure, from an anachronistic modern perspective, to invoke via her will some kinship or solidarity with the Afro-Peruvian people she owned, gives insight into the ways that freedom was always partial and processual in the world of transatlantic slavery. To write a will that refused that relationship was to use both language and law to assert her limited power.5 This chapter draws upon wills left by 17 Afro-Peruvian women between 1565 and 1666, located in Lima’s archives. There are likely a few more wills to be found, but certainly not many. The poverty of that sample is made clear by the rough population counts we have for the city of Lima: a 1636 census ordered by the viceroy registered 10,758 Spaniards, 13,620 negros, 861 mulatos, 1,426 Indians and 377 mestizos.6 That census certainly undercounts the city’s indigenous population, as it only refers to residents of the center of the city and excludes population outside the city walls and within the Cercado (a walled community intended to contain indigenous migrant workers), both of which were predominantly indigenous. But even so, Lima was overwhelmingly a black city, the vast majority of whom were enslaved: some 25 percent of Afro-Peruvians in the city were free according to a 1586 census, rising to 30 percent in a 1700 count.7 For roughly the same period, I have collected more than 200 wills left by the city’s indigenous residents, and there are surely more of those to be excavated from the vast and mostly uncatalogued notarial archives.8 The main reason for the dearth of Afro-Peruvian wills is certainly enslavement: although some slaves did own property, and were perceived to be able to manage estates independently of their masters, they were theoretically prohibited from writing wills and rarely appear in the notarial records except as commodities themselves. As Jouve Martín has noted, the receipt of a written instrument granting freedom (the carta de libertad) opened the doors of the lettered city to former slaves: indeed, the ability to write a will was one of the powers explicitly invested by the carta.9 But free people of African descent did not write wills in very large numbers. The majority of those who did write wills were female. In part this is because women likely received the lion’s share of those letters of manumission: almost 75 percent of the free Afro-Peruvian population in Lima in 1700 was female.10 Beyond absolute numbers, gender also affected the likelihood of testating for Afro-Peruvians as for indigenous Limeños. Women of both groups embraced Catholicism in larger numbers than men, and actively participated in confraternities (though they were excluded from leadership roles in many instances).11 Poor women, indigenous and African-descent alike, tended to work in public spaces, alongside notaries’ offices, and in the homes of Spaniards, who opened the ways of the legal system to them and introduced them to mediators.12 In all,

132

Female authority and legal discourse

Afro-Peruvian women were in a position to understand the importance to elite society of writing, even though they were mostly illiterate themselves. But for reasons of poverty and slavery, Afro-Peruvian women in Lima were unlikely to leave a will during the first century after conquest. Afro-Peruvians who did leave wills, even more so than indigenous people, tended to be much wealthier than their general cohort. Lima had a large free black population – nearly a thousand by 1586 – but very few of these were men or women of means.13 Unlike indigenous will-writers, though, who tended to own their own houses as well as agricultural parcels, Afro-Peruvian female willwriters overwhelmingly purchased slaves – occasionally many slaves – as their sole capital asset. In 15 of the 17 cases, the woman writing a will owned at least one slave; in contrast, only one owned a house, and two had significant cash saved up (although a number had very large debts to collect, which would create an estate if they could be collected). Many, like their indigenous counterparts, owned lots of home furnishings, fine clothes, and jewelry. Thus this small Afro-Peruvian sample is clearly differentiated from the larger African-descent population as well as from indigenous and Spanish testators. It is also differentiated by gender. The archive yields even fewer wills left by Afro-Peruvian men than by women: perhaps a function of women’s greater likelihood to be manumitted, or perhaps a product of my own irregular search. The six men’s wills I have located represent a group more likely to be married (four of six, with the fifth cohabiting with a sexual partner whom he owned), more likely to own property, including farmlands, and far less likely to own a slave (only two of the five did, for a total of three adults and two children, one of whom was the child of the testator/master). Slave ownership among AfroPeruvians was seemingly a gendered choice, perhaps resulting from women’s difficulties in purchasing lands, their lack of access to labor to work those lands, the need for laborers to support certain gendered occupations like food preparation and sales, or because – as I will argue here, in part – women’s own life experiences made slaves their preferred form of investment capital. A more acute gender analysis awaits more evidence, but from this limited sample we can conclude that slave ownership was more attractive or more viable for AfroPeruvian women than men, and that their relationship to work and slavery was quite different from that of their male counterparts, as I will show below. In this chapter, then, I will offer some micro-histories – narratives drawn from this handful of wills – that illuminate the precarious position of this group of women who on the surface appear to be moderately comfortable and stable. Although colonial authorities used the color term ‘black’ (negro) to describe them, these women had a far more complicated sense of self than that vague term implies. If they empathized with the men and women they owned as property, it was not because of a racialized connection. They presented their wishes by asserting a discourse of their own, despite illiteracy and despite the fact that the Spanish men who wrote down their words and even carried out their wishes did not necessarily understand or recognize that discourse. The key to understanding the disconnect between free and enslaved Afro-Peruvians is

Afro-Peruvian women’s legacies

133

recognizing how difficult it was for even the most successful people of African descent to carve out a life in colonial Lima, and how precarious their relationship to freedom was, even generations after manumission.

Naming oneself in freedom As one might imagine, freedom was hard won. Being free was in itself an unstable experience: free men and women had to provide for themselves in an economy already overrun with marginal urban workers, and rarely had the kind of community networks that some indigenous immigrants might be able to draw upon. Re-enslavement by those who had supposedly freed them or through new economic circumstance was always a possibility.14 Free men and women celebrated and even fetishized the act of leaving the state of slavery. Former slaves and their descendents emphasized their freedom in their meetings with notaries, describing themselves in their documents through a nomenclature that insisted upon their distance from enslavement. Naming is a weighty matter in notarial records – notaries had to interview their clients and accommodate those responses to the expectations of the notarial template and their own experience.15 The names assigned by the notary in legal documents both identified and placed clients in colonial society, and the documents themselves provide evidence that, at times, clients and notaries tussled over language: crossed-out terms, internal contradictions, and marginal notes suggest, at the very least, vigorous discussion. We should see notarial documents as conversations and processes rather than outcomes, recognizing that even illiterate clients had the ability to suggest, and sometimes get, their preferred language.16 Afro-Peruvian women are identified in their wills in a variety of manners (see Table 6.1). Each carried a Christian baptismal name, such as Francisca or Mencía, Catalina or Lorenza. Eleven bore surnames, either religious names such as ‘de la Paz’, or common Spanish surnames such as ‘Lopes’ or ‘Rodriguez’.17 One was called ‘de Huancavelica’, suggesting that she had migrated from the Andean region east of Lima famous for its mercury mines, so necessary to the exploitation of silver in the seventeenth century. Another mysteriously bore the geographic marker ‘de Bilbao’, in Spain, though she herself had been born in West Africa, perhaps referring to a former master. Seven had linguistic markers that vaguely tied them to African origins: Biafara, Carabalí, Folupa, Bran, Terranova and Angola. Enslaved men and women were given these ethnic or casta names when they were sold in slavery, a kind of verbal branding that allowed sellers to make generic claims about their abilities and emotional traits to potential purchasers.18 They rarely were passed on to second-generation ‘creole’ (American-born) slaves, and thus we can surmise that these five women, at least, experienced enslavement in their lifetimes. The casta names appended to African slaves in this period are notoriously difficult to parse, beyond the stereotypes and generalities they were intended to impart. They might refer to the ethnic or linguistic group whence the man or

134

Female authority and legal discourse

Table 6.1 Afro-Peruvian wills from Lima’s archives, 1565–1666 Date

Testator

Designation(s)

Slaves owned

1562 1565

Beatriz Heras Francisca Rodriguez

1 2

1566

Magdalena de la Paz

1566

Ysabel Brava

1578

Mencia Lopes

1578 (+1602) 1586

Catalina de Ysásaga Ana Biafara

1625

María de Vilbao

1632

María del Poço

1637 1640

Beatriz de Padilla Esperanza

1641 1651

Lorenza de Balboa Juana Barba

1655

María

1664 1666

María Angola Ana María Piraldo de Herrera María de Huancavelica

Morena mujer soltera e libre Morena persona libre … moradora en esta ciudad de los Reyes Morena horra criolla de la ciudad de Sevilla Mulata natural de Coria en los Reynos de España … residente … en esta ciudad de los Reyes Morena horra moradora en esta ciudad de los Reyes Morena libre moradora en esta ciudad de los Reyes Morena horra … residente en esta ciudad Morena libre de casta Bran natural de Chua en Guinea … moradora en esta ciudad Morena horra casta terranoba residente en esta ciudad Morena libre de casta Terranoba De casta Carabalí morena libre moradora en esta ciudad Cuarterona de mulata libre Morena libre vecina desta ciudad y natural della De tierra Folupalibre … moradora en esta ciudad Negra libre residente en esta ciudad Parda libre moradora en esta ciudad

1666

Morena libre de casta Folupa natural de Etiopiaen Guinea residente en esta ciudad

2 1

4 1 0 1

3 6 1 3 4 0 1 1 5

Source: Archivo General de la Nación (Protocolos Notariales) and Archivo Arzobispal de Lima (ramo Testamentos).

woman originated or with which they identified autobiographically, but equally might be a term imposed by a slave trader, referring to the African port of Atlantic embarkation or even some external notion of character or culture.19 Nor do the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century names even line up with later or modern nomenclatures. Biafara (Biafada), Bran, and Folupa all referred, in this period, to peoples originating in Guinea-Bissau; Terranoba generally indicated

Afro-Peruvian women’s legacies

135

slaves sold from the coast of Eastern Guinea, Carabalí was recorded for the peoples of the Bight of Biafara, in the Niger delta.20 These were the major regions feeding into the Peruvian slave trade before 1630. The sole place name not referring to West Africa is Angola: María Angola left a will in Lima in 1664.21 According to Bowser’s analysis of Lima’s notarial contracts for slave purchases, Angolans (generally people originating in Ambundu, in the hinterland of Luanda) started to appear in large numbers in Peru in the early seventeenth century and by the 1620s were the single largest source of slaves in Lima.22 These women would have been the product of raiding or warfare among local communities, traded towards the African coast, perhaps more than once, ending up in the hands of Portuguese merchants who shipped them to the Americas.23 After the Middle Passage, they might well have been sold as they made their way from a Caribbean port like Cartagena or Veracruz, into Panama, where they made the crossing from Caribbean Portobelo to Pacific Panama on foot. Those who survived the mountainous crossing (and failed to escape, as the crossing was notorious for maroonage), embarked again on a ship for the Lima-Callao port.24 Some of these women might have made the journey more piecemeal, traveling with a master from another region, or achieving freedom in some other location and immigrating to Lima independently. While the Middle Passage and the very processes of commodification and purchase were miserable and dehumanizing, the complex experiences of survivors gave them skills and tools for navigating their lives; the relative success of this small group attests to that fact for at least a minority.25 Two testators stated that they were born in Spain: Magdalena de la Paz, a pulpera or tavern owner originally from Seville, and Ysabel Brava, a mulata from Coria, outside Seville. Both dictated their wills in 1566, making them among the earliest generations of African-descent immigrants to Peru, which had only been conquered by Spain in 1532. The earliest testator, Beatriz Heras, did not speak to her birthplace, but noted that she had a daughter living in Seville, in the home of a merchant, though she is not identified as enslaved or free.26 The first African slaves arriving in the New World all came through the port of Seville, and were known as esclavos ladinos, or hispanized slaves: Seville, after Lisbon, was the largest European port for the trade in slaves, and the city itself had a large free black population as early as the mid-fifteenth century.27 Many enslaved Africans came to the New World accompanying their Spanish masters. But following a 1521 slave revolt in Hispaniola, attributed (likely spuriously) to ladino slaves, the passage of Africans through Seville to the New World was outlawed, and the asiento system of awarding monopoly contracts for merchants to bring enslaved men and women directly from Africa to the Indies became the sole legal means of importation of slaves.28 Most likely, these women either traveled illegally or received special license, perhaps as the property of an emigrating family.29 As was common practice, the notaries asked most of the testators to clarify their residential status in Lima. The general categories of residence in this period were vecino or citizen, which in Lima was an official status (accompanied by

136

Female authority and legal discourse

property and voting rights) awarded by the viceroy or cabildo upon petition; morador, or permanent resident without citizenship rights; and residente, a temporary (albeit potentially long-term) status.30 These classifications were used in this way by Spaniards, who could petition for the title of vecino with or without a land grant. On rare occasions, the Cabildo granted vecino status to indigenous men who met their standards for hispanization as well as asserting community ties.31 Elite indigenous women often claimed the title doña, drawing upon a vague association with the Inca and other ethnic nobility, whose aristocratic standing was accepted by the Spanish crown.32 No Afro-Peruvian women in the records consulted for this study were ever referred to as doña. One, however, was called a vecina. Juana Barba claimed (or received) this status; she was a free morena who owned four slaves, and a large estate of fine jewelry, clothing and cash, including a loan of 2,200 pesos she had made to two Spanish men before a city notary. Juana Barba was not only quite wealthy but she was a major donor to the Catholic church, and left a fund of 1,000 pesos to be managed by her confessor and another clergyman, for an undisclosed purpose.33 She also claimed the Cathedral as her parish church, indicating that she lived in a more prominent neighborhood than most other Afro-Peruvian testators (whose parishes were more often the less wealthy Santa Ana, San Marcelo, and San Sebastián), and her younger sister, with the notable name Agustina de Ampuero y Barba, was intending to take vows in the Convent of the Conception, an unusual expectation for an Afro-Peruvian woman.34 The notary, who was sworn to truth in this legal document, would be unlikely to award this title without reason, so we may assume that she was generally accepted as such, although she still did not receive the honorific title of doña. The other testators were split between moradores and residentes, although all of them appear to have been permanent residents of Lima. As Tamar Herzog has argued, in the early modern Iberian world categories of belonging like these depended upon local understandings of rights and obligations: citizens were those who enjoyed the rights and accomodated the obligations of citizenship without challenge. In the case of Afro-Peruvians, outside observers might well have predicated the distinction between natives and foreigners upon birth inside or outside the Americas: most of those called residentes also stated they were born either in Spain or on the African continent. This distinction may be a parallel to the terminology of bozal and criollo imposed upon slaves, wherein the first referred to a slave brought from Africa, and the second either to a second generation, American-born slave or an African who was sufficiently hispanized to be taken for American-born. The morador–residente distinction may well be the choice of the notary, reflecting an even deeper level of exclusion or foreignness from the perspective of the Spanish community.35 In addition to personal names and geographic- and migration-related nomenclature, notaries also recorded an ethnic appelation or descriptor for anyone not considered español. For people of African descent in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Lima, this generally meant one of three categories: negro, moreno (or occasionally pardo), and mulato. Spanish authorities who

Afro-Peruvian women’s legacies

137

spoke about Afro-Peruvians tended either to use the term negro as an umbrella or to use the other terms more or less interchangeably; mulatos were those who could claim Spanish along with African parentage, and morenos and negros could or did not.36 However, among African-descent people themselves, these categories had very different valences: negro referred to someone who was enslaved, while moreno was the color designation associated with a free person. It is notable that of 17 testators, only one was described as negra in her own will, María Angola in 1664. All the rest called themselves morena (12), parda (1), mulata (2) or simply libre or ‘free’ (1), refusing a relationship with the institution of slavery through their language. In this case, we can state that the choice of this particular appelation came directly from the testators themselves. María Angola aside, all of the women who professed an African casta origin also called themselves morenas, including Esperanza, who died in 1640 after writing a will in which she named herself ‘Esperanza of the Carabalí casta’, [free morena], in this city of Kings [Lima]’. Yet Spanish officials almost never made this distinction. In Esperanza’s case, the Defender of Pious Works, an official who investigated her executor’s delay in distributing her charitable donations after her death, referred to her as ‘Esperanza negra’, as did her executor, the Spanish merchant Juan de Salazar Negrete.37 Similarly, a woman who designated herself ‘María de tierra Folupa’, with no color adjective at all, was referred to as ‘María Folupa morena’ by her executor, himself designated ‘Antonio de los Santos moreno libre’.38 The designation, then, is less the passive acceptance of a category proferred by notaries or other officials than it is a self-identification or clarification by the subaltern agents themselves.39 This pattern is underscored in the records of the city’s many Afro-Peruvian confraternities, wherein we can see differences between the ways that AfroPeruvians described themselves and how Spaniards described them. Two late sixteenth-century litigations involving the officials of Nuestra Señora de la Antigua, one of the city’s oldest Afro-Peruvian brotherhoods, are illustrative. In 1574, in a dust-up with another Afro-Peruvian cofradía, Nuestra Señora del Rosario, over placement in the annual procession for Corpus Christi, the AfroPeruvian officers of La Antigua were careful to distinguish between the moreno leadership of the two organizations and troublemaking negros horros or free blacks who caused a violent scene ‘with little fear of God our lord’. In contrast, a Spanish witness to the clash referred to all the participants as negros, perhaps not sharing the officers’ belief that only some of the Afro-Peruvians were irreligious brutes.40 Such terms were also deployed pointedly within the Afro-Peruvian community, provoking responses from other Afro-Peruvians if not from their Spanish audiences. In 1598, the new mayor domo of La Antigua, Francisco de Gamarra, a free construction worker, accused his predecessor, Anton Aparias, of embezzling funds. Aparias filed a brief with the court to deny the charges, and in so doing identified himself as moreno while calling Gamarra negro. Gamarra responded in kind, next introducing himself in his own brief as ‘Francisco de Gamarra free

138

Female authority and legal discourse

moreno mason, and official of the Holy Office of the Inquisition’.41 Presumably this all went over the heads of church administrators; it is likely that it was Gamarra’s failure to produce the receipts in question rather than the namecalling that led to Aparias’ conviction and excommunication. Yet the language clearly mattered to the Afro-Peruvian men. The switch in designation was not simply a gesture towards their present status, but a refusal of the link with slavery. Through linguistic devices such as calling themselves morenas and failing to mention their own histories of transformation, Afro-Peruvians wrote slavery out of their life stories.

Unstable terrain: wealth, marginality, and the limits of manumission Although they do not tell us the paths of the women themselves, the wills offer insight into how freedom was gained more generally. Many slaves manumitted themselves in a process known as coartación, raising the hundreds of pesos required by putting away small amounts of earnings (jornales) over long periods.42 In many cases, these payments would have been made while still legally in slavery, providing a master with a new income stream without loss of ownership of the slave. Such a practice meant that what we term freedom was not an achievement but a process of freeing oneself, one which might have no real end. During the process of self-manumission, a slave could be resold, theoretically preserving the manumission agreement (including the final price) but changing the circumstances of enslavement in a way that might prevent one ever receiving the carta de libertad. Because of this tenuous process, enslaved people sought the support of family, friends, and charitable organizations to speed up manumission. María de Bilbao, a Bran born in ‘Chua in Guinea’ but now resident in Lima, had herself purchased Pedro Casanga’s freedom prior to marrying him.43 The 700 pesos she used to manumit Pedro Casanga came mostly from her own resources, but she borrowed 70 pesos from her (not their) daughter Marcela, and the rest of those funds would have been Marcela’s and her brother Francisco’s inheritance. In her will María de Bilbao agonized over the financial and emotional complications: she asked her children to forgive her husband part of the debt and to work out a payment plan with him for the rest. But she also threatened her husband with lawsuits and prison should he not make the monthly payments of four pesos to each child. Manumitting a loved one was a towering obligation: in María de Bilbao’s case, the cost of manumitting her husband was her ability to provide a stable life for her free children. And Pedro Casanga’s freedom came with the threat of prison or, more likely, re-enslavement by his wife’s children, should his economic circumstances falter. Sometimes manumission could be achieved by securing more formal credit, and Afro-Peruvian women, like indigenous women, provided loans for those not served by other markets. María de Huancavelica, described as a Folupa, had loaned 350 pesos to Antonio Carabalí and 400 pesos to Jacinta Folupa, to allow them to purchase their freedom. In her 1666 will she forgave Antonio but

Afro-Peruvian women’s legacies 44

139

ordered her executors to collect from Jacinta. María Angola noted in her 1664 will how she had assisted Ysabel Folupa in the long path out of slavery. The lender had arranged to pay 400 pesos in cash via a Spaniard, doña María de León y Salvatierra, to Ysabel Folupa’s then master. Ysabel Folupa promised before a royal notary to repay the loan by giving seven pesos every month to doña María de León until the debt was repaid with interest. At the time of María Angola’s death, Ysabel Folupa was in arrears, and the estate reclaimed the collateral – Ysabel Folupa herself. Ysabel was sold to doña María de León to pay her debt to María Angola, with the condition that she might still buy her freedom on the same terms. Thus María Angola’s ‘loan’ to Ysabel Folupa was really a transfer of the woman’s servitude until the repayment was complete.45 Two hundred pesos from that sale went to María Angola’s husband, Ventura Casanga, himself a slave, perhaps to help him acquire his own freedom. Numerous other wills mention smaller informal loans to enslaved men and women. Ana Biafara, for example, expressed her hope that her executors would collect her share of the 160 pesos she and her husband had loaned Sebastián de Loya for his manumission. As most formal routes for lending were closed to men and women of African and indigenous descent, they had to turn to their own informal networks.46 Indigenous men and (especially) women made small and larger informal loans as well: an example is the food vendor Ynes Quispi, who listed 15 small debts, mostly from other women vendors, in her 1623 will.47 Seven of the people she had made loans to were called ‘yndios’ or ‘yndias’, and a number of those came from her highland hometown of Mama rather than Lima; the remaining eight debtors were free women of African descent (negras horras or morenas), all fellow vendors in the plaza. None of the loans to AfroPeruvian women was greater than nine pesos, and likely represented goods sold on credit or other informal economic relationships. Indigenous men and women do not appear to have made loans to enslaved persons to help them buy their freedom, although they did occasionally serve as bankers for them: Juana Gomez, in her will of 1625, noted that she was holding funds for Catalina Bañu and Catalina Conga, both enslaved.48 While indigenous and African-descent men and women were intimately connected in Lima’s economy, only free AfroPeruvians seem to have had the sense of responsibilty or community that would lead them to offer the large loans needed to help manumit the enslaved. Tension over the overwhelming cost of manumission was present in many of the wills. A number of free testators had a still-enslaved husband or child, and saw their own death as a way to free their loved ones. Esperanza, a freed Carabalí, testated in 1640 as she was dying.49 Her husband Francisco belonged to Pedro de los Ríos, and she hoped to use her estate – which included her own slave, a 50-year-old woman named María Anchica – to free him. She named a Spanish merchant, Juan de Salazar Negrete, as heir to her estate ‘so that he might use the remnants of my possessions for what I have communicated to him as I have no legal heir, and that he do all the good he can for my said husband …’ Her obscure communications to Salazar Negrete were clarified when the courts brought him in to explain why he was taking so long to settle her estate: the

140

Female authority and legal discourse

bequest to her husband was indirect because, he said, as a slave, any inheritance Francisco might get could be claimed by his master. Esperanza’s hope of selling her own slave to free her husband came to naught, as María Anchica ran away, making it impossible to collect the 260 pesos a buyer had offered for her, and, as it turned out, Esperanza’s own outstanding debt to Salazar Negrete would barely have been covered by that sale. Instead, Francisco received a single payment of 40 pesos, a fraction of what he might require to achieve manumission. All of which raises the question of how Afro-Peruvian women could have gained this kind of wealth to begin with. Unfortunately, this question is not exactly answered by the wills: while men’s wills are often explicit as to their occupation, particularly in the case of artisans, women’s documents rarely tell us directly. One exception is the will of Magdalena de la Paz, a morena born in Spain, who was a pulpera or shopkeeper in Lima when she testated in 1566. De la Paz was also an active and versatile investor in a variety of enterprises. She invested cash with Spanish merchants and traders, who took her money to Nombre de Dios and Panama to ‘employ’ them buying and selling goods: Juan Griego, a sailor, took a cargo of ham, cheeses, wine, butter and mustard to Panama to sell for a profit, which she was still awaiting at the time of her death. Her estate, beyond these uncollected funds, included a horse, two slaves, and a great many goods, likely part of her stock as well as her personal effects. But most of the women in this sample had no discernable occupation. They did, however, use their slaves, almost always women, to earn income for them, either working alongside them or hired out to others for a wage (jornal). The tendency for Afro-Peruvian female testators to own slaves, usually female, rather than land or houses seems to emerge from their experiential understanding of the utility of labor. This could be chalked up to many things; as Joseph Miller has suggested, this could be a link with their African heritage, where control over labor, particularly reproductive labor, was the source of wealth; it could also have to do with their own experiences of using their jornal to buy their way to manumission.50 The latter would go a long way as well to explain the gendered difference in estates: enslaved men might have learned a skilled trade which they could practice in freedom independently, while freed women who continued to prepare and sell food and drink as their livelihood would gain a great deal from extra hands. In any case, of 17 women in the sample, 15 were slave owners, and most of these clearly relied upon their slaves to bring a wage into the household.51 The most poignant example comes from the will of Mencia Lopes, who testated in 1578, having recently been released from prison for an unspecified crime.52 Lopes claimed to have owned seven slaves prior to her arrest, three men and four women. The courts sold one slave for 500 pesos to pay for the costs of her trial and incarceration. She had pawned another, named Ysabel, for 500 pesos and hoped to collect enough debts through her executors to take her out of pawnage. While she gives no reason for having pawned Ysabel, the cost of incarceration plus the expense of tending her home and business while she was away provide sufficient explanation. A third slave had been purchased

Afro-Peruvian women’s legacies

141

under ‘uncertain’ conditions and was presently a wet nurse for another woman, which situation had to be remedied by her executors. She freed a fourth, Francisco, aged 40, for his long service to her, upon payment of a fee of 60 pesos. Three other slaves, named Juzepe, Juan de Bran, and Lusia, were away from her home, working for other masters. She called upon her executors not only to collect her laborers, but also to collect their wages. Presumably she had arranged their employment in order to have an income while in prison. A slave could provide a master with important services at the end of his or her life – an income stream when one could not work, someone to care for the owner when ill or disabled – but he or she was also a capital asset. Landowners could not plant a crop when disabled, although they could rent the land to others; home ownership guaranteed the owner a place to live but this need rendered the property illiquid when bills arose. Owning a laborer was a valuable safeguard in illness. Ysabel Brava, who testated in 1566, noted six men and women who owed her a jornal for her slave’s work; she also thanked her sister for her service during a long series of illnesses.53 In contrast, María Angola, whose estate was the still-uncollected loan to an enslaved woman for manumission, noted that she had had ‘twenty-two hens with a rooster, which I have been spending down for my illness’.54 Unlike the hens, a laborer could produce significant value without being sold. For this reason, perhaps, testamentary manumissions were nearly always contingent upon the testator’s death or that of her heirs.

Deathbed manumission: balancing legacies Despite the relative rarity of deathbed manumissions in these documents, the testators were far from heartless. Some women intricately balanced their desires to do well by their slaves against their need to provide for loved ones and for their own eternal soul. Juana Barba, who died in 1651 after writing her will, owned four slaves – she describes them as María de la Cruz, a 10-year-old creole; Isabel Caravalí, married to another slave; Clara de casta Bran, likewise married; and Juana de casta Bran, aged 30.55 In addition to dividing up her many jewels, clothes, and housewares between her sister Agustina and care for her own soul, she likewise thought carefully about the disposition of her human estate. She gave the young María de la Cruz to her sister, to serve her for the rest of Augustina’s life in the convent of La Concepción. She likewise sent Juana to serve her sister in the convent, but only for four years, after which she would be given her letter of freedom. These placements might illustrate bonds of intimacy between the master’s family and the slave, who was at the least protected from auction. Juana Barba gave her two married slaves, Isabel Caravalí and Clara de casta Bran, conditional freedom: Isabel would receive her carta de libertad after paying 50 pesos or 8 pesos a month; Clara after paying 100 pesos. But these conditions continued to worry her as she hung on through her illness for a few more months, especially as she contemplated new bequests to friends and

142

Female authority and legal discourse

family. In April she wrote a codicil increasing by 50 pesos the amount each slave was required to pay to receive freedom. After Barba’s death in August, the two women began to pay towards manumission: Ysabel paid 9 pesos a month from her income, but Clara gave the executors 90 pesos outright – nearly all she would have needed under the original will, but 60 pesos short of the codicil’s requirement. For this added misery, Juana Barba was able to make a bequest to a poor nun in Santa Clara convent, and give some used clothing to her comadre and a friend. Many clearly weighed freeing a family slave against endowing a child, given how testamentary law gave creditors the ability to decimate a life’s accumulated wealth. Lorenza de Balboa, a free mulata, testated in 1641.56 She was the mother of eight illegitimate children ‘of different fathers’, between the ages of 18 months and 17 years. She also owned two female slaves, Catalina Angola and Serafina Angola, and Teresa, the ‘six or eight month old’ daughter of Catalina Angola. The two adult women, Catalina and Serafina, were left to her three youngest children, as their father had purchased the slaves, but Catalina’s infant daughter was left to another child, to accompany her to a convent. The four children who did not inherit a slave instead shared in the rest of the estate, mainly housewares, clothing, and some jewelry. However the probate records show that all three enslaved women were ultimately sold at auction, the value then distributed among the children: Lorenza de Balboa’s considered solution was either rejected by her heirs or, more likely, derailed by the demands of her creditors. A few of the wills give us a more palatable narrative. Beatris de Padilla, a free Afro-Peruvian woman, died on a March night in 1637, having written a final will. She was quite well off, and well integrated into the city’s confraternities, leaving bequests to no fewer than seven, all of which were to accompany her body with their standards at a funeral of great pomp and circumstance. Her estate consisted of 2,500 pesos in cash, hidden where ‘Pasquala de los Angeles will know’, some household goods and clothing, and an enormous cohort of enslaved women and their children. Pascuala de los Angeles, who knew where the money was hidden, was a mulata born in Beatris de Padilla’s household, and had already been freed by her; she now had her liberty reaffirmed and was given two slaves of her own (a mother and child), 500 pesos in cash, and a variety of other goods. This extremely generous bequest would endow Pascuala as another materially comfortable Afro-Peruvian slave-owning woman. She was asked to act as guardian to a 13-year-old Spanish girl, also part of Padilla’s household. The rest of Padilla’s slaves – four adult women and their three sons – were each dealt with differentially. One woman and two children were freed with no conditions, another would be free with the ‘punctual’ payment of 300 pesos, and a third after paying 150 pesos within a year of her mistress’s death. Only Mariana Folupa and her son Pedro Ambrosio were left as part of the estate, to be auctioned off, along with the housewares. And, indeed, Catalina de Ysásaga, the testator whose 1578 will called for selling her slave Juana Zape in order to fulfill her religious obligations, ended

Afro-Peruvian women’s legacies

143

her own story in quite another way. She did not die immediately after writing the will, and in fact lived on until 1602, when she paid to have another will written on her behalf.57 Juana Zape was still part of her estate, and now 60 years old. Rather than treat her as a commodity, Ysásaga finally freed Juana and left her permission to live in one of Ysásaga’s houses. Of course, an elderly female slave likely had no market value to speak of, but the gesture of not only freeing the woman but providing a place for her to live out her years speaks of the long relationship between the two women, and the possibility of intimacy and kindness when there were resources to spare.

Conclusion: defining freedom in a culture of slavery Testamentary manumissions among African-descent slaveholding women were relatively scarce, according to the data in these documents. Of the 32 enslaved persons mentioned in the wills, only eight were freed outright upon the testator’s death, six conditionally upon specific terms of payment (which, if not met in the prescribed period, usually resulted in auction) and 19, more than half, were simply treated as part of the deceased’s estate. In some cases families were divided by manumission, as when in 1632 Maríadel Poço rewarded ‘the great service done me’ by Polonia Biafara by freeing her infant daughter, but not Polonia herself.58 Free Afro-Peruvian women made legible efforts in their wills to refuse a sense of commonality with the men and women whom they owned. Their refusal to be defined by slavery manifested in a variety of ways: they made no mention of how they themselves came to be free, and took specific pains to utilize a language that, at least among themselves, indicated that they were cut from a different cloth than the men and women still in bondage. They could not escape the notary’s question, ‘Where are you from?’, but they could insist on being called morena, which they, and perhaps few others, understood to mean that they were free and different from enslaved negras. In this sense, they demonstrably grasped the power of words and writing and were able to exercise power at that deathbed meeting with the notary. They also refused that connection with enslavement by understanding the human part of their estate as an investment in the uncertain future of their own families or their immortal soul. Afro-Peruvian men, on the other hand, seem to have met the challenge of providing for the future by buying agricultural properties, which likewise could be employed or sold, depending upon the express needs of the family. It is difficult to draw conclusions based on so few documents, but Afro-Peruvian men appear to have depended upon marriage, confraternities and land as structures that gave them support and security; women seem to have placed their trust in owning slaves.59 Lima’s free Afro-Peruvians were profoundly cognizant of the contingency of their situations, and their status vis-à-vis the still-enslaved majority. Freedom had been attained with difficulty by the testators or their ancestors. Some of them surely had been freed themselves through deathbed manumissions, a pious instrument which was fraught with doubt or danger, as when the estate of the

144

Female authority and legal discourse

testator did not meet their debt obligations, and slaves were seized as assets. As Michelle McKinley notes, men and women who believed they had been freed by a master’s will often fought in court to enforce those promises, demanding recognition of themselves as people rather than as property.60 Deathbed manumissions, and the tussles and litigation which often followed that testamentary act, were likely much-discussed among the enslaved, the stuff of daydreams and gossip. But even deathbed manumission could prolong enslavement, as the conditions and obligations imposed upon the freed person could last interminably. Nevertheless Afro-Peruvian testators likewise understood the precarious nature of their now-comfortable economic state. They saw their own slaves – not simply assets to be liquidated but laborers who could provide regular income streams – as the key to that comfort, which they wanted to pass on to another generation or to use to benefit their religious communities and their souls. They likely also understood their own freedom as partial, where law and brute force could re-enslave them literally or figuratively through impoverishment. Indeed, they likely understood that even the conditions they placed in their own wills were subject to revision by executors, creditors, judges, and other officials. For Afro-Peruvians, the state of being free was always entangled with slavery, and the line between the two was not definitive. Free Afro-Peruvian women, in their wills, inscribed a demonstrable distance between themselves and slavery in order to produce themselves as precariously free.

Notes 1 I wish to acknowledge wise counsel and generous assistance from Paul Ocobock, Calvin Selth, Carlos Gálvez-Peña, Berta Ares-Queija, participants in ‘At the Edge of the Law? Women of African Descent in Colonial Latin America’ at the Berkshire Conference on Women’s History (2014) and especially Michelle McKinley. Funding for this research was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. An earlier version of this article was published as ‘Lazos que unen: Dueñas negras de esclavos negros en Lima, siglos XVI–XVII’, Nueva corónica 2(Julio 2013): 625–40. 2 Testamento de Catalina de Ysasaga morena libre, Archivo General de la Nación, Lima, Peru (hereafter AGN) Protocolos Notariales (hereafter PN) 130 Esteban Pérez, registro 6, año 1578, f. 272v (April 30, 1578). 3 ‘Zape’ in the sixteenth-century Peruvian lexicon roughly indicates the people sold to slavers at coastal Sierra Leone, though their actual place of origin might have been different. See Philip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, 1969), p. 97. 4 On deathbed manumission, see Michelle McKinley, ‘Til Death Do Us part: Testamentary Manumission in Seventeenth Century Lima, Peru’, Slavery and Abolition (2012): 1–21. 5 There are many studies of slavery in Peru, such as the classic by Frederick Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524–1650 (Stanford, 1974). More recent studies include José Ramón Jouve Martín, Esclavos de la ciudad letrada. Esclavitud, escritura y colonialismo en Lima (1650–1700) (Lima, 2005); Rachel Sarah O’Toole, Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru (Pittsburgh, 2012); Carlos Aguirre, Breve historia de la esclavitud en el Peru. Una herida que no deja de

Afro-Peruvian women’s legacies

6 7 8 9 10

11

12 13 14 15

16 17

18

19

145

sangrar (Lima, 2005); Christina Hünefeldt, Paying the Price of Freedom: Family and Labor Among Lima’s Slaves, 1800–1854 (Los Angeles, 1995). As well as 22 Asians, mainly Filipinos and Goans. Bowser, The African Slave, p. 341. Bowser, p. 339; Jouve Martín, p. 41. See Karen B. Graubart, With Our Labor and Sweat: Indigenous Women and the Formation of Colonial Society in Peru, 1550–1700(Stanford, 2007). The prohibition is explicit in Alfonso X, Siete Partidas, Partida VI, Título 1, ley XVI. See Jouve Martín, p. 85. N. David Cook (ed.), Numeración general de todas las personas de ambos sexos, edades, y calidades que se ha hecho en esta ciudad de Lima año de 1700 (Lima, 1985). Studies by Frederick Bowser, p. 298; Jouve Martín, pp. 85–86; and Hünefeldt, p. 24; all point to women receiving freedom far more often than men in Lima, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. On the centrality of the culture of writing to Christian Andean communities, which could be extended to African-descent peoples, see John Charles, Allies at Odds: The Andean Church and Its Indigenous Agents 1583–1671 (New Mexico, 2010). On the Africans in the colonial Catholic church, see Nicole von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers: Confraternities and Social Mobility for Afro-Mexicans (Gainesville, 2006); Herman L. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570–1640 (Bloomington, 2005); Karen B. Graubart, ‘‘So Color de una Cofradia’: Catholic Confraternities and the Development of Afro-Peruvian Ethnicities in Early Colonial Peru’, Slavery and Abolition 33.1(2012): 43–64. On slaves learning and affecting the legal system, see Alejandro de la Fuente, ‘Slaves and the Creation of Legal Rights in Cuba: Coartación and Papel’, Hispanic American Historical Review 87.4(2007): 659–92. Bowser, p. 339. Michelle McKinley, ‘Freedom at the Font: Baptismal Manumission and Re-enslavement in Colonial Lima’, paper presented at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women (Toronto, 2014). Kathryn Burns discusses the ways that notaries and clients both attempted to exercise control over documents in Into the Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru (Durham, 2010), chapter 3. She discusses women’s strategies in particular in her ‘Forms of Authority: Women’s Legal Representations in Mid-Colonial Cuzco’, in Marta Vicente and Luis Corteguera (eds), Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World (Burlington, VT, 2003), pp. 149–64. For examples of neologisms given to notaries by indigenous clients, see Karen B. Graubart, ‘The Creolization of the New World’, pp. 471–99. This pattern is reminiscent of R. Douglas Cope’s findings for casta surnames in colonial Mexico: see his tables for common surnames in The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City 1660–1720 (Madison, 1994), pp. 62–63. The Jesuit Alonso de Sandoval described the physical, emotional and intellectual qualities associated with different African regions in this period in his treatise De instauranda aethiopium salute (1627). See Sandoval, Un tratado sobre la esclavitud (Madrid, 1987), especially libro I, capítulo xvi. Paul Lovejoy delineates the various possibilities and their meanings within and without Atlantic African communities in his ‘Ethnic Designations of the Slave Trade and the Reconstruction of the History of Trans-Atlantic Slavery’, in Paul Lovejoy and David Trotman (eds), Trans-Atlantic Dimensions of Ethnicity in the African Diaspora (New York, 2003), pp. 9–42. On ethnic designations specifically in Upper Guinea (though mostly after the period discussed here), see Walter Hawthorne, From Africa to Brazil: Culture, Identity, and an Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1830 (Cambridge, 2010).

146

Female authority and legal discourse

20 I rely here upon Philip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade, especially p. 97; and Paul Lovejoy, ‘Ethnic Designations’, pp. 16–19. 21 Testamento de María Angola, AAL Testamentos 62:18 (1664). 22 For patterns of ethnic attribution among Peru’s slaves in this period, see Bowser, The African Slave, table 1, pp. 40–41. See also Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade, p. 97; O’Toole, p. 38. 23 On the mechanics of enslavement and trade, see Mariana Candido, An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World (Cambridge, 2013). 24 O’Toole, pp. 38–41. 25 Leslie Rout, Jr. explains the systems of disembarkation and sale in South America in his The African Experience in Spanish America (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 69–75. On the ways that Africans made use of their hard-earned knowledge, see O’Toole, chapter 2. 26 Testamento de Magdalena de la Paz, AGN PN 68 Gutierrez (1566) fols 662–65v; Testamento de Ysabel Brava, AGN PN 68 Gutierrez (1566) fols 914–16v; Testamento de Beatriz Heras, AGN PN 138 Pomareda (1562) fols 1048v–50v. 27 Alfonso Franco Silva, La esclavitud en Sevilla y su tierra a fines de la edad media (Sevilla, 1979). 28 The allowance for esclavos ladinos was, in fact, an explicit exception to the policy banning New Christian immigration to the Indies, beginning in 1501 under Fernando and Isabella and restated by Carlos V in 1522. See Rout, p. 22; Spain, Recopilación de Leyes de las Indias [1681] (Mexico City, 1987), vol. 4, libro 9, título 26, ley xv. Concerns about ladino slaves continued throughout the colonial period; Leo Garofalo has shown that their association with Seville, in particular, made them suspect as practitioners of illegal rituals including witchcraft and healing. Leo Garofalo, ‘Conjuring with Coca and the Inca: The Andeanization of Afro-Peruvian Ritual Specialists, 1580–1690’, The Americas, 63.1(2006): 63–64. 29 On licensing, see Spain, Recopilación, vol. 4, libro 9, título 26, ley xvii. 30 On citizenship, and more broadly the terms through which ‘communities were described in social processes of inclusion and exclusion’ in Spanish America in this period, see Tamar Herzog, Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (New Haven, 2003), p. 15, and chapter 2. 31 Graubart, ‘The Creolization of the New World’, p. 480. 32 For example, Graubart, With Our Labor and Sweat, p. 2. 33 Testamento de Juana Barba, AAL, Testamentos 31:39 (Lima, 1651). Barba was also an esclava or voting member of the cofradía of Nuestra Señora de la Presentación, not one of the traditional black confraternities. 34 While they were not formally excluded from taking vows as nuns, most Afro-Peruvian women joined the church as donadas, or religious servants. La Concepción was one of the convents known to have a regular population of black donadas in this period: Jouve Martín, p. 69. For the process by which indigenous and mestiza nuns in Cuzco came to be differentiated from Spanish nuns, see Kathryn Burns, Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru (Durham, 1999), chapter 1. 35 Herzog further argues that all African-descent peoples in the Spanish Americas were legally foreigners, given that they were integrated into the Spanish kingdom against their will (in ‘just war’) and retained their allegiance to a foreign sovereign, though local archival evidence does not necessarily treat them as such, as in the above-discussed case of Juana Barba, vecina of Lima. See Herzog, Defining Nations, pp. 159–62. 36 According to Covarrubias’s dictionary, moreno was a ‘color, which is not fully black [negro], like that of the Moors, whence the name is taken, or from the mullberry [mora]’. Sebastián de Covarrubias Horozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española [1611] (Madrid, 2006), p. 1297. Pardo, also meaning black or very dark colored, began to appear in documents in Lima towards the later part of the seventeenth century.

Afro-Peruvian women’s legacies

147

37 Her will and the subsequent litigation are contained in AAL, Testamentos, Legajo 19, exp. 7 (1640–1643), which likewise refers to her in its description as ‘Esperanza negra de casta Carabalí’. 38 AAL Testamentos, Legajo 41, exp. 13 (1655–56). 39 Burns notes that the notary was charged with writing down exactly what witnesses said without changing words, gestures, or even word order. While she also acknowledges that notaries were popularly considered corruptible and deceitful, the difference between what testating parties call themselves and what they are called by others here is too distinct to see it as an intervention by the notary himself. Burns, Into the Archive, p. 33. 40 AAL Cofradías 64:1 (1574). See also Graubart, ‘So Color de una Cofradía’. 41 AAL Cofradías 64:3 (1598–99). 42 Although for a later period, jornales and self-manumission are treated in Hünefeldt, chapter 2. For the legal history of coartación see de la Fuente, ‘Slaves and the Creation of Legal Rights’. 43 Testamento de María de Bilbao, morena libre, AGN PN 221, Geronimo Bernardo de Quiroz, 1624–1625, fols 1101r–1102v. Casanga is likely Casamance, also in Guinea-Bissau. 44 Testamento de María de Huancavelica, morena libre de casta Folupa, natural de Etiopíaen Guinea, AAL Testamentos 69:6 (1666). 45 Testamento de María Angola, negra libre, AAL Testamentos legajo 62:18, Los Reyes (1664). 46 Testamento de Ana Biafara, AGN PN 77 Juan de Gutierrez (1586), fols 1257–58. 47 Testamento de Ynes Quispi, AGN PN 1851 Tamayo (1623), fols 143r–148v. 48 Testamento de Juana Gomez, AGN PN 1852 Tamayo (1625), fols 478–481v. 49 Testamento de Esperanza negra de casta Carabalí, libre, AAL Testamentos, legajo 19:7, Los Reyes (1640–1643). 50 For Miller’s argument about why African traders preferred female slaves in Angola, see Joseph Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830 (Madison, 1996), pp. 155–67. This does not, however, explain the apparent gender difference. Although both men and women worked in agriculture and in market-oriented labor, the distinction might come from which jobs produced income that allowed for manumission: men who earned their freedom in Lima might have had more experience laboring on agricultural properties while the women who did this were more likely to have worked in the markets. 51 In contrast, of six men in the small male sample, only two were slave owners while four owned some kind of landed property. 52 Testamento de Mencia Lopes morena horra, AGN PN 130 Esteban Perez, reg. 9, fols 439–44. 53 Testamento de Ysabel Brava mulata libre, AGN PN 68 Juan Gutiérrez (1566), fols 914r–16v. 54 Testamento de María Angola negra libre, AAL Testamentos legajo 62:18, Los Reyes (1664), f. 4. 55 Testamento de Juana Barba, AAL Testamentos, legajo 31:39, Los Reyes (1651). 56 Testamento de Lorenza de Balboa, AAL Testamentos, legajo 19, exp. 15, Los Reyes 1641–1643. 57 Testamento de Catalina Ysásaga, AGN PN Pedro Gonzales Contreras 786, fols 4370–4373v (29 November 1602). 58 AAL (Peru), Causas de negros, leg. 6, exp. 22 (1632), fols 4v–6r. 59 For example, see the will of Pedro Hernandes, a freed moreno, in 1562. He was married to Francisca de Burgos, likewise a freed slave, and owned a house and shared agricultural properties with a colleague. He left his estate to support his wife and to free his son (by a different enslaved woman). AGN PN Diego Ruiz 62, fols 26r–28v (January 8, 1562). 60 McKinley, ‘Til Death Do Us Part’, pp. 381–401.

148

Female authority and legal discourse

Bibliography Manuscript sources Archivo Arzobispal de Lima (AAL): Cofradías; Testamentos; Causas de negros. Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Lima: Protocolos Notariales.

Printed primary sources Alfonso, X., Las Siete Partidas, trans. S. P. Scott (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). Cook, N. David (ed.), Numeración general de todas las personas de ambos sexos, edades y calidades que se ha hecho en esta ciudad de Lima año de 1700 (Lima: Corporación Financiera de Desarrollo, 1985). Covarrubias Horozco, Sebastián de, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española [1611] (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2006). Spain, Recopilación de leyes de las Indias [1681] (México DF: Porrúa, 1987).

Secondary sources Aguirre, Carlos, Breve historia de la esclavitud en el Perú: una herida que no deja de sangrar (Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congresodel Perú, 2005). Bennett, Herman L., Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570–1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005). Bowser, Frederick P., The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524–1650 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974). Burns, Kathryn, Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999). Burns, Kathryn, Into the Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). Burns, Kathryn, ‘Forms of Authority: Women’s Legal Representations in MidColonial Cuzco’, in Marta Vicente and Luis Corteguera (eds), Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 149–164. Candido, Mariana, An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World. Benguela and Its Hinterland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Charles, John, Allies at Odds: The Andean Church and Its Indigenous Agents, 1583–1671 (Santa Fe: University of New Mexico Press, 2010). Cope, R. Douglas, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660–1720 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994). Curtin, Philip, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969). De la Fuente, Alejandro, ‘Slaves and the Creation of Legal Rights in Cuba: Coartación and Papel’, Hispanic American Historical Review 87. 4(2007): 659–692. Franco Silva, Alfonso, La esclavitud en Sevilla y su tierra a fines de la edad media. (Sevilla: Diputación Provincial de Sevilla, 1979). Germeten, Nicole von, Black Blood Brothers: Confraternities and Social Mobility for Afro-Mexicans (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006).

Afro-Peruvian women’s legacies

149

Graubart, Karen B., With Our Labor and Sweat: Indigenous Women and the Formation of Colonial Society in Peru, 1550–1700 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007). Graubart, Karen B., ‘The Creolization of the New World: Local Forms of Identification in Urban Colonial Peru, 1560–1640’, Hispanic American Historical Review 89. 3 (2009): 471–499. Graubart, Karen B., ‘So Color de una Cofradia: Catholic Confraternities and the Development of Afro-Peruvian Ethnicities in Early Colonial Peru’, Slavery and Abolition 33:1(2012): 43–64. Hawthorne, Walter, From Africa to Brazil: Culture, Identity, and an Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Herzog, Tamar, Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003). Hünefeldt, Christine, Paying the Price of Freedom: Family and LaborAmong Lima’s Slaves, 1800–1854 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995). Jouve Martín, José Ramón, Esclavos de la ciudad letrada (Lima: IEP, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2005). Lovejoy, Paul, ‘Ethnic Designations of the Slave Trade and the Reconstruction of the History of Trans-Atlantic Slavery’, in Paul Lovejoy and David Trotman (eds), TransAtlantic Dimensions of Ethnicity in the African Diaspora (New York: Continuum, 2003), pp. 9–42. McKinley, Michelle A., ‘Til Death Do Us Part: Testamentary Manumission in Seventeenth-Century Lima, Peru’, Slavery and Abolition 33. 3(2012): 381–401. McKinley, Michelle A., ‘Freedom at the Font: Baptismal Manumission and Re-enslavement in Colonial Lima’, Paper presented at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Toronto, 2014. Miller, Joseph Calder, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996). O’Toole, Rachel Sarah, Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012). RoutJr., Leslie, The African Experience in Spanish America, 1502 to the Present Day (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). Sandoval, Alonso de, Un tratado sobre la esclavitud (Madrid: Alianza Universidad, 1987).

This page intentionally left blank

Part III

Private lives and public opinions

This page intentionally left blank

7

Letters from the Río de La Plata Agency and identity in colonial women’s petitions Yamile Silva

The compilations of letters written by women who participated in the process of conquest and colonization of Spanish America, and studies of these, are relatively recent.1 Many of these women addressed their letters and petitions to the Spanish king or his representatives in the Spanish administration of the Indies. Many of the studies have filled considerable gaps in our knowledge of letters authored by women within the legal framework.2 They provide evidence of women’s use of textual representations as a means of empowering themselves. However, much of their production remains still unknown or hidden in colonial archives. Given that individual letters are not chronicles or narratives and they rather create a series of textual displacements, their classification in the archive is difficult. Indeed, most of these documents are labeled as ‘miscellaneous’ and their discovery may occur at random. Repositories of letters from colonial Spanish America include documents that range from files containing traveler registries to those pertaining to affairs of different viceroyalties. When located, some letters and case files are incomplete, or do not follow a sequential order, producing the effect of lacunae or incomplete accounts, as Nina Scott has mentioned.3 In this essay, I draw attention to texts written by women within the framework of activities and cultural context that defined their roles in colonial Spanish America. In the following pages, I examine three unpublished letters of female authorship, currently located at the Archivo General de Indias (AGI)4 in Seville, Spain. These letters were sent from the Río de la Plata in early seventeenth century and were produced by the Spaniards Isabel de Becerra y Mendoza (1608); María de los Cobos (1621) and Doña Mariana Osorio de Narváez (1621).5 I intend to demonstrate that these women used their letters as an empowering practice that attempted to persuade specific audiences and address particular agendas while emerging in unique social and political contexts in seventeenth-century Río de La Plata. I also suggest that their writings reveal the exercise of agency, a key concept to approach subjectivity as proposed by Paul Smith: A person is not simply an actor who follows ideological scripts but is also an agent who reads them in order to insert him/her into them – or not.

154

Private lives and public opinions Agent marks the idea of a form of subjectivity where by virtue of the contradictions and disturbances in and among subject positions, the possibility (indeed the actuality) of resistance to ideological pressure is allowed for.6

Agents, as Smith explains, are defined by their decision to accept or not positions from/upon which they may speak or act. Thus, in these women’s letters I analyze their ability to take purposeful action and to have effect on their lives and their surroundings. Letters like those studied here may also be seen as representations of space from which the writer’s identity emerges.7 As Henri Lefebvre points out, and de Certeau, Bourdieu, Foucault, Harvey, and Soja, among other critics, agree in different ways, space is a social and political product filled with ideologies. Space, Lefebvre argues, originates in a multitude of intersections between social relations of production and reproduction. From the results of that complex interaction, Lefebvre identifies three dimensions: the material spatial practices or the experienced; the representation of space or the perceived; and the spaces of representation or the imagined.8 The perceived or representations of space include signs, significations, codes and knowledge that allow those spatial practices to be talked about and understood. Since the letters analyzed here reflect, talk about, and configure spatial practices, we must consider them to be representations of the space following Lefebvre’s definition. In addition to this critic’s conception of space, I use Edward W. Soja’s ‘spatiality’ that denotes socially-produced spaces different from the terms ‘social space’ or ‘human geography’ that, as Soja points out, ‘have become murky with multiple and often incompatible meanings’.9

Letter writing: a brief overview Long before the letter became a central instrument of the process of colonization, the epistolary genre was a common practice that dates back to the first compendium of pre-Christian epistolary theory, De Elocutione, attributed to Demetrius.10 Alberico de Montecassino’s Flores rhetorici o Dictaminum radii (circa 1087) was instrumental in the theorization of the ars dictaminis. Some of the elements of the rhetoric contained in the division of the epistles – salutatio, exordium, narratio, petitio and conclusio – were included by Alberico and his distinction between salutatio and exordium was to become a hallmark of the medieval ars dictaminis. The dissemination of manuals for writing letters in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries triggered a significant number of dictatores throughout Europe. Karen Cherwatuk and Ulrike Wiethaus note the direct relation between ‘the gradual enclosure of women and their ensuing isolation and powerlessness’11 and the simultaneous expansion of the genre during the Middle Ages. In fact, Cherwatuk and Wiethaus add, some of these women produced their letters following the male-dominated practice of ars dictaminis, but others produced them outside this way of composing prose. As a consequence, the genre became a practice and a space

Letters from the Río de La Plata

155

whereby women could subvert public roles that were barred to them since medieval times. Eventually the ars epistolandi replaced the ars dictandi and one of its promoters was Erasmo de Rotterdam and his Opus de conscribendis epistolis (1522). In Castile, the imitation of these classical models during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries received wide attention, and many manuals that included sample letters were produced.12 These manuals influenced both epistolary and notarial cultures in Spain and the New World. According to Don P. Abbott, a new rhetoric surrounding the writing of letters originated in the colonies,13 and became the preferred means for long distance communication. Walter Mignolo asserts that letters, which often included petitions for rewards, were mechanisms of administrative control and government in colonial America.14 They provided the framework for the writing of relaciones (accounts), probanzas (proofs of services and proofs of nobility), court testimonies, and petitions among other legal documents.15 In her recent article about petitions written by women inhabitants of Florida, Yolanda Gamboa notices the significance of these documents since, they helped the functioning of the ciudad letrada and the colony and played an important role in sustaining an ongoing Spanish presence in Florida. Sharing many of the features of the medieval epistolary genre still in use in the 16th century, they represented a complex legal process. (154) The three letters studied here contain characteristics of the legal forms mentioned above – probanzas, petitions, relaciones – which illustrate their hybrid nature as the result of the colonial enterprise. We should add to this brief overview of letter writing a classification of letters proposed by Antonia Heredia Herrera. Her criteria focus on the actors of written communication (writer and reader) and distinguishes cartas reales (royal letters), written by the sovereign to his officers; cartas oficiales (official letters), written by Spanish officials to the king; cartas particulares (individual letters), sent by any person to any colonial or imperial authority to make a legal demand, and finally cartas privadas (private letters) between two people whose relationship was considered equal and symmetrical.16 The documents I analyze in this essay are individual letters written more than 50 years after Isabel de Guevara’s petition,17 the oldest known text produced by a woman in Asunción and the Río de la Plata, of July 2, 1556. Guevara was one of the survivors of the first foundation of Santa María del Buen Ayre, conducted by Pedro de Mendoza in 1536. Addressed to Princess Juana de Austria (Habsburg), regent of Spain, this letter narrated the plight of the members of this expedition that ended in disaster and reported on the role of women in the male-centered enterprise of conquest. At the end of her brief letter, Guevara stated that her services to the Crown entitled her to receive monetary and honorary recognition. Her letter executed a challenge to the official historical

156

Private lives and public opinions

accounts by telling her version of events, undermining the official narrative, and taking advantage of the genre in order to position herself as active participant of the conquest. Guevara’s letter may not have been read by the women I address next, but it provides evidence that Spanish women in the early colonies were familiar with the power of writing to bring their petitions to the attention of the king or a high official. Similar to other Spanish women settlers in the early colonial period, Guevara took advantage of letter writing to subvert the social expectation of her gender in the sixteenth century.18

On the foundation of Santa Fe and Buenos Aires: Isabel de Becerra y Mendoza On April 2, 1608, Isabel de Becerra y Mendoza addressed a letter to the Spanish king, the Council of Indies and the king’s secretaries to narrate the death of her husband and the tragic consequences of this event on herself and her family.19 Although Becerra y Mendoza’s letter told briefly the story of her loss and the services of her husband to Spain, it is unique because its initial motive was not ‘to provide an account’ or to report events to an established authority. Her story was not subject to an official request but it was her own initiative. Each segment of the letter featured the reiteration of a demand, an argument, and the articulation of a complaint, which is the trope of the letter. In fact, the imperative entreaty and the overall organization of Becerra y Mendoza’s text liken it to forensic elements of a demanda jurídica (legal petition).20 The influence of legal rhetoric on the epistolary genre has been well documented by scholars of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, particularly in La respuesta.21 While the Mexican nun’s work appeared in the last decade of the seventeenth century, other women writers before her used forensic discourse to present their cases in writing. One of them, Spanish medieval nun Teresa de Cartagena, wrote a treatise on consolation 200 years before Sor Juana, and used forensic rhetoric to present her points about women, intelligence and writing. Although Cartagena and Sor Juana did not write letters like the documents I study here, their works reveal a tradition of women’s writings that used forensic rhetoric to establish the defense of their cases.22 An examination of the components of Becerra y Mendoza’s letter shows classical rhetoric and forensic discourse as well. Indeed, the organization and content of her letter were composed according to the rhetorical features of the dispositio, which involved moving and persuading the audience through a presentation that consisted of exordio, an introduction of the theme, narratio, a description of events and facts; argumentatio, an exposition of arguments; and finally, a convincing conclusion to the discourse or epilogue. It is also important to identify formal elements such as the invocatio, a cruciform sign in the upper central part of the document23 and the salutatio that included the courtesy title of the intended recipient of the letter. Becerra y Mendoza’s letter includes M.P.S. (‘Muy Poderoso Señor’ or ‘Very Powerful Sir’) as salutation. The main text of the letter is visibly separated from the salutation and ends with a formulaic

Letters from the Río de La Plata

157

closing: ‘Dios Nuestro Señor guarde a Vuestra Majestad, como la cristiandad lo ha menester’ [May God our Lord protect Your Majesty, as Christianity sees fit].24 Finally, a validation accompanies the letter; that is, the complete signature and title of the author: name, surname, and date: ‘De Santa Fe, de la gobernación del Río de la Plata, y abril 2 de 1608. Doña Isabel Becerra y Mendoza’ [From Santa Fe, from the government of the River Plate, April 2, 1608. Doña Isabel Becerra y Mendoza]. The main action of this letter is súplica (supplication). Emile Benveniste has examined the etymology of súplica and pointed out its twofold connotation.25 Supplication was an act of acceptance and of submission to the other. It was also a representation of this submission where the supplicant was aware of his/ her role as an actor. In this case, Becerra y Mendoza’s act of supplication derived its force from its theatricality, her awareness of the act of representation, role and social status. As Marta Vicente and Luis Corteguera underline in their introduction to Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World, representation assumed a process of performance where ‘women have felt sometimes that they were literally on stage’.26 This theatricality appears as an imitation that mocks itself, potentially annulling the rhetorical effect that is intended by the act of submission, weakness, and fear before power. Historically, during their increasing access to public writing, women have had to position themselves in a situational paradox, the result of having to write from within a hegemonic system, which had not been developed either by or for women. And, at the same time, through participation in the hegemonic system, women generated strategies to modify and transgress it.27 The supplication, in the case of Becerra y Mendoza, is not the only excuse for writing; it is a pretext that goes beyond mere formulism. In the introduction of this letter, she states the extreme necessity in which she, her children and grandchildren have been for 26 years since the Indians of the Río de La Plata killed her husband, Juan de Garay. Her narration exhaustively describes how her husband populated the city of Santa Fe and Buenos Aires, at his own cost and without receiving any remuneration for his expenses. While listing these services, Becerra y Mendoza denounced how others aspired to receive credit for her husband’s deeds. At this point, the woman’s narration turns to the trope of humility set against her adversaries: si me fuera possible y no me lo estorbara mi edad y pobreza, me pusiera en camino a echarme a los pies de Vuestra Majestad … mas pues que no me es posible el hacer esto en persona, lo haré por ésta, confiando en Dios Nuestro Señor que, como tan justo, la encaminará a manos de Vuestra Majestad y favorecerá mi causa.28 [if it were possible for me and if I were not prevented by my old age and poverty, I would take to the road and throw myself at the feet of Your Majesty … but, alas, as it is not possible for me to do this in person, I will do it in this way, trusting in God Our Lord who is so just. He will guide this (letter) into the hands of Your Majesty and will favor my cause.]

158

Private lives and public opinions

In this quotation, Becerra y Mendoza’s writing acquires an almost sacred quality when it assigns to God’s power the journey of her letter to the Spanish king. According to Antonia Heredia Herrera and Elena Altuna’s works, writing is the only medium that places the writer and the recipient in the same space, blurring the division between ‘here’ and ‘there’.29 In Isabel Becerra y Mendoza’s exordio, for example, the subject presented herself as the old and impoverished widow of Juan de Garay, and emphasized the supplication while highlighting the primary intention of the letter: to favor her cause because it is just. Similarly to the cases of Teresa de Cartagena and Sor Juana Inés that I mentioned earlier, scholarly contributions have demonstrated how women writers used various textual strategies to empower themselves and to resist gender marginalization.30 In Becerra y Mendoza’s letter, her written gestures constituted strategies of discursive construction inasmuch as the writing reveals a subject that did not appear as submissive, but rather expressed herself from various spaces. With this textual performance, the Spanish settler criticized the colonial structure that mediated between the king and his vassals and resulted in difficult means of communication between the Crown and its colonies. Additionally, Becerra y Mendoza’s letter displays a progression, both in the purpose of the petition and in the voice of the supplicant. In fact, the initial section of the letter illustrates the author’s objective and pretext for writing: her unavoidable supplication for preserving honor, respect and her estate and that of her children, who did not have any protection. Later in the letter, the writer would reveal herself as a subject who engages in subtle criticism of other aspects of the colonial process. As the narratio progresses, the exploits of her husband increase and her tone becomes euphoric when she narrates his heroism and valor to obtain the king’s recognition. The service of Juan de Garay included disposing of the enemy and populating new lands on Spain’s behalf: Lo que el general Juan de Garay, mi marido, sirvió a Vuestra Majestad en esta provincial fue mucho, matando a los naturales, andando ocupado en servicio de Vuestra Majestad y en el despacho de la gente que trajo don Alonso de Sotomayor para el reino de Chile, pobló y fundó esta ciudad y la del Puerto de Buenos Aires, a su costa y mission, por lo cual quedamos yo y sus hijos en grandísima pobreza, y la padecemos.31 [Juan de Garay, my husband, served Your Majesty by kill[ing] many natives. On behalf of the people brought by don Alonso de Sotomayor for the realm of Chile, he colonized and founded this city and the port of Buenos Aires, at his own cost and peril, for which I and his children are now left in great poverty and suffering.] In this way, Becerra y Mendoza used a discursive strategy in which she, as an individual who felt isolated and far from the center of power and justice, seemed to contradict the official version of the founding of several cities in the Río de la Plata. As the letter develops, she becomes progressively aware of the magnitude of her voice and the power of her words within the system of power relations:

Letters from the Río de La Plata

159

Y por lo que debo como cristiana, suplico a Vuestra Majestad se sirva estar advertido de que el general Juan de Garay, mi marido, pobló esta ciudad de Santa Fe antes que viniese a esta provincia el adelantado Juan Ortiz de Zárate, y de ella le favorecía, envió y llevó socorros hasta la mar y puerto de San Salvador, donde asimismo fue favorecido y socorrido del general Ruíz Díaz Melgarejo, mi cuñado, en tiempo que sino le socorriera, padeciera el dicho adelantado y toda su armada, porque le habían muerto la más de la gente los indios charrúas […] La ciudad y puerto de Buenos Aires también la pobló y fundó el dicho mi marido, y no el dicho Adelantado.32 [And since I am a Christian, I entreat Your Majesty to be advised that General Juan de Garay, my husband, colonized this city of Santa Fe before the Adelantado33 Juan Ortiz de Zárate came to this province. My husband sent aid to the sea and Puerto de San Salvador, and he helped General Ruy Díaz Melgarejo, my brother-in-law, at a time when, had he not been provided aid, the aforementioned Adelantado would have suffered as well as his entire fleet, because most of his people had been killed by the Charrúa Indians … Also the city and port of Buenos Aires were colonized and founded by my husband and not by the aforementioned Adelantado.] In the second section of the letter, the objective of representing her husband as a hero is supplanted by her request that her version of events in the founding of Santa Fe and Buenos Aires be heard. With the authorization given by being the ‘wife of’, the writer was able to refute information about the foundation of the city as it was disseminated by Spanish documents. Furthermore, Becerra y Mendoza adopted more strongly her role as a good Christian when denouncing another Spanish official, Torres de Vera, to the king: Esto es verdad, y porque he entendido que con una información que andaba haciendo en esta gobernación el licenciado Torres de Vera, con sus amigos y paniaguados, examinando él propio los testigos, y escribiendo sus dichos en sus casas, y haciéndoselos firmar después en los pueblos donde no estaba vuestro gobernador Hernandarias, de quien se guardó y receló, porque no había de permitir semejantes falsedades, y quienes con ellas engañar a Vuestra Majestad y decir que el dicho Adelantado cumplió con las capitulaciones que hizo, poblando estos pueblos, siendo contra la verdad, advierto que esto se hallará ser como lo digo, cuando se quisiese saber.34 [This is true because I have heard that official Torres de Vera has collected information along with his friends and cohorts who served as his witnesses. They have written their statements in their houses and have signed them in the cities while governor Hernando Arias was absent, whom they avoided because the governor would not allow such falsehoods with which they intend to deceive Your Majesty and say that the aforementioned Adelantado has fulfilled the pledges he made and has populated these towns here. This is untrue and I assert that it is as I say, insofar as one should like to know.]

160

Private lives and public opinions

The recurrence of the first person as subject of the truth, ‘I assert’, ‘I say’, places the narrator of this letter in a position of loyalty and active participation. Her writing highlights the cowardice of bad vassals such as Torres de Vera who, with his cohorts, has provided a false account of events. Using the topic of the praemunitio, Becerra y Mendoza continues the defense of her husband by anticipating objections that Torres de Vera may raise. The fact that she denounces potential false testimonies and lies, offers a contrast with her selfrepresentation announced at the beginning of the narratio: the Spanish woman as the ‘good Christian’.35 In this way, Becerra y Mendoza attempts to persuade the king while presenting herself as the model of perfecta cristiana (perfect Christian woman) and sustaining her supplication. Besides the information provided by this letter, no other records have been located concerning Becerra y Mendoza. No evidence attests to her transatlantic journey or her life after arriving in the continent. This absence of documents, however, does not render her or other female immigrants to the New World a passive actor. According to Susan Socolow, Spanish women who came early in the colonization process found themselves involved in bloody turbulence because of their husband’s participation in wars of conquest and loss of life to rival groups of fellow Spaniards.36 As a consequence, Karen Vieira Powers notes, ‘there was a demotion in status of all colonial women, across race and class, though to varying degrees. Some women, however, resisted this demotion with all the means at their disposal, thereby helping to shape a changing colonial world’.37 That was the case of Isabel Becerra y Mendoza, whose service to the king meant the loss of her husband and the extreme conditions that she and her family endured in the Río de La Plata. Still in her letter, she manages to direct attention to the appreciation of her merits and reaches an appropriate moment to introduce the petition. It seems that her main goal is to request restitution of her hacienda (estate) and, at this point, the submissive tone of the old and poor woman turns into one that seeks more actively to move her reader’s attention and compassion. Becerra y Mendoza ends her letter emphasizing her behavior as a Christian vassal and appeals to the good sentiments of her royal recipient by signing ‘Sierva de V. A’. (‘Your Highness’s Servant’). After this analysis of textual strategies used by Becerra y Mendoza, one can conclude that this letter worked as a fulcrum between the motive of securing honor and financial aid. On the side of honor, the text offers a female subject who solicits rewards for the exploits of her husband. To actuate these requests, the supplicant focuses on her own condition of ideal vassal and not that of her husband. In this way, she represents herself as the king’s servant who complies with her duties by informing him of true facts and events in the conquest of the Río de La Plata while displaying exemplary Christian virtue.

Petitioning favors, benefits and rewards: María de los Cobos On May 16, 1621, María de los Cobos made a request to the Spanish Crown in a similar fashion to Becerra y Mendoza in 1608.38 After presenting the services

Letters from the Río de La Plata

161

rendered by her husband in the colonization of the Río de La Plata she demanded acknowledgment for his deed and mercedes (favor, benefit, rewards) for her family. Here I intend to demonstrate how María de los Cobos’s letter, with a subtle and willful voice, departed from her husband’s exploits, sufferings, unconditional loyalty, and exemplary conduct on behalf of Spain to articulate a discursive foundation on which she would redefine her own role as a woman. Rather than be passive and silent, de los Cobos demanded to be heard and requested what she considered was rightfully hers. In this sense, her letter is more akin to the purpose of a probanza and yet its structure remains rooted in the models of the ars epistolandi. De los Cobos’s construction of herself as a textual subject that asked for her deserved benefits as the widow of a conquistador demonstrates her situational paradox: she wrote from a space of silence to which women had been confined since medieval times.39 The axial point of this exercise of agency is her power of thematic selection, that is, what she chose to justify in her request and how she did it. De los Cobos’s letter contains neatly detailed descriptions of different events in her narratio. Her husband, Nicolas Ocampo, fiscal de la comisión de pesquisas (chief prosecutor of the commission of investigations) of the Río de La Plata had noticed how, even with a new governor, some illegal acts continued and they ought to be investigated: ‘el Tesorero Simón de Valdés salía al Peru, con color de que iba a pedir justicia a la Real Audiencia de la Plata, yendo a vender sus mercancías y ponerse en cobro’40 [the Treasurer Simón de Valdés went usually to Peru, with the excuse that he went to visit the Real Audiencia de La Plata, but the truth was that he went to sell his merchandise and to collect his debts]. Her husband decided to follow the aforementioned treasurer and intended to stand before that Real Audiencia to present charges against him. However, things did not happen as planned by de los Cobos’s husband. Instead, de los Cobos wrote, he was taken prisoner by Simón de Acosta, a Portuguese man and cousin of Diego de Vega, who was also known for his spiteful deeds in the Río de La Plata: [Acosta] que es muy conocido por pernicioso en este Puerto, la cual prisión la hizo el dicho Acosta, sin más omisión que conocerle por fiscal de pesquisa y con una gran tropa de portugueses, que en su compañía venían a emplear a este puerto, le aprisionó con ignominioso tratamiento de palabra y obra, diciéndole que aquello se hacía porque habían seguido al señor Diego de Vega, que con este respeto le nombran todos los portugueses en esta tierra, y sin que a mi marido le aprovechase requerir le dejasen seguir su camino, que era dar cuenta a Vuestra Majestad en la Real Audiencia.41 [[Acosta] is a harmful man in this port, and he put my husband in prison, without knowing more about him than he was fiscal de pesquisas [commissar]. He [Acosta] came with a large troop of Portuguese men and incarcerated and slandered my husband with ignominious treatment, saying that he was being imprisoned because he followed Diego de Vega, who was very well-respected by all Portuguese people here. My husband asked

162

Private lives and public opinions [Acosta and his men] to leave him alone, because his mission was to give his account of all what happened here to Your Majesty and the Real Audiencia.]

After this rendition of events, the writer claimed that she and her husband were victims whose honor and reputation had been insulted: Le llevaban afrentosamente por medio de la plaza, con prisiones, a las casas del gobernador, donde le tomaban las declaraciones y las confesiones que querían, poniéndole delante los instrumentos para atormentarle, para que dijese lo que querían con miedo, y al cabo de infinitos martirios, que éstos lo fueron y son, pues son padecidos por servir a Vuestra Majestad Católica, y después seis meses de estas crueldades y prisión, el gobernador y alcalde le sentenciaron a destierro para el fuerte de Mazangano en Angola, para que allí muriese, sin haberle querido otorgar la apelación …42 [They [Acosta and his men] walked my husband through the main square to imprison him, and took him to the houses of the governor, where they took his statements and confession as they wanted them, while threatening him with instruments to torture him, and to make him say, out of fear, what they wanted. After countless cruelties, because there isn’t any other word to describe what happened; he suffered while serving Your Catholic Majesty. He spent six months in prison, and later the governor and the mayor sentenced him to be exiled in Mazangano in Angola until his death and without giving him the opportunity to appeal.] In this quotation, de los Cobos summarized the injustices committed to her husband. His martyrdom – jailing, public ridicule, exile – while serving the king made him an example of a Christian vassal. Service to the Spanish Crown has meant for husband and wife a loss of material goods and, tragically, his life. However, their hardships were also presented as an offering to the Crown. Following Michel Foucault’s ideas in Discipline and Punish,43 the textual material of this story indicates emphatically that de los Cobos’s husband – with his unconditional obedience and subjection – constitutes a political instrument by all the actors involved and, as a consequence, his body has been tortured, imprisoned and exiled. Progressively, the description of events showed a person who had been assaulted. Then the text intended to honor and reinscribe him as a productive body for the defense of the monarchy. This political investment of the husband’s body as a place of vindication is bound up with its economic use; his persona is invested with relations of power and domination as Foucault indicates in his reflection on power, discipline and punishment. As a result, some merced is deserved and María de los Cobos positioned herself in the right place to request it. The word merced (favor, benefit, reward)44 derives from Latin merces (reward, remuneration), and at one time had an obvious relationship with Latin merx (goods, commodities), although the meaning of the two words has

Letters from the Río de La Plata

163

diverged considerably. That said, it is essential to understand how merx was related to merces. Merces does not mean ‘salary’ as compensation to a laborer. Instead, merces compensated the arms of a man, a soldier’s service in the war and, then, the intervention of a man in public life. Merces, therefore, was a compensation for the time that a person would put to a particular purpose.45 María de los Cobos mentions how her husband’s only aim was to comply with the mission that Hernando Arias de Saavedra has assigned him: ‘con mucha ayuda y trabajo de mi marido, sin salarios ni otra satisfacción que darla de sí con celo de server a Vuestra Majestad’46 [with a lot of effort, but with the satisfaction of serving to your Majesty as the only remuneration]. The petition becomes the central reason of the text: Por esta sentencia, ha más de año y medio nuestras haciendas de todo punto perdidas, nuestra madre muerta de ver estos trabajos, tres hermanas desamparadas, la una doncella y las dos viudas cargadas de hijos y de increíble pobreza, siendo nuestra calidad, hijas, nietas y biznietas de los primeros fundadores y conquistadores, no siendo menor estar padeciendo estos trabajos por haber mi marido servido a Vuestra Majestad, a cuyos pies, con mis inocentes hijos, pido con lágrimas justicia, pues aun cuando por delitos hubiera de merecer castigo, no se debía hacer como se ha hecho en mí y en ellos, que aun entonces esperara misericordia, cuanto más habiendo sigo castigado por fiel ministro de Vuestra Majestad, de quien lo quedarán los crueles que con causa de éste y otros, enviando el remedio que para todo pide la necesidad y los vivos clamores de los pobres, a quien Dios y Vuestra Majestad oyen.47 [It has been more than one and a half year since we have lost our estate. Our mother died of sorrow when she saw our hardships. My three sisters – a maid and two widows with children – are homeless and incredibly poor in spite of our noble quality since we are daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters of the first settlers and conquerors. We have suffered these hardships because my husband served Your Majesty. With my innocent children and while pouring many tears, I put myself at your feet and ask for justice because even if there was any offense, what has been done to them and to me should not has been done. We expect mercy, especially because my husband has been punished for being Your Majesty’s faithful servant. Please grant the remedy that we ask, as our needs and clamours as the poor people we have become, whom God and your Majesty hear.] By focusing her petition on a well-deserved reward and by requesting payment for their faithful service, de los Cobos masterfully demands her rights, and it is now the king’s turn to comply. Having captured the king’s attention, the Spanish woman privileges a representation of events and characters supported by the significance of her request. Being (or looking) weak constitutes the legal argument of this subject, but this argument will be overthrown by de los Cobos’s claims. Indeed, the semantic map of words related to the servant – passivity,

164

Private lives and public opinions

helplessness and humility – disappear when she protests in quite vivid terms: ‘no se debía hacer como se ha hecho en mí y en ellos’48 [what has been done to me and my family should not have happened]. While these remunerations were a tacit agreement between the sovereign and his subjects, a situation described by Alejandro Cañeque as ‘the economy of favor’,49 the act of petitioning by this woman appropriated elements of legal genres (probanza and petition) and validated her participation as active agent in this economy of rewards. The last paragraph of de los Cobos’s letter goes beyond the text as it unites secular and religious images and the author expects a solution based on her faith in divine justice: ‘enviando el remedio que para todo pide la necesidad y los vivos clamores de los pobres, a quien Dios y Vuestra Majestad oyen’50 [Please send the remedy that we ask for our needs and clamours as poor people that we are, and have God and your Majesty hear us]. The closing completes the circular nature of this letter which began with divine invocation through the cruciform mark and concluded with an allusion to royal power supported by its divine sacredness. In addition, de los Cobos’ letter appropriates a discourse by instituting herself within the colonial economy of reward. Although the claims and requests of these women were formulated within the framework of rights arising from a tacit pact between the sovereign and his vassals, this petición de mercedes (petition for rewards) symbolically blurred hierarchical boundaries. In order words, women like de los Cobos were part of the socio-political power of conquistadors and colonizers and like them, they also asked for favors. In this way, they appropriated the language of the king’s vassals and redefined her agency within patriarchal discourses.

Fidelity discourse and the pacification of tyrants and Indians: Doña Mariana Osorio de Narváez In her three-folio letter, the daughter of Hernando Cazorla Narváez51 sought the attention of the Spanish Crown to acknowledge the admirable service and allegiance of her father. In her examination of the production and impact of written texts by indigenous and Spanish women in sixteenth-century Peru, Rocío Quispe-Agnoli observes the different empowerment tools used by Spanish and Inca elite women who owned large encomiendas (labor grants): ‘While early Spanish women based their power in their services to the Crown’, Quispe-Agnoli writes, ‘Inca elite women displayed their noble origins as a matter of ethnic pride and source of power’.52 We observe features, services and noble origins, in the letter of Doña Mariana Osorio de Narváez, resident in the town of Mizque in the province of Las Charcas. Similarly to Becerra de Mendoza and de los Cobos, she wrote about her husband and, mainly, her father’s services to the Spanish Crown. The first one died as Capitán General (Captain General) while following orders of Viceroy Don Luis de Velasco, and her father assisted in the pacification of Peru and the punishment of the Indians. When referring to both, Osorio de Narváez called them ‘people of well known quality’. Don Hernando Cazorla Narváez, loyal to the Spanish king, was an active participant

Letters from the Río de La Plata

165

in Peru’s civil wars among conquistadors, always defending the king’s interest without receiving any wages from the Spanish Crown, and he was eventually named Maestro de Campo (chief of staff).53 By focusing on her father’s services rather than her own, Osorio de Narváez inscribed herself into a genealogy of ‘people of well known quality’, a strategy that can be understood as an empowerment tool that would sustain her female agency. To enhance the ‘well known quality’ of her father, Osorio de Narváez opposed the figures of tyrants Pizarro, Hernández de Girón and Castilla against that of her father. Indeed, the letter points out that Cazorla Narváez was in charge of colonizing territories for Spain without receiving any financial remuneration, only the esteem of different authorities. Furthermore, he paid from his own money the outlays of his army. Interestingly, Osorio de Narváez was able to create a neutral tone to give the impression of impartiality and truthful speech: Y [Cazorla Narváez] ha recibido en la batallas muchas heridas y arcabuzazos, y por dos veces fue preso por los tiranos están a pique de hacer de él justicia por servidor de Vuestra Majestad y por ser persona de valor entendimiento y trazas de guerra, y tener muchos amigos no ejecutaron en él la dicha muerte, deseando reducirle a su devoción con que dieron lugar a que ambas veces se pudiese huir volviéndose al campo de Vuestra Majestad, y después fue nombrado por general contra los indios Chiriguanaes que hayan inquietas estas fronteras y hacían muchas correrías muertes y robos.54 [And, he [Cazorla Narváez] received many injuries and wounds in those battles, and he was twice put in prison by the tyrants that were ready to take justice into their hands because he was Your Majesty’s servant. And because he was a gifted person and a good military strategist, and he had many friends, they [his enemies] did not kill him but wished to reduce to him to their devotion. In both opportunities, he was able to flee and he was later named General in the fight against the Chiriguanaes Indians, who made these borders restless, and they had many excursions spreading death and robberies.] In this quotation Cazorla Narváez is presented as a hero who, after epic battles, escaped from dying at the hands of the tyrants. He eventually joined Spanish forces to fight against the Chiriguanaes Indians because he was a faithful and courageous vassal of the Spanish king. In this way, Osorio de Narváez’s father is represented as the hero who fought against devilish powers of Native Americans and other Spaniards in order to maintain the stability of his king. The letter continues by describing how her father equipped armies to protect and pacify the city of La Plata and the town of Potosí.55 Osorio de Narváez also remarked on her father’s generosity that would confirm his Catholic compassion by giving food, clothing and shelter to his soldiers. Thus, Cazorla Narváez assisted actively in re-establishing the geopolitical order of the Spanish colonization. Moreover, his courage is not only limited to him alone but it extends to his sons who followed his example:

166

Private lives and public opinions Y segunda vez entró [Cazorla Narváez] al dicho castigo con nueva gente que llevó a su costa y dos hijos suyos Don Fernando y Don Luys, al cual en esta jornada mataron los dichos indios habiendo peleado valerosamente, y en esta ocasión dejó poblada la ciudad de San Lorenzo de la Barranca que es en medio de las tierras de los dichos indios. Y ha sido el freno y principal remedio para tenerlos sujetos que desde entonces no se atrevan al descubierto a cuya sombra se han podido poblar desde el dicho valle de Mizque, a la dicha ciudad y faldas de la cordillera mucha suma de haciendas de gran consideración y utilidad para la Real Hacienda y para la seguridad de estas.56 [he [Cazorla Narváez] brought his two sons, Don Fernando and Don Luis, and this time they killed all the natives. Having fought bravely, [he] settled the City of San Lorenzo de la Barranca, located in the middle of the natives’ land. This settlement was the solution to keep the natives under control. Since this happened, they [the natives] don’t dare to go out of their hiding places. As a result, it has been possible to colonize the land between the Valley de Mizque and the City of San Lorenzo. These borders have been secured and the foothills of the mountains boast very productive and useful lands for Your Majesty.]

The account of the colonization of new territories is presented here as another triumph of this Spanish chivalric knight who put the lives of his own sons at risk to serve the king. Most essential for the interest of Osorio de Narváez’s petition, this passage emphasized the lasting impact of her father’s colonization in favor of the Spanish regime and underlined its economic significance with ‘mucha suma de haciendas de gran consideración y utilidad para la Real Hacienda’ [very productive and useful lands.] Moreover, this account insisted on a theme of increasing importance in subsequent sections of the letter: the Indians were punished in such a way that peace for the Spaniards was ensured.57 At this point, the writer underscores the consequences of her father’s labor as having a long-term impact on the pacification of an unruly land and population. Thus, rather than speaking from (and through) the details of her own life, Osorio de Narváez acted as a witness for the actions of her father. The conscious choice not to represent herself or her life events in this letter used woman’s silence as a rhetorical strategy, whereby she constructed herself as a subject of importance to the king not by what she had done, but through the epic events of her father’s life. In this way, this woman appealed to the royal empathy. Furthermore, the extensive narratio of the letter, listing over three pages the number of hardships and difficulties suffered by her father – and her husband – to serve the Crown, set the foundation to demand compensation for a life of service to Spain: Respecto de lo que se ha quedado sin ninguna remuneración empeñándose de manera que le fue fuerza vivir y morir en el campo, sujeto a la suma

Letters from the Río de La Plata

167

miseria de una pobre labranza, quedando sus hijos en el mismo ministerio donde asimismo murió el mayor Don Fernando, gastándola ambos y el dicho mi marido en servicio de su Rey, como leales vasallos todo lo cual consta por informaciones y pareceres que están en el Real Consejo de indias. Por mi extrema pobreza de que podrán dar noticia el licenciado Hernando Maldonado de Torres oidor del Consejo de indias.58 [Without any compensation, he was forced to live and die in the field in absolute misery after leaving his children in the same circumstances. My husband died in these same conditions after being a loyal vassal to his king. All these merits can be proven as facts and based on evidence in the Council of Indies. About his extreme poverty, the judge of the Council, Licenciado Maldonado de Torres can give testimony.] Towards the end of her text, the writer’s farewell appealed to a good king who was a good Christian, a good ruler, and would grant what she requested: Quedo muy fiada de que satisfará su real conociendo y remediará mi pobreza y la de mis hijos y nietos con alguna equivalente merced. Como de mano de tan gran monarca con que los demás que han servido viendo este ejemplo se animarán y servirán en la ocasión presente. Guarde Dios a Vuestra Majestad como la cristiandad a menester. Febrero 20 1623. / / Rúbrica Doña Mariana Osorio de Narbáez.59 [I am very confident that your true wisdom will remedy my poverty and the poverty of my children and grandchildren with acts of kindness and generosity that are commensurate with your standing as a great monarch, and this will teach and encourage future rulers of Spain. God save Your Majesty, as Christianity needs him […] / / February 20, 1623. / / (Rubric) Dona Mariana Osorio de Narbáez.] We have seen thus far that the rhetorical strategy of Osorio de Narváez was built following the tenets of ‘fidelity discourse’. The word ‘fidelity’ conjoins legal and religious ideas. For Benveniste, the term originates from the Latin word fides (trust, belief) and was used to obtain the help of the gods: ‘This is the statement pro diuom fidem, to get the help of the gods, or: di, Obsecro uestram fidem, “Gods I am pleading your fides”’.60 Fides in a writer’s works meant having the reader’s trust. Benveniste stresses that when one (the writer) was able to get the fides of another person (the reader), the first had the other at his or her mercy. In other words, fides was related to dicio et potestas (authority and power). However, the potential ambiguity in a fides relationship would show when a given power exercised its protection over a person in exchange for submission. This relationship involved coercive power, on one hand, and obedience on the other. Over time, in the medieval Christian world, the meaning of fides started to designate ‘religious faith’, while creyere (believe) was used to refer to the confession of someone’s fides. An important change in the meaning of creyere should be noted: in classical Latin, credo (believe, trust)

168

Private lives and public opinions

literally meant to put ‘the kred’ on someone, that is to place the magical power into a being from whom protection was expected. As a consequence, creyere came to signify creer (to believe) in Spanish. In addition, fides, in the first sense of ‘credit’ or ‘credibility’, as previously mentioned, designated a notion very close to kred (believe). Thus, Osorio de Narváez’s narratio was built on the dual meaning of fides: she highlighted the prestige conferred on her as the daughter of Cazorla Narváez and provided a guarantee to support her final legal argument. It was also at this point where the second connotation of fides would take place: the writer placed her kred (belief) in the king. By conferring upon him extraordinary faculties, Osorio de Narváez took a submissive role within the religious connotation of fides. Both meanings, legal and religious justification, would prepare the reader for her request.

Conclusion: writing spatiality The letters of Isabel Becerra y Mendoza, María de los Cobos, and Mariana Osorio de Narváez were written and sent from a place that was considered peripheral to Imperial Spain in the early seventeenth century. These three documents could be understood as gestures of communication from the margins of the empire to the center of power, namely the Crown and the Council of the Indies. In this chapter I have brought together the letters of three women that include features of several legal genres such as proofs of merit, proofs of nobility, short accounts of the Indies, and petitions to the imperial power. Their letters can be also understood as geopolitical acts. They employed and manipulated rhetorical strategies and formulaic legal language to take advantage of the system. In doing so, Isabel Becerra y Mendoza, María de los Cobos, and Mariana Osorio de Narváez positioned themselves, rhetorically, in the same space as men. As Yolanda Gamboa comments on petitions written by women in Florida, these kinds of documents demonstrate ‘women’s awareness of the system’s functioning but also their determination’.61 This accepted form of women’s letters is, at the same time, unequivocal and exclusive. Unequivocal because the colonies and their written culture – accounts, petitions, probanzas, testaments, and other legal documents – were regulated by Spanish laws; and exclusive, because it was not expected that these women would take part in these public circles of communication. Throughout this essay, I have stressed the act of these Spanish colonial women who situated themselves and their acts of writing in this spatiality, also understood as a place of enunciation, a place from where they saw, wrote and spoke. It is important to pay attention to the symbolic meaning and role of spaces in the construction of gender relations. Traditionally, as Doreen Massey has indicated, restrictions on the mobility of women in society, in terms of both their identity and space, have been a way to exert control over them. Confining women to particular spaces, and limiting their mobility in public places, set restrictions on the ways women could see and talk about themselves.62 Undoubtedly, one result of attempting to control spatiality and identity has been the distinction between the public and private. Thus, the fundamental

Letters from the Río de La Plata

169

difference between the sexes formulated in extreme terms of perfection/imperfection since the Middle Ages affected not only the ways in which women saw themselves but also the physical spaces in which they lived. The purposes of the confinement of women to the domestic sphere, Massey explains, were to control their space, their access to power, and their identity.63 This confinement has political dimensions because space is filled with political ideologies. The participation of women who wrote letters like the ones analyzed here leads us to rethink spaces in colonial Spanish America as places of production and reproduction of women’s identity and self-expression. Therefore, they appropriated the textual spaces created by their letters to present themselves as active agents in the colonization of the New World. Indeed, the exercise of agency by means of their letters allowed these writers to redefine spaces assigned to women. Therefore, I suggest, we can read their writings as expressions of female geographies,64 in which women reconfigured material space in the colonies. The reconfiguration of written spaces for women’s expression and the exercise of their textual agency are perhaps two of the most interesting tactics of these letters. In order to use the space provided by letter writing, these Spanish women followed rhetorical precepts made by men. However, they used those precepts to accommodate other forms of speech and validate their words as participants of the conquest and colonization of the Americas. In sum, these letters show the writers’ awareness of their own history, the spatial appropriations and manipulations of the constructed order, the textualization of their presence in a series of female geographies, and the emergence of the writers’ identity. Hidden in the archives of colonial Spanish America, these letters have been waiting more than 400 years to have their places in social history recognized by historians and literary critics of the male-dominanted legal and political discourses about the colonial world.

Notes 1 The letters I study here differ from those that were originally written for private communication between Spanish women and their families in Spain. Studies on private correspondence between Spanish America and Spain include Meri Torras, Tomando cartas en el asunto (Zaragoza, 2001); Blanca López de Mariscal, ‘El viaje en la Nueva España entre 1540 y 1625: el trayecto femenino’, in Historia de las mujeres en América Latina (Lima, 2002), pp. 89–109; Josep Barnadas, Del barroco literarío en Charcas. Doce cartas de Alonso Ortiz de Abreu a su esposa, o, las trampas del amor y del honor, 1633–1648 (Sucre, 2000); Santiago Vergara Quiroz, Cartas de mujeres en Chile, 1630–1885 (Santiago de Chile, 1987); Lourdes Aguilar, ‘Imagen de las Indias en cartas escritas por mujeres en el siglo XVI’, La Voz del silencio (1992), pp. 157–69; Pilar García Mouton, ‘Las mujeres que escribieron cartas desde América’, Anuarío de lingüística hispánica (1985): pp. 319–26. Most of the primary sources used in those studies use the letters written by women from the corpus collected by Enrique Otte, Cartas privadas de emigrantes a Indias 1540–1616 (Sevilla, 1988). Recent studies of linguistic analysis shed light on syntactic analysis of the structures used on letters sent by Spaniards to their relatives in Spain. Examples include: Eva Bravo García, ‘Indicadores sociolingüísticos en la documentación indiana (cartas e informes de particulares)’, in Competencia escrita, tradiciones discursivas y variedades

170

2

3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10

11

Private lives and public opinions lingüísticas: aspectos del español europeo y americano en los siglos XVI y XVII (Tübingen, 1998), pp. 125–42; Juan Antonio Frago Gracia, ‘Una introducción filológica a la documentación del Archivo General de Indias’, Anuarío de Lingüística Hispánica III (1987): 67–97; José Luis Rivarola, El español de América en su historia (Valladolid, 2000); Orián Jiménez Meneses, ‘Rumores, cartas y caminos en la sociedad colonial’ (2002); Alexandra Alvarez, María Carrera de la Red, Irma Chumaceiro and Josefina Valeri, ‘Denuncias, quejas y súplicas en cartas colonials colombo–venezolanas’ (2008), pp. 5–34; Marta Fernández Alcaide, Cartas de particulares en Indias del siglo XVI: edición y estudio discursivo (Madrid, 2009). The following studies are pioneering insofar as they analyze epistolary documents by women conquistadors and colonizers, who requested favors in exchange for their services or, in the majority of the cases, in exchange for the services of a deceased husband: Gladys Lopreto, ‘Que vivo en esta conquista’ (Sucre, 1996), Raúl Marrero, Al margen de la tradición. Relaciones entre la literatura colonial y peninsular en los siglos XV, XVI y XVII (Madrid, 1999), Luisa Campuzano and Catarina Vallejo, Yo con mi viveza (Havana, 2004); Pilar Pérez Cantó, ‘Las españolas en la vida colonial’ (Madrid, 2005); Mary Berg, ‘Sitiada, oprimida, angustiada …’ (Caracas, 2006); Rocío Quispe-Agnoli, ‘Taking Possession of the New World: Powerful Female Agency of Early Colonial Accounts of Peru’ (2011), and Yolanda Gamboa ‘Female Agency and Daily Life in Early Colonial Florida’s Ciudad Letrada’ (2015). See also Kathryn Burns, ‘Forms of Authority: Women’s Legal Representations in Mid-Colonial Cuzco’ (2003) for her study of notarial records, specifically the use of exclamations by women. Nina Scott, Madres del verbo (Albuquerque, 1999), p. 7. I found these letters during two research stays in this archive. I would like to express my gratitude to the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spanish Ministry of Culture and United States Universities that sponsored my visit in December 2006– January 2007. For the purpose of this essay, I selected documents with a variety of knowledge about the New World. They also offer a surprisingly diverse panorama of actors and ideas from a short period of time (1608–1621) and were sent from the same geographical area. All translations in this essay are my own. Although I have searched for the names of the authors of these documents, nothing has been found. The only information we can count on is that provided in their letters. Paul Smith, Discerning the Subject, (Minneapolis, 1987), p. xxxv. Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender (Minneapolis, 1994), provides a detailed analysis on why and how space culturally shapes gender and the ways in which gender expectations act in the production of such spaces as well. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, 1991), pp. 26–40. Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies (London, 1994), pp. 78–81. On early treatises on epistolography, see Abraham Malherbe, Ancient Epistolary Theorists (Atlanta, 1988) William Roberts, History of Letter-Writing from the Earliest Period to the Fifth Century (London, 1843); James Murphy, Rethoric in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1974) and Medieval Rhetoric: A Selected Bibliography (Toronto, 1971); John Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship (New York, 1958); Rudolph Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from 1300 to 1850 (Oxford, 1976); Paul Kristeller, ‘Rethoric in Medieval and Renaissance Culture’, in James Murphy (ed.), Renaissance Eloquence. Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric (Berkeley, 1983), pp. 1–19. This list identifies only works in English; the literature in French and Spanish is very extensive. Claudio Guillén’s fine essay ‘La escritura feliz: literatura y epistolaridad’, in Múltiples moradas (Barcelona, 1998) offers a remarkable study of these manuals. Karen Cherwatuk and Ulrike Wiethaus, Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre. (Philadelphia, 1993), p. 8.

Letters from the Río de La Plata

171

12 In her doctoral dissertation, ‘Letters and Letter Writing in Fifteenth Century Castile’ (Davis, 1984), Carol Anne Copenhagen collected 564 letters written in Castile as a proof of the importance and development of this genre in the late medieval period. Claudio Guillén and Gonzalo Pontón assert that Gaspar de Texeda’s Cosa nueva. Primer libro de cartas mensajeras (1549) was the best manual printed during this period. Other notable epistolary manuals included De conscribendis epistolis liber unus (1564) by Francisco Juan Bardaxí, Arte de Retórica (1578) by Rodrigo de Espinosa y Sáenz de Santayana, El Dilucida conscribendi epistolas ratio (1575) by Juan Lorenzo Palmeiro, El Liber de conscribendis epistolis (1589) by Bartolomé Bravo, and Manual de escribientes by Antonio de Torquemada (1552). 13 Don P. Abbott, Rhetoric in the New World (Columbia, SC, 1996), p. 5. 14 Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance (Durham, NC, 2003), pp. 172–83. 15 Robert Folger describes in detail this process in Writing as Poaching: Interpellation and Self–Fashioning in Colonial Relaciones de Méritos y Servicios (Leiden, 2011). 16 Antonia Heredia Herrera, Recopilación de estudios de diplomática indiana (Sevilla, 1985). 17 Isabel de Guevara, ‘Carta de doña Isabel de Guevara a la princesa gobernadora doña Juana’, in Cartas de Indias (Madrid, 1877), pp. 619–22. 18 Guevara was not alone in her use of writing on her own behalf, in addition to that of her husband. Hers is the first known letter in early colonial Asunción and the Río de La Plata. Recent studies have uncovered letters and petitions of Spanish women settlers prior to Guevara’s like Inés Muñoz’s in Peru. In her 1543 letter to the king, she requested the devolution of Indian laborers of her encomienda. Her letter in Spanish and its translation to English are included in Quispe-Agnoli, ‘Taking Possession of the New World’, pp. 280–83. 19 Becerra y Mendoza’s letter was written in two folios, an open double-folio with the text written in landscape fashion. 20 Tesoro de la lengua castellana by Sebastian de Covarrubias (Madrid, 1611) defines demandar as ‘vale pedir un juycio o fuera dél, o preguntar’ (to request an audience, a hearing, or to ask). The Diccionario de Autoridades defines demanda as follows: ‘En lo forense es la deducción de la acción que se propone el litigante actor, pretendiendo pertenecerle alguna heredad u otra cosa como mueble o inmueble [In forensics it is the implication of an action that is proposed by the litigant agent, aspiring to gain possession of some inheritance or other thing such as furnishings or property]’. 21 Rosa Perelmuter Pérez, in her landmark 1983 article ‘La estructura retórica de la Respuesta a Sor Filotea’, analyzes the function of classical rhetoric and forensic discourse in the organization and content of the letter. 22 Rocío Quispe-Agnoli, ‘De Teresa de Cartagena a Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’, Boletín del Instituto Riva Agüero, 25(1997): 453–66. 23 The use of the cross is a medieval reminiscence. 24 AGI, Charcas 74–4–33, April 2, 1608. 25 Emile Benveniste, Problemas de lingüística general (Mexico, 1993). 26 Marta Vicente and Luis R. Corteguera (eds), Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World (Burlington, 2004), pp. 9–10. 27 For a thorough examination of the ways in which women developed their knowledge and their practices of literacy in Spain and the New World, see the collection of essays edited by Anne J. Cruz and Rosilie Hernández, Women’s Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World (Burlington, 2011). On letter-writing in particular, see Pérez–Toribios’s chapter included in that collection. 28 AGI, Charcas, fol. 1. 29 In addition to Heredia Herrera’s study, see Elena Altuna, ‘Imágenes del Peru y protocriollismo en las cartas privadas de los inmigrantes’, Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana, XXVI.52(2000): 215–25. 30 For instance, Debra Castillo, Talking Back (Ithaca, 1992), Lucia Guerra-Cunningham, Splintering Darkness (Pittsburgh, 1990), Josefina Ludmer ‘Tricks of the Weak’,

172

31 32 33

34 35

36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48 49

Private lives and public opinions in Stephanie Merrim (ed.), Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Detroit, 1991), pp. 86–93, Quispe-Agnoli, ‘El espacio medieval’ and ‘Taking Possession’, and Nina Scott, ‘Let your Women’, have discussed the concept of women’s silence as a subversive tool. Other scholars have analyzed especially rhetorical strategies to subvert patriarchal authority as Alison Weber’s study of Saint Teresa’s threefold strategy: uses of the rhetoric of retraction, choosing a reader and naming a paradox. Ibid. Ibid. Usually translated as ‘governor of a border province under Spanish rule’, this term refers to a military title granted by the Spanish king to some conquistadores as recognition for funding and organizing the exploration, pacification and settlement of a specific area outside of the jurisdiction of a viceroyalty. Ibid. On the use of classical and spiritual rhetoric in conventual letters see Carole Bynum, ‘The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later Middle Ages’, Zone, 4(1988): 161–219; Mónica Díaz, Indigenous Writings from the Convent: Negotiating Ethnic Autonomy in Colonial Mexico (Tucson, 2010); Asunción Lavrin, ‘Unlike Sor Juana? The Model Nun in the Religious Literature of Colonial Mexico’, University of Dayton Review, 16(1983): 75–92, and Sarah Owens, Journey of Five Capuchin Nuns (Toronto, 2009). Susan Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America (Cambridge, 2000), p. 54. Karen Vieira Powers, Women in the Crucible of Conquest (Albuquerque, 2005), p. 2. AGI, Charcas 74–4–37, May 16, 1621. A significant number of studies have analyzed the culturally prescribed behavior, during medieval times, for women to refrain from speaking and remain silent. See note 30 above. For a detailed examination of ‘woman’s silence’ as a topic in Spanish and Spanish American women’s writing, see Nina Scott, ‘Let your Women’, Rocío Quispe-Agnoli, ‘El espacio medieval’, ‘De Teresa de Cartagena a Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’ and ‘Taking Possession’, and Julie Bokser, ‘Sor Juana’s Rethoric of Silence’, Rhetoric Review, 25.1(2006): 5–21. AGI, Charcas 74–4–37, May 16, 1621, fol. 1. Ibid. Ibid. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York, 1977), pp. 25–26. According to Nuevo Tesoro Lexicográfico de la lengua, dictionaries from 1495 to 1591 define merced as ‘benefit’. In the first Spanish and English dictionary listed by Nuevo Tesoro, from 1706 and edited by John Stevens, merced is translated as ‘a kindness, a reward’ (260). I emphasize its translation as ‘reward’ as I consider this translation the most fitting for the context of these letters. ‘Reward’ also carries a similar connotation with goods and remuneration as merx does. Benveniste, pp. 62–64. AGI, Charcas 74–4–37, May 16, 1621, fol. 1. Ibid., fol. 2. Ibid., fol. 2. In The King’s Living Image: The Culture and Politics of Viceregal Power in Colonial Mexico (New York, 2004), Alejandro Cañeque studied carefully the figure of the viceroy and the political culture of the viceroyalty to illustrate the ways in which colonial elites articulated power and a social discipline to perpetuate the Castilian culture in colonial Mexico. In the fifth chapter, Cañeque defined the ‘economy of favor’ as the reciprocal relationship by which the sovereign rewarded the faithful services of his vassals. María Soledad Barbón also analyzes the economy of mercedes in the context of royal celebrations in the city of Lima in ‘“Siempre pronta a rendir y manifestar su vasallaje”: criollismo y lealtad en las fiestas monárquicas (Lima, siglo XVIII)’, in Juan M. Vitulli and David M. Solodkwo (eds), Poéticas de lo Criollo (Buenos Aires, 2009), pp. 309–330.

Letters from the Río de La Plata 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

173

Ibid. fol. 2. AGI, Escribanía 945, February 20, 1623, fol. 1. Quispe-Agnoli, ‘Taking Possession’, p. 257. This rank was created by Charles V and was inferior only to Capitán General. The person selected by the king for this position commanded a tercio (Spanish military unit during the reign of the Habsburgs. An infantry formation made up of pikemen, swordsmen and arquebusiers). The Maestro de Campo had the power to administer justice and to regulate the food supply. In the overseas colonies, a governor held the rank of Capitán General over his local forces and would appoint his Maestro de Campo. Ibid., fol. 2. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., fol. 3. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 4. Benveniste., p. 74. Gamboa, ‘Female Agency’, p. 159. Massey, Space, place, p. 179. Ibid. Massey defines geography ‘as an academic/intellectual discourse and set of social institutions, and geography in terms of its founding concepts and systems of knowledge’. (180).

Bibliography Primary sources Archivo General de Indias de Sevilla, Charcas 74–4–33, April 2, 1608. Archivo General de Indias de Sevilla, Charcas 74–4–37, May 16, 1621. Archivo General de Indias de Sevilla, Escribanía 945, Feb 20, 1623.

Primary printed sources Campuzano, Luisa, and Catharina V. de Vallejo (eds), Yo con mi viveza textos de conquistadoras, monjas, brujas, poetas y otras mujeres de la colonia (Havana, Cuba: Fondo Editorial Casa de las Américas, 2003). Covarrubias, Sebastián de, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (Madrid: Turner, 1979). Guevara, Isabel de, ‘Carta de doña Isabel de Guevara a la princesa gobernadora doña Juana’, in Cartas de Indias (Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel G. Hernández, 1877), pp. 619–622. Otte, Enrique, Cartas privadas de emigrantes a Indias, 1540–1616 (Sevilla: Consejería de Cultura Junta de Andalucía Escuela de Estudios Hispano Americanos de Sevilla, 1988). Owens, Sarah E. (ed.), Journey of five Capuchin nuns (Toronto: Iter, 2009). Real Academia Española, Diccionario de autoridades (3 vols, Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1963). Real Academia Española, Nuevo tesoro lexicográfico de la lengua española (Madrid: RAE, 2005).

174

Private lives and public opinions

Secondary sources Abbott, D. P., Rhetoric in the New World : Rhetorical Theory and Practice in Colonial Spanish America (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996). Altuna, Elena. ‘Imágenes del Peru y protocriollismo en las cartas privadas de los inmigrantes’, Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana, XXVI. 52(2000): 215–225. Álvarez, Alexandra, Micaela Carrera de la Red, Irma Chumaceiro, and María Josefina Valeri (eds), Denuncias, quejas y súplicas en cartas coloniales colombo-venezolanas (Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, 2008). Arenal, Electa and Amanda Powell (eds), The answer. La respuesta (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1994). Arenal, Electa, and Stacey Schlau (eds), Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works. Amanda Powell (trans.) (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010 [1989]). Barbón, María Soledad, ‘“Siempre pronta a rendir y manifestar su vasallaje”: criollismo y lealtad en las fiestas monárquicas (Lima, siglo XVIII)’, in Juan M. Vitulli and David M. Solodkow (eds), Poéticas de lo Criollo: La transformación del concepto criollo en las letras hispanoamericanas, siglos XVI–XIX (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2009), pp. 309–330. Barnadas, Josep M. Alonso, Del barroco literario en Charcas. Doce cartas de Alonso Ortiz de Abreu a su esposa, o, las trampas del amor y del honor, 1633–1648 (Sucre: Historia Boliviana, 2000). Benveniste, Émile, Problemas de lingüística general (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, (1993). Berg, Mary, ‘Sitiada, oprimida, angustiada …’, in Márgara Russotto (ed.), La ansiedad autorial. Formación de la autoría femenina en América Latina: los textos autobiográficos (Venezuela: Editorial Equinoccio–Universidad Simón Bolívar, 2006), pp. 97–110. Bokser, J. A., ‘Sor Juana’s Rhetoric of Silence’, Rhetoric Review, 25. 1(2006): 5–21. Bravo García, Eva María, ‘Indicadores sociolingüísticos en la documentación indiana (cartas e informes de particulares)’, in Eva Stoll Oesterreicher and Andreas Wesch (eds), Competencia escrita, tradiciones discursivas y variedades lingüísticas: aspectos del español europeo y americano en los siglos XVI y XVII (Tübingen: G. Narr Verlag, 1998), pp. 125–142. Burns, Kathryn, ‘Forms of Authority: Women’s Legal Representations in Mid-Colonial Cuzco’, in Marta Vicente and Luis R. Corteguera (eds), Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 149–163. Bynum, Carolyn, ‘The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later Middle Ages’, Zone, 4(1988): 161–219. Cañeque, Alejandro, The King’s Living Image: The Culture and Politics of Viceregal Power in Colonial Mexico (New York: Routledge, 2004). Castillo, Debra A., Talking Back: Toward a Latin American Feminist Literary Criticism. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992). Cherwatuk, Karen and Ulrike Wiethaus, Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993). Copenhagen, Carol Anne, ‘Letters and Letter Writing in Fifteen Century Castile: A Study and Catalogue’. Doctoral dissertation, University of California–Davis, 1984. Cruz, Anne and Rosilie Hernández (eds), Women’s Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011).

Letters from the Río de La Plata

175

Díaz, Mónica, Indigenous Writings from the Convent: Negotiating Ethnic Autonomy in Colonial Mexico (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2010). Fernández Alcaide, Marta, Cartas de particulares en Indias del siglo XVI: Edición y estudio discursivo (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2009). Folger, Robert, Writing as Poaching. Interpellation and Self-Fashioning in Colonial relaciones de méritos y servicios (Leiden: Brill, 2011). Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977). Frago Gracia, Juan Antonio, ‘Una introducción filológica a la documentación del Archivo General de Indias’, Anuario de lingüística hispánica, III(1987): 67–97. Gamboa, Yolanda, ‘Female Agency and Daily Life in Early Colonial Florida’s Ciudad Letrada’, in Adrienne L. Martin and María Cristina Quintero (eds), Perspectives on Early Modeern Women in Iberia and the Americas: Studies in Law, Society, Art and Literature in Honor of Anne J. Cruz (New York: Escribana Books, 2015), pp. 150–164. García Mouton, Pilar, ‘Las mujeres que escribieron cartas desde América’, Anuario de lingüística hispánica, 12–13(1985): 319–326. Guerra-Cunningham, Lucia, Splintering Darkness: Latin American Women Writers in Search of Themselves (Pittsburgh, PA: Latin American Literary Review Press, 1990). Guillén, Claudio, Múltiples moradas (Barcelona: Tusquets, 1998). Heredia Herrera, Antonia, Recopilación de estudios de diplomática indiana (Sevilla: Diputación Provincial de Sevilla, 1985). Jimenez Meneses, Orián, ‘Rumores, cartas y caminos en la sociedad colonial’, Historia y Sociedad, 8(2002): 199–230. Kristeller, Paul Oskar, ‘Rethoric in Medieval and Renaissance Culture’, in James J. Murphy (ed.), Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 1–19. Lavrin, Asunción, ‘Unlike Sor Juana? The Model Nun in the Religious Literature of Colonial Mexico’,University of Dayton Review, 16(1983): 75–92. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). López de Mariscal, Blanca. ‘El viaje en la Nueva España entre 1540 y 1625: el trayecto femenino’, in Juan Andreo García and Sara Beatriz Guardia (eds), Historia de las mujeres en América Latina’ (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 2002) pp. 89–109. Lopreto, Gladys, ‘Que vivo en esta conquista’, in Textos del Río de la Plata, siglo XVI (La Plata: Universidad de la Plata, 1996). Lourdes Aguilar, María de, ‘Imagen de las Indias en cartas escritas por mujeres en el siglo XVI’, in Cristina Segura (ed.), La voz del silencio (Madrid: Asociación Cultural Al-Mudayna, 1992), pp. 157–169. Ludmer, Josefina, ‘Tricks of the Weak’, in Stephanie Merrim (ed.), Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), pp. 86–93. Malherbe, Abraham J., Ancient Epistolary Theorists (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1988). Marrero-Fente. Raúl, Al margen de la tradición. Relaciones entre la literatura colonial y peninsular en los siglos XV, XVI y XVI I (Madrid: Espiral Hispano-americana, 1999). Masih, Mariela, Cartas coloniales Córdoba–Argentina, siglos XVI–XVII (Córdoba: Babel Editorial, 2009). Massey, Doreen, Space, Place and Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). Mignolo, Walter, The Darker Side of the Renaissance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003, 2nd ed.). Murphy, James J., Medieval Rhetoric: A Selected Bibliography (Toronto: University Of Toronto Press, 1971).

176

Private lives and public opinions

Murphy, James J., Rhetoric in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). Myers, Kathleen, ‘Sor Juana’s Respuesta: Rewriting the Vitae’, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, 14. 3(1990): 459–471. Pérez Cantó, Pilar, ‘Las españolas en la vida colonial’, in Pilar Folguera, Margarita Ortega López, Cristina Segura and Elisa Garrido González (eds), Historia de las mujeres en España (Madrid: Editorial Síntesis, 1997), pp. 525–554. Pérez-Toribio, Montserrat, ‘From Mother to Daughter: Educational Lineage in the Correspondence between the Countess of Palamós and Estefania de Requesen’, in Anne Cruz and Rosilie Hernández (eds), Women’s Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 59–77. Perelmuter Pérez, Rosa, ‘La estructura retórica de la Respuesta a Sor Filotea’, Hispanic Review, 51(1983): 147–158. Pfeiffer, Rudolph, History of Classical Scholarship from 1300–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). Pontón, Gonzalo, Correspondencias. Los orígenes del arte epistolar en España (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2002). Quispe-Agnoli, Rocío, ‘El espacio medieval femenino, entre la escritura y el silencio’, Lexis. Revista de lingüística y literatura, 19. 1(1995): 85–101. Quispe-Agnoli, Rocío, ‘De Teresa de Cartagena a Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’, Boletín del Instituto Riva Agüero, 25(1997): 453–466. Quispe-Agnoli, Rocío, ‘Taking Possession of the New World: Powerful Female Agency of Early Colonial Accounts of Peru’, Legacy, 28. 2(2011): 257–289. Rivarola, José Luis, El español de América en su historia (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 2000). Roberts, William, History of Letter-Writing from the Earliest Period to the Fifth Century (London: W. Pickering, 1843). Romero-Díaz, Nieves, Warnings to the Kings and Advice on Restoring Spain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Sandys, John Edwin, A History of Classical Scholarship (3 vols, New York: Hafner, 1958). Scott, Nina M., ‘Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: “Let your Women Keep Silence in the Churches …”’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 8. 5(1985): 511–519. Scott, Nina M., Madres del verbo: Mothers of the Word: Early Spanish-American Women Writers: a Bilingual Anthology (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999). Smith, Paul, Discerning the Subject (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988). Socolow, Susan Migden, The Women of Colonial Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Soja, Edward, Postmodern Geographies (London: Verso, 1994). Torras, Meri, Tomando cartas en el asunto (Zaragoza: Prensas universitarias de Zaragoza, 2001). Vergara Quiroz, Santiago, Cartas de mujeres en Chile, 1630–1885: estudio, selección documental y notas (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Andrés Bello, 1987). Vicente, Marta and Luis R. Corteguera (eds), Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003). Vieira Powers, Karen, Women in the Crucible of Conquest: The Gendered Genesis of Spanish American Society, 1500–1600 (Albuquerque:University of New Mexico Press, 2005). Weber, Alison, ‘The Paradox of Humility: Santa Teresa’s Libro de la Vida as Double Bind’, Journal of Hispanic Philology, 9(1985): 211–230.

8

Women’s voices in eighteenth-century Spanish American newspapers Mariselle Meléndez

Eighteenth-century newspapers in colonial Spanish America represented vital cultural artifacts that informed local and international readers about current events, scientific debates, financial matters pertaining to commerce, natural history, matters of religion and cultural practices, and many other issues related to the main ideas and tenets of the Enlightenment, including the ideas of progress, education, utility, and the well-being or pursuit of happiness of citizens. Newspapers functioned as a type of ‘archive’ in which ‘the emergence of forms of knowledge’ aimed ‘to achieve a level of authority in the intellectual sphere’. To inform and to educate the country constituted two of the main objects of many of these newspapers.1 Although their contributors were mainly male Creole, Spanish, and some mestizo intellectuals, we find for example, in newspapers such as the Mercurio peruano (1790–95), Papel periódico de Santa Fe de Bogotá (1791–1797), and Primicias de la cultura de Quito (1791–1792) that some women also participated as subscribers, readers, and contributors. In this essay, I explore how eighteenth-century women perceived the newspaper as an instrumental tool to educate the local population about women’s role in society. One aspect to be examined is the manner in which these women engaged in some of the main debates taking place at the time with regard to women’s condition, including their biological nature, their presence in public and domestic spaces, and their supposed lack of intellectual faculties. At a time when European Enlightenment thinkers such as Benito Jerónimo Feijóo (1676–1764), Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1755), François-Marie Arouet better known as Voltaire (1694–1778), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), and Denis Diderot (1713–1784) among others,2 were debating the subordinate role of women and their duties as wives and mothers, we find that men and women intellectuals in colonial Spanish America were also engaging in such debates. In the following pages, I discuss how local women in Lima and Quito responded critically to such discussions by proposing their own views about the role of women as active participants in society and simultaneously claiming that the time had come to critically engage in a debate about men’s own social and intellectual limitations. For the purpose of this discussion, I will focus on the newspapers Mercurio peruano and Primicias de la cultura de Quito.3

178

Private lives and public opinions

Women and the Enlightenment Debates about women in the eighteenth century were highly influenced by the tenets of the Enlightenment in which rationality and virtue functioned as a common binary to define women. As Dorinda Outram observes, ‘rationality was precisely what was denied to woman’ whereas ‘virtue was defined for women in an exclusively sexual sense’.4 Women’s virtue was understood to be affected by the outside world of society, which made them highly susceptible to vices and incapable of reasoning. From the above binary, problematic views of women emerged according to which, as Outram adds, women were emotional, credulous, and incapable of objective reasoning; and at the same time that they were the carriers, within the family, of a new morality through which the un-naturalness of civilization, its artificiality, could be transcended and a society created which was natural, polite and modern.5 In other words, women’s bodies were associated with nature. French, British, and German thinkers were very well known in Spain as well as in Spanish America. In Spain, it was Feijóo and his Teatro critico universal (1726–1787), who as Theresa Ann Smith reminds us, ‘endeavored through his writings to acquaint Spanish intellectuals with recent mental giants like René Descartes, Isaac Newton and even Jean-Jacques Rousseau’ (28).6 The ideas of intellectual, moral and physical inferiority of women were widely circulated in Spain but they were also debated. Feijóo himself, in his famous essay ‘Defensa de la mujer’ (1726) as Smith notes, discredited such a notion that women were ‘flawed beings’ and physically inferior, to argue instead that intellectually, women were equal to men (31). Feijóo’s position prompted many debates in which his views were either attacked or defended. The debates about the role of women in society and their supposed inferiority continued in Spain, the rest of Europe and the Americas throughout the eighteenth century.7 For Rousseau, considered one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers about women, the nature of a woman’s body endowed her with a sense of weakness that consequently made her inferior to man. However, he also contends, nature gives women the ability ‘to cultivate their minds’, although that education should be guided by men.8 Education should also work to make her a better wife and mother, and to avoid challenging men, because to do this would be in defiance of nature. In Encyclopédie (1765), edited by Denis Diderot and Louis Jaucourt, both authors echo Rousseau’s words when they attest that ‘The austere duties of women derive from the point that a child must have a father. I add finally that nature intended it thus; it is a crime to stifle the voice of nature.’9 For women at that time, there was no alternative to the perception of them as mere followers of men’s more informed decisions. In colonial Spanish America, as Susan Socolow observes, The purpose of an elite woman’s education was to make her better able to attend to her household and guide her children, to teach her some social

Women’s voices in newspapers

179

graces, and to give her enough skills to prevent her from falling into idleness.10 The desires for fashion and ostentation, as well as the need of to spend time at social events instead of in the household, were all seen as signs of idleness. Eighteenth-century newspapers in colonial Spanish America made this issue a point of departure in many of the news articles in which they prescribed how women should act, dress, and take care of their bodies. Most of these articles were addressed to elite women, especially those that detailed how women, as caretakers of the family, should behave and act within the spaces of the domestic sphere. The ideas creoles expressed in the newspapers were similar to those of the Enlightenment thinkers who viewed women as attracted more to the beautiful than to the useful, and as individuals who needed to be guided in intellectual and moral matters. The Mercurio peruano in particular included many articles in which male contributors highlighted some of these prototypical characteristics present in Peruvian women. However, in a few instances, women voiced their opinions about the manner in which men were judging them, and adamantly asserted that these supposedly innate female features were not merely inherent to women but to society in general. Eighteenth-century Spanish American newspapers show us that some women believed it necessary to combat some of the aforementioned ideas by proposing new ways to look not only at women but at men as well.11

Mercurio peruano: fashioning the female subject The Mercurio peruano was founded by a group of young Creoles mainly from Lima who also belonged to the Sociedad Académica de Amantes del País [Academic Society of Lovers of the Country]. The bi-weekly newspaper published articles on topics ranging from medicine, commerce, science, geography, religion, literature, and law. The main objective of the newspaper consisted in educating their fellow citizens on issues they believed to be useful for the progress of their homeland.12 In February 1791, the Mercurio peruano published a letter entitled ‘Carta escrita a la sociedad sobre los gastos excesivos de una Tapada’ [Letter written to the academic society about the excessive expenses of a Tapada]. The letter was addressed to all of the newspaper subscribers or, as the author called them, ‘Lovers of the Country’. The author, who signs with the pseudonym Fixiogramo, is a married man who, in search of understanding and sympathy, decides to share with readers a current problem he is having with his beautiful and talented wife, to whom he refers as ‘una perla preciosa, y el encanto de todas las tertulias’13 [a precious pearl, and the enchantment of all tertulias]. His pseudonym derives from the Latin fixus (firm) and the Greek gamo (union or marriage), implying that he is about to offer a firm opinion about marriage. The husband refers to his wife as a tapada, a term that at the time was used to designate women who covered their heads with a veil leaving only one eye

180

Private lives and public opinions

visible. The practice came to be known erroneously in the eighteenth century as a fashion statement invented by limeñas.14 Some eighteenth-century authors accused women of wearing this veil as a way to conceal improper behavior. The fact that the husband refers to her as a tapada immediately calls attention to the fact that his wife is going to be judged in part by her inclination to fashion and, of course, excess. One must remember that in colonial times and particularly in the eighteenth century, clothing ‘played a crucial role in discourses that attempted to control women’s mobility within the public space’.15 He proceeds to explain that his beautiful wife, who in theory should make him so happy, is instead his major object of preoccupation. The problem in question is that this woman is a compulsive shopper who spends more money than her husband earns. He states that his income of 1,000 pesos is not sufficient to cover her expenses and that to satisfy her impulses he would need at least a million pesos. According to Fixiogamo, she insists on attending every comedia, sitting in the most visible seats in the bullfighting events, and participating in every single social event in Lima and its surroundings. If he poses any obstacles to her wishes, she engages in a formidable temper tantrum that gives him no choice but to relent to her requests. It is her excessive desire to live her life in visible public spaces that also alarms him. For every social event she attends, she engages in new expenditures, as she has to dress to impress. Her uncontrollable consumerism extends to the purchase of lottery tickets, says Fixiogamo, adding that she cannot limit herself to one but instead buys several tickets on a monthly basis. He finds preposterous to have to spend eight pesos per month on lottery tickets, because he does not have that amount of money available for items that are not essential to daily life. Ironically, the only time that they won the lottery she decided to throw a big party with many guests and servants in attendance, whom she furnished with gifts. As a result, the party ended up costing more than their winnings. To complicate matters further, he complains that she gives permission to the man who sells the tickets to come into their own house, and spends the little time she is at home joking and chatting with him as if she had no other domestic obligations. He even mentions that their three children spend more time with the wet nurse and his wife’s favorite servant than with their own mother. It is clear that the husband is bothered by the manner in which his wife has let the public space infiltrate his house solely to satisfy her love of consumption, including the that of food. He adds, ‘Regularmente se baña con una camarada, y después del bañoacude la Picantera, la arrozera, la del zanguito con yuyo, las fruteras, con todas las demaszarandajas que porahí se van pregonando’16 [Regularly, she bathes with the help of a group of servants. After her bath, into the house comes the lady who sells spicy food, the one who sells rice, the woman who sells the dish zanguito con yuyo, the fruit sellers, and all the others who go around hawking their wares in the streets]. The husband views the domestic purchase of food as a financial and social threat to his household. One must remember that the women who dominated the food markets in urban colonial Spanish America ‘were either Indians, mestizas, mulattas or blacks’.17

Women’s voices in newspapers 18

181

In the case of Lima, most of the women were of African descent. The female street vendors who invade his house – including the one who sells spicy food (picantera), the one who sells rice (arrozera), the woman who sells zanguito con yuyo,19 and the ones who sell fruits (fruteras) – all represent women from subaltern sectors of society who bring the outside world into his house instead of circumscribing themselves to the streets. The female street vendors also flood his house with products from African or indigenous influences such as the zanguito con yuyo.20 What seems to bother this man is the way in which his wife interacts with the public space to the extent that women from low sectors of the society have turned their domestic space into a public one. Moreover, he is losing control of his wife’s mobility and her contact with public spaces. Here ‘the joint control of spatiality and identity’ is in crisis as he fails to restrict his wife to the domestic space and, moreover, is unable to stop her interactions with those who populate public spaces.21 Female street vendors have flooded into his house, blurring the social order that should exist between them and his wife. More alarming is the fact that his wife feels extremely comfortable interacting with this group of women. Before concluding his letter, he proceeds to reveal one more weakness that he sees in his wife: her passion for fashion. Clothing, as the quintessential sign of social prestige, turns into a sign of contention, as Fixiogamo perceives it to be a frivolous excess. He comments that she needs four faldellines (petticoats) in the summer and two in the winter, an expense which he considers unnecessary. To complicate matters further, she refuses to wear the same outfit twice in a row. He has no idea how he is going to pay for the work performed by the silversmith who changes the fashion styles all of the time, the tailor who creates the designs, and the merchant who sells on credit the lace, satin, silk, and lamé used in the faldellines, because the cost exceeds his earnings, leaving him in debt: ‘Debo no se quanto al sastre, al zapatero, el limpionero, al cigarrero, al pulpero, a mi barbero, al peluquero, y a que séyo cuantos mas’ [I owe who knows how much to the tailor, the shoemaker, the cleaner, the cigar maker, the storekeeper, my barber, the hairdresser, and I do not even know how many others].22 He believes his financial problems are the result of his wife’s love of opulence, fashion, and excess. His letter concludes by asking the editors of the newspaper for advice. What is interesting is the response that Fixiogamo’s letter received from a female subscriber, at a time when women were mostly the object of discussion and not necessarily active voices in public debates. Every published issue of the Mercurio peruano was accompanied by a list of subscribers, which although overwhelmingly male, also included several women. Among the list of female subscribers we find Manuela Cayro, Josefa Díaz, María Gertrudis Escalante y Llave, María Luisa Esterripa y Ramira, and Rita Unamunzaga. It is doubtful that the only people who read the newspaper were the subscribers listed, especially taking into consideration the good number of articles that were addressed to women. For example, in the prospectus one of the newspaper’s editors makes it clear that one of the sectors of the population they address and from whom

182

Private lives and public opinions

they request ‘generous support’ [benéfico patrocinio] are the talented Peruvian women whom he considers ‘the honor of our homeland [patria] and Kingdom’.23 However, we must take into consideration that these talented women were women who belonged to affluent sectors of society. As was the case in Spain, the discussions that took place in discursive venues viewed these women as important protagonists in the social reforms under way at the time (Bolufer Peruga, 20).24 The fact that most articles were written by men does not necessarily eliminate women as active readers and participants in the major debates of the day. The same holds for the newspaper Primicias de la cultura de Quito, which I will discuss later on. It was a common practice of writers in these newspapers, including men, to hide their names behind a pseudonym, especially when discussing matters that might criticize the colonial administration or that could have been considered dangerous.25 The letter in question, ‘Carta escrita a la Sociedad en contraposición de la de Fixiogamo inserta en el Mercurio número 12’ [Letter written to the Society opposing the letter written by Fixiogamo which was included in issue 12 of the Mercurio] is signed with the pseudonym of M. Antispasia. The name derives from the Greek word ‘antispasis’ which means ‘to draw in the opposite direction’.26 Her name obviously implies that her point of view is opposed to that espoused by Fixiogamo. The female contributor complains to the editors of the newspaper that they have not followed through with what they stated in their prospectus about considering women to be an important sector of the readership. To the contrary, what they have done is to publish at least three letters criticizing women: ‘publicando tres cartas en contra de los modales y costumbres mas autorizadas de nuestro sexo y pais’ [publishing three letters against the most common manners and customs of our sex and our country].27 She makes it clear that they will not gain female support if they decide to only highlight women’s faults, especially when, according to her, men’s behavior deserves plenty of criticism. To make her point, she offers the case of her own husband as an example. She begins by criticizing her husband’s absence from home and his inability to provide adequate financial support to the family. She mentions that his mining business is not very successful and that every time he returns home he has no money. Once at home, he bores her by talking about every detail and frustration of his trip. He is for the most part an absentee father and husband, and when he is at home his behavior is very undesirable. Antispasia recalls a day when he returned from the port city of Callao very upset because the colonial authorities had intercepted contraband merchandise from which he had expected to profit, but instead he lost everything. He was so furious that he threatened to hit her. She complains that he always takes out all of his anger on her: ‘de modo que todas sus pesadumbres, pérdidas y caprichos vienen a recaer sobre mi, debiendo aguantar todos opena de oirle contra en todas partes que yo soy una mala muger, y que no merezco tener lo por marido’28 [so that all of his afflictions, losses, and arbitrary impulses come to be blamed upon me, and I

Women’s voices in newspapers

183

have to deal with hearing him say everywhere that I am a bad woman and that I do not deserve to have him as a husband]. In this passage Antispasia depicts her husband as an incompetent, frustrated, and angry man who is incapable of taking responsibility for his shortcomings and blames her instead. For Antispasia, the editors of the Mercurio peruano should devote some pages in their newspaper to the criticism of men’s wrongful, temperamental behavior and ineptitudes instead of only targeting women. Another example of her husband’s ineptitude is his obsession with gambling. Antispasia decries that he goes to every single gaming house and loses all of his money. When he returns home, he is upset and instead of taking ownership of his actions by acknowledging that everything that has happened is his fault, he starts blaming her for spending money on clothes for the children and servants. More ironically, he is the one who accuses her of ruining the family. Taking into consideration that she is responding to Fixiogamo’s letter, it is clear that she is posing the argument that if women are to be blamed for wasting money, then the same criticism should be applied to men. Her husband is incapable of making the correct decisions for the wellbeing of the family, preferring instead to engage in bad business dealings and gambling. Antispasia makes it clear that their financial difficulties are due to his own shortcomings and not because of her expenditures. This criticism is an interesting take on the prevalent notion sustained by Enlightenment thinkers and the editors of the newspaper, who blamed women for an inability to control their spending.29 For Antispasia, men were guilty as well. If, as Socolow indicates, some of the most common defects that eighteenth-century men viewed in women were ‘exaggerated sensitivity, weakness of character, overly lively emotions, extravagance, and ostentation’, Antispasia suggests that men share many of these defects.30 The husband’s lack of common sense extends to simple things such as prioritizing hunting with dogs over the family. Antispasia describes the small farm they have in the country which – although it potentially could be a beautiful place – he has instead populated with dogs that defecate everywhere. He even chooses to feed the dogs rather than his own children, asking the servants to cook special food for his animals. It seems quite ironic to her that he has the audacity to criticize her for the amount of time she spends petting her dog at home, or when she gives special candy to her favorite mulatto servant, when he obviously is unable to prioritize what is best for the family. The best example of this situation is when he fills the patio with chickens, making it impossible for the children to play outside. She adamantly denounces him for taking better care of these animals than of his own children’s education. It is clear that her husband is not an enlightened man but an idiot (majadero) who wastes his time losing money instead of worrying about contributing to the welfare of his children and society. She recalls the anger that took control of him one time when his favorite rooster lost a cockfight and thus all the money he had bet on it. He arrived home screaming at his wife for no reason: ‘sus coleras y sus voces cayeron sobre mi, sin tenermas culpa que la de ser muger de un majadero’31 [his tantrums and screams fell upon me who did nothing wrong other than to

184

Private lives and public opinions

be the wife of an idiot]. What she emphasizes in this passage is the fact that she is married to a man who is guided by extreme passions and violent emotions (cóleras) and not by reason. Antispasia opposes the notion that only women can be accused of being highly emotional beings when according to her, her husband’s addiction to gambling, his temper, and his inability to make the correct decisions all make him a non-productive member of the household and of society in general. He encapsulates the various meanings that the word majadero implied at the time such as foolish, idiot, dull, and obstinate. This is why she takes the opportunity via writing to insult him and, along with him, all of those men in Peru who act like him. In this case, extreme passions and excess are not determined by gender but rather by a particular individual. Antipasia proceeds to discuss one more fault she sees in her husband, which pertains to his desire to be recognized as an important man in Lima. She criticizes the time her husband wastes pretending to be a distinguished man by attending every legal trial and visiting the high court to find out what is happening in town. He even attends the elections that take place at the University and Consulate without belonging to either institution. He pretends to circulate in the public circles of education, law, and commerce as if he were intellectually prepared to do so. Antispasia takes the opportunity to mock those men who pretend to be intellectually versed in areas usually associated with male knowledge such as commerce, education, and politics, when in fact they are not. Her husband cannot even succeed in the public arena, a space in which men are supposed to dominate. If the editors of the Mercurio peruano believed that many women in Peru were full of defects for which they needed guidance and correction, Antispasia emphatically indicates that there are plenty of men who need this guidance and correction as well. She seems to follow Feijóo’s position in his ‘Defensa de las mujeres’ where he emphatically states that ‘que no esmenos hábil el entendimiento de las mujeres que el de los hombres, aun para las ciencias más difíciles’ [that female intellects are equally capable of the most abstruse sciences, as those of men] (59).32 The wife concludes her letter to the editors by returning to what constituted Fixiogamo’s major criticism in his correspondence: the female passion for clothing. With regard to this topic, Antispasia states that what bothers her the most about her husband is his desire to make her dress according to his ‘weird, slovenly style’ [‘gusto estrafalario’].33 She proceeds to list the type of ridiculous suggestions he makes to her, such as to wear very bright yellow, red, and green items, or turquoise faldellines. Antispasia poses the following rhetorical questions to the editors and readers of the Mercurio: ‘¿Que cuenta ha de tener un marido con el color de la ropa de su muger? ¿Qué le importasies asi o asado? ¿No basta que vistamos con modestia y economia?’34 [What business does a husband have caring about the colors of his wife’s clothing? What does it matter to him if she dresses this way or that? It is not sufficient that we dress with modesty and discretion?]. She finds it totally unacceptable that he has the audacity to tell her what to wear when he cannot even take

Women’s voices in newspapers

185

care of issues that fall within his masculine domain such as fixing the calash, buying basic clothes for the calash driver, fixing the outdoor patio which is in poor condition, or repairing the chairs in the house that are falling apart because they are so old. When she points out these needs, or ‘reforms’ as she calls them, he reacts angrily and proceeds to insult her, calling her ‘una gastadora, una tonta’35 [a spendthrift and foolish woman]. Ironically, as she has demonstrated, he is the one who is full of faults and weaknesses. She utilizes this discursive platform to condemn men’s attitudes in general by asking: who are they to criticize women when men themselves have plenty of flaws? If a woman dresses modestly, there is no reason to criticize her desire to dress well. The love of fashion should not be seen as synonymous with a woman’s weakness of character. She insists that the editors of the newspaper should be more critical of men’s attitudes instead of always making women the object of their criticism. She is quite critical and sarcastic about the fact that the editors of the newspaper are eager to identify and publish any type of news that portrays a negative view of women while neglecting to do the same when it comes to men’s many flaws. According to her, her husband is a perfect example of this type of man as he encapsulates all of the imperfections that one can find in this sector of society. Instead of criticizing the insignificant flaws of their wives, men should be reforming or correcting their own vices. They should use their ‘self-acclaimed intellect’ (genio) to critically evaluate themselves instead of using it ‘to gossip’ about women (murmurador). What I believe is the most enticing aspect of her statement is the threat she makes at the end of her letter. Antispasia firmly indicates that if the editors of the newspaper dare to publish any other unjustified articles offending women (agravios), she will take revenge on them through the use of her pen (pluma), or if needed, her tongue (lengua). If they would like to avoid a future confrontation, she kindly asks them to leave women alone, otherwise the male editors and subscribers of the newspaper will have to listen to what she has to say. Through this letter, Antispasia makes it clear that if the goal of the Mercurio peruano is to be inclusive and to educate the Peruvian population and the rest of the world about what makes Peru such a marvelous kingdom, then they need to stop telling women what to do. If they deem it necessary to make women’s faults public, they need to also take a critical look at themselves, as Peruvian men have plenty of weaknesses that they need to address. A case in point is the behavior and ineptitude of her husband, who fails to be successful in areas that traditionally have been assigned to men such as commerce and the management of the household. Instead, his life is consumed by emotional and violent attacks as a result of his failed business decisions and his addiction to gambling. If men of the Enlightenment sought to dictate women’s cultural habits and mobility in the public space, Antipasia suggests a rethinking of these principals and urges men in Peru to take a critical view of their own limitations. Emotional volatility and the propensity to extreme behavior should not be innate features associated only with women, for they can be found in men as well.

186

Private lives and public opinions

‘It is dangerous alike to believe or to disbelieve’: sensibility and rational love in Primicias de la cultura de Quito Another example by which we can learn about women’s participation in the eighteenth-century debates that were taking place with regard to their role in society is found in the newspaper Primicias de la cultura de Quito.36 This shortlived title was published in Quito from 1791 to 1792 and was edited by a Quito intellectual of indigenous and African descent, Francisco Javier Eugenio de Santa Cruz y Espejo. Similar to the Mercurio peruano, the purpose of the newspaper was to inform Quiteños and people around the world about what made Quito an enlightened place, and one where ‘science, art, and erudition is practiced, and where knowledge is disseminated through the establishment of a university, a Patriotic Society and the newspaper itself’.37 In this newspaper, almost all articles are of male authorship and written by Santa Cruz y Espejo himself. The news articles discuss topics ranging from education, science and daily events, to economics, geography and literature, as it was understood at the time.38 One of the more-discussed topics in the newspaper was the issue of sensibility (sensibilidad), which at the time had two connotations: the first dealing with affect and the second dealing with reason. In the eighteenth century, sensibilidad was defined as the capacity to feel or perceive in general and to react with ‘pain or pleasure’ (pena ó gusto). From a philosophical point of view, it implied the possession of good judgment or ‘the reason’ (razón) to act with common sense (Diccionario de autoridades, s.v. sensibilidad). Sensibilidad was a concept that appealed to two aspects that have been often seen as opposites: affect and reason. Soledad Sánchez Flores in her study ‘Concepto de sensibilidaden la Ilustración’, explains that the notion of sensibility was widely discussed by eighteenth-century European thinkers such as Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), David Hume (1711–1776, Adam Smith (1711–1776, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and Denis Diderot (1713–1784). According to her, all the aforementioned thinkers, especially Rousseau, influenced the notions of sensibility discussed in Spain at that time (12). For Rousseau, sensibility was associated with matters of heart and passion, but if controlled, had the potential to become a virtue.39 However, for other thinkers such as Diderot, sensibility was understood as a capacity that men should avoid as it interfered with the ability to think rationally. Sensibility came to be seen as a fault, one more present in women than in men. It is this notion of sensibility as related to the capacity to think and experience that prompted a woman to write an article in response to what the editor, Santa Cruz y Espejo, had to say about how sensibility applies to society in general. The woman’s response offers another critical view on what men had to say about women’s ability to discern knowledge. In issue number 3, published on Thursday, February 2, 1792, a woman under the pseudonym of Erophilia addresses the editor and the male contributors of the newspaper with an article entitled, ‘Carta escrita al Editor de los Periodicos, sobre los defectos del numero

Women’s voices in newspapers

187

2’ [Letter written to the Editor of the Newspapers about the shortcomings of issue 2]. Erophilia, or as the pseudonym implies, the daughter of love, responds to an article written by the editor himself, entitled ‘Ensayo sobre determinar los caracteres de la Sensibilidad’40 [Essay on determining the characteristics of Sensibility]. Santa Cruz y Espejo’s article begins with a discussion of the physiological dimension of the faculty of sensibility and how it is affected by age, gender, temperament, and climate. The article approaches the issue of sensibility from the perspectives of jurisprudence, mathematics, theology, morality, and philosophy. For the editor, jurists should pay attention to how sensibility affects the character of the nation and its citizens by encouraging people to stay away from pleasure and to pursue honor instead. For the mathematician, sensibility should be related to the study of the body in order to understand how the corporeal nature of a human being can withstand punishment and pain.41 The mathematician should pay attention as well as how human sensibility is affected by the climate. The theologian, instead, should focus on those behavioral patterns that most affect the faculty of sensibility such as pride, vanity, and envy in order to guide the individual towards the path of virtue. Finally, the philosopher should focus on how sensibility can be shaped by the principles of civilization, social order, human progress, and reason in order to battle indolence. The editor points out that the appropriate practice and management of sensibility is crucial for the happiness and social order of the homeland (patria) and can be achieved by cultivating good virtues and promoting high-quality education. As he indicates, the good practice of sensibility should be of interest to all citizens in Quito who care about ‘[el] honor de la Patria, al incremento de las luces, al zelo del biencomun, al entusiasmo de la humanidad’42 [the honor of the Homeland, the increase of reason, the interest of the common good, and the admiration of humanity]. If the faculty of sensibility is not controlled in individuals through the areas aforementioned, then citizens will be lost to vices and indolence. There is no doubt that Santa Cruz y Espejo was familiar with the ideas much debated in Europe on this issue, especially by Rousseau and Diderot. The editor concludes his article by citing an anecdote that illustrates the consequences that society faces when sensibility is not correctly managed through true spirit (verdad ero espiritu) and thriving education (feliz educacion). It is worth noticing that to demonstrate his point, he chooses to cite as an example the case of a woman whose lack of proper name seems to suggest that she can be representative of all women in general. He recalls the case of a beautiful lady who was highly sensitive to excessive emotions and who had bought a beautiful collar for her beloved dog. One day, her servant notified her that a plague had spread into the province and that many people, including children, were dying. Half of the population was already dead and the other half was about to suffer the same fate. The servant also informed her lady that someone had removed the beautiful collar that the Señora had bought for the dog. The editor proceeds to describe the lady’s reaction to the news, commenting that the smile the lady had when she was informed of the plague that was

188

Private lives and public opinions

affecting the province, turned into ‘el llanto de la desesperacion, el furor de la colera, las protestas juradas de la venganza’ [the crying of desperation, the fury of rage, the sworn protests of revenge].43 In comparison to the earlier news she had received about the death of half of the population, what should be an insignificant event (i.e. the theft of her dog’s collar) is what evokes the woman’s deepest emotions. The lady becomes a perfect example of an individual’s lack of control and management of her sensible faculties. Reason turns into unreason and the love of her dog takes priority over the compassion she should feel toward her fellow citizens. The editor perceives the lady as foolish, weak, and irrational. For him, this irrational behavior can only be explained by the downfall of the lady’s grace and ‘innate nature’ [naturale zacaída], her ignorance, her propensity to error, and her inclination to overreact: ‘de presentar a todos momentos monstruos enormes’ [to throw all of the time extraordinary temper tantrums].44 The editor invites his fellow citizens to contribute their own writings to a discussion on how the faculty of sensibility can be managed aptly in order to better contribute to the religious, social, and political state of their homeland. It is to this invitation that the only female contributor to the newspaper – hidden behind the pseudonym of Erophilia – responds in her letter published on Thursday, February 2, 1792. The letter is preceded by an epigraph from The Fables of Phaedrus by the Roman fabulist Phaedrus (c. 15BC–c. AD50) from book three, fable 10 entitled ‘The Poet, on Believing, and Not Believing’. She quotes the original phrase in Latin, Periculosum est credere & non credere, which translates to ‘It is dangerous alike to believe or to disbelieve’.45 It is quite interesting that Phaedrus’s fable begins by explaining the following: Therefore, we ought to examine strictly into the truth of a matter, rather than suffer an erroneous impression to pervert our judgment. But, that I may not weaken this truth by referring to fabulous antiquity, I will relate to you a thing that happened within my own memory.46 (Italics in original) The importance of judging only from personal experience is relevant in Erophilia’s letter to the editor as she responds to his article based on her personal experience as a woman living in Quito and as a reader of the newspaper. Erophilia makes clear that the understanding of any matter goes hand in hand with how that issue is personally experienced. Addressing the editor as Señor Sensible [Sensible Gentleman], and in a very ironic tone, she indicates that after reading his article her soul was inundated with noble passions that prompted her to react as men usually think women react: with an ‘irresistible’ passion and outraged sensibility. Erophilia plays along with the stereotypes that the editor himself applied to women when discussing the issue of sensibility by implying that she is going to speak or over-react as women usually do from their subaltern position. However, she immediately changes her tone to make it clear that although people in Quito believe that

Women’s voices in newspapers

189

there are no women in this territory who devote their lives to the study of sciences, she is going to prove them wrong. She emphatically contends that: Diran mis amigas, y paisanas, que una muger en Quito, no alcanza à descubrir la sublimidad de las Ciencias y que todos sus misterios, son los hombres solos los que los penetran y manejan: Yo las compadezco, y digo que su error es escusable; pues que los mismos hombres le incurren frequentemente. A estos Señores y à mis amigas, quiero dar un desengaño que no tiene replica.47 [My fellow female friends and countrywomen may say that a woman in Quito is unable to understand the mysteries of the sublime Sciences, that men are the only ones who are able to manage and understand them. I pity them. However, I say that their mistake is excusable because even men frequently err in believing the same. To these men and to my female friends, I would like to prove them wrong with an argument to which there can be no counterpoint.] The female contributor takes the opportunity to make clear that Quito does not lack women with the aptitude and interest to seek knowledge and to be full participants in the city’s political life. She argues that in Quito there are women who are fully engaged in discussions pertaining to the view of Quito as a place endowed with enlightened people. To illustrate her point, Erophilia cites herself as an example. She mentions that she zealously reads all the books she owns and many others that she borrows. Erophilia criticizes men’s arrogant belief that women are not able to engage in the same epistemic endeavors as them. If men spend their lives trying to prove their superiority over other men, it is understandable why when it comes to women they have no respect for their intelligence and use of reason. For Erophilia, the article published by the newspaper editor on the importance of the faculty of sensibility in society, represents a perfect example of men’s prejudice against women when it comes to intellectual capacity. For Erophilia, his article is full of weak arguments. How can he discuss the issue of sensibility seriously when he does not even contemplate philosophical considerations (consideraciones filosoficas) that pertain to women’s nature? He himself shows signs of indolence when he does not want to spend time learning about women’s intellectual faculties and sensibility. She proceeds to denounce his own intellectual limitations, lack of sensibility, and indolence in not wanting to take women into consideration; and action that she describes as ‘funesto linage de indolencia’48 [a fatal condition of indolence]. If in his article he emphasizes the need to develop the faculty of sensibility to better educate people and to avoid indolence, she blames him of hypocritically demanding something that he is unable to practice. Like Antispasia in her article to the editors of the Mercurio peruano, Erophilia takes the opportunity to denounce men’s intellectual shortcomings. Her criticism becomes more direct when she emphatically condemns the lack of interest that the editor and the newspaper have shown towards women as

190

Private lives and public opinions

important components of society. She claims, ‘siquerria que U. huvie se empezado sus Periodicos dando lugar preferente à las mugeres, y hablando de nosotras con la decencia que demandan la Moral, y la Filosofia’ [I would have loved for you to begin your Newspaper by granting women a special place in it and talking about us with the decency that is required from a Moral and Philosophical perspective]. Erophilia makes it clear that philosophically and morally speaking, the newspaper should have taken them into consideration as individuals who can contribute to the welfare and the happiness of the homeland. She indicates that women bestow a much needed love that, when well-managed, can offer great benefits to society. Erophilia is referring to the notion of love held at the time in Spanish culture, which implied ‘the affection held by a rational soul’ which aims to pursue the good in things.49 It is the rational dimension of love that she emphasizes here. Indeed, Erophilia communicates to the editor that one of the biggest mistakes he made when discussing the notion of sensibility in the previous news article, was to not include love as part of the equation. As a good enlightened thinker, he should have remembered that the pursuit of happiness through love should be a central goal of those who care for the progress of their lands. She even reminds him that he should have consulted Plato, who believed that love as a faculty is able to keep peace among men: El amor, dice [Platón], mantiene la paz entre los hombres, muda la rusticidad en la cultura, apacigua las discordias, un e los corazones, inspira la dulzura, aplaca la crueldad, consuela los afligidos, restituye las fuerzas a las almas fatigadas, y en fin vuelve la vida perfectamente feliz.50 [According to Plato, love keeps peace among men, eliminates rusticity in culture, appeases discords, unifies hearts, inspires gentleness, softens cruelty, and in sum, makes live perfectly happy.] For Erophilia, as her name suggests, women should be taken into consideration as individuals who can bring love to society and, concomitantly, peace and happiness.51 It is interesting to note that Erophilia proceeds to denounce the lack of love present in their own society where hostility, slavery, war, discord, misery, spite, ignorance, and vices are rampant. What is lacking in Quito is love, and this lack is the result of ignoring this rational affect as a tool to bring order and happiness. Men like the editor himself prefer to avoid talking about love because they see it as a sensibility associated with women and therefore not worth discussing within the realms of philosophy. It is men’s own lack of sensibility that makes them ignore women in their conversations about the present and future progress of Quito. At this point, she asks the editor, ‘What exactly do you want me to be?’ [¿Que quiere U. que yo sea?].52 This is the question that will prompt Erophilia to ponder the relationship between the biological role endowed to women and love as a rational faculty that can impact society.

Women’s voices in newspapers

191

She begins her discussion of this issue by stating that she cannot deny the role that nature has endowed upon her as the bearer of children. This situation she cannot change and she has resigned herself to fulfill her responsibility. She seems quite familiar with the notion of education sustained by Enlightenment thinkers in Europe and in the Americas, who believed that educating women ‘would make then better wives and mothers, thus indirectly helping to improve society by tapping feminine potential’.53 Erophilia understands that society has endowed woman with the responsibility of educating her children so that they can acquire the necessary skills to become productive and good citizens. To achieve this, she must instill in her children religious principles and the good use of their faculties as well as develop in them social skills and a notion of confraternity. However, Erophilia makes it clear that in order for her to execute her assigned job, she needs to ensure that she is loved and respected by a man. For women to be successful, two types of love are needed: ‘un amor activo, y un amor pasivo. Debo amar, y debo ser amada’ [an active love, and a passive love. I should love others, and I should be loved].54 What Erophilia seems to be proposing is that when it comes to children’s education, men and women should complement each other, and a woman’s role should not be only that of a simple caregiver. She needs her husband’s support as a partner who is able to show her love and respect. Erophilia decides to take the opportunity to instruct the editor and male subscribers on how this type of love can be achieved. First, she states that even great philosophers who have made women the object of their inquiries have argued that without love, society will end in chaos and barbarism.55 She insists that women have no problem fulfilling their role in this equation as they have the natural talent to make men happy. She also clarifies to the editor that she is referring to a rational type of love. She maintains: ‘Este amor debe ser racional, conducido por la ley del Evangelio, atado à la coyuntura de la Razondotado de las preciosas prerrogativas de la verdadera sensibilidad’ [This love should be a rational one, guided by the precepts of the Gospel, tied to the articulation of Reason, and endowed with the beautiful prerogatives of true sensibility].56 The type of love she is advocating is driven by reason and premised on the notion of one’s ability to perceive it through the senses and to follow religious precepts. Sensibility is a faculty given to men and women alike, and one that distinguishes them from animals. Rational love entails understanding guided by the senses, and it does not relate exclusively to women but also applies to men. Erophilia proceeds to describe the responsibilities that men should fulfill in this type of relationship. He should be superior to her in the sense that he should be able to guide her in those social occupations conferred on her based on gender. He also should be in charge of educating their children in the realms of religion, science, and civility, so their children can become good citizens and thus ‘respect Society, love their Homeland, obey the King, and observe the laws’ [respetar la Sociedad, amar la Patria, obedecer al Monarca, observar las leyes].57 What she is suggesting here is that men should contribute to the domestic space as co-participants in their children’s well-being, even if this

192

Private lives and public opinions

means that women be guided by men. This type of man should also be able to show affection to his wife and to stay away from licentiousness and all kinds of vices that go against the ‘comun prosperidad’ (common wellbeing).58 She comes to the sad conclusion that, in her own experience, this type of man does not exist. Erophilia clarifies that she has come to this realization not out of frustration but with a clear mind: ‘alumbrada de las luces de mi Razon’ [illuminated by the light of my Reason].59 Reason has guided her to conclude that men lack the needed sensibility to complement women through the demonstration of love. Erophilia maintains that this is the reason she has never married. If the editor wants to contribute to the government’s pursuit of turning Quito into a land of prosperity, he needs to make women’s concerns a major object of discussion in the newspaper. She emphatically tells the editor: ‘Por nosotras, vuelvo a decir, por nuestros intereses, por nuestra vida, por nuestro ser politico debia U. haber dado a principio una stareas, que el sabio Govierno quiere que se dirijan à la ilustracion general, al bien del Pueblo, à la felicidad de la Monarquia’60 [For us women, I repeat again, for our interests, for our lives, for our political being, you should have engaged in the tasks given to you by the wise Government: to promote the education of all citizens, the good of the People, and the happiness of the Monarchy]. The goals of making Quito an enlightened place and the Spanish Monarchy a healthy government can only be achieved if women are taken into consideration when it comes to political matters that affect society. She reiterates that women have a principal role to play in any attempt to reform society: ‘Pero en esta, ya lo he insinuado, nosotras hacemos el papel principal’61 [I have suggested that in this task we, women, play the leading role]. Until men decide to view women as partners and to guide women with rational love, women will not be able to actively contribute to society. Rational love is the only way to liberate women from the slavery in which they live, and in which they are perceived solely as agents of sexual reproduction. His newspaper should play a major role in changing the mentality of men by broaching the discussion of matters pertaining to women in a new light, which would include allowing women to be part of the dialogue. Erophilia is proposing the need to look at women not as objects but instead as active agents of these discussions. She calls on men to develop their sensible skills and to work with women as a team within the domestic space. The symbolic slavery to which she is referring is the type of marriage in which the woman is left alone in the domestic space to fulfill the roles imposed upon her due to her biological nature. For Erophilia, a society has a better chance of achieving progress, social order, and prosperity if women are viewed as active citizens both within and outside the domestic space, and in politics that matter to society. As she concludes, ‘Si las mugeres somos las que damos el gusto à las Ciencias, la materia à la urbanidad, y el tono a todo el systema politico: Vea U. aquí Señor Editor, que yo por mi parte empiezo. Ya he dado la muestra de mis corto salcances: Yo he hecho de critica, de moralista, y de politica’62 [If we women are the ones who provide delight to the Sciences, substance to issues of civility, and tenor to the entire political system; I would like for you Mr. Editor

Women’s voices in newspapers

193

to understand, that I have already begun to contribute to these discussions. I have given a demonstration of my limited intellectual capabilities: I have acted as a critic, a moralist, and a politician]. Erophilia sarcastically explains that with her own sense of sensibility she has intervened in matters commonly restricted to men. If women are so important as objects of discussion when debating issues pertaining to science, theology, and politics, then they should have equal access to discursive venues in order to dialogue with men about these matters. If marriage as defined in the eighteenth century referred to a mutual contract in which two wills are united, then men should start to fulfill their part. They should be equal participants in this contract, and women should not bear all the responsibilities or blame. After all, society cannot function properly if one of the members of the contract is not fulfilling his or her part. Erophilia brings her own perspective to the mostly male-dominated debate about women’s nature. As Mónica Bolufer Peruga reminds us with regard to female writers such as Josefa Amar y Borbón (1749–1833) and Inés Joyes (1731–1808), who engaged in similar debates in Spain, all these women take advantage of the language of the Enlightenment to defend the idea of equal knowledge (‘igualdad de entendimiento’) when it comes to women and men.63 In the case of Erophilia, she promises the editor that she will keep sending him letters in order to convince him that women, due to their appropriate use of sensibility, can fulfill the tasks of critics, moralists, and politicians when it comes to presenting an alternative view of themselves and of society in general. As Erophilia makes clear at the beginning of her letter when quoting Phaedrus, ‘It is dangerous alike to believe or to disbelieve’. When it comes to issues of sensibility, it is paramount to hear what the other half has to say in order to make correct decisions.

Concluding remarks: women as cultural participants Colonial Spanish American newspapers have often been considered to be discursive vehicles mainly dominated by male intellectuals in which women had no voice. The two letters just discussed constitute examples of the manner in which eighteenth-century elite women engaged discursively in discussions pertaining to their condition within the context of the Enlightenment ideas that were circulating at the time.64 It is true that eighteenth-century newspapers spent a great amount of time discussing women with regard to education, sexuality, health, weakness, sensitivity, and social order. In most of those articles, women functioned as objects of discussion and not as active participants of current debates. However, Antispasia and Erophilia are examples of female voices that ventured to share their opinions in a male-dominated world. Their arguments illustrate how familiar these women were with matters pertaining to their roles as mothers, wives, and members of society. Both women call attention to the importance of taking women’s opinions into consideration when discussing issues which have overwhelmingly been associated with women, including the passion for luxury

194

Private lives and public opinions

and fashion, extreme sensibility, lack of reason, and their inability to express themselves as active thinkers. Antispasia and Erophilia take advantage of newspapers as a venue in which to voice their opinions publicly and to share a female perspective that was commonly absent from these discursive vehicles. Their female voices are recorded and preserved in the epistemological archives that are the newspapers.65 But their work goes beyond the sharing of opinions. Both women take the opportunity to pronounce openly that the male editors should also make men the target of their own criticism. For both women, men have plenty of faults and weaknesses that deserve serious discussion when it comes to thinking about the wellbeing of Peru and Quito. Based on their familiarity with the material published in the newspapers, it is clear that elite women such as Antipasia and Erophilia knew how to respond to their major critics. As they both ascertain, in a world guided by the principles of reason, order, and progress such as the one in which they lived, men are as responsible for society’s shortcomings as women. The tendency toward impulsive and uncontrolled affects is also characteristic of men and is not an innate feature of women alone. Antipasia and Erophilia suggest that only when the male editors of these newspapers learn to accept and discuss men’s limitations will their newspapers become more aware of what society in general needs to do to become more productive and enlightened. In sum, both female contributors suggest that if male editors and contributors broaden their notions of love, affection, and sensibility to apply to men, they will be able to realize that rational love and mutual respect are needed in the pursuit of an orderly and happy society. The time has come for these male intellectuals to approach matters from both ends of the spectrum, male and female, and to adequately understand that women are an important component of political matters pertaining to society and cannot be dismissed as weak individuals. The lack of sensibility and uncontrollable tempers of men are as dangerous to society as the excesses of sensibility that men perceive in women. Herein lies the possible reason why the editors in charge of the newspapers published these letters. Both letters denounce actions that Peruvians and Quiteño intellectuals did not wish to see in their respective societies at a time in which reason, social order, and the development of productive citizens were considered paramount tools for achieving progress. Antispasia and Erophilia, as symbols of the many elite women whom both newspapers addressed as readers, are able to illustrate that when it comes to discussing the condition of women ‘it is dangerous alike to believe or to disbelieve’. To disregard what women have to say constitutes a dangerous act that can only contribute to a partial view of what matters most to society: the pursuit of happiness and the development of useful citizens.

Notes 1 Anthony Higgins, Constructing the Criollo Archive (Lafayette, 2000), pp. 10–11. For a more detailed discussion of the role of newspapers in eighteenth-century colonial

Women’s voices in newspapers

2

3

4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11

12 13

14 15

195

Spanish America, see Mariselle Meléndez, ‘Spanish American Enlightenments: Local Epistemologies and Transnational Exchanges in Eighteenth-century Newspapers’, Dieciocho: Hispanic Enlightenment 4(2009): 114–33. As Rebecca Haidt reminds us, the works of Rousseau, Voltaire and Montesquieu, among others, were translated into Spanish and commented in Spanish eighteenthcentury newspapers such as Correo Literario de la Europa (1780). Haidt argues that Rousseau’s novel Emile was well known in Spain in the 1780s. See, Haidt, ‘The Enlightenment and Fictional Form’, in Harriet Turner and Adelaida López de Martínez (eds), The Cambridge Companion to the Spanish Novel: From 1600 to the Present (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 31–46. For a discussion of women as agents of public opinion in Papel periódico de Santa Fe de Bogotá, see, Mariselle Meléndez, ‘La mujer en la prensa ilustrada en los periódicos sudamericanos: 1790–1812’, in Francisco A. Ortega and Alexander Chaparro (eds.), Disfraz y pluma de todos. Opinión pública y cultura política. Siglos XVIII–XIX (Bogotá, 2012), pp. 329–52. In the case of Spain, scholars such as Elizabeth Franklin Lewis have emphasized that ‘The contributions of women published in important journals, together with male contributions on issues about women are further testimonies to women’s growing importance in eighteenth-century Spanish society, and to the importance women attributed to their own participation in this emerging medium’ (14). Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2005), p. 79. Ibid., pp. 80–81. Theresa Ann Smith, The Emerging Female Citizen. Gender and Enlightenment in Spain (Berkeley, 2006), p. 28. According to Smith and following Rich Herr’s study, Feijóo’s essays ‘cited more than two hundred French texts and sixty-four other foreign works’ (p. 211). For an excellent discussion on these debates between male and female intellectuals in Spain, see Smith. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile (1762), in Isaac Kramicnich (ed.), The Portable Enlightenment Reader (New York, 1995), p. 575. Denis Diderot and Chevalier Louis de Jaucourt, ‘Modesty’ (1765). The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Mary McAlpin, trans. (Ann Arbor, 2003), p. 553. Susan Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America. (Cambridge, 2000), p. 169. For excellent discussions on the manner in which female intellectuals participated in similar debates in Spain in the eighteenth century, see Bolufer Peruga, Mónica. Mujeres e Ilustración. La construcción de la feminidad en la ilustración española (Valencia, 1998); Catherine M. Jaffe and Elizabeth Franklin Lewis (eds), Eve’s Enlightenment. Women’s Experiences in Spain and Spanish America, 1726–1839 (Baton Rouge, 2009); Elizabeth Franklin Lewis, Women Writers in the Spanish Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness (Burlington, 2004); and Smith. For detailed information about the origins of the newspaper and the role of its editors see, Mariselle Mélendez, Deviant and Useful Citizens (Nasvhille, 2011), pp. 129–30. Mercurio peruano, 1790–1795 (Lima, 1964), 12, p. 112. Unless otherwise stated all quotes from Mercurio peruano come from the facsimile edition published in 1964. Citations from the newspaper follow the original orthography. All translations to English are mine. I would like to thank Lisa Burner-Reinhalter (University of Illinois) for her input on these translations. As I have discussed elsewhere, this tapada tradition comes from Moorish women in Spain. For more information, see Mariselle Meléndez, Raza, género e hibridez en El lazarillo de ciegos caminantes (Chapel Hill, 1999), pp. 186–88. Mariselle Meléndez, ‘Visualizing Difference: The Rhetoric of Clothing in Colonial Spanish America’, in Regina A. Root (ed.), The Latin American Fashion Reader (Oxford, 2005), p. 27.

196 16 17 18 19

20

21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38

Private lives and public opinions Mercurio peruano, 12, p. 112. Socolow, p. 115. Mélendez, Deviant, pp. 163, 216. ‘Zanguito con yuyo’ is a type of salty food that according to Sergio Zapata Acha, was sold in the streets of Lima in colonial times. The word ‘zanguito’ comes from the Quechua word ‘zango’ which is a type of cornbread used in pre-Hispanic times for religious purposes. In Lima, ‘zango’ or ‘sango’ became a type of dessert similar to the mazamorra to which was added lard. See Sergio Zapata Acha, Diccionario de gatronomía peruana tradicional (Lima, 2009) pp. 669, 671. According to Nathalie Otárola in her article, ‘Sanguito: tradición hecha manjar’, the ‘zanguito’ is also of African descent and part of Peru’s culinary miscegenation. What makes this dish African is the fact that people of African descent used to toast and add lard to it. Quoted in Martín Acosta González, ‘La historia del sanguito, un postre que se resiste a morir’, El comercio (July 9, 2001). For Doreen Massey, ‘the attempt to confine women to the domestic sphere was both a specifically spatial control and, through that, a social control on identity’. Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender (Minneapolis: 1994), p. 179. Mercurio, 12, p. 114. Mercurio [1790] 1964, n.p. As Elizabeth Franklin Lewis notes, Spanish women authors who actively participated in discussions about the role of women in society, such as Josefa Amar y Borbón, María Gertrudis Hore, and María Rosa Gálvez, all belonged to the upper middle class and were ‘commoners from families of economic privilege’, p. 2. For a discussion on the issue of censorship and the Mercurio peruano, and a list of pseudonyms used by the contributors, see Jean Pierre Clément, Indices del Mercurio peruano (Lima, 1979), pp. 10–12; 133–38. Webster’s Universal Dictionary (Riverside, 1983), p. 77. Mercurio 18, p. 161. Ibid., p. 162. For an outstanding discussion on the debates that took place in Spain about women’s inclination to luxury and excess, see Bolufer Peruga, pp. 176–96. As Bolufer Peruga explains, in Spain ‘las nuevas imágenes del lujo prolongaban y transformaban la acusación que desde hacía siglos venía formulando la Iglesia contra las mujeres como responsables por los “excesos” morales y económicos de las apariencias’ (p. 181) [The new images of luxury confirmed and, at the same time, transformed the accusations – made by the Catholic Church – against women as responsable for moral and economic ‘excesses’ for the sake of appearances]. Socolow, p. 167. Ibid., p. 163. The English translation is from the following edition, Benito Jerónimo Feijóo, An essay on the learning, genius, and abilities, of the fair-sex: proving them not inferior to man, from a variety of examples, extracted from ancient and modern history: translated from the Spanish of El theatro critico (London, 1774), p. 148. Ibid. [1791] 1964, 18, p. 164. Ibid. Ibid. All quotations from Primicias de la Cultura de Quito follow the original orthography of the facsimile edition. Italics come from the original. By ‘Quito’ the editor refers to the Audiencia de Quito (high court). All translations into English are mine. Primicias de la cultura de Quito [1791–1792] 1947, n.p. In the eighteenth century, literatura was defined as ‘el conocimiento y ciencia de las letras’ [the knowledge and science of learning] which included everything related to science, art, and erudition. See, Diccionario de autoridades, s.v. ‘literatura’, vol. IV (Madrid, 1734).

Women’s voices in newspapers

197

39 Soledad Sánchez Flores, ‘Concepto de Sensibilidad en la Ilustración’. In Pensamiento Ilustrado (Granada, 2014), p. 12. 40 Primicias, p. 18. 41 Mathematics at the time was described ‘as a science’ dealing with quantity and measurements and based on the principles of geometry, arithmetic, optics, astronomy, and cosmography, among others. See Diccionario de autoridades, s.v. ‘mathematica’, vol. IV (1734). 42 Primicias, p. 15. 43 Ibid., p. 16. 44 Ibid. 45 Phaedrus, The Fables of Phaedrus (London, 1887). 46 Phaedrus is referring to the fact that the fall of Troy was caused by Hippolytus believing his stepmother and not believing Cassandra. 47 Primicias, pp. 19–20. 48 Ibid., p. 21. 49 For the definition of ‘amor’ in the eighteenth century, see Diccionario de autoridades, s.v. ‘amor’. 50 Ibid. 51 On the definition and pursuit of happiness by female writers in Spain in the eighteenth century, see Lewis. According to Lewis, for these women, happiness was associated with the freedom to study and write, with their contribution to social harmony, with the ability to debate as fellow women in specific places (i.e. tertulias, reformist societies), and with virtue (pp. 17–18). 52 Ibid., p. 22. 53 Socolow, p. 167. 54 Primicias, p. 23. 55 Erophilia does not mention any particular philosopher in this passage but she might be referring to Plato whom she has quoted before and who wrote about the faculty of love. 56 Primicias, p. 23. 57 Ibid., p. 23. 58 Ibid., p. 24. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid., p. 25. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Bolufer Peruga, p. 112. 64 In the case of Spain, Josefa Amar y Borbón published in 1790 her Discurso sobre la educación física y moral de las mujeres (Madrid, 1790), in which she argued that educating women was imperative for a society to achieve happiness and success. 65 In general terms, an archive is also defined as a ‘record or document preserved in evidence of facts’. See Webster’s Universal Dictionary of the English Language, s.v. ‘archive’.

Bibliography Printed primary sources Amar y Borbón, Josefa, Discurso sobre la educación física y moral de las mujeres. (Madrid: Imprenta de Benito Cano, 1790). Diderot, Denis and Chevalier Louis de Jaucourt, ‘Modesty’ (1765). The Encyclopedia of Diderot and d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Mary McAlpin (trans.).

198

Private lives and public opinions

Ann Arbor: M Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/ 2027/spo.did2222.0000.039. Originally published as ‘Pudeur’, Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 13:553 (Paris, 1765): 31–48. Feijóo y Montenegro, Benito Jerónimo, ‘Defensa de las mujeres. Discurso XVI’. Teatro Crítico Universal. Discursos varios en todo género de materias, para desengaño de errores comunes. Vol. 1 (Madrid: Por D. Joaquín Ibarra, Impresor de Cámara de S. M, 1726). Feijóo y Montenegro, Benito Jerónimo, An essay on the learning, genius, and abilities, of the fair-sex: proving them not inferior to man, from a variety of examples, extracted from ancient and modern history: translated from the Spanish of El theatro critico (London: D. Steel). Mercurio Peruano, 1790–1795. Edición Facsimilar (Lima: Biblioteca Nacional del Perú, 1964). Primicias de la Cultura de Quito. Edición Facsimilar (1791–1792) (Quito: Publicaciones del Archivo Municipal, 1947). Real Academia Española, Diccionario de autoridades. 6 vols, 1726–1739 (Madrid: Gredos, 1963). http://web.frl.es/DA.html Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Emile (1762), in Isaac Kramicnich (ed.) The Portable Enlightenment Reader (New York: Penguin Books, 1995). The Fables of Phaedrus, Henry Thomas Riley and Christopher Smart (trans.) (London: George Bell & Sons, 1887). The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fables of Phædrus. (Internet archive, Project Gutenberg, 2008).

Secondary sources Acosta González, Martín, ‘La historia del sanguito, un postre que se resiste a morir’. El Comercio, July 9, 2011. http://elcomercio.pe/gastronomia/peruana/historia-sanguito-p ostre-que-se-resiste-morir-noticia-846169 Alvárez Vita, Juan, Diccionario de peruanismos (Lima: Editorial Rocarme, 1900). Bolufer Peruga, Mónica, Mujeres e ilustración. La construcción de la feminidad en la ilustración española (Valencia: Diputació de València, 1998). Clément, Jean-Pierre. Indices del Mercurio peruano, 1790–1795 (Lima: Instituto Nacional de Cultura, 1979), vol. 1. Haidt, Rebecca, ‘The Enlightenment and Fictional Form’, in Harriet Turner and Adelaida López de Martínez (eds), The Cambridge Companion to the Spanish Novel: From 1600 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 31–46. Higgins, Anthony, Constructing the Criollo Archive: Subjects of Knowledge in the Bibliotheca Mexicana and the Ruscatio Mexicana (Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2010). Jaffe, Catherine M. and Elizabeth Franklin Lewis (eds), Eve’s Enlightenment: Women’s Experiences in Spain and Spanish America, 1726–1839 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009). Lewis, Elizabeth Franklin, Women Writers in the Spanish Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004). Massey, Doreen, Space, Place, and Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). Meléndez, Mariselle, Raza, género e hibridez. El lazarillo de ciegos caminantes (Chapel Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 1999).

Women’s voices in newspapers

199

Meléndez, Mariselle, ‘Visualizing Difference: The Rhetoric of Clothing in Colonial Spanish America’, in Regina A. Root (ed.), The Latin American Fashion Reader (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005). Meléndez, Mariselle, ‘Spanish American Enlightenments: Local Epistemologies and Transnational Exchanges in Eighteenth-century Newspapers’. Dieciocho: Hispanic Enlightenment 4(2009): 114–133. Meléndez, Mariselle, Deviant and Useful Citizens: The Cultural Production of the Female Body in Eighteenth-Century Peru (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011). Meléndez, Mariselle, ‘Teorizando la nación: patriotismo y saber intelectual en tres periódicos sur americanos del siglo XVIII’, in Stephanie Kirk (ed.), Estudios coloniales latino americanos en el siglo XXI: Nuevos itinerarios (Pittsburgh, PA: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Latinoamericana, 2011). Meléndez, Mariselle, ‘La mujer en la prensa ilustrada en los periódicos sudamericanos: 1790–1812’, in Francisco A. Ortega and Alexander Chaparro (eds), Disfraz y pluma de todos. Opinión pública y cultura política. Siglos XVIII–XIX (Bogotá: Fondo Editorial de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2012). Nuzzo, Angélica, Ideal Embodiment: Kant’s Theory of Sensibility (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). Outram, Dorinda, The Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Sánchez Flores, Soledad, ‘Concepto de Sensibilidad en la Ilustración’. Pensamiento Ilustrado (Granada, Spain: Universidad de Granada, 2014), pp. 1–26. Smith, Theresa Ann, The Emergent Female Citizen: Gender and Enlightenment in Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). Socolow, Susan M., The Women of Colonial Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Webster’s Universal Dictionary of the English Language (Riverside, NJ: Dorset & Baber, 1983). Zapata Acha, Sergio, Diccionario de gastronomía peruana tradicional (Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Universidad San Martín de Porres, 2009).

Index

Page numbers in bold refer to tables. agency: female agency 165; religious women’s writing 7–8; text creation 5; textual agency 5, 112, 123, 169; women’s agency 5, 101 agents: Cobos, María de los 164; Doña Inés and her mother 114; letter writing 169; subjectivity 153–4 Amarilis 6 Ampuero, Francisco de 110, 111, 112, 115 Ampuero y Barba, Agustina de 136 Anacaona 91–9 Anglería, Pedro Mártir de 91, 92, 93, 94 Anguissola, Sophonisba 62 archives 7; Amerindian documents 86–8, 93, 96, 97, 101; Amerindian texts 102; cataloging of 10; colonial archives 5; Inquisition 20, 22, 24, 38, 39, 40, 50; newspapers 177, 194; probanzas 123; uncovering women’s colonial archive 1–12; wills 131, 132, 134; women’s letters 153, 169 areitos 92–3, 94, 96 arrobamiento 66; see also ecstasy; rapture ars dictandi 155 ars epistolandi 155, 161 Atahualpa 108, 109, 117 auto de fe 69, 70 authorship 7; avoiding responsibility for 24; female authorship 6, 153; male authorship 186 Axayacatl 89, 90–1, 97, 98 Barba, Juana 136, 141–2 beatas 4, 8–9, 11; Carranza, Angela 21–2, 69, 72; colonial life 4; history 19–21; Lima, Peru 32–3, 63, 66; Montoya, María Jacinta de 8–9; Rosa de Santa

María 19; Rosa Maria Egipçíaca 38–49, 51–4 beaterios 4, 20; see alsorecogimientos Becerra y Mendoza, Isabel de 2, 10–1, 153, 156–60, 168 Benavente ‘Motolinía,’ Toribio de 87 burning of documents 21–2 calidad(es) 39, 40, 47, 48, 51, 121 canon 6, 11, 89 capellanía 130 Carranza, Angela 4, 9, 20, 21–2, 27, 28, 69–71 carta de libertad 3, 131, 138, 141 Cartagena, Teresa de 156, 158 castas 23, 40, 47, 133, 137 Cazorla Narváez, Hernando 164–6, 168 Clarinda 6 coartacion 138 Coatlicue 9, 88–9, 91, 99, 101, 102 Cobos, María de los 2, 153, 160–4, 168 cofradías 4, 130 collaborative texts 6, 7, 63, 66, 69 confraternities 131, 137, 142, 143, 191 contact zone 106, 113, 121, 123 Contarguacho 109–14 contemplation 68; acquired contemplation 45; infused contemplation 44, 45, 46; see also prayer, contemplative contrition, acts of 26–7 Córdova y Salinas, Diego de 23, 66 corpus 1, 5, 6, 7, 11, 89, 102 Cortés, Hernán 97 cosmology 41, 51 Costilla de Benavides, Juan 63, 64 Council of Trent 5 coya 108, 115, 118, 119

Index Coya, Beatriz Clara 115, 122 Cusi Huarcay, María 3, 107, 108, 115–21, 122, 123 Cusi Titu, Diego 118–9, 120 delegated writing 7 Diderot, Denis 177, 178, 186 discourse 7, 12; female discourse 9, 65–6, 86–94, 97, 99, 102, 132, 164; fidelity discourse 167; forensic discourse 156; hegemonic discourse 48, 51; legal discourse 106, 107–8, 121; male discourse 92, 94; mystical discourse 63, 74; phallologocentric discourse 85, 88, 96, 101; political discourse 169 doña 109, 136 ecstasy 28, 63, 64, 66, 74 encomendero(s) 112 encomienda (s) 94, 110, 115, 119 Enlightenment: newspapers 4–5, 10, 11, 177–9, 183, 185, 191, 193; Pombaline Enlightenment reform 50 epistles 2, 10; Becerra y Mendoza, Isabel de 156–60; Cobos, María de los 160–4; Osorio de Narváez, Mariana 164–8; overview 154–6; writing spatiality 168–9 Espelho da perfeiçãosee Mirror of Perfection eyewitness testimony 11, 99 false visionary seeilusa Feijóo, Benito Jerónimo 177, 178 feminine writing see writing, feminine femininity: models of 86; rhetoric of 6 Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo 85, 92, 93, 94, 95–6 fidelity 2, 167; see also discourse Garay, Juan de 157, 158–9 Ginés de Sepúlveda, Juan 107 Godínez, Miguel 21 Guevara, Isabel de 155–6 Holy Office 2, 8; beatas 20–2; Gamarra, Francisco de 138; Montoya, María Jacinta de 24–6; Rosa María Egipçiaca 38, 50; see also Inquisition Hoyo, José del 69, 70 Huaylas Yupanqui, Inés 3, 107, 108, 109–15 Huayna Capac 108, 109, 112–4, 117, 120, 121

201

hybrid identity 9, 38, 41, 50 hybrid practice 43, 47–8, 50, 52 hybrid thinking 122 hybrid voice 38, 40, 42, 51, 54 hybridity 49, 51–2, 155 hybridization 51 identity: hybrid identity 9, 38, 41, 50; women’s identity 169 igualdad de entendimiento 193 ilusa 8, 20, 23, 29 informaciones 106–8, 116, 117, 119, 121, 123; informaciones ad perpetuam rei memoriam 107 inheritance, laws of 2, 111, 140 Inquisition 62, 66; beatas 8–9; Carranza, Angela 69, 71, 72; false visionaries 20–1; Montoya, María Jacinta de, self-denunciation of 24–9; Rosa María Egipçiaca 39–41, 43, 46, 48, 49–52 inscription 67, 68 institutions: colonial life 4; women’s engagement with 8 judicial inquiry 106; judicial inquiry for the perpetual memory 107, 116, 122 ladino Indians 112 ladino slaves 135 Las Casas, Bartolomé de 85, 87, 91, 94–5, 96, 107 letter writing see epistles life writings 62; see alsovidas Macuilxochitl 3, 89–90, 91, 97–9 majadero 183–4 Malintzin 89 Mama Huaco, Magdalena (Inca queen) 3, 107, 108, 120–3 Manco Cápac 108 Manco Inca 108, 110, 113–5, 117, 120, 121, 123 manumission 130–1, 133, 138–44; deathbed manumission 141–3; testamentary manumission 141, 143 mayorazgo 2 Maza, Gonzalo de la 63, 74 Medusa 85, 88–9 Meléndez, María 99–101 Meléndez, Mariselle 10, 11 Melgarejo de Sotomayor, Luisa 4, 9, 19, 63–9, 71 Mendoza, Antonio de 112 merced(es) 161, 162–3, 164, 167

202

Index

Middle Passage 135 Mirror of Perfection 45 Montoya, María Jacinta de 4, 8–9, 20, 33–4; archbishop’s summary of the transgressions of 32–3; death of husband 22–3; humility vs. special dispensation 29–31; self-denunciation 24–9 morador 136 mystic repertoire 38, 41, 46, 49–50 mystical discourse 63, 74 mystical discussion 45 mystical experience 21, 39 mystical seeing 65 mystical writings 5 mystics: Carmelite mystics 45; false mystics 69, 70; female mystic 63; Melgarejo de Sotomayor, Luisa 63, 64, 67, 68; Rosa Maria Egipçíaca 38, 39, 41, 46, 50, 52 naming 64, 133–8 newspapers 1, 5, 10–1, 177, 179; Mercurio peruano 179–85; Primicias de la cultura de Quito 186–93; women as cultural participants 193–4 Nieto, Fray Francisco 63–4 noblewomen 9, 97–9, 102, 108–9, 117, 120–3 notebooks, spiritual 8, 11, 23–4, 27, 67, 70 ñusta 108 Ocampo, Nicolas 161 Orishás 42, 44, 51, 52 Osorio de Narváez, Mariana 2, 153, 164–5 Ovando, Nicolas de 92–3, 94, 95, 96 Paullu Inca 114, 119 perfecta cristiana, model of 160 Phaedrus 188, 193 phallocentric discourse 101; Euro-phallocentric discourse 96 phallologocentrism 85, 88; phallologocentric frame 86; phallologocentric organizing principle 87 Pilco Huaco 108, 120, 121 Pizarro, Francisca 109, 110 Pizarro, Francisco 108, 109, 110–2, 113–4, 165 Pizarro Yupanqui, Gonzalo 109 prayer, contemplative 43, 44, 45–6 prayer, ejaculatory 46

probanzas 9, 108, 110, 112–4, 120–3, 155, 161, 164, 168; probanzas de limpieza de sangre 107; probanzas de méritos y servicios 9, 106–7; probanzas de nobleza 9, 107, 121 proofs: proofs of merits and services 9, 106–7, 155, 168; proofs of nobility 9, 107, 117, 155, 168; proofs of purity of blood 107 purity of blood 2, 107, 109 Qespi Sisa 109 rapture 62, 66–7, 74; see alsoarrobamiento; ecstasy recogimientos 4, 70, 120, 121; see also beaterios relics 62, 69–75 repartimiento 113 residente 136 rhetoric of femininity 6 Rosa de Santa María 4, 19, 63 Rosa Maria Egipçíaca 9, 38–41; AfroCatholic practice 44–9; agency, hybrid identity and counter-Catholic discourse 50–5; close reading of the visions of 41–4; before the Portuguese Inquisition 49–50 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 177, 178, 186, 187 Sahagún, Bernardo de 87, 88 Santa Cruz y Espejo, Francisco Javier Eugenio de 186–7 Sayri Tupac 108, 115, 118, 119, 120 self-denunciation 24–5, 28–9 self-representation 8, 106 señoras naturales 108 senses 46, 67, 68–71, 74, 191; external senses 65; five senses 63, 70, 71; interior senses 66; sense perception 65 sensibilidad 186, 191 sensibility 186–94 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz 6, 156 Spanish conquest: female accounts of 9 spatiality 154, 168–9, 181 spirit possession 39, 43–6, 48, 51 spiritual notebooks see notebooks, spiritual spiritual transcendence 20, 22 spiritual writing see writing, spiritual subjectivity 153–4; female subjectivity 88–9, 91, 96–9; women’s subjectivity 86, 89, 99–100 súplica 157

Index supplication 90, 157–8, 160 symbology, religious 41–2, 54

203

vecino 116, 119, 135–6 Velasco, Luis de 164 vidas 22, 23, 45, 48, 62; see also life writings visions: Carranza, Angela 22, 70, 72–3; intellectual vision 64, 65; Montoya, María Jacinta de 8, 23, 25–33; Rosa Maria Egipçíaca 38–54 voices: Afro-Catholic baroque voice 38; analytical voice 92; female voice 6, 9, 62, 85, 87, 89–91, 95–6, 193–4; hybrid voice 38, 42, 51, 54; women’s voices 1, 4, 7, 9–10, 86–8, 91, 97, 106

Taypichisque, Catalina 108, 117 Teresa de Ávila 5–6, 23, 24, 31, 45, 62, 67 testament 26, 130, 168 texts: agency 5; language and rhetorical strategies 5–6; mediated texts 7, 24, 48, 69, 71, 106, 111; mystical texts 63; nonliterary texts 62–3, 74–5; relics as texts 71–4; religious texts 45; terminology 1; text as body 67; texts within texts 66, 69; visual text 65 textual marronage 51 textual space 169 Toledo, Viceroy Francisco de 108, 119, 120, 122 Topa Inca Yupanqui 117 trance 4, 19, 21, 44, 68; ecstatic trance 62–3, 64, 66 Tupac Amaru 108, 119, 120, 121

Yorùbá 41, 42–4, 48, 50, 51–2, 54 Ysásaga, Catalina de 130–1, 142–3

Uzastegui, María de 64, 67

Zayas, María de 62

wills 1, 3, 6, 10–1, 26, 130–5, 134, 138–44; see also testament writing, feminine 88, 91, 96, 102 writing, spiritual 46

Taylor & Francis eBooks Helping you to choose the right eBooks for your Library Add Routledge titles to your library's digital collection today. Taylor and Francis ebooks contains over 50,000 titles in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Behavioural Sciences, Built Environment and Law. Choose from a range of subject packages or create your own! Benefits for you

Benefits for your user

Free MARC records COUNTER-compliant usage statistics Flexible purchase and pricing options All titles DRM-free.

df b k b k b kb k b bk k

Free Trials Available We offer free trials to qualifying

academic, corporate and government customers.

Off-site, anytime access via Athens or referring URL Print or copy pages or chapters Full content search Bookmark, highlight and annotate text Access to thousands of pages of quality research at the click of a button.

eCollections - Choose from over 30 subject eColiections, including: Archaeology

Language Learning

Architecture

Law

ASian Studies

Literature

Business I:< Management

Media I:< CommUnication

Classical Studies Construction

Middle East Studies

Creative I:< Media Arts

Philosophy

Criminology I:< Criminal Justice

Planning

Economics

Politics

MusIc

Education

Psychology I:< Mental Health

Energy

Religion

Engineering English Language I:< Linguistics

Security

Environment I:< Sustalnabllity

Sociology

Social Work

Geography

Sport

Health Studies

Theatre I:< Performance

History

TOUrism, Hospitality I:< Events

For more information, pricing enquiries or to order a free trial, please contact your local sales team: www.tandfebooks.com/page/sales Routledge T,yloc&F"omGwup

The home of I Routiedge books

www.taneoos.com