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The Cuiloni, the Patlache, and the Abominable Sin: Homosexualities in Early Colonial Nahua Society

2005; Duke University Press; Volume: 85; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-85-4-555

1527-1900

Pete Sigal,

Historical Studies in Latin America

The cuiloni: the sodomite, the penetrated man, the homosexual, the passive, the third sex, the faggot, the queer. Cuiloyotl (or cuilonyotl): sodomy, homosexuality, the act without which the cuiloni could not exist. The term cuiloni reveals much about sexuality, sexual identity, and the many homosexualities present in early colonial discourse on the Nahuas, the indigenous peoples who at the time of the Spanish Conquest made up the bulk of the population of central Mexico.1In recent years, scholars have begun to study the daily lives of the indigenous peoples of early Mexico, inquiring into the most intimate details of Nahua life.2 Still, little scholarship exists on homosexuality among the Nahuas.3 Those few works rely on problematic translations of Nahuatl documents that provide insufficient evidence to generate significant conclusions or else focus primarily on Spanish interpretations of Nahua realities. This article seeks to correct this imbalance by analyzing the extant primary sources on the topic. I will begin with the most relevant Spanish chronicles and then examine the Nahuatl documentation that points to preconquest notions of homosexual desires and acts. I focus on the Florentine Codex, a 12-volume Nahuatl and Spanish document produced in the mid–sixteenth century by a Franciscan friar with the help of many Nahua aides. Next, I analyze the language used in Catholic confessional manuals. Finally, I return to the Florentine Codex to study the highly Europeanized and encyclopedic book 10. Scholars must critically decipher the post-conquest documents in order to uncover three core influences: (1) medieval and early modern European concepts of the relationship between sodomy and sin; (2) Spanish tropes of conquest that asserted the effeminacy of the conquered group; and (3) indigenous discourse. I show that the Nahuas, at the time of the conquest, linked homosexualities with their religion. As the colonial years progressed, the Nahuas integrated the Catholic concept of sin into their cultural matrix, but sin never entirely displaced the relationship between homosexuality, ritual, and sacrifice.Modern scholars hold conflicting views concerning homosexualities among the pre- and postconquest Nahuas. Some say it was outlawed or repressed, others that it was part of the structures of society, yet others that it was part of religious ritual. Alfredo López Austin argues that the preconquest Nahuas had an "extremely negative image" of homosexuality. He states that the "death penalty was imposed on both female and male homosexuals, active or passive."4 Similarly, Noemí Quezada argues that the Nahuas punished male and female homosexuality by death, as it violated the order of the "heterosexual couple" established by the creator gods.5 Richard Trexler says that the preconquest Nahuas forced certain men to cross-dress, often for life, and that they used those men as "passives." The Nahuas viewed these men with disdain and saw them as dependent and effeminate. Trexler believes that the "active" partner was not denigrated in the same way that the passive partner was, and additionally he claims that "no laws against sodomy" existed.6 Cecelia Klein argues that the Nahuas believed that the passive partner caused great misfortune but that the active partner played a role "essentially consonant with his biological sex."7 Geoffrey Kimball argues that in the preconquest era, "there is no evidence for any kind of suppression of homosexuality such as occurred after the Spanish conquest."8 Clark Taylor says that "homosexuality played an important part in much of the religious life in México, and was commonly accepted in private life" but that the Mexica engaged in "heavy repression" of homosexual activity.9 The contradictory nature of these interpretations stems, in part, from some misreadings of the texts; the primary source of confusion, however, comes from insufficient efforts to situate the context of these sources.All of the Mexican documents referenced by these researchers were produced in the postconquest period. In order to use these documents fruitfully in the analysis of Nahua homosexualities at the time of the conquest, we must investigate the various influences upon them. Who wrote them? How can we understand the (often hidden) authorial voice? What were the influences, contemporary and historical, upon the production of the source, its narrative strategy, its political vision, and its treatment of the past?10The first epigraph to this article comes from Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún's Florentine Codex, a remarkable text—not just because of its relationship to Nahua realities but also because of the overinterpretation of later commentators who have used these books to analyze Nahua sexuality.11 Sahagún's Nahua aides intricately wove the notion of homosexuality into a tapestry of concepts related to the gods, religion, mockery, and the edifice of sacrifice. Scholars who have studied sex in the Florentine Codex have hinged their analyses on a series of inherently contradictory texts, enmeshed with European notions of sexuality, sin, and spectacle, that are disconnected from Nahua realities. Nonetheless, when analyzed alongside other documents, these texts have much to show us regarding sixteenth-century Nahua concepts of sexual behavior.The second epigraph is from Bartolomé de Alva's 1634 Confessionario Mayor, y Menor en Lengva Mexicana. As with the Florentine Codex, some have over-interpreted the confessional manuals for their power to reshape Nahua culture. The question in the epigraph above ("did you fall into the frightening sin?") is a model that was not necessarily used by any priest in any confession. Furthermore, even if priests did ask the question, it is difficult to know what effect such a discursive maneuver would have on the Nahuas, assuming they even understood what was meant. The text signifies an attempt by the clergy to regulate sodomy by placing it in the context of abominable sin, however inadequately translated into Nahuatl. Thus, the priests consciously attempted to remove sodomy from a cultural matrix associating it with religion, sacrifice, and the gods, and to place it instead within the Christian discourse of sin. While postconquest Catholic priests rarely considered sodomy a topic of great importance, the sexual behaviors of the Nahuas played a vital role in the genre of the confessional manual. As we will see when analyzing the Florentine Codex and the confessional manuals, though, this conscious act of colonial appropriation met with limited success.Only through quotidian interactions with Hispanized peoples did Nahua sexual concepts begin to change. While preconquest Nahua concepts of homosexuality related to Nahua cosmology, the postconquest process of hybridization altered the meanings and context of a discourse related to sodomy. Nahua interaction with non-Nahua peoples slowly produced a hybrid culture that combined elements from the groups coming into contact.12 As a result, Nahua views of homosexualities changed somewhat—partly because of colonial appropriation and partly because of the development of a mixed discourse that incorporated both European and indigenous notions. The ensuing hybrid Nahua discourse related sacrifice, ritual, and Catholic ideas of sin to male and female homosexual acts.My use of the term "homosexuality" warrants a brief interlude. In the introduction to Infamous Desire, I delineate the complexity of sexual terminology in early Latin America. While categories of sexual identity did exist, they were used inconsistently in legislation and the courts, and clerical and popular discourse. Furthermore, people of European, African, and indigenous backgrounds understood sexual identities in different ways. These discourses of identity existed in a dynamic and ever-changing relationship, in which people's sexual behaviors and desires built upon and gave meaning to the narratives presented in the writings.13 I have chosen here to use the term "homosexuality" to describe a set of behaviors, desires, and discourses broadly associated with same-sex sexual activity. This term, while imperfect, seems more appropriate than any alternative.When the Spaniards witnessed and fought the Mexica of Tenochtitlán and the other indigenous peoples in the Valley of Mexico, they perceived a contradiction: a highly masculine group that engaged extensively in sodomy. This contradiction, which arises only within a cultural framework that equates sodomy with effeminacy, perplexed many Spaniards.14 Some Spanish, mestizo, and indigenous commentators—particularly the great defender of indigenous societies, the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas—engaged in tortured mental gymnastics to contextualize the existence of ritualized sodomy among the Mexican peoples.15 I argue that the multiple constructions of homosexuality in these texts emerged from a colonial discourse that obscures the autochthonous views of Mexico's indigenous societies.16Most Spanish chroniclers, writing supportive accounts of the conquest of Mexico, associated Nahua sodomy with effeminacy, but they also reported that Nahua men were very masculine.17 The sodomitic discourse of these chroniclers was part of the Spanish justification of conquest, which used cannibalism, human sacrifice, and sodomy as excuses for conquering various peoples and questioning their humanity.18 However, as Trexler has warned, it would be folly to dismiss the Spanish reports of indigenous homosexuality as mere propaganda designed to support the conquest.19 Moreover, Trexler notes, the overwhelming majority of references to sodomy "occur alone, with no link to those other, more serious 'crimes.'"20 Finally, the statements of these authors fit with the seemingly ubiquitous presence of cross-dressing figures in indigenous societies of the Americas, and of Mesoamerica in particular, from before the conquest through today.21In one of many examples of chroniclers discussing sodomy, Francisco López de Gómara (Hernando Cortés's chaplain and confidante) stated that the men of central Mexico "were very much inclined to carnal acts, both with men and women."22 In Panuco, a Nahua area north of Veracruz, for example, there existed "houses of grand putos [faggots] where thousands of men publicly congregated at night."23 Gómara provides no analysis of the place of sodomy within Nahua discourse but simply uses the notion that Nahua men engaged in such activity to critique their behaviors and justify Cortés's actions.The Spanish apologists for the indigenous told a different story. Las Casas compared the indigenous peoples of the Americas to the classical civilizations of the West. The effeminate, cross-dressed sodomites became eunuchs, injured in some way and thus unable to complete their roles as men in warrior societies.24 Further, those Mexica youth who committed sodomy in the schools and temples did so with each other, not with older men.25 Las Casas believed that they displayed the same positive characteristics as the ancients, among whom those unable to perform their proper roles as men remained a valued part of society. At the same time, the Mexica rejected what Las Casas and the Catholic clergy considered one of the worst sins of the Greeks: pederasty.26 Las Casas seems to make a unique argument here: pederasty is truly evil, while sodomy between youth is not as problematic. This argument does not appear to have any intellectual parallels elsewhere in the medieval and early modern European corpus. Las Casas's arguments show that the chroniclers' various discourses about sodomy related closely to their divergent viewpoints on the conquest.27Some Spanish writers believed that the Nahuas' penchant for institutionalized sodomy made them necessarily less civilized than the Spaniards. Still, sodomy, as noted above, was a trope related to the chroniclers' analysis of the conquest, and those chroniclers, like Las Casas, who opposed the conquest denied the existence of extensive amounts of sodomy. Once a group was conquered, Spaniards rarely maintained an interest in their homosexual activities.28 Still, as the conquest spread to the more remote corners of the Americas, even at a significantly later date, the Spaniards almost invariably discussed sodomy, cross-dressing, and other behaviors that challenged European masculine norms.29The discourse of conquest that associated homosexualities with abominable sin and effeminacy first entered the hybridized indigenous narratives through mestizo and Nahua chroniclers.30 The sexual ideology in these writings was directly influenced by the chronicles produced by Spaniards.Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, a Mexica chronicler probably less His-panized than others, has little to say about sodomy.31 He states that the leader of the Nahua city-state of Coyoacan forced Mexica messengers from Tenochtitlán to return home wearing women's clothes as a penalty for the Mexica's aggressive behavior and to warn them against war.32 When the messengers returned to Tenochtitlán, the Mexica leader soothed their bruised egos by calling them brave and honorable.33 This story points to a discourse that connected war with masculinity; the leader of Coyoacan asserts his own masculinity and subverts that of the leader of Tenochtitlán (through his representatives). The chronicler Tezozomoc critiques this ritualistic subversion of Mexica masculinity.34The sexual worldview of Diego Muñoz Camargo, a late sixteenth-century mestizo historian of Tlaxcala, was more clearly influenced by the Spaniards. He wrote exclusively in Spanish and used the word bardaje (berdache), a term derived from Arabic, to signify a cross-dressing, cross-gendered figure.35 He states that while the Tlaxcalans did not punish these people, they did denigrate bardajes as effeminate: "They held the nefarious sin to be a great abomination, and sodomites were despised, thought to be lowly, and treated like women. They did not punish them, and they said to them . . . 'You evil and miserable men, is there (perhaps) a lack of women in the world? And you who are bardajes, who would take the office of women, would it not be better to be men?'"36 According to Muñoz Camargo, Tlaxcalans mocked bardajes in order to force them back to normative masculinity. Through his discursive critique of effeminacy, Muñoz Camargo attempts to reclaim Tlaxcalan masculinity.Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, a historian of Texcoco with a complex mestizo/indigenous identity, wrote significantly later than Tezozomoc and had even stronger Hispanic influences.37 According to Ixtlilxochitl, both the Toltecs and the people of Texcoco outlawed sodomy, and this "nefarious sin was punished in two ways: from the one who functioned as a woman, who was tied to a post, they removed the entrails through the lower parts. And the young men of the city covered him with ash, so that he came to be buried underneath it, after which they placed much firewood [on top] and set him on fire. As to the one who functioned as a man, they covered him alive with ash, tied to a post, until death."38The chronicles produced by Nahuas, mestizos, and Spaniards all form part of a particular genre in which the presence or absence of ritualized sodomy among the indigenous peoples related to a discourse of conquest. Those who viewed the conquest as a valid enterprise also viewed indigenous populations as fundamentally corrupted by endemic sodomy. Those who emphasized the conquerors' savage treatment of the indigenous populations argued that sodomy was rare and subject to punishment under indigenous codes of morality. We need to understand all of these elements not only in the context of the genre in which they were produced, but also in the context of the behaviors that the chroniclers observed. Thus, we turn now to a Nahua discourse on homosexuali-ties of the period immediately preceding the conquest.Unfortunately, representations of preconquest homosexualities can only be found in postconquest documents. Before the conquest, the Nahuatl-speaking peoples did not refer directly to sodomy in any writings that we have recognized at this time. While conqueror Bernal Díaz del Castillo discusses idols that represent acts of sodomy, no such images appear to have survived the conquest.39 Furthermore, while Nahua mythology contains many gender ambiguities and cross-gender activity, no direct references to homosexual sex acts exist.40 This contrasts with the situation in the Andes, where the ancient Moche peoples produced many pieces of pottery depicting homosexual acts.41Still, by analyzing some of the early postconquest depictions of preconquest times, modern scholars have shown that human sacrifice was related to Nahua cross-gender activity. Cecelia Klein notes several depictions of female sacrifice that suggest the transformation of men into women: men donned women's clothes in one ceremony, and in others male priests wore the flayed skins of sacrificed women.42 David Carrasco strongly supports this connection, noting that in one important festival linked to fertility and success in warfare, men became goddesses by wearing the skins of dismembered women.43Some postconquest documents that discuss religious ritual provide signifi-cant information regarding an early colonial Nahua discourse on homosexuali-ties. This discourse, while influenced by colonialism, contains many elements not tied to Spanish notions of homosexuality.44 Thus, while we do not have and cannot recreate a purely preconquest indigenous view of homosexuality, these non-European elements allow us to view an early colonial cultural formation that places homosexual acts within a matrix of ritual and religion.The sixteenth-century Codex Magliabechiano was created by a Nahua tlacuilo, a writer/painter who incorporated Nahua pictorial imagery into a running Spanish-language text. The tlacuilo probably painted the images and then told the stories to an interpreter or a bilingual scribe. The text contains much discussion of various sexual and other types of sins. The tlacuilo places all the sexual acts in the context of divination, celebration, or sacrifice. Sodomy is mentioned once, in a Spanish-language text describing a divination ritual, where it is termed "diabolic medicine." A healer brought to the ill person an image of the god Quetzalcoatl and then scattered 20 grains of maize on a cloth in front of the image: "If the grains left the middle empty, a sort of field surrounded by grains, it was a sign that [the patient] was going to be buried there, meaning that this person would die of that disease. And if one grain fell on top of another, it was said that the illness came from sodomy. And if the grains of maize separated, half to one side, half to the other in such a way that a straight line could be placed in the middle without touching any grain, it was a sign that the patient would be cured of the disease."45If sodomy caused disease and was related to death, what did this tell the Nahuas?46 It is unclear what is meant by sodomy here; the Spanish-language text does not go into detail. If the grains represented the human body, two grains on top of each other signified sexual activity—in this case sodomy.47 The image associated with this portion of the text (figure 1) shows a female curer throwing the grains onto a cloth in front of a rather diseased-looking man. Was the man a sodomite? Note that the man is seated immediately below the image of Quetzalcoatl, assuming a virtually identical position. Could the sodomy mentioned in the text signify a ritualized homosexual relationship between Quetzalcoatl and the man, only to be cured by another, this time heterosexual, ritualized relationship? While I find this suggestion intriguing, it does not fit with other evidence. In the closely related Codex Tudela, grains of maize and beans are thrown on a mat, and if one grain of maize lands on top of another, this indicates that sodomy caused the illness.48 The Tudela text specifies that the sick person goes to an "old sorceress."49 The rather obscure ritual requires some context, provided only indirectly by the Florentine Codex. There, diseases are cured in a variety of ways, often through supplications to the gods. A seventeenth-century Nahuatl ritual text shows that human sexual activity with gods or goddesses in some cases cures, and in other cases causes, disease.50 This same text states that excess and illicit sex could cause disease and death in crops and livestock.51 The Codices Magliabechiano and Tudela appear to refer to a dualistic relationship: sexual behavior can cause life or death, just as it can make one ill or cure a disease.The Codex Tudela also contains a text and image that refer specifically to cross-gendered activity and its relationship with both sodomy and the sweat baths: "Temazcatl: bath of hot water where they committed offenses to Our Lord . . . . And in this bath there were many men and women. Thus there, with the heat, they illicitly used [each other]: men with women, women with men, and men with men. And in Mexico they had men dressed in women's clothes, those who were sodomites and performed the offices of women, such as spinning and sewing. And some lords had one or two [of them] for their vices."52 Thus, the Spanish saw the temazcatl, a curing device, as a breeding ground for moral license, particularly sodomy. The connection between the temazcatl and the cross-gendered figures is unclear in this text. The Nahuas may have used the baths for a variety of sexual purposes, and the cross-gendered figures could have been added here to emphasize the nature of the acts performed. One notes the paradox: the baths, intended to cure ill people, inflicted them with the further "illness" of sinful sex. The translation from the Nahua moral framework, in which the sexual acts did not necessarily signify vice and sin, to the Catholic framework greatly concerned with sexual sin, caused this irony, this disjuncture in meaning.In addition to connecting sodomy (and, in the case of the Codex Tudela, cross-gendered activity) to disease, the tlacuilos placed the act in the context of sacrifice, punishment, and cannibalism. In the Codex Tudela, the preceding folios deal with sacrifice and the punishment of criminals, and the subsequent folios concern sacrifice and cannibalism. In the Magliabechiano, the various folios surrounding the text that mentions sodomy all focus on sacrifice. While these documents exhibit much Spanish influence, many of the connections placed in the text clearly relate to preconquest Nahua concepts.In the Florentine Codex, the worship of various goddesses included references to diverse sexual acts, but no deities were seen as representatives of either the Catholic concept of sin or the more modern concept of a stable, internalized, sexual identity.53 While Clark Taylor has stated that the goddess Xochiquet-zal was a goddess of homosexuals and others who engaged in nonreproductive sexual acts, I have found no evidence to support his claim.54 Though Nahuas identified Xochiquetzal with sexual acts of various kinds, she was not associated with any particular sexual identity.55 Based on her reading of an image of Xochiquetzal in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, Lisa Sousa argues convincingly that an aspect of Xochiquetzal was connected with sexual excess. "Seated backward on a throne, her head is turned around, her hair is disheveled, and she is weeping. Unlike most depictions of central Mexican women, this one shows Xochiquetzal's breast exposed. The goddess holds a container which is filled with what an anonymous scribe identified in a Spanish gloss as mierda."56 Traditional Nahuatl imagery shows that all of these things, particularly the unkempt hair and excrement, signified disarray.57 Women shown in such positions were connected with sexual excess and prostitution.58 Heads and feet turned backward symbolized to the Nahuas sexual and gender disorder.59 Furthermore, a lengthy seventeenth-century Nahuatl text shows Xochiquetzal as a goddess who seduces men.60 The main deity related to sexual activity and sexual excess, however, was Tlazolteotl.61Through Tlazolteotl, we can see a Nahua discourse that disparages sexual excess and lauds moderation.62 Tlazolteotl literally translates as "deity of trash," and she existed in a complementary relationship with Tezcatlipoca, a high-ranking male trickster god. Arthur Anderson and Charles Dibble, in their version of the Florentine Codex, translate her name as "goddess of vice," and Sahagún says that she is goddess of "carnal matters" (cosas carnales) and associates her with the planet Venus.63 Yet the Nahuatl text associates her with more than sexual vice. For Tlazolteotl was a goddess of sexuality in a variety of ways, and she ruled people's sexual desires, from their commission of sexual acts to their confession of those acts and other behaviors. Her power was thus double-edged: able both to entice people to engage in sexual acts (some deemed excessive) and to confess sexual transgressors and give them forgiveness.64 Moreover, one scene in the early colonial Codex Borbonicus shows Tlazolteotl giving birth, while another shows her surrounded by men with erect penises.65I could proceed with many more examples of gods and goddesses associated with sexual desires, but the point has been made: none are connected specifi-cally with homosexuality or any other sexual identity. Rather, they are marked by duality and a wide variety of sexual desires. Yet, as the colonial period progressed, these gods and goddesses became associated with the paired sins of idolatry and sexuality.The Florentine Codex provides a prime example of an early colonial discourse related to homosexualities. The epigraph with which I began this article is part of the series of omens in the codex. This omen, related to the day sign of the god Tezcatlipoca, was also the day sign of the slaves, who on this day were to be treated well and given pleasure.66 Anybody who mistreated a slave would receive a great penalty from Tezcatlipoca.While Trexler does not analyze this quote, because he states that it is merely an insult, Kimball finds great meaning here: "There was some kind of relationship between homosexual men and the trickster persona of the god Tezcatlipoca."68 Sahagún does, at one point in the Spanish translation, declare Tezcatlipoca a puto.69 This declaration, however, has no parallel in the Nahuatl text and clearly relates only to the declaration regarding Titlacauan (one of Tezcatlipoca's many identities). Moreover, Kimball ignores the fact that the text clearly uses the term cuiloni as a pejorative intended to gain control over the god and prevent the unpleasant sacrificial fate of the human. The statement continues, "Thus he said this to him, which was merely his word of torment. Yet, what good was it? For it was said that he had been aroused. Those to whom this had befallen were foolish."70The person to be sacrificed in the stead of his captive or his slave unleashed an epithet. But this epithet has meaning, for the sacrificial moment is closely related to ritualized sodomy. The images that accompany the text clarify this, as they show a seated man who appears sad, followed by a picture of his sacrifice by means of heart excision, followed by cannibalism, complete with the almost obligatory European trope of the person boiling in a pot.71 Tezcatlipo-ca's alter ego, Titlacauan, is mocked and insulted in his attempts to be a great warrior, to capture and sacrifice others. He is sodomized and feminized just as he is captured, sacrificed, and eaten. The forced feminization may remind us of Tezozomoc's story of the forced cross-dressing of the Mexica messengers. The feminization here signifies the penetrated man, present in the acts of both sodomy and sacrifice.Was the connection between sacrifice, cannibalism, and sodomy based in the European mind of our Franciscan, the Europeanized minds of his aides, or the indigenous minds of the Nahua people at the time of the conquest? Las Casas states that he had heard that the sacrifice of beautified and effeminate young men pleased the gods. But, as is common with Las Casas, he combines hearsay from a variety of locations in his statements regarding the people of Mexico.72In the text from the Florentine Codex, though, dualities build upon each other in such a way as to suggest that the discourse relates quite closely to Meso-american traditions. Tezcatlipoca can enrich, and therefore also punish, a person. Tezcatlipoca and Titlacauan are parts of the same god, existing in a dualistic relationship with each other. Tezcatlipoca represents both a strong masculine figure and a feminized god.73 A ritualized power inversion occurs: the person who beats the slave or loses the captive himself becomes a captive destined for sacrifice. The cuiloni, the one who is sodomized, becomes intricately connected with the one who is sacrificed and eaten. These dualisms and inversions stem from the relationship between sexuality and religious ritual.In the book of the Florentine Codex concerning the origins of the gods, one chapter discusses the purpose of Tezcatlipoca. The chapter shows that this god engaged in curing; the person needing a cure berated the god with a sodomitic insult. For Tezcatlipoca was extremely powerful and had been the one who made the person sick. Still, the sick person can only bring him/herself to insult Tezcatlipoca's alter ego, Titlacauan: "And when he placed [illnesses] upon people, it was when he was offended: that someone had not carried out his/her vows, that one had damaged the fast, that a man had lain with a woman; a woman had lain with a man, or that otherwise the fast had been broken . . . . And the one who was ill and very weak, who could not be cured, who could no longer struggle, sometimes scolded [Titlaca