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The Woman Who Turned into a Jaguar and Other Narratives of Native Women in Archives of Colonial Mexico

2019; Duke University Press; Volume: 66; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00141801-7300222

1527-5477

Leslie S. Offutt,

Latin American history and culture

The remarkable breadth and depth of Lisa Sousa’s cross-cultural study of indigenous women in highland Mesoamerica make it a fine contribution to the growing body of colonial Mexican ethnohistorical and gender and sexuality studies. Weaving together information from an extensive archival, textual, and pictorial source base, Sousa explores the mundane worlds of indigenous women from the 1520s to the mid-eighteenth century. The geographical and thematic scope of her study allows her to identify both similarities and region-specific practices among four major highland groups: the Nahuas of central Mexico and the Mixtec (Ñudzahui), Zapotec (Bènizàa), and Mixe (Auyuc) of Oaxaca.At the heart of Sousa’s study—indeed, at the heart of Mesoamerican societies—is the household, the institution that linked “public” and “private” spheres and in which women were central actors. Sousa argues that the binary public/private trope is artificial; the household and the community were two interrelated spheres, and women were at the nexus of both inter-household and household-community interactions (303). Elite women surface in her study, but Sousa is more broadly concerned with women across the social spectrum as she explores gender identity, social relations, and the impact of Spanish institutions, cultural attitudes, and legal systems over nearly three centuries.Sousa finds evidence of continuity as well as adaptation, particularly in marriage practices and rituals that were often “glossed” with Christian/Spanish practices that barely masked strongly held indigenous traditions. Friars were particularly dismayed by Mesoamerican practices of serial monogamy (which allowed divorce and remarriage) and polygyny, and by native peoples’ resistance to abandoning those practices. Over time these traditions gradually gave way to Spaniards’ narrower models of proper marriage and sexuality, which restructured social relations and constrained women’s ability to leave an abusive marriage. In a separate chapter on marital relations, Sousa looks at the social, economic, and political dimensions of marriage, establishing preconquest expectations of couples’ mutual obligations and locating married couples firmly in broader family and community networks. Here too, Sousa finds that “even with the introduction of Christianity, indigenous people continued to interpret the social, economic, and political significance of marriage in traditional terms” (108).Sousa’s examination of sexuality (chapters 5 and 6) uncovers “an entire cultural complex of intimate behavior” (147), and it shows how over time Christian concepts of sin and immorality infiltrated (but did not entirely replace) indigenous concepts of sexuality and morality. Sousa finds Spanish and indigenous attitudes regarding violations of the marriage contract closely aligned. Fidelity within marriage was of paramount importance, regulating sexuality and establishing the basis of cooperative labor arrangements, and violations of the marriage vow—adultery, rape—threatened the marriage, disrupted reciprocal economic and social relations within the household, and created conflict within the community.As scholars have long noted, Spaniards left critical Mesoamerican structures intact, understanding that through them they could more effectively establish political control; as Sousa ably demonstrates, this had the salutary effect of allowing for “indigenous cultural maintenance . . . even under the strains of colonial rule” (13). Thus, we see divisions of labor within the indigenous world more or less maintained, essential as they were for the provision of tribute. Indeed, Sousa’s close examination of labor at the household level reveals how wealth produced by indigenous women and men at the base was essential to the creation and maintenance of empire (304).This is an extraordinarily rich, complex, and eminently readable work of scholarship, and ethnohistorians will be well served to emulate Sousa’s approach to questions of cultural persistence and change, gender relations, and community in other regions of the Americas. Her mastery of materials in three indigenous languages, her dogged efforts to ferret out women’s voices in male-authored sources, and her fine storytelling abilities make this essential reading for scholars of colonial New Spain.