Daily Life In Colonial Latin America (9 page)

This chapter addresses sexuality, affection, and attraction
outside marriage, including both heterosexual and homosexual relationships and
the romantic lives of priests who were sworn to celibacy. Historians working in
periods before the advent of widely available and highly effective birth
control methods have the advantage of following the birth of children outside
marriage as one measure of premarital and extramarital relations. Children born
out of wedlock become the embodiment of extramarital sex and a measure of its
frequency among heterosexuals. Another indication of affective life is the fact
that enslaved Africans and their descendants, whether or not they were formally
married, sometimes took enormous risks to find their mates or to visit them on
a nearby plantation, a fact that provides a clue to the deep attachment some
people felt for one another. Homosexual relationships are more difficult to
find in the past, and statistics on children born out of wedlock are
irrelevant, obviously. In recent years, considerable time and creativity have
been devoted to unearthing evidence of homosexual relationships, so far
primarily between men. What is clear is that the church as an institution
fought an uphill battle in its attempt to control sexuality and contain it in
the approved channel of reproduction within marriage while seeking to eliminate
same-sex relations altogether. Meanwhile, individual priests were almost as
likely as their flocks, some would say more likely, to be overcome by their
passions and violate their celibacy, sometimes taking advantage of their
position of power over their parishioners to make demands for sexual favors.

While colonial elites seem to have gone to great lengths to
achieve at least the appearance of abiding by the church’s social and sexual
rules, evidence abounds of the church’s failure to control sexuality
effectively among the common people during the period. This chapter will
explore some of the differences in the romantic and sexual relationships of
people of different social classes.

SEX AND SIN

There is considerable evidence that the indigenous peoples
of the Western Hemisphere prior to the arrival of the Europeans held views on
matters of sex, sin, and their relationship to each other that differed, in
some cases radically, from those of the 15th- and 16th-century Roman Catholic
Church. Some histories of the pre-Columbian period claim there was no concept
equal to the church’s notion of sin and that some indigenous societies included
sexuality in public ceremonies and prohibited not sex itself, but sexual
excess. With the arrival of the Iberians, however, came the misogynist linking
of sexuality with women and the devil, who together had achieved the banishment
of man from paradise. The ideal posed by the church for women became the Virgin
Mary, an impossible model, as some historians have pointed out, since Mary was
both a virgin and a mother.

In addition to bringing to the Americas a concept of sex
linked to sin, the church also brought a deep aversion to sex acts between men,
something that apparently had not been forbidden in at least some pre-Columbian
societies. Even before the Inquisition arrived in the colonies, the church had
succeeded in making sodomy illegal. Some historians of sexuality have observed
that the church forbade homosexuality primarily because of the threat posed to
patriarchy and the gender system by a man playing the sexual role of a woman.
Their thesis draws strength from the fact that the partner playing the active
role in a sexual act between men was not subjected to much criticism in trials
before the Inquisition.

Some non-Christian American religions have retained a view
of sexuality that diverges widely from that of the church; Afro-Brazilian
Candomblé does not hold non-reproductive sex to be sinful by definition, nor
does it forbid sexual acts between members of the same gender. In the colonial period,
however, the church was the unchallenged creator and arbiter of moral
standards; there were no other institutions capable of balancing or challenging
that power.

PREMARITAL SEX

Despite the power of the church over their lives, it may be
that the common people of the colonial period clung to some of the mores and
practices that had characterized the pre-Columbian era, and indeed many of the
common people of colonial Latin America do seem to have believed that sex
between two unmarried people was not sinful. In addition, it seems that given
the hardships of peasant life and the key role played by the wife in the
peasant household, among rural people a woman’s virginity occupied a position
low on the list of assets to consider in the choice of a wife. Virginity in
one’s intended might be a nice feature, but documentation from the period shows
that it was not considered a necessity by young men seeking a mate. So while
elites attempted to abide by fairly rigid social rules concerning premarital
sex, the records of the lives of the common people demonstrate a more
freewheeling approach that granted considerable latitude to unattached women
whether widows or young unmarried women.

In-Laws and Blood Relationships

The frequency of sex before marriage emerges not only in
baptismal records, where a baptized child is identified either as an
hijo
legítimo
(legitimate child) or an
hijo natural,
but also in marriage
applications that include dispensations of impediments to marriage. According
to canon law, the legal code of the Roman Catholic Church, there were several
“impediments” to marriage, including a relationship by blood (e.g., being
cousins), as well as various relationships considered incestuous. These
incestuous relationships were based not only on blood relationships, like the
modern secular definition of incest, but also on in-law relationships and those
created by certain commitments. In the late colonial period, canon law required
those who fell into categories defined as incestuous to apply for dispensation
of the impediment that resulted. If, for instance, a man wished to marry his
brother’s widow—not uncommon in a situation where life expectancy was short and
the dangers of rural life were many—the couple had to apply for a waiver of the
impediment posed by their relationship, a link known as
afinidad lícita
(legal
relationship). Otherwise the relationship between this former brother-in-law
and sister-in-law would prevent their marriage.

Most applications for church waivers of impediments to
marriage dealt with blood relationships, especially in small villages that
might have been founded by two or three couples whose offspring would all be
related within a few generations. In addition, though, dispensations were often
sought for
afinidad ilícita
(illicit relationship), and it is from these
documents that we get an indication of the frequency of premarital and
extramarital sex. When the couple met with their priest to state their intent
to marry, the interview might reveal an illicit relationship that required
dispensation from the archdiocese. Records of applications for this waiver
reveal a high incidence of premarital sex, although this did not deter couples
from marrying. Young men of the popular classes seem to have attached little
significance to the past sex lives of their chosen mates; other considerations
weighed more heavily in the choice of a partner.

One suitor explained to a dismayed priest his reasons for
choosing to marry a relative who, even before they began their premarital
relationship, had not been a virgin: he was alone in the world, his lands were
intermingled with those of his intended’s father, widespread knowledge of the
sexual relationship he had with this young woman would prevent him from finding
another partner, and he wished to clear his conscience and avoid a conflict
with the girl’s father. His intended explained that she had begun her sexual
relationship with her suitor because of “human weakness,” out of youthful
ignorance and the fact that he was working for her father and living in the
same house with her, and now she wanted to marry him to escape her father’s
poverty and the control of her stepmother. She admitted that this was not her
first sexual relationship.

Other applications for dispensation of impediments to
marriage give similar reasons for wanting to marry someone with whom there was
an impediment of blood or incestuous relations. One young man sought to marry
because he was an orphan whose guardian had recently died leaving him with no
place to go. A girl admitted she was already sexually involved with her suitor
and wished to marry because she was homeless after being put out of the house
of her stepfather. When one suitor sought the dispensation of his intended’s illicit
relationship with his brother and two of his cousins, the priest wondered why
he would want to marry such a girl, but the young man refused to be budged in
spite of the past experience of his bride-to-be. One engaged girl had sexual
relations with a man other than her fiancé, but she assured the priest that it
was not based on any commitment between them but was strictly a casual event;
her suitor was unfazed. In another case, a young woman was pregnant by her
mother’s suitor, but about to marry someone else very soon; both mother and
daughter were married to their suitors shortly thereafter.

Virginity, Honor, and Practical
Considerations

In some cases, marriage was delayed due to the poverty of
the suitor. Under these circumstances, the couple would frequently begin a
sexual relationship. When the young woman became pregnant, they sometimes
attempted to “cover her honor” by speeding up the marriage.

Certainly, there were exceptions to the low value attached
to virginity by those of the popular classes. One rural woman ran away from her
village, leaving her suitor of many years, because she feared for her life if
he found out about her previous relationship with his brother, although the
brother was long dead. In another instance, an application to waive an
impediment shows a father’s fears that if his daughter did not quickly marry
the only suitor who had appeared, she would lose her virginity and increase the
difficulty of finding a partner. In addition, one study of judicial records of
sexual assault in the late colonial period shows that women’s accusations of
rape were rarely taken seriously, and that victims had almost no hope of
obtaining a favorable verdict if they had prior sexual experience. So the
historical record seems to be contradictory regarding the importance of women’s
virginity during the period. Indeed, the difference may lie in the nature of
the documents themselves (i.e., criminal assault cases versus applications for
marriage).

In any case, evidence of concerns related to the choice of
a marital partner from a rural area of eastern Guatemala at the end of the
colonial period shows that the Euro-Catholic value system with its equation of
women, sex, and sin had not yet extended its control over the population in the
matter of selection of a mate. The documentation also shows that the sexual
double standard had little influence on the real expectations that men and
women had of each other. While there were certainly some exceptions to this
rule of the slight importance of a woman’s personal sexual history, the weight
is definitely on the side of practical rather than ideological considerations.
Not that chastity and fidelity in a woman were not desirable, but material
considerations took precedence.

The Upper Classes and Premarital Sex

The examples above give some idea of the frequency of
premarital sex and its social significance among the common people. Among
elites, rules were considerably more strict, and women could pay a high price
for premarital sex. Since a formal commitment to marry was almost as binding as
marriage itself, couples often began their sexual relationship during the
engagement period. Pregnancy often complicated matters. While marrying before,
or in some cases even after, the birth of the child would rescue the family name,
the woman was totally dependent on her family to keep her out of sight until
the baby was born and then help decide what to do with it. If the engagement
went forward to formal marriage, the child, categorized as an
hijo natural
(child
of unmarried parents), although born before the marriage, was easily
legitimized, and there was no shame attached to the pregnancy and birth.

Sometimes an engaged couple needed to wait for official
permission from the Spanish or Portuguese crown or for the resolution of some
family matter before marrying. Unfortunately for a woman who became pregnant
before the marriage was performed, plans to marry sometimes fell through. If
the suitor changed his mind, or if his employment took him away from his
intended and his return was delayed, or worse still, if he were killed, his
pregnant fiancé found herself in an unenviable position. Elite families went to
great lengths to conceal the pregnancy of an unmarried daughter or sister,
since this occurrence threatened to make another marriage an impossibility for
her and cast a stain on the honor of the whole family, thus diminishing the
marriage prospects for all family members. At times, the newborn might be
brought into the household under the fiction that it was an orphan and even be
granted legitimacy at some point, but the honor of the child’s unwed mother was
lost if word spread that she had parented a child.