Witchcraft

One thing that i though was rather interesting in the discussion on witchcraft was the fact that amerindians were free from inquisitor rural.  So that they could not be the targets of blasphemy or heresy from religious courts.  Fray makes a point to state this in her introduction for the witchcraft report:  “On Her Death Bed.”  Fray notes that however these amerindians could still be used as witnesses for such crimes.  In the document, “On Her Death Bed, Maria de la Candelaria accuses Michaela de Molina of Casting Spells”  Maria de la Candelaria an indian is the accusing Michaela de Molina a mulata  and sells candy.  I would lake to note that Maria is a servant to one dona Juana.  I think this is important; on one side an indian servant gets ill and sues a mulata, who is in a higher class then indians.  Yet Maria has the help of her noble mistress and here daughter.  The only testimony brought forth in this document is that of Maria, dona Juana and her niece dona Rafaela, there was no testimony from Michaela.

According to the testimony from all of them stated a history between the two.  From the perspective of dona Juana and dona Rafaela the history seemed to be one involving “illicit” activities, one can assume sexual activities.  I would like to note on Lorenza’s case.  She too had seen the same man that Maria saw and was suffered similar symptoms.

As to what was expelled from Maria, it seems, at least to my knowledge (granted Im not a doctor) rather far fetched.  Bleeding through the nose generally means heard trama, while the vomiting of rocks, charcoal, towels, hair, cigs, etc. means that Maria must have ingested these ingredients.

The final thing I would like to note on, ties in with what I start with; the fact that indians can not be tried for witchcraft.  Through out the testimonies two indian women were brought up, one as a known witch, still this accusation was not against them.

Nahua Names

Rebecca Horn’s article on the naming practice of Nahuan children brought out many interesting facts, such as the “acceptance” of the catholic faith, social class, gender differences.  As a study of mostly baptismal records, Horn was able to indicate key factors that went in to the naming of nahuan children post-conquest.  Once again Spanish, mostly Christian culture dominated the realms of names, especially as time went on.  One must remember that the names present in this study are only of those Nahuans that subjected themselves to the Catholic faith through baptism.  Horn points out that for early baptisms, it would have been the baptizing priest or friars who would have named the child. I believe this to be very important due to many aspects.  First off, priest and friars are men, so when it came to  giving christian saint names, one would assume that the fathers would choose feminized male saints names over those of female saints.  This could be due to the devotions the friars had, or as Horn stated the lack of knowledge on the subject.

Naming of Nahuas was also affected by their social class and gender.  Horn states that female pre-conquest names tended to be more stereotypical while male names were more personal.  Horn points out that this, most-likly had something to do with act of marriage and the female joining the husbands kinship.  This lack of personalization of names followed into the post-cpnquest time period.  Horn also disscussed how ones class would determine their name or rather specail and sometimes Spanish surnames were gifted to the elite nahua.

Horn’s article shows how the spanish institutionalized something that would be considered something that would be personal:  one’s name.  Once again the Church had a hand in this cultural domination.

Allyson Poska’s “When Love Goes Wrong” discusses how local laws protected  under the Fuero came in contact under the watchful eyes of the Catholic Reformation Church, what could marriage be other than righteous and just (and therefore strictly adherent to church law)? In small Spanish diocese like Ourense, far away from the the secular and ecclesiastical powers, marriage was more an act of tradition than an act of religious fervor. As such, the peasants of Ourense ultimately cared very little for the Catholic Reformation Church’s opinions on the act of marital union. Most marriages followed traditional formats, with a private or semi-public exchange of a marriage promise being enough to bind a legal marriage. However, due to the schism in marital beliefs between the Reformation Church and the rural Spanish population served only to blur the line between a “legal” marriage or an “illegal” marriage and allowed the rural population to take advantage of various loopholes in marital law. For instance, the church recommended (forced?) the population to eventually make their marriage promise “legal” by giving it in front of a priest. Almost all of the population eventually did confirm their vows in front of a priest, but many considered themselves married for some time before doing so on private vows alone. This blurred the line between married and unmarried in many people’s eyes simply because what was once considered a binding oath could be considered an illegitimate promise simply because of the lack of a priest’s presence. Ironically, because of this action taken by the Catholic Reformation Church (who happened to be firmly against divorce and considered marriages permanently and spiritually binding) many couples were allowed to separate under allegations of false pretenses. Those legally married in the eyes of the church had a harder time with separation. To be frank, in the eyes of the church it was impossible. Most had to deal with it by way of physical separation, usually by fleeing secretly. However, there were loopholes even in the Church’s draconian divorce laws. For instance, the Church was strictly against forced marriages and didn’t consider them binding. The Church also would annul marriages if one or both of the wedded desired to take up the cloth. Because of local tradition and differing cultural beliefs from those of the governing Reformation Church, most of the people living in these rural areas were rather promiscuous. The rate of illegitimacy was between five and ten percent, much larger than the two percent boasted by a large part of Europe. All of this shows that although the Catholic Reformation Church was strict and staunch in its lawmaking, cultural flair around Europe (especially in areas far from the concentrated areas of power) could not be completely stamped out.

So recently we discussed the African element in Latin America.  For some countries this influence would prove to be powerful in shaping their countries culture.  For Brazil, the African element would be enormous.  As we know the portuguese, due to the control of the gold coast by settlements at Cabo Verde, controlled the African Slave Trade.  Due to this a higher percentage of slaves went to Brazil, Portugal’s only Latin American colony.

We all know of the horrors that came along with slavery.  The article “The Children of God’s Fire” does a good job portraying some of these atrocities.  It was written in the prospective of a portuguese doctor in 1793.  He describes the scare tactics used to keep the slaves aboard the middle passage in-order.  He explains that at no time are the Africans safe from the portuguese, while beatings and whippings are used to keep the Africans subordinate.

These slaves were sent to Brazil for economic purposes, such as farming sugar cane, mining, etc.  Women who could not due labor were used as nannies and house servants.  These women slaves would be important for the creation of the Brazilian Portuguese.  These slave nannies would care for and feed for the masters’ children.  These nannies would be the first contact with language that these next generation colonial brazilians would have.  So along with portuguese words and broken grammar, naturally, African words would be passed along as well.

MAny scholars argue as to the levels of inhumanity associated with Latin American slavery.  Some argue that slaves did not have it as hard in Latin America as in the North.  Well still one can not deny the horrors of the trade as well as the ownership of humans.  In Brazil folklure tells us of a buitiful black slave women named Chica da Silva, who uses her body to win over the heart of João Fernandes de Oliveira, a portuguese sent by the crown to regulate diamonds in the Brazilian State of Minas Gerais.

This was a segment of Cacá Diegues film Xica da Silva(1976).  Keep in mind the african elements shown here.  Most notably the music and the dress.

First of all when looking at these selections of speeches and documents, one must keep in mind that all of these were transcribed or written down after the Spanish conquest.  This is important because it is known that the Spanish were in the business of spreading Catholicism.  So of corse, after defeating the warriors, the peninsulares began their reign of political, ethnic, and cultural domination.  This is evident in the speeches most notably in the dialogues and the testaments at the end.  In the dialogues their is talk of “the Lord.”  This Lord can only be taken as the christian god, Christ, which would have been taught by the friers.  Greetings include the lord’s blessing, common again with teachings by missionaries.  The fact that the christian god is seen as the lord shows the domination of the spanish culture on the natives of meso-america.  The testaments at the end of the pdf show much more in terms of the cultural domination.  Amerindians have taken christian names, such as Martin, Maria, augustine, etc.  The presence of the christian god is also seen in these testaments.  The testament of Maria interests me as it is an amerindian women clearing her and some of her husbands’ debts.  First, the notion of debt in this testament is one imposed by the Spanish, or at least I presume it is.  This is due to, first of, the testament was made to Spanish executors, Miguel Garcia, Martin de Santiago, Anton Jacobo, and Juan de San Pedro, and secondly that the debt is to paid out in a monetary, peso.  Maria proclaims the debts as hers, even though some were acquired by late husbands.  None the less, Maria assumes these debts are hers and in order to make good on the debts, she is forced to sell her house.  Questions that come to mind, If not for the Spanish, would the Amerindian society have the notion of debt? and How far could a woman go to pay or rebuke a debt?