Sexuality And The Unnatural In Colonial Latin America

Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America brings together a broad community of scholars to explore the history of illicit and alternative sexualities in Latin America’s colonial and early national periods. Together the essays examine how "the unnatural” came to inscribe certain sexual acts and desires as criminal and sinful, including acts officially deemed to be “against nature”—sodomy, bestiality, and masturbation—along with others that approximated the unnatural—hermaphroditism, incest, sex with the devil, solicitation in the confessional, erotic religious visions, and the desecration of holy images. In doing so, this anthology makes important and necessary contributions to the historiography of gender and sexuality. Amid the growing politicized interest in broader LGBTQ movements in Latin America, the essays also show how these legal codes endured to make their way into post-independence Latin America.

In Sins against Nature Zeb Tortorici explores the prosecution of sex acts in colonial New Spain (present-day Mexico, Guatemala, the US Southwest, and the Philippines) to examine the multiple ways bodies and desires come to be textually recorded and archived. Drawing on the records from over three hundred criminal and Inquisition cases between 1530 and 1821, Tortorici shows how the secular and ecclesiastical courts deployed the term contra natura—against nature—to try those accused of sodomy, bestiality, masturbation, erotic religious visions, priestly solicitation of sex during confession, and other forms of "unnatural" sex. Archival traces of the visceral reactions of witnesses, the accused, colonial authorities, notaries, translators, and others in these records demonstrate the primacy of affect and its importance to the Spanish documentation and regulation of these sins against nature. In foregrounding the logic that dictated which crimes were recorded and how they are mediated through the colonial archive, Tortorici recasts Iberian Atlantic history through the prism of the unnatural while showing how archives destabilize the bodies, desires, and social categories on which the history of sexuality is based.

"Few decisions in life should be more personal than the choice of a spouse or lover. Yet, throughout history, this intimate experience has been subjected to painstaking social and religious regulation in the form of legislation and restraining social mores." With that statement, Asunción Lavrin begins her introduction to this collection of original essays, the first in English to explore sexuality and marriage in colonial Latin America. The nine contributors, including historians and anthropologists, examine various aspects of the male-female relationship and the mechanisms for controlling it developed by church and state after the European conquest of Mexico and Central and South America. Seldom has so much light been shed on the sexual behavior of the men and women who lived there from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. These chapters examine the variety of sexual expression in different periods and among persons of different social and economic status, the relations of the sexes as proscribed by church and state and the various forms of resistance to their constraints, the couple's own view of the bond that united them and of their social obligations in producing a family, and the dissolution of that bond. Topics infrequently explored in Latin American history but discussed her include premarital relations, illegitimacy, consensual unions, sexual witchcraft, spouse abuse, and divorce. Lavrin's opening survey of the forms of sexual relationships most discussed in ecclesiastical sources serves as a point of departure for the chapters that follow. The contributors are Serge Grunzinski, Ann Twinam, Kathy Waldron, Ruth Behar, Susan Socolow, Richard Boyer, Thomas Calvo, and María Beatriz Nizza da Silva. Asunción Lavrin is a professor of history at Arizona State University at Tempe. Her 1995 book, Women, Feminism, and Social Change in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, 1890-1940, won the Arthur P. Whitaker Prize from the Middle Atlantic Council on Latin American Studies.

In Sins against Nature Zeb Tortorici explores the prosecution of sex acts in colonial New Spain (present-day Mexico, Guatemala, the US Southwest, and the Philippines) to examine the multiple ways bodies and desires come to be textually recorded and archived. Drawing on the records from over three hundred criminal and Inquisition cases between 1530 and 1821, Tortorici shows how the secular and ecclesiastical courts deployed the term contra natura—against nature—to try those accused of sodomy, bestiality, masturbation, erotic religious visions, priestly solicitation of sex during confession, and other forms of "unnatural" sex. Archival traces of the visceral reactions of witnesses, the accused, colonial authorities, notaries, translators, and others in these records demonstrate the primacy of affect and its importance to the Spanish documentation and regulation of these sins against nature. In foregrounding the logic that dictated which crimes were recorded and how they are mediated through the colonial archive, Tortorici recasts Iberian Atlantic history through the prism of the unnatural while showing how archives destabilize the bodies, desires, and social categories on which the history of sexuality is based.

For the preconquest Maya, sexuality was a part of ritual discourse and performance, and all sex acts were understood in terms of their power to create, maintain, and destroy society. As postconquest Maya adapted to life under colonial rule, they neither fully abandoned these views nor completely adopted the formulation of sexuality prescribed by Spanish Catholicism. Instead, they evolved hybridized notions of sexual desire, represented in the figure of the Virgin Mary as a sexual goddess, whose sex acts embodied both creative and destructive components. This highly innovative book decodes the process through which this colonization of Yucatan Maya sexual desire occurred. Pete Sigal frames the discussion around a series of texts, including the Books of Chilam Balam and the Ritual of the Bacabs, that were written by seventeenth and eighteenth century Maya nobles to elucidate the history, religion, and philosophy of the Yucatecan Maya communities. Drawing on the insights of philology, discourse analysis, and deconstruction, he analyzes the sexual fantasies, fears, and desires that are presented, often unintentionally, in the "margins" of these texts and shows how they illuminate issues of colonialism, power, ritual, and gender.

Organized around three central themes - control and repression; the politics and culture of resistance; and sexual transgression as affirmation of marginalized identity - this intriguing collection will challenge and inform conceptions of Latin American sexuality.

This book defies long standing assumptions about indigenous societies in the Americas and shows that non-heteronormative sexualities were already present among native peoples in different regions of what is now Latin America before the arrival of European colonizers. Presenting data collected from both literature and field research, the authors give examples of native queer traditions in different cultural regions, such as Mesoamerica, the Amazon and the Andes, and analyze how colonization gradually imposed the models of sexuality and family organization considered as normal by the European settlers using methods such as forced labor, physical punishments and forced marriages. Building upon post-colonial and queer theories, Queer Natives in Latin America: Forbidden Chapters of Colonial History reveals a little known aspect of the colonization of the Americas: how a bureaucratic-administrative, political and psychological apparatus was created and developed to normalize indigenous sexuality, shaping them to the colonial order.

"Latina Performance is a densely theorized treatment of rich materials." --MultiCultural Review "Arrizón's important book revolves around the complex issues of identity formation and power relations for US women performers of Latin American descent." --Choice Latina Performance examines the Latina subject whose work as dramatist, actress, theorist, and/or critic further defines the field of theater and performance in the United States. Alicia Arrizón looks at the cultural politics that flows from the intersection of gender, ethnicity, race, class, and sexuality.

Now available in a fully-revised and updated second edition, A History of Modern Latin America offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the rich cultural and political history of this vibrant region from the onset of independence to the present day. Includes coverage of the recent opening of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba as well as a new chapter exploring economic growth and environmental sustainability Balances accounts of the lives of prominent figures with those of ordinary people from a diverse array of social, racial, and ethnic backgrounds Features first-hand accounts, documents, and excerpts from fiction interspersed throughout the narrative to provide tangible examples of historical ideas Examines gender and its influence on political and economic change and the important role of popular culture, including music, art, sports, and movies, in the formation of Latin American cultural identity Includes all-new study questions and topics for discussion at the end of each chapter, plus comprehensive updates to the suggested readings

Gender and Sexuality in Latin American Horror Cinema explores the different mechanisms and strategies through which horror films attempt to reinforce or contest gender relations and issues of sexual identity in the continent. The book explores issues of machismo, marianismo, homosociality, bromance, among others through the lens of horror narratives and, especially, it offers an analysis of monstrosity and the figure of the monster as an outlet to play out socio-sexual anxieties in different societies or gender groups. The author looks at a wide rage of films from countries such as Cuba, Peru, Mexico and Argentina and draws points of commonality, as well as comparing essential differences, between the way that horror fictions – considered by many as low-brow cinema - can be effective to delve into the way that sexuality and gender operates and circulates in the popular imaginary in these regions.