The Woman Who Turned Into a Jaguar examines gender relations in indigenous societies of central Mexico and Oaxaca from the 1520s to the 1750s, focusing mainly on the Nahua, Ñudzahui (Mixtec), Bènizàa (Zapotec), and Ayuk (Mixe) people. This study draws on an unusually rich and diverse corpus of original sources, including Ñudzahui- (Mixtec-), Tíchazàa- (Zapotec-), and mainly Nahuatl-language and Spanish civil and criminal records, published texts, and pictorial manuscripts. The sources come from more than 100 indigenous communities of highland Mexico. The book considers women’s lives in the broadest context possible by addressing a number of interrelated topics, including: the construction of gender; concepts of the body; women’s labor; marriage rituals and marital relations; sexual attitudes; family structure; the relationship between household and community; and women’s participation in riots and other acts of civil disobedience.
The study highlights subtle transformations and overwhelming continuities in indigenous social attitudes and relationships. The book argues that profound changes following the Spanish conquest, such as catastrophic depopulation, economic pressures, and the imposition of Christian marriage, slowly eroded indigenous women’s status. Nevertheless, gender relations remained inherently complementary. The study shows how native women and men under colonial rule, on the one hand, pragmatically accepted, adopted, and adapted certain Spanish institutions, concepts, and practices, and, on the other, forcefully rejected other aspects of colonial impositions. Women asserted their influence and, in doing so, they managed to retain an important position within their households and communities across the first two centuries of colonial rule.