Indigenous and Black Confraternities in Colonial Latin America

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javiera Jaque Hidalgo ◽  
Miguel Valerio
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Colonial Latin America ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Colonial Society ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Racial Hierarchies

Employing a transregional and interdisciplinary approach, this volume explores indigenous and black confraternities –or lay Catholic brotherhoods– founded in colonial Spanish America and Brazil between the sixteenth and eighteenth century. It presents a varied group of cases of religious confraternities founded by subaltern subjects, both in rural and urban spaces of colonial Latin America, to understand the dynamics and relations between the peripheral and central areas of colonial society, underlying the ways in which colonialized subjects navigated the colonial domain with forms of social organization and cultural and religious practices. The book analyzes indigenous and black confraternal cultural practices as forms of negotiation and resistance shaped by local devotional identities that also transgressed imperial religious and racial hierarchies. The analysis of these practices explores the intersections between ethnic identity and ritual devotion, as well as how the establishment of black and indigenous religious confraternities carried the potential to subvert colonial discourse.

Time and Christianity in Early Latin America

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-38
Author(s):  
Matthew O'Hara
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
American Christianity ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
History Of

The arrival of Christianity in the Americas and its long-term development throughout the colonial era were closely connected to questions of time—whether the human experience and manipulation of time, the crafting of historical memory, or the imagining of potential futures. Exploring classic and recent scholarship on the colonial era, this chapter considers some of the ways that the history of Christianity in early Latin America is also a history of time. This chapter focuses on the viceroyalty of New Spain—Central Mexico in particular—but also makes some references to scholarship from other parts of Spanish America. The centering of attention on time starts a productive dialogue within the historiography on early Latin American Christianity—a conversation that steps beyond a tired debate about the relative “Europeanness” or “indigeneity” of post-conquest cultures, focusing, instead, on unique ways of being that emerged out of the remarkable convergence of intellectual traditions and cultural practices in the colonial world.

scholarly journals Songs between cities: listening to courtesans in colonial north India

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
RICHARD DAVID WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
North India ◽  
Language Politics ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Colonial Society ◽  
Musical Skills ◽  
Female Singers

AbstractIn the aftermath of 1857, urban spaces and cultural practices were transformed and contested. Regional royal capitals became nodes in a new colonial geography, and the earlier regimes that had built them were recast as decadent and corrupt societies. Demolitions and new infrastructures aside, this transformation was also felt at the level of manners, sexual mores, language politics, and the performing arts. This article explores this transformation with a focus on women's language, female singers and dancers, and the men who continued to value their literary and musical skills. While dancing girls and courtesans were degraded by policy-makers and vernacular journalists alike, their Urdu compositions continued to be circulated, published, and discussed. Collections of women's biographies and lyrics gesture to the importance of embodied practices in cultivating emotional positions. This cultivation was valued in late Mughal elite society, and continued to resonate for emotional communities of connoisseurs, listeners, and readers, even as they navigated the expectations and sensibilities of colonial society.

scholarly journals Sodomitical Butterflies: Male Homosexual Desire in Colonial Latin America

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph James Wawzonek
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Complete Analysis ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Colonial Latin America ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of

Despite the vast research done by contemporary historians concerning the history of sexuality, relatively little is known about gender and sexual identities in what is now Latin America. Much of what is known has been altered by the experiences and backgrounds of historians in this field, leading to interpretations which are either dismayingly negative or wholly positive. Some publications focus more on inference than fact, or ignore much of the context for why homosexuality and non-binary gender identity were treated as they were by Spanish colonists and conquistadors. This paper aims to construct a more complete analysis of sodomy throughout the history of colonial Latin America by comparing existing discourses regarding sodomy in colonial Latin America, as well as a few select colonial documents and court cases. An evaluation of this documentation reveals that the nature of sodomy in Spanish America is too complicated to describe in a binary manner. Authority did not always condemn homosexuality outright, and though most criollos were not for same-sex relations, some had more neutral feelings towards homosexual desires. This anaylsis adds to the growing body of research regarding American sexuality before and after European ideology altered continental perspectives. In using publications with varying perspectives, the role of male homosexuality, the perception of sodomy, the culture of honour in regards to sodomy, and the consequences of same-sex desire in Spain's American colonies can be better understood.

Religion and Race in the Early Modern Iberian Atlantic

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica L. Delgado ◽  
Kelsey C. Moss
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Colonial Latin America ◽  
The West ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Religion And Race ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Modern Era

This chapter reviews the scholarly treatment of religion and race in the early modern Iberian Atlantic world and colonial Latin America and suggests new directions for research. Through a critical reflection of the place that Spain and colonial Latin America have held in histories of race in the West, the chapter challenges historians of the Americas to rethink their understanding of the relationship between religion and race in the early modern era. It highlights processes and ideologies visible in Spanish America and calls for investigation into similar dynamics in the Anglophone colonies.

A Marginal Man: Luis of Saric and the Pima Revolt of 1751

1988 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-77
Author(s):  
Roberto Mario Salmón
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Colonial Latin America ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Mixed Blood ◽  
Geographical Factors ◽  
History Of

The history of colonial Latin America can be told in terms of the relations between Spaniards, mixed blood frontiersmen, and Indians. In Mexico, Indians figured as significantly as did political and geographical factors in determining the nature and direction of Spanish-Mexican advance and settlement. The Spaniards were ever desirous to learn more about the Indians, especially if they had cultures and economies worth exploiting. But the Indians seldom submitted peacefully to these strange men who spoke of God and king and insisted on a new way of life. Indian chieftains only reluctantly gave up positions of tribal control and they remained prepared to foment sedition and rebellion against the Spanish and Mexican colonizers. This rebellion occurred often on the fringes of Spanish America.

scholarly journals Bourbon Absolutism and Marriage Reform in Late Colonial Spanish America

2003 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steinar A. Saether
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Family Formation ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Colonial Latin America ◽  
Marriage And Family ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Marriage Reform

The study of marriageways in colonial Latin America has altered and deepened our understanding of the societies and cultures within the Spanish and Portuguese empires of the New World. During the last thirty or forty years a series of studies have explored the complex and varied patterns of marriage and family formation in colonial Latin America. Inspired by the work of Peter Laslett, Lawrence Stone and Louis Flandrin among others, historians of the region have produced a rich historical literature on the demographic, social and cultural aspects of colonial marriageways. Most studies have focused on the late colonial period, and the years after 1778 when the Pragmática sanción de matrimonios (first issued in Spain in 1776) was extended to Spanish America. One effect of the new law was an astonishing outpouring of reports, questions, lawsuits and regulations concerning marriage, which in turn have been seized upon by historians to reconstruct important aspects of late colonial Latin American societies. Despite the frequent use of these sources, the legislation itself has received little serious attention, and several basic misunderstandings prevail regarding its background and meaning. As a consequence, the political implications of marriage have been poorly understood.

scholarly journals Introduction: Canon Law and its Practice in Colonial Latin America

2016 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-11
Author(s):  
Jorge E. Traslosheros
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Colonial Latin America ◽  
Current State

The three papers included here, written by Ana de Zaballa, Pilar Latasa, and Gabriela Ramos, constitute a highly professional effort within the study of canon law in colonial Spanish America. These papers allow us to perceive how closely linked pastoral concerns, legal imagination, and judicial practices were during that period. To fully appreciate the importance of these four investigations, we must first briefly lay out the current state of academic studies in canon law in “las Indias Occidentales,” what today is generally called viceregal or colonial Spanish America.

Sex, Honor, and Devotion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Single Women ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Colonial Latin America ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Feminine Ideals ◽  
Religious Landscape ◽  
Over Time

Chapter 3 traces how non-elite single women navigated their moral status and developed alliances with the Catholic Church in the shifting religious landscape between 1700 and 1770. Although scholars have examined the ways in which elite women in colonial Spanish America took advantage of loopholes and the distance between public honor and private sexual matters, the experiences of non-elite women remain unclear. Wills highlight how laboring unmarried women invoked feminine ideals other than chastity and enclosure through their enthusiastic participation in confraternities and Third Orders, contributions to the spiritual economy as pious benefactors, and complex alliances with local priests. Much as scholars recognize that race in colonial Latin America was a flexible category and individuals might count multiple racial identities simultaneously or change their racial identity over time, these findings illustrate how poor single women took advantage of alternative feminine ideals and claimed moral status within their communities.

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