Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America

by Ann Twinam

Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, illegitimate offspring of elite families in colonial Spanish America appealed to the Council and Cámara of the Indies in Spain to purchase gracias al sacar legitimations. Their applications provided intimate testimony concerning their own lives, accounts of their parents' sexual relationships, and details regarding the impact of illegitimacy within their families and communities. Bourbon officials in Spain debated which petitions merited approval, and in the process forged policies concerning gender, sexuality, illegitimacy, and the family. Scattered throughout the Archive of the Indies, the petitions were difficult to locate until the author determined the pattern of how they were archived and was able to access this extraordinarily rich new source for Spanish American social history. For this book, she has not only analyzed the gracias al sacar documents of some 240 illegitimates, but also traced the histories of those involved in eighteen major archives in Spain, the Caribbean, Mexico, and South America. The collective biographies of the gracias al sacar parents, and of their illegitimate offspring—as infants, children, and adults—reveal a Hispanic mentality that consciously differentiated between the public and private spheres. Colonial elites distinguished between a private circle of family, kin, and intimate friends and a public world where status ( honor ) was negotiated with outside peers. This bifurcation was distinct yet permeable; an individual might "pass" to negotiate a public status different from a private reality. Thus, an unwed mother might enjoy the public reputation that she was a virgin, the bastard son of a priest might be treated as legitimate, and a mulatto could be transformed into someone white. The author explores how the probability for passing varied throughout the Spanish Empire, and how it narrowed as the eighteenth century drew to a close. She also demonstrates that the inability to conceptualize passing beyond the scope of the individual exacerbated social tensions prior to independence.

Genres: History, Sexuality, Gender, Family

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Historian. Her research area is Latin American colonial history of the eighteenth century, especially the issues of society and family, women and gender, sexuality and illegitimacy.

Reviews

[Kami · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this book was fascinating and far from being dry. Many of the life stories explored could practically be movie scripts but each meticulously researched. The depth and context it gave to colonial Spanish American life was unique to anything I've read before. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Benja Graeber · Rating 4 out of 5]

La sociedad hispanoamericana colonial era más versátil y flexible de lo que normalmente se cree.

Ann hizo un trabajo impresionante como historiadora social, reuniendo piezas de un puzzle de como los miembros de la sociedad colonial lidiaban con la ilegitimidad, el honor y como esto se relacionaba con el género.

Twinam describe y explica mediante ejemplos de los documentos de la Cámara de Gracias y otros organismos legales de la época como los miembros de la élite colonial describían sus transgresiones como el sexo extramarital,adulterio, espurio, abandono, entre otras faltas.

La dualidad en la que funcionaba la sociedad hispanoamericana entre el siglo XVIII y XIX, de lo privado y público, con un fuerte énfasis en el honor, puede parecernos extraño pero Ann logra que nos coloquemos en su posición, sin entrar en reduccionismos, sobre todo a la hora de lidiar con el concepto del género y definir la relación de las mujeres, el patriarcado y la masculinidad dentro de los códigos sociales y jurídicos que entraban en juego.