Butterflies Will Burn: Prosecuting Sodomites in Early Modern Spain and Mexico

by Federico Garza Carvajal

As Spain consolidated its Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, discourses about the perfect Spanish man or "Vir" went hand-in-hand with discourses about another kind of man, one who engaged in the "abominable crime and sin against nature"—sodomy. In both Spain and Mexico, sodomy came to rank second only to heresy as a cause for prosecution, and hundreds of sodomites were tortured, garroted, or burned alive for violating Spanish ideals of manliness. Yet in reality, as Federico Garza Carvajal argues in this groundbreaking book, the prosecution of sodomites had little to do with issues of gender and was much more a concomitant of empire building and the need to justify political and economic domination of subject peoples. Drawing on previously unpublished records of some three hundred sodomy trials conducted in Spain and Mexico between 1561 and 1699, Garza Carvajal examines the sodomy discourses that emerged in Andalucía, seat of Spain's colonial apparatus, and in the viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico), its first and largest American colony. From these discourses, he convincingly demonstrates that the concept of sodomy (more than the actual practice) was crucial to the Iberian colonizing program. Because sodomy opposed the ideal of "Vir" and the Spanish nationhood with which it was intimately associated, the prosecution of sodomy justified Spain's domination of foreigners (many of whom were represented as sodomites) in the peninsula and of "Indios" in Mexico, a totally subject people depicted as effeminate and prone to sodomitical acts, cannibalism, and inebriation.

332 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2003

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

The introduction and first chapter of this informative volume are written in such scholarly brogue that they might turn off the average reader. But I would encourage them to continue, as once the language returns to the author's voice, it becomes an interesting report on sodomy in Spain and the New World and how the strenuous laws worked as a continuous excuse for empire and colonialism. The subtle humor invoked in the chapter titles and in the author's turns of phrase remind us how ridiculous such laws actually were. They might also be read as a warning against the repetition of history.

[Tina P · Rating 1 out of 5]

Accidentally selected this - did not read

[Yobaín Vázquez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Encantado con este libro que nos lleva a los inicios de la inquisición y de por qué se aferraron con quemar a homosexuales (o sodomitas). Lo hace desde una perspectiva en que entiende el pensamiento de la época, pero no por ello deja de mencionar que es parte importante para el colectivo lgbt.

Se pone de manifiesto que en toda época se ha tratado de encontrar en la disidencia sexual un chivo expiatorio que justifique posiciones severas. Creo que uno de los grandes logros de este libro es que muestra cómo va de la mano la homofobia con el nacionalismo y la xenofobia.

Nos muestran casos de España y de la Nueva España, pero no en un tono victimizante, sino que también se logra ver en estos procesos la manera de organizarse clandestinamente y las redes que incluían tanto a ricos y pobres.

Un libro que clarifica mucho sobre un pasado que pertenece a todo el acrónimo lgbt.