Sex in Colonial Mexico

This week in class, we discussed sexual sins and the Catholic Church’s response to them. The Church had strict guidelines regarding the most intimate details of married couples’ sex lives. The standard acceptable template laid out three overlying rules for sex. First, sex must be consensual. We learned about this aspect in last week’s class and by reading about it in Patricia Seed’s book. Marriage must be between two consenting adults, who married on their own free will, and not of their parents’. The second was that sex should only happen with the sole purpose being to procreate. The third rule was that sex should be unadventurous. If the sex was enjoyable and not purposeful and to the point, the couple had committed a sexual sin in the eyes of God (i.e. the Church). This rule is hard to understand viewing it in today’s eyes where just the opposite is the case. It seems like today, the number one reason/goal of sex is for enjoyment and the second, or “side effect” of sex is procreative. Of course these rules seem unrealistic and I wonder just how many couples obeyed them in the intimacy and privacy of their homes.

In our discussion groups, we discussed the court cases brought before the Church involving sexual sins. My group discussed the deflowering of Maria by Juan. In our eyes, this was just one example of how easily women claimed sex as a reason to sue a man over “lost virginity” and honor. Although it did not work out quite as Maria and her family had wished.

This week’s lecture and discussion topics were probably the most interesting materials so far this semester. It is so interesting to see the strict values the church hold the people to at the time and the court cases that result with those preconceived values.

Marriage, Love, and Free Will in Colonial Mexico

This week’s reading was of Patricia Seed’s book, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial America. In it, she discusses the changing ideals of colonial Latin America regarding love honor, and obedience, focusing on the desired ideals of the Spanish Catholic Church.

Seed predominantly writes about how the Catholic Church protected the freedom of marriage choice by allowing couples to be married, in spite of the wishes of the community or the couple’s family and protected them from rebuffs of their parents. These views were sort of revolutionary at the time, with the Spanish Catholic Church and the Church of England being the only groups that held those views of the major Western European religions. Although they commanded that children obey their parents, they held that God removed children from subjection to their parents when it came to the choice of marriage. Throughout her book, Seed notes the changes in parental authority throughout the 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th centuries. Later, in the 18^th century, as the balance of power shifted from the Church and more toward crown authority, marriages were more easily stopped by families opposed to their children’s marriages. Wealthy families especially held the upper hand, as they were able to use the royal courts to prevent marriages that they viewed as socially undesirable, which was, during the 16^th and 17^th centuries, an invalid reason. These changes were, in part, due to the shift in attitudes towards the importance of money and economic success. That is why, in the 18^th century threats of inheritance was viewed as a legitimate excuse to stop a marriage between two people.

Seed also discusses the meaning of love to these colonial Latin Americans. Their view of love meant nothing of what it does today. In the reasons why couples desired to wed, love, or at least our meaning of it, was not viewed upon as good. If a couple reasoned that they were in love and wanted to be married, they were looked at as foolish and immature individuals and believed that they were blinded by passion and could not think rationally. Instead of “amor” they would use “te gusta” to convey that they liked each other and that they were two compatible people who wished to marry. These views were very different to what I am used to in today’s culture, where just the opposite would be true. If a couple just said they “liked” each other and were “compatible” one would question their love for one another and a potential marriage. While, if a couple outwardly showed and confessed love to one another, however sickening it may look, we would believe that the couple genuinely loved each other.

This book really opened my eyes to the practices and beliefs of the colonial culture and their views on love. To my surprise, they were not as different in their beliefs on marriage and free will as our culture today.