Love and Marriage in Colonial Latin America

Love and Marriage in Colonial Latin America

Romance between young adults today is drastically different from that in centuries, and even the decades, before us. With the uprising of technology and advanced ways of communicating that neither our parents, aunts, uncles, nor grandparents had, intimate relationships have become cyber and impersonal more than anything else. My generation and more so the generation below me, will grow up forming bonds through AOL Instant Messenger, MySpace, and Facebook. Young lovers do not exchange hand written letters anymore. Nor do we send flowers for any particular reason. Instead, we send a touching e-mail or a free E-Card from a website such as hallmark.com. Virtual internet flowers have taken the place of a real dozen of red roses. Chivalry today consists of sending compliments over the Internet attached with correlating smiley faces, signifying that a significant other is interested. Relationships, whether marital or romantic, existing centuries ago in Colonial Latin America were both different and similar to those of today.

Several scholars have argued that romantic love in Colonial Latin America did not openly exist nor did it thrive until the 18th century. It was even said to be seen as a necessary precursor to marriage. In Ramon Gutierrez's 1991 study of colonial New Mexico, he found that in the early 1700's , the most frequent reasons given to a priest for marriage were religious or obligatory , usually enforced by the parents. By the turn of the 19th century, it became clear, according to Gutierrez that couples' reasons had drastically changed from collectivist to individualistic (Earle 22-23). Some researches disagreed with Gutierrez and believed that romantic love never penetrated into colonial Spanish America or if it did, it fell into disgrace at the turn of the 17th century. According to our text, a marriage almost always was between the same ethnicity and social class, but it was not uncommon for Iberian males to "have less formal relations with Indian, black, and casta women" (Burkholder 214). Men also almost always married younger women, women who were then held in a tight grip by their husbands. The wife of an elite class were chaperoned and closely watched, for a reputation of the family was at stake. Some were forbidden to have conversation with other males. (Burkholder 217)

It is interesting to note that despite the new formation of society and fusing of many different civilizations in the 16th century, the status of women did not significantly change. Their word had no significant play into the decision making. (Lavrin 388) What was significant was a woman's ability to carry a child. A girl's virginity was looked upon as blessed and holy in the Catholic doctrine. With that said, many women were merely concubines without any regard to the status of her family's character. This, in turn, tends to contradict that of Lavrin's point of view of women in Colonial Latin America. Prevalent in the lower classes of women, more likely black or Indian, was witchcraft. The sorcery allowed the women to have , what they believed, were sexual powers that a white woman did not have. With these powers, they would lure the elite women into paying for the black woman's sexual knowledge. With this, white women could use "spells" to control their husbands' authority over them, both sexually and emotionally. For, according to the law, husbands were legally permitted to punish their wives. (Stoner 1-3)

Another fascinating aspect of the love lives of colonial Latin Americans is the somewhat unknown homosexual tendencies of males. In Peter Sigal's book, Infamous Desire: Male Homosexuality in Colonial Latin America, he researches the same-sex tendencies that occurred from the 16th century to the beginning of the 18th century. A homosexual subculture was found in Portuguese colonies and were said to have been punished by judges under the crime of sodomy. These relations were most frequently between a younger and older man in an elite colonial class. Other offenders, who

...