Male Sexualities in Early Latin America

Chuchiak, John F.
The Sins of the Fathers: Franciscan Missionaries and the Sexual Conquest of the Yucatec Maya, 1545-1745

Apart from the recent research of Pete Sigal, little else is known about the topic of colonial Maya sexuality. Differing from the rapid political, economic, and social conquests, the conquest of indigenous sexuality was often a long and deeply contested arena of indigenous-Spanish encounters. The roots of what can be called the “sexual conquest” began with the initial missions of the Franciscan friars. The earliest friars produced vocabularies, grammars, sermons, and confession manuals as tools for their missionary effort. By analyzing these missionary creations, we can approach an understanding of the friar’s views of Maya sexuality. This paper will examine how the knowledge of the “Sins of the Fathers” served both the missionaries and the Maya in their
struggle for control over the complex nature of evolving colonial sexuality.

Herrera, Robinson
Unseating Santiago: Interspecies Intercourse in Late Colonial Guatemala

Throughout the colonial Americas, slaves of West Central African origin earned the reputation of inveterate runaways. More than a mere stereotype, statistics support the planter claim that slaves known as congos and angolas absconded more frequently than Africans of other ethnic origins. In colonial Costa Rica, for example, congos and angolas accounted for a full quarter of all known runaway slaves between 1600 and 1750, although they made up only about three percent of the total slave population. An examination of the African background of the runaways reveals that far from being a simple reflexive reaction, the flight of congos and angolas conformed to cultural patterns rooted in Africa. In seventeenth-century West Central Africa, slave flight involved tens of thousands of men and women who fled not simply to "escape slavery," but to seek out new patrons who could provide protection from the masters they left behind. In Central America, enslaved West Central Africans used the same tactic again and again, fleeing from one master to another in a quest for permanent freedom. Flight and seeking new patrons formed two sides of a strategy that West Central Africans successfully employed on both sides of the Atlantic.

Horswell, Michael
From Morisco luxuria to Inca sodomía: The Invention of Indigenous Sin in Colonial Andean Ecclesiastical Literature

The Doctrina christiana (1585), the body of official ecclesiastical texts used in the evangelization of the Andes beginning in the late sixteenth century, attempted to totalize the moral universe of the indigenous past and re-present it as error and sin in the present time of the colony. The authority for this discourse was found in the accumulated mores of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The heritage of conversion, especially from the context of the Spanish Re-conquest of Christian territory in Iberia, informed these texts. The Moor and Morisco were model “others” in the construction of the extirpation of sin on the peninsula. The Spanish missionaries learned to investigate local cultural practices and re-present those customs as sin. Similarly, Andean culture was appropriated and assimilated into Christian pedagogic discourse. The Church teachings and confession manuals I analyze in this paper were shaped in part by the chronicles and reports that the catechists and civil officials wrote from information gathered with the purpose of controlling the native population.

Just as the control of Moorish and Morisco sexuality became important markers of successful conversion in the re-conquered peninsular, indigenous Andean sexuality, especially non-normative sexuality, figured prominently in the ecclesiastical texts translated into Quechua and Aymara in the Concilio de Lima´s Doctrina christiana. I will explore the connection between the construction of luxuria in Reconquest conversion materials and the construction of sodomía in the Doctrina christiana. In particular, I will explicate the translation of sodomía into Quechua and consider how these translations contributed to the transculturation of indigenous Andean sexual practices.

Spike, Tamara
Healing Hermaphrodites: The Timucan Berdache

The Native American berdache simultaneously repelled and intrigued the first European explorers and conquerors. Hundreds of years later, they had much the same effect on early ethnographers. Despite this reticent history, a growing body of work on the native North American berdache had slowly emerged. Much of this work has been centered around ethnographies of twentieth-century berdache. Questions about the role of the berdache within groups that no longer exist, such as the Timucua of Florida, must be examined through a combination of historical research and comparative studies.
The Timucuan berdache shared many of the same characteristics as the berdache of other native communities. They dressed in clothing similar to the women of the culture, wore their hair in a fashion similar to women’s, performed many types of women’s work, and were characterized as being strong and robust. The specific work and duties of the Timucuan berdache- feeding and caring for the sick, and preparation and interment of the dead- are shared by the berdache of other cultures, who are perceived to have special talents for healing and planning funerals.
However, the Timucuan berdache seem to have occupied a special role associated with marginal tasks strongly connected to ideas about purity and impurity. It is possible that the berdache, like the Timucuan healers, shamans, and other sacred figures, were endowed with the special power to come into contact with the impure yet remain ritually pure, suggesting that contrary to European perceptions, the berdache occupied a high status within the community