Dangerous Speech: A Social History of Blasphemy in Colonial Mexico (review)

How can blasphemy enlighten us? In effect, societies reveal much about their values and mores by the way that their members swear and blaspheme. This excellent study examines colonial Mexico using what was then considered a crime—blasphemy—under the aegis of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Blasphemy was apparently one of the most commonly reported crimes to the Holy Office—representing about seventy percent of all the existing proceedings. It is strange that scholars of colonial Mexico and particularly those within inquisition studies have not written about blasphemy at any length since it was a crime which greatly preoccupied and disturbed colonial peoples. Instead, historians have concentrated on what seems to us more exotic—witchcraft, magic, or pacts with the devil—but which were not of such great concern at the time. This is an important and insightful book. It helps us understand how the renunciation of God or the Virgin could coexist with what was a profoundly religious and devout society. The juxtaposition of profound religiosity and this rather casual insult to devotion that blasphemy represented is very difficult to fathom but, nevertheless, Javier Villa-Flores does an excellent job in its elucidation. This study helps bring another degree of complexity and sophistication to our understanding of religiosity in New Spain. Until now, most studies of religion have either tried to decode the kinds of combinations and mixings that arise out of either indigenous or African religions with Catholicism, or they have examined the beliefs and practices of Spanish Christians. Villa-Flores looks at several groups within colonial society and shows how religion or its rejection was lived on a daily basis.

Blasphemy was a crime that was practiced by all social groups. Villa-Flores looks at many social and work categories: men and women (of Spanish and other racial derivation), sailors, muleteers, soldiers, and African slaves. The topic transcends the boundaries of these social and racial groups and allows for a better global understanding of religious practice within colonial Mexican society. The book also addresses heterosexual masculinity, which is not a topic frequently examined in most studies in the colonial period (which often only examine masculinity through homosexuality). Thus the book helps us to begin to develop a more complete picture of what it meant to be a man in New Spain both homosexual and heterosexual.

This book will be of great interest for specialists ranging from those who study speech and swearing, inquisition studies, religious studies, African diaspora studies, and, in general, specialists of colonial Latin America. Each of these discrete groups will find this study a valuable addition to their fields and will include his insights in their interpretative frameworks. It also answers the important questions of why so many Afro-Mexicans turned up in the Inquisition records. Diaspora specialists will be fascinated by Villa-Flores' account of how slaves used blasphemy to halt particularly harsh and cruel beatings. Apart from the specialist audiences who will appreciate Javier's work as part of this school of history, it is written in a style that is not overblown or so heavily dependent on abstruse theory such that it will appeal to a more general audience.