Gender and the Negotiation of Daily Life in Mexico, 1750-1856

6. The Head, Honor, and Aggression

How many people in middle-period Mexico read civility manuals? The simple answer is that it is not possible to know, but certainly the vast majority of the population was neither literate nor had access to books. So how did they become familiar with the rules governing politeness, and, more important , all the tenets governing the body? There is an intangible way that a common language of body symbolism developed in Mexico, as in other places and times described by historians. The theorists of the body have not been able to determine how exactly the ideas surrounding the body (or other matters) filtered down into a more generalized culture, but historians have detected this process in many instances. The language of symbolism was not something that was taught formally, except perhaps at the very highest levels of society, but it became universal because the plebeians were not isolated from the elites. They learned from the body language of their peers and were educated by example when judicial authorities acted upon their bodies . Lower-class men and women noted that those in the highest ranks used their heads to indicate their rank, for example, 6. The Head, Honor, and Aggression The Head, Honor, and Aggression 172 but also that they imposed a lowering of the head upon those that they considered inferior. In this manner a commonly understood vocabulary and grammar of the body was established without being written down through the daily interactions and the acts of violence that cemented it into the culture. The bodily metaphors that prevailed in Mexican culture can be detected not just in the literature surrounding civility and morality but also within people’s actions. There was an intersection between symbolism and clashes that can be seen in patterns of violence. Some of these patterns seem mundane (husbands attacked wives); others might seem more exotic (groups of women patrolling female sexuality) but they were really not so extraordinary. Mexicans of the middle period recognized and understood these patterns—they knew how to behave, regardless of whether they were participants or spectators. The scenarios of violence were part and parcel of their culture. Even elite members of society were aware of these frameworks, although they believed themselves above such violence. There was an unwritten code that people learned by living rather than by reading a manual, but it was not less real when fighting words were uttered, stones were raised, or knives were unsheathed, and a crowd gathered to see the action. Middle-period Mexicans assaulted particular places in another’s body because of the symbolism associated with that distinct part, and as such they created a grammar of violence that associated blows with messages. Scenarios of violence that encompass hitting different parts of the body, in particular the head (and its constituent parts: the face, eyes, mouth) and genital areas must be understood. What ties all these various forms of hitting together, however, is that all the blows were designed to restore honor and dignity. The Head Because of the centrality of the head in the symbolic language of Mexico, a very large portion of the reported aggressions were The Head, Honor, and Aggression 173 aimed at this part of the body. Thus heads dominate much of the criminal documents and consequently play a starring role in the scenarios of violence. Heads are actually constituted of different parts, each with its own symbolism. Although the head as a whole was the central symbol of honor, faces, mouths, eyes, and hair all had their own separate symbolic capital. Because the different sections of the head meant something distinctive in the culture, the scenarios of violence that played out with respect to each area was different and often implied particular weapons. For example, it was common to use sticks or stones to hit the head in general, but if aiming at the face, most people used a knife. The reasons for trying to cut a face were not the same as those for hitting the head. At the same time, the eyes and the mouth were not so much an objective as weapons of aggression . Thus the head was a complex area with many different target areas and scenarios of violence. The starting point is an examination of generalized aggression against the head. Because of the choices made in selecting documents for this study, and because only violence in which women were involved (either as...