Women Who Live Evil Lives: Gender, Religion, and the Politics of Power in Colonial Guatemala, and: Transcending Conquest: Nahua Views of Spanish Colonial Mexico (review)

Martha Few's and Stephanie Wood's books both offer fascinatingly nuanced views of Spanish colonial control over Mesoamerican people—or, rather, the contesting of that control and the assertion of identities, legitimacies, and cultural practices that undermined the ethnic stratification of colonial society. Few, using Inquisition trial records from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focuses on women accused of religious crimes in urban Santiago de Guatemala, the colonial capital of Central America. Wood examines sixteenth- through eighteenth-century pictorial documents from a variety of Nahua (and some other indigenous) communities in New Spain for native views of the Spanish invasion and the continuing Spanish presence. Both tell the unofficial story: the "conquest" was not a world-transforming event that converted native Mexicans into a class of cowed colony-builders; churchmen and colonial officials could do little to stem the tide of both cross-ethnic interactions and alternative religious expressions. By now, studies unmasking the holes in colonial hegemonies are hardly anything new, but both of these works are welcome additions to the literature on contested colonialisms.

Contributing to gender studies as well as colonial studies, Few uncovers a booming magico-religious underground in which mulata, mestiza, Maya, African, and even Spanish women trafficked in spells and potions, placed curses on each other or on their wayward lovers and other annoying males, and even started clandestine cults. During a period of social and economic change, when barriers between these ethnic groups were breaking down and new economic opportunities were arising, women creatively exploited cross-ethnic alliances and opportunities to turn arcane knowledge into ready cash. Typically characterized in the documents as mujeres de mal vivir, or "women who live evil lives," these women threatened simultaneously the authority of men over women, the Catholic church over "heretical" beliefs and practices, and the colonial elite over persons of indigenous, African, and mixed heritage.

Given that cases resulting in formal investigations are surely only the tip of an iceberg, one gets the impression that colonial women enjoyed a significant degree of success in subverting attempts to control their minds and, especially, their bodies. True, some women were punished with fines, confiscations of property, flogging, or confinement, but sometimes only after long careers as practitioners. Others evaded serious consequences by fleeing the city or by displaying contrition, blaming others, or appealing to their feminine weakness. Though men, too, could be hauled up for religious crimes, and Few describes some of these cases, the Inquisition overwhelmingly targeted women, a sign that upholding gender hierarchy was more important than maintaining religious purity. The fact that much of the magic under investigation had to do with sex and midwifery is further evidence of the centrality of gender and the control of female bodies to this particular colonial conflict. Women's private affairs were rendered public knowledge, as the colonial state sought to inscribe its authority on the female body; in turn, practitioners used the magical power inherent in their female bodies for purposes of self-advancement, vengeance for wrongs, healing, or simple economic survival.

Although the Inquisition lacked direct jurisdiction over Native Americans, indigenous individuals appear in these documents as witnesses, teachers of magical techniques, and suppliers of magical substances. The beliefs and practices themselves are an amalgam of native, African, and European elements. Few traces some elements to these respective origins but, magical practices worldwide being frequently very similar, on the whole they seem inextricably entwined into a shared symbolic complex, with such local touches as the use of opaque and gritty chocolate...