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The Faces of Honor:
Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America
Colonial Period
The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America. Edited by Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-rivera. Diálogos. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998. Photograph. Illustrations. Map. Notes. Glossary. Index. x, 240 pp. Paper, $19.95. As the title to this anthology suggests, honor in Latin and Luso-American societies had many faces, and each of the eight contributors gives careful consideration to its contextual representations across race, class, and gender lines. In the introduction, editors Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera point to the broad range of interpretations of honor; depending upon the context, it could denote status, hierarchy, or virtue. Elites, plebeians, and slaves demonstrated honor in awarding honorific posts, in violent verbal and physical confrontations, and in courtroom testimonials.
The articles by Mark Burkholder and Ann Twinam offer an overview of honor as a status symbol and as a means to foster and maintain class endogamy throughout Spanish America. Burkholder, in particular, examines the vocabulary of rank, prestige, and honor expressed among male nobles in the titles, public rituals, and privileges, that distinguished them within their group. Twinam argues that elites in the eighteenth century employed gendered notions of legitimacy, birth and family, and race to decide who possessed honor. In considering the suit against Dr. Juan González, a homosexual priest in Peru, Geoffrey Spurling argues that his publicly acknowledged sexual indiscretions threatened notions of masculinity, thus placing witnesses in the awkward position of trying to find ways to defend his reputation and honor status. Muriel Nazarri gives a fascinating portrayal of the contradictory expectations held by Brazilian women of different class and racial backgrounds, and their distinct experiences of honor and shame in the "need to conceal" unwanted pregnancies and infanticide.
In the fifth essay, Johnson presents a composite picture of how provocative gestures, words, and violent acts formed a theatrical "subtext" of honor in colonial Buenos [End Page 169] Aires. Richard Boyer's piece challenges the assumption that passionate conflicts in Mexico over honor stemmed solely from sexual misconduct among elites. Plebeians also fervently defended honor in terms of "reputation and character." Lipsett-Rivera maintains that Mexican women were just as likely as men to resort to violence to protect their honor. Finally, Sandra Lauderdale Graham examines the divorce testimony of a nineteenth-century Bahian slave couple as a means of exemplifying the honor codes of married slaves.
This volume advances our comprehension of the "slippery" exchange of meanings of cultural codes such as honor, status, reputation, shame, and sexuality. The discussions presented in the text thus raise important questions. For instance, is it possible to generalize about "plebeian," "slave," or "elite" notions of honor? Did colonial subjects ordinarily distinguish between a "properly public culture" and their "interior worlds" (public/private spheres)? The essays present a fascinating array of case histories; most colonial subjects, however, consisted of couples living together. Future research should therefore explore further the complexities of gender relations in this context. How did couples attempt to reconfigure the meanings of honor as "women" and "men" as part of a conjugal unit, and as individuals facing quotidian realities that departed from "public and well-known" normative ideals?
The anthology is well organized and comprehensive but lacks concluding remarks that would provide a summary for undergraduates exposed to these ideas for the first time. The authors adequately demonstrate that honor was not a static concept borrowed from the Mediterranean context but was multifaceted, complex, and contradictory. The Faces of Honor remains an invaluable contribution to the cultural history of colonial Latin America and is likely to elicit further discussion and studies on the subject.
Nancy E. Van Deusen
Western Washington University
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The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America (review)
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