Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (review)

This excellent, complex book weaves dramatic narratives from the private lives of elite, eighteenth-century men and women from throughout the Spanish Empire. The details were presented in petitions to the crown for legitimation--the process of gracias al sacar. Puzzled by accounts of extraordinary efforts of upper-class colonials to have their birth status termed "legitimate" (contrary to fact), Ann Twinam embarked on an exhaustive quest to understand why being seen as "legitimate" was so important. This investigation took her to archives in Spain and throughout what had been the Spanish Empire, as she painstakingly pieced together impressive banks of individual data. This data includes 244 petitions of legitimation from 1700-1820, which also described the lives of 187 mothers and 187 fathers of petitioners (some had more than one child). This book is remarkable in presenting an empire-wide analysis of highly individual documents relating to private matters of sexuality and marriage. In the process of amassing data from throughout the Spanish Empire, Ann Twinam considered these petitions and cedulas from the perspective of a Bourbon social policy.

The stories of "hidden pregnancies" and public virginity, or public pregnancies and extended engagements, incorporated into the collective biographies of the mothers and fathers of illegitimate children, usually ended in marriage or abandonment. The very conscious separation of the private from the public reality plays an important part in these narratives. If the lovers were unmarried and suitable partners for marriage at the time of the birth of the child, the child was "natural" (hijo natural) and could be automatically legitimated by the subsequent marriage of its parents. This very common scenario did not result in a petition for gracias al sacar, because it wasn't necessary. However, if the parents did not or could not marry at the time of the affair (because one or both was already married, or because of religious vows, death, or incest), only a petition of gracias al sacar could remedy the situation of lost honor represented by inferior birth. Further, the condition of illegitimacy lasted for two generations, so being the legitimate son of an illegitimate parent could also result in various kinds of social discrimination against the son or daughter. Twinam vividly describes the overwhelming importance of legitimacy in colonial Spanish America for young men to enter a wide variety of careers: to attend university or the colegio, to be a notary, smelter worker, military officer, priest, lawyer, doctor, or officeholder in the local or royal bureaucracy. For women, the negotiation of a good marriage was the main issue, and whether honor could be passed on to children. While the question of inheritance was pressing as well (illegitimates were limited to a fifth of an estate if there were legitimate heirs), Twinam argues that gracias al sacar did not usually resolve this question.

The first two chapters provide a comparative context of legitimacy, including the evolution of marriage as an institution, the meaning of illegitimacy in Spanish America, and the relationship of honor to race in the New World. Together, these constitute an invaluable primer to any student of colonial Latin American culture. In the next several chapters, Twinam looks at the life course of the mothers, the fathers, and the offspring, including the latter's childhood experiences, and the ways in which an illegitimate birth influenced life opportunities for marriage, career, and inheritance. The third section examines the aggregate decisions of the Cámara de Gracias y Justicia (de Indias) on legitimations as Bourbon social policy. Finally, Twinam examines the effectiveness of gracias al sacar in resolving the social difficulties of those who petitioned for it.

Applications for gracias al sacar (a process known for centuries in Spain) grew from very few between 1717 to 1760 (when petitioners submitted little information...