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

Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America. By Ann Twinam (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 447 pp. $60.00

Many years ago, engaged in dissertation research in Medellin, Colombia, the author encountered a curious document. A recently arrived royal official had addressed a local merchant of illegitimate birth in public without using "Don," the term of honor. Gabriel Muñoz, the merchant, was incensed at what he considered to be a breach of conduct, and in 1787 he initiated a lengthy lawsuit to secure redress. Twinam kept the case in the back of her mind as she completed research for Miners, Merchants, and Farmers in Colonial Colombia (Austin, 1982). Years later, she returned to the intriguing incident in order to make sense of the issues of honor, sexuality, and illegitimacy that were so much a part of the colonial social fabric. In the course of investigation, she learned that, in contrast to Anglo practice, exemplified in the medieval statute of Merton (1236)--"once a bastard always a bastard"--the Spanish system was different; it had "the potential for significant racial and social flexibility (26)." There were hijos naturales who became fully legitimated when the parents married; the expósitos (children often abandoned at the door of the local church); or the children whose parents were unknown (padres no conocidos). True bastards were offspring born of incestuous or adulterous relationships or the children of clergy or nuns who had broken the vow of chastity.

The author reviewed much secondary and theoretical literature on the subject, and attempted to place her revisionist findings into the broader context of social history. She admits that she was challenged by Leonore Davidoff, Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class (New York, 1995), especially her probing of the "public-private dichotomy" and the strengths and weaknesses of a "separate spheres dichotomy" of males and females. Twinam carefully examines the meaning of "público" and "privado" in the context of the public and private lives of individuals and families, as well as "público y notorio" in the context of testimony taken in specific cases. She notes that in Hispanic America, the concept of "honor must be approached with caution (31)." Twinam frequently points out how the results of her work challenges that of other scholars, particularly Stern and Seed. ¹

Twinam's primary data are the 244 "gracias al sacar" sets of documents related to the petitions and responses of individuals who formally approached royal authorities to secure papers of legitimation, change of birth status, or even verification of purity of blood. Increasingly in the eighteenth century, the papers could be used to secure citizenship, a title of nobility, or even change racial status. Generally, a lengthy and costly procedure had to be followed in order to secure the desired royal award; a legal team had to be hired to collect a credible number of depositions from individuals who could attest to the "truth" of what was being proposed. A payment, or series of payments, were required before the final outcome--an appropriate decree with the royal seal. The cost meant that the "gracia al sacar" decrees were for the colonial elite, not the lower classes.

Most legitimation documents are housed in the Archive of the Indies in Seville. Only seven of the 244 decisions date from the seventeenth century. Earlier in the colonial period, viceroys were sometimes authorized to issue decrees of legitimacy; this procedure was especially important for the mestizo offspring of the encomendero elite during the era of conquest. But the Bourbon reforms of the late eighteenth century turned the process of granting the decrees of legitimation into a potential source of profit for the royal treasury. There were only seven petitions in the decade of the 1720s, two in the 1730s, ten in the 1740s, five in the 1750s, fourteen in the...