Colonial New Mexican Families: Community, Church, and State, 1692-1800 by Suzanne M. Stamatov (review)

Focusing on the period 1694 through 1800, Stamatov examines Hispanic families in colonial New Mexico and their interactions with the state, Church, and the broader community. She contends that colonial settlers expected state and Church officials to intervene in family matters such as marriage, sexuality, and honor, and in turn, the community and families offered the state and Church details about interpersonal relationships, with the intention of assisting in the adjudication of conflicts, so as to create a more stable colonial society.

Frontier conditions made community and family harmony acutely necessary for settlers' survival. For this reason, colonial New Mexican society was more tolerant of premarital sexuality, more egalitarian in inheritance practices, and less stringent in implementing racial and class hierarchies. Toleration, however, had its limits in cases of severe domestic abuse or broken promises of marriage and fidelity.

Indigenous peoples are marginal actors in Stamatov's book because her subjects "are the Hispanics who came north in Spain's recolonization of New Mexico and their descendants" (10). Chapter 1 offers an overview of demographic conditions and the cultural values of early settlers. Most were of mixed race and from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Spaniards constituted a minority in the colony, so the crown recruited humble families from Mexico City with the goal of reconquering New Mexico and augmenting its pre-Pueblo Revolt settler population.

Chapter 2 addresses policies implemented by colonial officials to foster stable Christian families as the foundation of New Mexican society. Mexico City officials preferred family groups; however, colonial governors allowed unmarried settlers to join the reconquest. Although civil authorities administered inheritance matters, "the state did not carefully oversee the intimate lives of its citizens," waiting instead for settlers to seek assistance (50).

Chapter 3 addresses the sacrament of marriage, arguing that "marriage was not only a matter between a man and a woman and their respective families," but of the community as well (75). The community, Church, and families shared knowledge to avoid marrying close relatives or spiritual kin and sought dispensations from Franciscans who willingly granted them to ensure the best outcomes for couples and families. Although parents, the state, and the Church all believed that premarital sex was sinful, frontier conditions shaped communities' toleration of premarital sexual contact between couples. Chapter 4 chronicles civil and ecclesiastical lawsuits brought by women and their families seeking to reclaim honor after a woman's sexual "deflowering" (184-5). These cases underscore divergent beliefs among men and women about marriage promises and premarital sex. Parents had little involvement in early courtship. Instead, peers and the community were key witnesses and facilitators.

Chapter 5 tackles the belief that New Mexican settlers obsessed over preserving family wealth and blood purity by marrying cousins prior to 1800. Stamatov also looks at couples' exchanges of marriage tokens and dowry practices. Most Hispanic couples lived in nuclear households in close proximity to kin, due to frontier inheritance and land division practices. Chapter 6 looks at community and family reactions to domestic violence, arguing that battered wives fared better when living near kin, and that women played active roles in attempting to restore harmony and reclaim honor by staying with abusive husbands.

Overall, colonial New Mexico appears relatively free of racial or class conflicts. The absence of indigenous peoples as significant actors in Stamatov's depiction of colonial society poses problems, allowing the overstatement of social harmony. Although Stamatov occasionally addresses settlers' attitudes toward native peoples, further examination of how interracial couplings and infidelity affected marital and community harmony would provide a useful dimension here.

The author relies on a 1790 census, Franciscan registers, premarital investigations, wills, inventories, dowry letters, civil cases, officials' correspondence, legal codes, and historical and anthropological studies. Additional engagement with gender, sexuality, and queer studies would elevate Stamatov's analysis. Nevertheless, this book will be a useful addition to undergraduate and graduate courses. It contributes to the...