Disobedience, Slander, Seduction, and Assault : Women and Men in Cajamarca, Peru, 1862-1900

Chapter 1. Introduction: Presenting the Case

chapter 1 Introduction presenting the case G This book considers how lower-class Peruvians reconciled everyday behavior with the strict norms established by church, state, and the public at large. While the state and church in late-nineteenth-century Peru established premarital virginity, patriarchal sovereignty, and the indissolubility of marriage as absolute norms, most Peruvians were unable to follow such rules. Public preoccupation with virtue and honor is evident in contemporary literature and contributions to national and regional newspapers, where the ideal woman was described as the guardian angel of the home. Despite such concern for moral norms, the near-unattainable standards set by public discourse were defied in everyday life by the population in general. Among the lower classes, many women worked outside of the domestic arena, moving freely in the streets and markets. Young women sold their family’s produce at the market or ran errands, unchaperoned, exposing themselves to contact with potential seducers. Couples cohabited without ecclesiastical blessing and separated from spouses despite formal wedding ceremonies in a church. Regardless of these departures from publicly accepted norms, however, lower-class women and men displayed great concern for their reputation, as can be seen from criminal trial transcripts preserved to the present day. How did they reconcile their behavior with the norms that they purported to adopt as their own? This book seeks to offer insights into the tensions that developed as a result of multiple, overlapping gender codes in a northern departamento (largest administrative unit in the Peruvian state, divided into provinces and districts) of nineteenth-century Peru. By studying criminal trial transcripts in the Archivo Departamental de Cajamarca, I have been able to analyze inti1 disobedience, slander, seduction, and assault mate gender relations and how Cajamarcans of different social standing dealt with codes of honor and respectability. One of my main concerns has been to understand official, state-sanctioned gender discourse, the ways in which lower-class practice differed from this, and how the encounter between official norms and popular practice was negotiated in the legal arena. To this purpose I analyze marital practice, the role of honor in provincial society, premarital sex, and relationships among women. The predominant theme—the tension between official and popular gender norms—lies embedded in the very nature of the sources. While using judicial records for historical research can be an exercise mined with difficulties , I use these sources to explore the dialogue between the state’s and the plebeians’ often contradictory understanding of gender. Official gender norms—outlined in legislation and often reiterated by judges as they passed sentence—met popular gender practice in its many variations in litigants’ and witnesses’ depositions. In court, the many varieties of gender practice encountered and confronted each other. Although gender was constructed through interaction between men and women everywhere and continually, only a fraction of these encounters have been recorded; meetings within the judicial apparatus are among the few instances of gender negotiation which resulted in written documentation and, as such, are an invaluable source for the historian seeking to access subaltern understandings of gender. Litigants came from a broad social spectrum and ranged from Cajamarca’s more respectable citizens to (more typically) small-scale landowners, artisans , petty merchants, market women, agricultural laborers, and servants. As the events described in the proceedings clearly illustrate, lower-class everyday lives did not reflect state-defined gender norms.Young couples engaged in premarital sex; many, in fact, chose not to marry at all. Women lived on their own, many with illegitimate children, often fathered by different men, and those who cohabited with spouses countered their husbands’ discipline with an array of responses, including violence. The lens of the legal arena reveals, then, the gap between elite visions of society, as encoded in legislation, and actual gender practice. In addition to enabling us to study plebeian norms and lives, the trials reveal litigants’ attempts at reconciling their behavior with the law. honor: defining personal worth Assessment of right and wrong, and also of individual worth, was pivotal to legal proceedings. Judges passed sentence on defendants and, implicitly, on plaintiffs when they rejected suits or simply allowed them to grind to a halt. 2 Introduction They evaluated witnesses’ statements, often allowing their assessment of the witnesses’ moral worth to influence them in calculating the value of the testimony. Plaintiffs and...