Sins against Nature

Sex and Archives in Colonial New Spain

Bibliographic Data

ID7531013
AuthorsZeb Tortorici (corresponding author)
Year2018
Pages344
Publication date2018-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueSins Against Nature (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/9780822371625
OpenAlexW4236884913
Open LibraryOL29795100M
ISBN9780822371625
LanguageEN
Citations received12

In an unremarkable box on a shelf of the municipal archive of Monterrey, in the Mexican state of Nuevo León, is a document with a story that is at once extraordinary and entirely mundane.That story relates how one day in 1656, Nicolás de Lares, a citizen of Monterrey, was walking through some fields when he came upon Lorenzo Vidales, a thirteen-year-old mestizo goat herder.Vidales was, according to Lares, standing under a tree committing the pecado nefandothe "nefarious sin" of bestiality-with one of his flock.Lares, observing the boy "with the said she-goat in between his legs, " took matters into his own hands: he interrupted the carnal act, tied up the boy, and whipped him.He then turned in the boy to the local alcalde, the colonial mayor who was, in this case, Spanish. 1 One witness noted that Lares could not help but whip the boy himself because the act was "atrocious." Out of anger and perhaps due to other, more visceral, reasons, the boy's boss had the black goat slaughtered, which certainly caused him some lost income.For his part, Vidales was surprisingly forthcoming with the judge who, some days later, interrogated him.As was customary, the court-appointed notary transcribed the boy's testimony onto paper in the third person, altering the words of witness and suspect alike from the first-person voice to the third-person "he."The result, as we will see throughout this book, is that suspects, such as Vidales, appear to be speaking about themselves in the third person.This is a relic of notarial and archival pro cesses, and is one of several mediations at the heart of the archive, through which documents come into history (and ended up in a box on a shelf).Vidales fully admitted his crime-"restraining the goat by the horns, he fornicated with her two times"-although he claimed ignorance that the act was sinful. 2 The criminal court tried the boy, found him guilty

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · Genealogy · Political science · Suspect · Witness · Archaeology and Natural History · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Latin American history and culture · Law · New spain · Sex crimes · Sex customs · Trials

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