Indigenous Women’s Changing Status under European Colonial Rule
Emily Vrooman
HIST*2930, Karen Racine
November 18, 2011
The European colonization of Latin American altered the status of indigenous women in
Latin America, in terms of their labour roles, marriage responsibilities and freedoms, and their
position in the hierarchy of society. When the Spanish arrived in the New World they disagreed with
the customs of the indigenous people and, in line with Queen Isabella’s millennial vision, they
imposed their own customs upon the indigenous people of Latin America:
…for 301 years after Cortes captured Mexico city, that vast territory formerly
governed by native tribes and empire was ruled by a foreign power that imposed
religion, government and cultural tradition, that of the Crown of Castile and Leon.1
The impositions of these foreign rulers had initially detrimental effects on the status of
women in society.
Under the previous governance of the Incas and the Aztecs, women had roles in labour that
were particular to their gender and often equally important as those of their male counterparts.
Within marriages women were subordinate but still served important roles in child-bearing and raising. Women were also used politically in marriages and were essential to Aztec rulers for
maintaining power. In both Inca and Aztec society women were below men in the class structured
hierarchy, but this subordinance was much less that what it would be beneath the masses of Spanish
immigrants following the conquest of Latin America by the Spanish.
As part of a Spanish colony, the indigenous peoples were beneath the rule of foreign rulers
and recent immigrants who did not share their customs or beliefs. As a result the status of women in
society initially lowered. The new customs, however, created a whole new system by which the
classes in society were defined, and offered indigenous women new opportunities to improve their
social standing. These opportunities were not previously available to indigenous women within the
Inca and Aztec cultures.
1
P. Seed, To love, honor, and obey in colonial Mexico: conflicts over marriage choice, 1574-1821, (Stanford: Standform
University Press, 1988), p.17.
1
The Incan empire made use of all individuals in their society, organizing their responsibilities
by age and gender, “every man and woman had to serve the state in one way or another according to
his or her age abilities.”2 Staying busy was an essential part of life as it was believed that idleness led
to bad habits and vices.3 Children were included in this principle; children of different ages also had
different responsibilities.4 Inca children of both genders began their education at the age of five. 5 At
this age girls were presented with a number of responsibilities in order to prepare them for the tasks
that were required of grown women. From ages five to nine they helped their mothers in domestic
occupations:
They had to carry water, fuel, and grass, to help the other women in brewing
chicha, to look after the smaller children, to weed the fields, etc.6
Throughout their lives, women were responsible for all the household work, raising the children,
cooking meals, and making clothing for their family members, as well as working in the fields.7
Women who were exceptionally good at performing these tasks were often sent to tend to the Coya,
the Inca queen. 8 These divisions of labour taught young women valuable life skills. These life skills
were exclusive to women and contributed to the industry of the Inca nation.
Through the next stages of their lives, girls performed various simple tasks and became
increasingly involved in taking care of the household.9 Mature Inca men and women participated
equally in agriculture, sharing all types of physical labour.10 At the same time Inca women also had
to manage their household and raise their children. When women reached fifty they were grouped
with the men of the same age. At this point many became supervisors of households. Others were
2
Rafael Karsten, The Totalitarian State of the Past, (Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1949), p.117.
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid.
7
Bernabe Cobo, History of the Inca Empire, Roland Hamilton ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), p.30.
8
Karsten, The Totalitarian State of the Past, p.117.
9
Karsten, The Totalitarian State of the Past, p.117.
10
Gordon F. McEwan, The Incas: New Perspectives, (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006), p.105.
3
2
able to sustain themselves off of small plots of land along with the diversite skills they had
accumulated throughout their lives.11
The Aztec community was based on a system of communal tasks with minimal individual
assignments.12 This created a society based on cooperation, and generated a genuine sense of
contribution for individuals in the Aztec community 13 This labour was still controlled and regulated
by the state, which meant that although individuals in a community worked the land and could
harvest and sell the crops that were grown on it they did not own the land.14 Instead the Aztecs used
a system of common landholding in which the land was shared between individuals in for the good
of the entire community.15
It was an Inca custom that a tupu, or plot of tilled ground, was given to every married couple
to use to support themselves and their family. The couple received additional tupus when they had
children; one full tupu for every son and a half tupu for every daughter. These plots were used by the
families, but owned by the state. When a woman was married the tupu that had been given to her
family upon her birth was given back to the state. The Incas did not have a dowry system, “A man
had to support his wife, and it was not considered necessary to assign tilled ground to a married
woman.”16 This meant prospective marriageable women were assessed for other, more intrinsic,
qualities.
The Spanish were surprised by the marriage customs of the Inca. Polygamy was seen in the
higher classes of Incan society as the possession of numerous wives was seen as “a sign of greatness
11
Karsten, The Totalitarian State of the Past, p.119.
Charles Gibson, “A Case Study: The Aztecs Under the Spanish Labor Systems,” in Indian Labor in the Spanish Indies,
John Francis Bannon, ed., (Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1966), p.82.
13
Marco A. Almazán, “The Aztec States-Society: Roots of Civil Society and Social Capital,” in The Annals of the
American Academy 565, (1999): p.163.
14
Gibson, “A Case Study: The Aztecs Under the Spanish Labor Systems,” p.82.
15
Ibid.
16
Karsten, The Totalitarian State of the Past, p.111.
12
3
and wealth.”17 There were a number of other things the Europeans found peculiar; Father Barnabe
Cobo, a priest in the New World remarked,
…when an Indian chooses a woman to be his wife, he does not try to find out
whether she has led a virtuous or a licentious life because, among them, this is not a
matter which adds to or detracts from her worth.18
Instead Inca men considered two things when looking for a wife: how much wealth she possessed
and whether she was a hardworking woman who would be a good wife.19 Still, as much as the men
would have liked to be able to choose which women they got to marry it was the hunu’s, the highest
ranking Inca official, who decided which women the men would receive as wives.20 In fact, amongst
the commoners, men could not marry a woman without state approval.21
If a marriage was approved of there was often period during which the man tested out the
suitability of his potential wife. During these trial marriages the woman would often serve as a
man’s concubine first so he could determine whether she would be a good wife or not. 22 If the
woman did not meet the man’s standards he would not marry her. According to these customs, Inca
men had a choice in marriage matters, while the women were obligated to do as men and the state
decided.23
In Aztec culture, women were essential as wives and mothers to the political system as it was
based on hereditary rule.24 Wives of rulers could provide their husbands with a blood heir and
daughters of rulers could be made wives of men their father wanted to be allied with. These
marriages were often used as political strategies to form alliances and noble dynasties. 25 These
women were not merely used by their husbands through marriage; they could also act as spies for
17
Ibid, p.144.
Cobo, History of the Inca Empire, p.30.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid, p.201.
21
McEwan, The Incas: New Perspectives, p.104.
22
Cobo, History of the Inca Empire, p.30.
23
Karsten, The Totalitarian State of the Past, p.144.
24
Lori Boornazian Diel, “Till Death Do Us Part,” Ancient Mesoamerica 18, (2007): p.259.
25
Ibid.
18
4
their families in the homeland, reporting any “transgressions or political machinations by their
husbands.” 26 Noble Aztec women were considered valuable for these reasons; however they were
still being defined by their state and their male counterparts.
Within the Inca culture, men and women were viewed as “complementary parts of a greater
whole” with a considerable degree of equality.27 In Inca culture there was only one reigning queen,
considered a sacred person, a woman known as the coya.28 Aztec nobles and rulers had a number of
wives but only one principle wife, although she was not publically involved in the politics of the
nation. In general, men controlled politics and the natural resources and ranked higher than women
did in society.29
The class structure of the Incan society was a rigid system dividing the rulers and the ruled.30
There was lower class of commoners, middle class of the curacas, who were direct rulers of the
commoners, and an upper class made up of the hahua nobles and royal Incas known as the capac.31
Members of the higher classes were exempt from paying taxes to the state.32 Women in the higher
classes were given the opportunity to be educated in special institutions. In these institutions the
skills they had learned as girls were refined, along with lessons on how to properly conduct
themselves in society.33
Compared to the refined lives of Spanish girls, Father Cobo felt that indigenous girls were
given excessive freedoms throughout their upbringing, “Nor did they prohibit them from going out
by themselves whenever and whenever they wanted.” 34 Cobo was concerned that these girls were
26
Ibid, p.260.
McEwan, The Incas: New Perspectives, p.101.
28
Karsten, The Totalitarian State of the Past, p.143.
29
McEwan, The Incas: New Perspectives, p.104.
30
Ibid, p.97.
31
McEwan, The Incas: New Perspectives, p.98.
32
Karsten, The Totalitarian State of the Past, p.119.
33
McEwan, The Incas: New Perspectives, p.106.
34
Cobo, History of the Inca Empire, p.29.
27
5
not controlled enough by their male counterparts and their fathers. For the most part the Europeans
customs and beliefs were more conservative when it came to women, and they were applied both
directly and indirectly.
The control women had over their households was maintained through the marianismo ideal
of the Catholic Spaniards. Marianismo was, and still is, an idealized view of intrinsic female
characteristics and values. 35 These values gave even indigenous women their own form of authority,
especially within their household, based on characters they possessed naturally based on their
gender. This authority was not something that could be contested by men; it was simply understood
to be a difference between the male and female genders. 36 The values entailed in the marianismo
image were based off of the image of the Virgin Mary and had religious origins.37
European religious and cultural beliefs were applied to marriages in the New Words.38 All
marriages that took place in Colonial Latin America were regulated by the Catholic Church which
had been brought over with the conquistadors.39 Any conflicts concerning marriage that came up
were then adjudicated according to Catholic and Spanish opinions and ideas. This meant that
indigenous women who wished to get married could no longer do so according to their customs, they
had to convert to Catholicism and follow the peculiar customs of their new rulers. Although this may
have been a bewildering process, as Catholics indigenous women were considered to be morally
equal to Spanish women. These moral judgements were intrinsically “related to a fundamental
conviction of Spanish superiority” over the indigenous population. 40As long as they remained
faithful to this Christian faith indigenous women were able to maintain religious equality.
Ascunción Lavrin, “Women the Family, and Social Change in Latin America,” World Affairs 150, #2 (Fall 1987),
p.112.
36
Ibid, p.120.
37
Ibid.
38
Seed, To love, honor, and obey in colonial Mexico: conflicts over marriage choice, 1574-1821, p.17.
39
Ibid.
40
Ibid, p.18.
35
6
In King Philip of Spain’s Royal Ordinances, it was suggested that in order to avoid
difficulties in the conversion of indigenous populations:
…the children of the caciques and nobles are brought to the Spanish settlements and
are kept there as hostages under the pretext of entertaining them and teaching them to
wear clothes.41
This form of passive aggressive conversion begins to depict the way the Spanish recognized the
social hierarchy of Latin America. The Spanish refused to acknowledge the previous social hierarchy
of the Incas and the Aztecs; however they did recognize that the “nobles” still held the respect of
their people and used that to their advantage.42 Otherwise, the Spanish felt that the indigenous were
“lazy, racially inferior, mentally deficient, and physically degenerate.” 43 In many instances this led
them to take advantage of the established customs of the indigenous. When the Spanish saw the
voluntary participation of individuals in the Aztec community they tried to use it to serve their own
purposes. The joy that the Aztecs felt from participating in the communal tasks within their
communities disappeared under Spanish rule, and the work they had previously done for social and
moral reasons became merely an economic necessity.44 Men and women were not slaves beneath
these European rulers; however they were placed on the bottom rung of the social hierarchy.
Priests and religious figures were included in this hierarchy, and they had their own distinct
role in maintaining it. It was the custom of priests in Latin America to keep church records of all
marriages, and the races of the man and woman these marriages were between. In a study of a
sample of these church records it was determined that Spanish women married Spanish men 80.5
percent of the time, mulata women, who were of mixed African and European descent, married
mulata men 80.8% of the time, and mestizo women, who had one parent who was European and one
Lewis Hanke, ed., “Royal Ordinances on “Pacification,” 1573,” in History of Latin American Civilization, vol. 1, The
Colonial Experience, (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967), p. 151.
42
Aaron P. Althouse, “Contested Mestizos, Alleged Mulattos: Racial Identity and Caste Hierarchy in Eighteenth Centry
Pátzcuaro Mexico,” The Americas 62, #2 (October, 2005), p. 156.
43
Seed, To love, honor, and obey in colonial Mexico: conflicts over marriage choice, 1574-1821, p.21.
44
Gibson, “A Case Study: The Aztecs Under the Spanish Labor Systems,” p.83.
41
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who was indigenous, 50 percent married other mestizo. This practice of women marrying men within
the same race class perpetuated a class system that was very race based known as a caste hierarchy;
Europeans were at the top of this caste hierarchy, followed by mestizos, with mulatas below them. It
is however interesting to note that 12 percent of mestizo women also married Spanish men who were
above their status and 12 percent married mulatas below their status.45 This suggests that indigenous
women and their children had the opportunity to improve their status through marriage after the
Spanish arrived.
Following the conquest of Latin American, race became the most defining characteristic of
an indigenous woman, creating recognized status differences according the caste categories created
by racial mixing.46 These caste categories created an opportunity for indigenous women to improve
the social status of their families, using marriages to men in higher categories. Although parish
records kept track of the race of the bride and groom many couples fell into the ‘no label’ category.
This category was reserved for individuals who either refused to divulge, or simply did not know
their specific race.47 It is unfortunate that the races of those couples are unknown as mixed-race
individuals made up an important part of the caste hierarchy in Latin American society under
colonial rule.
The conversion of indigenous women to the Catholic religion gave them religious and moral
equality to the Spanish members of society who were racially superior. However indigenous women
were kept perpetually inferior based on both their race and gender as a result of the aspirations of the
Spanish, who were continually motivated to improve their status and power. 48 The foreign ruling of
Latin America ensured that the indigenous population would be subordinate as the leadership of
Althouse, “Contested Mestizos, Alleged Mulattos: Racial Identity and Caste Hierarchy in Eighteenth Centry Pátzcuaro
Mexico,” pp. 162-163.
46
Ibid, p. 152.
47
Ibid, p. 156.
48
Seed, To love, honor, and obey in colonial Mexico: conflicts over marriage choice, 1574-1821, p.18.
45
8
social institutions “continued to be recruited from the Old World,” 49 giving indigenous individuals
no opportunity to change the customs of this imposed society.
The Inca, Aztec, and Colonial societies all had a patriarchal structure that, in its nature,
perpetuated the subordination of women. 50 These female-run households that existed within all of
these societies gave women power that was contradictory to these patriarchies, and were an
opportunity for women to express their moral superiority. It is no surprise that women were not
easily able to find ways into leadership roles in these cultures; in Mexico women were not
incorporated into politics until after WWII.51 Prior to Conquest, women had a role in industry and
the economy and were socially defined by their abilities in that sphere. Following Conquest,
religious morals and values were applied to indigenous women, redefining their position in society
on these European terms.
49
Seed, To love, honor, and obey in colonial Mexico: conflicts over marriage choice, 1574-1821, p.20.
Lavrin, “Women the Family, and Social Change in Latin America,” p.109.
51
Ibid p.112.
50
9
Almazán, Marco A. “The Aztec States-Society: Roots of Civil Society and Social Capital.” The
Annals of the American Academy 565 (1999): 162-175.
Althouse, Aaron P. “Contested Mestizos, Alleged Mulattos: Racial Identity and Caste Hierarchy in
Eighteenth Centry Pátzcuaro Mexico.” The Americas 62, #2 (October, 2005): 151-175.
Cobo, Bernabe. History of the Inca Empire, translated by Roland Hamilton. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1979.
Diel, Lori Boornazian. “Till Death Do Us Part.” Ancient Mesoamerica 18, (2007): 259-272.
Gibson, Charles. “A Case Study: The Aztecs Under the Spanish Labor Systems.” In Indian Labor in
the Spanish Indies, edited by John Francis Bannon, 82-101. Boston: D.C. Heath and Company,
1966.
Hanke, Lewis, ed. “Royal Ordinances on “Pacification,” 1573.” In History of Latin American
Civilization, vol. 1, The Colonial Experience. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967.
Karsten, Rafael. The Totalitarian State of the Past. Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1949.
Lavrin, Ascunción. “Women the Family, and Social Change in Latin America.” World Affairs 150,
#2 (Fall 1987): 109-128.
McEwan, Gordon F. The Incas: New Perspectives. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006.
Seed, P. To love, honor, and obey in colonial Mexico: conflicts over marriage choice, 1574-1821.
Stanford: Standform University Press, 1988.
10