‘Es honor de su nación’: Legal Rhetoric, Ethnic Alliances and the Opening of an Indigenous Convent in Colonial Oaxaca

Abstract

This article examines the manner in which the caciques (noble Indians) and principales (Indian notables) from the Oaxaca region in New Spain adopted a ‘legal rhetoric’ in their quest to open a convent for noble Indian women during the eighteenth century. Through a close reading of the legal documentation produced in the petition for the convent for indigenous women in Antequera, I find that the caciques strategically used the same laws that had placed them in a subordinated place in the social hierarchy of the colony in order to negotiate certain rights and privileges. Aware of their belonging to the legally determined category of ‘Indians,’ indigenous peoples from the Valley of Oaxaca appealed specifically to the laws that had granted them a special judicial place in the colonial scheme. By referencing the Recopilación de las leyes de las Indias and several royal decrees (cédulas), the caciques appealed to colonial officials at a key historical moment, when Bourbon reforms sought to modernize all institutions, including the Catholic Church.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the Newberry Library and the South Central Modern Language Association for a summer research grant that allowed me to conduct the research on which this article is based. I also wish to thank the three anonymous readers at CLAR, as well as Kris Lane, Amber Brian, and Ethan Sharp for their comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. Indian municipalities were called pueblos, and head towns were referred to as cabeceras. The difference between cacique and principal was not clearly marked, and for Spaniards the overlapping usage of both terms was generalized. Charles Gibson differentiates between caciques as natural lords, and principales as the relatives of caciques (1964, 155).

2. A copy of this same expediente is found in the AGI (Archivo General de Indias), México 2661, in Seville, Spain. It has been briefly examined by Luisa Zahino Peñafort. The documents found at the AGI and the Newberry Library are important since no other documentation about the founding of the convent for indigenous women in Antequera (Oaxaca City) has been located. Other than the funerary sermon of one of the Indian abbesses, and some autograph letters by the abbess located at the AGN in Mexico, this compendium of documents represents the most detailed account about the affairs of the indigenous community in their petition for the convent.

3. In a recent study, Joanne Rappaport and Tom Cummins examine the traces of native peoples’ engagement with literacy in northern Andean society and the way in which indigenous peoples participated in the production of legal documentation (Rappaport and Cummins 2012, 3–4). Similar studies include Burns 2010, Charles 2010, and Dueñas 2010.

4. In his study on indigenous church agents in Peru, John Charles (2010) exemplifies the possibilities of the archive for providing another dimension to the pioneering studies of the writings of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala and Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yanqui by Rolena Adorno.

5. Caciques and principales were in an intermediate position that allowed them to maneuver in the colonial system. For a lengthier discussion of native identities, see Yannakakis 2008.

6. According to the judicial condition of miserables, Indians were to have special legal assistance, and their cases and complaints were taken under special royal and Church protection. This particular judicial condition was recalled in the courts for the benefit of the indigenous litigants. Solórzano Pereira's Política Indiana defines those of the miserable condition, explains their privileges, and the special protection they could get. See also Borah 1983, 81.

7. Brian Owensby contends that once we surrender the notion of finding the true or original voice of the person involved in the legal case, ‘we can hear from the cases themselves’ (2008, 9). For an excellent overview of indigenous engagement with the courts, see Borah 1983.

8. For recent scholarship in the field of history that studies native involvement with the law in New Spain see Borah 1983, Kellogg 2000, Cutter 2001, Owensby 2008.

9. Carmagnani delves into the symbolic value that space had for ethnic identity (1993, Ch. 1). In the case of the convent in Oaxaca, indigenous peoples from different ethnicities were united in their quest to open a convent for ‘their’ pueblos.

10. Later petitions for convents for natives were initiated by the same indigenous nuns residing in the Convent of Corpus Christi in Mexico City.

11. William Taylor adds in a note that certain caciques from Zapotec communities moved to the Oaxaca Valley to serve as judges, or governors because of the insistence of Spanish authorities (1972, 38–39).

12. For a lengthier exploration of political culture in Oaxaca, see the work of Peter Guardino 2005.

13. Two grand-daughters of Emperor Moctezuma were said to have entered the first convent that opened its doors in 1540 (Holler 2005, 16). Later in the seventeenth century a singular exception occurred when the Otomí cacique Diego de Tapia gathered support to found a convent in Querétaro where his daughter could profess. No other indigenous woman was ever accepted in that convent (Díaz 2010, 34–35).

14. Much of what we know about the history of the Convent of Corpus Christi we owe to the work of Josefina Muriel (1963). Asunción Lavrin's scholarship has also been fundamental in laying the foundation for studies of female conventual culture in Spanish America.

15. In Historia de Oaxaca, José Antonio Gay includes the names of the founding nuns who arrived from Mexico City on 24 February 1782: María Teodora de San Agustín, María Clara de Santa Gertrudis, María Martina de la Luz, María Petra del Santísimo Sacramento, María Francisca Liberata de San Pedro de Alcántara y María Gertrudis de los Dolores (Gay 1881, 336; also Castañeda 1993, 26).

16. The exceptions are Matthew O'Hara, who explores the initiative of indigenous leaders in the convent's foundation in the context of other indigenous appeals to open seminaries and convents for Indians, and Luisa Zahino Peñafort. See O'Hara 2010, ch. 2, and Zahino Peñafort 1995.

17. Matthew O'Hara explains that ‘convents buttressed the status; of Indians within the larger body politic and articulated the relationship between the Bourbon monarchy and Indian communities’ (2010, 82).

18. For a study on the role of procuradores in the Indian court, see Owensby 2008, ch. 3. In a manner similar to this case, Yannakakis finds that municipal courts hired apoderados or agents in the early stages of litigation, and were usually caciques (2010, 147).

19. A bachiller usually held a university degree or baccalaureate (Schwaller 1987, xvi).

20. Until recently, the prevailing position on the cacicazgo was one recovered from research on sixteenth-century Indian elites in which caciques were depicted as the ‘vanishing nobility’ (Chance 1994, 46). In the last thirty years more studies focused on the eighteenth century proved that in some regions Indian elites continued to occupy important places in their communities.

21. Brading references a letter by Archbishop Manuel Rubio y Salinas (1749–1765) to the king in which the usage of Spanish among Indian communities is defended at length (1994, 66).

22. O'Hara analyzes the failed petition for an indigenous seminary that began in 1749; it intended to train priests to serve their communities in their native languages, see O'Hara 2010, ch. 2. The promotion of the Spanish language was not the only reason why the convent was successful and the seminary was unsuccessful. Another reason was that women would remain cloistered for life, while men would be trained to serve their communities as priests and potentially would have limited the posts of Creole priests in New Spain.

23. One of the parish priests in the village of Oaxaca reported in 1804 that the use of Nahuatl had virtually ceased, although Mixtec could still be heard in some more remote towns (Chance 1978, 151).

24. The testimony of María Teresa de Jesús was studied by Lavrin and O'Hara, but neither noted the fact that the discourse that Fr. Carlos de Almodóvar reported was not his but rather that of the said nun (Lavrin 2008, 266–67; O'Hara 2010, 85).

25. In this passage, Sor María Teresa gives a vivid image that is lost in translation. Since the word for ‘target’ that it is used in Spanish is ‘blanco’ which literally means ‘white,’ she juxtaposes the colors red and white, which could literally been translated as ‘red target,’ but which in fact intends to juxtapose the color of the red dye of the cochineal and the color white, a symbol of the purity of the female religious state.

26. Cochineal was Mexico's second most important export product for most of the colonial period. However, Europeans dominated the commercial end of the industry. See Baskes 2000, ch. 1.

27. See for example Burns 2007, Fisher and O'Hara 2010, Hill 2005, Martínez 2008.

28. Race (raza) appears in colonial documentation as a cultural and religious categorization. See, for example, Twinam 2009, 146.

29. Owensby refers to three understandings of the law in the New World: as ensuing good government, as legislation, and as an unwritten norm (2008, 45).

30. Don Manuel is adamant that an Indian should collect the donations from the caciques rather than a Spaniard (f. 163).

31. There was a proposal to establish a Capuchin convent in Dolores, Hidalgo, in 1809 (Newberry Library, Ayer Ms. 1147). See also Lavrin 2008, ch. 8.