Inquisition: State-Sponsored Terrorism

When we embarked on our discussion on witch hunts, in general but in Spanish America specifically, it did not phase me that the witch hunt specifically targeted women (perhaps this indicates how witches and witch hunts are portrayed to us as children). However, I soon began to wonder - why almost exclusively women?

It seemed “reasonable“ that the Spanish perceived indigenous religion as demonic on account of their Catholic mission to convert. Observing communities steeped in ritual, the Spanish made the short conclusive leap to consider these rituals demonic witchcraft.

In line with Catholic tradition and related religious gender roles, stemming from Eve‘s encounter with Satan as a snake and further developed, women are considered “capricious, emotional, … something that had to be dominated, conquered, and controlled… and weak, incapable, and consequently more susceptible to diabolic temptation” (Silverblatt 176). Such a conception, reinforced within the patriarchal culture, easily lent to a gendered idea of witch as feminine.

However, this distinctly gendered religious role bestowed with power (even if connected with a negative connotation) contradicts indigenous cultural gender parallelism, which characterized not only religious practices but all types of practice, public and private. This sort of parallelism is indicative of both Andean and Nahua civilizations. As such, women were not perceived as morally weak or subservient to men; instead, both men and women’s complementary contributions were considered integral to the successful accomplishment of community goals, including religion. Similarly, the notion of parallelism throughout Andean and Nahua cosmology denies the Western conception of Satan, as the singular embodiment of evil.

So with this in mind - how and why were witches persecuted? In reading Behar, Silverblatt, and Few, the issues that arise as more interesting are the following:

- Inquisition cases were generally initiated by members of the community and brought to the Church, meaning that the community understood the Church’s statute and embraced its tenet as commendable.

How and why did this occur?

Acculturation - Indigenous people originally did not accept Christianity à came to accept aspects à increasingly more aspects with increasing time and increasing hope for social mobility.

- Actions defined as witchcraft did not necessarily run contrary to Christianity - or rather are not as I traditionally conceive as witchcraft. I was struck by the sort of cultural integration that was persecuted as witchcraft and described by Few:

[Women] used popular religion in ways that were seen as dangerous to the colonial state. Yet popular religion was also empowering to these women, because they could use it to reshape and refabricate the “traditional” roles of women in a society structured by colonialism and patriarchy… the women’s actions were not a direct attack on church or state authority; they did not reject Catholicism or try to overthrow the state. They did, however, use religious resistance to push outward against the narrowly defined structures of their lives, creating an identity for themselves as women within colonial patriarchal structures. (p. 625)

- Lastly, why were these “witches” persecuted? A few theories.

To promote gendered conceptions of honor, which were also tied to class and race, as seen through Few’s cases of Dona Lorensa and Sebastiana.

Or

To promote the stability of the church and by extension of the state

The Inquisition against Dona Lorensa, an elite white woman, was initiated by a mulatto slave. This demonstrates the prevalence and severity of superstition in the state and fear of how it may contribute to state instability.