Nahua Parallelism Absent in Sex

“The attempt at sexual conquest through the confessional largely failed, instead producing a hybrid sexual system that survives today in many indigenous Mesoamerican societies. Though conscious efforts by Spaniards to alter Nahua ideas of sexuality did not succeed, much change did occur as the Nahua came into daily contact with the Hispanized people….”

This quote from Pete Sigal’s “Queer Nahuatl: Sahagun’s Faggot’s and Sodomit’s, Lesbians and Hermaphrodites” (pg. 13) summarizes so succinctly a variety of themes and forces within both pre- and colonial Mesoamerica in relation to sexual-social conquest.

I find this discussion of Spanish conquest of Nahua (and Mesoamerican more generally) culture in terms of its degree of success particularly interesting, as I recall our consideration of pre-colonial Mesoamerican civilization at the beginning of the semester. Nahua society was defined, similarly to Andean, with parallel gender relations and delineated social expectations; as such, absolutely distinct and separate economic and social roles (and also religious in most cases) existed for males and females. However, sexual roles and behaviors seem less absolutely distinct, as seen upon the arrival of the Spanish.

The Spanish, arriving in the new world both with a goal to settled an untamed land and people but also Christianize such, condemned the sexual-social behavior they found in Nahua society, referring to such with pejorative language, such as puto, sometico, xochihua, cuiloni, and patlachuia. But prior to the arrival of the Spanish, there appears no evidence (though there remains little direct historical record available) to demonstrate that Nahua penalized or condemned such behavior (Sigal 23). Indeed, it is most fascinating to consider the likelihood of such sexuality liberty in Nahua society since every other aspect of their society seemed to thrive under the operation of such binary gender-sex social relations.

However, the Spanish, with a desire to impose both royal and ecclesiastical authority over the Nahua, perhaps found the greatest outlet for doing so in regulating sexual behavior. The Spanish both defined newly acceptable and unacceptable sexual roles and activities for Nahua males and females and established a system of punishment for violations of these defined acceptable standards that reinforced the authorities’ power (e.g. alcalde del barrio and la ronde).