Did anyone have a choice with the Spanish? I don’t think so.

It’s nice to focus on both men and women in Incan society, not just women. Sometimes when studying gender or even referring to it, we tend to focus on women, so discussing the effects of the Spanish invasion on both men and women in Incan society has been….refreshing. I believe we left class with the question as to whether the Spanish conquest was coercive or not towards women in power dynamics. So, keeping the theme of discussing both sexes going, I think that the Spanish conquest was obviously coercive to both men and women in all aspects of life. Silverblatt really focused on how this conquest affected women, but through this, we can see that the Spanish’s economic and political way of life changed all of Incan society, including both sexes, especially with the privitization of land.

Maybe I’m being a little idealistic, but the Inca’s seemed to have a communal respect towards the gender roles that kept life going. Yes, roles were different for men and women, but regardless, it seems as if all people were integral to the vivacity of the community. We talked about these kinship relationships with other communities in different niches, and this really seems thematic in Inca society. There was a different relationship with “mother” earth, an arguably closer relationship than any private land-owning, male-only political system that the Spanish brought with them.

As the Spanish conquest developed, I do believe that there were different effects on the Inca men and women, due to the Spanish’s unrecognization of women in political life, with possible subordination of women in private life as well. In agreeance with Burkett, women seem to have gotten the brunt of mistreatment during this conquest as their roles in the household and Incan way of life, which seems to have been respected prior, was really ignored by the Spaniards. Although women had new access into Spanish life due to these marriages, the Incan women really lost a meaningful part of their humanity as being an integral part of society. Sexual mistreatment occurred and it almost feels as if women were exploited into these marriages with more political goals among the Spanish agenda. I cannot imagine a more humiliating, degrading experience for these women, and am very grateful I never experienced it. The Inca men, as we mentioned, did not receive this “access” into the Spanish community, as the women did through marriage, but were also more threatening to the Spaniards. A complete upheaval of Incan community life was occurring, and both genders clearly sufferred in similar and different ways.

What I find interesting is the kinship among Inca women that occurred during the Spanish conquest. Burkett discusses this in terms of women’s roles in the economy, but I hope we are able to develop on this more in our discussions this coming week.