Holes in history

Prior to reading Kimberly Gauderman’s analysis of  the various articles centered around “the nefarious sin,” I had not realized that the subject of sexuality in Latin America around the colonial period has not yet been thoroughly established by historians.  Gauderman points out that some of the authors had to draw inferences from very minute details and create theoretical models from these details.  I now have a better comprehension for why topics surrounding sex and sexuality remain semi-ambiguous; the lack of concrete and complete documents to study, the gaps have to be filled very carefully and strategically.  This article further proved to me the scientific nature of history in that facts elucidated by one historian may be contradicted by another historian’s findings — an incident that occurs often in research fields of the natural sciences.

From what I was able to glean from this article, pulling information from the other articles, Gauderman illustrates that homosexuality to the indigenous people was framed in ambiguity as opposed to how the Spaniards viewed it.  By pointing out that sex was something that was performed and not linked to someone’s identity in Nahua ideals, Gauderman concludes from Sigal’s article that sexuality is a subjective creation of cultures.  Indigenous men, strangely enough, did not view the passive sexual partner as being more feminine than the active partner.  This immediately seemed strange to me because it seems natural to assume the more feminine partner would be the passive one because in heterosexual intercourse, the woman, whom is associated with femininity, is the passive partner.  Indigenous people, however, did not make this distinction.  The only reason that indigenous people began to conform to these strict norms for sexuality was to use it to their benefit to rid their towns of Spanish clerics that had infiltrated them by accusing them of sexually victimizing indigenous men.  According to Chuchiak’s article, the indigenous people were quick to understand Spanish sexual politics.

The article also clarifies that women in fact were not passive members of society, so the active/passive and its associations with femininity can be relevant beyond the bedroom; but considering that women were given more of an active societal role, the passivity should not be immediately correlated with femininity.  In Nahua villages, women — bearers of femininity — played a crucial and significant societal role, so in this respect, they were by no means “passive” which could possibly explain why the passive partner in homosexual intercourse was not viewed as more feminine than the other.  The indigenous men did not follow the active/passive model.

Without the luxury of having properly translated and complete Nahua articles, we as historians cannot fully understand the ideals associated with sexuality as the Nahua people practiced them.  The evidence we have available to us is accounted from the view of the Spaniards and laced both with their biases as well as our own.