Homosexuality in Latin America

This past week we talked about homosexuality in early Latin America and exactly how the issue was dealt with by the local authorities. During the Spanish conquests the soldiers were told to look for unusual sexual practices so there would be some kind of justification for the conquer. Immoral natives were mistreated often and the women generally raped by the soldiers. Long after the conquests the local neighborhoods had established a kind of neighborhood watch that would go around the towns, these people were referred to as “Alcalde Del Barrio”. The job of these individuals was to specifically look for anything illegal that the townspeople might be engaging in. Often times they would search the house of certain people based on a suspicion from another towns person that they were conducting immoral acts. We went over a few cases in class of a few individuals who were under the suspicion of having a same-sex relationship with each other. In both of the cases it seemed that a lot of the charges against them were the same generalities and often misunderstandings according to the ones being tried. In this day and age there was no DNA evidence or most of the time eyewitness accounts so the main way to get someone caught was to basically have a feeling about them. Many of these cases also happened to be brought about because a friend or family member suspected them of having a same sex relationship. We saw how the punishment for something like this could be several years working with tobacco.

It sucks that many of these people were “caught” through word of mouth by someone who might just have a grudge against them and the evidence or lack there of could be so stacked against them. But it just goes to show just how against homosexuality the church and others were that suspicion would be enough to lock these people up. But some of the things we talked about were really disturbing that some of these people too religion to places it shouldn’t go. The woman who pleasured herself to images of Jesus and all of that with the candles and whatnot was a bit odd and I couldn’t imagine what the person questioning her was thinking.  However it’s not surprising that religion had such big influence over people and infrastructure as it normally does throughout all of history. It’s also not surprising that acts of homosexuality go back this far even though back then it might not have really been viewed in the way we know it today.