She’s a Witch!

1) Ruth Behar, Lots of confessions and accounts to the courts.

a) Women are generally subordinate to men in the public sphere and any power a woman gains is considered to be negative to society or “pollution”. b) Spain was different than other countries in Europe when it came to Witchcraft. While other countries carried out witch hunts mostly targeting women, Spain had bigger heretics to deal with such as Islam and Judaism and did not have mass movements to take down “witches”. The Spanish religious elites considered witchcraft as more of stupidity and not heresy.

c) Indians, Mulattas and Mestizas seemed to be the ones most accused of witchcraft

d) Sexual witchcraft and kinds that made their men submissive to them

e) Women mostly used witchcraft to gain some kind of power over men.

2) Irene Silverblatt, first hand accounts from letters.

a)  Women were seen as the inferiors in society and had no voice in politics or church and women could not own property. According to the church this made women dangerous and most likely to use evil ways to get what they wanted.

b) Witchcraft was tied to demonic acts of the Devil and black magic and this was seen mostly done by poor and old women in the Andes.

c) The devil began to take on many forms to the indigenous people of the Andes and eventually appearing as a Spaniard and things that did not mirror the image the Europeans had for the devil.

3) Guaman Poma, 1992

a) Magic that made people fall in love or punished thieves for stealing crops and ones that punished parents for having twins, a cleft-nosed baby or if the baby was born feet first. And also magic used to cure injuries or diseases.

b) Magicians or high Priests of the Incan society

c) These acts don’t seem to be done just by women and aren’t really about control but more about helping others or punishing those who have done bad deeds. every now and then these practices were used to abuse others.

4) Michaela de Molina, 1696

a) Michaela to me seems to be just a candy seller who happened to get into a fight with the neighbor Maria and Maria got sick from the pregnancy but it also seems like she or someone else used witchcraft on her for some reason. The mistress and niece seemed kind of mean towards Michaela because of her friends.

b) Michaela was charged with using witchcraft on Maria because of the fight they had over the man and the witnesses only claimed that she was a witch because of the fight and the friends that she had one being a person who had already been accused of being a witch before.

c) I think maybe that Teresa might have used witchcraft on Maria in order to get back at her for fighting with Michaela.