More Mythbusting

When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away, by Ramon Gutierrez, studies the effects of the conquest on the Pueblos of the greater New Mexico area. He uses marriage to provide a window into intimate relations and how they changed through the course of three and a half centuries. A complex web of interacting players negotiated symbols through marriage.

Gutierrez begins by assuming that every system of marriage in the era was a system of inequality. The first part of the book covers the 1600s, before the Spanish came. Serial monogamy and polygamy was the practice, and the inequality in society was largely between junior and senior men of society. Society was stratified and respect and other social debts perpetuated a cycle of indebtedness. The second part covers the conquest, where the Franciscan influence led to conflicting views and tensions among social and cultural groups and eventually led to a revolt. The Franciscans felt their role was to purge the indigenous peoples from practices they failed to understand and the friar control of marriage led to the previously established hierarchy falling apart. Indeed, the Franciscans held the political power in the era, something the crown would later challenge. The third and largest part covers the 18th century after the reconquest, where marriage was strictly supervised by the Spanish to promote inequalities. The third section focuses on a variety of topics, from the reconquest’s empowering of the nobility to the importance of honor and virtue among both masculine and feminine sexuality to statistics about marriage and population growth.

Though the book is divided into three sections, it might be better viewed as two. In the first, the Spanish and Pueblos continually negotiated cultural customs and this part does more to break down traditional myths than many other works. The second half of the book focuses more on marriage and, unfortunately, more on the Spanish. Both are useful in understanding the conquest. Much of the most valuable parts of the book, however, have nothing to do with marriage and sexuality, sparse topics in the first two brief sections. For example, Gutierrez claims that the Franciscan’s failure to prevent Apache raids and drought led to the loss of belief in their spiritual power and eventual revolt. In the final pages, he also provides valuable insight as to how encroachment from other colonies, the United States and France, led to the crown taking control of New Mexico from the church. Indeed, the book is a decent study of marriage and sexuality and a more poignant one on power.