Blog 8

Hello everybody and sad day of the vols!  Well I have learned many new things this week about what was acceptable sexual practices in Mexico.  For the people of Latin America, well for the ones who followed the churches rules, it must have been hard to know how and why the rules were so harsh, such as the women always being on the bottom during sex.  It’s a bit hard to follow all the rules, such as the seven sins of lust, but it is a lot simpler to know the one rule of man on top women on bottom in a bed and only to try to create a baby.  It’s funny that they have to point out all the other sexual practices they cannot do.  It is also a bit odd to me that they have different levels of sexual crimes like stand up sex is worse than man on bottom and women on top.  It also must have been scary sneaking around and always having to worry about getting caught for not following the rules of sex, especially if one could have been killed for a sex crime, such as a husband catching his wife in bed with another person and having every right to kill both of them out of anger! It was very interesting reading all the case studies on sexual crime.  Most of these crime logs show that honor was a big deal, and crime of sex was a good way to tant someone’s reputation or even their family’s reputation.  Such as in Catalina’s crime log, because her brother testified for her in a good way, even when it was known that she had sent many love letters to Juan.  It seems that her bother could have even more of an interest for not only his sister, but of his own and entire family.  Although all these case studies seem a bit crazy to me and many others, I have to stop back and look at our own ways of slander in 2010, and overall it has not changed to much, when people want to slander someone they go straight to the slut or fag and it can be a low blow to someone’s feelings.  One of the major differences of today and the time of early Latin America is that we do not go to court for simple sexual crimes, like sex before marriage.  I can imagine that people at that time must have been nicer to one another, because if they get into an argument and one person want them to get into trouble, they could have gone to the church and said that that person was unfaithful to the sexual rules and sent them to prison.  I am happy to see that if they were caught lying they themselves could be sent to jail, but only if caught.