Burn the Witch
To me, witchcraft in the medieval times all the way through the 18th century conjures the image of old women standing over the smoking black cauldrons that when discovered were quickly brought to justice either by fire or possibly drowning. Although in many places witchcraft was seen as a threat to the community that only death could cure, in colonial Spanish America witchcraft was handled in other ways. The stereotypical version of a witch being an old poor woman did not really exist in Castile and southern Spain. Women who practiced witchcraft came from all different backgrounds and occupations. Witchcraft was not considered to be so much heresy as it was simple ignorance, so instead of putting witches in the hands of the inquisition which would have led to death, the people caught practicing witchcraft were to be educated in biblical doctrine. This then begs the question; if witchcraft is not considered heresy what threat did it pose?
Indian and mestiza women are the most closely associated with witchcraft but this was a practice and belief that crossed both racial and social lines. There were remedies and concoctions for all kinds of things but remedies for love seemed to be the most common. Women typically made men ingest their witchcraft because as the preparers of the food it allowed easy access to a medium in which they could dispense their remedies. These remedies served many purposes. They were used to keep a lover faithful, to blind him to her affairs, to cause impotence, to spy on lovers, or even increase love. This leads us to a main threat in women practicing witchcraft; it gave women power over their husbands. Ruth Behar points out in her article that men saw this as a “larger threat to a patriarchal structure” that it turned “the world upside down by making husbands submissive to their wives.”
Though the offense was not usually punishable by death witchcraft and magic were considered sins. The church gained knowledge of these affairs through the confessionals and were generally considered the result of ignorance. The Inquisition really just desired those guilty of such deeds to feel a “sense of guilt and shame.” By denouncing people’s fears of witchcraft as mere superstition, it devalued the women’s power gained by the ability to control a lover and questioned their mental capacity. This slap in the face served its purpose in some cases, causing people to disbelieve in the power of witchcraft, while it also allowed those still inclined to use the remedies a certain amount of freedom from consequences.
