History 465- Week 12 Post-Ethnohistory

For this week’s post I have chosen to discuss John Chuchiak IV’s article “The Sins of the Fathers” discussing the collision between Mayan sexual practices and those of the conquering Spanish.  I found his analysis very interesting, as he used the missionary tools used by the friars such as their vocabularies and sermons to determine the effect these teachings had on the pre-conquest Mayan ideas of sexuality. Initially he examined how pre-conquest Mayan sexual practices were more “promiscuous” on the surface than the system the friars attempted to impose, but in actuality the civilization had a more pure and efficient way of handling what they deemed sexually inappropriate. The advent of the Spanish actually reduced the effectiveness of the system as it muddled concepts of what was sexually appropriate, and because the Spanish system of punishment was in general more lax at following through on its rulings. This clash between two cultures sexual concepts is important to look at because as we have often discussed in class, the sexual nature of a culture represents the culture on a much broader scale, and as civilizations are often organized around the family structure the altering of sexual norms therefore alters a culture as a whole. As Chuchiak writes, “all sex acts were understood in terms of their power to create, maintain, and destroy society” (73).

We have examined all over Latin America this semester how the conquest of the Spanish resulted in the Spanish imposing their own system of beliefs onto the people they conquered. This phenomenon is seen with the Maya, where a mixing of sexual ideas occurred. Contrary to previous beliefs, the Mayans were taught that “celibacy was the most desirable state and that sex was sinful and dirty”. (89). It’s hard to believe first of all that such a thing was being taught, and second of all that the Mayans bought into it on any level. I suppose when you’re being conquered there’s not much choice but to adopt the system of laws of the conquering people, but to take on such radically different views must have been extremely uncomfortable for the Mayans.

I find it comical that the Mayans actually used the ridiculous sexual standards imposed by the Spanish friars against them to defend themselves. We have seen select examples of indigenous people in Latin America using the invading system to their advantage (e.g. women using marriages to Spanish men for their gain), and the Mayans were able to do it. They “learned well the lessons that the priests and friars taught them” and then used them to attack the clergymen, who were breaking the rules they tried to impose. (99). In teaching such strict doctrine the clergymen actually condemned themselves, because the Mayans had the right to call them out when they knew they were committing sexual sin. This information is important because it shows us that the conquered people in Latin America were not always helpless when it came to their position versus the Spanish, but rather were allowed room to protect themselves using the invaders system. It thus repaints the picture of conquered society as one not where one race dominated the other completely but where rights existed on both sides. This coexistence probably strengthened even more as time went by and intermarriages between the two cultures happened, to the point where there was not longer two distinct sexual ideas clashing, but rather one mixed one.