Homosexuality Cases in Colonial Latin America

This week we discussed cases of people caught practicing homosexuality. Many of these cases are intriguing, though exhausted with details. Many of the details discussed and examined in these cases included who was on top and bottom during sex, who ejaculated first into whom, their actions in public, specifically whether or not they quarreled with one another, and many other things to try and prove a couple suspected of practicing homosexuality guilty.

It is important to note that the main force used to implicate and charge these unlawful acts was the reliance on alcalde del barrio, a network of neighborhood surveillance “copycats”, who accused these people of committing these nefarious sins. So, in effect, snitching neighbors became the key force of enforcing sexual rule in the society. This is interesting, because these cases were almost always based on 100% circumstantial evidence of how the couple acted in public. What made it even harder for the accused was that there was an assumption of guilt by the court, instead of today, where the accused are always assumed innocent until proven guilty. So, essentially, if a scorned acquaintance wanted to convict someone of committing the sin of sodomy, and the accused did not have an acceptable excuse, they were guilty.

Also, in many cases, the accused were tortured until a confession was made. I support capital punishment as a deterrent to others and a penalty to one who has committed heinous crimes; I do not think anyone would advocate severe torture as means to obtain a confession. Any amount of logic would conclude that most confessions were proclaimed to stop the pain of being raised up by the hands while tied behind the back and other painful methods. For instance, Zeb Tortorici writes in his article of Sodomitical Subcultures about a case in which a baker named Francisco Capiche was accused of sodomy, which he flatly denied. However, when he was interrogated and instruments of torture were introduced, he admitted to the crime.

These two subjects are two examples of how I believe that these accused couples were wrongfully tried in court. Even though they very well may have been practicing these unlawful acts, the way they were tried and convicted just did not seem fair in my eyes.