Marriage, Love, and Free Will in Colonial Mexico

This week’s reading was of Patricia Seed’s book, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial America. In it, she discusses the changing ideals of colonial Latin America regarding love honor, and obedience, focusing on the desired ideals of the Spanish Catholic Church.

Seed predominantly writes about how the Catholic Church protected the freedom of marriage choice by allowing couples to be married, in spite of the wishes of the community or the couple’s family and protected them from rebuffs of their parents. These views were sort of revolutionary at the time, with the Spanish Catholic Church and the Church of England being the only groups that held those views of the major Western European religions. Although they commanded that children obey their parents, they held that God removed children from subjection to their parents when it came to the choice of marriage. Throughout her book, Seed notes the changes in parental authority throughout the 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th centuries. Later, in the 18^th century, as the balance of power shifted from the Church and more toward crown authority, marriages were more easily stopped by families opposed to their children’s marriages. Wealthy families especially held the upper hand, as they were able to use the royal courts to prevent marriages that they viewed as socially undesirable, which was, during the 16^th and 17^th centuries, an invalid reason. These changes were, in part, due to the shift in attitudes towards the importance of money and economic success. That is why, in the 18^th century threats of inheritance was viewed as a legitimate excuse to stop a marriage between two people.

Seed also discusses the meaning of love to these colonial Latin Americans. Their view of love meant nothing of what it does today. In the reasons why couples desired to wed, love, or at least our meaning of it, was not viewed upon as good. If a couple reasoned that they were in love and wanted to be married, they were looked at as foolish and immature individuals and believed that they were blinded by passion and could not think rationally. Instead of “amor” they would use “te gusta” to convey that they liked each other and that they were two compatible people who wished to marry. These views were very different to what I am used to in today’s culture, where just the opposite would be true. If a couple just said they “liked” each other and were “compatible” one would question their love for one another and a potential marriage. While, if a couple outwardly showed and confessed love to one another, however sickening it may look, we would believe that the couple genuinely loved each other.

This book really opened my eyes to the practices and beliefs of the colonial culture and their views on love. To my surprise, they were not as different in their beliefs on marriage and free will as our culture today.