The Wedding "gift" my in-laws wished had been returned 13 years ago...

One question that has been nagging at me these last couple of weeks is with regards to families, both Spanish and Indigenous, “gifting” their daughters hand in marriage. My first thoughts were that the daughters had been treated as though they were property with either their dowry or familial social/political status as the trade off. Even prior to the Spanish conquering, this same social gifting was prevalent. However, after reading Pedro Carrasco’s essay on Indian and Spanish intermarriage, I began to wonder something else, something that I have yet to see discussed in any of our readings. My question is simple, what if in our modern day know-it-all ethnocentric attitudes, we have misunderstood the acting of “gifting” itself?
Our focus has been on explaining and trying to understand gender roles and assignments from the late 15th century to currently the late 16th century. Yesterday while dealing with my divorce, I reflected on why I married my husband and how funny the concept would have been if my dad had “gifted” me to my husband and his family; though I am pretty sure since they have always treated me like crap, they would have rather he kept his loud mouth liberal daughter… At any rate the thought popped into my head that my father had “gifted” me so to speak. In most traditional marriages, the bride is usually “given” to the groom by the bride’s family. Then I asked myself, what if our understanding of the word “gift” in relation to marriages we are studying has been either misinterpreted or misunderstood.
Some might argue that no, they were literal gifts especially since the Indigenous have their own version prior to the conquest. Carrasco was only able to study intermarriages of the upper echelon of both ethnic realms, mainly because they would have been the only written down or recorded somewhere. However, the idea of a bride’s family giving the equivalent of some form of capital in their society, perhaps land or an actual dowry is nothing new and would have crossed both social and economic barriers; after all, do not most parents want to help their newly married children out with money, furniture or help them find achieve a home of their own? A friend of mine got married over the weekend to another friend of mine from high school. Who gave her away? You guessed it, her family. What did this mean? It meant that those two families are now linked through the marriage of their children. Is this any different from families in the past? No. My in-laws did not like me (and quite frankly there is no love lost on my side either), however, our families will forever be linked. Why? My husband and I had three children, all sons. Regardless of whether my husband and I are married or not, and regardless of my husband and his family disowning my children socially, they are still an undeniable link to his family. My children’s history and heritage comes from both sides because unlike the Holy mother of Christ, I was impregnated by a dork from West Tennessee, not the Holy Spirit, therefore my children and part of their lineage come from their biological father and well as myself. Unfortunately, unlike most of the fathers from Ourense, Spain (Allyson Poska’s essays), my husband apparently thinks he should be able to leave his wife and children, with no child support or alimony, and deny his children their legitimacy and bloodline through his family.

Side note: Do not ask how I got off on this tangent, I gave up “coca-cola” for lent and my mind needs caffeine in order to function properly. Though considering lent is a Catholic practice, I might be able to later tie it into a future discussion…