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Profit and Passion. Nicole von Germeten
Читать онлайн.Название Profit and Passion
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780520969704
Автор произведения Nicole von Germeten
Издательство Ingram
Guisas’s clientele included a mestizo tailor named Juan Mallorquin. This man supposedly had open access to the couple’s house, and on a recent occasion he had injured Guisas’s arm with his sword in a drunken argument. Witnesses spoke of at least four other men who had paid for carnal access with Guisas with the full knowledge and consent of her husband. A mulatto called Juan de Perillo (who was also imprisoned in the archbishop’s jail) claimed that he had heard a revealing conversation between the husband and wife. Allegedly, Guisas, in a drunken rage, had called Temiño a “knave, a great scoundrel and cuckold because . . . you sent me to earn with my body so that you would have some money [bellaco bien bellaco cornudo porque . . . me enviaba de ganar con mi cuerpo para que os tuviese dinero].” Temiño responded in kind, saying María de Guisas “lied, like a knave [bellaca].83
It appeared to both these witnesses and the provisor that Temiño made a living by hustling his wife, but when questioned, both spouses denied every accusation. Both claimed that they were honorable people, with Guisas adamantly asserting her monogamous wifely virtue. The couple used this opportunity in court to redeem their reputation by not letting a single aspect of the accusations pass without denouncing them as false. In addition, Temiño made several petitions asking why he was suffering such a long imprisonment (a month) and especially why he had to endure a thick chain and irons on his legs.84 If we understand his denials as written rhetorical stances and trust the witnesses for the prosecution, as the court did, this harsh treatment makes sense in terms of traditional Spanish censorious attitudes toward ruffians, dating back at least to the Siete Partidas.
Despite the claims made by hostile witnesses, ten plebeian Spanish men (ranging in age from mid-twenties to over sixty) denied that Temiño “consented” to his wife’s having sex with other men. The evidence that they offered highlights Temiño’s violent and jealous character. During the course of his defense, the witnesses created a written record of his honorable character for him, even though outside the court he preferred to use violence to shape his reputation.
Statements about Temiño take both a formulaic and more individualistic shape, both as the expected responses of character witnesses and glimpses of the real Temiño. Beginning on a positive note, most of the witnesses spoke of Temiño and his wife as good Christians. One witness affirmed that Temiño would never allow his wife to associate with dishonorable people, a confirmation of his honor. But his possessiveness went too far, beyond the honor code’s dictates regarding men’s roles as protectors of the sexuality of dependent women. Several of the witnesses stated that it was unlikely that such a suspicious and jealous man would allow his wife to have sex with other men. But his character emerges as worse than jealous: Temiño frequently beat María de Guisas, according to six witnesses, so much so that she appeared with a bloody face and feared for her life. One man claimed that he had stepped in to break up their fights. The court testimonies wrote Guisas as a victim of domestic violence, not a dishonorable woman.85 While the witnesses for the defense redirected the investigation away from Guisas’s alleged sexual improprieties, they also erased the evidence that Temiño worked as her panderer.
Although the deponents expressed the opinion that making an income off procuring did not suit a jealous, violent husband like Temiño, in fact, the persona they created for him sounds like that of a typical ruffian. If nothing else, Temiño’s character witnesses certainly did not convince the court that he was a good husband. Guisas apparently received no sentence and probably did not remain imprisoned for very long during the trial, given that, at this time, royal law did not define her as a criminal. If a legal whorehouse did not exist in 1571 Mexico City, in theory she did not disregard brothel regulations by operating as a clandestina. On the other hand, procuring certainly was punishable, especially when a husband pandered his wife. Even those who spoke in Temiño’s favor suggested that he certainly deserved some form of penance. The ecclesiastical court agreed with them and sentenced him to march to a mass on foot, carrying a candle. He also received a sentence of banishment from the archdiocese of Mexico for two years and admonishment to treat his wife more appropriately within the bonds of matrimony. Because his prosecutors were churchmen not secular judges, Temiño avoided the sentence of ten years’ galley slavery, as Phillip’s laws decreed. Temiño’s ecclesiastical prosecution differs from crown intent regarding ruffians, but it carried out royal decrees against public sin.
A BAWD
If they wished to avoid ruffians like Temiño, potential illicit lovers in sixteenth-century Mexico City could call on bawds to arrange their affairs. Following in the medieval tradition, these slightly older women mediated between men and women by carrying persuasive messages and sometimes providing accommodations for compensation. A Spanish woman named Catalina García helped bring the previous centuries’ mediator traditions to New Spain. In 1570, García came before the archbishop’s court for allegedly helping to organize her friend María de Rojas’s encounters with at least three men.86
García knew how to convince her clients with words; she was persistent and aggressive, and she masterminded locations for lovers to meet. In return for arranging the affairs, carrying messages, and hosting the encounters, she received a few pesos in compensation and, in one case, some sugar. García, at age thirty-eight, had twelve more years of life experience than Rojas. Born in Castile and living in New Spain since 1557, García also enjoyed a slightly higher social status than Rojas did, claiming a tradesman husband and the ability to write and sign her name very confidently. She may have even written convincing petitions in her own hand.87 In contrast, the court labeled Rojas (of unknown origins) a soltera (sexually active single woman), and she could not sign her name. The official accusations branded García not only as an alcahueta “for fornicating men and women,” but also an encubridora and a tercera, an accessory to fornication and a mediator.88 Rojas may have sought to clear her own name through the intervention of the court, while García intoned the expected rhetoric, using the legal formulas to inscribe her good reputation against the accusations.
According to Rojas and three of her clients, García solicited each of the men as they innocently (as the four accusers portrayed it) strolled past her house at various hours of the night and day. García called to them from her window or stood in the doorway, alone and on occasion with her friend Rojas in the door with her. The targeted men, age twenty, twenty-six, and thirty, were also plebeians, one described as a mestizo and another working as a tailor. In classic bawd style, allegedly García ignored all of their hesitation over engaging in “carnal access” with Rojas and aggressively “persuaded” the four potential fornicators to submit with her persistent verbiage. When Rojas at first refused to have sex with the men, García asked her over and over again (“tantas veces” or “so many times”), promising that each man would “do very well” for her.89 García convinced the men, on some occasions instantly or otherwise over a period of time, to meet Rojas either at their shared house or at the men’s accommodations.90
While Rojas and her lovers risked compromising their reputations by making these detailed accusations, sex exchanged for money and simple fornication between unmarried adults carried no criminal penalty at this time, so García had the most to fear in terms of legal sanctions. The clerical court took seriously and disliked what they heard about García from hostile witnesses, so an official called for her arrest and incarceration in the archdiocesan jail. When questioned directly about accusations of pandering, García (already described as an effective verbal persuader) refuted everything other than the fact that Rojas had lived with her for a few months. She justified this as an act of charity to help a sick friend.91
García built her own case by asserting her superb reputation as an honest married woman while simultaneously tearing down the trustworthiness of the testimonies. According to García, Rojas’s accusations had no value because she was a “public whore [ramera]” who slept