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The Construction of a colonial patriarchal society

I. The “Ideal”

State and Family

With the formation of colonial societies came new ways of family organization.

• The family: basic social institution (“pillar of society”)

Especially when the state was not a strong institution.
Home: ideally mirrored the organization of the state

• State: viewed society as self contained groups with specific social roles and
privileges

Law: The Siete Partidas or Seven Books of Law (13th century)

Implemented by the monarch Alfonso X, this text became representative of Spanish
legislation and it was implemented in Latin America.

• Patriarchal society: society ruled or controlled by men

• Males: Padres de Familia (Male household heads)

-Men were representatives of the King and the state within the family

-The Siete Partidas established that the adult male ruled his wife and children
with the support of the law. Fathers had parental power—which is the rights that
family heads exercised over family members and their property.

-Under this principle, fathers and husbands enjoyed the fruit of their family
property and imposed their will by legal authority and physical punishment if
necessary.

• Children: There were sharp distinctions between the rights of legitimate and
illegitimate children

-The law protected children conceived within a legal marriage while those outside
legal unions did not enjoy the same rights.

-Adultery was condemned, since is interfered with the transfer of material goods
to the children who were product of legal marriages and created economic
conflicts.

-Endogamy: children were expected to marry within their social and racial class to
ensure the continuation of family social status and wealth.

• Women: virtous, chaste, virgin, ignorant, and weak

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-A “true woman” was expect to have the virtue of virginity and chastity, but since
she was considered fragile, ignorant, and weak, she required a male guardian over
her morality.

-women were considered by law to lack mental capacity (sexo imbécil)

-therefore, by law, women required to have patriarchal supervision

Women need partriachal supervision. Why?

• Role of women in preserving social status (Show slide 3)

1. To protect women’s economic condition

2. To ensure that they would not bring unwanted heirs
3. To preserve family wealth, states, and “honor”
4. To maintain the social structure

-Hispanic Community property law

50% marital property to the surviving spouse and the rest equally divided
among children. Men had higher mortality rates, so the law was designed to
financially protect women and children.

-By ensuring that each citizen knew what rank her or she occupied or was
born into, the state tried to maintain social hierarchies and avoid conflicts.

• Women’s rights

1. Depended on their marital status, sexual behavior, and reputation in the

community.

2. In principle, a woman had no juridical personality unless she was single or

widow; if married, she was required to have her husband’s permission for
every transaction she did.

3. A woman, however, could go to court without a license to sue her husband

in civil and criminal court and to defend herself from a criminal lawsuit.

4. Usually, in order to decide how the law would be applied, it was necessary
to ascertain whether the woman in question was decent and virtuous rather
than a woman of low esteem.

5. Since poor women had to work outside the home and were not usually
under the surveillance of a man, it was difficult to defend their decency.
Women who worked in the streets were likely to have their honesty

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instantly questioned in the courts.

-Example: cases of estupro (deflowering of a virgin woman or a chaste

widow by deceit or seduction)

If a male was found guilty of the charge of estupro, he could have half of
his wealth confiscated, could be publicly lashed, or exiled for five years.

In most cases men were never found guilty because of lack of evidence.

According to both the Church and the state, if the woman was not virtous,
the crime would become a simple fornication, which carried no major
punishment.

The message: sexual offense could be permitted against women who were
not virtuous according to ecclesiastical and secular norms.

-Example: cases of rapto (abduction-talking away a woman by force)

The punishment was decided according to the circumstances and rank of

the people involved; it ranged from death sentence to loss of property.

If the woman was not a virgin, a virtuous widow or a married woman, then
the sentence would be lenient and based on the judge’s criteria, not on the
letter of the law.

The message: The fate of the aggressor depended on the sexual conduct of
the woman.

-Women labeled as “public” were considered social cancers that had to

be extirpated because they were likely to seduce a family head or son.
Therefore, they had to claim against a male offender who was usually set
free.

This shows how women were representative of deceit, as in the biblical

story of Adam and Eve.

Powers of the padres de familia:

Parental power could only be exercised by fathers and this right could only
end by death, being sent into exile or jail for committing an offense, or by
legal emancipation.

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Cruel punishment on the part of a father could make their children take
him to court to demand legal emancipation and his wife could sue him for
a temporal separation of the bed and board.
These cases were hard to prove because there were no guidelines to
determine extreme physical punishment, and most of these incidents
occurred in the privacy of the home, hence, creating no evidence.

Men’s sexual conduct

His promiscuity was not to be punished like a woman’s because he did not
bring—in his body—extraneous children to the family as females did.

This explains the close supervision of the sexual conduct of married

women and young daughters.

Men did not need to be responsible for the children that they brought into
the world, since the law established that paternity could only be
demonstrated by the father’s recognition or by proving that he lived in
concubinage with the child’s mother.

Fathers that legally acknowledged their natural children were obliged by

law to support them, and this led these children to gain inheritance rights.

There is a paradox contained in these expectations of men versus the

expectations of women:

While females were considered fragile and weak, they were accountable
for controlling the sexual passions of men, who, in theory, were
considered more prudent, intelligent, and physically able than their female
counterparts.

Role of women in colonial society

-Women occupied a key social position under Spanish secular law because
of their capacity to preserve and reproduce social status and the social
structure of society

-Their sexuality needed supervision to maintain inheritance customs and

the class structure. Thus, they were under the constant tutelage of men.

-The marital society would not continue if one were not subordinated to
the other, just as there would be no order if the padre de familia and his
family were not subordinated to the king.

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II. Actual behavior

• Patriarchal power was limited, the system did not work well in Latin
America.

Why?

1. 13th century law

The economic development of the Caribbean change the rigid social
structure based on a monarchy.
• Ethnic prejudice substituted aristocratic prejudice
• Prestige was gained through personal merit and not necessarily
inheritance
• Economic position became more important than inherited titles of
nobility.
• Two centuries after the conquest, nobility could be bought with
currency acquired through the exploitation of natural resources and
human resources. Yet, prestigious families continued to be
expected to keep appearances of unsullied behavior.

2. Most people did not have property to pass on.

3. Not many had a male figure in their homes. Why?

• Mortality rates were very high

• 35-45% males in the late 18th-early 19th century
• 50% or higher illegitimacy rates-18th century
“Problems of getting married” even when people aspired to it
-proof of parental permission
-birth certificate (age)
-distance
-costs (living costs)
-women lost rights: difficulty of getting a divorce
-women were often deceived by a “future promise
of marriage”
• Fluidity of race and gender relations
Conditions led people to intermix and interact, contrary to what the
norms stipulated.