The Commodity of Sex

The importance of credit to early modern Spaniards reveals much about the way that their economy and their society worked. The systems of trade based on trust and obligation emphasizes the importance of honor in Spanish culture and its influence on interactions between genders and classes. The general ideas of honor were attached to female chastity and male virility. The reputation of a Spanish woman was to be defended by her male family members at all costs, through the practice of dueling and other legal measures if necessary. This would certainly make it appear that sexual and gender identity was the most important component of honor to the Spanish at this time period. However, as Scott Taylor's article points out, the use of credit was just as important to the honor of men and women in early modern Spain as chastity was. The failure to pay a debt or honor a promise could bring about the same violence as an affront to virginity could. In fact, these were more common causes for such duels than slander or accusations of immorality. The entire economy was based largely on honor and the potential of one to repay his debt, and failure to uphold such promises could be damaging to many people. What is most interesting, though, is that in light of the importance of financial honor, the perception of sexual integrity seems to change. In fact, female virginity becomes almost a commodity that can be argued over much as the payment for any other product could be. While gender is important in the conception of honor, particularly among the elites, both men and women have other aspects involved in their social standing, as well as the ability to control such things. Due partly to the militaristic emphasis of the Reconquista, the fight for one's integrity and the integrity of family members was a part of life for men and women, and involved every aspect of one's reputation, not just the acceptable characteristics of gender.

Reasons for Slavery

In modern times, with the knowledge that we have about the horrors of slavery, it doesn't seem that it could in any way be reconciled with a Christian worldview. At the time of the slave trade, however, Europeans who bought, sold, and owned slaves found excuses for doing so in the Bible. The very Scriptures that would eventually be used in the cause of abolition were misconstrued in order to support human trafficking and violence to unknown people groups. The professed rationale and the true motives behind this terrible enterprise reveal a lot about the Europeans who developed the slave trade and the effect it had on African slaves in South America.

The Europeans looking for justification for slavery often claimed that, much as they were "civilizing" the natives that they encountered in the Americas by changing their culture and religion, they were helping the slaves by bringing them to a New World and teaching them about Christianity. This might have given some comfort to nobles who had concerns about the practice. However, the slave trade began as purely a financial venture, used to serve the needs of the Portuguese on their sugar plantations and other ventures that required more human labor than they could provide. Racial dynamics were not necessarily involved in the original capture of African slaves. In fact, African tribes helped the Portuguese by trading enemy prisoners for European products. While the Portuguese felt themselves superior to the Africans, it was as much due to their access to modern weapons and military power as it was to supremest ideas of religion and societal interactions. They merely understood that slaves taken out of their home to an unfamiliar world would be easier to subdue than those forced to work in their native environments.

While Africans brought to North and South America had similar experiences in their capture and transportation across the Atlantic, the cultures that they developed were surprisingly different. The number of slaves sold in Latin America was enormous compared to the number sold in the North, especially since the slave trade came to South America and the Caribbean about a century before the first slaves arrived in Jamestown. Due to the size of the African population in South America, the slaves retained more of their African culture, and relied perhaps even more heavily than before on the mystical, magical elements of their religions and societal interactions as a way of coping with the atrocities they faced. Even as generations were born in the Americas, this retention of African sensibilities affected the way the slaves interacted with the other people groups in Latin America and led to a unique subculture that has lasted into modern times

The "Congratulations to a Married Couple" written by Tetzcoco nobles shows both the influence of the Spanish and the heritage of the Nahua people. The intent was to standardize the expectations of people who considered themselves nobility. Part of this process involved the idealization of traditional pagan systems, but these were now combined with the value system of the Franciscan monks and the Spanish nobles who were beginning to influence the Nahua. Both the native and Spanish nobility felt that they were united by class similarities, so they were willing to modify elements of their cultures so that they could form mutually beneficial relationships.

One recurring element in the text is references to the God of the Catholic Spanish, as well as the Holy Mother and the sacraments. Though the Nahua had their own deities prior to the arrival of the Spanish, they were largely able to adapt their own systems of worship to the Catholic system in order to please the Franciscan monks and conquistadors. This made religion another unifying factor for the nobles, and this dialogue uses such imagery in order to emphasize the uniformity of the blended society.

The groom is encouraged to work on the provisions needed in the household and to constantly be alert to the needs of those around him. Even as he sleeps he is charged with protecting his family at all costs and ensuring their happiness. This responsibility is similar to the traditional roles of Nahua men. Going to war to gain worth and glory was the way they supported their families and their standing in the community. Even though the Spanish discouraged war and many of the blood sacrifices that followed the capture of prisoners, the Nahua retained the symbolic nature of their gender roles.

The bride's advice is to work tirelessly in the home to keep it clean and hospitable for her family and community. She is also responsible for the food and drink that anyone in the household needs, as well as the duties of spinning and weaving. These had been women's responsibilities throughout Nahua history, and while the Spanish usually thought of these jobs as acts of servitude performed by women as weaker creatures, the natives saw them as a way for women to wage their own war against chaos and evil spirits. So the translation of a similar worldview was not always based on the same motivations, but allowed the two cultures to merge.

One important thing to keep in mind about these dialogues is that they were a guideline for a new noble culture. Those who wrote them were hoping to unite the Spanish and Nahua nobility to increase their own power and avoid serious conflict with the newcomers. This does not mean, however, that all of the natives agreed with these new principles. They were merely an ideal guideline for interactions based on the ancient structures of Nahua society and the traditional ideals of the colonizing Spanish. But they do show how the colonial society developed in ancient Mexican cultures and the effect the changes had on the native peoples.

Although it seems that the parallelism of the Incan culture is vastly different from our own, there are many similarities. In the modern deconstruction of gender conventions, writers like Derrida have focused on the binary system of gender that is prevalent in western culture, their primary criticism being that, as we discussed, neither gender can be defined without reference to its differences from the other. Their proposed solution was a redefining of gender that would include broader definitions of the term. Unfortunately, our society has not, in general, moved very far beyond traditional conceptions.
The Incans, on the other hand, crafted a society that embraced the perceived differences between men and women and crafted a society based on the binary nature of gender. Their parallel belief system was nearly equal in its treatment of men and women, giving them each a hierarchical system according to class, with a male and female ruler at the top of society. Both genders had assigned tasks to further the success of their ayllu, and it could be argued that neither set of jobs was more difficult than the other. They embraced the fact that women were made for childbirth and men were made for protection and provision, but they did not see either role as more or less necessary than the other.
However, the system of convents described in the article by Garcilaso de la Vega does not seem to fit in this parallel scheme, since it involved only women. The virgins that were chosen for seclusion lived their lives without contact with the outside world, other than visits from the Coya and her servants. They were not given a choice in this fate, but they were revered as special servants of the huacas and the society in general, and the goods they produced were seen as more prestigious than normal ones.
When the Spanish arrived, the class distinctions that already existed within Incan society were exaggerated because of the way they fit into the social structures of the colonizers. The Spanish adventurers aligned themselves with the Incan nobles because they felt that their similarities in class standing outweighed their ethnic differences. For this reason, noble Incan women were often respected by the Spanish as potential partners, and their marriages were used as political alliances. This fit into the parallel structure of the Incans in a sense, but the male domination of the Spanish slowly began to affect this mixed culture.
Even though the Incan culture was still a binary definition of gender, it was in many ways more advanced than our own. The Incans celebrated the differences between men and women, and created a system of harmony. They also allocated specific jobs for women that allowed them to have a structured hierarchy within their own gender and a method of sustaining themselves and their families. This was a great help to the women as they began to interact with the Spanish, because they could hold their own and garner respect from men who were used to women being placed in roles of submissiveness and subjection.