Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America.

Cover -- Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Unnatural Bodies, Desires, and Devotions -- PART I. UNNATURAL HERESIES -- 1. Archival Narratives of Clerical Sodomy and Suicide from Eighteenth-Century Cartagena -- 2. Sacred Defiance and Sexual Desecration: María Getrudis Arévalo and the Holy Office in Eighteenth-Century Mexico -- 3. The Devil or Nature Itself? Desire, Doubt, and Diabolical Sex among Colonial Mexican Women -- 4. Female Homoeroticism, Heresy, and the Holy Office in Colonial Brazil -- PART II: UNNATURAL CRIMES -- 5. Experimenting with Nature: José Ignacio Eyzaguirre's General Confession and the Knowledge of the Body (1799-1804) -- 6. Prosecuting Female-Female Sex in Bourbon Quito -- 7. Sodomy, Gender, and Identity in the Viceroyalty of Peru -- 8. Incestuous Natures: Consensual and Forced Relations in Mexico, 1740-1854 -- 9. Bestiality: The Nefarious Crime in Mexico, 1800-1856 -- Epilogue: Unnatural Sex? -- Contributors -- Index.

Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America brings together a broad community of scholars to explore the history of illicit and alternative sexualities in Latin America's colonial and early national periods. Together the essays examine how "the unnatural" came to inscribe certain sexual acts and desires as criminal and sinful, including acts officially deemed to be "against nature"--sodomy, bestiality, and masturbation--along with others that approximated the unnatural--hermaphroditism, incest, sex with the devil, solicitation in the confessional, erotic religious visions, and the desecration of holy images. In doing so, this anthology makes important and necessary contributions to the historiography of gender and sexuality. Amid the growing politicized interest in broader LGBTQ movements in Latin America, the essays also show how these legal codes endured to make their way into post-independence Latin America.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.