Curtailing Excess: The Excision of Idolatry, Magic, and Non-reproductive Sex in Colonial Mexico

This dissertation employs excess as an analytical framework to explore the ways in which commoner indigenous and mixed-raced peoples accessed the divine to alleviate the ills afflicting their communities. This study also highlights the moral and legal contexts in which colonial officials invoked excess to justify conquest. The documents that I have consulted show that monarchs, viceroys, clergymen and other state functionaries labeled transgressions such as idolatry, superstition, and deviant sex acts as “excesses.” In addition to these primary sources, my understanding of excess as a calculated rhetorical strategy that conflated non-European sociocultural experiences into a single pejorative category has been informed by historians and literary scholars of Latin America.

This dissertation develops three central arguments. First, European and Mesoamerican cultures recognized that excessive behaviors such as dissolution and licentiousness produced harmful repercussions in the terrestrial world. However, the precise definition of these categories and the ways in which they were addressed varied widely, providing the interstice necessary for Spanish colonizers to equate non-European cultural traditions with sin and immorality. A metaphysical impasse emerged as Europeans maintained a unidirectional relationship with the divine while Indigenous peoples emphasized reciprocity. Because Catholics opined that abstention from all sin was the best way to appease the Lord, the total eradication of excess, rather than its management, was the best way to secure good fortune in the terrestrial realm.

Second, additional conflict stemmed from whether geography was deemed to be sacred or profane. Throughout the colonial era, many indigenous and mixed-raced peoples believed that every aspect of the environment corresponded to a supernatural entity. Spanish colonizers, in contrast, approached geography from a secular perspective. Improper land usage failed to improve the terrain, leaving it wild, while acceptable forms of land tenure enhanced the surrounding area, rendering it cultivated. Areas distant from a city’s moral center were viewed as potentially dangerous, thereby transforming formerly sacred landscapes into dens of iniquity.

Third, although the sexual comportment and religious practices of commoners concerned both elite Spaniards and indigenous peoples, the sociopolitical changes that occurred after Iberians solidified their place in the upper echelons of colonial Mexican society meant that pre-Hispanic forms of sexual behavior and religious devotion were derided and pushed underground. Customs that had facilitated diplomacy, e.g. polygynous marriages, were stripped of their political utility and grouped alongside other sinful practices such as masturbation, sodomy, and. And while commoners continued to solicit the services of native and mixed-raced healers, Catholic officials disparaged them as Devil worshipers. Because excess was consistently interpreted to be antithetical to the imperial project, colonial officials attempted to excise practices such as idolatry, magic, and non-reproductive sex from the body politic. Spanish colonizers fretted about non-orthodox rituals, non-reproductive sexual acts, and other perceived excesses because the perpetuation of these practices threatened the construction of an orderly society.