A Child Marriage in Early Colonial Cuzco

Abstract

This article examines an arranged marriage between a seven-year-old Inka girl and an adult Spanish man, and the prosecution that followed. Historians of marriage in the early modern Hispanic world have found broad support for the principle of free consent, which underlay Catholic marriage law and prohibited child marriage. Child marriage was legally invalid and rare. Yet, in this case none of the participants, whether Spanish or indigenous, in favor or opposed to the marriage, considered child marriage to be wrong in itself. The marriage of a child provided members of two ruling castes (colonial elites and colonized Inkas) a shared space for family alliance.