Colonial Intimacies: Interethnic Kinship, Sexuality, and Marriage in Southern California, 1769–1885

Abstract

Erika Pérez ambitiously intervenes in colonial borderlands analyses and Chicana/o studies with her impressively researched Colonial Intimacies. For too long historians tended to treat these scholarly traditions as disconnected. Most narratives about Alta California focus on one or the other with an odd void in the mid-nineteenth century. Pérez joins a small group of scholars who are, instead, uncovering continuities from 1769, the start of Spain's aggressive missionizing efforts, to 1885, when U.S. railroads transformed the regional economy. She does this by eschewing the more typical reliance on violence or elites' machinations. Pérez offers an alternative narrative, framed around the theme of intimacy, which includes familial relationships, spiritual relationships, and sexual relationships. Colonial Intimacies thereby gives more weight to the difficult daily choices that indigenous and Spanish-speaking inhabitants made against shifting colonial pressures. Her two main touchstones are compadrazgo (godparenting) and “biethnic” (mixed-race) relationships. Traditions of godparenting, first introduced during missionaries' conversion efforts, became a durable strategy for community building. Individuals chosen as padrinos or mardinas became co-parents, with expectations of safeguarding their godchildren's welfare. These obligations created more expansive kinship networks, which provided stability in turbulent times. In California, though, racial hierarchies made these relationships asymmetrical. Native godchildren became bound to give their labor in exchange for the material and spiritual incentives they received. Pérez argues that, despite the severe inequities, mission Indians nonetheless adapted godparenting for their own goals, including upholding traditional female leadership roles. Those same practices persisted, eventually building connections between newly arriving Euro-American foreigners and established Mexican and native communities.