Women, Religion, and Power: Gender and Resistance in Daily Life in Late-Seventeenth-Century Santiago de Guatemala

Abstract

Women's power to reshape and refabricate social identity is explored in two case studies from the records of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Women manipulated religious symbols, language, and rituals to push against the narrowly defined structures of their lives. Gender, along with race and class, is central to understanding resistance strategies in colonial life. The Case of Dofia Lorensa de Galves In October i668 Dionisia de Castellanos, a sixteen-year-old mulatta slave, presented herself to the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Santiago de Guatemala (today Antigua) to accuse Dofia Lorensa de Galves of witchcraft and superstitions.' Dofia Lorensa, an elite widow of unspecified ethnic origins, had been married to Don Nicolas Enriques de Castellanos. A month before, Dionisia and five of her female companions-a black slave, two Indians, and two mulattas, all servants of a neighbor-were in the house of Dofia Lorensa de Galves. Dofia Lorensa told them that a shawl, a petticoat, and a woman's head covering had been stolen, and that she wanted to find the thief. To do this, she attached one end of a silk thread to a hoop and the other end to a pair of scissors. Dofia Lorensa and her servants, Maria (a free mulatta) and Melchora (a black woman), held the hoop between them and con dedos animados (with animated fingers), swung the scissors around, praying Saint Peter and Saint Paul and all of the Apostles tell me who has stolen these things.2 As they continued to swing the scissors, Dofia Lorensa said the names of all those present. When she mentioned the name of Dionisia's friend Madellena, the silk thread began turning over and over in a circle. Three Ethnohistory 4z:4 (fall I995). Copyright ? by the American Society for Ethnohistory. ccc ooI4-i8oi/95/$I.50. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.138 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 06:03:43 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms