Social Status and Agency in Colonial Mexico
Whether gained through birth, business, or the newly-established translator class, social status allowed women and minorities in colonial Mexico to control their lives in ways that otherwise would have not been possible. Social status allowed women like Doña Josefa, Polonia de Ribas, Madalena, and Malintzin to resist society’s expectations, ensure their self-preservation, command the respect of their peers, provide for their offspring and develop careers. Social status was more important than gender or race in determining one’s agency in colonial Mexico.
Colonial Mexican Society had many expectations for women. Since women were seen as intellectually inferior to men, men wrote books instructing women on how to act; they were supposed to be shy, restrained, and seek enclosure. Women were taught by their parents, educators, and society, in general, to believe that “the pursuit of beauty and social pleasures were… the only aims in a woman’s life”[1]. Doña Josefa Amar y Borbón, a wealthy woman by birth, resisted these expectations and prejudices by printing a defense of women’s intellectual abilities. Doña Josefa rejected how women were conditioned to make themselves “beautiful and agreeable to men.”[2] She wrote that women needed a more thorough education that paid more “respect to women as human beings”[3] rather than beauty and social pleasure being their only goals. Doña Josefa wrote this defense because she saw the issues and understood what caused them; she would not have been able to do this without her social status. Because of Doña Josefa’s upper-class birth, she had the “education, social standing, and strength of character necessary to undertake the task of speaking in the name of women.”[4] Josefa, as a member of the upper class, had received an education, a necessary skill when writing a treatise. Additionally, she already had the social connections to get her work published. If Josefa had been a member of the lower class, she would not have had the means to have her work published, or even taken seriously. Doña Josefa’s social status gave her the education and strength of character strong enough to take on the daunting task of defending her gender.
Polonia de Ribas was a wealthy free Mulata who was the daughter of a slave. She acquired her social standing by being a “shrewd businesswoman”[5] with “business savvy”[6] which allowed her to purchase slaves and run a successful business. Because of the social standing, her business afforded her, Polonia developed a wide social network of “wealthy and politically powerful men who held her in esteem.”[7] Despite her position as a Mulata, she was now respected by society with social legitimacy. Additionally, owning slaves was “the best proof to others that one was no longer…enslaveable.”[8] Her social standing allowed her to ensure her safety. Polonia was also able to provide at least one daughter with a sizeable dowry worthy of the upper class. As a Mulata in colonial Mexico, she would not have been able to do this without the social status that her business gave her.
The women the Spanish abducted during the early colonial period in Mexico did not have much control over their lives. They were beaten, raped, and generally mistreated, but one option they did have was to become a translator. In early colonial Mexico, “the Europeans would go to almost any lengths to attain translators.”[9] The Maya and Nahuatl translators the Spanish took deserve their own social class. They went from being slaves to one of the most important members of an expedition, earning power, influence, and sometimes even the title of doña. Madalena is the clearest example of how powerful and influential translators were in early colonial Mexico. Madalena was an indigenous woman who was abducted and eventually became a translator for Luis Cáncer in his last mission. Shortly after Madalena started translating for Cáncer, two of the friars who accompanied them were captured and killed. When Cáncer and Madalena went ashore to look for them, Madalena conversed with the natives and told Cáncer that his friends were alive further inland, a lie if she knew their fate. When Cáncer went to look for them, he was killed, and Madalena disappeared. It is unclear whether or not Madalena knew the friars were killed and betrayed Cáncer. We can assume Madalena returned to her people[10]; she rejected the Spanish society that had enslaved her and returned to her home village. Upon becoming a translator, Madalena was given the trust and autonomy to make her own decisions about what she said in her translations. She may have used mistranslation as a weapon[11], luring Cáncer into a trap and creating an opportunity for her own freedom. Madalena was taken as a slave because of her indigenous status. If she had stayed in the lower class, she would have spent a good portion more of her life as a slave, just about the lowest agency a person can possess. Because of her social status as a translator and the power it provided, she was able to reject Spanish society and return to her home village.
Malintzin, Cortez’s iconic translator, is another example of the agency afforded to the new translator class. Malintzin was taken as a child and sold into slavery to the Nahua. She eventually was given to Cortez who gave her to one of his men as a concubine. One night, Moctezuma sent two Nahua-speaking messengers to talk with the Spanish, but Cortez’s translator spoke only Mayan and thus could not translate. At this moment Malintzin saw her opportunity to change the trajectory of her life. Before she was sold into slavery, Malintzin had been born into a high-class household where she had learned the intricate grammar used in noble Nahua speak and had developed the confidence to wield it correctly[12]. Malintzin could not only communicate with the Nahua but also make an impression. If she had been raised in a low-class household, she would not have had the confidence or knowledge to speak in the proper way. She would not have had the power to resist her captivity or provide for her own safety. When Malintzin spoke up to translate for the first time, her change in class was overnight. Her new position afforded her respect and influence not just with Cortez, but also with Cortez’s men who started “to refer to her as doña Marina, just as they referred to noblewomen from Spain.”[13] They knew that doña Marina now was important and to be respected. Malintzin found a way to ensure her self-preservation and command the respect of those around her. Additionally, Malintzin’s “high birth among her own people, of noble stock”[14] enabled her son to become a knight in the prestigious Order of Santiago. He would not have been allowed into this order had Malintzin not been of high social standing at birth. Malintzin, in the eyes of the Spanish, was indigenous and a woman but her usefulness superseded her race and gender so much that she was able to not just control her own life but influence those around her as well.
An individual’s agency in Colonial Mexico depended on their social status more than religion or race. Whether gained through business, birth, or the new translator class, members of the upper class had much more control over their lives than the lower class. Malintzin, Madalena, Polonia, and Doña Josefa all should have been at a disadvantage, whether it be race or gender, but through their social status, they were able to resist society’s expectations while ensuring their self-preservation, command the respect of their peers, providing for their offspring and developing careers.
[1] Asunción Lavrin, “In search of the colonial woman in Mexico: the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” in Asunción Lavrin, ed, Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives (New York: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1978), Pg. 28.
[2] Asunción Lavrin, “In search of the colonial woman in Mexico: the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” in Asunción Lavrin, ed, Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives (New York: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1978), Pg. 28.
[3] Asunción Lavrin, “In search of the colonial woman in Mexico: the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” in Asunción Lavrin, ed, Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives (New York: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1978), Pg. 28.
[4] Asunción Lavrin, “In search of the colonial woman in Mexico: the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” in Asunción Lavrin, ed, Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives (New York: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1978), Pg. 28.
[5] Danielle Terrazas Williams, “ ‘My Conscience is Free and Clear’: African-Descended Women, Status, and Slave Owning in Mid-Colonial Mexico,” The Americas 75:3 (July 2018), Pg. 544.
[6] Danielle Terrazas Williams, “ ‘My Conscience is Free and Clear’: African-Descended Women, Status, and Slave Owning in Mid-Colonial Mexico,” The Americas 75:3 (July 2018), Pg. 542.
[7] Danielle Terrazas Williams, “ ‘My Conscience is Free and Clear’: African-Descended Women, Status, and Slave Owning in Mid-Colonial Mexico,” The Americas 75:3 (July 2018), Pg. 540.
[8] Danielle Terrazas Williams, “ ‘My Conscience is Free and Clear’: African-Descended Women, Status, and Slave Owning in Mid-Colonial Mexico,” The Americas 75:3 (July 2018), Pg. 551.
[9] Camilla Townsend, Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006), Pg. 57.
[10] Scott Cave, “MADALENA: The Entangled History of one Indigenous Floridian Woman in the Atlantic World,” in The Americas (April 2017), Pg. 199.
[11] Scott Cave, “MADALENA: The Entangled History of one Indigenous Floridian Woman in the Atlantic World,” in The Americas (April 2017), Pg. 198.
[12] Camilla Townsend, Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006), Pg. 86.
[13] Camilla Townsend, Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006), Pg. 42.
[14] Camilla Townsend, Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006), Pg. 196.