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Letters and Love in Colonial Spanish America*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

A.X.  and
Rebecca Earle
Rebecca Earle
Affiliation:
University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom
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Extract

Is love a modern invention? This question is perhaps not quite as ludicrous as it might appear. For nearly three decades scholars have been exploring whether contemporary ideas about love are in fact as ancient as we might believe. As a result of these investigations, some historians have concluded that our current attitudes towards love date from no earlier than the seventeenth century. This opinion was expressed most forcefully by Lawrence Stone in his 1977 The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800. In this path-breaking study Stone argued that recognizably modern ideas about marriage did not emerge in England until the seventeenth century. Only then did what he called “companionate marriage” develop. “Companionate marriage,” as described by Stone, was characterized by certain distinguishing features.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , July 2005 , pp. 17 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2010

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Christa Hämmerle, Steve Hindle, Peter Marshall, Iris Montero and the Americas referees and editors for their very helpful comments. I am also indebted to Everette Larson for guidance on Spanish linguistics, and Rosario Márquez Macías for providing me with a copy of her Historias de América: La emigración española en tinta y papel. This article originates from a paper I presented at the University of Vienna in 2000. That paper appeared as “Briefe und die Liebe im kolonialen Spanisch-Amerika” in Christa Hämmerle and Edith Saurer, eds, Briefkulturen und ihr Geschlecht. Zur Geschichte der privaten Korrespondenz vom 16. Jahrhundert bis heute (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2003), pp. 135-62. I am grateful to the editors for their permission to publish this revised English-language version.

References

1 Stone, Lawrence, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977)Google Scholar.

2 Daniel Defoe, cited in Stone, The Family, p. 326.

3 This issue was raised in some of the earliest reviews of The Family, Sex and Marriage. See, for example, the reviews by Macfarlane, Alan, Thompson, E. P., and Trumbach, Randolph in History and Theory 18:1 (1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Radical History Review 20 (1979), and Journal of Social History 13:1 (1979), respectively. For a later critique, see Macfarlane, Alan, Marriage and Love in England: Modes of Reproduction, 1300-1840 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986)Google Scholar.

4 Mintz, Steven and Kellogg, Susan, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York: Free Press, 1988), p. 41 Google Scholar. Mary Beth Norton similarly describes the “new egalitarianism” of post-revolutionary American marriages. ( See Norton, Mary Beth, Liberty ‘s Daughters. The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980), p. 232.)Google Scholar

5 Lewis, Jan, “The Pursuit of Happiness”: Family and Values in Jefferson’s Virginia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), esp. chapter 5 (the quotation is from pp. 188–89)Google Scholar.

6 Fliegelman, Jay, Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution against Patriarchal Authority, 1750-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)Google Scholar. See also Degler, Carl, At Odds: Women and the Family in American from the Revolution to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 8–25 Google Scholar for his description of the “modern American family.”

7 See, for example, Greven, Philip, “Family Structure in Seventeenth-Century Andover, Massachusetts,” William and Mary Quarterly 23:2 (1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a description of the extensive control Puritan fathers exercised over their sons’ marriages in the seventeenth century. Morgan, Edmund, The Puritan Family: Religious and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England (New York: Harper & Row, 1966)Google Scholar, similarly asserted that “Puritan love . . . was not so much the cause as it was the product of marriage” (p. 54). There is an ongoing debate about the accuracy of Morgan’s characterisation of Puritan marriage, which it is beyond the scope of this article to consider.

8 See for example Ardanas, Daisy Ripodas, El matrimonio en indias: realidad social y regulación jurídica (Buenos Aires: Fundación para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura, 1977)Google Scholar; Arrom, Silvia, “Marriage Patterns in Mexico City, 1811,” Journal of Family History 3–4 (1978–79)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCaa, Robert, “ Calidad, Clase, and Marriage in Colonial Mexico: The Case of Parral, 1788-90,” Hispanic American Historical Review 64:3 (1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lavrin, Asunción, ed., Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Martínez-Alier, Verena, Marriage, Class and Colour in Nineteenth-Century Cuba: A Study in Racial Attitudes and Sexual Values in a Slave Society (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cook, Alexandra Parma and Cook, Noble David, Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance: A Case of Transatlantic Bigamy (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Rodríguez, Pablo, Seducción, amancebamiento y abandono en la colonia (Santa Fe de Bogotá: Fundación Simón y Lola Guberek, 1991)Google Scholar; Almécija, Juan, La familia en la provincia de Venezuela (Madrid: MAPFRE, 1992)Google Scholar; McCaa, Robert, “Marriageways in Mexico and Spain, 1500-1800,” Continuity and Change 9:1 (1994)Google Scholar; Aispuru, Pilar Gonzalbo and Rabell, Cecilia, eds., La familia en el mundo iberoamericano (Mexico City: UNAM, 1994)Google Scholar; Stavig, Ward, “Living in Offense of Our Lord: Indigenous Sexual Values and Marital Life in the Colonial Crucible,” Hispanic American Historical Review 75:4 (1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boyer, Richard, The Lives of the Bigamists: Marriage, Family and Community in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Stern, Steve, The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men and Power in Late Colonial Mexico (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Rodriguez, Pablo, Sentimientos y vida familiar en el Nuevo Reino de Granada (Santa Fe de Bogotá: Ariel, 1997)Google Scholar; Johnson, Lyman and Lipsett-Rivera, Sonya, eds., The Faces of Honour: Sex, Shame and Violence in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998)Google Scholar; and Twinam, Ann, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

9 Cook and Cook, Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance, 49 (for quote).

10 Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets.

11 Gutiérrez, Ramón, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 328 Google Scholar.

12 All examples from Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, p. 328. Several of these examples are also discussed in Gutiérrez, Ramón, “Honor, Ideology, Marriage Negotiation, and Class-Gender Domination in New Mexico, 1690-1846,” Latin American Perspectives 12:1 (1985), pp. 94, 100-01CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, p. 328. See also p. 330.

14 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, p. 329.

15 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, pp. 227, 329.

16 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, pp. 331-32.

17 Courturier, Edith, “Women and the Family in Eighteenth-Century Mexico: Law and Practice,” Journal of Family History 10:3 (1985)Google Scholar.

18 Pragmática Sanción para evitar el abuso de contraer matrimonios desiguales, El Pardo, 23 March 1776, in Konetzke, Richard, ed., Colección de Documentos para la Historia de la Formación Social de Hispanoamérica, 1493-1810, 3 vols (Madrid: CSIC, 1962) vol. 3:1, p. 411 Google Scholar. See also R.C. declarando la forma en que se ha de guardar y cumplir en las Indias la Pragmática Sanción de 23 de marzo de 1776 sobre contraer matrimonios, El Pardo, 7 April 1778, in Konetzke, , ed., Colección de Documentos vol. 3:1, pp. 438–442 Google Scholar. The Royal Pragmatic and subsequent marriage legislation are discussed clearly in Martínez-Alier, Marriage, Class and Colour in Nineteenth-Century Cuba; and Saether, Steiner, “Bourbon Absolutism and Marriage Reform in Late Colonial Spanish America,” The Americas 59:4 (2003), pp. 475–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Cadalso, José, Cartas marruecas [1789] (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1950), pp. 69, 183-85Google Scholar (for quote).

20 Manual Azamor y Ramírez, 1795, cited in Ardanaz, Rípodas, El matrimonio en Indias, pp. 402–04 (403 for quote)Google Scholar.

21 Asunción Lavrin, “Sexuality in Colonial Mexico: A Church Dilemma,” in Lavrin, ed., Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, pp. 59 (for quotes), 84n.l5. 85n.26. See also Richard Boyer, “Women, La Mala Vida, and the Politics of Marriage,” in Lavrin, ed., Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, p. 273.

22 Seed, Patricia, To Love, Honor and Obey in Colonial Mexico. Conflicts of Marriage Choice, 1574- 1821 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

23 Rodríguez, Sentimientos y vida familiar en el Nuevo Reino de Granada, p. 158.

24 Martínez-Alier, Marriage, Class and Color in Nineteenth-Century Cuba, pp. 66-67, 70 (for quote), 161n.24; and Mark Szuchman, “‘A Challenge to the Patriarchs’: Love among the Youth in Nineteenth-Century Buenos Aires,” in Szuchman, Mark, ed., The Middle Period in Latin America: Values and Attitudes in the Seventeenth-Nineteenth Centuries (Boulder: Rienner, 1989)Google Scholar.

25 Eugenia Rodríguez Sáenz, “Civilizando la vida domèstica en el Valle Central de Costa Rica (1750-1850),” in Sáenz, Eugenia Rodríguez, ed., Entre Silencios y voces. Género e historia en América Central (1750-1990) (San José: Centro Nacional para el Desarrollo de la Mujer y la Familia, 1997)Google Scholar.

26 Diego Risueño to Josefa Micaela Carrasco, Mexico, 15 September 1722, in Macías, Isabel and Padrón, Francisco Morales, eds, Cartas desde América, 1700-1800 (Seville: Junta de Andalucía, 1991), p.77.Google Scholar

27 Stone, The Family, p. 226.

28 Stone, The Family, p. 329.

29 See Norton, Liberty’s Daughters, pp. 61-62.

30 Degler, At Odds, pp. 38-40. Not all historians share this view. Edmund Morgan, for example, claimed that affectionate salutations and closings were not atypical of seventeenth century Puritan letters. See Morgan, The Puritan Family, pp. 50-51, 60-61.

31 That is, I have examined every personal letter exchanged by couples during the colonial period that I could locate.

32 To my knowledge no overview of Hispanic “America Letters” has been written. For an assessment of the uses scholars have made of the “America Letters” from immigrants to the United States, see Gerber, David, “The Immigrant Letter between Positivism and Populism: American Historians’ Uses of Personal Correspondence,” in Earle, Rebecca, ed., Epistolary Selves: Letters and Letter-Writers, 1600-1945 (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

33 For an overview of Iberian emigration, see Albornoz, Nicolas Sánchez, “The Population of Colonial Spanish America,” in Bethell, Leslie, ed., Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; and Burkholder, Mark and Johnson, Lyman, Colonial Latin America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 104–06 Google Scholar.

34 For examples of conjugal letters written by women see Quiroz, Sergio Vergara, Cartas de mujeres en Chile, 1630-1885 (Santiago: Editorial Andrés Bello, 1987), pp. 64–66, 67-78, 84-90, 104-05, 126-29Google Scholar; Macías and Morales, eds, Cartas desde América, pp. 141; Macías, Rosario Márquez, ed., Historias de América: La emigración española en tinta y papel (n.p.: Gráficas Nerva, 1994?),pp. 126–27, 132, 141;Google Scholar and Socolow, Susan Migden, The Women of Colonial Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 196–98 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am grateful to an anonymous Americas referee for recommending Vergara’s book.

35 For comments on the “typicality” of such eighteenth-century letters, see the introduction to Macías and Morales, eds., Cartas desde América.

36 In her study of eighteenth century immigration to the Americas Rosario Márquez asserts that requests for their wives to join them in the Indies are the single most characteristic feature of letters from immigrant husbands. See Macías, Rosario Márquez, La emigración española a América (1765-1824) (Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 1995), p. 259 Google Scholar.

37 Antonio del Angel to Petronila Jiménez, Mexico, 15 April 1721, in Macías and Morales, eds., Cartas desde América, pp. 72-73.

38 Juan López de Sande to Leonor de Haro, Mexico, April 1568, in Otte, Enrique, ed., Cartas privadas de emigrantes a Indias, 1540-1616 (Seville, Jerez: Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos, 1988), pp. 51–53 Google Scholar.

39 Andrés José Marín to María Antonia Pérez, Puerto España, 8 May 1791, in Macías and Morales, eds., Cartas desde América, p. 234.

40 Joaquín Ugarte to Juana Landero, Havana, 14 June 1768, in Macías and Morales, eds., Cartas desde América, eds., p. 255. I have translated hija as “dearest.”

41 Juan Miguel de Ortesa to María Nicolasa de León y Toledo, Veracruz, 12 July 1755, in Macías and Morales, eds., Cartas desde América, pp. 123-24.

42 Juan Díaz Pacheco to Ana García Roldan, Mexico, 30 April 1586, in Otte, ed., Cartas privadas, p. 112.

43 Luis de Cordoba to Isabel Carera, Puebla, 5 February 1566, in Otte, ed., Cartas privadas, pp. 147-48. “Small and miserable life” is from Luis de Illescas to Catalina Gutiérrez, Mexico, 24 September 1564, in Otte, ed., Cartas privadas, p. 45.

44 Faustino Fajardo to Josefa de Tapia, Cartagena, 16 July 1713, in Macías and Morales, eds., Cartas desde América, pp. 175-76. Fajardo remained without his wife until at least 1720.

45 Gaspar Mejía to Catalina Domínguez, Zacatecas, 5 January 1587, in Otte, ed., Cartas privadas, p. 212.

46 Bartolomé de Morales to Catalina de Avila, Mexico, 1573, in Otte, , ed., Cartas privadas, p. 71 Google Scholar.

47 Fine clothing figured prominently in such lists. “The most important thing is not to come without good cloaks and skirts,” warned Salvador Sala in 1762. (Salvador Sala to Gertrudis Sala, Veracruz, 4 March 1762, in Macías and Morales, eds., Cartas desde América, pp. 126-27.) For the links between clothing and identity in Spanish America, see Earle, Rebecca, “‘Two Pairs of Pink Satin Shoes!!’: Clothing, Race and Identity in the Americas, 17th-19th Centuries,” History Workshop Journal 52 (2001), pp. 175–95 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Antonio de los Ríos to Catalina de la Cadena, Mexico, 19 October 1721, in Macías and Morales, eds., Cartas desde América, pp. 75-76.

49 Baltasar de Valladolid to Clara de los Angeles, Santa Fe, 1 May 1591, in Otte, ed., Cartas privadas, pp. 283-85.

50 Diego Risueño to Josefa Micaela Carrasco, Mexico, 15 September 1722, in Macías, and Morales, , eds., Cartas desde America, p. 77.Google Scholar

51 Miguel Hidalgo to Maria de la Cruz, Cartagena, 4 June 1587, in Otte, ed., Cartas privadas, p. 303.

52 Juan de Palencia to Magdalena Jiménez, Mexico, 16 December 1570, in Otte, ed., Cartas privadas, pp. 59-60.

53 Pedro de León to his wife, Mexico, 10 October 1796, in Macías and Morales, eds., Cartas desde América, p. 63. Letter-writing manuals provided detailed information about the sailing schedules of mail boats to facilitate correspondence. See Antonio, J. D., y Begas, , Nuevo estilo y formulario de escribir cartas misivas y responder a ellas (Madrid, 1794)Google Scholar.

54 Hume, Martin A. S., “A Fight against Finery (A History of the Sumptuary Laws in Spain),” in Ten Years after the Armada and Other Historical Studies (London: 1896), pp. 235–37.Google Scholar

55 These include Gaspar de Tejada, Cosa nueva: Estilo de escribir cartas mensajeras cortesanamente (1549); Antonio de Torquemada, Manual de escribientes (1552?); J. Pablo de (or Gerónimo?) Manzanares, Estilo y formulario de cartas familiares (1575?, 1600, 1607); Juan Vicente Piliger (or Peligero), Estilo y methodo de escribir cartas missivas (1607); Gabriel Pérez del Barrio, Dirección de secretarios de señores (1613, 1622, 1645, 1667); Miguel Yelgo de Vásquez, Estilo de servir de príncipes (1613?); Juan Fernández Abarca, Discurso de las partes y calidades con que se forma un buen secretario (1618); Juan Páez de Valenzuela y Castillejo, Nuevo estilo y formulario de escribir cartas misivas y responder a ellas (1630); Gabriel Joseph de la Gasca y Espinosa, Manual de avisos para el perfecto cortesano (1680); Diego de Salazar (?), Secretaire espasnol enseignant la maniere d’écrire des lettres espagnols, selon le stile moderne (1732); Gaspar de Ezpeleta y Mallol, Práctica de secretarios (1760-1); J. Antonio D. y Begas, Nuevo estilo y formulario de escribir cartas misivas y responder a ellas (1794); and Antonio Marqués y Espejo, Retórica epistolar o arte nuevo de escribir todo género de cartas (1803). I have seen copies only of those manuals whose titles are underlined. See also Lafaye, Jacques, “Del secretario al formulario: Decadencia del ideal humanista en España (1550 a 1630),” in Lerner, Lía Schwartz and Lerner, Isaías, eds., Homenaje a Ana María Barrenechea (Madrid: Castalia, 1984)Google Scholar.

56 Salazar (?), Secretaire espagnol, prologue.

57 Cadalso, Cartas marruecas, pp. 112-13.

58 These letters are taken from Otte, ed., Cartas privadas; Tovar, Hermes, “Cartas de amor y guerra,” Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura 12 (1984)Google Scholar; Macías and Morales, eds., Cartas desde América; Rosario Márquez Macías, ed., Historias de América: La emigración española en tinta y papel, Gráficas Nerva (n.p., 1994?); Nancy van Deusen, ‘“Wife of my Soul and Heart, and all my Solace’: Annulment Suit between Diego Andrés de Arenas and Ysabel Allay Suyo,” in Boyer, Richard and Spurling, Geoffrey, eds., Colonial Lives: Documents on Latin American History, 1550-1850 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 135–37 Google Scholar; Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America; and the collection of personal letters preserved in Estado 6375, Archivo Histórico Nacional de Madrid, Madrid. I am grateful to an anonymous Americas referee for drawing my attention to Van Deusen’s work.

59 Juan de Córdoba to Catalina Pérez, Cartagena, 27 May 1583, in Otte, ed., Cartas privadas, pp. 296-97.

60 José Manuel Cárdenas to María Celestina Rubio, Tambo, 6 August 1811, in Tovar, “Cartas de amor y guerra,” p. 161.

61 See Tejada, Cosa nueva.

62 See Salazar(?), Secretaire espagnol; and D. y Begas, Nuevo estilo.

63 Evangelistas operated in town markets and for a fee would draw up written documents on behalf of the illiterate. For descriptions from nineteenth-century Mexico, see Poinsett, Joel Roberts, Notes on Mexico made in the Autumn of 1822 (New York: Praeger, 1969), p. 78 Google Scholar; Lyon, G. F., Journal of a Residence and Tour in the Republic of Mexico in the Year 1826, 2 vols (Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1971), vol. 2, p. 130 Google Scholar; and Mayer, Brantz, Mexico, As It Was and As It Is (Philadelphia, 1847), pp. 39–40 Google Scholar. For the ownership of letter-writing manuals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Lefaye, “Del secretario al formulario,” p. 255.

64 “Abre niña este papel,” in Baudot, Geogres and Méndez, María Agueda, eds., Amores prohibidos: La palabra condenada en el México de los virreyes, Siglo XXI (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1997), p. 145 Google Scholar. I am grateful to an anonymous Americas referee for recommending this book.

65 Mintz and Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions, p. 48. Their assertion is based in part on Norton’s analysis of eighteenth century correspondence in Liberty’s Daughters, pp. 61-2. Norton comments that the hierarchical nature of such marriages is obvious “in those cases where husbands addressed their wives as ‘dear child.’”

66 hijo, Real Academia de la Lengua, Diccionario [1726-37J, republished as Diccionario de Autoridades, 3 vols. (Madrid: Credos, 1963).

67 This is consistent with the fact that the average age gap between husbands and wives does not appear to have increased from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. For a discussion of age of marriage in Spain and Mexico, see McCaa, “Marriageways in Mexico and Spain”; Ramón Gutiérrez, “From Honor to Love: Transformations of the Meaning of Sexuality in Colonial Mexico,” in Smith, Raymond, ed., Kinship, Ideology and Practice in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), p. 256 Google Scholar; and Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, p. 327.

68 Patricia Seed, “La narrativa de Don Juan: el lenguaje de la seducción en la literatura y la sociedad hispánica del siglo XVII,” in Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Rabell, eds., La familia en el mundo iberoameri cano, pp. 110-14. While the title of Seed’s piece refers to the seventeenth century, her argument about male epistolary vulnerability is based on examples drawn from the eighteenth century.

69 Correas, Gonzalo, Vocabulario de refranes y frases proverbiales [1627], Comber, Luis, ed., (Bordeaux: Institut d’études Ibériques et Ibéro-américaines de l’Université de Bordeaux, 1967)Google Scholar.

70 See Entwistle, William, The Spanish Language together with Portuguese, Catalan and Basque (London: Faber & Faber, 1936), p. 209 Google Scholar; Kany, Charles, American-Spanish Syntax (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 58–61 Google Scholar; Lapesa, Rafael, Historia de la lengua española (Madrid: Escelicer, 1965), pp. 251, 356Google Scholar; Urdaneta, Iraset Páez, Historia y geografía hispanoamericana del voseo (Caracas: Casa de Bello, 1981), pp. 34–67 Google Scholar; and Weinberg, María Beatriz Fontanella de, El español de América (Madrid: MAPFRE, 1992), pp. 81–91 Google Scholar.

71 Kany, American-Spanish Syntax, pp. 60-61.

72 For the history of the voseo in colonial and early nineteenth-century Spanish America see Bello, Andrés, Gramática de la lengua castellana destinada al uso de los americanos [1847] (Santacruz de Tenerife: Instituto Universitario de Lingüística Andrés Bello, 1981), pp. 237, 243Google Scholar; Kany, American-Spanish Syntax, p. 61; Giraldo, José Joaquín Montes, “Sobre el voseo en Colombia,” Thesaurus: Boletín del Instituto Caro y Cuervo 22 (1967)Google Scholar; Weinberg, María Beatriz Fontanella de, “El voseo en Buenos Aires en las dos primeras décadas del siglo XIX,” Thesaurus: Boletín del Instituto Caro y Cuervo 26 (1971)Google Scholar; Weinberg, María Beatriz Fontanella de, “La constitución del paradigma pronominal de voseo,” Thesaurus: Boletín del Instituto Caro y Cuervo 32 (1977)Google Scholar; and Páez Urdaneta, Historia y geografía hispanoamericana del voseo, pp. 34-67 (63 for quotation).

73 Paez Urdaneta, Historia y geografía hispanoamericana del voseo, pp. 50-56 (53 for quote).

74 tú, usted, and vos. Real Academia de la Lengua, Diccionario.

75 Other historians concerned with the nature of romance in the Hispanic world have accorded the verb amar (“to love”) undue analytical importance. Both Patricia Seed and Ramón Gutiérrez claim that the term was not widely used until the late eighteenth century, a fact that both regard as highly significant, although they disagree in their interpretations of this change. Gutiérrez argues that the increasing use of the words amor (“love”) and amar after 1800 reveals the growth of a rhetoric of romantic love. Prior to then, he asserts, these terms were used to refer either to the Christian sentiment of agape, or to illicit sexual activity. It did not convey a positive image of physical affection. The latter sense of the word, he claims, appeared only at the end of the eighteenth century. (Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, p. 329.) According to Seed, amor carried implications of uncontrolled sexual desire throughout the eighteenth century, and hence remained a term of abuse. She argues that its increased use in the eighteenth century as a motive for marriage implied a devaluing of that institution, rather than a growth in the language of romantic love. (Seed, To Love, Honor and Obey, pp. 48-49, 119-20.) In fact, the 1726-37 dictionary of the Real Academia de la Lengua gave virtually synonymous definitions for amar and querer, with little suggestion that amar carried an illicit sense. Amor itself was defined as the “sentiment of the rational soul.” Only amores, and enamorar carried negative, lascivious overtones. (See amar, amor, amores, enamorar, and querer. Real Academia de la Lengua, Diccionario.) Moreover, Spanish golden-age poetry gives ample evidence that amar was in wide and positive use from at least the sixteenth century, and the term was indeed used by our letter-writers in the body of their letters, if not in the salutations. In any event, this focus on one verb is unreasonable. The letters examined here reveal that from the sixteenth century spouses employed a wealth of endearments with great expressiveness. The presence or absence of the single verb amar thus reveals little.

76 Norton, Liberty ‘s Daughters, p. 62.

77 Pedro Sánchez to Juana Ramos, Mexico, 26 June 1564, in Otte, ed., Cartas privadas, p. 44.

78 Jacinto de Lara y Rosales to Manuela de Lara Rosales, Mexico City, 2 August 1730; José Rodríguez Vidal to Florentina María de la Bastida, Santa Fe, 31 May 1720; Francisco Domínguez Morales to wife, Mexico City; and Pedro Ildefonso Trujillo y Seixas to Frasquita Manuela Seixas Trujillo, Veracruz, 9 February 1770; all in Macias and Morales, eds., Cartas desde América, pp. 84-85, 167- 68,74, 130-31.

79 Pedro García Mojarro to Felipe María Mojarro, Mexico, 16 May 1717; and Ignacio Muñoz de Sandoval to Beatriz García Pérez de Vargas, Mexico, 27 February 1718, in Macías and Morales, eds., Cartas desde América, pp. 70-71. The same phrase was used by an eighteenth-century Mexican priest in a letter to a parishioner whom he aimed to seduce. See Baudot and Agueda Méndez, eds., Amores prohibidos, p. 140 (and also pp. 128-29).

80 For a study of the terms of endearment used in French personal letters from the eighteenth century, see Marie-Claire Grassi, “Friends and Lovers (or the Codifications of Intimacy),” in Charles Porter, ed., Yale French Studies: Special Issue on Men and Women of Letters 71 (1986), pp. 77-92.

81 For comments on “the Spanish character,” and particularly its spoken dimensions, see William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, esp. Act V, sc. I; Torquemada, Manual de escribientes, p. 202; the lament of Quevedo’s Caballero de la Tenaza, in Quevedo, Francisco de, Cartas del Caballero de la Tenaza [c1600], in Obras satíricas y festivas (Madrid: Espasa-Caple, 1965), p. 82 Google Scholar (letter XI); Anon., , The Character of Spain: Or, An Epitome of their Virtues and Vices (London, 1660)Google Scholar; Fer, Nicolas de, Historical Voyages and Travels over Europe,tome II: Containing all that is most curious in Spain and Portugal (London, 1693), esp. pp. 34–35 Google Scholar; C. T., , A Short Account and Character of Spain (London, 1701), p. 19 Google Scholar; Martiniere, M. Buzen de la, Le Grand Dictionnaire géographique, historique et critique (Paris, 1737), pp. 125–26 Google Scholar (entry for “Espagne”); Mothe, Marie Catherine La, d’Aulony, Countess, The Lady’s Travels into Spain (London, 1774)Google Scholar, particularly the preface; and Duffy, Michael, The Englishman and the Foreigner: The English Satirical Print 1600-1832 (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1986), pp. 23–27 Google Scholar. I am grateful to Peter Marshall for his advice on this topic. The Spanish emphasis on “their own peculiar grandeza” was the most frequently-cited example of the supposed Spanish weakness for hyperbole. Travellers maintained that in Spain even poverty-stricken beggars claimed noble status using the elevated language of the court. When a beggar craves your charity, one anonymous seventeenth-century writer affirmed, “it shall be in these or the like terms, May it please you sir, to do some courtesie for a distressed cavaliero.” (These quotations are from Anon., The Character of Spain, pp. 3, 6.)

82 The quotation is from Frézier, Amédée, Relación del viaje por el mar del sur [1716] (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1982), p. 207 Google Scholar.

83 Dumas, Alexandre, The Man in the Iron Mask [1848-50] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 271.Google Scholar

84 Francisco de Ajofrín, Diario del viaje que por orden de la sagrada congregación de propaganda fide hizo a la America septentrional en el siglo XVIII, cited in Anthony Pagden, “Identity Formation in Spanish America,” in Canny, Nicholas and Pagden, Anthony, eds., Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 89 Google Scholar (and see p. 88). For similar assertions that colonial Spanish was more florid than peninsular Spanish, see Florescano, Enrique, Memory, Myth and Time in Mexico from the Aztecs to Independence (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), p. 187 Google Scholar. I am grateful to Iris Montero for these references. “Spanish courtesy, of which we still retain some remains (and God forbid that we should ever lose them to accept in their stead a false and hollow politeness), was once proverbial throughout the world,” noted the Peruvian writer Manuel Fuentes in 1866; Fuentes, Manuel A., Sketches of the Capital of Peru, Historical, Statistical, Administrative, Commercial and Moral (London, 1866), p. 118 Google Scholar.

85 Herreros, Manuel Breton de los, “Dios me libre y me defienda,” Yarza, Francisco Caudet, ed., Las mil cien mejores poesías en lengua española (Madrid: A.L. Mateos, n.d.), pp. 205–07 Google Scholar.

86 “attachment and will” are Seed’s translation of afiliación y voluntad. (Note that Gutiérrez translates voluntad as “liking.”) She translates de mi gusto as “to my liking.” (Seed, To Love Honor and Obey, p. 48.)

87 Boyer, The Lives of the Bigamists, p. 85. Lavrin similarly notes that such inquisitorial records tend to emphasise “the frailty of the human condition.” See Lavrin, “Sexuality in colonial Mexico,” pp. 61-62.

88 For court testimony (in this case from early modern England) as a narrative genre, see Gowing, Laura, Domestic Dangers. Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)Google Scholar, esp. chapter 7. I am grateful to Steve Hindle for drawing this source to my attention.

89 See Martin, Luis, The Daughters of the Conquistadores: Women of the Viceroyalty of Peru (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983)Google Scholar, chapter 6; Calvo, Thomas, “Concubinato y mestizaje en el medio urbano: el caso de Guadalajara en el siglo XVII,” Revista de Indias 44:173 (1984)Google Scholar; Sergio Ortega, “Teología novohispana sobre el matrimonio y comportamientos sexuales, 1519-1570,” in Ortega, Sergio, ed., De la santidad a la perversión, o porqué no se cumplía la ley de Dios en la sociedad novohispana (Mexico: Grijalbo, 1985)Google Scholar; Lavrin, “Sexuality in Colonial Mexico”; and Kathy Waldron, “The Sinners and the Bishop in Colonial Venezuela: The Visita of Bishop Mariano Martí, 1771-1784,” both in Lavrin, ed., Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America; Rodriguez, Seducción, amancebamiento y abandono en la colonia, chapter 3; and Almécija, La familia en la provincia de Venezuela, chapter 5. For cases of transatlantic bigamy, see Cook and Cook, Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance; and Boyer, The Lives of the Bigamists. For epistolary self-construction, see Earle, ed., Epistolary Selves.

90 See in particular Stern, The Secret History of Gender.

91 This principle was formulated in the early sixteenth century, and was reiterated throughout the colonial period. See Ardanaz, Ripodas, El matrimonio en Indias, pp. 364–70 Google Scholar; and Bakewell, Peter, A History of Latin America (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 77, 172Google Scholar.

92 D. y Begas, Nuevo estilo y formulario. For additional examples, see inter alia, Irving, William Henry, The Providence of Wit in the English Letter Writers (Durham: Duke University Press, 1955), p. 6 Google Scholar; Perry, Ruth, Women, Letters and the Novel (New York: AMS Press, 1980), p. 77 Google Scholar; Brown, Richard, Knowledge is Power: the Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700-1840 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 21 Google Scholar; and Jardine, Lisa, “Reading and the Technology of Textual Effect: Erasmus’s Familiar Letters and Shakespeare’s King Lear,” in Raven, James, Small, Helen and Tadmor, Naomi, eds., The Practice and Representation of Reading in England (London: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 6 Google Scholar.

93 A.X. to Eloisa Artega, Puerto Rico, 2 June 1823, in Archivo Histórico Nacional de Madrid, Madrid, Estado 6375, carpeta 15.