WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST.

LOUIS Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

Dissertation Examination Committee: Stephanie Kirk, Chair Nina Davis Mary Ann Dzuback Linda Nicholson Elzbieta Sklodowska Claire Solomon

SUBVERSIVE FRONTIERS: SPACE, GENDER AND LITERATURE IN COLONIAL LATIN AMERICA by Kate Alicia McCarthy-Gilmore

A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

August 2009 St. Louis, Missouri

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Subversive Frontiers: Space, Gender and Literature in Colonial Latin America by Kate Alicia McCarthy-Gilmore Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures Washington University in St. Louis, 2009 Professor Stephanie Kirk, Chairperson

In this dissertation I examine the construction of space, gender, and literary form in the Spanish American colonies as represented in Mateo Rosas de Oquendos Stira hecha por Mateo Rosas de Oquendo a las cosas que pasan en el Pir, ano de 1598, Bartolom de Arzns Orsa y Velas Historia de la villa imperial de Potos, and La verdad sospechosa by Juan Ruiz de Alarcn. I argue that the space of the New World is a frontier which promotes new representations of gender that differ from those in peninsular Spain. The first chapter establishes a theoretical framework for this discussion through an analysis of the frontier, early modern gender paradigms, and the historical context of colonial Latin America. In Chapter Two, I argue that the women in the Stira employ nontraditional behaviors to form in-between representations of femininity that break the early modern heterosexual binary of gender. The structure of the poem parallels this gender representation because the literary forms the author uses create a frontier-like in-between text. In Chapter Three I question how Arzns creates a stable Creole city in the weakened mining center in the Historia. Due to the historical realities of Potos, ii

Arzns constructs cross-dressed women as models representative of colonial Creole culture and thereby challenges the view that women did not have a role in the creation of societies and cultures. In Chapter Four I examine La verdad sospechosa in which Alarcns representation of Spain from a colonial perspective indicates how the New World manifestations of gender explored in Chapters One and Two impact Old World society. The movement of ideas and behaviors between continents highlights the twoway cultural exchange that occurred throughout the colonial era. The structure of the play follows this path and underlines the contradictions in the authors own identity as a Creole who migrated to the peninsula. In total, my dissertation questions how space and gender are implicated in the transformation and creation of cultural ideologies. The nature of the frontier fosters the subversive gender representations in these texts and reveals that new possibilities for gender are created through alternative spatial practice.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Washington University in St. Louis
International Area Studies Pre-Dissertation Research Grant, Washington University in St. Louis

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract of the Dissertation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii

Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv

Table of Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter One: The Frontier in Colonial Latin America: Gender, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Literature, and the Transformation of Ideology

Chapter Two: The Spatial Constructions of the Body and Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 in the Stira hecha por Mateo Rosas de Oquendo a las cosas que pasan en el Pir, ano de 1598

Chapter Three: The Gendered Construction of Creole Identity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 in Arzns Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potos

Chapter Four: Colonial Itineraries of the Old World: Juan Ruiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 de Alarcns La verdad sospechosa

Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

Works Cited. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

INTRODUCTION Within contemporary studies of colonial Latin America, the topics of space and identity have been approached in many ways; however, these issues have not yet been linked directly with specific questions of gender and literary genre in the Spanish colonies. Through an analysis Mexican and Peruvian texts I examine the production of space and question the treatment of gender and literary genre in the colonies. Fundamental to this discussion is an understanding of the space of the New World as a frontier, a fluid social space, which destabilizes social, religious, governmental and literary institutions and ideologies present in Spain. In turn, these destabilized ideologies, which serve to control gender behavior on the peninsula, allow for new constructions of gender and the female body which are representative of the colonial frontier. As I have already noted, questions of space and spatial practices currently form an important element of discussion in colonial studies. For example, it is the goal of Mapping Colonial Spanish America: Places and Commonplaces of Identity, Culture and Experience to present a case for the intellectual importance of space, place, and territoriality in the reading and interpretation of Spanish American colonial discourse (14). In this way, Mapping works to open a new field of colonial studies. This text does build upon the research of other colonial scholars. For example, in La ciudad letrada (1984), Angel Rama implicates space in the production and acquisition of power and knowledge in the Spanish colonies. The author argues that, within the colonies, the metropolis became the center of colonial power, as well as the site of its distribution. A more recent scholar, Walter Mignolo, also applies the construction and representation of

space to his discussion of colonial discourse in The Darker Side of the Renaissance. Although this text focuses primarily on questions of ethnicity and the colonization of space through literacy, Mignolo also examines the representation and distribution of space in the physical mapping of colonial America. Given the publication of texts such as those of Rama and Mignolo, it becomes clear that Mapping is relevant to current colonial scholarship, and also opens a new space of discussion. My own work stems from this scholarly trend; however, I also develop an understanding of the relationship between the production of space, femininity and literature in the New World which opens still unexplored elements of Mateo Rosas de Oquendos Stira, Bartolom Arzns de Orsa y Velas Historia de la villa imperial de Potos, and Juan Ruiz de Alarcns La verdad sospechosa. The first chapter of my project is a theoretical discussion of the term frontier and its application in colonial Latin America. I will use the term frontier to describe both the ideological space and a geo-political location I am discussing, instead of simply referring to space in the Americas. I suggest that New World is not simply the site of uninhibited cultural and social contact; rather, the specific nature of the frontier in the colonies is created because social and cultural institutions and ideologies are not established in the Americas as they are in Peninsular Spain. The destabilization and subversion of these social structures gives way to altered forms of social contact between men and women, and therefore creates a space which is fundamentally different than Spain itself. In relation to my discussion of the frontier, throughout this chapter I contextualize my analysis of women in colonial literature within contemporary discussions of gender

construction and representation. I argue that any representation of the body or gender must be understood within the historical context it was produced following Joan Wallach Scotts argument that we must see man and woman as both empty and overflowing categories. Empty because they have no ultimate, transcending meaning. Overflowing because even when they appear fixed, they still contain alternative or denied definitions (49). This understanding of gender reinforces my projects focus on a historical contextualization of gender within literary texts. I complete this theoretical framework by positing that the body is an element which disrupts the imposition of the symbolic order in the creation of the Latin American city. The body is an entity altered by space, and, therefore, the body of the colonial subject will reflect the reality of the city rather than its symbolic or ideological order (Grosz 51). Such and understanding of the body and space can be extended to literary texts whose content are reflective of the reality in which they are produced. In the New World, then, it is not only gender which is impacted by the nature of the frontier, but also literary genre. In chapter two, I examine the Stira hecha por Mateo Rosas de Oquendo a las cosas que pasan en el Pir, ano de 1598, arguing that within Rosas de Oquendos poem, the Spanish ideology of female enclosure is challenged because women take advantage of the fluidity of the space they inhabit and break free from the physical and verbal constraints of domesticity. In the Stira, the frontier does not repeat the patriarchal and institutional controls of the Peninsula: Women spend endless time in the public plaza, and women who are married have sex with many men, cutting themselves with glass in order to fake their virginity. This indicates that, on the frontier, a woman can be both masculine and feminine, neither feminine nor masculine, or an in-between figure

representative of both gender roles. This depiction of the possibilities for gender construction in the Americas is also reflected in the space of colonial Lima since the city is feminized by the actions of the women who inhabit public spaces. Further, the fluidity of the frontier, which allows for the mutual inscription of space and bodies, is reflected in the construction of the poem which moves between literary forms and reflects the nature of the women in the work. In the third chapter of this project I examine the Historia de la villa imperial de Potos, a text whose author is deeply concerned with creating a grand image of Potos in a time when the citys economic power was declining. The culture that Arzns is attempting to recreate is that of elite Creole society, but in the authors eighteenth century reality of Potos this social group has been all but erased. Nevertheless, Arzns is desperate to reestablish the glory of Creole society, but he cannot find any suitable male figures to represent the city. He turns, thus, to women as his ideal residents of Creole Potos. One section of the Historia relates the story of the Warrior Maidens, who, as young women, often dressed as men. At the end of the narrative these cousins are not married nor are they members of a religious institution, and they are symbolized in art in their masculine disguise. The use of such figures as representatives of Creole society indicates that the frontier does not impose a specific and singular cultural identity on its subjects; rather, colonial society is actually based such nontraditional manifestations of gender. Further, in the authors desperate attempt to uphold a disappearing image of the city, the text itself scatters into a multiplicity of stories and historical relations which cannot be pieced together in a coherent vision of the city. The text and the city of Potos pull perpetually between the idealized historical past and the authors uncertain present,

causing both the text and the urban center to reflect the in-between gender structure that is present on the frontier. Finally, my fourth chapter turns to the Mexican viceroyalty and to La verdad sospechosa by Juan Ruiz de Alarcn. This play differs from the other texts studied here in that, not only is it the product of a Mexican author, but it also takes place on the Spanish peninsula. My understanding of the frontier, as highlighted in Chapter One, establishes the entire space of the New World as a frontier, not just that of one specific viceroyalty or city. Therefore, Alarcns text follows the same ideas of space and gender present in earlier sections of the dissertation; however the plays setting in Madrid actually moves the realities of the colonial frontier to the peninsula. In La verdad sospechosa we witness the way the Spanish American colonies have impacted and altered the Old World, rather than simply understanding the processes of conquest and colonization unidirectional. The gender patterns seen in Rosas de Oquendo and Alarcn are inverted in the comedia as the playwright creates a system of marriage exchange based on men and locates excess and lack of honor in the plays male protagonist. Further, the idea of travel or a journey is present throughout La verdad sospechosa and this type of movement between spaces highlights the authors own repeated migration from Spain to the New World, causing Alarcn to become an in-between figure much like the men and women in his work. In conclusion, this is a project which stems from current discussions in the field of colonial Latin American literature today. Through a theoretical, historical and literary analysis of the Stira, the Historia and La verdad sospechosa, I propose that the space of colonial Latin America, the frontier, is a product of cultural and social interactions and

exchanges. These encounters produce a space which is both inscribed by and on those who inhabit the frontier. This fluidity and mutual reinscription leads to a destabilization of traditional Spanish gender ideology in the New World, creating new possibilities for gender representation which were not present on the Peninsula. The fluidity of the frontier also alters the form of literary genre in the colonies, paralleling the construction of gender and the body in the Americas. While other readings of women and gender are possible in these texts, space is an element of the colonial experience which cannot be left out when discussing colonial discourse and the ideology which produces and sustains it. Therefore, a reading of space and gender in these texts will both contribute to scholarly debate and offer insight into the production of colonial subjectivity and identity.

CHAPTER ONE The Frontier in Colonial Latin America: Gender, Literature, and the Transformation of Ideology In the field of Latin American colonial studies the term frontier has been used to describe the social, political, and geographical realities of many distinct areas and cultures. Donna Guy and Thomas Sheridan write that in the colonial period frontiers were areas where imperial or, later, national power was too weak to maintain stable patterns of coerced labor (11), while for Richard Slatta frontiers are lines where one body of law stops and another body of law begins (12). In contrast, David Lorey focuses on the structure of frontier societies and writes that the two key frontier institutions are the presidio and the mission, and that a frontier settlement is unique because it is ethnically diverse and dependent on wage labor (21-3). These three examples indicate that the frontier is a multifaceted concept based on the constant transformation of laws, social structures and government power in a colonized zone. Further, given the issues of alteration and modification that are inherent to this term, the space frontier can also serve as a foundational theorization from which to analyze the representation of gender and literary genre in the space of the Spanish American colonies. My own understanding of the frontier is specific to the Spanish empire and its New World colonies and connects the link between gender and the frontier to the way in which the space of the New World altered the imposition of imperial ideologies in colonial culture, drawing upon spatial theory as well as examples from the field of history, cartography and gender studies. In this study the analysis of the impact of spatial

concepts on cultural and social institutions relates to the topic of traditional female gender norms and literary genre and their representation in the colonies. The project outlined above addresses the literary and historical representation of white Creole women living on the Latin American frontier. A focus on this specific sector of the population serves primarily to explore, as I have already stated, spatial and gender codes in colonial Spanish America. While important work on the women of other ethnic groups has been carried out by scholars such as Karen Vieira Powers and Susan Kellogg, white elite Creole women also played a role in the disruption of empire in the Spanish colonies. In fact, a study of the white female body reveals intense cultural anxieties in regards to female behavior and identity, and can be directly linked to questions of race and authority in the New World. As Allison Blunt and Gillian Rose state, an examination of the role of white women in the New World has the potential to disrupt imperial claims of transparent space and mimetic representation by revealing the fluidity rather than the fixity of space (10) .1 This understanding of femininity stems from early modern Spain where the wifes body served as a kind of transcoder of and for various types of cultural anxieties, a site on which concerns over the interpretation and misinterpretation of signs and especially signs of Otherness racial, religious, cultural were at different times projected, materialized, codified, negotiated, and even contested (Dopico Black 4). The female body, and particularly that of the wife of a Spanish nobleman, was an instable signifier which reflected and reproduced the cultural anxieties of Spain in this period. This is exemplified by questions over the status of the converso and the Morisco in Spanish culture because anxieties concerning the wifes body and its pleasures, were seen as either symptoms or projections of the anxieties provoked by the

body of the racial or religious other (Dopico Black 7). As I will discuss later, within traditional Spanish gender ideology, a wifes body was the subject of extreme surveillance and control, due principally to the cultural and racial anxieties I have highlighted here. In the New World, the body of the white female elite women was subjected to the same type of social and cultural anxiety; however, in the Americas her body also represented issues of race involving the Native American community as well as the struggle for power between differing white social groups. Elisa Sampson Vera Tudela discusses this problem in her work on the Carmelite convent San Jos in colonial Mexico City. She writes that the nuns in the order were all members of elite Spanish and colonial culture. However, within the convent these women were divided into two groups according to cultural and ethnic background: criollas and gachupinas. The gachupinas were women of pure blood born in Spain, and had escaped the supposed effect of the climate of the New World, which was believed to make women lazy and morally lax, a climate the criollas had been exposed to since birth (Sampson Vera Tudela 32). This type of differentiation established a clear hierarchy in social status in the convent, the criollas were not as pure or as morally upright as the gachupinas because they had been impacted by their New World environment. Many of the convent writings reveal that the criolla was seen to have an excess of sexuality because of her cultural and social difference, and could, therefore, not represent the perfect Carmelite nun. Such an understanding of cultural differences indicates that cloistered nuns did not exist in isolation, outside of the political and social realities of the colonies, rather these elite women directly reflected and participated in specific colonial questions of

power and racial status: the desire to preserve a pure white class in the Americas. Sampson Vera Tudela notes that the enclosed nun comes to symbolize the honor of contesting power groups in the Indies and her story becomes the reflection of their histories and the projection of their imagined futures (29). While different from the wifes body in Spain, this example demonstrates how the body of white elite women in the Americas reflected cultural anxieties about race and pure blood, and was implicated in the struggle between the creoles and the Spanish for the domination of colonial society. It becomes obvious that an examination of white elite women is clearly not just a study of an isolated population group, but an inquiry into specific social and cultural issues in the Spanish colonies. This understanding of the role of white women in colonial culture is the basis from which my own project stems: the study of the literary representation of peninsular institutions and ideologies in relation to the female body, the anxiety the body and the ideologies represented, and their mutual alteration in the New World. This analysis of white elite women will reveal how the construction and contestation of space, institutions, and ideologies had a direct impact on peninsular ideology in the creation of a settler society in the New World.2 The Space of the New World as a Frontier Within the terms of this project, the frontier is a contested ground that exists between traditional Spanish gender ideology and the behavior of women in the New World. This understanding of the frontier indicates that: Frontiers are certainly not boundaries between civilization and wildernessbecause those are nothing more than value judgments of the conquerors. . .Instead, we view frontiers as zones of historical interaction

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where no one has an enduring monopoly on violence. . .Frontiers marked the social and geographical limits of power among the polities. . .Frontiers were, in a most basic sense, contested ground. (Guy and Sheridan 10) My own construction of the frontier in Latin America is based on this definition by Guy and Sheridan, and expands on the understanding of the frontier as a zone of historical interaction in order to question how the frontier, as contested ground, functions as a space which permits, and is a catalyst for, the changing nature of gender representation in the colonies. A frontier, then, does not come into existence until a particular geographic space becomes the site of contact between differentiated bodies.3 The necessity of contact and exchange makes the frontier a middle space, a space created and limited by exchange, which cannot exist without these dynamic interactions. Michel de Certeau, in The Practice of Everyday Life, supports this idea when he writes that the frontier is a third element. . .a middle place, composed of interactions and inter-views, the frontier is a sort of void, a narrative sym-bol of exchanges and encounters (127). Further, this is also a space created by contacts, where the points of differentiation between two bodies are common points (127). The idea that the frontier is a middle place, or an in-between place, suggests that the frontier is a zone where various groups come into contact, where there is fluidity and exchange between identities and ideas. In connection with De Certeaus theory, I understand the frontier as the locus of its own flexible and constantly altered space, one that transforms and impacts the identities of those who inhabit the New World.

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The Monja Alfrez, Catalina de Erauso, exemplifies this idea because her body is the consummate in-between in the colonial period. This nun traveled from the Old World to the New and spent years living as a man while she moved throughout the frontier. In her autobiography, Historia de la Monja Alfrez, Catalina de Erauso, escrita por ella misma, Catalina displays her own version of masculinity, by representing herself as having participated in duels and engaging in relationships with women, among other traditionally masculine behaviors. The body she constructs is truly reflective of the space of the New World, because at the end of her story she relates that she has received a dispensation to continue dressing as a man. This papal dispensation highlights how the power of the church extended to the New World, but was altered in that it allowed nontraditional representations of gender to exist within its hierarchy. After her journey to Rome, Catalina returns to the colonies and continues her life as a man until her death. The body of the Monja Alfrez, then, demonstrates the way in which the New World allows for fluidity through a constant process of exchanges and encounters between inhabitants of the colonies as well as the interaction between peninsular beliefs and the American reality. In the New World, the Monja Alfrez is not forced to elect one gender over the other because she continues cross-dressing with the permission of the Church; instead, she represents the space in which she lives, the middle-space of the frontier. Elizabeth Grosz expands on the idea of the in-between when she writes that: The space of the in-between is the locus for social, cultural and natural transformations: it is not simply a convenient space for movements and realignments but in fact is the only place the place around identities,

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between identities where becoming, openness to futurity outstrips the conversational impetus to retain cohesion and unity. (Architecture 92) If the frontier is a middle place, or an in-between, then the identities of the colonial subjects which inhabit this space are outside of that of Peninsular Spain. As Grosz states, the in-between, formed by juxtapositions and experiments, formed by realignments or new arrangements, threatens to open itself up as new, to facilitate transformations and identities that constitute it (Architecture 92). The space itself is an in-between which is not yet a settler society, but neither is it simply the home of unaltered peninsular identity in the New World.4 Although I find De Certeaus thinking on the frontier fundamental to my own interpretation of the term, I do question his representation of the frontier as a sort of void. His conceptualization of this space is misleading because it constructs the frontier as a blank slate on which anything can be written or imposed. If the frontier is a contested ground based on the contact between differentiated bodies, it is not a space that is simply awaiting the inscription of ideas and values, rather it is created through the processes of cultural and social exchange. This theorization of the frontier points to an understanding of the New World as the locus of a constant process of alteration of identity and ideology. In this light, we can understand the colonial frontier not as an empty continent awaiting the imposition of Spanish values, but as the of site social practices which delimit the nature of this space as well as the identity of those who inhabit the New World. While De Certeaus elaboration of the frontier as a middle place of contact and fluidity is the basis for the types of interactions I argue for in the colonies, my

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understanding of the frontier also stems from the work of Henri Lefebvre in The Production of Space where he theorizes that new societies create new spaces and spatial practice alters the nature of space itself. Lefebvre has established four principle concepts of space: social space, spatial practice, representational spaces and representations of space. The author defines social space as a space that: Contain(s) and assign(s) (more or less) appropriate places to (1) the social relations of reproduction, i.e. the bio-physiological relations between the sexes and between age groups, along with the specific organization of the family; and (2) the relations of production, i.e. the division of labor and its organization in the form of hierarchical social functions. (35) Social space, then, is at the root of social structure and hierarchy, it underlies the way in which certain groups organize and represent themselves. For Lefebvre, social space is the locus of spatial practice: social space works to impose social order and structure while spatial practice guides the behavior of the members of a society and creates the possibility for new or alternate manifestations of this space. In my own project social space is based on the ideologies and institutions that Spain brings to the New World in order to govern and control this space. However, spatial practice is not always in line with the rules promoted by social space. What happens on the frontier, then, when the exchanges and interchanges create or promote behaviors that are traditionally prohibited by Spanish society? In the case of this study, it is not the unproblematic reproduction of social space which I wish to examine on the frontier; rather, it is the attempt by the

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Spanish crown to create a specific type of social space which is impeded by the spatial practices and reality of those who live on the frontier. The study of this relationship is possible given two other concepts in Lefebvres theorization: representations of space and representational spaces. For Lefebvre, representations of space are tied to the relations of production and to the order which those relations impose (33), while representational spaces are linked to the clandestine or underground side of social life and involve complex codes and social symbols (33). In other words, representations of space, which occur through spatial practice, are those behaviors suggested by the order and ideology that governs a space. In the context of colonial Latin America this is exemplified by policies and institutions brought from the Spanish peninsula and imposed on the New World. Representational spaces, however, are the small alterations in behavior, or spatial practice, which eventually work to change the hierarchy or ideology of the space, such as the behavior of women on the frontier who do not meet with, or follow, traditional Spanish gender ideology. Lefebvres theorization of space and spatial practice will allow me to examine the way in which behaviors, specifically those of women, alter the space of the colony, while that space, and the ideologies it is intended to represent, impact the women of the New World. In this way, social space is fluid and constant: it both permits and prohibits certain behaviors which maintain and slowly change the nature of the space. Such a conceptualization of space, as fluid and stable entity which is altered by spatial practice, is the understanding of space I will be using throughout my dissertation in my discussion of the frontier, gender and literary genre in the New World.

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In addition to the relationship between social space and spatial practice, the interaction between the body and space is also fundamental to my reading of the frontier given that I am particularly interested in the relationship between these two entities in the New World. Grosz highlights this idea when she defines the body as concrete, material, animate organization of flesh , organs, nerves, and skeletal structure, which are given unity, cohesiveness, and form through the physical and social inscription of the bodys surfaces (Space 104). This definition suggests that although the body is a physical entity, it can also be socially and culturally constructed by means of space. For example, a city is a site for the bodys cultural saturation . . . the place where the body is representationaly reexplored, transformed, contested, reinscribed. In turn, the body (as a cultural product) transforms, reinscribes the urban landscape according to its changing needs (Space 108-9). Groszs argument clearly demonstrates that the body and space, in this case the city, are mutually dependent. However, this dichotomy can be taken one step further to suggest that both space and time are categories which are filtered through the production of the body. Inherent in this understanding of space and time is the importance of historical context in the interpretation of these categories; that is to say, space, time, and the body mutually produce each other in ways that are specific to a given society or culture. In fact: Any understanding of bodies requires a spatial and temporal framework. Conversely, space and time themselves remain conceivable insofar as they become accessible for us corporeally. I would contend that space and time are . . . a priori corporeal categories, whose precise features and idiosyncrasies parallel the cultural and historical specificities of bodies. .

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.there is a correlation of historically specific conceptions of subjectivity, spatiality and temporality. (Architecture 32) In light of this type of connection, it becomes clear that an examination of the process of the reinscription and production of space, time, and the body in the representational strategies of the historical context of the colonial Latin American frontier will expose the possibility for the questioning of the ideologies which ruled the body, and its behavior, in the early modern era. In addition to the interplay between bodies and space, a study of the link between the city and the frontier completes my theorization of the frontier. The relationship between the city and the frontier has been studied by scholars such as Alvaro Flix Bolaos who writes that the frontier refers to an open space penetrated by European colonization, and that the Western city is an enclosed space inside that frontier whose existence guarantees the success of the conquest (275). Although the discussion of the connection between the city and the frontier is a valid topic of study, like elements of De Certeaus scholarship, this representation of the frontier and the cities that exist within it is problematic. The idea that the city is an enclosed space, that guarantees a successful outcome of the Spanish conquest of the New World suggests that the colonizing project will be successful only if Western ideology is completely imposed upon the New World. Although this may have been the dream of the Spanish and other European empires, as I will demonstrate later, the nature of the frontier did not allow institutions and ideologies to establish themselves in the manner the Spanish preferred. Nevertheless, the city clearly forms a part of the frontier. Bolaos may understand the urban environment as an enclosed space, but as Elizabeth Grosz argues, the city

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brings together economic flows, and power networks, forms of management and political organization, interpersonal, familial, and extra-familial social relations, and aesthetic/economic organization of space and place to create a semipermanent but everchanging built environment or milieu (Space 105). The joining of these dispersed and varied elements of social and spatial practice clearly mark the city as the site of the type of cultural exchanges which are inherent to the frontier. Therefore, while not all cities are frontiers, the city can certainly exist in and on the frontier, given that it is produced by, and is a product of, social interchange and interaction. A specific example of a city which exists on the frontier and represents the characteristics Bolaos and Grosz discuss is Lima, Peru. This colonial capital was the site of constant social and cultural exchange throughout the colonial period; however, Lima is also reflective of the nature of the frontier in another, more regionally specific, manner. In contrast to other early modern or colonial cities, Lima has been characterized as feminine throughout its history. Paul Firbas has studied this tradition and writes that the feminized construction of Lima is so persistent throughout history that it representa un problema crtico y una invitacin a la interpretacin cultural (256). According to him, in fact, lo que es especfico del imaginario de Lima es la intensidad de la metonimia, la recurrencia de la alabanza de sus mujeres y feminizacin de la ciudad. La mujer limea domina la urbe de una manera no vista en otros pases (Firbas 258-9). As this critic suggests, there is something inherently different about Lima in comparison to other cities throughout the world or in the Latin American colonies, this difference is symbolic of the nature of the frontier and the space of the New World.

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Lima cannot be envisioned in the same way as European cities because it is not the site of the same cultural practices found in the Old World, it is fluid and flexible as Fribas discussion of women in the capital indicates. In this colonial city, women are described as gallardas or gentlemanly a description which reflects female behavior patterns and reveals in contrast to other cities, las mujeres de Lima, en efecto, seducan a los viajeros, pero stos estaban ya previamente seducidos por el lenguaje y la iconografa sobre la ciudad . . . la ciudad femenina, como espacio colonial, preexista a sus mujeres notables que confirmaban su fama (Firbas 264).5 The relationship between women and the city which Firbas is arguing for is illustrative of the relationship between the body and the city on the frontier which I am constructing. The textual representation of social practices that developed in this city impacted the body and behavior of these women, while the women themselves altered and impacted the representation of the city. As in my understanding of the space of the New World, this image of Lima is both the site of social prohibition and the alteration of those rules, it is a space created through the contacts of differentiated bodies. The Frontier and Spanish Ideology: A Game of Alteration and Imposition As the discussion above demonstrates, the frontier promotes the differentiation of spaces and bodies through a constant process of transformation and change. In the context of colonial Latin America, this process is due to the failed imposition of Spanish ideology, institutions, and law in the colonies. Throughout the period of conquest and colonization, the Spanish attempted to impose specific social controls upon the colonies; however, the space of the frontier allowed for and promoted behaviors and gender

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representations which were outside of these social norms and therefore weakened these ideologies or institutions. An example of this process if found in the request for an annulment of a marriage which was filed in Lima in 1599. This legal document recounts the story of a woman named Ana Ruz who was forced into marriage at knife point by her mother. Ana was not interested in this marriage, and upon her mothers death the young woman filed for annulment claiming that she had protected her virginity, and therefore her honor, by wrapping herself in sheets when the marriage was to be consummated, a fact which was checked by doctors and proven to be true (Archivo Arzobispal Legajo 3: 1595-1599). In this instance, there are two examples of feminine authority and agency, the mother in question exerts her power as family matriarch and forces her daughter to marry a man of her choosing; however, the daughter also works within the confines of gender construction and maintains her social value in spite of her disagreeable circumstances. So, in this example of a single family in the New World, demonstrates how the ideals for female behavior in the colonies were deconstructed and reinterpreted on a daily basis. In addition to this archival example, historical studies of immigration, colonial law, and cartography also highlight how space on the frontier altered Spanish ideals and institutions. In the case of the New World, Spanish ideology is the locus of prohibitions; it is the source of strict gender and social codes which attempt to recreate the ideals of Spanish society on the newly discovered continent. As Lefebvre claims, the ultimate foundation of social space is prohibition and social space is the outcome of past actions, social space is what permits fresh actions to occur, while suggesting others and prohibiting yet others (73). In spite of the intended role of peninsular ideologies in the

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colonies, we can question the efficacy of an ideology no longer linked to the space of its creation: What is an ideology without a space to which it refers, a space which it describes, whose vocabulary and links it makes use of, and whose code it embodies? (Lefebvre 44). Following this reasoning, it becomes clear that an ideology disconnected from its own space cannot serve as a locus of prohibition. In the Latin American colonies, this dislocation opens legal codes, gender norms, and many other traditional social structures to new transformations given that ideologies do not function in the way the Spanish intended, they are modified and do not dictate ideal versions of social order and spatial practice: Ideologies dictate the locations of particular activities, determining that such and such a place should be sacred, for example, while some other should not, or that a temple, a palace or a church must be here, not there. But ideologies do not produce space: rather, they are in space, and of it. It is the forces of production and the relations of production that produce social space. (Lefebvre 210) Lefebvres argument demonstrates that ideologies cannot simply be imposed upon a specific space; rather, they are part of the space and can therefore be altered by it. Belief systems and normative codes can dictate the shape and form of a particular space, but they cannot control the spatial practice that occurs at these sites. Instead, it is the inhabitants and their bodies which form space and are consequently formed by it. Lefebvre addresses this point when he comments that social practice is an extension of the body (249) and that while space is the locus of prohibition, it is also the site of the body which can turn prohibition on its head (201). In this way, it is the actions of spatial

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practice which determine the nature of space, not power structures or ideologies. Given that the frontier is a middle place which is in constant transformation, the New World offers different possibilities for the body and spatial practice than the Peninsula or other European countries because the nature of social space is dependent upon the behavior and nature of its inhabitants, of those who perform spatial practices. Therefore, while ideology can divide and order space, it cannot rule it: Spanish institutions are altered in the New World because the space responds to practice rather than ideological construct. An example of the alteration of ideology in the New World due to the nature of the frontier comes from Kathleen Myers in her article, Writing of the Frontier: Blurring Gender and Genre in the Monja Alfrezs Account where she argues that: Colonization and redistribution of power and resources often created a fluid society that contradicted period documents and edicts written by elite Spaniards who talk of control and rigid legal and moral codes. The further one lived from the centers of power often the more fluid the social mobility and interpretation of the law. (193) Myers makes this proposal in her discussion of Catalina de Erauso and the presence of female warriors and gender fluidity in the colonies. She suggests that there is a fundamental difference between Spanish law and colonial reality as represented in New World literature. In fact, she proposes that: On the frontiers of the Spanish Empire, the military was anything but centralized. Catalinas Vida I sucesos itself hints at the often ad hoc nature of conquest, defense, and rebellion squashing . . . Beyond lax

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military organization, Spanish America also broke every rule set by Madrid regarding marriage, dress, caste systems (193). As Myers demonstrates, the controls attempted through written documents lose their impact when they are implemented thousands of miles from the source of their production. This breakdown of legal and social ideology does not allow for completely unprecedented forms of social behavior in the New World; however, specific behaviors and representations of gender and genre evince this destabilization within the empire. In La ciudad letrada ngel Rama also examines this point in relation to the construction of the city in Latin America. For Rama, el orden debe quedar estatuido antes de que la ciudad exista, para as impedir todo futuro desorden . . . una ciudad, previamente a su aparicin en la realidad, deba existir en una representacin simblica que obviamente slo podan asegurar los signos (8). In other words, the city must exist on a symbolic level before it exists in reality. This creates una maravillosa independencia de la realidad (9) because las ciudades americanas fueron remitidas desde sus orgenes a una doble vida (11). The double life of the city is based on the disparity between the symbolic construct and New World manifestations of the metropolis which are always interrupted by los vaivenes de construccin y de deconstruccin, de instauracin y de renovacin, y sobre todo, a los impulsos de la invencin circunstancial de individuos y grupos segn su momento y situacin (Rama 11). As Myers argues in terms of gender, the city in Latin America cannot meet with Spanish ideology because the daily reality is impacted by the space of the New World. The symbolic order cannot match the impulsos de invencin present on the colonial frontier. Therefore, the concept of the frontier must also be contextualized within the

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reality of the Spanish American colonies. As the work of Myers and Rama indicates, the frontier is not a space in which anything can happen; instead, specific changes in gender and literary genre occur due to loosened social and ideological paradigms. Several examples from the Spanish American exemplify the manner in which institutions were imposed as a means of controlling or stabilizing colonial society, but which, in reality, worked to alter the space and people of the Americas. First, in the early colonial period it was the goal of the Spanish Crown to bring peninsular women to the colonies in the hopes that the presence of Spanish women in the New World would shore up the institution of marriage, and introduce Iberian cultural values into newly conquered regions (Socolow 53). This practice appeared in an attempt to stabilize colonial marriage patterns because few Spanish women participated in the conquest, and, in turn, the government was concerned with the sexual conduct of many of the conquistadors. In fact, in order to control the turbulent sexual morality of its men and create a stable society, the Spanish government soon instituted a reward system that encouraged husbands to send for their wives, and, further, the crowns two pronged policy encouraged married women to join their husbands in the Indies while enlisting unmarried women to come to the colonies as prospective wives for unmarried conquistadors (Socolow 54). Therefore, the government saw the immigration of women as a means of bringing the culture of peninsular Spain to the Americas given that women were a metaphor for rootedness, and were portrayed as carrying the seeds and plants of the Old World to the New (Socolow 53). This metaphor stems from the fact that in the colonial period, elite women were viewed as reproducers of peninsular values and culture in the New World.

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Consequently, during this era the church and the state were mainly preoccupied with the sexual conduct of elite women, since the latters bodies would be the vessels through which the white nobility, with all its attendant privileges, would be reproduced (Powers 113). It was not solely the marriage of Spanish women to colonial subjects that concerned the crown and promoted immigration, it was also their value as producers of Spanish culture in the Americas. Clearly, then, the issues of immigration, marriage, and childbearing of peninsular women in the colonies were of paramount importance to the Spanish empire as the presence of Spanish women was viewed as a means of stabilizing peninsular values in New World, a project which was fundamental to the creation of the imperial society Spain hoped to create in the Americas (Powers 114). Nevertheless, the attempt to stabilize the institution of marriage through the immigration of Spanish women to the New World did not have its intended impact on colonial life. As with other peninsular institutions, marriage patterns were altered by the fluidity and constant processes of exchange which occurred on the frontier. For example, the Spanish government brought many young single women to the colonies and married them to aging conquistadors in the hopes of creating a stable society.6 However, these women often used this process to their financial advantage. Instead of focusing on the Spanish values they were entrusted to bring to the colonies, the goal of these women was to marry an old conquistador who would soon die off, become a wealthy young widow, contract a second marriage with a dashing young husband, and live happily ever after on the fruits of the conquistadors wartime efforts (Powers 87). Clearly, women who followed this pattern were still participating in the institution of marriage and the creation of a settler society; however, the realities of life in the New World, and the process of

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marrying young women to older men, offered an agency to these women that was unintended by the Crown. Upon the death of their first husband, these young brides were able to select the husband of their choice and, therefore, exerted some control over their future. This is a drastic alteration of the status these women held when they arrived in the New World: they were nothing more than the future wives of conquistadors. In this way, the institution of marriage in the colonies no longer served solely to stabilize colonial culture; instead, it created a means of self-actualization for women who were traditionally considered inferior in the eyes of Spanish law. Clearly, then, on the frontier there existed a possibility for the alteration of traditional peninsular marriage paradigms because the realities of colonial life allowed women who immigrated to the New World for a specific purpose the opportunity to use the institution for their own benefit and thereby potentially transform the nature of the institution itself. In addition to the institution of marriage, colonial law is another example of the way in which the space of the frontier transformed Spanish institutions and ideas. Kathleen Myers highlights this idea when she argues that the frontier was the site of a particularly flexible social and cultural code because Imperial law simply could not be imposed from thousands of miles away (182). She argues that the reach of the crown did not extend to all realms and regions of the colonial territories. Although there existed a large bureaucracy which attempted to govern the New World, the distance between Spain and it colonies was so great, and the number of inhabitants, cities, villages and towns which needed to be governed so numerous, that it became impossible to impose laws and social ideologies in a comprehensive way (Myers 183). The editors of Contested Ground expand upon this idea, suggesting that in matters of gender as well as race and class,

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frontiers were zones of intense negotiation as well as violence zones where social identities were more fluid than they were in more established areas where states exercised greater political, economic, and social control (Guy and Sheridan 15). The work of these scholars indicates the difficulty with which the Spanish governed and controlled the colonies, a reality which was also present in the legal code of the Americas. The body of colonial laws demonstrates that Spain was the locus of enunciation of laws which could not be or were not imposed in the colonies as the Crown intended because of the space of the frontier and differences in spatial practice between Europe and the New World. One of the most in depth studies of colonial Spanish American law is M.C. Mirows Latin American Law: A History of Private Laws and Institutions in Spanish America.7 This author notes that in the colonies: Law was an essential tool of royal economic and social control over distant possessions. A massive bureaucracy sought, and in part succeeded, to extend and replicate Spanish royal structures and Spanish society that supported the law. Law and the administration of justice were not just important functions of government, they served as its center. Thus, colonial Spanish law attempted to manage in detail vast territories which, in practice, because of their distance from the peninsula were able to exercise substantial autonomy. (11) Given this argument, and as Myers suggests, the distance between these two realms of the Spanish empire altered the space of the New World and caused the difficulties Spain encountered in governing the colonies. The inability of the Crown to control the colonies allowed for slippages and breakdowns in the colonial legal system since, as Mirow notes,

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the New World was not governed by its own body of law. Instead, the law that governed the Americas was based on the Siete Partidas created in medieval Spain, and, until 1614 Castilian law, and the laws of the colonial power, automatically governed and applied to the Indies (Mirow 46). However, this was not a successful way to create or maintain social order in the Americas given that, in addition to overcoming great distances, Spanish colonial law had to accommodate and address new segments of society that did not exist or were extremely small in peninsular Spain. These included Indians, a substantial slave population, Creoles, peninsular Spaniards in the colonies (Mirow 12). According to this argument, even the peninsular Spaniards in the New World, who had previously been governed by Spanish law, could not be contained within the legal corpus of the empire. In concordance with Myers, the thousands of miles which separated the Peninsula and the colonies impaired Spains ability to create and impose specific cultural norms, and the frontier allowed for transformations in New World society which altered the Spanish immigrants. These changes were due to the nature of the frontier and the social space created there, the spatial practice of the Spaniards was not that of Europe and the people could not therefore be governed by the same set of laws. How, then, was law implemented in the colonies? For Mirow, even if the letter of the law was not followed in practice, the texts themselves were considered important. . .the laws allowed local authorities to maintain power and demonstrate flexibility. . .Thus the availability and knowledge of theses texts were essential parts of colonial rule (46), and, further local officials with judicial power in peripheral areas settled legal disputes by applying what rules they could muster through summary procedures. They relied on

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the inherent flexibility of Spanish colonial law (53) to maintain power and settle legal questions. In relation to the concept of the frontier, the use of the term flexibility as one of the primary descriptions of colonial law in both of the quotes I cited above is significant. In this context, flexibility is an element which allowed for the possibility of subversion and alteration of imperial legislation in the colonies.8 It is not that colonial law was completely separate from Spanish traditions, but the nature of the frontier promoted alterations and changes, and therefore flexibility, which created distinct nuances and patterns of representation which are different from that of the Old World. This shows that the law was also impacted by the frontier, it was fluid and flexible, both the source of proscription and the locus of possibility. Specifically, in the colonies there was a great level of selectivity with which judges and officials imposed the law. There was not a uniform or blanket system which ruled the New World, rather there existed a judicial system dependent upon local authorities. This structure was partially based on the availability of legal documents in the Americas because only those who had access to these documents had knowledge of, and consequently authority over, the law. Therefore, these men, members of the New World cultural elite, were able to impose the law as they saw fit as well as manipulate it in order to serve their own purposes. Given the flexibility of colonial law, there was an overt failure on behalf of the Spanish legal system to establish itself in the colonies in a way similar to that of its peninsular counterpart. The Spanish legal system in Europe was obviously not free of flaws, and it did contain an element of flexibility; however, these examples point to the transformation of the legal institution itself as a reflection of spatial practice in the Spanish American colonies, and, further, suggest that these changes and alterations were based on a specific

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American reality for which the legal corpus of Castile had limited applicability. The system would have had other failings in other cultures, but in the context of the Americas the nature of the legal system, and the way it was altered from Spain, was dependent upon the nature of the frontier and its inhabitants. Another example of a peninsular institution which did not have its intended impact on the colonies is the project of mapping the New World. After the initial phase of conquest, the Spanish endeavored to categorize and contain their new territories through mapping. This was primarily the concern of King Phillip II who favored mapmaking as a means of gaining knowledge and control over his far reaching territories. In fact, Phillip viewed cartography with such great importance that he hoped to extend this ideology both to the Peninsula and the New World, thereby creating a conduit between the Crown and his far reaching territories. One of the results of this desire is the Relaciones geogrficas, a mapping and narrative project designed for the New World and created by in Spain in 1577. This immense venture was run by the cronista mayor, Juan Lpez de Vasco who asked local colonial officials to draw maps of their surroundings. For Lpez de Vasco, as for King Phillip, maps were the perfect complement to texts, spatial descriptions rounding out the temporal chronicles (Mundy 31). However, beyond the ideology of mapping created in Europe, maps also had a more practical purpose for the Spanish crown: they facilitated the control and governing of the New World given that cartography represented and defined territories to be controlled and realms with subjects to be colonized (Mignolo 281).9 In fact, the project of the Relaciones geogrficas was an integral part of this process because mapmaking is a means of imposing a specific ideology or belief system upon another culture. For

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example, a map that has Spain, or Europe, at its center automatically weakens the authority of the indigenous inhabitants of the colonies because their locus of observation, or their own perspective, has been obscured and repressed (Mignolo 260). In this way, in mapping the colonies mapping controled territories and also created a hierarchy which divided the Spaniards and the inhabitants of the Americas. That is to say, through projects like the Relaciones Spain was able to impose its own system of knowledge and classification upon the New World and therefore render inferior any other system which did not follow the guidelines of Western cartography. As with peninsular law and traditional marriage patterns, the art of cartography and the ideology it encompassed, were altered upon their arrival in the colonies. The Crown originally dictated that Spaniards and Creoles were to produce the maps for the Relaciones geogrficas: yet, of the ninety eight maps from this project that are known to exist today, only fifteen were actually produced by Creoles and Spaniards, the remaining eighty three were the product of indigenous mapmakers. This demonstrates that while Lpez de Vasco commissioned local leaders to produce these maps, in the Americas colonial officials passed off their duties to Native Americans, an alteration which is a clear reflection of changes in the meaning of cartography and maps upon their arrival in the New World. As one possible explanation, Barbara Mundy suggests that colonial officials had not yet absorbed the rational ideas of map making that existed in Europe which King Phillip hoped to bring to the Americas (31). However, when we look at the meaning of maps produced by the native inhabitants of the Americas, other options, which reflect the nature of the frontier, also come to light.

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As I stated earlier, the project of the Relaciones geogrficas served as a means to augment the crowns ability to control the colonies. Nevertheless, the fact that the majority of these maps were produced by Indians greatly undermined this process because participation of Indians in the mapmaking project allowed for these maps to become the site of cultural exchange, rather than the means of imposing an ideology upon a specific culture. This act of spatial representation by indigenous peoples undermined the hegemony of the colonial project. It is through the meeting of differentiated bodies and ideologies which the frontier is created, and this constant flow of interactions and transformations fosters the frontier and is exemplified in the native cartography discussed here. For example, one of the maps of the Relaciones is the Pintura of ChimalhuacnAtoyac, which was produced by Native American. In the representation of this town, there is a hill and a monastery which are located at the top of the map. Although within a Western reading of this drawing, this spatial organization would seem indicate the importance of the hill and monastery, within the Amerindian sign system relevant objects could be placed toward the bottom left instead of the upper right (Mignolo 307), the precise place in which a symbolic Aztec temple is located in the pintura. In other words, within the Spanish map of this town, Amerindian spatial organization dominates, and Spanish culture is constructed to be less important and less powerful than native belief systems. This was clearly not the goal of the Relaciones; however, the lack of Spanish participation in this project promoted the involvement of Amerindians and thereby altered the ideology with which the project was begun. The institution of mapmaking and cartography were, then, transformed in the New World where they did not serve to control space, rather they represented Native American values and, therefore,

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offered multiple loci of enunciation from which many voices could be heard. In this way, mapmaking is a project which did not have its intended impact on the New World, but followed the pattern of immigration, marriage and colonial law in that Spanish institutions and ideologies simply could not impose themselves on the New World in the same way that they did on the Peninsula since, as these examples have demonstrated and as Lefebvre argues, an ideology removed from its source of production, no longer holds cultural or social value. Female Gender Representation and the Frontier The examples of cartography, marriage and immigration discussed in the previous section indicate how the relationship between the frontier and certain Spanish ideologies is based on the specific historical context of the New World. The nature of mapmaking in the Americas is due to the link between colonists, the land, and indigenous groups. Without an understanding of these connections, created through historical documentation, the changes in mapmaking that Mundy and Walter Mignolo discuss would not be able to explain the alterations this art experienced in the New World. Questions of gender also need historical contextualization; in fact, Blunt and Rose write that there is a need to ground the subject positionality of women in historical and geographical research. Constructions of subjectivity should be recognized as both spatially and temporally specific if feminism is to ground itself in a self-conscious politics of location (14). In this way, we see that to truly examine the role of gender in the social structure of the Latin American colonies we must treat it as a historical category and not simply one part of a binary relationship women share with men.

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This idea is explored further in Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, where Thomas Laqueur discusses the role of the one-sex and two-sex model of the body in the creation of gender. He argues that sex, which he defines as the body, is always situational, and that the way in which the body is read is always informed by questions of gender and power (17). In fact, he suggests that the main question in sexual and gender representation is the female body, an entity which is always unstable and subject to multiple readings and interpretations because its meaning is not based on evidence. Instead of observation or scientific data, Laqueur demonstrates that is it authority and ideology which produce representations of the female body (42). Therefore, all commentary or discussion of this body is based on culturally specific ideology and hierarchy, and, consequently, must be understood within the historical context it was produced. For example, in relation to dissection and anatomization in the early modern period, Jonathan Sawday points out that a science of the body had not yet emerged. Instead, what was to become science a seemingly discrete way of ordering the observation of the nature world was, at this stage, no more than one method amongst many by which human knowledge was organized, further, in exploring the history of the body, we will have to trace the fear (or desire) which the prospect of anatomical knowledge of the bodys interior seems to have excited (1-2). That is to say, in the early modern period cultural meaning was implicated in the science that studied the anatomy and physiology of the body. In the same way, as Laqueur writes, without cultural evidence, there is no way to analyze the meaning of specific behaviors or reactions to women in a given culture or society. In fact, without an examination of early modern

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Spanish gender ideology and the sociocultural reality of the frontier, it would be difficult to fully conceptualize the representations of women in the literature of the period. The female subjects in these texts are created by social and cultural contexts and must be understood as such; therefore, historical contextualization is essential to creating a valid representation of women and their life on the frontier. In her article Gender as a Useful Category for Historical Analysis Joan Wallach Scott articulates a similar conceptualization of gender, which she understands to be a cultural construction, a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes, and gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power (43) which depends on cultural symbols, normative concepts, politics and social institutions as well as a subjective identity for its production (Scott 44). This description of gender and its inherent link with questions of social and cultural structure demonstrate that gender cannot be anything but contextual. If gender signifies power and is based on cultural constructs and symbols, it will be represented and interpreted differently in all cultures. Therefore, we must examine the social meaning of this category in order to create a valid reading of gender for a particular society. In fact, for Scott, gender is always historical and must be an analytical category which sees a man and a woman as both empty and overflowing categories. Empty because they have no ultimate, transcending meaning. Overflowing because even when they appear fixed, they still contain alternative or denied definitions (49). The idea of empty and overflowing categories is essential to my understanding of gender in this project. In the same way that Laqueur argues that the body is dependent on authority and social ideology for meaning, Scotts interpretation of gender underlines the fact that we

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cannot study gender outside of its cultural and social meaning. Instead, we must ask questions based on historical context and social reality in order to fully examine and analyze its ramifications and meanings. In the case of the New World, this means that we must both understand the nature of traditional Spanish gender ideology, which I articulated earlier, as well as the implications this set of gender norms had on the inhabitants for the colonies. Only this approach to the study of gender will create an opportunity to explain the meaning behind the somewhat radical and unpredictable behavior of colonial women, as well as the way in which these behaviors altered the overall construction of colonial space, spatial practice and society throughout the colonial period. While I have already discussed the importance of studying white Creole women and early colonial marriage patterns in relation to space and gender in the in the New World, the parameters of Spanish gender ideology also reveal how women break free of the peninsular norms of female conduct and create new patterns of behavior in the space of the colonies. Obviously, not all women in the New World participated in transgressive behaviors; rather, in many literary representations women perform such non-traditional acts that they cannot be contained by the colonial patriarchy. In fact, the acts of these women, and the way in which they reproduced and reinscribed gender categories, points to the possibility of constant alterations in gender through spatial practice. In Spain, there existed a strong patriarchal society which relegated women to the status of an inferior dependent and offered men almost exclusive authority over every aspect of a womans life. In fact, on the peninsula, at the level of the state, Spanish women, regardless of social or economic status, were thought to lack the innate ability to

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reason and hence were considered to be minors in the eyes of the law, just as children were (Powers 41). In addition to the fact that a wife was considered to be her husbands property, in early modern Spain, a womans chaste body was also a symbol of her husbands honor, and any promiscuous sexual behavior on her behalf threatened his own social identity. As Georgina Dopico Black writes, in this culture we can understand (male) honor as radically dependent on (female) chastity honor, then, as the site, localizable on the wifes body, through which the husbands subjectivity is vulnerable to the wifes will (16). Under this systematization of gender, a womans behavior could alter her husbands social worth, given that Spanish society valued male honor above almost all other qualities. Therefore, the female body had to be constantly surveyed so that the wife did not dishonor her husband. However, as Dopico Black notes, a wifes impurity, usually committed through adultery, could not be traced through visible signs. Although she was the carrier of her husbands honor, her behavior could not be viewed on her body, there was no visible sign of transgression (penetration) . . . there is, in other words, no somatic signum visibile of wifely adultery (and, by extension, no sign to disprove it); the natural signifier that ought to be there is missing as an index. . .to guarantee legibility (27). If the chastity of a mans wife was the marker of his honor, and her chastity could not be tracked, her body became a locus of social and cultural anxiety and was therefore the subject to extreme surveillance and control. For this society, then, the normative woman, was symbolized by the enclosed body, the closed mouth and a locked house (Stallybrass 127) given that a woman who was chaste, did not speak and remained within her home could not (supposedly) dishonor her husband.

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These traditional gender norms were propagated by marriage treatises such as Fray Lus de Lens La perfecta casada which were directed at women and suggested the proper social behaviors they should follow. These conduct manuals argue that women belong only in private, domestic spaces, a woman has no link to the public sphere because: su casa es un cuerpo, que ella es el alma de l (31). In addition to popular literature, this ideal was so prevalent that it extended to the religious doctrine of the era in which enclosure and purity developed as strategies for defending the faith, for separating the sacred from the profane, and also for protecting social order (Perry 6). In particular, the representation of the Virgin Mary was used in the early modern period to set new gender roles. For example, Mary is represented more often as an obedient girl or passively sorrowing mother than as the actively ingenious Mary (Perry 39) found in medieval Spanish Cantigas. That is to say, there is an alteration in the Virgin Mary in the early modern period: Mary becomes passive and obedient as the normative Spanish, and colonial, woman should be. In this way, religious framework preserves gender and social order in Seville (Perry 41). Clearly, then, traditional Spanish gender ideology was based on a patriarchal social structure which established women as inferior to men, but also endowed them as carriers of their husbands honor. This dual status as well as the illegibility of the female body created a cultural anxiety which submitted the female body to extreme measures of control and scrutiny. This ideology, as seen in the examples offered above, will function throughout my dissertation as a basis from which to discuss how the creation and reproduction of gender is an ideology and institution which is altered and transformed on the frontier. The differences between peninsular and New World gender patterns will

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demonstrate that the study of gender in the Americas is a valid way in which to approach the relationship between space and imperial ideology given that gender norms are just as susceptible to change and destabilization as the examples of marriage, cartography and Castilian law. The work of Karen Vieira Powers offers a historical example of the way in which gender representation on the frontier was altered from the ideals of the Crown. Powers argues that there is a difference between prescribed and actual behavior among women in the Americas, and she focuses specifically on gender constructions, especially those concerning sexuality, that were fostered in the colonial environment of the New World (112). Powers examines divorce rates, the existence of matrilocal families in the Americas, as well as analyzing an element of colonial culture which implicates the upper classes of New World society: prostitution. She writes that white high-class prostitutes in colonial cities often received generous enough compensation to live in the lap of luxury, with fine clothes, precious jewels, and fancy carriages like nobility (Powers 141). Colonial officials passed many laws in order to inhibit this behavior and protect social divisions given that these prostitutes threatened the structure of Spanish gender norms which were essentially based on class. Powers notes: Iberian gender ideologies that divided women into separate categories virtuous and deviant . . . That prostitutes paraded around the streets of colonial cities dressed as noblewomen blurred the categories and offended official and societal sensibilities (141). The example of prostitution demonstrates the way in which the women of the New World pushed the envelope of the tradition of Spanish gender ideology and blurred the lines between noblewomen and the other female members of colonial society. It should be clarified that

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not all prostitutes were white, there were certainly many examples of prostitutes of other ethnic backgrounds (Powers 130); however, the specific example I have illustrated here involves and implicates white women in the New World. Therefore, Powers work is a concrete example of the way another ideology, the traditional representation of Spanish gender norms, like marriage and the creation of colonial law, is transformed in the colonies.10 Genre and the Frontier: Another New World Transformation As I indicated earlier, literary genres often behave in the same way as gender or the body on the frontier, that transformations in gender norms impact the production of literary genres. If, as Lefebvre argues, every society produces a space of its own (31), and representations of space directly influence the production of space (42), literary texts also alter and are altered by the space in which they exist. Kathleen Ross highlights this possibility in her study of literary works of the conquest and colonial period, she writes that as Spanish cultural institutions were transferred to American soil, they evolved into American customs that variously imitated, changed or exaggerated the European model (102). Following Ross description of change in the New World, we see that literature follows the pattern of transformation and exchange inherent to the frontier. Elizabeth Grosz articulates this idea on a more theoretical level when she defines texts, a category which includes books, buildings, paintings and other forms of representation, as: Complex products, effects of history, the intermingling of old and new, a complex of internal coherences or consistencies and external referents, of intension and extension, of thresholds and becomings. . .Texts could be read, used, as modes of effectivity in action which, at their best, scatter

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thoughts and images into different linkages or new alignments without necessarily destroying their materiality. Texts, like concepts, do things, make things, perform actions, create connections, bring about new alignments. They are events situated in social, institutional, and conceptual space. (Space 126) Groszs definition demonstrates that texts are as much a part of social space as bodies and cities; therefore, they are involved in the mutual process of inscription and reinscription I argued for between bodies and space. In this way, the form of a work will be altered as it is transferred to the colonies and required to represent a reality far distant from that of peninsular Spain, and the altered gender forms which exist on the frontier will change the way literature is produced and created. Further, the actions of the women in these texts contribute to the changing discursive practices of the colonial period, allowing for the transformation of literary forms which fully capture the colonial experience, a world which is not easily encapsulated into traditional Spanish paradigms. For example, J.H. Elliot has argued that upon discovery of the Americas Europeans struggled to incorporate the American reality into their own structures of knowledge and experience. America was a totally new phenomenon, quite outside the range of Europes accumulated experience and of its normal expectation (8); however, the Europeans did not react by creating new categories for the Americas. Instead, the Christian and the classical traditions were . . . the points of departure for any evaluation of the New World and its inhabitants (24) a practice of analysis which served European purposes, but left the Americas without a way to construct its own reality. Therefore, the New World was in desperate need of its own system of representation, directly related to

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the reality of the frontier in the New World. The alteration of literary form and the creation of new modes of writing are reflective of the space of the frontier and are, consequently, one way in which colonists could express the American reality. For example, in her analysis of the writings of Catalina de Erauso, Kathleen Myers examines the way in which literary form in the Americas often pushed the limits of traditional forms of writing. The Memorias of the Monja Alfrez oscillate between the picaresque, a soldiers tale, and the libro de la vida, moving easily between these forms as well as altering them slightly. For example, the nuns picaresque tale, a traditionally masculine genre, is narrated from a female viewpoint, a fact which alters the genre itself. In her confessional, part of the typical libro de la vida, no conversion is recorded and the priest, who is her superior, is brought to tears while Catalina is allowed to continue her transgressive gender behavior. This manipulation and alteration of literary form leads Myers to conclude that in the Americas vacillations between different genres reflect the nature of the information that needs to be conveyed, and the behavior of the women of the colonies. Often, this includes an experience which cannot be relayed through an unaltered peninsular literary form. This is directly reflective of the frontier itself and the way in which spatial practice creates new spaces. The writings of the Monja Alfrez are an in-between art form, in the same way that De Certeau argues that frontier, and in this case the Spanish American colonies, is a middle place, the writings are created of exchanges and encounters and provide the opening for the creation of new identities. In fact, small alterations in literary practice which slowly expand and alter the definition of specific texts and genres allow women to step outside of convention and create a new identity that reflects the reality of the frontier. In other words, innovative literary forms

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make possible the literary construction of new hybrid identities (Myers 83-4) for all inhabitants of the New World, including women. It is through this innovation and creation of identities that colonial gender practices impact the formation of literature just as literature reflects the gender realities of the colonies. Literary texts are as much a fluid and creative part of the colonial experience as gender norms, both impact each other, and the space around them, reacting to and recreating social experience and practices through constant production and reproduction of analytical categories and art forms. Therefore, the examination of American literary productions in relation to gender representation and space in the colonies highlights the impact of the frontier on the body and the cultural production of the colonial subject, as well as the literature itself. In conclusion, the frontier is a social and historical concept which has been constructed and reconstructed by contemporary scholars; but, in every conceptualization and definition the most fitting understanding of the term is that of contested ground. My project relies upon an understanding of the frontier not as a void, but as a middle place created by interaction, by the contact of different bodies and subjectivities. This, in turn, implies a vision of social space, and social practice, as articulated by Lefebvre, which is always changing, always in flux. The social space of the frontier is created through the social realities of the New World which cannot be encompassed by traditional Spanish laws and ideologies. As we have seen, Spanish institutions such as cartography and legal codes could not impose themselves thoroughly upon the frontier. This process of the alteration of ideology extends to the production and reproduction of gender and, given that bodies and space mutually alter each other, female bodies and texts come to represent the space of the New World, the frontier. Further, the space they

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inhabit reflects these new gender practices and consequently moves further from the imperial ideology of social and cultural practice. Literary form follows this process as well, and also works to reflect and recreate space in a way not seen on the Spanish Peninsula. Certain texts are altered to meet a New World reality, while others are created in response to a lack of categories for the representation of the Americas. Further, the concepts of space, gender and literary form are also dependent upon historical contextualization for their meaning and cultural significance. This specific conceptualization of the frontier, along with historical contextualization will serve as the basis for my examination of the literary works I will study in the remaining chapters of the dissertation.

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CHAPTER TWO The Spatial Constructions of the Body and Text in the Stira hecha por Mateo Rosas de Oquendo a las cosas que pasan en el Pir, ano de 1598 Batallas he yo tenido, rrecuentros y enemistades: no en la costa del yngls sino en la de mis comadres (1589-1682) The Stira hecha por Mateo Rosas de Oquendo a las cosas que pasan en el Pir ao de 1598 is a poem which perpetually creates images of the city of Lima as the scene of endless debauchery (Jonhson 38) and also presents una visin denigratoria de la vida limense (Lasarte Stira en el virreinato 45). The women represented in the Stira are active participants in this depraved construction of the colonial capital because of their roles in the disruption and destabilization of the social ideals Spain hoped to implant in the New World. Women in the Stira are agents in the subversion of traditional Spanish gender ideology and their actions alter the possibilities for gender and spatial construction in the New World, changing the representation of colonial masculinity as well as the city of Lima. In the epigraph, which forms part of a longer section portraying the narrators exploits with various female companions, the prominent and seditious role of women in the poem is exemplified when the narrator speaks of sexual battles that were more difficult and painful than any he experienced with English corsairs. The representation of women as figures who are so sexually vigorous and experienced that they are compared to fierce soldiers, foreigners, and outlaws reveals how Rosas de Oquendo creates a vision of the elite women in Lima that does not match the ideals of traditional peninsular gender ideology. This phenomenon is mirrored by the structure of the poem which reinscribes 45

this literary form with New World meaning through an oscillation between multiple genres and the deconstruction of the male narrative voice. In the Stira, gender norms, literary text, and the space of colonial Lima are transformed in response to the behavior of the women Rosas de Oquendo presents. An essential component of the Stiras representation of women is based on the subversion of early modern Spanish gender ideology in the New World. These gender norms were produced in Spain and transported to the New World through the process of conquest and colonization. Rosas de Oquendos work demonstrates that this process was anything but seamless; in fact, his poem indicates the fractures and fissures inherent in this translation which allowed for reformulated gender behavior and literary representation in the Americas. Spanish culture was the site of production of the gender ideology prevalent in both the Old and the New, and the focus of this project is on the function and transformation of these ideals on the colonial frontier. That said, the question of honor was at the center of this Spanish treatment of women, and the culture as a whole: honor was a complex social code that established the criteria for respect in Hispanic society; it meant both the esteem a person had for himself and the esteem society had for him (Seed 62). Honor was generally considered a value of the social elite, and it depended not only on ones behavior, but also on the opinions of others: honor was dually created through noble birth or elite status in society, as well as the display of moral virtue. Due to its cultural importance, both men and women were required to act in an honorable way, but this mandate called for different behavior patterns from a man and his wife:

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For men, maintaining honor implied a willingness to fight, to use force to defend ones reputation against those who would impugn it. Cowardice led to a precipitous loss of honor . . . For women, the defense of honor as a virtue was tied to sexual conduct. Before marriage, honorable conduct meant the appearance of chastity; afterward, fidelity . . . Sexual honor, although the preserve of women also concerned men. A man could be dishonored by the public disclosure of the sexual activities of a sister or wife. (Seed 63) This distinction between the roles of men and women in elite society placed a premium on female sexuality, making it the domain of both men and women. Women were bearers of honor, but the honor was not theirs alone, it was also that of their husbands and families and could be lost or questioned by the disclosure or revelation of even the smallest indiscretion. The massive role of female behavior in the construction of honor was compounded by the fact that in Spanish culture women were considered to have rampant sexual desires which they were unable to control. As Fray Martn de Crdoba points out: las mugeres ms son carne que espritu y avn de aqu se sigue que entre los varones ay esta diferencia: que quanto el varn es ms dotado de razn tanto menos sigue la inclinacin dela carne (210). In this way, women were the key element in the construction of Spanish honor: they were the vessels in which masculine and familial honor was stored, but they were ruled by their fleshly nature and their actions were thought to continually put this honor in peril. The importance of honor as a social ideal, and the instability brought to it by traditional Spanish construction of femininity, caused didactic authors of this period to

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speak out through prescriptive literature, delineating the expected and acceptable behavior of honorable women. The conduct manuals published in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries all present variations on a similar theme, that of the pure and honorable wife protected by home and family. In his work published in 1500, Fray Hernando de Talavera writes that a woman should spend one tenth of her time praying, an activity which kept a woman occupied and consequently less susceptible to the temptations of inherent leisure (Lavrin 26). Further, Fray Martn de Crdoba suggests that la mugger, como deximos fue fecha para que fuese ayuda al varn, para engendrar & multiplicar los honbres (136). These activities, praying and raising the children, in addition to charity work, were two of the most acceptable and honorable pastimes for women because they were connected to religious activity and also to a womans nature as mother and nurturer.1 As I noted in Chapter one, Fray Luis de Len also offered the same outlines of female behavior in his treatise, expanding upon this theme by counseling women about how to treat their husbands and run their homes in a virtuous way. In total, the behaviors and suggestions mandated by the conduct manuals printed in this period attempt to protect elite women through enclosure because a womans location within the home posed the least risk to her, and her familys honor. The ideal of female enclosure was clearly one of the primary means used to guard women from the consequences of their carnal desires. In Spanish society, the ideal of enclosure was coupled with the view of marriage as the most virtuous state for women: Social pressures worked to encourage marriage, an institution that limited a womans legal independence . . . marriage deprived women of a separate juridical personality, transforming them into the legal wards of their husbands (Socolow 10). This

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combination of enclosure and marriage worked to keep a woman chaste and virtuous, and therefore hindered the possibility of dishonor to the family. Melveena Mckendrick discusses the importance of marriage in elite society as represented in the plays of the Spanish Golden Age, referring to the yugo blando de matrimonio which young, and sometimes rebellious, women were forced to accept (101), thereby taking on the mantel of honor and virtue society expected of them. Given the effort put into guarding honor in the early modern period, and the understanding of women as incapable of resisting temptation, we can see how the construction of gender in this was period fraught with tension and paradox. The requirements of sixteenth century femininity were further complicated by the fact that many Spanish authors presented the Virgin Mary as the ideal female representative Spanish Christian culture. However, while her condition as a mother without blemish made her impossible to emulate, the Virgin Mary was nevertheless the model for all female behavior, combining sexual purity, perfect mother, stoic suffering, and sacrifice (Socolow 7).2 In the same way that honor required a morality of women which their feminine nature made almost impossible to maintain, in the representation of the Virgin Mary, we see that women were expected to protect or emulate values which their very nature impeded them from enacting; and, further, that the ideal of femininity itself could not be met, a woman could not be both a virgin and a mother. Clearly, then, Spanish and colonial women were in a paradoxical situation, their society demanded from them behaviors which were impossible to emulate. Women were to be pure and innocent virgins and mothers; two mutually exclusive roles. This duality worked to further problematize the role of women in Hispanic culture, placing impossible

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expectations on subjects who were already relegated to the position of inferior and sinful beings. The impossibility of meeting with contradictory gender roles often prompted the subversion of expected feminine behavior. In literary texts and historical documents there is repeated evidence of women who worked within these strict behavior patterns in order to gain agency and power within their family unit. Many scholars have pointed to the role of widows in both peninsular and New World culture as an example of women who continued to function within the confines of acceptable behavior, and also expanded their traditional gender roles. In Spanish and colonial society, widowhood was a common state for women because many upper class colonial women married men as much as twenty and thirty years their senior, and therefore typically outlived them by a large number of years.3 Through widowhood women often found themselves in good economic position, in control of their dowry and property acquired during marriage . . . guardians of their minor children, and able to draw on male family members and compadres for advice and support while they ruled their families. (Socolow 70). In this way, women were able to expand upon the role of a virtuous and chaste wife and gain power within the family setting. It is not that they broke free from the restraints of traditional gender ideology and domesticity, but they were able to take advantage of the system to gain a space of agency for themselves. Widows were frequently found to be in charge of the familys finances, they could orchestrate marriages for their sons and daughters, as well as run the hacienda or other family businesses. The power women gained through widowhood does not represent extreme acts of gender subversion; however, these women did stretch and reshape the structure of honor I highlighted above,

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creating new possibilities for female behavior and the construction of gender in the New World. Edith Couturier encountered this trend in her work on the Mexican counts of Regla, indicating that for a woman who has lost her husband her duties as a widow and heir to her familys entail spanned both masculine and feminine pursuits; while contesting and initiating lawsuits and administering haciendas, she supervised the health and education of her children and grandchildren (130). In this example, the traditional gender roles expected of men and women are still present, but this noblewoman was able to conduct business in the public sphere without suffering dishonor to her family or herself. In addition to widowhood, single women over the age of twenty-five often became major property holders through inheritance or mayorazgo: as a rule mayorazgos favored the firstborn and the male over the female, but they passed to womens hands when males were not available (Lavrin 43-4). It was not just older women, then, who altered gender ideology through acceptable and legitimate activities, younger women too acted upon the possibility of being honorable and participating in public affairs at the same time, reshaping the construction of gender in the process. Clearly, there were many colonial and Spanish women who gained agency within their families, and yet continued to move within the dominant gender ideology of the period; however, there were also many women who strayed completely from the expected social mores and put the honor of their families at risk. One example of deviant sexual behavior stems from the fact that in Spain and the New World some couples began sexual relations during engagement. This created a certain ambiguous space for women, endangering the future of a woman who failed to marry her intended (Socolow 62) .4

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This ambiguous space is more than a danger to the future of women, it is a means of gaining power within a system which relegates women to the impossible position of mother and virgin, of honorable and carnal being. Just as widows and spinsters used their social position to gain agency, women were able to exert some amount of control over their bodies through premarital sexual relations, subverting or disordering the colonial and peninsular honor system and making the need to maintain appearances more important than the actual protection of honor.5 On the topic of maintaining appearances and the construction of honor, Seed points out, more important than private morals in this Spanish code was the lack of public disclosure. This meant that, more than anything else, maintaining honor signified preserving appearances once virtue had been lost (63). The significance placed on the appearance of morality is due to the construction of honor as dependent on the opinion of others. Therefore, even when virtue had not been lost, but dishonorable behavior was suspected, women were subjected to social controls and censure. In one instance, a woman questioned why her daughter-in-law attended mass at three different churches in one day. Due to suspicion of liaisons, and in an effort to protect the family honor, this mother-in-law wrote to the young womans husband and the excessive churchgoing was put to a stop (Couturier 133). In more extreme cases it becomes clear that the behavior of elite of noblewomen often fell outside the bounds of gender norms, but was hidden from the rest of society for the sake of the familys honor: Iberian Spanish society with its strict prohibitions on premarital sexual activity had the highest levels of pregnancies outside of marriage in Western Europe . . . Spanish women in the New World followed the

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pattern of their European cousins, having extraordinarily high numbers of births outside of marriage, significantly higher than even their European counterparts. (Seed 63) The number of extramarital pregnancies in Spain and the New World demonstrates that chastity and virtue may have been social ideals, but a great number of women broke with these mores and followed their own sexual and physical desires. As we will see in the Stira, the value of honor and appearances inherent to normative peninsular gender ideology is jeopardized as women in the New World completely destabilized the mores of Spanish paradigms.6 Pedro Lasarte had examined this seditious characterization of women in the Stira, and while he does not focus primarily on questions of gender, Lasarte has studied Rosas de Oquendos representation of women in relation to the carnival, the duplicity of language, and the construction of the narrator in the Stira.7 For Lasarte, la denuncia satrica del poema, que recae principalmente sobre las actividades sexuales de las mujeres y la ostentacin y oportunismo de la corte, llega a crear una imagen global denigrante de la vida virreinal (La Stira y el Carnaval 417). This image of colonial Lima is created through the carnivalesque union of opposites: la alabanza y el vituperio, lo espiritual y lo escatolgico, la verdad y el engao, la riqueza y la pobreza (La Stira y el Carnaval 421) which is present throughout the poem. In total, in the vision of Lima Rosas de Oquendo creates, as well as the use of the carnival in the poem, se permiten archivar burlesca y jocosamente discursos culturales que, ya en pugna o en armona, componan la compleja y contradictoria realidad del Per colonial (Lasarte La stira en el virreinato 52). The presence of women in the poem is almost possible to ignore, an

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example of their rampant sexual desire appears on almost every page of the work. While Lasarte does examine the role of women in the Stira, his focus is limited to questions of the duality of language in the poem, and Rosas de Oquendos vision of Lima as a society turned upside down. In an in-depth analysis of the use of language and symbols in the work, Lasarte mentions a vieja tapada and writes: El lenguaje que la describe asimila desde un principio el ncleo antittico de la figura, el de la reciprocidad de la apariencia y la verdad. La ambivalencia se duplica al explicarse la razn para cubrirse la cara, el ataparse, que ahora sobrepone a la decepcin de la apariencia fsica otra alusin variante a sus propsitos: ataparse permite una lectura anfibolgica sexual. (Alegora 82-3) In this example we see that establishing a relationship between the verbal representation of women and the duality of the text is key to Lasartes interpretation of the structure and meaning of the poem. Women are not examined in their own right, but they are actors in the creation of social ills; in Lima, they are linked to subversive sexual behavior, but their role as agents in this sexuality is not mentioned. In another example, Lasarte discusses Rosas de Oquendos construction of women the colonial capital, but he relates these images directly to the narrative voice of the text, writing that the stira de las doncellas in verses 193-318 es interrumpido tres veces por el narrador: primero en un apstrofe que aconseja el comportamiento autntico, and later en una execracin- a modo de exemplum- para denunciar el matrimonio (Anlisis xxviii). Again, women here are not examined as independent of greater social issues in colonial Lima, they follow the behavior of other members of society and their actions are not considered

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outside of larger social issues. These examples do not deconstruct Lasartes reading of women in the poem; instead, they demonstrate the need for further examination of the representation of women in Rosas de Oquendo. Given the active role of women in the Stira, and the fact that the issues raised by the construction of female gender roles in the poem are not addressed in Lasartes work, there is a need for further exploration of the role of women in Rosas de Oquendo as agents of their own bodies and usurpers of public space. Julie Greer Johnson has studied Rosas de Oquendos women, analyzing the relationship between female sexuality and the moral degradation of Lima found in the poem. Rosas de Oquendo constantly mentions the sexuality of the women in the colonial capital, and Johnson reads the poets continual reference to acts of carnality acquire the monotonous pattern of daily routine and therefore lend credence to the impression that Lima is the scene of endless debauchery (38). The connection Johnson makes between this representation of women and the city of Lima is interesting; however, her discussion fits within an understanding of the Stira as an inversion of conquest where it is the conquered female rather than the supposed conqueror who, after surrendering delightfully to his advances, ironically receives the spoils of victory (36). This interpretation of women in the Stira accounts for a more active female role than Lasarte attributes to the women in the poem, but it still represents women as conquered female subjects rather than agents of their own sexuality. Again, reading the Stira as an inverted conquest is incredibly interesting and suggestive, because it creates possible interpretations of the work which were previously not accessible; but, women in this poem also have a powerful role outside of their relationship to the narrator, the use of language, and the

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symbolism of the conquest. The women present in the Stira are in charge of their own sexuality, and they alter the culture and the space of the New World by creating new behavior patterns for both the women and the men of Spanish America. Representations of Colonial Female Sexuality in the Stira The possibilities for sexual representation created in Rosas de Oquendos Stira subvert the premium on female chastity and modesty discussed earlier, blurring all divisions between virtuous and shameful women, and completely destabilizing the honor paradigm. Instead of the honorable woman who is symbolized by the enclosed body, the closed mouth, and the locked house (Stallybrass 27), women on the frontier have unabashedly vigorous sexual appetites. However, in a diversion from traditional gender norms, these women are not punished or controlled because of their open sexuality; instead, they impact the space they inhabit and the behavior of the men who surround them. In fact, the women Rosas de Oquendo describes in his poem make no attempt whatsoever to hide their behavior, and every pretense of honorable or virtuous conduct has disappeared. Women participate in many sexual encounters, and when they are in need of a partner they proclaim: ay aposentos basos, ponen sdula a la calle, que para tener visitas no es menester otro achaque (1361-4) For these women, there is clearly no need to hide their sexual desires, they are free to poner sdula a la calle in order to meet their needs, and there is no discretion or maneuvering of female gender expectations through subversive behaviors as in the

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examples I discussed above. This point is emphasized in Lasartes notes on the poem where he writes that aposento is nuevamente anfibologa sexual que alude a vulva (Stira 101). The presence of female sexuality appears even in the poetic language Rosas de Oquendo utilizes and is no longer a quality which needs to be hidden or disguised; it exists in every layer and subtext of this poem just as it does in viceregal society. Using the word aposento as a symbol for female sexual organs and proclaiming that mothers and daughters walk the streets together without hiding their desire for sexual encounters reveals the extent to which even the pretense of appearances has been destabilized in the colonies. The deconstruction of the ideal woman due to her explicit sexuality continues in Rosas de Oquendos representation of married women, when he states that they frequently have sex with many men: La otra tiene vn galn discreto de lindo talle, y quando su viexo duerme, se lebanta a rregalalle, y en la cama de la nia suelen a solas holgarse, (1127-32) Here, we see that married women are having multiple sexual relations, but they do not even bother to wait until their husbands are out of town, or out of the house, to do so. This behavior is also present in historical descriptions of colonial Lima, where one anonymous traveler writes that wealthy women have only the desire to satisfy their carnal appetites, the sole thought of these women is to pursue pleasure and they never

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reflect on what may happen to them later (Leonard 100). Through these two sources we can see that the idea of the husband as the protector of female chastity is challenged in the Stira because he cannot limit his wifes behavior even when he is physically present; further, the representation of the house as a place of security for women is destabilized because women enact their sexual desires within their own home. In these few verses, then, there is a transfer of the power over female sexuality from the husband and society to the woman herself because the social strategies which attempted to contain women do not work on the openly sexualized women in the Stira. Ideals of enclosure and chastity are also transformed in the poem when, in their liaisons with men, women often fake their virginity in order to appear pure and honorable in each encounter: Y la nia pecadora, harta de galopearse, que barata halla la cura, qu fzil el rremedendarse, qu buen amigo es el vidro, la granada y el sumaque, para quedar como nueba al tienpo del entregarse! (749-56) When we look at the behavior of the married woman presented in this passage we see that she has found a way to break with social custom and in order to have the sexual experiences she desires. However, this section of the poem reveals how the women in the Stira behave in a traditionally manly way, being sexually promiscuous, and yet still

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represent themselves as feminine, cutting their flesh to pretend they are virgins. I do not read this act of cutting and bleeding as an attempt to submit to patriarchal structures, rather I suggest that these women demonstrate the multiple facets and possibilities of female gender construction through this action. They command male agency because they refuse to be confined to private spaces, and a single man. They also pretend to be pure and honorable women at the moment of the sexual encounter and are therefore not forced to choose between their actions and their femininity. In this instance, married women are moving within the system of gender ideology by recreating honor and chastity; however, instead of reinserting themselves into the system, they use the predominant gender expectations of their society to continue their sexual exploits. Through the re-creation of virginity and the display of sexual prowess, the women in Rosas de Oquendo embody what would traditionally be considered both masculine and feminine gender roles; and, by moving between these behavior patterns, the women become neither man nor woman. They are, instead, in-between figures that have chosen what they like of both gender roles, and these in-between subjects clearly mirror, and impact, the space that surrounds them. Further, the use of glass in this section of the poem represents a form of selfmutilation or bodily transformation that influences Rosas de Oquendos construction of gender. Israel Burshatin discusses the issue of physical self-fabrication in the life of Eleno de Cspedes, a sixteenth century Spanish hermaphrodite who was also a former slave and a renowned doctor.8 Burshatin describes how Eleno used his surgical knowledge to close his vulva and convince his wife, and the Spanish authorities, that he was fully a man. In the early modern period, the question of gender was always related

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to which category a person belonged: male or female. That is to say, gender was not determined in its own terms, but was used as a means of categorization and reading the body in a social or political context. In Laqueurs words, for hermaphrodites the question was not what sex are they really, but to which gender the architecture of their bodies most readily lent itself. The concern of magistrates was less with corporeal reality. . .than with maintaining clear social boundaries, maintaining categories of gender (135). How, then, can a body like Elenos, or those of the women in the poem who cut themselves and enact typically masculine behavior, be read in this social context? Burshatin understands Elenos self-transforming actions a means of creating a self produced body that was a site of resistance to the implied subservience in the subject positions slave, woman, and even hermaphrodite (431). In the case of Eleno the reinscription of the body leads to a rejection of racial and gender categories. We can also read the bodies of the women in the Stira as self produced in that they transform the meaning normally imposed upon the female body by appropriating it for their own use and desires. In fact, the action of cutting oneself with glass produces a new sexuality which is the product of female agency. In this way, as Burshatin advances in relation to Eleno, the behavior of these women allows their bodies to reject and amplify the social structure of the period. They make the desire to maintain boundaries between male and female bodies impossible by appropriating female sexuality; and, if, as Laqueur argues, categorization is the essential characteristic of gender in this era, the women in Rosas de Oquendos poem defy this need for systematization by transforming their own bodies and becoming in-between subjects who are neither male nor female.

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The construction of the women in the Stira is also connected to the larger problem of the role of gender in culture because it suggests that masculine and feminine are not inherent characteristics, but subjective (or fictional) constructs, and that the subject is in a constant process of construction (Scott 39). Therefore, not only does the behavior of women in the work subvert the gender ideology propagated by Spanish imperial expansion, it also deconstructs the ideology itself by rendering invalid distinctions between traditional constructions of male and female gender roles. Women on the frontier appropriate male characteristics through direct publicity of their sexual encounters, yet they also remain feminine through the reconstruction of virginity; in this way, they reveal the instability of the Spanish gender code during colonization and expansion, deconstructing the idea that gender categories are fixed or immutable. Colonial Women, Sexuality and New World Spatial Practice The rampantly sexual female behavior present in the Stira questions traditional gender paradigms; however, it also reveals a mutually inscriptive connection between space and the body which impacts the representation of Lima in the work. In the poem, both the body and space create and deconstruct each other according to the social and historical context of the period: The subjects relation to space and time is not passive: space is not simply an empty receptacle, independent of its contents; rather, the ways in which space is perceived and represented depend on the kinds of objects positioned within it . . . space makes possible different kinds of relations but in turn is transformed according to the subjects affective and instrumental relations with it. (Grosz Space 92)

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From this quote, it is clear that space and the body are conceptually linked, and neither is a fixed entity which is impervious to new social realities. The space of the frontier is composed of interactions and inter-views. . .a narrative sym-bol of exchanges and encounters (De Certeau 127), which impacts the production of identity in this space. In Rosas de Oquendo, women reflect the nature of the frontier because they become inbetween figures through a process of interchange and transformation. Therefore, there exists a link between the production of space, gender, and the body in the colonies, which alters the possibilities for spatial practice and the construction of social space in the New World. Lefebvre argues that social space is a locus of prohibition which prescribes and limits the behaviors allowed in that space (41); however, in the Americas, the frontier destabilizes the nature of social space through its constant process of exchange which, in turn, responds to and allows for new constructions of gender. The connection between space and body makes each of these entities in-between figures which create new social spaces because of the possibilities for new behavior they produce (Lefebvre 64). The concept of the sexual inbetween is especially interesting because in the early modern period a common in-between figure was the hermaphrodite, a subject who denoted an ambiguous mixture of sex, a degraded confusion of parts and a promiscuous hybridity; an unstable identity that might wander away from the neuter into the dangerous realms of effeminacy (Gilbert 9). Following this definition of the hermaphrodite, women in the Stira can, in fact, be considered hermaphroditic because they engender both male and female roles without deciding between either of these norms. While the women in the poem do not participate in homoerotic acts, Gilbert notes that in the early modern period the sign of hermpaphroditism was used repeatedly to signify

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transgressions of conventional gender codes and legitimate sexual practice, and the term hermaphroditism was used metaphorically to label appearances or behaviours that challenged the heterosexual binary of gender (25). Such an understanding of the hermaphrodite appears in other literature of the period as well, including Joshua Pooles The English Parnassus in which the hermaphrodite is defined as ambiguous, promiscuous, mixed, sex-confused, mongrel, neuter, effeminate (111). Here, Gilberts reference to the promiscuity and the dangerous effeminacy of the hermaphrodite are highlighted; further, in this definition we see that hermaphrodite is an ambiguous figure who does not fit into the male/female gender binary. In addition, many dictionaries of the period defined hermpharoditism as androgney, including Covarrubias Tesoro de la lengua castellana: Damos este nombre al que tiene ambos sexos de hombre y mujer, dicho por otro trmino andrgeno (530). The combined usage of the terms androgyny and hermaphroditism in Covarrubias dictionary reflects my conceptualization of hermphrodisitims in Rosas de Oquendos poem because both terms represent ambiguity or an in-between state: androgyny is a physic state of experience, whereas hermaphroditism is a physical state of being (Kimbrough 20). In this way, Covarrubias definition points to and understanding of the hermaphrodite as the sexual in-between, as a figure who embodied socially disruptive sexual ambiguity (Gilbert 11). The women in the satire, then, are clearly hermaphroditic figures who challenge the stability and binary construction of the Spanish gender system.9 In this period defining ones sexuality was directly linked to societys ability to contain and name; however, in reading these women as hermaphrodites the way in which

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their self- produced bodies become illegible in this culture is highlighted. For Laqueur, concern about comporting oneself above ones place, born of the breakdown of patronage networks, the insidious workings of money, and the rise of new statesponsored positions, was transferred to gender (136). The question for this society was who was entitled to wear male clothing and act as male, and the hermaphrodite destabilized this hierarchy. This illegibility makes the female body in the Stira open to colonial society because women can no longer be categorized within traditional gender norms. Women reject categories of gender through self-mutilation and bodily production, and their hermaphroditic nature also makes their bodies illegible to a society whose ordering was dependent upon categorization. In addition to the concept female illegiblity, the construction of the women of colonial Lima as hermaphrodites was problematic for the category of masculinity. Gilbert states that gender differentiation was a potentially fragile system of classification. If one term collapsed so it threatened the integrity of the other (26). Given that women are hermaphroditic because they are agents of their own sexuality and often participate in masculine behavior, they not only subvert the category of femininity, but they also put masculinity at risk. There was a great fear in this society over the usurpation of the masculine role both in the public and private sphere (Bushartin 436), and the idea that women could overtake this traditionally male domain disrupted the possibility of categorization through the deconstruction of the supposedly binary poles of male and female. Traub proposes that female homoerotic desire, as well as the desire of hermaphrodites and tribades, did not signify in early modern culture because female sexual actions were always read through the lens of heterosexuality (165). While this is

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clearly a fundamental point, in the Stira female sexual behavior is significant to the construction of colonial culture because this subversive sexuality is the primary force of destabilization and social fracture in the poem. It is the women of Lima who contribute to the moral debauchery found in the city, and it is their actions which are the most representative of colonial culture. The women in the text who are hermaphroditic in nature reinscribe their bodies and usurp masculine roles are valuable and significant representatives of both colonial and early modern culture in that they disrupt the institutional project of gender categorization through their own sexual activity, and through the destabilization of the concept of masculinity as a binary opposite to femininity. We see can see this hierarchy of gender displayed in an example from the early modern didactic literature discussed earlier, in La perfecta casada Fray Luis outlines the expected roles of men and women: como son los hombres para lo pblico, as las mujeres para el encerramiento; y como es de los hombres hablar y el salir a luz, as de ellas el encerrarse y encubrirse (67). This is clearly a mandate for the separation of the sexes in public and private spaces, but in the Stira there is a complete inversion of this suggestion as Rosas de Oquendo advises husbands to stay at home, proclaiming: Dad al Diablo estos paseos, / estnse en caza y trauajen! (847-8). These lines suggest that the places of men and women have been altered in the New World and that the natural relationship between the sexes supported by Spanish norms has been destabilized: husbands are to stay home while the women of colonial Lima openly parade around town with multiple men. This transfer of public and private spaces also implies that men can

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no longer demonstrate the sexual prowess which was valued as part of their nature in the sixteenth century, and must now remain in the house as was required of women: Sepan seores maridos que an de preparar sus carnes con mucha zal de pasicencia para que no se les dae, que sobre la miel del juego ban las mosas a sentarse (1145-50) The women of Lima are too interested in having sex with their lovers to pay attention to their husbands, and the narrator now instructs them to preparar sus carnes because of the lack of sexual activity they will be experiencing. Now men not only have to stay home, but they have lost the possibility of all sexual activity because their wives have usurped their place in the public sphere, transforming the construction of masculinity in the process. By extension, this reversal of roles produces new meanings for these spaces because the production of space is impacted by the subjects within it (Lefebvre 33); therefore, in addition to the categories of male and female, the women of the Stira bring new possibilities to the construction of the public and private sphere. The suggestions Rosas de Oquendo offers are similar to the conduct manuals of this period, but with one important change: men are now being instructed on how to behave while women are given no instruction whatsoever. In prescriptive literature, normally women were told what was womanly and how to behave accordingly by men such as intellectuals, leading educators or spiritual directors . . . The models provide forms of acceptable behavior (Lavrin 24-5). In the case of the New World, however,

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this piece of gender ideology has been inverted and men are now the subjects of such behavioral models. In fact, Rosas de Oquendo offers the following advice for a man to gain the sexual interest of his wife: Tienple a su muxer el traxe, / i por ocasiones leues / no la enoxe ni maltrate, (1256-8) porque el tratarla peramente / es de hombre que poco sabe, (1267-9). This is clearly a total deconstruction of Fray Luiss vision of matrimony and the relationship between husband and wife as well as the nature of prescriptive literature itself. In contrast to teaching a woman to descuidar continuamente a su marido (Len 21), the reversal of traditional gender roles allows women to act like men, which, in turn, relegates men to the former position of women. One of the most fundamental ways in which the women of the Stira impact the space of the New World is through the appropriation of the home as a means of subversive sexual activity. As I noted in Chapter One, Fray Luis de Lens La perfecta casada claims that a womans naturaleza y estado pone en obligacinde mirar por su casa y de alegrar (21) because su casa es un cuerpo, que ella es el alma de l (31). These mandates clearly relate to the examples of enclosure in Spanish society and the discussion of women who were able to maneuver within their kinship networks and families highlighted above. As with the ideals of sexuality, this requirement of domesticity is altered drastically in the Stira. Instead of remaining within the house, the women of Lima become the owners and agents of the home, renting it out when they choose to have a sexual encounter: Quieren alquilar la cassa, o quieren amancebarse, porque se les fue el galn;

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o tienen necesidades: (1357-60) Here, the house that in Spain was the place of containment for women becomes a symbol of the female body, over which the woman, and not her husband, exerts complete control. She is both the public agent of control of the space of the house, outside of it rather than within, and in control of the female sexuality that resides within it. Fray Luis states that for women su casa es un cuerpo, but on the frontier this construction has been reformulated. Instead of constructing the woman as a figure that remains within an enclosed house, in the Stira the female body is a house which is rented freely to all interested men by its owner. Normally, women could not act in public outside of a few prescribed behaviors for fear of dishonoring their husbands, but in Rosas de Oquendos poem women transform their homes into a semi-public space, open their front doors wide and let men enter from the street. The use of the verb alquilar in these verses is also key to an understanding of gender in the poem because Covarrubias defines this verb as dar o tomar en alquiler alguna cosa, para servirse de ella por cierto precio y tiempo: como una casa, una caballera, una tienda, y as otras cosas. Usase de este verbo indiferentemente, as para el dueo que da en arrendamiento, o alquiler, como para el que toma y arrienda el uso y servicio de la cosa (243). This definition indicates that Rosas de Oquendos use of alquilar refers to the actions of women who rent out their bodies, women who are the agents in the construction of their sexuality. The women in the poem also exist, however, on the other side of Covarrubias definition, in the text women are the ones who toma y arrienda el uso y servicio de la cosa. Clearly, men also enjoy the sexual activity of these women, yet women participate and take pleasure in their own sexual liaisons without

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being controlled by men. In fact, in relation to the house men are only mentioned as entering through the backdoor with the permission of women, they are the passive, almost nonexistent subjects in this transaction. Women in the poem have a dual role in the renting of the house: they are both agents and users of the body they are renting and are, thereby, dually empowered within the gender system. This is even more subversive when we consider the context of colonial Lima where women were only allowed to rent or control properties with the written consent of their husbands (Lavrin 30), and Rosas de Oquendo informs us that the women he describes do not have the permission or the blessing of their husbands to rent out the house or their bodies yet they do so publicly. Reading the term alquilar in connection with the female representation of the body as a house is doubly subversive and destabilizing, these women are clearly outside of the historical and ideological confines of the period and have transformed the meaning of the very social controls intended to contain and categorize them. Given the behavior of men and the construction of female authority in the text, women on the frontier have the power to decide who will enter their house without fear of dishonor or criticism, and men are forced to hide their behavior from the public eye. This is yet another way in which the female subject, as an in-between or hermaphrodite, alters the identities of those who surround her, further subverting institutional values and beliefs in the colonies. This transformation, in turn, causes the house itself to become an in-between given that space always complements the subjects who occupy it (Grosz Space 102). The house, then, is no longer a wholly private or public space, rather the women who use their homes for sexual liaisons have altered the value of domestic sphere in colonial society as a space occupied and controlled by women. This alteration in the

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meaning of the home, from a place of female enclosure to a semi-public locus of female sexual freedom and agency, shows how women in the Stira enact disparate elements of Spanish womanhood, traditional masculinity, and deviant femininity to accurately depict the multiplicity of possibilities for gender construction that exist in the Americas. The Women of Lima and the Image of the Viceregal Capital Female appropriation and usurpation of the space of the home, and the significance of this behavior for masculinity in the New World, is directly tied to the way in which these female subjects transform the representation of the city of Lima into an entity representative of the frontier and the citys female inhabitants. The house can often be understood as a microcosm of the city (Stallybrass 133); and, in the case of the Stira, the women in this poem are disruptive and transformative on every social level: within their own sexuality, within the house and within the city. The influence that women in the poem have over urban spaces directly contradicts the way the Spanish crown attempted to establish cities in the Americas, always with the intent of bringing order to the surrounding area and people (order which did not include the presence of women in the public sphere). Rama writes that the desire of the imperial project was to certify el triunfo de las ciudades sobre un inmenso y desconocido territorio, reiterando la concepcin griega que opona la polis civilizada a la barbarie de los no urbanizados (14) in order to impede la irrupciones circunstanciales ajenas a las normas establecidas, entorpecindolas o destruyndolas (8). From the initial moment of conquest there was a division between order and disorder in the New World, and the sueo de un orden as Rama terms it, existed before the actual cities were able to enact their triunfo over the territory of the New World.

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Due to the Spanish dream for the colonial city, in the early colonial period each metropolis initially followed the same process of establishment: el marco institucional es comn: se apoya en una legislacin homognea, en costumbres muy arraigadas y en prescripciones prcticas anlogas, si no idnticas. Inicialmente, pues, los fenmenos urbanos son similares, tan similares como son los textos de las actas de fundacin (Romero 35). There was a pattern of prescribed order which directed the nature of each space. This order was created in Europe and it was translated to Latin America without consideration for the individual reality of each American city. The intended function of the colonial city was to serve as a means to perpetuar el poder y para conservar la estructura socio-econmica y cultural que ese poder garantizaba (Rama 11); it was the challenge of the leaders of these early cities to put into reality the Spanish sueo de un orden. However, this discrepancy between reality and dream hizo que la ciudad fuera el ncleo del proceso. Desde ella ya erigida o todava embrionaria habra de convertirse la virtualidad en realidad (Romero 38). The reality of sixteenth century Lima we find in Rosas de Oquendos poem does meet with the virtual or real order expected of the colonial city because of the connection that exists between the female body and space. There are: . . .constitutive and mutually defining relations between bodies and cities. The city is one of the crucial factors in the social production of (sexed) corporeality: the built environment provides the context and coordinates for contemporary forms of body. The city provides order and organization that automatically links otherwise unrelated bodies: it is the condition and

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milieu in which corporeality is socially, sexually, and discursively produced. (Grosz Space 104) Given that corporeality is produced through the city, and ideologies and images relating to the body always impact the construction of space, the city is both a mode for the regulation and administration of subjects but also an urban space in turn reinscribed by the particularities of its occupation and use (Grosz Space 109). Rosas de Oquendo tells us in the title of his poem that the setting of his narration is the city of Lima, Peru in the year 1598; but, while the Stira is filled with a variety of people, representing almost every colonial type, the work lacks concrete urban images. There are no descriptions of buildings, public spaces, or the layout of the city, and upon reading the poem we can visualize Limas people, but not the city itself. This lack of urban images disrupts the ideals and social structures represented by certain spaces in the city, such as the Cathedral or government buildings, because, as Lefebvre argues, an ideology must always have a space or symbol to which it refers (65), and when space is not defined or specific symbols are not present, the ideology itself is destabilized. Therefore, in the Stira these spaces, which are filled with women and virtually no men, come to represent and reflect the people who occupy them. When Rosas de Oquendo does mention public spaces, they are consequently transformed into locations of uncontained female sexuality: y si ay missa en sus perroquias de qu les sirue alejarse visitando monesterios y viendo paternidades! (843-6)

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Here sites intended for religious practice are devoid of spiritual importance, they have meaning because of the women who visit, not because of the importance of the church in Spanish culture. The space of the church in the poem relates to the nature of women in the New World, further removing this religious space from its intended status as an ideological stronghold of peninsular culture and values. Normally, it is the intent of the state to function as a solidity, a mode of stasis or systemacticity (Grosz Space 107), but in the Stira, the elements of state foundational to the creation of cities in the Americas are not present, there are no church buildings or elements of an institutional presence; instead, these spaces become like the women who occupy them, like the women in relation to whom they are always mentioned. Specific locations in the city do not exist outside of the female inhabitants of the colonial capital and their New World gender practices; further, the lack of symbolic spaces in Lima creates a void of prescribed roles these women. Therefore, women are freed from the constraints of spaces such as the church and plaza, and the city is constructed through alternative gender and spatial practice. In Rosas de Oquendos poem, women are the dominant presence in the city, and the urban space must in turn represent these new subjects, breaking radically from the imperial ideals outlined at the beginning of colonization. Limas construction as a city altered by female gender construction appears in the poem when Rosas de Oquendo mentions the names of several of the citys neighborhoods and outlying districts. These references, like the churches discussed above, come in a passage questioning the behavior of Peruvian women: O maridos infelises,

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los que la elesion errastes, qu tienen vuestras muxeres que hazer en los Amancayes, qu rentas coxen en Sucro, qu cuentas tienen en Late, qu barcas desde el Callao despachan para los balles, qu barras les traen en Arica, o qu pasas de los Majes; (833-42) The names of places such as Amancayes, Sucro, Late, Callao, Arica and Majes all reference various points around the city to which women often travel without the knowledge of their husbands. As I noted earlier, we do not see the artifices of institutions in this list, rather we have names or signs empty of meaning because they lack description and actual presence in the poem. Traditionally the citys form and structure provides the context in which social rules and expectations are internalized or habituated in order to ensure social conformity (Grosz Space109), but in the Stira we do not have the form or structure of the city, we have names of places and the mention of churches, but no coherent vision or image of these neighborhoods. Instead, women appropriate these areas, conducting business and acting as men would traditionally behave in the public sphere. In the verses quoted above, women are able to traer barras, despachar barcas, cojer rentas and tener cuentas, none of which are actions reflecting the gender ideology of the Spanish crown. If the only image of the city Rosas de Oquendo offers his reader is that of place names, then there is no context or social structure to give

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the city meaning, and the space itself becomes entwined with the practices of the bodies or subjects who inhabit it, the women of colonial Lima who subvert gender norms and send ships out of port, collect rents, and manage bank accounts while their husbands are powerless over their behavior. One of the only public spaces mentioned in the Stira is the main plaza of colonial Lima, an area which, in this poem, is not constructed as a site of control and cultural imposition as was intended by the imperial project.10 In Lima, the plaza was designed to be the core of the city, the site of institutions representing the major components of the social order. On the north side, backing the river, stands the Palacio de Gobierno . . . On the east side the imposing cathedral is flanked by the Archbishops Palace (Higgins 32). These types of buildings are obviously absent from Rosas de Oquendos Lima, and in the poem the plaza becomes the place of women, defined and represented by them as they take advantage of the nature of the frontier and subvert the constraints of domesticity, altering the representation of the city at the same time. Of these women, the narrator states that they spend: El da del Corpus, visitando los altares, dando a la quadra mil bueltas y disiendo libertades (923-6) According to tradition, it was acceptable for women to visit altars and churches; however, by talking freely while moving around the plaza they break into public space with both their actions and their words. Further, in addition to enclosure and chastity, the closed mouth was an essential characteristic of the ideal and honorable women: silence,

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the closed mouth, is made a sign of chastity. And silence and chastity are, in turn, homologous to a womans enclosure within the house; in contrast, the signs of the harlot are her linguistic fullness and her frequenting of public space (Stallybrass 127). Fray Martn de Crdoba also highlights the danger of the loquacious women: el mucho hablar haze tres males: desuanesce la cabeza, ensuzia la conciencia y disfama la vida (226). The women Rosas de Oquendo presents are clearly not enacting the ideals of Spanish honor, they appropriate public space and speak openly while in the plaza. These women can consequently be understood as a type of local authority in the plaza since they control the space by moving through it and speaking openly. Constructing women as local authorities alters the signification of what should be an institutional and ideological stronghold, transforming it in into a feminine space, and thereby feminizing the city because the plaza is considered to be the very cultural center of the metropolis. Multiple Sexualities and Texts in the Americas The overwhelming presence of nontraditional women in the Stira is related to almost all of the elements and images in the text, yet its influence is not contained to Rosas de Oquendos descriptions of Lima and its inhabitants. The structure of the poem is also tied to the role of women in the colonial capital, and the literary forms employed in the work question the authors own stated goals in preparing his satire. In her study of satire in the New World, Julie Greer Johnson suggests the need for a contextual reading of the changes this mode upon its arrival in the colonies. For Johnson satire is transformed in the Americas because writers see a discrepancy between European visions of the New World as a paradise and the actual reality encountered in the colonies. She proposes that by bending the inversely magical lens through which Europeans at first

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generally perceived America, satirists reoriented traditional elements to create an entirely new configuration and one that portrayed the New World as trying to break with the Old (Johnson 1). Historical context is the key to genre transformation in this argument; the alterations in the form of satire cannot be read outside of their relationship to the historical reality of the colonial experience. The creation of new American versions of the satire often included two means of representing colonial realities: authors used modes of writing popular in the New World in a satiric manner, and they brought models from Spain which already served a satiric purpose and could be transformed to meet the context of the colonies (Johnson 9). In the Stira the various literary forms are used throughout the poem in the same way as female gender behavior, they make use of specific elements of each literary form and create multiple possibilities of literary construction without being limited to a single categorization. The use of the sermon in the Stira exemplifies this process because the narrator proclaims that he is offering a sermon to all who will listen in order to help them repent from the life of debauchery in Lima. The sermon was a prevalent discursive form in the late sixteenth century, and all sermons conveyed three actions: first, they needed to win the attention of the congregation through novelty or erudition; second, they needed to delight both the senses and the intellect; third, they needed to engage the emotions of the congregants so that they would embrace a new and better way of life (Levin 13). Levins description of the sermon makes clear that the orator or preacher had to be able to communicate his own faith and spiritual transformation to his audience if their conversion were to be possible. As Cerdan has discussed, the goal of the preacher in the early modern period was to ensear, deleitar y conmover . . . ya que todo sermn es,

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fundamentalmente, un discurso organizado como proceso comunicativo y es, pues, un mensaje codificado por un emisor y dirigido a un receptor (mltiple) capaz de descodificarlo (61). The sermon, then, was a communicative process which had clear goals and means for attaining the desired impact on the audience. However, in the Stira, this process is deconstructed by the words of the narrative voice. In reference to his conversion he declares: Yo del rretablo del mundo ador la falssa ymaxen y aunque le di la rrodilla y le ofres basallaje, ya con las aguas del sielo boy xauonando su almagre. (1967-72) This section of the poem is perhaps the narrators most explicit description of his conversion; however, if we look at the structure of these verses it is clear that even after his supposed reformation, the narrator is not truly a changed man. In these brief lines, purportedly highlighting his transformation from a life of sin to one of pure and honorable behavior, the narrator speaks more of his sinful ways than his divine salvation. He only mentions el sielo one time, but spends four verses speaking of his extreme adoration of false images. Further, the last verse of this quotation states, boy xauonando su almagre, meaning that he is still in the process of converting, and he has neither truly condemned nor forgotten his past exploits. What is the significance of a sermon where there is no clear message projected from the discourse; and even the preachers own conversion is at stake as is clearly the case here? The words the narrative voice uses to

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form his sermon put the function of the discourse itself at risk because they contain nostalgia for his old ways, for the life he knew in the city of Lima. The sermon may be able to deleitar, but the sins of the past are still overpowering the supposed reformation of the narrators present. For example, in another section of the poem, the poetic voice claims to be an example for the people of Lima, to be and inspiration for their conversion: Yo soi la causa ajena, exenplo de caminantes, que por seas, en silensio, da boses al ynorante. (1959-62) The narrator obviously considers himself to be an example for others, a man who experimented in sinful behavior and has now found the right path. The narrative voice refers to his attempts at rescuing the people of Lima from their social depravity as equal to . . .ablar en disierto, / y echar sermons al aire (2027-8) which indicate that the narrator is constructing himself as a preacher, but who, then, is his audience? In the tradition of the sermon his goals should be ensear, conmover, and deleitar, but who does he want to teach, and what behaviors is he promoting through his own self representation? The narrator has not given up the life he once lead; and he would gladly participate in sinful activities again if the circumstances were to arise. Halfway through the poem he proclaims: suplcole que baxare; / y si yo fuere a primera, / lo ms siguro es echarse (942-4), and Lasarte argues that this comment indicates that the el narrador ya aceptara el avance sexual . . . por una lectura anfibolgica de otro sentido de baxare (Anlisis xxxvi). He is not truly a man who has found salvation, but rather a figure in-

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between the two subjects he is creating here, the sinner and the converted preacher.11 This vision of the narrator is in-line with the way in which the use of the sermon in this poem does not follow the traditional ideological paradigms of this form, here we have no attempt to ensear or conmover, but, it seems, a desire on behalf of the narrator to delitar, to make his audience enjoy his work and to laugh at the moral deviance he claims to be condemning. Upon a first reading of the Stira, it appears that the intent of the poem, and its use of the sermon, is to critique and change the morality of the city. However, rather than offer a clear path to conversion, Rosas de Oquendo creates a narrator who uses the sermon as a means of presenting a message, not of purity and moral righteousness, but of continued immorality. The sermon turns the poem into a text that is a parody of the sermon and therefore reflective of the colonial frontier. The poem attempts or pretends to be a sermon on several occasions, but it does not meet with the requirements of this discourse; therefore, the use of the sermon makes the poem an in-between text which does not condemn the social ills of sixteenth century Lima as both the sermon and satire generally propose to do.12 Instead, the elements of the sermon present in the Stira create possibilities for textual construction, by adapting traditional forms to new functions. The use of the testamento in the Stira is also reflective of the use of literary structures in the poem. During the colonial period, the testatmento was primarily a religious rite: El testamento se configuraba como una forma de expresin religiosa escrita, como un testimonio personal de fe en el cual. . .manifestaba los peculiares matices de su imaginacin religiosa y de sus afectos pos (Cruz de Amenbar 45). Further, for the author of the testamento, the document served como inventario y

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asignacin legal de propiedades, objetos y pertenencias materiales (Cruz de Amenbar 43) given that it contained la enumeracin de los bienes inmuebles y muebles testados (Goi 8). Rosas de Oquendos poem clearly does not contain the enumeracin de bienes of the narrator, but rather the enumeracin of the downfalls and immorality of Limas society. Further, the narrator does not speak about himself throughout the poem, outside of his sexual exploits and conversion; instead, he uses the structure of the testamento to discuss the realities he experienced in colonial Lima. The poem itself is not a religious rite for the narrator, given that there is almost no mention of religion at all in the poem. In fact, the question of religion only appears in relation to female sexuality, as in the representation of churches I discussed earlier.13 Structurally, however, the Stira does follow the some of the outlines of the testamento, as it begins with the traditional phrase, sepan quantos esta carta. . .vieren which is the protocolo inicial de notificacin o protestacin in this type of document. This phrase is also la formula ms caracterstica y diferencial del cuerpo del testamento (Goi 9); therefore, from the first verse of the poem the reader is prepared for the presentation of a testamento. In line with this expectation, Rosas de Oquendo claims that he is writing his poem because he is about to embark on a long voyage, as he states: puesto ya el pie en el estribo / para salir destas partes, / a tomar casa en el mundo (11-3). Although the majority of testamentos were written due to grave illness, or were the product of men and women who were about to enter monastic life, many were created before embarking on a long and dangerous journey (Goi 10). Beyond these few examples the poem contains very little of the traditional form or content of the testamento, and on occasion it openly subverts them.

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This parody of the testamento is particularly apparent when we consider that the male speaker has none of the traditional goods, wealth, or property that were traditionally left by men as a symbol of status. What the narrator offers instead is a vision of himself which is an ironic result of gender destabilization in Lima. In the Stira, it is only women who control houses, collect rents, make and possess wealth; men such as the narrator are left with nothing to offer even at the time of departure from the colonies. Therefore, in the same manner as the sermon, the use of the testatmento in the Stira is also implicated in the construction of the poem as an in-between text which furthers the potential for new constructions of literary form in the colonies. Through the connection between space, gender, and genre, then, we can see that the Stira represents possibility for the destabilization of ideology in the New World in its treatment of multiple discursive forms. The use of these literary modes parallels the same phenomena which occur in the poem itself: women behave in such a way that traditional models are left behind and new possibilities for both male and female gender behavior are created, in the same way Rosas de Oquendo uses various forms of exposition to create a literary form which is unique to and representative of the New World. In conclusion, the type of spatial practice found in the Stira responds to the transformation of women, the city of Lima, and colonial literature in the late sixteenth century. Inherent to this study are questions of the relationship between the body, space, and ideology, all of which are implicated in the use of multiple discursive forms in the work. Understanding these entities as entwined and self-producing promotes a reading of gender categorizations as signifiers which always contain within them alternative, denied, or suppressed definitions (Scott 49), an approach which promotes a discussion

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of how women in the Stira take advantage of the nature of the frontier, appropriating space, and creating a new female subject which cannot be classified or contained. The Stira also offers examples of the subversion of gender ideology in the colonies, demonstrating how women in the New World create new spaces of gender construction, changing the very meaning of masculine and feminine, and questioning the natural hierarchy at the heart of the Spanish patriarchal system. Ideologies and institutions which work to cover cultural norms in Spain are deconstructed in the New World through female behavior and the reality of a colonial space in which even the Church cannot construct a stable symbol of its power. The structure of the Stira also follows this pattern because the use of multiple discursive forms reflects the behavior of the women represented in the poem, and, therefore, creates multiple possibilities for the construction of discourse in the Americas. In total, the Stira creates a vision of colonial Lima which goes beyond a representation of the immorality or debauchery of the city, and explores the nature of colonial society from a perspective which implicates gender and genre in the continued alteration of spatial practice.

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CHAPTER THREE The Gendered Construction of Creole Identity in Arzns Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potos Colonial scholar Karen Stolley writes that eighteenth-century colonial literature is a literary no-mans land from which many literary historians retreat, and which readers see not [as] a bridge but rather an abyss between the Colonial Baroque and nineteenthcentury Romanticism (The Eighteenth Century 336). Other scholars have noted similar problems with the study of eighteenth-century texts. Anthony Higgins argues that the trajectory of poetic theory in the eighteenth-century is not clear in South America ((Post-) Colonial Sublime 124) and Mariselle Melndez states that literary critics who study issues of heterogeneity in South America rarely delve into the 18th century (175). Due to the critical distance surrounding the literature of the late colonial period, many eighteenth-century texts have been left almost untouched by academic research and analysis. This includes Bartolom Arzns de Orsa y Velas Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potos, a text which required over thirty years to write, includes more than one million words, and covers over one thousand pages. Historically, we know that Arzns was a man who had no formal education and lived modestly (Hanke Historia 15). The means of production of the text are obscure, although Lewis Hanke has observed that the Historia was Arzns only work and that it was unfinished at the time of his death. While the text was left unpublished for two hundred years, at the time of writing Arzns was so intent upon creating a valid recounting of his tales, and using eyewitnesses from the city, that he kept his manuscript concealed underneath the floor of his home for fear of theft. His work contains many 84

scenes of sex and violence, and the citizens, who did not want their most shameful and dishonorable deeds mentioned in an urban history, threatened Arzns so often that he was frequently forced to go into hiding (Hanke History 16). Due to his narration of eighteenth-century culture in Potos and his discussion of the citys history from the time of its founding, the form of the Historia moves between factual history, such as those we know in the twenty-first century, and outright social commentary of the events he was witnessing. This dynamic was prevalent in the majority of eighteenth-century colonial literature, making the Historia an ideal text from which to examine literary, social, and cultural questions of this period. In particular, my discussion will include an examination of Creole identity, gender, space and literary genre in Potos in connection with the historical reality of the city and the moment of the Historias production. The city of Potos itself plays a key role in Arzns narrative; every comment and tale the author relates contributes to the creation of an image of a wealthy and glorious city. While this wealth was once a part of life in the mining town, in the eighteenth century the circumstances of those living in Potos had changed drastically. The Spanish chapter of the citys history began in 1545 with its founding, but before this time the site was used by the indigenous inhabitants of Peru as a source of silver, although it lay approximately twenty miles from any major pre-colonial mining centers (Padden xii). The early colonial history of Potos was filled with great hope and excitement over the wealth to be found in the cerro, and by 1611 it was the largest city in the New World (Padden xiii). However, from the initial stages of establishment there was no planning or order in the construction of the city: streets were crooked, houses and mining operations were located in the same areas and there was no source of drinking water. In fact,

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conditions were so dismal that it was not until 1598 that the first Creole born in the city lived past infancy (Padden xvii).1 The greatest period in the history of Potos ranges from 1572 1650 when the city experienced improved living conditions and an economic boom due to the introduction of mercury in the refining of silver, the creation of the mita, or required service in the mines by indigenous laborers, and the reforms of the Viceroy Francisco de Toledo.2 Toledo created order in Potos by straightening streets, creating flood canals, as well as constructing the Ribera where all mining activity was conducted.3 In total, it is estimated that during this period the mine at Potos produced over 127 million pesos (Padden xvi), an economic boom which filled life in the city with ostentation and almost constant displays of wealth. This overabundance of silver came to an end, however, and by the time Arzns began his history of Potos 1705, city life had drastically changed. Potos was no longer the envy of the New and Old World, the mountain was mined out and the population had plummeted to 60,000 from 160,000. Further, where there had once been 132 refineries, there were now only 60 (Padden xxx). Several major disasters had also struck the city before Arzns began his project, including almost constant civil wars, the collapse of the dam near the city, and the debasement of coinage. The transformation of the city from a boomtown to a shell of its former greatness spured Arzns desire to recreate the citys glorious past, prompting him to write a local history of the mining center. Such a desire to write a local history of Potos follows an eighteenth century trend in which there was a shift away from the compendious Historias de Indias. . .towards local histories which chronicle the discovery, exploration, and settlement of a region or even a specific city (Stolley 349). A writing of the history of Potos which follows this pattern of a focus on

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local ideals rather than those of the conquest is what Arzns attempts in his work. Yet, as we will see, the Historia slips away from even the broad confines of this type of history into a work representative both structurally and thematically of the authors own specific cultural and historical moment and social anxieties.

The Place of the Historia in Contemporary Colonial Scholarship During the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, colonial texts which had once been considered merely historical or archival documents have been revalued and analyzed as works with literary influence and significance. As I mentioned earlier, this trend has led to the publication of primary documents and criticism on formerly unknown colonial texts. In spite of this development in colonial literature, there continues to be a relative paucity of scholarship on the Historia. Only one major study has been published on the Arzns work, Lewis Hankes introduction to the Brown University edition of the Historia which was printed in 1964 and 1965. This introduction is, by far, the most indepth and varied study on the text to date. Hanke touches on almost every possible topic in the Historia and offers a wealth of information to be explored and dissected by future scholars. His work is primarily historical, incorporating a detailed examination of the history of the text, which was never edited in the colonial era, from its completion by the authors son Diego in 1736, to its eventual publication in United States the 1960s. Hanke also uses historical documents, such as official reports from the Spanish authorities on mine production in Potos, to compare the historical reality of mining with the vision of this industry Arzns offers.

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In a manner typical of mid-twentieth century scholarship, before the reevaluation of eighteenth-century colonial texts I mentioned above, Hanke interprets Arzns Historia as an objective and purely historical work, as a true history of Potos rather than a literary creation. The primary example of this tendency is evident when Hanke accepts Arzns as a historian and scholar with a vast personal library (History 22) even though there is no textual proof in the Historia to support his claim. Hanke is correct in that Arzns goes to great lengths to find outside authority for his tales as was deemed necessary to create the eyewitness perfect history he was striving to write. However, of the five texts he cites most frequently none have been proven to exist, even by contemporary scholars (Padden xxxv). Hanke is aware of this fact, and does question Arzns authenticity, pondering whether one of these five texts is la primera en una larga serie de invenciones de Arzns, que conjuraba ante la asombrada mirada de sus lectores a una infinidad de historiadores en su apoyo, y cuya imaginacin fue suficientemente frtil como para urdir varias crnicas y dar animadas biografas de sus presuntos autores (Introduccin li). In spite of this doubt, which Hanke articulates on several occasions, he decides that Arzns quotes these authors so frequently that we must take his word for their existence. Arzns use of nonexistent documents as a means of authorization in the Historia is just one of the ways in which a purely historical interpretation of the text, such as Hankes, is problematic and quickly destabilized upon deeper analysis of Arzns writing. I do not mean to suggest that there are not historical elements to the work and that Hankes approach is invalid; however, we must also open the text to other possibilities of interpretation, representative of the cultural moment of its production, eighteenth-century Potos.

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Gender is one such category that must be examined within this analytical framework. On the surface of the Historia it appears that Arzns follows the misogynistic tendencies of his society, writing of women that en gran parte de este sexo hay mucha incapacidad y mengua, pues curiosas siempre de lo que menos les importa. . .se entregan con facilidad en manos de la serpiente (2: 271). However, as we will see, the text is also replete with women who act as men without condemnation (and sometimes with honor), women who defend themselves in the face of violence, and those who live noble and honorable lives without marrying or joining a religious order. Given that he was discussing historical fact rather than social issues, Hanke does no delve into the question of women, and leaves this topic unexamined throughout his study. Gina Hermann delves into the issue of the role of women in Arzns text in an article on the relationship between gender and identity in the Historia. Her interpretation of ambivalent femininity and masculinity in the work serves as a jumping off point for my own analysis of femininity as a more stable category of gender in Arzns text than masculinity. In addition to femininity, Hankes mention of the formulation of the authors Creole identity opens the construction of such a tenuous identity for further exploration: es obvio que l [Arzns] mira las hazaas de Espaa en el Nuevo Mundo como algo propio; pero tambin fue un americano, censur a veces a los espaoles, y no ignor que los espaoles nacidos en el Per eran distintos, en muchos aspectos importantes de los peninsulares (Introduccin xxxiii). This task has been taken on by Garca-Pabn, who writes on the development of Creole culture and identity in relationship to Spain and the indigenous inhabitants of Potos. This article is important in that it incorporates questions of race into Arzns criollismo, arguing that se puede decir que porque no hay un lugar

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para los indios en la jerarqua espaola su lugar est, como incordio, en todas partes: junto a los soldados espaoles, al lado de los dueos de las minas, en el carro triunfal de la Virgen. . .y seguramente a invadir otros espacios del imaginario social potosino (435). While issues of ethnicity lie outside of my discussion of Creole subjectivity in the Historia, these topics are present within the text and have been examined by contemporary scholars.4 In sum, as the work of these scholars demonstrates, the Historia is a richly complex text and the research discussed here provides a sound basis from which to move forward with my investigation into the issues of gender and criollismo in Arzns work which have not previously been examined. Creole Identity in the Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potos Of obvious concern in this project is the meaning and evolution of the term criollo, or Creole, given the development and treatment of this social group in the Historia. In the Americas, a Creole was a resident of the New World who was born in the colonies and was not of mixed race. Yet, while this exclusive and elitist meaning of criollo was in usage by 1563, the term actually appeared in daily language much earlier in the colonial period. In the mid-fifteenth century the term criollo, or criollano, referred to black slaves born in the Indies in order to differentiate them from those slaves that arrived directly from Africa, known as bozales (Lavall Promesas 19). The use of the term criollo as a means of designating the origin of slaves who lived in the Americas is clearly quite removed from the social and racial meaning given to the word later in the colonial era. In relation to this gap in signification, Lavall writes that: Al nombrar criollos a los espaoles de Amrica, se los rechaza hacia un estatuto lxico (y por lo tanto social) ambiguo. Si bien siguen siendo

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espaoles, en algo tambin y el nombre lo revela estn relacionados con los dominados del mundo colonial. Esta ambigedad perdurar tanto ms que. . .la palabra criollo se sigui empleando para los esclavos y, como adjetivo, pas a significar sencillamente nacido en [y] oriundo de. (Promesas 20) The use of the word criollo, then, was not just in reference to the elite members of colonial society, but also to Indians and Africans whose background and cultural ties required clarification. In this way, from the very beginning, the stability of the term criollo, which became the standard-bearer of difference from the Spanish crown and other colonial social groups for the elite sectors of New World society, was tenuous because it was directly tied to the very social and racial classes this group sought to separate itself from. Further, due to its original meaning, a criollo was a member of the dominated classes of the Indies rather than a member of the neo-European (Mazzotti 14) elite in the New World. Clearly, Creoles formed part of the Spanish empire and were, as we will see, subject to the hierarchies implicit in the colonial system; however, this link with the dominated classes of the Americas, with African slaves and indigenous peoples, strays precariously from the intended, elite, meaning of the term used in the late sixteenth century, and throughout the remainder of the colonial era. Inherent, then, in the concept of criollismo is a process of negotiation between desired meaning and actual historical or contextual positioning of this group in the colonies. In addition to the history of the term criollo, the development and evolution of Creole culture has been widely studied by many scholars, including Antonio Mazzotti, Mabel Moraa, and Anthony Higgins, among others. The majority of this research

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focuses on the way in which members of Creole society attempted to separate and differentiate themselves from the Spanish Crown while continuing to maneuver within imperial power. One of the first catalysts for this differentiation was a feeling of distinction which had existed among the settlers of the New World from the initial moments of conquest and colonization: La categora de criollo se refiere ms bien a un fundamento social y legal, antes que estrictamente biolgico. Implica tambin un sentimiento de pertenencia a la tierra y un afn de seoro (presentes incluso en los conquistadores, antes de que nacieran los primero criollos), as como una aspiracin dinstica basada en la conquista que distingua a sus miembros del resto del conjunto social de los virreinatos. (Mazzotti Introduccin 11) From this quote we see that due to their experiences in the settlement of the colonies, the conquistadors, and their ancestors the Creoles, believed they had more knowledge of and ties to the Americas than members of the Spanish crown who were not present in these battles.5 This link between conquistadors and criollos demonstrates how, from the beginning of the colonial enterprise, the ideal of criollismo was always tied to local interests and American land (Lavall Promesas 25). Due to its origin in the first years of colonization, Creole subjectivity cannot be understood as a phenomenon that developed in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries; instead, it was a feeling of difference, initially due to the New World experiences of conquistadors, which existed from the earliest moments of Spanish presence in the colonies.

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In part, the differences that existed between Creoles and the Spanish were based on a belief by elite members of New World society that they were better fit to run the American branches of the Spanish empire than their peninsular counterparts. This is reflected in the feeling among this group that there was a marginamiento sistemtico on behalf of the Crown which worked to limit the positions Creoles held in colonial government and the Catholic church (Mazzotti Introduccin 12). While cloistered women are clearly not representative of all colonial women, an example of Creole and Spanish nuns I discussed in Chapter One illustrates this point because the division between these two groups is indicative of the institutional and bureaucratic issues at work in the development of colonial society. As I noted, within the convent these women were divided into two groups according to cultural and ethnic background: criollas and gachupinas. This form of demarcation highlights the bureaucratic marginamiento sistemtico that frustrated colonists and their descendents and left them with a desire to articulate the ways in which they were different from, and superior to, the Spanish. Due to this positioning, the Creole subject held a fragile place within colonial society, and, consequently, participated in a constant process of negotiation between Spain and the Americas throughout the entire colonial period. The feeling of marginalization was deepened by the appearance of the Leyes nuevas in 1542 which exemplified colonial dissatisfaction with the crown because these decrees, among other rulings, changed the laws regarding treatment of encomienda Indians as well as the organization of the encomienda system.6 At stake here was the question of perpetuidad, or the right of hereditary ownership of the encomiendas, which, since the beginning of colonization had been law. However, with the Leyes nuevas, the

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law was changed to allow the hereditary possession of an encomienda to only one generation; that is to say, the original owner of the land title and his immediate heir. One of the primary reasons for these decrees was, in addition to concern over indigenous welfare, el temor de ver a los encomenderos ms ricos y asegurados de continuar sindolo (Lavall Promesas 35), or, in other words, a concern of the power of wealthy Creoles in New World society and culture. These laws were so infuriating to New World elites that they caused social and political unrest, including a revolt in Peru led by Gonzalo Pizarro to overthrow the Viceroy. In 1545 thirty of the laws, including the rulings concerning the encomienda system were repealed; however, this was not enough to calm feelings of distance and anger with the Crown. As the colonial era progressed, Spains power to place peninsular officials in prominent New World positions weakened with each passing year due to decades of economic, political and social crises on the Peninsula.7 Lavall maintains that hubo momentos en que en Lima prcticamente todos los miembros de la Real Audiencia eran americanos y los escasos peninsulares estaban obviamente identificados con los intereses de conocidas familias criollas (Criollismo 50). There was a transition, then, from a systematic marginalization of Creole elites in the early years of the colonial era to a period in which this group had a predominant role in governmental and social concerns; a position earned not only by Spains weakening power, but also through the Creole need for self-definition and identity in contrast to both peninsular Spaniards and other social and racial groups in the Americas. In their artistic, literary or intellectual projects, Creoles often articulated themselves through an appropriation of peninsular and imperial discourses, an artistic

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response which constructed the colonial subject as an interlocutor e interpelador de la metrpolis (Moraa 20). This process created what Moraa understands to be the barroco de indias; a discourse which was representative of the Creole cultural project because it was the product of peninsular Spanish discursive and esthetic codes and the historical and social reality of the colonies.8 One of the best examples of this process is Sor Juanas use of popular literary forms and indigenous voices to institutionalize el multiculturalismo americano como base para una identidad criolla diferenciada (Moraa 128). In her villancicos Sor Juana uses a poetic structure present in both Spain and the New World, but alters it through the use of native American words and phrases which would be incomprehensible to someone unfamiliar with colonial cultures, thereby distinguishing the poem from its Spanish counterparts and creating an American identity which can only be interpreted and reproduced by the Creole intellectual elite (Moraa 126-9). This example of Creole means of differentiation exposes how the colonial subject moved within the imperial project while attempting to separate him or herself socially and culturally from Spain. Therefore, in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries the idea of criollismo no se trata de un otro que se transfigure en presencia de la autoridad metropolitana, sino de individuos que se autoconciben como parte del poder imperial, y sin embargo, no se consideran a si mismos extranjeros en Amrica (Mazzotti Introduccin 20). What is clear, then, is that for elite members of New World society, there existed difference from Spain. There was not separation, but rather the negotiation of a subjectivity which was developed and transformed throughout the colonial period. Men, Women, and the Formation of Colonial Subjectivity

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Arzns develops this connection in the stories of the battles that took place in Potos during the civil wars. For example, in his tales the Basques are the troublemakers in the city and the Creoles are always on the right side of the fight. Creoles, in fact, are often persecuted and are required to defend Potos, redeem their honor, and protect their rights. In relation to this division between Basques and Creoles, Kagan proposes that: Creoles generally played the good guys, Spaniards the bad. . .Lined up on the side of evil were the Basques, a euphemism for Spaniards, a nation synonymous with ambition, cruelty and pride. On the good side were the vicuas, creoles forced by the Spaniards to defend their lives (which is natural law), their patrimony, patria, and honor. Writing in this vein, Arzns was able to portray Potos as one of the crowns loyal vassals, a community which, despite its sins of some individuals, still merited royal largesse in the form of better government as well as offices and other rewards for its (Creole) inhabitants. (188) As Kagans comments indicate, the contrasting of the colonial elite and the Basques is an ideal way for Arzns to articulate the Creole feelings of differentiation and ties to America that separated them from Spain.9 This Creole/Basque dichotomy establishes the colonist as a superior and more honorable figure than his Spanish counterpart, as a person interested in the stability and safety of Potos. For example, Arzns writes that in the year 1602 a corregidor joined forces with the Basques who were poderosos en riquezas y armas (I: 249) in order to fight Creoles who opposed his ambition and wealth. The corregidor was Spanish, and throughout the tale, Arzns reinforces the fact that the

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Creoles were fighting the Basques in self-defense rather than provoking further violence in the city. In addition to wealth, honor, and loyalty to American interests, another important characteristic for Arzns criollismo is ultimate loyalty to the king of Spain. As in many other elements of Creole identity, there is ambiguity in this position. The Creole must be focused on American interests and the society he, and it was always he, is building in the New World, yet his ultimate allegiance is to the King and to Spain. There is a juxtaposition of values implicit in this duality which reinforces the idea that the position of the Creole subject in the colonies was one of constant negotiation, of differentiation and belonging, of Creole consciousness and Spanish heredity. In the Historia, Arzns glosses over these ambiguities and presents a version of the Creole most pleasing to the Spanish crown, an interpretation of criollismo which allows for a stable and cohesive vision of the elite New World subject who does not break with those ideals expected of him. This is demonstrated when, in the middle of a battle that rages in one of Arzns tales, a man wishes to see no more violence and calls out in the kings name. The Creoles, upon hearing this clamor for peace, stop fighting immediately and join with the Spaniards in laying down their arms (1: 256). This brief recounting of one small encounter of the civil war reveals how the Creoles in the Historia work within the imperial system while still challenging and questioning the governance of the New World. They will fight against Basques and other enemies to defend their city, but they will not betray the king or go against his name. Again, this example highlights the process of negotiation and ambiguity that exists for the Creole, how can he create a balance between two loyalties, between the King and the colonies? Arzns, nevertheless,

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fails to delve into this uncertainty of this position because such questioning would subvert the image of the ideal Creole he wishes to create. For this author, the role and values of the Creole subject are clearly defined by social expectation and Arzns does not offer any critique or observation which could damage this vision. In fact, again and again he highlights loyalty to the king, as when the people of Potos receive word that the king, Felipe II, had died. In order to commemorate his passing, the Creoles construct an ornate and ostentatious mausoleum for the king, covering the structure with the finest gold and silver and tolling the bells of the cathedral everyday during its construction (Arzns 1: 239-40). On the last day of the citys mourning the author writes that este da y los pasados desde que lleg noticia se dijeron en dicha iglesia mayor 1,200 misas por la difunta majestad, (2: 245) directly noting, once again, the loyalty to both the king and the Catholic Church in Potos. This vision of colonial loyalty served not only to construct the Creoles as good citizens, but it also contributed to Arzns goal of demonstrating that Potos, for all of its shortcomings, remained loyal, peace-loving, and devout, that is, a civitas christiana in every sense of the term (Kagan 188). Clearly, the image of the Creole that Arzns hoped to create in the Historia follows the process of self-identification I discussed above, without stopping to examine the problems inherent in such a position. Therefore, in Arzns the ideal Creole subject demonstrates every positive quality of his identity without question or doubt, he is honorable, noble, a supporter of the Crown who also has faith in his own ability, and that of his social group, to keep the city in order through self defense and civic duty. Gender and the Real criollismo of the Historia

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In addition to questions of civic duty and loyalty to the king, gender and sexuality are also key elements in the construction of Creole subjectivity in the colonies, and in the Historia. Mabel Moraa touches upon the development of femininity in the New World in her discussion of Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz and the barroco de indias. Her analysis is focused primarily on the intellectual role of Sor Juana as well as her use of multiculturalism as the basis of the differentiated Creole identity I discussed above. This work on the female Creole intellectual is essential to any study of the colonial cultural production in that it highlights the ways in which women were able to make a space for themselves in a traditionally masculine sphere. Mariselle Melndez also discusses his topic of gender and the Creole intellectual project in Representing Gender, Deviance, and Heterogeneity in the Eighteenth-Century Peruvian Newspaper Mercurio Peruano. In this article Melndez examines the intellectual and social role of women in the public sphere of colonial Lima through an analysis of articles in an eighteenth century Peruvian newspaper. Melndezs work is relevant to my own because she argues for a historical representation of women as heterogeneous figures who have the ability to impact the construction of gender and identity in the eighteenth century. One other important article on the topic of gender and criollismo is, Ethnic and Gender Influences on Spanish Creole society in Colonial Spanish America by Elizabeth Anne Kuznesof. This piece is central to the creation of a cohesive vision of criollismo because it examines the relationship between race, women, and Creole identity in the colonies, arguing that the ethnic background of women was often erased when they married men from different social or ethnic groups, and that Creole women were not always of pure Spanish heritage. As these examples demonstrate, there have been

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several important analyses of gender and Creole subjectivity in recent colonial scholarship. These studies have opened this field to further discussion of gender representation and its impact on the formation and stability of Creole culture, society, and ideology at the close of the colonial period. Following this trend, I will assess the construction of women and femininity in the Historia in connection with Arzns vision of Creole social order, arguing that the presence of what would traditionally be considered subversive and deviant women in the text does not cause social disorder because Arzns is searching for members of the Potoss colonial elite to uphold the Creole values he is promoting. The most likely candidate to represent the ideal Creole would be an elite colonial male because, traditionally, masculinity was at the center of Spanish social and political ideology. As I discussed in Chapters One and Two, in the early modern period the Spanish ideal of masculinity deemed men be honorable figures who were heads of their households. The ideal of the Creole man stems from peninsular gender ideology which was also present in Spanish theatre of the early modern period. In these plays, men forced supposedly subversive women to either pay for their dishonorable behavior through death or reinsertion into the marriage system in an attempt to protect their honor. A classic example of this process is, of course, Calderns El mdico de su honra in which Gutierre murders his wife, doa Menca, because her supposed adultery has stained his honor. This murder is a male attempt at total control of the female body, and can be considered an honorable action within this code because Gutierre was, in his mind, defending himself against the dishonor of his wife. This action prohibits even the prospect of female behavior that falls outside of the traditional Spanish ideal and

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establishes patriarchal control as the dominant force in Spanish gender relations.10 We also see this trend, although in less violent fashion, in Valor, agravio y mujer written by Ana Caro in the seventeenth century. In this comedia, the protagonist, Leonor, crossdresses and, in her masculine disguise, becomes her own suitor. Yet, her ultimate goal is always to regain the love of her first love and enter into marriage with him. Although women have some agency in this play through masculine disguise and the portrayal of traditionally male behavior, at the end of the work the resolution is still marriage, it is the goal to which all characters strive (Soufas 16). Again, the patriarchy dominates the social structure of this play; there is no option for Leonor outside of marriage, no true role beyond that of wife and mother. These examples reflect the gender hierarchy Spain attempted to establish in the New World by demonstrating how men in peninsular society had the authority to contain and control women, while women were continually left without power and agency. The type of relationships found between men and women in these plays, and early modern Spain and the colonies, is based on the heterosexual binary in which men and women played specific and fixed roles that were, in turn, mutually exclusive. Just as the comedias of the Golden Age depict, men in the Old and New World had legal and social authority over women, and the roles of these two sexes reinforced this power by creating separate social spaces for each sex. The gender ideology transferred to the New World also included this dichotomy, although as my analysis of the Historia will argue, gender norms were altered and subverted in the colonies. The parallel gender ideologies which existed on both continents and the omnipresence of the patriarchy in these plays prompts

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a reexamination of the masculinity found in the Historia, and the impact that the role of men in Potos has on the women and the criollismo of the text. An analysis of masculinity in the work almost immediately provides nontraditional images of men because with each passing page of the narrative it becomes apparent that women, rather than men, abound in the public and private spheres of the Historia. In fact, in every decade the text covers, from 1545 to 1736, at least one story relates the tale of a woman whose actions challenge the Spanish ideal of femininity and, in the majority of these stories men are either absent from the account or have minor secondary roles. This trend is most evident in the narrative frame of many stories in which the author explains that women have been left without patriarchal supervision before the beginning of the tales plot. In most instances, the family patriarch, be it father or husband, has either died or is out of the city, visiting other regions of the colonies. For example, in a tale in which a young elite virgin takes revenge on the men who rape her, Arzns writes that on the day the events of this story occur furonse sus padres (por haber estado enfermos) al bao de Tarapaya a convalecer, quedndose aquella doncella en casa (2: 172). Further, in what is perhaps the most popular of all of the tales in the Historia, the story of the warrior maidens, Arzns writes: Cuando sus padres. . .salan fuera, se entretenan las dos doncellas en aprender a disparar las de fuego y jugar las otras (2: 150). In these two brief examples we see that women do not break with patriarchal control, but instead it has abandoned them. Where Spanish gender norms would dictate that men contain and defend the honor of these women, Creole men in Potos are nowhere to be found, they have disappeared from the narrative and left elite women to enter the public sphere and challenge early modern ideals of femininity.

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Another, more dramatic, example of the masculinity present in, or absent from, the Historia appears in the tale of Doa Magdalena, an arrogant elite woman, who was forced to marry a man she did not love. Arzns writes that this man was un hombre noble y tranquilo con una disposicin anglica, un contraste grave con la arrogancia de su mujer (1: 104). Due to her lack of satisfaction with the marriage, doa Magdalena killed her husband by hacerle la vida imposible: le negaba su presencia, su conversacin, su cama, y le mandaba dormir afuera en el balcn (1: 104). Although Arzns does paint this man as noble in some ways, the other characteristics used in his representation are not those of an ideal Spanish or Creole man. Magadalenas husband, who remains nameless in the tale, is not the head of his household, nor is he valiant and willing to fight against wrongs done to him. Rather, terms such as angelic disposition and quiet point to a feminization of this figure that destabilizes even the most basic elements of colonial masculinity. His death, in effect, erases this weakened version of masculinity from the Historia, but does not leave another representation of virility in its place. Later in the story, Magdalena marries again, requiring that this new husband defend her honor against an enemy. The man does not stand in defense of his wife, as was customary, instead he shirks his duty and in payment for this lack of honorable behavior, Magdalena has her slaves kill him. In the moment before his death, he exclaims Magdalena, qu te he hecho? Permteme confesar. Pero (qu cruel mujer!), solo dijo, Pguenle otra vez y terminen su vida (1: 105). Where Gutierre kills his wife based on suspicion, Magdalenas second husband does not stand up to defend the honor of his wife (which is, in actuality, his honor) and on his death bed he begs her for reprieve. Again, his death negates the possibility for the creation of an ideal Creole man, and marks another

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instance in which Arzns attempts to contain, through death, banishment or simple absence from the city, all examples of imperfect Creole men. This containment is problematic for the author because he needs idealized elite Creoles to form his glorious vision of Potos; and, as Spanish ideology dictates, men should be the basis of this vision. In his attempt to create only a perfect colonial masculinity, Arzns removes all imperfect men from the Historia and is, consequently, left without any symbols of Creole culture and identity. There is a paradox, then, between the ideal Creole subject, the role of women in Spanish society and the treatment of men in the Historia. For Gilbert, such a vision of the patriarchy is significant because, the heterosexual binary of gender differentiation was a potentially fragile system of classification. If one term collapsed so it threatened the integrity of the other (26). In the Historia masculinity collapses owing to the absence of men in many tales, and the recurring story of behavior which contravenes the values of honor and virility which were essential to this identity. What is the impact, then, of the subversion of the category of masculinity on the women of colonial Potos? Arzns is clearly in search of a representative of Creole culture to stabilize his vision of the city and to create an ideal image of this New World society; however, men are not a group on which this representation can be based because they have fallen away from the tenants of Spanish masculinity and are often not present in Potos. Therefore, as I will discuss, Arzns transfers his search for Creole subjects to the women of the city. However, the movement from elite men to elite women is complicated by the fact that female gender representation is also in question because women cannot form part of a heterosexual binary that does not exist. If men are no longer men, then women must become a new or

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transformed version of women. Yet, this new form of femininity cannot be one where women simply take on characteristics of men, such as the mujer varonil, because masculinity in the Historia is a category of weak or absent figures who contradict Creole values. Usurping this type of masculine space would simply transform the women into the sort of men Arzns has already rejected for his history of Potos. Due to the role of masculinity in the Historia, and the consequent revaluation of femininity, I suggest that in this work gender roles are not based on a male/female dichotomy or hierarchy; instead, for Arzns, markers of gender are negotiated according to the needs of the text. This is, in fact, and inherent characteristic of gender because, historically, gender is one of the recurrent references by which political power has been conceived, legitimated, and criticized. It refers to but also established the meaning of the male/female opposition (Scott 49). That is to say, the meaning or significance of gender can be altered for political and social gains, there is no fixity to these categories: they are socially constructed and can be altered as such. The instability of Arzns vision of Potos and the society that exists there is clearly reflected in the Creole city he presents because this culture cannot produce acceptable masculine figures. The lack of men causes women to become the primary symbols of Creole society in Potos, thereby altering New World representations of femininity and challenging the idea that a stable society can only be symbolized or created by men. The issues of social order and colonial gender representation are apparent in the story of a young wealthy virgin who is raped and then seeks vengeance for the injustices done to her. The tale begins when the girl visits a friend while her parents are out of town and is tricked into entering the store of a local merchant. The storekeeper

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immediately rapes the young virgin; but after this violent scene the girl, who is nameless throughout the tale, orchestrates a plan to burn down his store, destroy his merchandise, and gravely injure the man who violated her. Her plot works perfectly and, in addition to defending her rights, the virgin also finds 14,000 pesos in the shop with which se libertaron los seis negros que se encargaron de aquel dao, y los 8,000 guard. De all a poco tiempo murieron sus padres y ella qued con toda la herencia, y cas dotndose por su mano (2: 173). This girl, then, not only seeks vengeance for wrongs done to her, she does not lose her honor from the violence she experienced. Further, she is able to marry an elite Creole inhabitant of Potos while providing her own dowry and committing an act of justice for other marginalized groups (the seis negros)! Clearly, the virgins story includes events which would have traditionally impeded her potential to meet with the gender ideals. Yet, in the Historia we have a complete subversion of this gender system given that the girl is only not blamed for her actions, but, in lieu of a man to defend her honor, succeeds in defending herself. Further, in recounting an event, rape, which should have cost the young girl her honor, Arzns does not treat it as such because he needs this woman to support his vision of Creole Potos. From the beginning of the work, men are totally incapable of meeting this goal because they are absent or disappear from the text due to death or other events; therefore, female deviance and potential loss of honor are treated in the Historia as less problematic to the development of New World society because they are the only figures who are accessible to Arzns for his construction of criollismo. In fact, the repeated presence of men in the text who are weak or willingly leave women without supervision should, according to early modern gender ideology, destabilize the social structure of the city

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because men were to be the head of the public sphere and of their home. Yet, in the Historia this idea is challenged by a new form of femininity which subverts the idea of fixed gender roles and social instability created by women. In this tale social order is established through the supposedly deviant and unfeminine actions of a woman who, upon conclusion of the story, is both honorable and virtuous. It is not to say that women are free to act in any way they please, but, because of the needs of the text, they are able to create a new form of colonial femininity which includes previously prohibited behaviors and actions. This is apparent when, at the conclusion of this narrative, the social structures of marriage and family order have been restabilized in a manner normally impermissible within the traditional honor paradigm. Upon her marriage, brought about when she provides her own dowry, this young girl reenters the patriarchal system and returns to her traditional role of wife and mother. That the entire social system is reinforced by a marriage reveals that feminine deviant or subversive gender behavior is not an issue which impedes the formation of a stable society and Creole subjectivity in the text. There are, then, gender constraints which continue to formulate traditional marriage as the ideal condition for women, but the requirements of the women who enter into these marriages is altered. The young virgin has agency, wealth and has defended her own honor, and thereby created an altered form of femininity which is relevant to the New World because it follows the needs Arzns has for his creation of Creole Potos. The young woman is honorable, she is a wealthy elite, she is also feminine and a full participant in traditional social order. Whereas men are not legitimate subject for Arzns criollismo, the author alters early modern ideals of femininity to include characteristics essential to the Creole, honor and duty, without

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subverting the traditional model of Spanish femininity, a transformation which challenges early modern ideals of gender hierarchy by allowing women to engender stable societies. While she is not a locus of social disorder, the actions of the young virgin do endow her with both masculine and feminine characteristics because she defends her rights without the help of a man and yet is still able to be an ideal wife. In other sections of this dissertation I have argued that this type of combination of male and female attributes leads to the creation of hermaphroditic beings that have a fluid gender identity; but, this is not the process at work in the Historia. The hermaphrodite is a figure who denoted an ambiguous mixture of sex, a degraded confusion of parts and a promiscuous hybridity; an unstable identity that might wander away from the neuter into the dangerous realms of effeminacy (Gilbert 9). The deviance and instability that are inherent to the construction of the early modern hermaphrodite are clearly not elements present in the sexual identity of the young virgin. Her gender identity, while a mix of traditionally dichotomous opposites, is not unstable in the Historia, it is, rather, a category which is developed by the author to include female traits as well as those he wishes to endow upon Creole identity. For Arzns, this combination is one that can be held up as a symbol of potential and possibility for the strength and stability of Creole culture and identity, a figure that reinforces traditional social structures and sustains the qualities of honor and wealth that the author believes necessary to this imaginary. In this way, the symbol of the Creole woman in Potos is no longer the closed mouth, locked house, and enclosed body (Stallybrass 27); rather, we have a system in which the traditional social roles enacted by men and women still exist, but the restraints and controls on the female body within this system have been altered to meet with the needs of the author. Therefore, in

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this, and other similar stories in the text, Arzns is promoting a version of Creole identity in which eighteenth century ideas of gender construction are deconstructed through the development of a colonial femininity which is able to promote and maintain social order. This formulation of gender in the text is further exemplified in the story of the so called Warrior Maidens, a tale in which two elite girls, Ana and Eustaquia, learn to manejar y jugar las armas as de acero como de fuego, que de todo gnero las tena en la casa. After learning to use weapons, the girls decide to salir una noche en hbitos de hombre y dar vuelta por el pueblo y volverse, (2:150). This initial experience in the streets is so pleasurable that the girls repeatedly leave their house at night, dressing as men and participating in battles where they show their great valor, such as when Eustaquia proclaims to one bandit teneos all, porque si os llegis este corto rayo os lanzar contra vuestra voluntad (2: 151). In further rejection of traditional femininity, the women participate in a freedom of movement which was not typically permitted to women by maintaining their male disguise for many years and actually moving to other cities in the Americas where they are much admired: Hallndose en la ciudad de Los Reyes, como llevaban en joyas, oro y plata mucha cantidad lucieron sus hermosas y gallardas personas con grande efecto de toda la ciudad, que no haba quien no desease su amistad, y as se vean queridas y regaladas tenindolos todos por mancebos nobles (2: 153). After so much adventure, at the end of their story, the Warrior Maidens return to Potos, never having married, and live out the remainder of their lives in relative tranquility. The actions of the women in this story clearly parallel to the tale of the virgin; however, in this case Arzns relates this account in such a way that the representation of

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Creole identity and the image of the city of Potos are fortified by the gender performance of these women. In this way, the Warrior Maidens impact the spatial representation of the city as it is constructed in the Historia. To begin his narration of the story of the cousins, and in stark contrast to peninsular gender ideology, Arzns proclaims : van errados cuantos no sienten que es fcil a una mujer conseguir cuanto intenta, y que muchas han podido exceder a los hombres en valor, armas y entendimiento (2: 150) and further, nadie se debe admirar de ver tanta excelencia en mujeres, porque ni son de diferente naturaleza que los hombres ni son menos perfectas sus almas (2: 150). Again, these two statements are a complete contradiction to a Spanish gender ideology in which women were inherently inferior and subjugated to men, having to gain through subversive actions what Arzns bestows upon these two women within the first few lines of his story. At the opening of the tale, then, there is a similar gender construction to that found in the story of the virgin, yet here it is more explicit. Arzns actually states that women han podido exceder a los hombres en valor, armas y entendimiento (2:150) a statement which highlights the illegitimacy of masculinity in the Historia and demonstrates how Arzns transfers the qualities he envisions in Creole society to the women of Potos. This process of alteration is at work in the Historia because Arzns melds the ideals and values which traditionally were encompassed by either men or women into a single character regardless of his or her gender, thereby converting the categories of femininity and masculinity into characteristics, like chastity, virility, and wealth that can be altered or removed at any time. This formulation of gender in the Historia is most apparent when the Warrior Maidens dress as men for the first time and Arzns writes that

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they are en diferente traje del suyo (2: 150). The use of the word traje for the male disguise and gender identity indicates that masculinity is something that can be put on and removed depending on needs of the women in the narrative. Further, it is not just masculinity that is a traje, Arzns informs the reader that women are in a different traje del suyo, indicating that, for him, femininity is also not an inherent category of identity. This construction of gender is not a one time occurrence in the text; instead, the malleability of gender roles is employed at various points throughout this tale, as in when Arzns writes that in Los Reyes the women were queridas y regaladas tenindolos todos por mancebos nobles (2:149). The structure of this statement is revealing in that Arzns initially uses the feminine gender ending to define the women queridas y regaladas, but in the very next word, not even the next sentence or paragraph, he refers to the women with the use of a masculine pronoun tenindolos and mancebos. This fluid and easy movement from one gender to another indicates that in the text the idea of an inherent form of masculinity and femininity is replaced by the understanding of gender as a characteristic which can be established and reformulated at any time. It is not gender identity that is in question in the Historia, but the way in which this formulation of gender aides the construction of Arzns text. Space, Women, and Potos The lack of essentialist readings of gender in Arzns work is especially apparent when we learn that Ana and Eustaquia continue as men throughout their life and are eventually immortalized in a painting in their masculine attire. Arzns writes: don Juan de Itulan las hizo retratar en aquel traje, y abajo en los pies de cada una puso en el uno: La valerosa doa Eustaquia de Souza, y en el otro: La valerosa doa Ana de Urinza,

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peruanas de Potos (2: 154). It is significant that in the Historia this painting is one of the only concrete images, outside of religious buildings and artifacts, mentioned as representative of the city and the Peruvian identity. The use of the phrase peruanas de Potos indicates that Ana and Eustaquia are both representatives of the Creole identity, peruanas, as well as of the city de Potos. Further, it is not Arzns who has created this portrait, it is the work of the artist don Juan de Itulan who painted it out of his own admiration for these women. The fact that multiple men glorify these cousins indicates that not only Arzns, but other members of the Creole community, understand these cross-dressed women to be valid cultural symbols that should be kept and protected for posterity. In relation to the painting of the Warrior Maidens, Gina Hermann has argued that Ana and Eustaquia are ultimately threatening because they do not play the civilization-erecting game according to Arzns rules (5), but I suggest that the representation of these women leaves us to question which rules Arzns is playing by. Rather than construct these women as threatening, or even ambiguous, when Arzns states that Ana and Eustaquia are the peruanas de Potos, we see that these women, with their somewhat ambiguous gender identity, are not symbols of danger and disorder but potential symbols of a city that was known as the envy of kings and the treasure of the world (Hanke Introduccin xxxviii). Given that he names them the peruanas de Potos Arzns treatment of the warrior maidens cannot but impact the space of the city. However, in contrast to Oquendos criticism and debasement of female behavior in Lima which I detailed in Chapter Two, in the Historia we have an author who glorifies the actions of Ana and Eustaquia while they are cross-dressing as men and living alone in other cities of the

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empire. This treatment of these women is problematic because in literature of this period, women who cross-dressed were generally required to remove their masculine disguises and marry at the end of the work, thereby reentering the marriage system and creating social order. Melveena McKendrick notes this trend in Spanish Golden-Age theatre where: Marriage is used at the end of a play as a symbol of the restoration of the good order of society. The seemingly haphazard batch of marriages with which nearly every plot is brought to an end is not merely an empty convention employed as an easy solution to the action; it reflects a philosophy of life, the belief that continuing security depends on order. Woman has her place in this order as wife and mother. A refusal to accept this place is a threat to the whole pattern of life. (172-3) A reestablishment of the marriage system is clearly not the closing Arzns offers to the tale of the Warrior Maidens, but according to the ideology of the period, continued crossdressing should have caused social chaos and destabilized any representation of the city the Historia was trying to promote. The disparity between the representation of Potos the stories of these women offer, and that of other cities marked by deviant gender behavior is even more apparent when we compare the tale of Ana and Eustaquia with that of other cross dressing figures from colonial literature. In Sor Juana Ins de la Cruzs Los empeos de una casa the gracioso Castao participates in a nontraditional form of cross-dressing; in fact, Los empeos directly questions the stability of gender identity in the New World. Castaos cross-dressing best exemplifies this idea given that, in the space of a few verses, he undergoes an almost

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complete gender transformation. Further, just before the cross-dressing scene commences, Castaos ethnic background - he is a native inhabitant of the Indies - is revealed. At this moment he exclaims: Quin fuera aqu Guaratuza, de quien en las indias cuentan que haca muchos prodigios! Que yo, como nac en ellas, le he sido siempre devoto como a santo de mi tierra. (293-98) In my understanding, it is more than coincidental that this revelation occurs directly before Castao switches genders. I propose that Sor Juana is, of course, questioning the stability of gender identity. The play also points to a fluidity of gender identities in the Americas which does not exist in Spain. The link Castao establishes between his homeland, Garatuza, and himself will illustrate and elaborate this point. First, it is important to note that Garatuza was a man who went from town to town in the New World, tricking and swindling many people. Throughout his adventures he donned many disguises, as Castao indicates when he states in relation to Garatuza: bien esgrimas abanico, / o bien arrastres contera (III 301-2). In light of his use of both female and male gender roles, this figure can be understood as a New World pcaro. . .whose own gender markings were in a state of flux (Dopico Black 185). Further, given Garatuzas unstable gender identity, when Castao names him as the Saint of the Indies, the gracioso is also imposing that identity upon the New World. If one of the fundamental characteristics of this figure is his chaotic gender markings, and he is the Saint to which

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both Castao and the Americas are devoted, it follows that both the Indies and the gracioso embody or idealize this virtue. In this way, Castaos comments an entire culture has been given the sign of a trangressive and subversive gender construction. As many scholars have pointed out, it is the American Castao, and not a peninsular Spaniard, who enacts the process of cross-dressing and gender switching, given that the cross-dressed man was extremely rare on the comedia stage. For the Spanish society that produced these texts, the man dressed as a woman is the subject for farce or depicted as pathetically weakened or emasculated (Yarbro-Bejerano Feminisim 106). Therefore, the presentation of Castao in female dress automatically indicates that his identity is not as stable as those of other men in the play, this becomes especially true when his cross-dressed image is coupled with his prior comments on Garatuza. In contrast to this representation of Castao, where the entire New World is labeled as the locus of unstable gender identity, Arzns allows his Warrior Maidens to remain prestigious and honorable in spite of their behavior. A similar case occurs in the story of the Monja Alfrez I mentioned in Chapter One. However, we must remember that in this particular case, it is only with a papal dispensation and proof that she is, in fact, still a virgin that the Monja Alfrez is allowed to remain in masculine dress and live as a man in the colonies. She, like Castao, is not free to create her own gender identity. Why do we encounter this acceptance of questionable gender identity as an ideal representative of New World space in this text, given other examples of colonial gender construction such as those found in Los empeos and the Monja Alfrez?11 We can begin to approach this question by noting that for Arzns, as in the case of Creole identity, gender identity was molded to help him create and ideal colonial space. In his

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tale there is no negative impact of life long cross-dressing on the representation of Potos; instead, these women are heralded for their honor and righteousness, ideals which are thereby imposed onto the city itself. Kagan has written that European artists and print makers tended to equate Potos with the Cerro Rico, the source of its immense mineral wealth, displaying little interest in Potos as a town (188); while in Arzns we find that only rarely does the reader catch a glimpse of the mines themselves. Potos, the opulent, pious, and licentious City, was the stage for Arzns; the Mountain honeycombed with the mines that produced the wealth that supported the Imperial City was decidedly off stage (Hanke Arzns History 28). In this text, then, there is a shift in the perception of the space that Potos represents, from the mines to the city itself, and with this new focus the author is in need of city residents who represent the space he is trying to create. That is to say, Arzns is in search of figures to fill the newly defined space of the city, and he looks outside of traditional or ideological parameters to meet this goal. What, then, is the impact on Potos of this connection between the Warrior Maidens and the city? First, it must be clear that the representation of the city is not feminized by its female representatives. In earlier chapters of this thesis I noted how Lima has been feminized throughout its history, and that the female inhabitants of the colonial capital represented an ambiguous urban space on the New World frontier (Firbas 263). However, given the use of women to stabilize Creole identity in the Historia, we can see how the Warrior Maidens actually help Arzns create the colonial city he is striving to construct. This is especially evident when the author aims to contradict widely accepted beliefs about the city. For example, during his eighteenth century journey through South America documented in El Lazarillo de los ciegos caminantes,

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Concolorcorvo passed through Potos and wrote that el cerro de Potos est hoy da en mucha decadencia, por la escasez de la ley de los metales, and that sin embargo de tanta riqueza, no hay en esta villa un edificio suntuoso, a excepcin de la actual caja de moneda (94). In spite of the fact that he is writing at a time when the city of Potos is producing half the amount of silver it once sent to Spain, and that its population had also decreased by half (Padden xxx), Arzns desperately wants to create an image of a stable and important colonial city for Potos. Therefore, the tale of the Warrior Maidens, which occurs in 1657, helps establish a constant presence of wealth, honor, and nobility throughout the citys history. The girls are, of course, singularly beautiful and noble (Padden 58), and Arzns notes that the masculine attire they wear is nothing but the finest, and most ostentatious, available: pusironse sobre delicado cambray unos jubones de armar, y sobre ellos unas finsimas cotas; debajo de las cotas traan unas sayas cortas que igualaban con las rodillas, las cuales eran de fino brocado ncar. . .pusironse unos sombreros blancos de castor, unos capotes de escarlata guarnecidos con puntas de oro (2: 150). This extreme example of wealth and social status indicates that Potos is a city of both immense riches due to the mines, and also of noble families and honorable people. These girls are the ideal combination of the values Arzns wishes to include in his version of Potos, they are not immoral, nor are they from lower social classes. In place of poor buildings and a lack of wealth, the Warrior Maidens convert the city of Potos into a bastion of elite culture and society. We also see this positive impact on the space of Potos when the Historia uses Ana and Eustaquia to combat the vision of social life in Potos as a sort of wild-west atmosphere that exemplified, in the gaudiest and most memorable of colors, the passion

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for wealth that drew many Spaniards to the New World (Hanke Imperial 41). Instead of a focus on ostentation and new wealth, what we find in the tale of the Warrior Maidens is a sense of social honor and responsibility that stays with the women throughout their lives. For example, upon their deaths in addition to highlighting their Catholic faith, Arzns tells us that the women dejaron bien repartida su hacienda a los pobres, y a la negra, su fiel esclava, la dejaron libre, dejndole tambin en compaa de su hijo cantidad de plata para que pasasen la vida y volviesen a esta Villa (2: 154). This conclusion to the tale of these two women returns to the idea of civitas christiana that Kagan mentions in relation to the authors desire to paint Potos as a town loyal to the King and faithful to its Church. The fact that Ana and Eustaquia perform acts of charity with their considerable estate indicates that the city is not the locus of uncontrolled social chaos and a search for wealth, but of a stable cultural order that is the foundation for New World society. In the tale of the Warrior Maidens, then, we see how untraditional female behavior can positively impact the construction of space in the New World when gender is no longer a source of anxiety or differentiation because it has been displaced by other, more relevant, cultural ideals. Criollismo, Gender, and Literature in the Historia As I discussed earlier, in the eighteenth-century local histories like the Historia were written specifically written for a Creole subject who was attempting to define and create a cultural past. Arzns desired to present a spatial foundation for a colonial conciencia de s (Hanke Introduccin xliv) which had an interest in the American experiences that Creoles and their ancestors had lived. This phenomenon was occurring in other regions of the Americas as well:

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Urban histories become increasingly common as new demographic centers in America become more firmly established. Even without accepting the notion of any real nationalist consciousness during the eighteenth century an anachronistic notion, to be sure one notes that many authors do seem to identify closely with a particular region. This identification is expressed through the titles of their works. . .their portrayal of hijos ilustres or native sons, and their interests in economic and administrative reforms. (Stolley 349) The pattern of loyalty to an urban center, without contemplation of a nascent idea of independence, is a structure that guides the entire creation and presentation of the Historia. Pedro Prez notes this same phenomenon when he argues that urban histories were los medios ideales para la exaltacin de la patria chica. . .las corografas coloniales fueron obras destinadas a instruir a los lectores que podan identificarse con la comunidad que se estaba describiendo (244). In Arzns work, then, we have the space of Potos which, according to the title and to the understanding of the text as an urban history should guide the authors literary creation. This plan, however, is quickly compromised in the work when the realities of the time in which Arzns is writing contradict the history he is creating. In this period, new cultural centers outside of the viceregal capitals were developing, altering the balance of power from Mexico City and Lima to other regions. This movement in power was accompanied by a boom in the colonies of printing presses, literary societies, and exhibitions of art and science appearing throughout the Americas. As Stolley notes, this type of cultural products are as much manifestations of eighteenth-century thinking as

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any one volume or author (339). In contrast, the Historia, and its moment of production, exist in direct contrast to this boom in urban centers and cultural development. As we have seen, the city itself was not growing, but shrinking, losing power rather than gaining it. Also, in the 300 year history of Potos not a single volume or pamphlet was published; a reality evidenced in the Historia by an image of Potos that is opulent, violent, and wealthy, but never a center of learning. For Arzns, and throughout history, the city was one in which all else was second to the exploitation of the silver mine (Hanke History 18). In the same way that the Potos existed outside of the social and cultural trends of the period, the text of the Historia presents itself as an urban history which does not represent the new modes of cultural and literary production present in the Americas. Arzns, then, was not writing in the brightest moment of Potoss history; however, throughout the text the author attempts to create a glorified vision of the city of Potos for its Creole inhabitants. Consequently, the structure of the text is reflective of the realities of writing in eighteenth century Potos, and at stake in the composition of the Historia is a negotiation of the glorious past of the city with the realities of eighteenth century cultural production and a New World society in social and economic crisis. For Arzns, there are two Potoss, one which he sees reflected in the wealth and stories of the past, and another in which is in perpetual crisis, out of touch with the contemporary colonial cultural, and has suffered major disasters. This duality between the historical reality of Potos and nostalgia for its days of grandeur is especially apparent given the fact that, as I noted earlier, the text was originally to be called the Tres destrucciones de Potos, a reference to the civil wars of 1622-25, the collapse of the Caricari dam in 1626 which left the city flooded, destroying both lives and property, and the devaluation of

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Potoss coinage in the 1650s (Stolley 357-8). Obviously, Arzns elected not to use this title to head his work, a decision which impacts his overall view of the city, and of course the Historia itself. He clearly did not want to focus on the recent, negative, history of the city by placing these events at the forefront of his text; rather, in the title of the work we find words such as riquezas incomparablesand grandezas de su magnnima poblacin which remove from the readers perspective any sign of destruction and lack of wealth. This tendency to yearn for the past rather than focus on the present history of the city is a quality which causes the Historia to transcend its historical and sociological importance to offer us a moving account of late colonial nostalgia, written in a moment of extreme crisis (Stolley 359). Therefore, the principle factor in the construction and ordering of the Historia is a historical reality that wants to present Potoss days of wealth as the enduring image of the city, offering one version of Potos as a mask for that which truly exists. The elaboration of dual visions of the city pulls constantly toward the present moment in which the historian is writing and which clearly reflects the preoccupations of the early eighteenth century (Stolley 358). In fact, the disparity between past and present foments the establishment of two Potoss in the text: Arzns vision of the Creole subject requires a city which is wealthy and powerful, but the Potos in which he finds himself writing is a distant shell of that glorious urban center. In the Historia there are obvious chronological markers which guide the narration of the tales, but the text itself pulls so continually between Arzns two visions of Potos that his anxiety over the production of a stable vision of the city and the people within it overwhelm the text. In fact, Arzns extreme desire to recreate the greatest moments of

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Potoss past and cover the realties of the late colonial period changes the structuring principle of the text from the genre of an urban history, to a game of masks which underline the citys disconnect with eighteenth-century culture. The way in which the text moves between desired and actual reality is demonstrated by the stark contrast between the authors vision of destruction in the city, and the uplifting and righteous tales he presents throughout the entire Historia, stories which appear before the fortunes of the city begin to decline. In his analysis of the text, Kagan has indicated that the Historia reads like a catalogue of woe, a year by year account that traces the declining output of the Cerros mines, the towns loss of population and endless factional infighting and feuds (187). While there are certainly many incidents of violence and destruction in the work, the inclusion of positive tales after the majority of these tragic events (including the tres destrucciones in the late 1650s and 60s), alters the authors understanding of the text as a catalogue of woe and creates within in it the possibility of remaining an urban history which writes the history of the structures of colonial culture, rather the story of endless destruction and economic hardship in Potos.12 Arzns does, nevertheless, lament the change of fortunes experienced by the mining city writing that everything is finished. Without doubt this has been one of the greatest downfalls ever to overtake one of the worlds peoples; to see such diversity, such incomparable wealth turn to dust (quoted in Padden xxxi). However, the tale of the Warrior Maidens discussed earlier perfectly highlights the movement between destruction and wealth, given that it occurs in 1657 and leaves the reader with a feeling of hope and belief in the spirit of the people of Potos because of the

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noble life these two women led and the charitable acts they commit at the end of their lives. The stories of such idealized and honorable characters, who have maintained social order through the creation of new gender roles, impedes the disappearance of the greatness of Potos from Arzns text. Although there a persistent vision of despair in the work, there is also the city that appears in the first line of the Historia, La muy celebrada, siempre nclita, augusta, magnnima, noble y rica Villa de Potos, orbe abreviado; honor y gloria de la Amrica; centro del Per; emperatriz de la villas y lugares de este Nuevo Mundo; reina de su poderosa provincia; princesa de la indianas poblaciones; seora de los tesoros y caudales; benigna y piadosa madre de ajenos hijos; columna de caridad; espejo de liberalidad; desempeo de sus catlicos monarcas; protectora de pobres. . .a quien todos desean por refugio, solicitan por provecho, anhelan por gozarla y la gozan por descanso. (1: 3) There are, then, two Potoss. One which matches the economic and social realities of the mining center in the eighteenth century, and another which the author wants to promote as the real Potos, the wealthy and noble colonial city of the past. We see this desire to maintain the ideal Potos from the very beginning of the text: Arzns use of siempre and muy to begin the Historia indicates that times have changed for Potos, but the city will always be the stronghold of colonial and Creole culture and wealth that it was from the first moments of colonization. Further, the presence of the two words siempre and muy as descriptions of the city in the very first line of the text indicates that the work is always pulling toward the actual reality of the city and that its construction as wealthy

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and grand must be upheld from the opening of the narrative. In fact, the need for this reinforcement and the establishment of Potos as siempre nclita and muy celebrada reveals what will be the overall structuring mechanism of the text, a balancing act between past and present which strives to remain in the best moments of the citys history, but moves always toward Arzns social and economic reality. Throughout this chapter, I have demonstrated the way in which gender in the Historia is deconstructed and remolded into alternative paradigms for sexual identity and spatial construction. In response to this construction of women in the Historia, Gina Herrmann has suggested that the Ana, Eustaquia, and by extension the vengeful virgin, show how cultural, economic, racial, sexual [and] institutional ambivalence permeate the historical mandate of this New World chronicler (3). In other sections of this study I have discussed the relationship between gender and the ambiguity of imperial institutions and ideologies in the colonies. In the case of the Historia it is the colonial experience and the historical reality of Potos which allows Arzns to propose an alternative possibility for the construction of Creole identity and the space of Potos, a subjectivity in which women are not ambivalent, but are, in fact, capable of stable and complete self-definition and spatial practice. This new, or alternative, possibility in the construction of women is based on colonial reality because it is tied to the Creole process of negotiation and differentiation of identity. This is demonstrated in the way in which the women I have discussed here represent the ideals that Arzns lays out for his version of criollismo such as the virgin who defends her honor and frees slaves and the Warrior Maidens whose wealth and nobility are highlighted again and again in the text. In the Historia, Arzns negotiates with gender and the acceptable parameters of honor in order to create what is,

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in effect, a nuanced representation of masculinity and femininity that is continuously developed throughout the text. This process is extended to the structure of the Historia itself in which considerations of genre and chronology are pushed aside by the tension between the image of Potos the author wishes to present and the historical moment in which he is living. Earlier in this chapter I demonstrated how the position of the Creole within the Spanish empire was in constant transition and movement. In the Historia, in a search for means of negotiating the Creole relationship with the Crown and the New World in his own text, Arzns chooses to neutralize gender, and literary genre, in order to make use of the best qualities of any elite citizen of Potos in his formulation of Creole identity and the space of the city itself.

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CHAPTER FOUR Colonial Itineraries of the Old World: Juan Ruiz de Alarcns La verdad sospechosa Indiano: El que ha ido a las Indias, que ordinario stos buelven ricos Perulero: El que ha venido rico de las Indias, del Per -Sebastin de Covarrubias Tesoro de la lengua espaola The terms perulero and indiano are a popular means of referring to the New World and its inhabitants in the literature of seventeenth-century Spain, however the historical meaning and significance of these words may not be clear contemporary readers. As Covarrubias definitions indicate, these figures were sometime inhabitants of Indies whose wealth was derived from their experiences in the New World. Yet, the descriptions listed above suggest more than riches and colonial prosperity. Also present in the definitions of these terms is the idea of a voyage, of traveling from Spain to the colonies, and then returning, hopefully with wealth in hand. This concept of the journey, of the volver and venir, extends the meaning of the Spanish American territories beyond that of silver mines and colonial treasures and highlights the truly transatlantic nature of Spains empire. In the early stages of conquest and settlement, cartographers such as Lpez de Gmara attempted to construct America as insular, as independent and disconnected from the reality of seventeenth-century Spain.1 Nevertheless, Covarrubias instructs us that these two distant geographies are, in fact, related, and that there is a constant exchange of people and wealth across the Atlantic Ocean. The work of Juan Ruiz de Alarcn (1581?-1639), who emigrated from Mexico to Spain as a young man, highlights this process of exchange and movement between the peninsula and its colonies. At the outset of La verdad sospechosa (1634) the term

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indiano is used by the protagonist, don Garca, to define and identify himself. The use of this term makes clear the role the New World will play in the action of this comedia, and, as we will see, in the daily experience of life in seventeenth-century Spain. Given the presence of colonial and peninsular interaction in La verdad sospechosa, in this chapter I will question how, through spatial practice and cartography, the Americas directly impacted and changed Iberian representations of gender and identity in the seventeenth century. Scholars such as Ann Laura Stoler have examined this type of reverse influence from the colony to the metropolis, questioning how social discourses such as those of sexuality and racism are articulated in colonial settings. Stoler writes that as critics moved from exploring the colonies as sites of exploitation to laboratories of modernity the roots of specific elements of European culture have been located in the colonies rather than in Europe itself (15). In light of these studies, in my own project I will analyze how the spatial construction of Madrid in the play as well as the structure of Alarcns comedia alter traditional systems of exchange and power relations between the Old World and the New in response to Spains economic and social decline in this period. Juan Ruiz de Alarcn was a well known playwright during his lifetime, publishing his theatrical works in 1628 and 1634.2 La verdad sospechosa appeared in the second volume of this collection while the author was living and working in Spain. Although he spent the majority of his adult life on the peninsula, Alarcn was born in Mexico around 1581 to an affluent family. He traveled to Spain to study law at the university in Salamanca in 1600, joining only two other students from the colonies enrolled at the institution in that period. Alarcn completed his degree in Mexico, but soon returned to Spain in the hopes of obtaining a position at court. The playwrights

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multiple movements between the Old World and New were common to certain inhabitants of Spain and the colonies, particularly government officials and immigrants whose families remained on the peninsula (Mundy 12). However, the authors path between these spaces is notable in that he returned to Mexico to complete his law degree although the New World was deemed intellectually inferior to Spain (Addy 26). Alarcn seems not to have engaged in such inferior constructions of his native land given that no such comments appear in his plays and he believed himself worthy enough to live and work in the Kings court. The playwright died in 1639, having achieved his goal of joining the Royal Council of the Indies in 1626. Once the author obtained this bureaucratic position, he appears to have stopped writing completely (Alatorre 11); however, the works he published in his lifetime have received a great deal of scholarly attention. La verdad sospechosa is one of his most popular works, and it tells the story of an insufferable liar, don Garca, who falls in love with Jacinta upon his arrival in Madrid. This tale of love and courtship is complicated at the outset of the play when Garca confuses Jacinta for Lucrecia, thereby incorrectly pursuing Lucrecia throughout the work. In the remaining two acts, Garca lies constantly to his father, don Beltrn and to the two noblewomen in order to obtain Jacintas (Lucrecias) affections. In the end, Garca is forced to marry Lucrecia while Jacinta weds her longtime suitor and true love don Juan. The majority of criticism on this play revolves, perhaps not surprisingly, around the role of truth and lies in the work. In his analysis of the comedia Eduardo Urbina concludes that las mentiras y engaos de don Garca son un arte que viene a expresar su necesidad de afirmacin de individualizacin frente a la esfera social dominante de su padre don Beltrn (724). For Urbina, such an

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understanding of the play is tied to the tension between the protagonist and his father, a relationship within in which lying takes a central role. However, such animosity between generations can also be linked to the period of decline Spain was experiencing in the seventeenth century, as well as the implications of that decline on the role of the nobility in peninsular society (Elliot 256). Barbara Simerka highlights this connection when she writes that Alarcns indictment of lying reinforces a link between the protagonists behavior and that of the court he is to jointo link Garcas flaws and those of the ruling class (197). There is, then, a struggle between generational interpretations of values and social roles in La verdad sospechosa. This conceptualization of the tension and problems surrounding lying and decadence in the life of Spanish nobility is linked to my own examination of the play which understands the relationship between Beltrn and Garca as reflective of Spains changing role as a global power in the seventeenth century and the New Worlds role in this transformation. If Urbina and Simerka focus on social and generational issues, Catherine Larson instead suggests that Garcas lies challenge languages ability to identify, describe, and make real (96).3 This is particularly relevant to the relationship between the Old World and the New in the play given that due to the colonization of the New World and the discovery of new lands and peoples, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries required the Spanish to participate in a constant process of naming and categorizing.4 Returning to the new terms I addressed at the beginning of this chapter, Mary Malcolm Gaylord also questions the relationship between language and truth in the work in relation to terms indiano and perulero since these words are used to identify Garca as an inhabitant of the Spanish American colonies. For example, when Jacinta discovers she has been fooled,

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she proclaims Cmo el embustero / se nos fingi perulero (II: 1334-5). For Gaylord, Jacintas reference to the New World does not function simply as shorthand for fabulous wealth; he is also the figure of wealth as fable, and for the fables as wealth (230). Here, then, the ability to create verisimilar representations of people and places through naming is clearly destabilized. Through early modern understandings of indiano and perulero, the Spanish colonies have been cast as the land of wealth, but also of lies and myth. In this regard, we must ask how authentic this representation of the New World was in the context of seventeenth century Spain and to that of La verdad sospechosa? As earlier chapters have shown, the issue gender is often a key element in understanding the construction of space in the colonial period. The representation of femininity in Alarcns comedias has been considered by many scholars. Such analyses date to 1852 when Juan Eugenio Hartzenbush vehemently stated that la mayor parte de las mujeres pintadas por Alarcn aparecen de mezquina ndole y facciones comunes; obran mal sangre fra, su travesura carece de gracia (qtd in Pasto 227). Hartzenbushs comments were based on a more traditional understanding of gender than that of feminists and scholars today; nevertheless, his condemnation of the women in Alarcns theatre does highlight the important role of gender in these plays. Contemporary scholarship on La verdad sospechosa focuses primarily on the roles of Lucrecia and Jacinta, the two female protagonists, in relation to don Garca and the other young men in the work. After examining Jacintas character, Gaylord concludes: Jacinta in no sense plays the perfect opposite of Garca: she is quite willing to deceive not only her suitor, Don Juan de Sosa. . .but her best friend as well. But Jacintas chief virtue, prudence, does give her a certain superiority, plus a clear tactical advantage (234). Gaylords

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interpretation of Jacintas actions do not paint her as the traditional female Golden Age figure, rather Jacinta is able to maneuver herself in a way that lends her authority over her own destiny in the play. Urbina offers a different approach to the protagonist, describing the way in which Jacinta, juega bien sus cartas, hasta llegar en un momento a tener disponibles, segn cree ella, hasta tres pretendientes, actions which this critic interprets as condemning to Jacintas female nature, making her menos que perfecta (725). These two arguments offer drastically varying interpretations of Jacintas actions: for Gaylord, Jacinta is able to negotiate her place in the social hierarchy of Madrid, while Urbina simply understands this woman as less than perfect. Such division is indicative of the general trends in scholarship on gender in La verdad sospechosa, and it highlights the need for a more indepth study of this topic. My own interpretation of gender in the play follows Gaylords suggestion of Jacintas negotiation of the gender system in Spain, but is also based on David Pastos view that Jacinta refuses to be a fool for love. . .she decides to use her cleverness to keep her options open in case she cannot marry Don Juan. . .Jacinta is the character in La verdad sospechosa with the most control over her own destiny (233). Pastos interpretation of Jacintas power over the marriage system in seventeenth-century Madrid opens new modes of understanding the text by suggesting that both masculinity and femininity are altered in the work. The issue of masculinity is rarely mentioned in criticism on this play; yet, as I demonstrated in the Chapter Two, the value of femininity cannot be altered without also impacting the meaning and significance of masculine identity (Scott 165). In this light, my own analysis of gender in this chapter works from interpretations of femininity in the

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play such as those offered by Gaylord and Pasto, and moves toward an understanding of all gender roles in the text, not solely that of women. In particular, I examine how New World constructions of gender, such as those analyzed in Chapters Two and Three of this dissertation, are present in the characters of Jacinta and Garca and the way in which these versions of masculinity and femininity create a colonial social order in the plays representation of Madrid. The Presence of the New World in Alarcns Madrid The colonial gender representation we witness in La verdad sospechosa is directly related to the historical realities of Spain, and Madrid, in the seventeenth century. As the site of the enunciation of belief systems and hierarchies, Madrid was at the center of (re)production of the ideas and institutions that were disseminated throughout the New World. Yet, the connection between Madrid and the colonies goes beyond the fact that the city functioned as the nations capital, since Madrid was actually created to respond to the needs of the growing world power. The city did not evolve as Spains capital throughout the medieval period and into the early modern era; rather, in the first half of the sixteenth century the Spanish court moved throughout the countryside until Philip II decided to establish Madrid as the home of his government in 1561. Before this time, Madrid was not considered to be an important Spanish city, Deborah Parsons relates that Madrid originated as an Arab fortress town in the ninth century, founded to protect the nearby Toledo from Christian attack, it remained little more than a small rural town and modest trading centre throughout the medieval period (13). Madrid, then, was not a primary cultural center to which the king brought his court and the Spanish government, rather he imposed his court and his empire upon the city.

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Parsons highlights this idea when she writes that Philips decision to install the Hapsburg court at Madrid in 1561 is generally agreed to have been both arbitrary and short-sighted. The city had no illustrious past to speak of, no grand monuments, no navigable river. What sixteenth century Madrid did offer was a suitably blank page for the writing of the kings narrative of imperial monarchy (13). Philips capital city was directly tied to his imperial project, to expanding and maintaining his countrys status as a global power. Consequently, the space of Madrid was the space of empire, created by and through the actions of the royal court, colonial administrators, and other members of the imperial bureaucracy.5 Elliot highlights this connection between Madrid and empire when he describes the capital as: An artificial city of courtiers and bureaucrats, deriving its rather febrile prosperity from the profits of empire which flowed into it from all over the world; a distorting element in the economic life of the Castilian meseta in its role as a centre of conspicuous consumption for luxury goods brought from other parts of Europe and paid with the silver of the Indies. (18) Elliots description of Madrid is significant in that it underscores how the Spanish paid for manufactured goods with the New Worlds raw materials, demonstrating that this trade within Europe would be impossible without the silver from colonial American mines. That is to say, Spain could not participate in the European economy or maintain its status as a global power without the wealth of its American possessions. Rather than existing solely as a space in which Spanish institutions and ideologies were imposed and transformed, the connection between New World raw materials and Spanish trade directly implicates the space, people, and wealth of the New World to the social and

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economic status of the peninsula. The role of Madrid in these exchanges was that of a bureaucratic and commercial center in which European goods were mixed with the silver of the Indies, making the citys, and the nations, power dependent upon American wealth and its colonial project. In this way, Madrid was transformed by the New World, the capitals power stemmed from the Americas and the space of the city was defined by its relationship with the colonies. Madrid was not a city which imposed its values on other spaces, it was the center for the meeting of people, money, and space from the Spanish American colonies and in this period it did not exist outside of this relationship between the Old and New World. This spatial link between Madrid and its empire existed in contrast to the relationship between other Spanish cities and the New World. For example, Seville was of utmost importance during the colonial period as the center for the shipment of goods to and from the Americas. The citys role in the imperial project, as well as the social and economic effects of conquest and colonization on the city, is examined by Mary Elizabeth Perry in her book Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville. In spite of the citys role as a commercial center, in the context of this discussion Madrid takes primacy over Seville due to the capitals role as the locus of government and the symbolic center of the nation and its colonies.6 In La verdad sospechosa, Salamanca is another city which differs drastically from Madrid because it had been the home of one of the most prestigious universities in Europe since the thirteenth century, yet in the history of the city one does not witness a close relationship with the Americas.7 It is not to suggest that Salamanca was not impacted by the Spanish colonies; rather, the space of Madrid was more reflective of the connection between the two lands than other cities on the

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peninsula. The enrollment figures for the University of Salamanca reflect this idea because they reveal that institution was home to very few students from the Indies, even in the seventeenth century. Entre los 1,892 matriculados en 1570 en la facultad de derecho cannico (donde Alarcn estuvo inscrito durante un corto tiempo en 1600) no haba un solo estudiante nacido en las Indias: entre los 2,953 matriculados en 1620, los procedentes de las colonias eran slo diecisiete. Una ojeada rpida a la lista de estudiantes matriculados en la facultad de derecho civil en 1599-1600. . .nos revela slo tres estudiantes nacidos en las Indias (King 95). Such enrollment figures point to a disparity in the presence of colonial figures or identities (verisimilar or invented) in Madrid versus the university city of Salamanca. Such differences are also underscored in La verdad sospechosa when Beltrn, who is concerned about his sons move to the capital, describes Madrid as otro mundo (I:73). Madrid is not the same sort of place as Salamanca or other Spanish cities and one must be prepared to find such differences upon arrival in the capital city. Rather than being an inherently Spanish city, Madrid is the center of the conjunction of empire, it is defined by New World wealth and European luxury goods. In fact, Garcas move from the university to court life appears to be so drastic that, upon arrival in the Spanish capital two friends are no longer able to recognize each other: D. JUAN: Quin es? D. GARCA: Ya olvidys a don Garca? D. JUAN: Veros en Madrid lo haza;

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y el nuevo trage. D. GARCA: Despus que en Salamanca me vistes, muy otro devo de estar. (I: 593-8) In this interaction between Juan and Garca we see that identities are different in Madrid, that Madrid through its connection with empire and the court is a world set apart from Spain. The presence of the court and the government required to manage imperial possessions are the primary differences between these two cities, the Spanish American colonies are related to Madrid in a way that they are not connected to Salamanca or other peninsular urban centers. While Madrid was initially a city created out of the dreams and transformations of empire, at the time that La verdad sospechosa takes place Spain was on the verge of becoming a second-class power. During the first phases of conquest and colonization, the Spanish empire envisioned itself as a return to glories not seen since the days of Rome, with Madrid acting as the center of this powerful new global force. Ricardo Padrn notes that king Philip II managed to add the kingdom of Portugal, with its colonies in Africa and Asia, to the vast inheritance left him by his father, making him monarch of the first-ever empire upon which the sun never set (2). Nevertheless, social and economic decline began in late sixteenth century which was based on several factors that challenged Spains position as a global power as well as its domestic integrity. In his seminal book Spain and its World: 1500-1700 Elliot discusses the main causes of this downfall:

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Under Philip IV as under Philip II, the basis of Spanish power. . .was unchanged. It was, as it had always been, the resources of the Crown of Castile. Philip IVs best troops, like Philip IIs were Castilians. Philip IVs principal revenues, like Philip IIs came from the purse of the Castilian taxpayer, and Philip IV relied, like his grandfather, on the additional income derived from the American possessions of Castile. (222) Given the crowns dependence on the wealth of Castile, the kings worth was greatly reduced when, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, this region suffered a continued decline in population and productivity. Such decline was due to terrible plagues and famines in 1599 and 1600 which decimated the population as well as the migration of many men to other parts of Spain and the New World (Elliot 222). Further, in this period the relationship between Spain and its colonies began to change because Mexico and Peru began to develop their own industries and separate themselves economically from the crown.8 Therefore, Elliot concludes, with less demand in America for Castilian and Andalusian products, less of the American silver carried to Seville is destined for Spanish recipients, and it is significant that Spanish silver prices, which had moved upwards for a century, begin their downward movement after 1601 (235). Less silver from the Indies as well as a domestic population crisis brought Spain to the brink of catastrophe and by 1620 the nation could barely afford to maintain its armies or govern its foreign possessions (Padrn 17). Given that this economic and social decline occurred on international and domestic fronts and impacted the entire

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nation, there was national and outcry which demanded that Spain be saved from its impoverishment. One of the most prolific responses to Spains situation in the seventeenth century was an effort by writers and moralists to create a code of masculinity that would return Spain to its former greatness. For many authors of the period, the royal court was decadent and idle, and this laziness and lack of economic production had contributed directly to the countrys downfall. For this reason, as Elizabeth Lehfeldt suggests, codes of manhood formed the core of the discourse aimed at preventing Spains misery as writers of the period crafted images of ideal men meant to provide a model that would combat the descent into decline (465). In conjunction with this reformulation of masculinity, writers also emphasized the value of marriage in order to promote procreation and grow the nations population. Black points out that the status of the institution of marriage was of major concern to the Church and the monarchy. According to Spanish commentators, decreases in the rates of marriage and procreation threatened the future of the nation (661). In this way, writers and moralists focused on domestic social issues in order to cure Spains ills. In their eyes, a return to productivity and labor was needed to directly counteract the effects of the court. Many authors searched for ideal men in the lives of saints because these religious figures offered a possible blueprint of masculinity. They were defined by their productivity and virtue (Lehfeldt 474). Nevertheless, the pastoral life of the biblical character had little resonance with seventeenth-century court life, working the land was simply not an ideal which could bring the nobility together in an attempt to regain Spanish authority and power. In spite of the lack of potential new models of manhood,

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these authors continued to insist that if the crises in masculinity and marriage could be remedied the nation would be able to move forward and return to prosperity and power. This vision seems shortsighted because the role of Spains foreign possessions was essential to the construction of empire. Both historically and in La verdad sospechosa the role of the New World is tied to Spains economic and social downfall. Perhaps for this reason, the scholars of the period came up short and were unable to provide a new code of masculinity for the seventeenth-century Spanish nobleman. Returning to La verdad sospechosa and the way in which the social and economic realities of the seventeenth century are present in the play, we have seen how Alarcn connects the city of Madrid to Spains American colonies through the use of the terms terms indiano and perulero. As Covarrubias definitions indicate, inherent to these terms is the idea of a trip and movement along a path between Spain and the New World.9 A journey is even present in Garcas depiction of himself as a resident of the Americas, in the moment in which he first identifies himself as an indiano: Quando del indiano suelo por mi dicha llegu aqu, la primera cosa que vi fu la gloria de esse cielo (I: 489-92) This quote takes the reader from the New World to the heavens of Jacintas beauty while also moving Garca from the space of the New World to that of early modern Madrid. In this way, the representation of space in the play creates a connection between the Old World and the New, a connection based on movement between these spaces which brings together multiple people and social practices in the capital of Spains empire. As we will

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see later, this reference to the New World lays the ground work for the treatment of masculinity and femininity in the play because an exchange of men reminiscent of the colonial frontier replaces the traditional exchange of women in the marriage contract. This connection between spaces is further reinforced at the beginning of the play by the figures of Camino and the cochero because they communicate essential information to the main characters and advance the action of the comedia. For example, Camino is employed to pass messages between Garca and Lucrecia, and during one of these exchanges he highlights his role as a conveyor of notes (and falsehoods). In response to Lucrecias request that Camino carry a message to Garca, he replies: No se perder por m, / pues ves que Camino soy (III: 2222-3). While he is not moving between European and colonial space, Camino does represent the fluidity of space in Madrid, and through his character we can establish a connection between the space of the city and the colonial frontier. In Chapter One I discussed the nature of the frontier as the site of constant exchanges and interchanges (De Certeau 45), and this reality is brought to La verdad sospechosa through the idea of movement in the play. Caminos character and the trips related to the inhabitants of the Indies also make Madrid a frontier, the site of the types of exchanges present in the New World. In this way, Madrid is no longer simply the center of the empire, the presence of New World spatial practices and gender representations makes the city the product of its imperial project. The supposed connection between these spaces in which Madrid was the basis of colonial culture and social order and the Americas were simple recipients of this transfer is challenged, La verdad sospechosa demonstrates how colonial

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interpretations of Spanish ideologies and institutions, such as gender, are connected to life in imperial Madrid. The movement and exchange of the frontier symbolized by Caminos name and words parallels the role of the cochero in the play. This character is Lucrecias driver and displays himself as loyal to his mistress. However, the name cochero also clearly represents movement between spaces and his prominent role in the confusion of the play indicates the importance of travel and journey in the work. For example, when Garca sees a woman who is so beautiful that he must discover her identity, he asks his servant to obtain this information from the womans cochero: TRISTN: Pues, yo, mientras hablas, quiero que me haga relacin el cochero de quin son. GARCA: Dirlo? TRISTN: S, que es cochero. (I: 433-7) Tristn proceeds to ask the cochero for information on the women, in particular he hopes to obtain the name of the one who is la ms hermosa (I: 552). The cochero answers that the woman Garca desires is named Lucrecia, identifying his mistress as the most beautiful while the woman Garca actually desired was, in fact, Jacinta. This is a confusion which is not resolved until the last moments of the play, and which sets into motion the majority of the works action. This scene is particularly relevant to the idea of New World space in La verdad sospechosa because it reveals that driving force of the play comes from the mouth of the cochero.

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The exchanges and communications we witness throughout the remainder of the action are due to the exploits of characters whose symbolic representation is that of the movement, of a path or connection between two realities. In this way, La verdad sospechosa offers the reader an interpretation of New World spatial practice in peninsular Spain in the seventeenth century. For example, the scene of mistaken female identity, as well as Garcas declaration of experience in the Americas, occurs in front of a platera or jewlers shop. I have already mentioned Gaylords analysis of the connection between the terms indiano and perulero and wealth: the idea that the lands of the New World are the space of wealth, but of wealth as myth or lie. The presence of the initial meeting between Garca and Jacinta in the platera returns to this concept of material wealth and commercial viability because the jewelers shop offers many expensive goods for sale: Y tales son mis riquezas, pues os vi, que al minado Potos le quito la presuncin. (I: 497-500) Here, then, there is an overt connection between the setting of the events and Garcas wealth. In the same scene in which Garca mentions the mines of Potos, the jewelers shop is the background for this action. The connection between the platera and Potos suggests that it is the money of the Indies upon which the wealth of Spain in the seventeenth century is based, and it is only silver from the Americas makes possible the buying of goods at the jewelry store. We have already seen how New World silver was used in Spain to buy luxury items, and this fact is reinforced in the play by directly naming this wealth as the product

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of Potos. Alarcn highlights the link between the Old World and the Americas by placing this scene at the opening of his play, and, therefore, prepares his audience for the subsequent events of the work. This connection is further underlined by the use of the term Per as a symbol of money and exchange in the comedia. Tristn comments on the women of Madrid: Pero que adviertas es bien, si en estas estrellas tocas, que son estables muy pocas, por ms que un Per les den (I: 353-6) Again, by employing Per as an indicator of riches, the New World becomes the site of wealth which has brought money to Spain. In relation to space, the references to money in this scene and the setting of the jewelers shop underscore the fact that the space we are witnessing is that of the New World, not solely that of Madrid. The introduction of Jacinta and Lucrecia in this scene is also significant because, as I will discuss later, women were traditionally considered objects of exchange between men. Here, they are mentioned among other luxury goods and riches; yet, in this scene it is Garca who defines himself through his wealth and hints at the inverted system of exchange that we will witness in the second and third acts of the play. The colonies and the imperial project have made Madrid and Spain into a global power and the connection between American silver and peninsular wealth cannot be ignored. However, this relationship is also linked to myth and lies, Garca is certainly not an indiano and the wealth he mentions does not exist. In this way, the myth of the American space reflects the Spanish economic situation in this period given that in the seventeenth-century Spain

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began to experience an economic and social decline which was directly based on fewer shipments of silver from the Indies. Therefore, the scene in the platera highlights how the realities of Spain and its colonies are intertwined. It is not just that Spain is the locus of enunciation of ideologies which are imposed upon its territories; rather, these new frontiers have altered the reality of the nation: in this case by bringing wealth that reflects an undeniable connection between these spaces and the transformation of Madrid into a frontier of the Old World. Decline and Exchange in Imperial Madrid As the previous section indicates, when Spains national identity was challenged both on a political and domestic level, masculinity was immediately understood to be an essential tool for maintaining traditional Spanish cultural values. In La verdad sospechosa Alarcn also treats this question of masculinity; yet, in contrast to the moralists of the seventeenth century he offers a new form of gender representation rather than that of the farmer or sheep herder. Given the link between colonial and Spanish space discussed earlier, we can read the treatment of gender in La verdad sospechosa as another form of masculinity that is viable in Golden Age Spain. Further, a dichotomy existed between the roles of men and women in this period and a collapse in the value of masculinity would provoke a change of meaning for femininity. Therefore, Alarcns representation of gender also implicates women and traditional Spanish constructions of femininity. The forms of gender in the work reflect the presence of New World space in Madrid because of the citys construction as the locus of empire. Traditionally, relationships between elite Spanish men and women stemmed from a system of exchange between noblemen, as James Mandrell writes, in Spain it is in the exchange of women

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that men find and represent their own worth, since in controlling the circulation of women, in controlling their value, men can establish themselves in relation to one another (156). In fact, when men exchanged women in this period they were exchanging their honor, an essential value of the social elite that depended not only on ones behavior, but also on the opinions of others. Due to its cultural importance, both men and women were required to act in an honorable way, but this mandate called for different behavior patterns from a man and his wife. Men were judged through their virility and willingness partake in physical battles in order to defend themselves, while women were considered honorable only if they were sexually chaste while unmarried and unquestionably loyal to their husbands after marriage (Seed 63). For this reason, when Mandrell discusses relations between men in early modern Spain he also writes that exchange implies credit as well as a full economy driven by desire and acquisition and backed up by the guarantee of honor, an economy in which women are the coin of the realm (156). Alarcns treatment of gender in La verdad sospechosa is based on such a construction of masculinity and femininity; however within the first moments of the play the system of exchange in which women are the coin of the realm is quickly replaced with a new arrangement where women trade and accept goods and men function as both negotiators and merchandise. Although the Spanish system of female exchange claimed to maintain social order and stability for elite members of society, Gayle Rubin argues that this arrangement negates the role of women in the exchange system. While it does not address the early modern Spanish context, Rubins article is one of the most fundamental writings in feminist theory for the analysis of the exchange of women. She questions the role of

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women in this exchange system, arguing that women have no agency in a system where they are treated as objects: If it is women who are being transacted, then it is men who give and take them who are linked, the woman being a conduit of a relationship rather than a partner to it. . .The relations of such a system are such that women are in no position to realize the benefits of their own circulation. As long as the relations specify that men exchange women, it is men who are the beneficiaries of the product of such exchanges social organization. (174) As Rubin suggests, nowhere in Mandrells description of the Spanish honor system does female agency or choice play a primary role in social interaction; instead, women are relegated to the status of objects, of value only as symbolic carriers of honor, but not as actual participants in the social structure within which they are exchanged. This is underlined by the fact that in Mandrells description women are always mentioned in relation to control, exchange, and coin, never are they independent of their socially, and biologically, dictated role. This construction of female identity within early modern Spanish society was compounded by what Rubin deems the culturalization of biological sexuality on the societal level (189). That is to say, biology, and its specific meaning within the historical context of La verdad sospechosa was imposed onto the social workings of Spanish culture. It was not until the eighteenth century that sex as we understand it today was invented. In this period, sexual organs became the foundation of difference rather than the site of display for social hierarchy (Laqueur 149). During the sixteenth century,

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scientists began to explore the body, including sexual organs that supposedly represented physical manifestations of gender; however, this scientific exploration was not based on objective science: The history of anatomy during the Renaissance suggests that the anatomical representation of male and female is dependent on the cultural politics of representation and illusion, not on evidence about organs, ducts, or blood vessels. No image, verbal or visual, of the facts of sexual difference exists independently of prior claims about the meaning of such distinctions. (Laqueur 66) Therefore, the representation of gender in Golden Age comedias, as highlighted by Mandrells interpretation of La estrella de Sevilla, imposes a social hierarchy on the female body which does not distinguish between culturally created manifestations of gender and physical organs of sexuality. In the case of seventeenth-century Spain, then, the biology of a woman indicated that she was an inferior being who was subject to the will and desires of her husband, a woman who was exchanged as a symbol of male honor. In this way, the system of exchange present in Spain imposed social meaning on biology, perpetuating the exchange of women between men, and further tying women into their supposedly inherent role in the heterosexual paradigm of gender. As I discussed in earlier chapters, gender paradigms like the exchange network were social ideals established by the elite male members of Spains patriarchal society, and they were perpetually challenged by elite women on the peninsula and in the colonies. Mary Elizabeth Perry discusses various modes of subversion in Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville when she notes that women of all classes often

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participated in business deals, conducting their own transactions and commercial interactions without help from their husbands (15). In a system where women were intended to function only as objects, their participation in the public arena directly challenged the stability of the Spanish gender system. Further, due to the impact of colonial expansion on the city, it often seemed in the sixteenth century that so many men had left for the New World that Seville had become a city in the hands of women (14). In a more extreme example than the female business transactions, in this quote the actual space of early modern Seville is transformed by the presence of women whose absent husbands can no longer serve as their protectors. A colonial manifestation of the challenges to Spanish ideals of gender is found in the figure of the Monja Alfrez who I have mentioned in earlier chapters. In the majority of the Golden Age comedias, a woman who cross-dressed was forced to return to her biological gender and reinsert herself into the marriage system; however the Monja Alfrez is given a papal dispensation which allows her to proseguir mi vida en hbito de hombre, encargndome la prosecucin honesta en adelante (173). The examples offered here by the Catalina de Erauso and the history of Seville indicate that while systems of gender exchange formed the basis of Spanish and colonial society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were manifestations of gender behavior in this period which created fractures within this paradigm. I have also examined this type of transformation in the work of Rosas de Oquendo and Arzns, arguing that this type of female behavior not only challenges Spanish ideals, but creates new role for both women and men in the early modern period. In light of such behavior, social constructions of femininity and

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masculinity cannot remain static, they respond and react to the actions of figures like the women of Seville and the Monja Alfrez. The break with the ideals created in the Spanish gender system is also highlighted in La verdad sospechosa when Tristn provides a description of the women of the court: Otras ay cuyos maridos a comissiones se van o que en las Indias estn, o en Italia, entretenidos. No todas dizen verdad en esto, que mil taymadas suelen fingirse casadas por vivir con libertad. (I: 317-324) In this passage, Tristn is clearly discussing women in terms of their relationship to men, highlighting the women that Garca should avoid or seek out in Madrid. However, as in Perrys comments on early modern Seville, elite women manipulate the social and historical reality of the period, using the fact that their husbands are participating in the colonial project to alter the gender system. It is not that they are breaking free entirely from the ideals of exchange and marriage, but there are means within the system through which these women, and those referenced by Perry, are able to attain their own form of agency: by taking advantage absent husbands, or pretending to have an absent husband in order to live (however briefly) on their own terms. La verdad sospechosa also offers the reader an altered manifestation of this gender paradigm through the exchange of men, rather than women, in the honor system.

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This transformed gender paradigm dominates the action of the play and highlights the way in which New World realities and spatial practices dominate in seventeenth-century Madrid. The inverted exchange system is present throughout the work and appears in the opening scene of the play when don Beltrn discovers that his son has a major fault, no dezir siempre verdad (I:156). Here, we have a traditional patriarchal figure who must find a way to protect his family honor because of his sons flawed character: Qu cosa tan fea! Qu opuesta a mi natural! Ahora bien: lo que he hazer es casarle brevemente, antes que este inconveniente conocido venga a ser. (I: 215-20). This reaction from Beltrn is striking on many levels: Why is he so perturbed by the vice of lying? Why is his first reaction to insert Garca into a marriage system which traditionally only promoted women as objects of exchange? Instead of negotiating with other patriarchs in order to obtain a pure and chaste wife for his son, Beltrn subverts the entire system by attempting to exchange his son in a marriage contract. The fact that, in the opening moments of the play, the system of gender and social interaction inherent to Beltrns social class is deconstructed reveals the way in which La verdad sospechosa will guide the reader from the social and cultural ideals Spain propagated to alternative modes of gender representation reflective of the countrys seventeenth-century experience, offering new forms of masculinity in response to the nations economic and social decline.

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In contrast to the traditional representation of honor I discussed earlier, Beltrns reaction to Garcas excess of lies puts male rather than female honor into question. Traditionally, it was female waywardness and sexuality that needed to be controlled or covered up through a speedy marriage; however, La verdad sospechosa offers us an inversion of this system. It is male identity that is unstable, and this instability could, in Beltrns eyes, lead to a corruption of family honor. Instead of exchanging women, La verdad sospechosa exchanges men and converts lying into a symbol of honor that is equal to female chastity. That is to say, rather than female indiscretion, lying is considered culturally dangerous. In his examination of medieval representations of gender, Howard Bloch argues that femininity was dangerous because it was equated with excess, with the inability to control ones emotions and desires (12). In La verdad sospechosa, Garcas lying is treated in the same light, his actions are excessive and therefore dangerous to his familys honor (Levinson 168). In fact, Garcas lies are excessive because they appear in almost every scene of the play and become more elaborate as the work progresses. He begins in the first act by claiming that he has been in love with Jacinta for over a year, when he had just arrived at court the day before: ms de un ao que por vos / he andado fuera de mi (I: 483-4), to which Tristn comments Un ao, y ayer lleg / a la Corte? (I: 485-6). This apparently simple lie is quickly followed by an eighty-three verse description of a dinner Garca supposedly prepared for Jacinta, an elaborate discourse which includes sensory details: limpia y olorosa mesa (I: 670), la plata blanca y dorada (I: 679), se sirvieron / treynta y dos platos de cena (I: 713-4). The motivation for this tale is to demonstrate to Juan that Jacinta is now in love with Garca, and after listening to this discourse Juan proclaims:

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Por Dios, que la avys pintado de colores tan perfetas, que no trocara el oyrla por averme hallado en ella. (I: 749-52) The account is so elaborate, the details so overwhelming, that even the interlocutor of the false banquet feels like he has seen it. Nevertheless, the imagery of luxurious banquets only begins to suggest the lengths to which Garca will go to obtain his goal of marrying Jacinta. In the third act of the play Garca tells Tristn that he has murdered don Juan: los mismo sesos / esparzi por la campaa (III: 2776-7), when in the following verse, the gracioso reveals the ridiculousness of the lies: Pobre don Juan! Mas no es ste que viene aqu? (III: 2778-9). The reader or spectator cannot help but smile at such an absurd turn of events, but the lies that most highlight Beltrns concern over Garcas character come when the protagonist directly and blatantly deceives his father in order to avoid the marriage Beltrn has arranged. This monologue, which occupies 187 verses, narrates the story of a false marriage that was to have occurred in Salamanca. In addition to other excessive details, Garcas story involves a violent scene between the lovers and the maidens father: quiso la suerte que toquen a una pistola que tengo en la mano las cordones. Cay el gatillo, dio fuego; al tronido desmayse doa Sanca; alborotado

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el viejo, empoez a dar vozes. (1621-7) There is clearly no need for such elaborate images, or such creative lies in the face of Beltrns wishes. While Garca may see the need to lie in the examples offered here, what perturbs his father, and the reader, is the extent of the lying. It is not the simple uttering of a small falsehood that makes Garcas character doubtful, it is the protagonists willingness to create elaborate and complex stories almost without provocation at every possible moment. Therefore, excess is the key to conceptualizing the gender system created in La verdad sospechosa. In the same way that Beltrn understands Garcas excessive lying as detrimental to familial honor, uncontrollable and overwhelming female sexuality were traditionally deemed threatening to masculine honor. For example, women in this period were considered excessive figures who were: governed by flesh rather than spirit. . .Their fleshly nature meant that women tended to have uncontrollable carnal appetites and could little resist temptation. Unable to govern their own passions and behavior, women were dangerous to themselves, their families, and society at large if uncontrolled or uncloistered (Socolow 6). Yet, the paradigm created here by Alarcn alters this construction of gender and puts masculinity, rather than femininity, in question. We can, then, form a parallel between excess which feminizes Garca and the exchange of men in the work. It is no longer women who contain the possibility to destroy Spanish social and cultural hierarchies, it is masculine excess, as displayed through lying that threatens patriarchal hegemony. Further, the threat to patriarchal structures, and by extension the stability of Spanish society, can also be related to the decline of Spain in the seventeenth century. In the same way that authors of the period condemned the court life for breeding

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idleness and a lack of productivity, Alarcn condemns a form of masculinity in which excessive lying and decadence threaten noble families. Nevertheless, the playwrights solution to the national crisis of masculinity is not to return to pastoral ideals; instead, Alarcn points to the possibilities for gender representation found in other realms of the empire. We have already seen how the authors New World paradigm of gender is based on the exchange of men rather than women, and the alteration of traditional systems is reinforced by the fact that the excess witnessed by Garcas lies is absent from all representations of women in La verdad sospechosa. The two main female characters, Jacinta and Lucrecia, offer multiple possibilities for female gender construction in the text, but they never cross the line into excess or possible questioning of honor as Garca perpetually does. In fact, Jacintas primary attribute is cordura, or prudence, a trait not often associated with women in this period. This cordura lies in stark contrast to the representation of noble masculinity in the text. When asked to promise her hand to Garca she refuses, deciding that: Que el breve determinarse en cosas de tanto peso, o es tener muy poco seso o gran gana de casarse. (II: 921-4) Such a decision is atypical of the Spanish Golden Age heroine since the majority of women represented in the comedias submit the marriage system at the end of the play without openly challenging the wishes of their fathers.10 We see such behavior from Lucrecia, who at the conclusion of La verdad sospechosa agrees to marry Garca, although she does not truly love him. Once she discovers that he is not married in

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Salamanca, and in spite of the fact that she is aware of his lying she declares: Siendo ass, mi voluntad / es la tuya, y soy dichosa (III: 3067-8). Lucrecia offers one viable possibility for gender representation in seventeenth century Spain, that of the traditional marriage paradigm in which the ideal woman submits to the will of an older nobleman and is exchanged among men. However, in response to the decay of masculinity, Jacinta is the symbolic of a New World spatial reality, where women are prized for their prudence and clarity of mind: Ya p or vuestra gran cordura si es mi hijo vuestro esposo, le tendr por tan dichoso como por vuestra hermosura. (II: 937-40) As this quote from Beltrn demonstrates, a system that was once based on treating women as the currency of the realm has been transformed by the possibilities of other constructions of masculinity and femininity. It is in the space of Madrid that such a transformation is possible given the connections between the city and Spains territories discussed earlier. The space of the city, the imperial city, promotes exchanges and the creation of new identities, thereby offering new responses to the countrys crisis of masculinity. In a reflection of New World spatial practice, Alarcn does not suggest that masculinity be remedied, rather he instigates a new system of gender practice in which women are not tied to their biological sex or social roles and can fully participate in social networks and relationships. In chapters Two and Three I examined this type of colonial gender representation in the works of Mateo Rosas de Oquendo and Bartolom de Arzns Orsa y Vela. The

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works of these authors reveal how ideals of Spanish gender norms are transformed in the colonies because of altered representations of space and female behavior. The constant processes of exchange on the frontier create women who feign virginity in order to participate in multiple sexual encounters as well as young Creole women who cross-dress throughout their lives, never marry and are still held up as representatives of the colonial elite. Given that the space of Madrid in La verdad sospechosa is a place constructed by empire, the gender system in the play is representative of New World spatial realities. Jacintas actions are similar to those of the women Potos because she takes over a space traditionally dominated by men and acts of her own accord, on behalf of her own desires: The character in La verdad sospechosa with the most control over her own destiny. It is true. . .that she cannot resolve the central misunderstanding of the play, but neither can anyone else, including the men. More importantly, Alarcn gives her all of the power at the end of the play. Alarcn arranges the action so that she has two men who want to marry her, and Jacinta has the power of choice, not the men. She decides the fate of the male characters, as well as her own. (233) What authority to be cast upon a woman who should have been the symbol of honor for men! When taken in conjunction with the representations of space and travel in the play, the exchange of men in a system dominated by women is directly reflective of colonial realities now taking place on the peninsula. Further, it offers new possibilities for social structure in light of Spains decline and social crisis. What Alarcn promotes, rather than court life, is a system in which prudence is honored above gender, a reality in which those with the most common sense and self control have authority over the society.

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For this reason, Jacinta is able to negotiate with the noblemen who would normally view her as an object of value in their transactions. For example, Jacinta wants to examine Garca before considering his proposal, and upon this request Beltrn promises to bring the goods he is marketing by Jacintas window so that she can decide their value: D. BELTRN: Esta tarde, con Garca, a cavallo passar vuestra calle. JACINTA: Yo estar detrs d eessa celosia. D. BELTRN: Que le mireys bien os pido, que esta noche he de bovler, Jacinta hermosa, a saber cmo os aya parecido. (II: 945-53) Beltrn treats Jacinta as an equal participant in the negotiation of his sons marriage. In fact, we see that Jacinta is actually in charge of these negotiations when Beltrn comments to her father: No sin causa os remits, / don Sancho, a su parecer (943-4). Clearly, then, it is not just that there has been an inversion in the gender system which now allows women to participate in the exchange of men. There is also a process of negotiation between men and women that no longer takes markers of gender as the primary indicator of exchange. The markings of Jacintas gender no longer have social value, and the imposition of biology onto social function is no longer present. Jacinta is valued because of her prudence, because of her ability to make decisions rationally

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without flowing into excessive lies. In this way, Alarcn establishes an alternative to constructions of masculinity which do not resonate with contemporary nobility. This multiplicity of gender identities differs from those that I have studied earlier because Alarcn offers both traditional and colonial models of male and female behavior whereas Rosas de Oquendo and Arzns focused almost entirely on subversive or revolutionary women. This vision of both traditional men and women is tied to the space of Madrid in which the play takes place. I have already noted how Madrid was the center of empire, the meeting point of ideologies and cultural values from around the global, the locus of possibilities. The gender constructions witnessed in La verdad sospechosa reflect the nature of the city, offering elements from the Old and New World, just as the history and nature of the capital suggest. La verdad sospechosa and Alarcn, between Spain and the New World In the early twentieth century the criticism surrounding Alarcn and La verdad sospechosa searched for a connection between the play and the authors Mexican identity. Scholars questioned whether the playwright was Spanish or American, never suggesting that he could possibly have an in-between identity that was reflected in the nature of his work. An article by Antonio Alatorre examines this trend, compiling multiple interpretations of Alarcns national identity that have been discussed since the nineteenth century. For example, the critic Philarte Chasles believed that Alarcn was uno de los nombres ms grandes de la literatura espaola y en ningn momento piensa que pueda serlo de la mexicana (Alatorre 11). For Urbina in Alarcns works there is un toque de tristeza, herencia de la psicologa indgena, un dejo de melancola que las distingue claramente de las espaolas (qtd in Alatorre 18). Alfonso Reyes also writes:

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Con la obra de Alarcn, Mxico por primera vez toma la palabra ante el mundo y deja de recibir solamente para comenzar ya a devolver. Es el primer mexicano universal (quoted in Alatorre 21). Such varying comments on national identity and allegiances are products of the time and historical context in which these critics lived and worked. Contemporary scholarship on the La verdad sospechosa tends to avoid this question, almost ignoring the reality of the authors colonial identity. However, while the scholars Alatorre cites do seem out of place in contemporary criticism, their arguments highlight a question in Alarcns plays that points to the larger discussion of this chapter. In my analysis of La verdad sospechosa I have examined how the movement between the Old World and the New is directly related to the representation of Madrid and gender in the play. Further, the names of characters such as Camino and the cochero indicate a movement between spaces which reappears repeatedly in the work. In fact, the structure of the play and Alarcns identity as a colonial subject can be tied to the practice of early modern cartography given that, after the initial phase of conquest, the Spanish endeavored to describe and depict the New World through mapping. As I mentioned in Chapter One, projects such as the Relaciones geogrficas had the practical purpose of controlling New World space because mapmaking was directly related to controlling territories and colonizing the native inhabitants of the colonies (Mignolo 281). However, as we have seen, the art of cartography and the ideology it encompassed were altered upon their arrival in the colonies. The relaciones geograficas project promoted a geographic rationalization of space based on lines of longitude and latitude which were first used in the sixteenth century to create a frame or grid on the space of a map which, according to Padrn:

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Combined the appearance of ideological transparency with an unacknowledged political function. Between 1570 and 1630, Spain brought this power cartography to bear upon the rationalization of its sprawling American empire. The gridded spaces of Renaissance maps had established themselves in the eyes of Europeans as the only true and accurate way of representing territory. (39-40) However, Mundy suggests that colonial maps were produced by travelers who did not reside in the area they were attempting to represent. This lack of connection between traveler and land meant that these men were merely able to recreate the small portion of the territory they had seen (35). The type of map that Mundy references in relation to colonial administrators traveling in the New World is an itinerary map, a kind of cartography popular in the medieval period and generally used to get from place to place along a marked route. The itinerary, then, acted in direct contrast to the grids of rationalized space the Spanish envisioned because they offered little new information about the landscape and lacked the rational principles that Lpez de Vasco would have expected to order them (Mundy 50). Yet, as Mundy and Mignolo have shown, the itinerary was a common means of mapping space in the New World, a space which my discussion of the frontier has established as ideologically and institutionally different from that of peninsula. The connection between the itinerary and the frontier is further reinforced by Padrns understanding of the itinerary as the clear locus of alternative spatiality. . .a spatiality that is very different from the planar extension of the gridded map (53). That is to say, the alternate spatiality which is created through New World gender practice and the

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representation of cities such as Lima and Potos is reflected in the itinerary map. The map reproduces the type of alternative spatiality seen in the Stira and the Historia, a space that is different than the one the Spanish empire attempted to create both through the imperial mapmaking project and the imposition of other ideals into the colonial experience. Returning to the question of determining Alarcns Spanish or colonial identity, reading the action of La verdad sospechosa through the lens of cartography and mapmaking clarifies this issue. Clearly, it is not possible to speak of a New World comedia in the same way that we cannot suggest that Alarcn was simply an early Mexican or a Spaniard. When the genre of the comedia comes to the New World it certainly manifests realities particular to the colonial experience; yet, as witnessed in La verdad sospechosa the genre continues to maintain the same structures employed on the peninsula. Nevertheless, given the connection between Madrid and colonial space, as well as the theme of the journey or the trip in the work, we can understand the setting and location of La verdad sospechosa as an itinerary, or a series of stops, that highlight the way in which the space of the New World has impacted Spain and Alarcns identity, as an author and as a person located in and living between two spaces. In Alarcns comedia we have a type of discursive itinerary of the space of Madrid which includes multiple stopping points that structures the play in a way that is reflective of the authors own experience. Padrn argues that, in addition to traditional maps, a wide variety of texts including lyric poems, plays, and paintings represent and reinforce questions of geography and cultural imperialism (26). In this way, it is not simply traditional maps or

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cartographers that address issues of geography and the connection between spaces. Instead, a Golden Age comedia like Alarcns can actually create scenes of both realties within a single literary space. The locations and scenes that the play presents to its public emphasize the authors own connection between the New World and the peninsula. That is to say, Alarcn cannot simply be considered American or Spanish, and the map his play creates clearly points to this in-between identity. For example, La verdad sospechosas itinerary of colonial and European spaces begins in the works opening scene. In Beltrns discussion with the Letrado, the patriarch repeatedly expresses his concern is over his Garcas move to Madrid from Salamanca, from the world of the university to the world of the court: En Salamanca, seor, son mozos, gastan humor, sigue cada qual su gusto; hazen donayre del vicio, gala de la travesura, grandeza de la locura: haze, al fin, la edad de su oficio. Mas, en la Corte, mejor su enmienda esperar podemos, donde tan vailidas vemos las escuelas del honor. (I: 170-80) As I demonstrated earlier, this quote highlights the differences inherent to the space of Madrid and that of Salamanca. Salamanca is a place in which a student can

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maintain his light spirited identity: it is a safe-haven, a purely Spanish space not yet connecting the students to the larger issues of life at court. It is indicative of the itinerary in the play that this scene comes in the opening moments of the action, because it demonstrates the way in which Alarcn and Spain have left behind simple constructions of space and identity and moved toward complex constructions of nation and subjectivity. The space of the city of Salamanca demands and creates a juvenile and carefree life for its students, while Madrid is the home of the court, of the empire which may be as decadent and frivolous as student life, but certainly imposes a different set of expectations on its citizens. The distinctions between these spaces, and the movement of the play from a more traditional Spain to that of a global power highlights the way in which empire is essential to understanding the structure of Alarcns works. It is the Madrid of La verdad sospechosa which is the site of the authors writing and literary creation. It cannot exist without both Spain and the New World and is a representative of both elements. The alternative spatiality that the itinerary creates is that of a dual space, a space in which elements of both realities create literary products that cannot be categorized. The itinerary or series of stopping points reflective of the collusion between Alarcns realities continues in the scene I discussed earlier in the platera where the presence of colonial money overrides all other social values when Garca states Si es qeu ha de dar el dinero / crdito a la voluntad (I: 505-6). As I noted, in this scene there is a connection between the action of the play and the Spanish experience with the countrys colonial possessions in the seventeenth century. We have also seen how the events that occur in front of Jacintas house challenge traditional interpretations of gender

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given that in this scene, Beltrn finds his son, dresses him up in his finest clothes, and attempts to make his tainted merchandise pleasant to Jacinta. Both of these examples highlight the way in which the structure of the play moves from setting to setting, from scene to scene, along an itinerary that constantly connects the author to both his Spanish and New World roots. The work is structured in such a way that the settings in Madrid are inseparable from either Spanish or colonial space in the same way that any understanding of Alarcn must be connected to both of the realms in which he lived. This point is perhaps best highlighted by the marriage ending in the play, a traditional means of closing the comedia that, in this case, also continues to move the reader along La verdad sospechosas itinerary of alternative spatiality. Alarcns play is structured in such a way that the action moves us from the house of a nobleman in the opening scene to the house of another powerful patriarch at the conclusion. While all the pieces of a traditional marriage closure seem to be in place: patriarchs to arrange the marriages, a gracioso to provide the closing moral message, and young couples (somewhat) willing to be married; the conclusion of La verdad sospechosa rings false to many readers. In fact, scholars vary widely on their understanding of the finale of Alarcns comedia. I have already noted that Pasto does not find the marriages arranged in the last few scenes problematic, he deems Jacinta all powerful over both the men and the women of the work. However, Gaylord suggests that Alarcns ending seems perplexingly untidy because it merges two kinds of slip one would like to keep discretely apart. . .Garca is both liar and bungler, the duper and the duped, the villain and the victim (226). It is true that, in the style of many comedias the marriage ending that concludes La verdad sospechosa is somewhat untidy: the union between Lucrecia and

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Garca is not truly desired by either character, while Juan and Jacinta are finally able to marry after being betrothed for many years. However, the significance of the plays ending for the larger issues in the work are also tied to Alarcns experience as a figure in-between two spaces. Clearly historical contextualization is essential to understanding the social and cultural issues at work in any piece of literature; and the ending of La verdad sospechosa traces the question of nationality and identity back to the issues of masculinity and empire at the heart of Spanish identity in this period. A comedia which refers constantly to the colonies, both symbolically and literally, must include markers of the empire, and in the case of La verdad sospechosa, these markers reference alternative representations of space and gender practice as created outside of the peninsula and returned to Madrid through the action of the work. Rather than recreate the story of masculinity based on pastoral life or to that of a soldier, the author draws on the possibilities of social order in other parts of the realm and creates a new model for Spain. It is not an inverted system, but a system with multiple possibilities for gender behavior among both men and women. In the same way, the closure of our itinerary does not determine the future of Spain or its colonies. Rather, the untidy marriage ending offers us the same possibilities of spatial construction present in the authors life. There are many possibilities of gender construction in the play: Lucrecia appears to be the ideal women, accepting the heterosexual binary of gender without question, Garca demonstrates the perils of excess and the ways in which family honor can be lost. Jacinta underscores what these two figures suggest: it is not gender that defines or creates identity, identity is created through actions, through spatial practice. By connecting this last stopping point on the itinerary to

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Padrns understanding of this type of map as the creation of alternative spatialities, the ending which concludes La verdad sospechosa not only promotes coexisting interpretations of gender, it also highlights the authors position between these two spaces. In the same way that the ideology of cartography was transformed upon its arrival in the New World, Spanish and colonial identities rewrite and transform each other through a constant process of delineation and description. The various locations of Alarcns play are, in effect, the sites of connection not only between ideologies but between identities. The city of Madrid, the platera, Jacintas house, and the marriage ending all point to movement along a path which, more than connecting two spaces highlights their interconnectedness. In conclusion, La verdad sospechosa is a play which moves my discussion of colonial space from the New World back to the Spanish peninsula. Unlike earlier chapters of the dissertation, where imperial ideologies were transported to the colonies for dissemination, in this play colonial realities are returned to Europe and offered as solutions to Spains economic and social problems. While some critics have suggested that Alarcns works rarely mention his homeland, this discussion has demonstrated that this comedia promotes an understanding of the Old and New world as interconnected given that here is direct movement between the spaces of the colonies and Spain. Alarcn also creates multiple symbols of movement and fluidity within the city of Madrid, suggesting that the city is a reflection of its colonial possessions. In this way, alternative gender practices created on the colonial frontier are present in the city of capital and serve as a means to combat Spains decline. Rather than search internally for solutions to global economic problems, La verdad sospechosa incorporates the Spanish

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colonies into a viable paradigm for seventeenth century gender and social relations. The structure of the play parallels this conjunction of spaces and identities given that the representations of masculinity and femininity Alarcn creates do not exclude specific manifestations gender. Rather, like the author himself, we witness all possibilities of identity in the text: identities of the New World, the Old World, and those created by both spaces.

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Conclusion Sor Juana, Mara de Zayas, and the Indigenous Women of Colonial Latin America Throughout this dissertation I have examined the connections between space, gender and genre in the literary production of the New World. This work demonstrates how nontraditional gender behaviors challenge early modern concepts of masculinity and femininity in the Americas in literature from colonial Mexico and Peru. While theorizations of the frontier and its relevance to colonial Latin America have existed for some time, my project expands upon current discussions of space and gender and suggests that the frontier creates and promotes new possibilities for gender negotiation in the colonies. Texts from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries indicate that specific representations of gender responded to the spatial and social realities of the colonies. Further, these manifestations of gender differed in each city and century, and produced constructions of femininity and masculinity different from those the Spanish Crown intended to create in the New World. Through my examination of these colonial gender patterns and transformation on the frontier, several questions have appeared in my investigation that cannot be addressed by the scope of this dissertation, but are possible paths of further study. The texts addressed in this dissertation examine works written by elite male authors who were members of the established gender hierarchy in the early modern period. These texts highlight the institutional male perspective and demonstrate how women defied this particular representation of femininity. However, the theoretical apparatus I establish in the first chapter could also be applied to the work of female authors as well. It would be especially interesting to compare Sor Juana Ins de La Cruzs Los empeos de una casa with La verdad sospechosa given that both plays occur 168

in Spain but were written by Mexican authors. Potential topics for future investigation include how the New World is represented in each comedia as well as the differences and significance of colonial gender behaviors in each work. The inclusion of a text of female authorship would provide an interesting dialectic to my discussion. Further, given that this study pulls heavily from the ideas and ideologies of early modern Spain, an analysis of works such as Mara de Zayas Novelas amorosas or Traicin en la amistad would provide a contrast to the gender behavior witnessed in the texts I study. Clearly, nontraditional gender patterns were not solely the providence of colonial Latin America and a comparison of the texts discussed here, including those of Sor Juana or Catalina de Erauso, with peninsular literary works such as those of Zayas or Ana Caro would be productive. This type of analysis would address questions such as how gender representation in Spain differs from that present in colonial texts. What are the differences, and what are the social factors for this differentiation? How is space implicated in the creation of these new possibilities for femininity and masculinity, and, what is the role of the frontier in each text? Given that Alarcns play occurs in early modern Madrid, potential differences between the Creole representation of Spanish society as altered by the frontier and those of native peninsular culture would be insightful. Another possible topic for exploration is the role of the indigenous women on the frontier. Clearly, texts with native voices are difficult to find, but the study of Fray Ramn Pans Relacin acerca de las antiguedades de las indias or the Crnica mexicana by Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc could create new possibilities for my discussion. My current theorization focuses on elite Creole women, and many of the arguments I make

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are specific to the historical context of this social group; however, in Pans work the space of the frontier is in formation given that his is the first literary work from the New World, written around 1498. How are native women implicated in such a creation, and, how does Pan us his representation of women to attempt to create a coherent and stable vision of the colonial frontier? Further, is the frontier present in the Relacin related to the experience of elite Creole women later in the colonial period, and, if the answer is in the affirmative, how so? In a similar way, the Crnica mexicana reflects a different type of frontier, that of the negotiation of an indigenous author with the Latin American colonial society. Again, questions of the role of women in this negotiation and the authors use of women from his own culture to formulate his cultural identity would create an informative comparison with the work of Spanish and Creole authors in this era. In total, this dissertation has created new possibilities for the study of space and gender in the New World. My investigation has also produced new questions for future study of the frontier in the Spanish American colonies. In this way, the conclusions of this dissertation are twofold. First, I have contributed to the current critical dialogue about space and gender in Latin America concluding that the space of the colonies is a frontier which creates subjects who are not tied to traditional paradigms of gender, but exist in their own formulations of femininity and masculinity. Second, a study of the questions I highlighted above would further our current understanding of specific historical manifestations of gender in the New World and how this gender behavior relates to various social groups and authors, thereby further contributing to the fields of colonial and gender studies.

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Chapter One The Frontier in Colonial Latin America: Gender, Literature, and the Transformation of Ideology Karen Vieira Powers has written extensively on indigenous groups in the colonial period: however, Women in the Crucible of Conquest : The Gendered Genesis of Spanish American Society, 1500-1600 (2005) specifically discusses the role of native women in both pre-colonial and colonial society. Susan Kellogg, in Weaving the Past : A History of Latin America's Indigenous Women from the Pre-Hispanic Period to the Present (2005), traces the trajectory of mestizo and Indian women from pre-conquest culture to the twentieth century. The Women of Colonial Latin America (2000) by Susan Migden Socolow examines colonial women from mulitple ethnic groups, including female African slaves, pre-conquest indigenous women, and Iberian women in the New World.
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Jos Antonio Maravall offers a more general understanding of the value of studying elite or noble culture in his book Poder, Honor y lites en el Siglo XVII where he contends that the changing relationship between the monarchy and the nobility in Europe led to the development of la gran innovacin moderna del Estado, actuando como clase. . .ya que se trat, sin duda, del primer grupo que asumi un carcter de tal (8). In other words, for Maravall, the nobility is the first social group to act as or develop a class conscious and therefore merit in-depth study.

Historical representations of the term frontier also follow the definition I am outlining here. In American Usage of the Word Frontier from Colonial Times to Frederick Jackson Turner, John Juricek notes that in early modern Europe the frontier was understood to be more of an area than a precise dividing line; in fact, it was defined as a fortress on the frontier; a frontier town or a barrier against attack (11). In addition, almost any European dictionary or thesaurus before the 19th century lists border and not boundary as the closest synonym for frontier (13). Also, the modern usage of the term frontier was inaugurated by Frederick Jackson Turner in his seminal paper, The significance of the Frontier in American History in 1893, an essay which continues to be of fundamental importance today. Penn writes that the Turner thesis was, basically, that the American frontier had given both the American people and American history their distinctive character. The frontier, for Turner, was not simply a place but also a condition or a process where the unsettled became settled by the physical movement of settlers on to the land. Since it was a meeting place between savagery and civilization the frontier was a region of continuous transformation. Ultimately, however, American institutions and the American personality emerged from this evolutionary process. (19) This is the usage of the term upon which most scholars of the frontier in contemporary studies base their conceptualization this space. Mary Louise Pratt discusses the space of the type of contact zones that I am suggesting here in her book Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. While this work is focused primarily on 19th century travel writing and the native inhabitants of colonized lands, her treatment of the impact of indigenous cultures on the travel writers and explorers is insightful. Her study points to the fact that in contact zones or on frontiers, 171
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exchange is not one sided, the Europeans travelers are as effected by the new space as the indigenous inhabitants are by the arrival of Western culture. In support of Firbas argument, the Diccioarnio de autoridades defines gallardo as bizarre, liberl, defembarazado, airfo, y galn. Viene del Francs, Gaillard, que fignifica bien difpuefto y valiente (645). Clearly, such a definition of gallardo indictes that the term is used in reference to men and its application to women in the literature of colonial Peru is reflective of New World gender paradigms. In addition to the question of female immigration and marriage in the New World, Twinam studies illegitimacy and marriage patterns in the colonies in Public Lives, Private Secrets, while Seed discusses the changing nature of marriage and the importance of Peninsular ideals in this institution in the Americas in To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574-1821.
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There are many other studies of both contemporary and early Spanish American law and governing ideology. For additional information see Kenneth J. Adriens The Noticias secretas de Amrica and the Construction of a Governing Ideology for the Spanish American Empire Colonial Latin American Review 7 (1998): 175-193, or Colin M. Maclachlan Spains Empire in the New World: The Role of Ideas in Institutional and Social Change Berkeley: U of California P, 1988. This is a pattern which has also been documented in studies of British and French colonial law. Policing the Empire : Government, Authority, and Control, 1830-1940 (1991), which was edited by David M. Anderson and David Killingray explores multiple facets of Britains colonial rule of Australia, India, Africa and Canada. The recent publication Modern Histories of Crime and Punishment (2007), edited by Markus D. Dubber and Lindsay Farmer, includes several essays which question the efficacy of British law in India, and how the instability of legal doctrine compromises the imperial project. Further, Richard Roberts work Litigants and Households: African Disputes and Colonial Courts in the French Soudan, 1895-1912 (2005) examines the meeting of Native customs and cultures with imperial law, and the way in which these two entities impacted each other. While the specific focus of the work of Mignolo and Mundy is the relationship between indigenous spatial practice and imperial projects of cartography, Richard L. Kagan has explored the importance of maps and cartography in Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 1493-1793 (2000) and Spanish Cities of the Golden Age: The Views of Anton van den Wyngaerde (1989). Further, in The Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain (2004) Ricardo Padrn discusses the link between the rising importance of cartography in Spain, and the discovery of the New World.
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It would be nave to suggest that this type of occurrence was present only in the New World. There was also blurring of class lines in Spain as evidenced in the work of Mary Elizabeth Perry and her study of early modern Seville and the prescriptive literature of the period such as Fray Luis de Lens La perfecta casada. 172

Chapter Two The Spatial Constructions of Body and Text in the Stira hecha por Mateo Rosas de Oquendo a las cosas que pasan en el Pir, ano de 1598
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Socolow discusses the role of women as mothers and civilizers in her book The Women of Colonial Latin America (2000). In Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (1999), Ann Twinam also examines the role of women and motherhood in relation to illegitimacy; and, finally, Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru studies a womans preparation for motherhood in Las mujeres en la Nueva Espaa: educacin y vida cotidiana (1987). This concept is also discussed at length by Mary Elizabeth Perry in Gender and Disorder in Early modern Seville (1990), where she examines the changing construction of the Virgin Mary throughout the Early modern period as expectations for the women of all social classes changed. As I discussed in Chapter One, and has been documented by Socolow, as well as Karen Vieira Powers in Women and the Crucible of Conquest: The Gendered Genesis of Spanish American Society, 1500-1600 (2005) women were brought from the Peninsula to the colonies in order to marry aging conquistadors and establish a Spanish society in the New World. This was one of the fundamental differences between widows in Spain and the New World, given that in the colonies young women often gained agency through this process because they were able to marry any suitor of their choice upon the death of their first husband.
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Seed discusses the importance of the marriage promise at length in her book To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts Over Marriage Choice, 1574-1821 (1988). She discusses the role that children had in choosing their marriage partners as well as the way in which the Church often supported the choices of the younger generation, sanctioning marriage promises without the consent of the parents. In addition to sexual relations, in some regions of Spain women could also sue for damages in cases when marriage did not ensue. Renato Barahona has published a book Sex Crimes, Honour, and Law in Early Modern Spain: Vizcaya, 1528-1735, which refers to such instances in the region of Vizcaya.
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Social historiography, including Perrys Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville (1990), has shown that normative legislation responds to social problems of active female sexuality and that this behavior occurs throughout Spanish history. However, while women in Spain clearly engaged in subversive activities, both sexual and otherwise, as indicated in books such as Mujeres de accin en el Siglo de Oro (2006) and Mujeres renacentistas en la corte de Isabella la Catlica (2005), in my analysis am referring to the 173

ideal of normative gender behavior which is reformulated in the colonies in order to create a truly American version of female sexuality. The ideas discussed here represent only a brief overview of the major arguments in Lasartes work. He has also written on the connection between Rosas de Oquendo and Caviedes and their importance as colonial satirists and members of the ciudad letrada in this article Lima satirizada: Mateo Rosas de Oquendo y Juan del Valle y Caviedes. In addition, he has published an article on several unedited works by Rosas de Oquendo which help to construct a more concrete biography of the poet, Apuntes biobibliogrficos y tras inditos de Mateo Rosas de Oquendo. Marie Catherine-Barbazzas Un caso de subversin social: el proceso de Elena de Cspedes (1587-59), and Burshatins Elena alias Eleno: Genders, Sexualities, and Race in the Mirror of Natural History in Sixteenth-Century Spain provide additional insight into Elenos experience in early modern Spain, addressing questions of ethnicity, race and legal process.
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It should be clear that in the early modern period not all hermaphrodites were considered monstrous or disturbing. Gilbert indicates that scientific observation was essential to the reading of a monstrous hermaphrodite. Gilbert also discusses the difference between androgyny and hermaphrodites in her work, and important distinction before the early modern era. For more on the scientific discourse surrounding hermaphrodites also see Invisible Relations: Representations of Female Intimacy in the Age of Enlightenment (1999).
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The importance of the space of the plaza has been studied by many authors including Higgins in Lima: A Cultural History (2005). Also, in his article A Place to Live, A place to Think, and a Place to Die: Sixteenth Century Frontier Cities, Plazas and Relaciones in Spanish America, Alvaro Flix Bolaos discusses the importance of the plaza in the imposition of imperial power as it was a symbol of the imagined city, the imaginary omnipresence of a European culture (77).

Lasarte makes a point similar to the argument I am constructing here, but he ties the representation of the narrator to the carnival environment of the text as well as the duplicity of language present throughout the poem. See Mateo Rosas de Oquendo y la escritura autobiogrfica, and La Stira de Mateo Rosas de Oquendo: El carnaval y la trasgresin. The role of the sermon in the New World can be examined from many angles, many of which are outside of the scope of this essay. For more on the importance of the sermon in the Early modern Period see Smiths Preaching in the Spanish Golden Age (1978) which examines actual sermons from this period. Further, in Metaphors of Conversion in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Drama (1999), Levin analyzes the connection between preaching and acting and the implications of this link of the sermon itself.
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Lasarte has also discussed the connection between female sexuality and religion in the Stira. Specifically, he argues that sexuality is tied to religious symbols through satiric language in articles such as La stira en el virreinato del Per, and Mateo Rosas de Oquendo: La stira y el carnaval, and that this connection reflects the role of the carnival in the Stira because it joins two traditionally opposite symbols.

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Chapter Three The Gendered Construction of Creole Identity in Arzns Historia de la villa imperial de Potos This vision of Potos contrasts drastically Spains vision for the colonial city as laid out in Ramas La ciudad letrada. The city, at least in theory, was to be a place of order. Rama writes that the desire of the imperial project was to certify el triunfo de las ciudades sobre un inmenso y desconocido territorio, reiterando la concepcin griega que opona la polis civilizada a la barbarie de los no urbanizados (14) in order to impede la irrupciones circunstanciales ajenas a las normas establecidas, entorpecindolas o destruyndolas (8). From the initial moment of conquest there was a division between order and disorder in the New World, and the sueo de un orden as Rama terms it, existed before the actual cities were able to enact their triunfo over the territory of the New World.
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The mita was a system which required forced labor in the mines of Potos every seventh year and stemmed from an Incan form of labor that existed before conquest and colonzation. The workers, or mitayos, came from a wide region around Potos and were to work in the mine every third week, resting in between from the exhausting labor. The mitayos were also paid, in theory, but the wages were far too low to support a worker and his family. The system was devastating to indigenous society and the health of the workers. The case of the Potos mita is examined by Jeffrey A. Cole in The Potos mita, 1573-1700: Compulsory Indian labor in the Andes. As Padden and Hanke argue, not all of Toledos contributions were positive. He was also the instigator of the mita which required Indian labor in the mines and was a source of unparalleled controversy in the colonial era. In Potos, Toledo also dictated that Indians and Creoles live in separate parts of the city, separated by canals and bridges. Toledos treatment of the Indians is, of course, criticized and contested in Guaman Pomas Nueva cornica y buen gobierno. In relation to questions of ethnicity and race in the Historia, in addition to Pabns article, Trading Roles is also important in that it focuses on questions of race and gender in Potos. Further, Padden discusses the role of the indigenous inhabitants of Potos in his introduction to the English version of the Historia and Lavall touches on this topic in Promesas ambiguas.
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Another aspect of this connection between conquistadors, settlers and local interests has been studied by Rolena Adorno in her foundational article on Bernal Daz del Castillo. Discourses on Colonialism: Bernal Daz, Las Casas and the Twentieth Century Reader focuses on political issues that were at work in Dazs writing due to his interest the rights of the conquistadors during colonization. The encomienda system dictated that Native Americans work for Spanish encomenderos in return for protection and instruction in Catholicism. The Spanish had the right to tax the Indians and force them into manual labor although the Spanish did not control indigenous land or property rights. Wendy Kramer has written on the encomienda in Encomienda Politics in Early Colonial Guatemala: 1524-1544 in addition to De la encomienda a la hacienda capitalista : el valle del Jequetepeque del siglo XVI al XX by Manuel Burga which traces the history of the encomienda throughout the colonial period and into contemporary Latin America.
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The realities of the struggle of Spain to maintain its colonies in the eighteenth century in relation to the development of Creole identity are explored by Anthony Higgins in his article (Post-) Colonial Sublime: Order and Indeterminacy in Eighteenth-century Spanish American Poetics and Aesthetics, as well as by Lavall in Promesas ambiguas.

While I only touch on it briefly here, Moraas theory on the development of Creole culture and the barroco de indias is fully developed in Viaje al silencio in which she analyzes the historical processes involved in the formulation of Creole identity. This concept is also explored in her article on La endiablada, La endiablada, de Juan Mogrovejo de la Cerda: Testimonio satrico-burlesco sobre la perversin de la utopa which discusses Creole processes of identification and self-definition in relation to this colonial work. More information on the civil wars is available in Hankes introduction to the Historia where this author examines the historical factors involved in the civil wars as well as their representation in the text. He thoroughly discusses the factors leading up to these battles as well as the destruction caused in the city and the impact on the population of Potos.

In Perfect Wives, Other Women, Georgina Dopico Black points to other readings of El mdico de su honra which relate to issues of otherness and ethnicity in the play. She suggests that the question of pure blood and Spanish anxiety over muslum influence in Spain convert Mencas body into a sign that cannot be read and for that reason an attempt to contain her is made through murder.
11

10

The Monja Alfrez and her autobiography Memorias is an essential example of the kind of gender fluidity and instability I am discussing here. However, just as Castaos sexuality is marked by deviance, the Monja Alfrez must receive a papal dispensation in order to continue her cross dressing. Unlike the Warrior Maidens, she is not allowed to continue with her masculine disguise without the imposition of social controls. 176

It is important to note that Arzns son Diego actually completes the last chapters of the Historia after his fathers death. As Hanke states in his History of Potos, this section of the text is filled with tales of giants, bisexuals and general miscellaneous information that is not generally taken into account when discussing the overall structure or focus of the work (20).

12

Chapter Four Colonial Itineraries of the Old World: Juan Ruiz de Alarcns La verdad sospechosa Padrn explores this idea in the Spacious Word. Here he examines the maps of Lpez de Gmora, Oviedo, and the writings of Las Casas, discussing the way these cartographers and authors used their images to separate the space of the New World from Europe. This tactic served to distinguish the inhabitants of the New World from European men while still classifying them as human. In his book Juan Ruiz de Alarcn, Letrado y dramaturgo, Willard King discusses Alarcns relationship with Lope de Vega and Quevedo. There existed much animosity between these figures, especially Alarcn and Quevedo as evidenced by poems written by each author defaming his counterpart. Such information indicates that Alarcn was, in fact, involved in the intellectual life of seventeenth century Madrid, an issue disputed by some scholars. Larsons argument focuses on the instability of language in the early modern period. Larson argues that naming parallels the instability of social and generational values in Spain in the seventeenth century, stating that language can now no longer cover or respond to the social and moral decline of the nation.
4 3 2 1

As Elliot indicates in The Old World and the New, the peoples, places and lands encountered in Spains discovery of the New World challenged Spanish ability to incorporate such a massive amount of information into current systems of categorization of knowledge. The European vocabulary is not enough to comprehend the New World. For this reason, Elliot suggests, there was a slowness to respond to the New World in Europe.

I have elaborated this connection between the body and space more completely in Chapters One and Two of this dissertation. In addition to Space, Time, Perversion, Groszs book Architecture from the Outside is also insightful on this topic. Further, for a contextualized view of the relationship between space and the body in relation to gender in colonial Latin America, see Alison Blunt and Gillian Roses introduction to Writing Women and Space: Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies. Madrid is clearly not the only Spanish city impacted by empire. Perrys book Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville examines how the Spanish experience of empire is directly connected to the reality of Seville in the early modern period. However, the 177
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representation of Madrid that I am arguing for in this chapter does promote a historically specific understanding of the space of the city which differs from that of other Spanish urban centers, even those involved in direct interactions with the Indies. Both King and Alatorre discuss the history of Salamanca, always in relation to the University rather than the citys connections with the rest of Spain. Further, in The Enlightenment in the University of Salamanca, George Addy highlights the way in which city life revolved almost entirely around the university community. In addition to his arguments about Castile, Elliot also discusses the role of Spains foreign policy on the countrys situation in the seventeenth century. His in depth analysis of the nations decline in this period creates a global understanding of the Spains rise to power as well as its gradual impoverishment.
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Gaylord mentions the idea of the itinerary in her article The Telling Lies of La verdad sospechosa, however she does not form a link between Old and New World space or its impact on the representation of gender in the play. She also mentions the presence of the journey in the play in a footnote in the article without delving into further explanation or analysis. I am not suggesting that all Spanish Golden Age comedias portray women as submissive and lacking agency. There are clearly examples such as Ana Caros Valor, agravio y mujer and Mara de Zayas Traicin en la amistad which offer alternative examples of traditional comedia structures. What I do suggest, however, is that Jacintas role in La verdad sospechosa is historically contextual to the setting of the play. Her gender role is determined by the decline of Spain in a way that specific to the works of Caro and Zayas.
10

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