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Whose Crime is it anyway? Gender, Race, and Petty Theft in Guatemala, 1770–1900

CLAH Panel 46, “Spanish America, 1770–1970: Law, Order, and the Ladies”

Heather J. Abdelnur, Ph.D.

Georgia Regents University, Georgia U.S.A. Conference on Latin American History, Affiliated Society

Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association New Orleans, Louisiana January 6, 2013

Introductions

Over the past 15 years, I have in some ways always been interested in textiles. My

interest has been in the “who” of the production of goods and the “how” of the method of

that production with my attention fixed on those that wove, what types of products they

created, and for whose ownership those products ultimately found themselves, whether

stolen or otherwise in urban colonial Guatemala. Along the way, I have uncovered:

fascinating accounts of angry guild members frustrated by supposedly illegal indigenous

hawkers of thread; household mistresses crying over the real or imagined theft of precious

items by their servants; the importation and contraband of a wide variety of textiles from

Europe and Asia housed in the shops of wealthy merchants; pawnshops with an

abundance of textiles for sale on their shelves; and indigenous peoples continuing to

produce goods for their own consumption as had occurred from time immemorial.

On the periphery of the Spanish colonial world, the Kingdom of Guatemala was a

crossroads of trade, an intersection of culture, and a seat of administrative power for

Central America. What has been the norm of a victimized and relatively passive female

population in the criminal record of the core areas of the Spanish colonial world, with the

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exception of moral or religious crimes, is slightly skewed for Guatemala. Surveying the

available court cases from the half century leading to independence and utilizing other

documentation through 1900 clearly demonstrates a society with a female population

active in the local economy, with women of all racial and ethnic compositions and ages,

single, widowed, and married, involved in petty theft of textiles and others being abused by

the system of forced textile production (repartimiento de generos) and fighting

back. Analysis of these documents defies the standard generalization of women in core

areas of empire and requires reconceptualizing Guatemala’s women as active agents in

local economy and society. It also presents a unique window of information on a society in

flux from both geological and socio-political changes.1 Let me begin with a chronological

overview of textile production in Guatemala.

Part I—Pre-Columbian

Prior to Spanish arrival in the 1520s to Mesoamerica, weaving had been an

essential part of the woman’s sphere of duties, with much precious time devoted to care of

family and preparation of food as well as for the creation of essential textiles. From the

archaeological record, scholars have uncovered the remains of textile impressions in clay

artifacts at Maya sites from somewhere in the range of 900-1500 CE.2 These fabric

imprints in the clay hint at pattern, but cannot indicate gender of creator, symbolism, color,

or function. There is also no evidence to demonstrate just how Mesoamericans adopted

1 Susan Kellogg, Weaving the Past: A History of Latin America’s Indigenous Women from the Prehispanic Period to

the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 76. Kellogg states, “Evidence shows that in central Mexico,

while any woman was a potential target for violence, poorer and non-Spanish women were frequent targets, as were

women who lived in familial units, that is, women who lived in families and younger wives, more than older wives or

widows.” 2 See Patricia Rieff Anawalt, “Out of the Past,” available online as continuous text at http://www2.essex.ac.uk/arthistory/arara/issue_six/paper4.html.

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and adapted the stick loom technology to their own purposes.3 There are, however, many

other examples of weaving and sewing apparatus that appear in the form of tools from

spindle whorls dating back to the 500s BCE and spinning bowls/gourds, to bone needles

and awls, as well as fragments of female figurines representing weavers, all of which

pepper the archaeological sites.4 Part of the importance to historians in utilizing the

evidence provided by archaeologists is that there is not a single (to the best of my

knowledge) remaining whole piece of woven cloth from the pre-Columbian or even the

colonial period originating in the highlands of Mesoamerica. The reason for this complete

lack of textiles or “prehispanic costumes” is due mostly to climate, though Anthropologist

Patricia Anawalt also attributes this loss to the burial practices of pre-Columbian Middle

Americans.5 Cloth and clothing remains are nearly impossible to conceive of in the

extremely damp, humid, tropical lowland environment of Yucatan, and the coastline of

Central America. Equally problematic is the damp, humid, cloud forest environment of

Chiapas or the Central American highlands. Scholars are left with a fragment or two from

Jaina, or the “Island of the Dead”, off the coast of Campeche in Mexico, or the remains of

pottery with hints at the wrappings of textiles from sacred sites, like those dredged from the

3 Cherri Pancake brought to light some thirty years ago the fact that the Mesoamerican loom development “must be a matter of speculation, since it appears in the archaeological evidence only in its completed form.” See “Textile Traditions of the Highland Maya: Some Aspects of Development and Change,” 3. 4 See Anne Pollard Rowe, A Century of Change in Guatemalan Textiles, 13. She states, “But for the highlands, the only specific traces for most of the area’s history are clay spindle whorls, and impressions of coarse plain-weave textiles on pottery. This evidence allowsus to say that they did indeed spin and weave, probably cotton, but that is all.” This is also documented by Cherri Pancake with the caution that this may be backed up to an earlier date if more evidence is retrieved, from page 1 of her 5 See Anawalt, “Prehispanic Survivals,” El Palacio, 13. This is also indicated by Krystyna Deuss as she states, “A major frustration for those wishing to trace the development of Maya textiles from Pre-Columbian times through to the 20th Century has always been the lack of material evidence. Apart from some tiny cloth remnants found at various archaeological sites, no known examples of highland Maya weaving exist prior to Maudslay’s collection…” See Deuss, “A Glimpse of Guatemala: A Century of Change in Maya Weavings,” Ghereh, 13. Even Rowe states on page 13 that, “At the outset it must be admitted that very little is known about either weaving or costume of the Guatemalan highlands before the late 19th century.” See also Hilda Delgado Pang in “Similarities between Certain Early Spanish, Contemporary Spanish Folk, and Mesoamerican Indian Textile Design Motifs,” page 388, where she claims, “Unfortunately, while there is some information on costume at Contact, specifics on design are almost nil.”

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well, or cenote, of Chichen Itzá in the late 19th century as well as from other areas of

Yucatán, México and the Petén of northern Guatemala.6

Images of Mayan gods and goddesses, some representing weaving and others with

elaborate textile presentations can be found in the Dresden, Madrid, Paris, and Grolier

codices.7 Not only do the codices provide valuable information revealing the everyday life

and religious practices of the pre-Columbian Maya, they provide direct evidence of elite

clothing and ritual associations with cloth and bodily adornment and the physical means by

which the weavers created loincloths, capes, skirts, and other pieces.8

The linkages between the everyday and the divine are furthered by connecting

weaving with an actual Mayan goddess, thus indicating the importance of textile arts as a

major foundation of the occupational function of the female sex in the pre-Conquest period.

This deity was the goddess of rains and floods, weaving, and childbirth—essentially, the

goddess of women’s “nature” and concerns. She appears in the Dresden Codex as a

young woman, Ixchel, with an elaborately decorated skirt and in the Madrid Codex as an

old woman, Xaqchel or Saqchel, occupied at her loom.9 This is verification of the

importance ascribed to weaving on society in general with direct ties to the gods; it is also

further proof of the value of women’s work in Mayan society. Women connected the

heavens and the earth by using natural elements to create symbolic works of utilitarian

mastery modeled after the goddess.

6 See Harriet F. Beaubien, “Textile-Clay Laminates: A special-use material in ancient Mesoamerica,” on the FAMSI website at http://www.famsi.org/reports/01010/section03.htm an image of textile impressions in clay. Anawalt in “Out of the Past” also documents the retrievals from the well at Chichen Itza, though saying that precise patterns are “too blackened to make out precise patterns.” 7 http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/codex/background.html. 8 See Rosemary Joyce of Harvard University “Images of Gender and Labor Organization in Classic Maya Society,” Chapter 6 page 63, Figures 1 and 2, though the images originate with the site of El Peru. See the associated webpage at http://www.anthro.appstate.edu/ebooks/gender/ch06.html. 9 Both the young Ixchel and the old Saqchel weaver woman images are available on the California State Los Angeles site at http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/bevans/Art446-04-IntroMayan/WebPage-Thumb.00002.html.

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At the close of the 15th century, the Empire of the Maya had long since been

dismantled. The Maya peoples had dispersed into smaller kingdoms, clans and kinship

groups and, especially in the highlands, scattered amongst craggy peaks and lush valleys

and divided by language and local identity. The commonality amongst these distinct

groups, however, was in the maintenance of particular traditions, linguistic and otherwise,

and the guarding of similar elements of material culture. For certain, elevation and cold

factored into the choice of attire for a Maya man or woman and delineated someone from

the highlands of 6000+ foot elevation from a lowland person at sea level in a tropical

and/or rainforest environment, however, the similarity of method of textile production,

function, and habiliment were the same. Women wove, not men. Women used backstrap

or stick looms to weave using locally grown cotton, agave, or pita fiber and adorned with

local feathers, fur and metals, and dyed with natural plant, insect, or mollusk shell dyes.

The cloth was usually draped or tied, not sewn, and did not encase the body, but merely

covered it. The cloth itself had four “web edges” or “selvages” so there really was not a

need for fitting or cutting. But, the cloth itself was limited by the arm span of the woman

herself with most fabric not exceeding one yard in width and limited by weight and stability

to no more than five yards in length.10 Now, enter the Iberians.

Part II—Conquest

In 1524, a close companion and fellow conquistador to Hernán Cortés, named

Pedro de Alvarado, left Mexico on a quest to find more riches and glory in the Maya

kingdoms to the south. Owing partly to a previous epidemic of smallpox spreading through

the population along established trade routes between the Aztec and Maya-controlled

areas, to in-fighting and warfare amongst the major highland Maya kingdoms, to a huge

10 Pancake, 6-7.

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divide in weaponry and military technology between the Spanish and Native American

groups, but also due to surprise, the conquest of the highland Maya was completed in a

matter of several years. Soon after crushing the remaining kingdoms of Los Altos by

playing various groups against each other, Spanish conquistadors created their first capital

in the region at the Kaqchikel Maya city of Iximché and began their rule of exploitation.11

These early Spanish settlers of the 16th century who survived the initial encounters,

warring, deluges, and more, introduced their European-style wooden footlooms and male-

dominated arts to the newly claimed area, complete with the stamp of colonial power and

dominance. What emerged over the course of the next 300 years was the gradual yet

permanent division of technological labor based not only on racial heritage of Native

American versus Iberian, but also on gender of male versus female. While this split in the

production of textiles has been noted by both anthropologists and historians, the addition

into academic writings has more often than not been to add color to their publications.

Rather than simply document the presence of dual modes of production and their

corresponding hands at work, more emphasis should be given to focusing on the

convergence of the person with the product as a window into a unique view of a society in

development. After conquest, there could no longer be simply a “New World” of

indigenous peoples and producers of locally made cloths for domestic consumption or

religious utilization. Neither was there an “Old World” of Iberian-made woolens and

tapestries static and separate in the Kingdom of Guatemala; instead, a syncretism of sorts

11 After a few short years, the capital was moved to a more appealing spot to the Spanish in a fertile valley alongside the extinct Volcán de Agua at the town now known as Ciudad Vieja in Guatemala. The soon-to-be Kingdom of Guatemala, with Alvarado at its head, appealed to quick settlement due to its comfortable climate and densely settled indigenous population for a coerced labor force. Ironically, there was a cataclysm where during heavy rains the crater of the volcano filled with water like a giant bowl, and the mountainside collapsed sending water, mud, and debris onto the sleeping inhabitants (killing even Alvarado’s wife, Doña Beatriz). The capital was again ordered to be moved further from the volcano to the area named Santiago de los Caballeros, now known as La Antigua.

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emerged as demands were made for tribute payments in cloth and to this mixture were

added the importation of luxuries produced in Asia as well as northern Europe.12

Part III—Early Colonial Period

To be a true to the traditions of the master Spanish weavers, one had to sit at the

loom with the latest technology of pulleys and peddles. Where would the Maya men, the

primary labor force in the colonial period, or the soon-to-be products of miscegenation both

physically and culturally, fit into this work equation? If weaving had existed solely

associated with female labor, how could Maya and Latinized men become weavers?

There exists much documentation to support that there were early obrajes, or rudimentary

organizations of factory labor to produce textiles in colonial Mesoamerica. There is

evidence to support the creation of weaving guilds and the domination of commercialized

fabric production by men in urban areas that was to be sent to the cattle ranches and

mining camps of Nicaragua, the indigo plantations of El Salvador, and for general use by

laborers and servants in and around the Kingdom of Guatemala. How could men produce

these goods without emasculating themselves?

Ultimately, Maya men would reject stick-looms along with the spinning of cotton as

“feminine”, restricting cotton usage to foot-loomed utilitarian plain manta, or generic

commercially produce yardage. These men psychologically could justify their entrance

into the world of loom technology by: first, suggesting footlooms were foreign in origin and

associated with the conquering peoples; second, by being seated in a chair, stool, or on a

bench, men were physically raised off the ground; third, they focused on utilitarian plain

cotton yardage that was cut off the frame rather than smaller selvedged handloom pieces.

Men also adapted to the introduction of sheep and the foreign use of woolens in clothing

12 Ruth Morrissey is a great resource for the early conquest period and tribute cloth.

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by becoming the exclusive weavers and occasional spinners of wool, though women might

card and spin.13 There is some argument as to just when the identity develops of Ladino,

the creation of a new ethnic identity of racially Maya in heritage, though culturally

hispanicized. Ruth Morrissey argues, somewhat unsuccessfully, that the simple

association of men who worked European footlooms and with cotton textiles caused them

to be “no longer identified with Indian culture.”14

Why were women not the recipients of this new knowledge and technology of

Spanish treadleloom weaving? One suggestion is that Europeans were accustomed to

men weaving and it made sense to continue that tradition. 15 Indigenous women, on the

other hand, were physically lowered by sitting or kneeling at ground level to weave,

evidence of their lowered social status. Maya women also retained the traditions of cotton

textile production for home, not commercial use, with elaborate pattern and symbolism

designating language-specific and town-specific information as well as religious and

cultural beliefs. Their goods, however beautiful, and their looms, however portable and

adaptable to changes in tension and manipulation of design, could not compete with the

requirements of extra yardage for Spanish clothing styles or the speed with which a

footloom could accomplish that goal. A Maya woman, depending on the size and the

intricacy of her weave, could take anywhere from one to three months to complete a single

shirt or carrying.16 There was also the mistaken notion that the simplicity of the stick loom

itself indicated simplicity of the finished product.

13 Pancake, 9. 14 Ruth Claud Morrissey, “Continuity and Change in Backstrap Loom Textiles of Highland Guatemala,” 120. 15 Pancake, 12. 16 Pancake, 11.

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Not all women were weavers, however. Not only did the elite as well as Ladinos

normally purchase their cloth and clothing, but there also existed a small, but distinct

population of African slaves in the early capitals of the Kingdom of Guatemala who worked

as household servants, tavern waitresses, shop clerks, and general laborers.17 Either their

employers had to purchase clothing for them, or they had to buy it themselves. With the

sense of luxury associated with the lovely imports of French lace, British Manchester

textiles (largely contraband), Chinese silks, and the cost and time needed to produce

locally-made fabrics, it is of no surprise that theft of cloth and clothing was a regular activity

conducted by both women and men. Much of what can be learned about the underclass in

colonial society, especially women of color, emerges from the first person testimonies of

the court cases of petty theft. The archival holdings of the Archivo General de

Centroamérica (AGCA) are extensive and there are some valuable resources from the 18th

century with remnants of cloth sewn into the document bundles, along with manufacturing

import stamps, waybills, transport receipts to local fairs and taxes paid.18

To an observer of the middle period, an elite woman would have worn

elaborate fashions of imported fabrics in styles imitated by Europe. One of mixed-race or

lower status might have been identified by her reboso/scarf or poorer imitation of the elite

dress. Indigenous women wore distinctive dress particular to their language group, town,

and sometimes even neighborhood. While the value of the individual articles of clothing

would seem obviously to vary according to origin, cut, and quality, that is too simple a

guess. The huipile, or traditional shirt of an indigenous woman, handmade usually at her

own hands and taking weeks in preparation was extremely costly in that very few woman

17 Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America, 140. 18 See my dissertation “A History of Highland Guatemalan Textiles: Lost Opportunities and Colonial Legacies, 1780-1820,” Texas Christian University, 2005.

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had more than a single change of clothing, and some not even that. So it is somewhat

dangerous to compare the cost of the traditional Maya woman’s outfit with the costly piece

of fine linen from Europe worn by the dona of an elite household. By the same token,

regardless of class or racial background, the value of cloth and clothing items was well

known and well understood, causing much turmoil when an instance of theft occurred.

In a criminal court case from 1802, Mariana was accused of stealing a chamarra,

which she purportedly separated into pieces and distributed to various folks who were in

her hangout. The accusers stated that Mariana was a bad woman, who was usually

drunk, known to sell clandestine chicha, had a 15 year old daughter who was already

deflowered, and who was living in sin with a Sebastian Rivas, a local married man. While

it was not enough that she was a “wayward” woman, it was only after the theft of the

chamarra that the claimants declared she needed to be sent to prison.

In another seemingly innocuous crime, Geronima Sunsin, stole a piece of fabric in

1803. She was a single, mulatta, 16 year old who had previously been accused of stealing

money and an iron on other occasions. She ends up being jailed for 2 months for the theft

of the Cortina. That same year, Lucía Escarda was accused of theft of some homespun

women’s skirts. The accusation was that she sold the used skirts in a chichería for only 2

reales to get drunk, but the testimony demonstrates that she also might have fallen on

hard times as a 34 year old widow.

So what do these small vignettes demonstrate? Although the focus for criminal

investigation was on the theft of cloth, numerous other details emerge that increase

general knowledge of Guatemala’s women. One case is particularly useful. Anastacia

Corado was sent to jail in 1801 for supposedly stealing 2 chamarras, a towel, and 2

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chickens. She had been the servant in the house of a 26 year old Spanish woman named

María Ventura Reyes. In the process of further testifying against Anastacia, a single 29

year old mestiza María gives careful description of how her servants were paid. She listed

the following:

At breakfast a half roll and some sugared chocolate For noon some 5 or 6 tortillas with a place containing some 2-3 pieces of meat and other foodstuffs of the day In the afternoon a ration of bread and more Pinol sweetened chocolate Dinner varied between “sometimes a lot” or “a little” 12 reales salary (monthly) 2 reales for soap and clothing

Again, though Anastacia had also been accused of sleeping around, she was sentenced to

6 months in the house for wayward women for the theft. Other women capture this same

example, from Maria Rosalia Ruíz in 1800 accused of stealing a shirt and for concubinage.

More important was the missing good shirt, and the concubinage added as an afterthought

and the extra push to ensure she was not seen in a good light by the judges. Many of

these domestic servants, accused rightfully or not, fell afoul of their mistresses. Maria

Micaela Guindar was accused of stealing everything from a shirt, to petticoats, bedding,

lace headcoverings, and children’s clothing after coming to Rafaela Matal’s house in

search of domestic employ.

What is heavily documented and supportive of the importance of textiles in colonial

society and their production and usage by the entire breadth of society is in regard to

contraband, forced labor practice, and petty thievery. Murdo MacLeod’s Spanish Central

America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520-1720 provides extensive coverage about

contraband trade coming out of the Caribbean and flowing through ports on the Central

American coastline. Spanish forces could not keep up with the demand for the goods and

their inadequate fortresses and military might could not plug all of the holes in the dam

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from Belize to Honduras, while merchants loaded with contraband textiles found their way

into the capital city of the Kingdom and to other areas in the highlands. In discussions of

forced labor, there was a form of coercion that related to textiles called repartimiento de

mercancías. Essentially indigenous women could find themselves the unlucky recipients

of hanks of raw fiber to spin or with demands from Spanish administrators for certain

amounts of cloth to be woven. Oftentimes the weight of the fiber was short and the women

were forced to purchase more in order to meet the length requirements final product.

Occasionally they were not paid or paid insufficiently for their time invested. This practice

continued through the end of the colonial period, even though prohibited by the Crown as

excessive; whole towns, through the corresponding male leadership, protested the

excessive burden placed on their women. There are examples of the leaders of towns,

like Sololá, for example, bringing cases to court in defense of their female townmembers.

What I find particularly interesting when revisiting these cases is in what is absent

from their testimony. Though there had been year of calamity in the form of earthquakes

that leveled La Antigua Guatemala in 1773 to rubble and forcing much of the population to

flee in the following years to a “new” capital, none of the cases from that time period

mention the earthquake, forced relocation, or dire conditions still existing in La Antigua as

the reason for their poverty or motivation for theft or pawning of goods. I only uncovered

one case where household goods from the old capital to the new with the help of two

mozos from Jocotenango. In that case, the owner of the goods was a woman accusing

the carriers of drunkenness and carelessness in getting her goods stolen along the way.

Likewise in absence is any evidence of social dislocation from political changes

from 1808 through 1822 with the problems overseas related to Napoleon and the

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Kingdoms of Spain and Portugal. Even with questions of colonial control and declarations

of independence from Mexico down through the Southern Cone and fighting in many

areas, there is no indication that any of the political confusion or militia and military action

affected women or caused any sort of increase in female petty theft. I do, however,

continue to wonder about the lessening of political control from the period of the Bourbon

Reforms through to absorption into Iturbide’s Mexico. More than half of the petty theft

entries in the fichero occur between 1800 and 1810. Whether this is due to better

reporting of incidents of crime, or to more criminal activity failing in local settlement and

being sent to court, or that more documents existed but have been destroyed or have yet

to be uncovered makes any certain conclusion difficult to make.

Part V—Middle Period

The shift from colonial to independence period was anything but dramatic for the

majority of Guatemala’s women. Their occupations did not see significant alteration. By

the time of the separation of the Latin American mainland from Spanish control in the

1820s, what had emerged was the distinction of women’s textile production being

relegated to the marginality of the stick loom. Male Maya production of woolen pieces was

exclusively for indigenous men’s usage, and Ladino footloom production created rough

cotton pieces of inferior quality for the lower classes and workers in society. Those of

primarily or “pure” Iberian heritage continued their guild memberships copying European

styles, and the wealthiest in society contributed heavily to the importation of expensive

goods. The inventories of the storehouses, pawnshops, and wills of the wealthy abound in

luxury fabrics and clothing.19

19 Richmond Brown, “Profits, Prestige, and Persistence: Juan Fermín de Aycinena and the Spirit of Enterprise in the Kingdom of Guatemala,” HAHR, 417. “The trade goods counted in the 1768 inventory reveal the great majority of the

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The late 19th century can be classified as a time of “progress” and “modernization.”

Indigenous peoples retained both types of loom technology split along gender lines.

Ladinos moved into purchasing foot peddle sewing machines and working with mass-

produced fabrics, and with those of the upper classes leaving textile production altogether

except as consumers of imported goods. Much of the written history of the national period

comes in the form of political unrest, change, rebellion, and factionalism. In the course of

a few decades, Central America was first part of the Mexican Empire, then the separate

and independent United Provinces of Central America, and ultimately split into separate

nations. Chiapas, which had been part of the Kingdom of Guatemala, chose to attach

itself to México, though its climate, geography, and the culture of its people are much more

akin to that of Guatemala than México.

Prior to independence from Spain in 1821, most foreign visitors were Spanish in

origin for obvious reasons. With the opening of the ports and trade of the coastline of

Central America to the formerly barred and banned nations of northern Europe, there was

a great influx of trade goods, After that point, and very much so after 1870, droves of

foreigners explored the region, some as merchants, others as amateur botanists or

archaeologists, still more as photographers or even traveling companions particularly from

England and France, with Germany soon to follow with a boom in coffee production. North

Americans also came looking for adventure and commercial activity. These foreigners

often took careful note of the imports they came across in their travels and the potential for

richer trade relations to cultivate for the future, and inadvertently captured in their diaries

goods Juan Fermín [de Aycinena] imported were textiles: Italian velvets, taffeta from France and Spain, fine linen from Brittany, English flannel and serge, Chinese silks, damasks from China and Valencia, Belgian lace, cottons from Rouen, India, and China, and cheesecloth. The Aycinena store stocked luxury items, essentials, and articles for everyday use. It supplied thread, buttons, twine, ribbons, braids, tapestries, and chintz…petticoats…floorcloth, bedspreads, huipiles…blankets…”

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and journals the consumption patterns of the elite and the servants in their acquaintance

and employ. Much of what can be gleaned about textile production in the mid-to-late 19th

century comes in the form of travel writings for foreigners present in the region. Some

recorded information as a diary, others for investors or government officials at home, and

still more for eventual publication. William T. Brigham, of the United States, in the course

of his travels in the highlands, peaked into peoples’ homes and happened upon a weaver

in his home.20 What Brigham witnessed was a continuation of a colonial tradition; the loom

described was a draw loom that the Spanish had adopted from the Chinese in their Asian

trading in colonial times.21 In a K’iché area, Brigham also took note, in very flattering

tones, of stick loom production that successfully functioned as well.22 Usually the travelers

were interested in recording the exotic of the region, paying much more careful attention to

indigenous costume and the unusual, rather than footloom pieces or Westernized wear of

the elite of Central America, unless to criticize for the lack of current mode of fashion. For

that reason, Brigham’s account is particularly important and the contrast he provides from

the 1880s. The photography of those such as Eadweard Muybridge is equally valuable in

documenting change.23 However posed the images, the photos shed light on a subject

20 See William T. Brigham, Guatemala: The Land of the Quetzal, 139. “The loom had two harnesses worked by the foot of the weaver, and twelve more pulled by a boy at the side; the bobbins were wound on bits of small bamboo. It was a long way back in the series of the evolution of a modern carpet-loom, and yet it did its work exceedingly well, if slowly…” 21 Pancake, 12. 22 Brigham, 252. “In textile work they were advanced, obtaining results with their rude hand-looms that even to-day would hold their own against the machine-made fabrics of the present day for durability and aptness of design…their shawls or blankets are often works of art…and without pattern before her she traced figures resembling those in the old manuscripts, though mingled with very modern-looking pictures.” Also of use is my M.A. Thesis from Tulane University, 1997, dealing specifically with 19th century travel account literature and images of the other in highland Guatemala. Helen Sanborn, Anne Cary Maudslay, and many others are fantastic sources of detailed information of textile design and use in the 19th century as is Lily de Jongh Osborne, Matilda Geddings Grey, and others for the early 20th century. 23 Muybridge’s photos are well represented in revised travel texts such as that of Helen Sanborn, as well as by anthropologists like Anne Pollard Rowe for a comparison of the then and now. They are even used by historians such as R. Williams for evidence of coffee production in the 19th century. Most of the photographs are owned by Harvard University.

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largely ignored by local historians and record-keepers of the day. By the late 1800s, textile

manufacturing in Central America had contracted back to cottage industry as consumers,

however much they would have preferred to support locally made goods, could not ignore

the inexpensive British imports flooding their nations.24

Part VIII—Conclusions

The culmination of all of the years under discussion indicates that Central

Americans, like their textiles, are very complex in origin and development. While this study

is limited to the urban women of highland Guatemala, rural women also inhabit this piece

as they carried daily produce and homespun cloth into the cities or sent their unmarried

daughters to work in elite urban households. All of the women surveyed here, regardless

or their age, marital status social class or racial heritage, share a common thread, literally,

in their consumption of textiles. Rather than defining middle period women in Guatemala

by their number of years alive, whether they were single or married, or even by all the

endless gradiations of skin color present in Guatemala, class and corresponding

occupations were the defining features of social life. These specific occupational

limitations were, in turn, demonstrated by the textiles a woman could purchase or wear

without suspicion, and use on a daily basis.

Of the social classes under investigation here, let us separate women into

categories of cloth: elite women as purchasers, domestic servants as non-producers, and

handicraft producers, y. Most elite women, whether Espanola, Criolla, or merchant elites,

purchased fine quality European fabric imports, whether British indianillas or Rouan silk or

24 David McCreery, in his By the Sweat of Their Brow: A History of Work in Latin America, on page 100 supports this statement also emphasizing that by taking away locally produced textiles it reduced “one of women’s key roles in the family” and ultimately “contributed their marginalization.” The import of British and other world manufacturers into Latin America and the collapse of local industry is also heavily discussed by R. L. Woodward, Jr. in numerous publications and Miles Wortman in his Government and Society in Central America, 1680-1840.

17

Spanish mantillas, and produced little themselves, with the exception of the occasional

decorative item to keep their idle hands busy. Those that predominantly found themselves

employed as domestics were in the lower-classes and often mixed-race. They did not

produce their own needed textiles, rather purchased them outright with their wages,

obtained them as part of their salary/contract, or re-sold, pawned, or outright stole them.

The handicrafts producers were most often rural indigenous women working with carding

wool or spinning cotton thread for the repartimiento of merchandise or their own

elaborately and symbolically patterned and colored garments and items for home use.

I see petty theft fitting into a larger framework that helps better outline Guatemala’s

underclass, particularly those in the Guatemala City/Antigua region. There is solid data on

female occupations, family size, economic status, living conditions, housing, and the

typical material goods owned by different sectors of society all available in the criminal

cases involving petty theft. These women, through the pen of the court scribe, provide

reasons why they stole, or why they were falsely accused. They beg the court for leniency

due to extreme poverty, their age and ignorance of their crime, to dependent family

members at home. We follow them as they are sent to the female house of corrections,

paraded through the streets in evidence of their crime, or remanded to their husbands. We

meet their neighbors in the gathering of witness testimony and find social connections and

relationships. Whether an indigenous highland woman protesting abuse by a Corregidor

for coerced textile production, or a Guatemala City merchant accusing indigenous thread

salesmen of illegally avoiding taxation, an elite woman fallen on hard times blaming her

servant for theft of goods that she, herself, had pawned, or a widowed mother of three

stealing clean laundry to sell and feed her family, who was the victim and who was the

18

perpetrator of the crime is not so very important. It is that they were all connected, all

interacting, and all refashioning a Guatemala of the modern era.

GENERAL THEFT OF GOODS

Accused Date

1. María Molina 1770

2. Ana Alvira de Morales 1779

3. Vicenta Martinez 1788

4. María Antonia González 1792

5. María Micaela Guindari 1793

6. Dorotea Guachoc 1793

7. Dolores Regina 1797

8. Manuela Antonia Molina 1799

9. Bárbara Urrutia 1800

10. María Rosalia Ruíz 1800

11. Anastasia Corado 1801

12. Francisca Rizo 1801

13. Mariana Jacinta 1802

14. Simona Ramírez 1802

15. Higinea Josefa Ramírez 1802

16. Lucía Escarda 1803

17. Josefa Quinteros 1803

18. Luisa Felles 1803

19. Jerónima Sunsín 1803

20. Felipa Castillo 1803

21. Angela Estrada 1803

22. doña Gregoria Rías 1804

23. Felipa Veliz 1804

24. Josefa Salazar 1805

25. Inocenta Estrada 1805

26. Fermina Corado 1805

27. María Josefa Estrada 1805

28. Josefa Castillo 1805

29. Manuela Masate 1805

30. Simona Ramírez 1805

31. Fernanda Orellana 1805

32. María Matíaz Juárez 1805

33. María Susana Alva 1806

34. Juana Gálvez 1806

35. Cirila Gutiérrez 1806

36. Lucrecia Cárdenas 1806

37. Encarnación/Paula Pérez 1807

19

38. Nicolasa Pérez 1807

39. Manuela Morales 1807

40. Felipa Morales 1808

41. Leandra Muy 1808

42. Sebastiana Sunsín 1808

43. Feliciana Soto 1808

44. Matilde Hernándes 1809

45. María Morales 1811

46. Dorotea Anzueto 1811

47. Josefa Cervantes 1812

48. Juaquina Sánchez 1812

49. Crecencia Ortíz 1813

50. Cayetana Rogel 1813

51. Juana Castro 1813

52. Matilde Zúñiga 1819

53. María Pia Mata 1821

54. María Borrayo 1821

55. Mauricia Antonia Aguila 1822

56. Monica de la Cruz González 1822

On the periphery of the Spanish colonial world, the Kingdom of Guatemala was a crossroads of trade, an intersection of culture, and a seat of administrative power for the region stretching from Chiapas to Costa Rica. It would seem logical that society would be typical to other colonial cities such as Mexico City or Lima; at the heart of El Reino de Guatemala, for many centuries of colonial rule at Santiago de los Caballeros, or modern-day Antigua, after the earthquakes of the 1770s, moved to what is now today’s Guatemala City. However, what has been the norm of a victimized and relatively passive female population in the criminal record of the core areas of the Spanish colonial world, with the exception of moral or religious crimes, is turned upside-down for Guatemala. Surveying the available court cases from the half century leading to independence clearly demonstrates a society with a female population active in the local economy, with women of all racial and ethnic compositions and ages, single, widowed, and married, involved in petty theft of textiles and others being abused by the system of forced textile production (repartimiento de generos) and fighting back. Analysis of these documents defies the standard generalization of women in core areas of empire and requires reconceptualizing Guatemala’s women as active agents in local economy and society. It also presents a unique window of information on a society in flux from both geological and socio-political changes.25

25

Susan Kellogg, Weaving the Past: A History of Latin America’s Indigenous Women from the Prehispanic Period to

the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 76. Kellogg states, “Evidence shows that in central Mexico,

while any woman was a potential target for violence, poorer and non-Spanish women were frequent targets, as were

women who lived in familial units, that is, women who lived in families and younger wives, more than older wives or

widows.”

20

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