women were best suited to passive contemplation rather than to intellectual analy-
sis, the purview of men (Franco 1989). Also, mystical raptures bordered on danger-
ous and complex terrain, beyond the ken of women who were thought to be
overcome by passion and prone to lunatic episodes. But what the confessors feared
most was the direct challenge to male authority that women’s communications with
spiritual beings posed. Male priests were the only designated intercessors between
people and God, yet women’s mystical experiences gave them irrefutable authority.
Women who did not live in convents but claimed to have mystical experiences had
much more difficulty legitimizing their claims. The Church dismissed their discourse
as the Devil’s deceptions, arguing that these women claimed to experience raptures
and visions in order to make money or for other kinds of perverse reasons. Many of
these women ended up in asylums. Ana de Aramburu, for example, was condemned
by the Inquisition to imprisonment in a secret prison for claiming that God singled
her out. An even more important female mystic was Sor Juana, a woman of renowned
intellect and an acerbic critic of machismo (as her poem in Box 12.2 attests).
Native Women’s Roles in Colonial
Highland Chiapas, Mexico
The decimation of the native population during the first century of Spanish occu-
pation meant that surviving men and women had to fulfill the onerous tribute and
work obligations imposed by the Spaniards. Spanish priests, colonial administrators,
and entrepreneurs competed among themselves to exploit Indian labor. Native
women worked extremely hard to produce the yarn and woven goods demanded in
the repartimientosystem (see Chapter 5). Men had to transport the requisite goods
long distances on their own beasts. Exhausted and constantly on the move, men were
easy prey to sickness and died young; often, their wives survived them. Households
headed by women became a common feature of indigenous life.
Women’s central participation in nativist or revitalization movements illustrates
the important roles women played in rural colonial communities. Through nativist
movements, indigenous peoples sought to bring hope and redemption to their rav-
aged communities. They attempted to forge alliances with supernatural beings that,
on the one hand, would help them carry on, and on the other hand, would serve as
rallying points to consolidate the native struggle against invasive forces.
In highland Chiapas, a young Tzotzil-Mayan woman named Dominica López
claimed that she had a vision in a cornfield of the Virgin Mary who spoke to her, re-
questing that her image be brought to town and a chapel be built for her there (for
a shorter version of this and the rebellions to follow, see Box 5.3). The townspeople
did as she wished, and Dominica and her husband were named mayordomos(stew-
ards) for the Virgin. The Virgin Mary reportedly communicated only through Do-
minica. She stated that she would reward the people with an abundant harvest of
corn and beans and many children. When word reached the Spaniards about the
great stir that Dominica’s vision was creating in native communities, they took deci-
sive action. They carried the image of the Virgin off to San Cristóbal and brought Do-
minica López and her husband to trial.
CHAPTER 12 WOMEN AND GENDER IN MESOAMERICA 451