Ana de Zaballa ha publicado el artículo titulado «Indian Marriage Before and After the Council of Trent: From Pre-Hispanic Marriage to Christian Marriage in New Spain» en el número 29 de la prestigiosa revista Rechtsgeschichte – Law History del Max Planck Institute for European Legal History.
El resumen del artículo, en inglés, es como sigue:
«When studying the transformation of Indian culture during colonial times, it is common to consider that transformation resulted from two factors: First, the policies imposed by the Crown, explicitly seeking hispanisation; second, the activities performed by missionaries, which sometimes backed up such policies. Nonetheless, there seems to be a third aspect that has been overlooked: Indians’ willingness to make the culture, law, and privileges pertaining to the new established order their own.
I have discussed some examples of the reception of legal practices by the Indian population,1 which can be understood as the reception of the Spanish legal culture to serve Indians’ interests. In those previous studies, I have explained the presence of natives at Spanish courts of law for different reasons, including marriage issues. The idea of the appropriation of Spanish habits and culture by Indians can be called into question when considering that marriage habits were imposed, since polygamy – among other Indian customs – was forbidden and punished according to Christian marital morality. While this is true, there were some other aspects concerning marriage that could have been disregarded by Indians but in fact were not. The fact is that Indians presented accusations, complaints, and lawsuits concerning issues that can be considered rather proper of criollos − namely, the importance given to a marriage promise, women’s freedom to marry, and the need for parental marriage permission, especially in the case of unequal marriages. That is, when analysing marriage among Indians, it can be seen that not only was Christian marriage assimilated, but so too were certain habits and customs, social links, assumptions or preferences, and practices related to Christian marriage, over pre-Hispanic habits. All of these demonstrate a profound assimilation of marriage and social guidelines»
Se puede consultar y descargar el artículo completo en este enlace.
