Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:03:15.817Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Marriageways in Mexico and Spain, 1500–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Robert McCaa
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Articles
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , May 1994 , pp. 11 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

ENDNOTES

1 This injunction from St Paul (I Corinthians 7:9) was printed in Arbiol, A. y Diez, , La familia regulada con la Doctrina de las Sagradas Escrituras (Saragossa, 1715)Google Scholar, as cited in Dubert, I., ‘Los comportamientos sexuales premaritales en la sociedad gallega del antiguo régimen’, Studia Storica Historia Moderna 19 (1991), note 16Google Scholar. See also Dubert, I., Historia del la familia en Galicia durante la época moderna 1550–1830 (estructura, modelos hereditarios y conflictividad) (Sada, 1992), 301ff.Google Scholar

2 Calvo, T., ‘Concubinato y mestizaje en el medio urbano: el caso de Guadalajara en el siglo XVII’, Revista de Indias 173 (1984), 208Google Scholar. The verb form of the Spanish maxim -‘es’ (from ser, ‘to be’) – denotes a state of permanence or immutable characteristic or condition, while the proverb from New Spain uses the construction ‘estar’ (also ‘to be’), forewarning of a temporary or passing state. These and subsequent translations are by the author unless noted otherwise.

3 For a recent review of the literature on Mexico, see Arrom, S. M., ‘Perspectives on the history of the Mexican family’, Latin American Population History Bulletin 17 (1990), 4–9.Google Scholar

4 Smith, R. M., ‘Discontinuidades cronológicas y continuidades geogràficas en la demografía de la Europa medieval: implicaciones de algunas investigaciones recientes’, in Moreda, V. Pérez and Reher, D. S. eds., Demografía histórica en España (Madrid, 1988), 62.Google Scholar

5 In addition to questioning the role of church and state in affecting the formation of the couple, Burguière questions whether economic change or a new morality invented by enlightened elites was responsible for the formalization of conjugal life (Burguière, A., ‘The formation of the couple’, Journal of Family History 12 (1987), 39–53).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Meekers, D. develops a similar point in a contemporary African context: ‘The process of marriage in African societies: a multiple indicator approach’, Population and Development Review 18 (1992), 61ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Lockhart notes that Nahuatl terms for ‘family’ or even ‘relative’ rarely appear in the texts (Lockhart, J., The Nahuas after the conquest: a social and cultural history of the Indians of Central Mexico, sixteenth through eighteenth century (Stanford, 1991), 73)Google Scholar. Instead kin terms are constructed outward from the reference point of each individual, reflecting the age and sex of both referent and ‘referee’ (ego). In any case, ‘inclusiveness is emphasized over precise descent’ (p. 76) and automatic lineage solidarity is deemphasized (p. 82). Parents probably played a secondary role because family was more a matter of co-residence – ‘cemithualtin’ (los de un patio, those living around a single courtyard) – than fixed relations of parentage. See Burkhart, L. M., ‘Mujeres mexicas en “el frente” del hogar: trabajo doméstico y religión en el México azteca’, Mesoamerica 23 (1992), 27.Google Scholar

8 Clendinnen, I., Aztecs, an interpretation (Cambridge, 1991), 42, 160Google Scholar. Burguière argues that in sixteenth-century France, where there was a great variety of controls, ‘candidates for marriage could easily find a way to decide according to the dictates of their hearts’ (‘The formation of the couple’, 42Google Scholar). Among the Mexica, rigid social codes left youngsters of the opposite sex with few opportunities to meet, thus explaining the importance of matchmakers.

9 Calnek, E. E., ‘The ethnographic content of the third part of the Codex Mendoza’, in Berdan, F. F. and Anawalt, P. R. eds., The Codex Mendoza (Berkeley, 1992), vol. 3, 87Google Scholar. Royal marriages had a completely different logic, primarily involving matters of statecraft; see Marcus, J.' brilliant analysis of Mesoamerican royal marriages extracted from indigenous records, Mesoamerican writing systems. Propaganda, myth, and history in four ancient civilizations (Princeton, 1992), 223–60.Google Scholar

10 Rodríguez, M. J. V., ‘La conditión femenina en Tlaxcala según las fuentes’, Mesoamerica 17 (1989), 1–23.Google Scholar

11 Calnek, , ‘The ethnographic content’, vol. 3, 82.Google Scholar

12 Borah, W. and Cook, S. F., ‘Marriage and legitimacy in Mexican culture: Mexico and California’, California Law Review 54 (1966), 946–1008CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Burkhart, L. M., The slippery earth: Nahua-Christian dialogue in sixteenth-century Mexico (Tucson, 1989), 151.Google Scholar

13 Burkhart, , The slippery earth, 150Google Scholar. Recent scholarship does not support the notion that ‘tanto el cristianismo como la norma nahua conferían un alto precio a la virginidad de la mujer’ (‘Christianity, like the Nahua norms, conferred a high price on virginity of the woman’); Gruzinski, S., ‘La “conquista de los cuerpos” (cristianismo, alianza y sexualidad en el altiplano mexicano siglo xvi)’, in Familia y sexualidad en Nueva España (Mexico City, 1982), 178Google Scholar. Burkhart argues that among the Mexica virginity ‘was esteemed, but it was not the essential feature of a young person's character’. The dangers of using sixteenth-century dictionaries, which tried to reconcile native practice with Christian law, have been noted by Ragon, P. in Les Indiens de la découverte: evangélisation, mariage et sexualité Mexique, XVIe siècle (Paris, 1992), 56.Google Scholar

14 Lockhart, , The Nahuas after the conquest, 80.Google Scholar

15 Cline, S. L., ‘The spiritual conquest reexamined: baptism and Christian marriage in early-sixteenth-century Mexico’, Hispanic American Historical Review 73 (1993), 476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Calnek, , ‘The ethnographic content’, vol. 3, 84–6Google Scholar; Burkhart, , The slippery earth, 151Google Scholar; Clendinnen, , Aztecs, 160Google Scholar; Carrasco, P., ‘Family structure of sixteenth-century Tepoztlan’, in Manners, R. A. ed., Process and pattern in culture: essays in honor of Julian H. Steward (Chicago, 1964), 185–210Google Scholar. Cline (personal communication) thinks that almost the entire female population married by age 20. Calnek argues (‘The ethnographic content’, vol. 3, 91Google Scholar) that the Mendoza account of the birth and marriage rituals of commoners is to be preferred over those in the Florentine Codex, which refers to social elites. Premm's discussion of marriage age, with its emphasis on education and temple duties, is clearly premised on elite experiences (see Premm, H. J., Dykerhoff, U. and Feldweg, H., ‘Reconstructing Central Mexico's population,’ Mexican 15 (05 1993), 52–3Google Scholar. Among Yucatecan Maya women marriage is reported as occurring at around 20 years of age, falling to 12 under Spanish rule, but the documentary evidence for either figure is frail; see Farriss, N. M., Maya society under colonial rule. The collective enterprise of survival (Princeton, 1984), 173, 446Google Scholar. Gruzinski, in a passage of little import to his overall theme, citing del Paso, Francisco y Troncoso, 's Papeles de Nueva España (Madrid, 1905)Google Scholar, reports that according to the Relaciones geográficas village elders of Chicoloapan recalled [more than a half century after the conquest] that among ancient norms that had become lost and abandoned was that of late marriage, at 30 years for men and 25 for females (‘Le pueblo voisin de Chicoloapan ne se risque pas non plus sur cette voie, se contentant d'ajouter à la liste des normes perdues et abandonnees le mariage tardif d'antan [à trente ans pour les hommes et vingt-cinq ans pour les femmes]’), in Gruzinski, S., La colonisation de l'imaginaire: sociétés indigènes et occidentalisation dans le Mexique espagnol XVIe–XVIIIe siecle (Paris, 1988), 119Google Scholar. This testimony of perdition lost should not be accepted at face-value (which, of course, Gruzinski does not do – see pp. 132–7), but rather as ‘an idealization of the past’ (Burkhart, , The slippery earth, 151Google Scholar). Gibson, C. concurs (The Aztecs under Spanish rule: a history of the Indians of the valley of Mexico, 1519–1810 (Stanford, 1964), 151, 504–5).Google Scholar

17 As noted by Burkhart, , in The slippery earth, 151.Google Scholar

18 ‘Micca-’ signified ‘deceased’; thus, according to Lockhart (The Nahuas after the conquest, 80Google Scholar), ‘nomon is “ray son in law” and nomiccamon is “my son in law, husband of my deceased daughter”’.

19 My conclusions are derived from the following studies: Saul, F., The human skeletal material of Altar de Sacrificios: an osteobiographic analysis (Papers of the Peabody Museum, 58, 2, Cambridge, Mass., 1972)Google Scholar; Mansilla, L. J., Las condiciones biológicas de la población prehispánica de Cholula, Puebla (Mexico City, 1980)Google Scholar; Morfín, L. Márquez, Peraza, M. E., Gamboa, J. and Miranda, T., Playa del Carmen: una población de la costa oriental en el postclásico (un estudio osteológico) (Mexico City, 1982)Google Scholar; Hodges, D. C., ‘Health and agricultural intensification in the prehistoric valley of Oaxaca, Mexico’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 73 (1987), 323–32CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Webster, D., Sanders, W. T. and van Rossum, P., ‘A simulation of Copan population history and its implications’, Ancient Mesoamerica 3 (1992), 185–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Mesoamerican archaeologists should not be accused of ignoring or overlooking skeletal remains lacking signs of severe stress. Consider specimens of the colonial Hispanic elite unearthed from the Cathedral of Mexico City. Only minimal signs of nutritional or physical stress were reported from a rigorous examination of their bones; see Morfín, L. Márquez, Sociedad colonial y enfermedad: un ensayo de osteopatología diferencial (Mexico City, 1984).Google Scholar

20 The most thorough work published in English on the mortality of prehistoric populations in the Central Mexican Basin is by Storey, R., ‘Perinatal mortality at Pre-Columbian Teotihuacán’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 69 (1986), 541–8CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, and more recently, Life and death in the ancient city of Teotihuacan. A modern paleodemographic synthesis (Tuscaloosa, 1992)Google Scholar. On the basis of an exceedingly complete set of skeletal material for Teotihuacan (300–650 AD), she calculated the remaining life expectancy from age 15 to be 20 years (compared with 53 years for all of Mexico in 1960). The only study to compare similar pre- and post-contact sites (Cholula) estimates remaining life expectancy from age 15 at 19 years in post-classic times (1325–1520 AD), reaching 33 years a century and a half after the conquest (1648–1691). See Hayward, M. H., ‘A demographic study of Cholula Mexico from the late postclassic and the colonial period of 1642–1738’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Pennsylvania State University, 1986), Table 7.5, 221–2.Google Scholar

21 Sanders, W. T., Parsons, J. R. and Santley, R. S., The Basin of Mexico: ecological processes in the evolution of a civilization (New York, 1979), Chapter 6.Google Scholar

22 Clendinnen, , Aztecs, 156.Google Scholar

23 Rodríguez, , ‘La conditión femenina’.Google Scholar

24 Storey, , ‘Perinatal mortality’Google Scholar; Hayward, , ‘A demographic study’.Google Scholar

25 McCaa, R., ‘Paradise, hells, and purgatories: population, health and nutrition in Mexican history and pre-history’, unpublished paper presented at a conference on the History of Health and Nutrition in the Americas, Columbus, Ohio, 1993Google Scholar; see Table 1.

26 Carrasco, , ‘Family structure’.Google Scholar

27 Chaunu, P., L'Espagne de Charles Quint (Paris, 1973), vol. 1, 141–5Google Scholar; for Galicia, see Dubert, , Historia de la familia en Galicia, 302ff.Google Scholar

28 Gacto, E., ‘El grupo familiar de la edad moderna en los territories del mediterráneo hispánico: una visión jurídica’, in La familia en la España mediterránea (siglos XV–XIX) (Barcelona, 1987), 36.Google Scholar

29 Alberola, P. J. Pla, ‘Familia y matrimonio en la Valencia moderna. Apuntes para su estudio’, in La familia en la España mediterránea, 127–8Google Scholar; and Phillips, C. R., ‘Time and duration: a model for the economy of early modern Spain’, American Historical Review XCII (1987), 548.Google Scholar

30 Smith, , ‘Discontinuidades cronológicas’, 55.Google Scholar

31 Boyd-Bowman, P., ‘Patterns of Spanish emigration to the Indies until 1600’, Hispanic American Historical Review 56 (1976), 600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Chaunu, , L'Espagne de Charles Quint, vol. I, 141.Google Scholar

33 See Rowland, R., ‘Sistemas matrimoniales en la Península Ibérica (siglos XVI–XIX). Una perspectiva regional’, in Moreda, V. Pérez and Reher, D. S. eds., Demografía histórica en España (Madrid, 1988), 90–2Google Scholar; and Moreda, V. Perez, ‘Matrimonio y farnilia. Algunas consideraciones sobre el modelo matrimonial español en la edad moderna’, Boletím de la Asociación de Demografía Histórica 4 (1986), 3–51Google Scholar, and his ‘Del mosaico al calidoscopio: sistemas de nupcialidad, fecundidad y familia en España y América Hispana (ss. 16–19)’, unpublished paper presented at the Poblamiento de las Americas Conference (Veracruz, 05 18–23, 1992).Google Scholar

34 M. Livi Bacci provided the first detailed analysis of the strong historical persistence of regional marriage patterns some twenty-five years ago (‘Fertility and nuptiality changes in Spain from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century’, Population Studies 22 (1968), 83–102 and 211–33).Google Scholar

35 Rowland, , ‘Sistemas matrimoniales’, 94–5Google Scholar; Berruguete, A. R. Ortega, ‘Matrimonio, fecundidad y familia en el País Vasco a fines de la Edad Moderna’, Boletín de la Asociación de Demografía Histórica 7 (1989), 47–74.Google Scholar

36 Roel, Compare A. Eiras, ‘Modèle ou modèles de démographie ancienne? Un résumé comparatif’, in La France d'ancien régime. Etudes réunies en l'honneur de Pierre Goubert (Toulouse, 1984), vol. I, 249–59Google Scholar, with Rowland, , ‘Sistemas matrimoniales’, 99Google Scholar. C. R. Phillips argues that the critical variable was the basis of the local economy – stockraising, farming, commerce, mining or manufacturing (‘Time and duration’, 551 and 555).Google Scholar

37 Rowland, , ‘Sistemas matrimoniales’, 109–12Google Scholar; Roel, A. Eiras, ‘Mecanismos autorreguladores, evolutión demográfica y diversificatión intraregional. El ejemplo de la población de Galicia a finales del siglo XVIII’, Boletín de la Asociación de Demografía Histórica 8 (1990), 66–7Google Scholar. Rowland offers a complex aggregative analysis of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century data to demonstrate the persistence of regional patterns. The printing error in the map on his page 112 detracts from the geographical patterns meticulously delineated in the author's tables and text but is corrected in a Portuguese printing in Estudos Econômicos (São Paulo) 19 (1989), 497–553Google Scholar. Regional variation in female nuptiality was greater in Spain toward the end of the nineteenth century than for any other country in Western Europe (Reher, D. S., ‘Marriage patterns in Spain, 1887–1930’, Journal of Family History 16 (1991), 9).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Examining local patterns for 476 Spanish districts in 1887, Reher finds that well over one-third of the variation in female marriage age is associated with, first, the relative indivisibility of inheritance (as measured at the provincial level) and, second, the prevalence of domestic service (‘Marriage patterns in Spain’, 22).Google Scholar

39 Smith, (‘Discontinuidades cronológicas’, 70)Google Scholar asks if this suggests that regional marriage patterns were more resistant – less malleable – to church ideology than Goody, J. argues in his Development of the family and marriage in Europe (Cambridge, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 For a discussion in the Mexican context, see Aizpuru, P. Gonzalbo, Las mujeres en la Nueva España: educación y vida cotidiana (Mexico, 1987), 44–5.Google Scholar

41 de la LLave, R. Córdoba, ‘Las relaciones extraconyugales en la sociedad castellana bajomedieval’, Anuario de Estudios Medievales (Barcelona) 16 (1986), 577, 579.Google Scholar

42 Gacto, , ‘El grupo familiar’, 39.Google Scholar

43 Alberola, Pla, ‘Familia y matrimonio’, 111Google Scholar; Valverde, L., ‘Illegitimacy and the abandonment of children in the Basque Country, 1550–1800’, in Henderson, J. and Wall, R. eds., Poor women and children in the European past (London, Routledge, forthcoming 1994)Google Scholar. Peña, F. Mikelarena and Valverde, L., in ‘Ilegitimidad y expositión en Navarra (xvi–xx)’ (unpublished paper, III Congreso de la Asociación de Demografía Histórica, Braga, Portugal, 22–24 04, 1993)Google Scholar report that over the centuries the church fought to convince the Basques to marry to prevent that they ‘juntan, coavitan y tienen tratos de la misma suerte que si estuvieran cassado’ (‘join together, cohabit and deal with one another in the same way as if they were married’). Indeed, illegitimacy in Navarre declined from over 20 per cent of births at the beginning of the seventeenth century to less than 10 per cent a century later, bottoming out at 1 per cent in the 1770s and then rebounding to 4–5 per cent in the first decades of the nineteenth century (see Valverde, , ‘Illegitimacy and the abandonment of children’, Tables 3–6).Google Scholar

44 Larquié, C., ‘Amours légitimes, amours illégitimes en Madrid au XVIIe siècle (une approche quantitative)’, in Redondo, A. ed., Amours légitimes, amours illégitimes en Espagne (XVIe–XVIIe siècles) (Paris, 1985), 80.Google Scholar

45 Livi-Bacci, , ‘Fertility and nuptiality changes in Spain’, 227Google Scholar. By 1900, overall levels had fallen to only 4.5 per cent, and regional differentials had lessened accordingly. From Mikelarena and Valverde's analysis (‘Ilegitimidad y expositión’) of illegitimate births for all Spanish provinces during the 1860s, only five had ratios above 10 per cent (Cadiz, Coruña, Lugo, Madrid and Pontevedra), seven had ratios of 5–9 per cent (Córdoba, Huelva, León, Orense, Oviedo, Salamanca and Seville), and fourteen had less than 3 per cent (Alava, Alicante, Burgos, Castellón, Cuenca, Gerona, Guadalajara, Lérida, Logroño, Navarre, Segovia, Soria, Tarragona and Teruel).

46 Dubert, , ‘Los comportamientos sexuales premaritales’, 130.Google Scholar

47 Unfortunately most studies of breach of promise do not examine evidence for the nineteenth century, when paternal authority over the marriage of minor children became absolute. See Novísima recopilación de las leyes de España (Madrid, 1805)Google Scholar, Ley ix, tít. II, libro x del 21.III.1776 and Ley XVIII, tít. II. libro x del 10.IV.1803. The law of 1803 remained in force in Mexico and was reproduced in an official edition of laws and statutes published in 1877; see Dublan, M. and Lozano, J. M. eds., Legislación Mexicana ó Colección completa de las dispositions legislativas expedidas desde la independencia de la República (Mexico City, 1877), vol. I, 301–3.Google Scholar

48 Mikelarena, and Valverde, , ‘Ilegitimidad y expositión’.Google Scholar

49 Casey, J., The history of the family (Oxford, 1989), 104.Google Scholar

50 Dublan, and Lozano, eds., Legislatión Mexicana, vol. I, 301–3Google Scholar; Arrom, S. M., ‘Cambios en la conditión jurídica de la mujer mexicana en el siglo XIX’, Memoria del II congreso de historia del derecho mexicano (Mexico City, 1981), 449.Google Scholar

51 Margadant wonders whether the decree of 1803 had the ‘“pase” necesario para valer en las Indias’ (‘official seal necessary for its enforcement in the Indies’) (see Margadant, G. F., ‘La familia en el derecho novohispano’, in Aizpuru, P. Gonzalbo ed., Familias novohispanas sighs XVI al XIX (Mexico City, 1991), 29Google Scholar. Whether this was the case or not, by 1804 the order had reached such distant locales as the northern frontier of New Spain (see McCaa, R., ‘Gustos de los padres, inclinaciones de los novios y reglas de una feria nupcial colonial: Parral, 1770–1810’, Historia Mexicana 40 (1991), 587Google Scholar), the western slopes of the Andes in Nueva Granada (Rodríguez, P., Seducción, amancebamiento y abandono en la Colonia (Santa Fé de Bogotá, 1991), 52Google Scholar) and the heartland of the Captaincy General of Chile (Cavieres, E. F. and Mesa, R. Salinas, Amor, sexo y matrimonio en Chile traditional (Valparaiso, 1991), 92Google Scholar). In Antioquia, Rodriguez discovered a local judge (alcalde) insisting that: eran demasiadas las demandas que con este motivo se presentaban, hecho que ocupaba el tiempo de la justicia y la apartaba de los asuntos importantes de la República. No obstante, reconocía que por el incumplimiento de las promesas se estaban presentando muchas madres solteras con nefastas consecuencias para la moral pública. (‘there were too many suits that were filed for this reason, such that they occupied much of the time of the law and kept it from attending to the important affairs of the Republic. Nevertheless, it was recognized that because of breach of promises there were coming forth many unwed mothers with nefarious consequences for public morals.’)

Rodriguez concludes that the authorities favoured concubinage suits over breach of promise and the like because, for the former, fines went to the authorities while for the latter fees were limited to costs. Seed, on the other hand, argues that in Mexico City by the middle of the eighteenth century sexual congress was no longer seen as sealing the nuptial obligation, but rather as a dishonour to the woman and just cause for breach of promise and abandonment (Seed, P., To love, honor and obey in colonial Mexico. Conflicts over marriage choice, 1574–1821 (Stanford, 1988), 106–8).Google Scholar

52 Tarrés, A. Simón, ‘La familia catalana en el antiguo régimen’, in La familia en la España mediterránea (sighs XV–XIX) (Barcelona, 1987), 80Google Scholar. The few studies of orphanhood and parental consent point in the same direction. During the eighteenth century in a rural Catalan community, 52–61 per cent of grooms of minor age were orphans at marriage compared with 43–80 per cent of brides. Simón Tarrés notes that Pierre Goubert computed the mean duration of unions in seventeenth century France at 15 years, compared with 13.2 years in Cataluña a century later.

53 Casey, J., ‘Le mariage clandestin en Andalousie a l'époque moderne’Google Scholar, in Redondo, ed., Amours légitimes, amours illégitimes, 67.Google Scholar

54 Alberola, Pla, ‘Familia y matrimonio’, 119.Google Scholar

55 Casey, , The history of the family, 104.Google Scholar

56 Dubert, , ‘Los comportamientos sexuales premaritales’, 133, 140.Google Scholar

57 Casey, , The history of the family, 97.Google Scholar

58 I sampled the Arxiu Diocesà de Barcelona, Sección de Procesos for roughly twenty-five-year intervals. See for example cases no. 11 (1700, secuestro), 1069 (1724, estupro), 1116 (1724, rapto), 2015 (1750, oposición de padres), 2017 (1750) and 1800/6 (cumplimiento de palabra), and 1800/48 and 1825/48 (embargo de sello). From the beginning of the nineteenth century ecclesiastical divorce (separation without the right of remarriage) accounts for some three-quarters of judicial disputes concerning marriage, although cases of breach of promise and its opposite, freedom to marry (embargo de sello), as well as abduction and rape continue to be represented. In contrast, in the previous century, there were very few divorce cases, but disputes over breach of promise, embargo de sello and the like averaged five cases per year in the diocesan court.

59 Mörner, M., Race mixture in the history of Latin America (Boston, 1967), 22Google Scholar. For a brief, popularized summary, see Stolcke, Verena, ‘Mujeres conquistadas’, Cuadernos de Ciudad 4 (1992), 25–36.Google Scholar

60 Cited in Konetzke, R., ‘El mestizaje y su importancia en el desarrollo de la poblacion hispanoamerica durante la época colonial’, Revista de Indias 23–4 (1946), 20.Google Scholar

61 ‘… le urto robo y llebo su muger’ in Archive Municipal de Hidalgo del Parral (hereafter AMP), Year 1651, Reel b, Frames 1329–1338 (i.e., AMP 165 Ib. 1329–1338). From 1631 to 1699 in this frontier mining district (pop. 3,000–5,000) 39 cases of stolen women were recorded. This compares with 65 cases of homicide and 141 of various other kinds of theft.

62 Konetzke, , ‘El mestizaje’, 45.Google Scholar

63 Aizpuru, Gonzalbo, Las mujeres en la Nueva España, 44Google Scholar: ‘Bastante frecuentes fueron las relaciones de barragania, las cuales daban a las mujeres una relativa establilidad al proporcionarles un compañero fijo’ (‘Barragania relations, which gave to women a relative stability by providing for them a fixed companion, were very frequent’). Altman's argument that among Spanish hidalgos a ‘well-entrenched pattern’ of having children outside marriage ‘proved to be ideally suited to the needs and circumstances of emigrants in the New World’ slights the vast differences between Spain and America in the scale and significance of the practice; see Altman, I., Emigrants and society in Extremadura and America in the sixteenth century (Berkeley, 1989), 151.Google Scholar

64 Hirschberg, J., ‘Social experiment in New Spain: a prosopographical study of the early settlement at Puebla de Los Angeles, 1531–1534’, Hispanic American Historical Review 59 (1979), 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65 de Humboldt, A., Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne (Paris, 1811), vol. 2, 60.Google Scholar

66 Martinez-Alier, V., Marriage, class and colour in nineteenth-century Cuba: a study of racial attitudes and sexual values in a slave society (Ann Arbor, 1989, 2nd edn), 60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 Konetzke, , ‘El mestizaje’, 48Google Scholar: ‘La residencia de los mestisos y españoles en pueblos de indios es mui perniciosa, porque estos les quitan violentamente a sus mugeres, les roban sus hijas y si hallan alguna resistencia en defenderlas, los maltratan y dan de palos, i ai mestiso que no se contenta con tener una o dos, sino seis y ocho viviendo con tanto escandalo que pierden el respeto a Dios, a sus Ministros y a todo el mundo.’

68 Cline, S. L., Colonial Culhuacan, 1580–1600: a social history of an Aztec town (Albuquerque, 1986), 122.Google Scholar

69 Gruzinski, , ‘La “conquista de los cuerpos”’, 178–9Google Scholar. The sexual activities of the ruling elite are related in graphic detail in the Codex Chimalpopoca; see Bierhorst, John (trans.), History and mythology of the Aztecs: the Codex Chimalpopoca (Tucson, 1992), 38, 50, 84–5, 108, 113, 119, 150.Google Scholar

70 The classic account of early attempts to administer the marriage sacrament to natives of the Central Mexican Basin (Ricard, R., The spiritual conquest of Mexico: an essay on the apostolate and the evangelizing methods of the mendicant orders in New Spain: 1523–1572 (Berkeley, 1966Google Scholar; first published 1933)) dwells almost exclusively on the issue of polygamy, reflecting the obsession of the friars themselves (pp. 109–16).

71 Lockhart, , The Nahuas after the conquest, 255, 555.Google Scholar

72 Ricard, , The spiritual conquest, 112Google Scholar; for an exhaustive survey of the missionaries’ own testimonies, confessionals, catechisms and correspondence regarding their efforts to extend Christian marriage among the Mexica, see Ragon, , Les Indiens de la découverte, 169 ff.Google Scholar

73 See Cline, , ‘The spiritual conquest reexamined’, 472–80Google Scholar, and also her The book of tributes: early sixteenth-century Nahuatl censuses from Morelos (Los Angeles, 1993)Google Scholar. A second set of early Nahautl censuses are translated into the German and published in Hinz, E., Hartau, C. and Heimann-Koenen, M.-L. eds., Aztekischer Zensus. Zur Indianischen Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im Marquesado um 1540: Aus dem ‘Libra de Tributes’ (Col. Ant. Ms. 551) im Archivo Histórico, México (Hanover, 1983).Google Scholar

74 Gruzinski, , ‘La “conquista de los cuerpos”’, 204–6.Google Scholar

75 Cline, , ‘The spiritual conquest reexamined’, 473ffGoogle Scholar. The quotation is on page 480; translations from the Nahuatl above are by Cline. See also her The Book of Tributes.

76 S. L. Cline, personal communication; Gibson noted the lack of evidence that clerics or encomenderos promoted early marriage, other than a royal decree from 1581 which asserted as much (The Aztecs under Spanish rule, 504).Google Scholar

77 Beltrán, G. Aguirre, La población negra de Mexico (Mexico City, 1972).Google Scholar

78 Carroll, P. J., Blacks in colonial Veracruz: race, ethnicity and regional development (Austin, Texas, 1991)Google Scholar. My percentages allow for all types of crossings.

79 Alberró, S., ‘La sexualidad manipulada en Nueva España: modalidades de recuperación y de adaptation frente a los tribunales eclesiásticos’, in Familia y sexualidad en Nueva España (Mexico City, 1982), 238–57.Google Scholar

80 See Calvo, T., Acatzingo: demografia de una parroquia mexicana (Mexico City, 1973)Google Scholar and ‘Concubinato y mestizaje’; Morin, C., ‘Los libros parroquiales como fuente para la historia demogr´fica y social novohispana’, Historia Mexicana XXI (1972), 389–418Google Scholar; and Brinckmann, L., ‘El siglo XVIII en Mexico. Natalidad y mortalidad en Tecali (Puebla), 1701–1801’, Siglo XIX 4 (1989), 219–69.Google Scholar

81 Boyer, R., ‘Women, la mala vida, and the politics of marriage’, in Lavrin, A. ed., Sexuality and marriage in colonial Latin America (Lincoln, 1989), 252–86Google Scholar. Gutierrez finds a similar pattern in eighteenth-century Nuevo Mexico (Gutierrez, R., When Jesus came the corn mother went away (Stanford, 1991), 285).Google Scholar

82 Calvo, , ‘Concubinato y mestizaje’, 203.Google Scholar

83 Valdes, D. N., ‘The decline of the sociedad de Castas in Mexico City’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis. University of Michigan, 1978), 33.Google Scholar

84 Rabell, C., La población novohispana a la luz de los registros parroquiales (avances y perspectivas de investigation) (Mexico City, 1990), 21–3.Google Scholar

85 Maternal mortality was high in colonial New Spain, but general mortality of men was even higher. For a discussion of sex differentials in mortality and migration at the end of colonial rule, see McCaa, R., ‘The peopling of nineteenth century mexico: critical scrutiny of a censured century’, in Statistical abstract of Latin America (Los Angeles, 1993), vol. 30, 622–8.Google Scholar

86 Calvo, , ‘Concubinato y mestizaje’, Table 1.Google Scholar

87 Calvo, T., ‘Familia y registro parroquial: el caso tapatio en el siglo XVII’, Relaciones, estudios de historia y sociedad 10 (1982), 60–1Google Scholar. Calvo's research on colonial Guadalajara offers the most detailed insights into the workings of mestizaje and concubinage in New Spain; see Guadalajara y su región en el siglo XVII. Población y economia (Guadalajara, Jal., 1992).Google Scholar

88 Giraud, F., ‘De las problemáticas europeas al caso novohispano: apuntes para una historia de la familia mexicana’, Familia y sexualidad en Nueva España (Mexico City, 1982), 75.Google Scholar

89 Much more sanguine were the prospects for wealthy widows, but their fascinating experiences should not be confused with the norm (Lavrin, A. and Couturier, E., ‘Dowries and wills: a view of women's socio-economic role in colonial Guadalajara and Puebla, 1640–1790’, Hispanic American Historical Review 69 (1979), 280–304)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a view from within the village see Kanter, D., ‘Hijos del Pueblo: family, community, and gender in rural Mexico, the Toluca Region, 1730–1830’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1993)Google Scholar; and McCaa, R., ‘La viuda viva del México borbónico: sus voces, variedades y vejaciones’, in Gonzalbo Aizpuru ed., Familias novohispanas, 299–324.Google Scholar

90 My argument of why ‘feria nupcial’ may be a more appropriate metaphor than ‘marriage market’ for nuptial bargaining in multiracial colonial Mexico is summarized in McCaa, , ‘Gustos de los padres’, 581.Google Scholar

91 Arrom, S. M., The women of Mexico City, 1790–1857 (Stanford, 1985).Google Scholar

92 Morfin, L. Márquez, ‘La evolución cuantitativa de la población novohispana: siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII’, in Consejo Nacional de Población, El poblamiento de México: una visión histórico-demográgica (Mexico City, 1993), vol. 2, 50.Google Scholar

93 Morin, C., ‘Demographic et différences ethniques en Amérique latine coloniale’, Annales de Demographie Historique (1977), 301–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

In contrast, a recent paper argues that in Brazil colonial roots were more important than race or the frontier in fostering delayed marriage and high rates of illegitimacy. The author argues that these forms of marriageways were common to all races in Minas Gerais and were similar to family formation patterns of the Portuguese who settled in this district, many of whom were from Minho in Northern Portugal. See Ramos, Donald, ‘From Minho to Minas: the Portuguese roots of the Mineiro family’, Hispanic American Historical Review 73 (1993), 639–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

94 Among settled Indian groups, the presence of unmarried adult females was rare, often as little as one or two per thousand. Either Indian women married at an early age or they migrated to Hispanic cities. In addition to sources listed in the following note, see McCaa, R., ‘Descenso de la fecundidad en México antes de 1930? Hidalgo de Parral (Chihuahua) y Santiago Zautla (Puebla)’, Tercera Reunión Nacional Sobre la Investigation Demográfica en México (Mexico City, forthcoming).Google Scholar

95 Morin, C., Santa Ines Zacatelco (1646–1812): contribución a la demografia histórica del México colonial (Mexico City, 1973)Google Scholar; Brading, D. A. and Wu, C., ‘Population growth and crisis: León, 1720–1860’, Journal of Latin American Studies 5 (1973), 1–36CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Romero, C. A. Rabell, ‘El patrón de nupcialidad en una parroquia rural novohispana: San Luis de la Paz, Guanajuato, siglo XVIII’ in Memorias de la la Reunión Nacional sobre la Investigatión Demográgica en México (Mexico City, 1978), 419–32.Google Scholar

96 y Noriega, F. Navarro, Memoria sobre la población del reino de Nueva España (México, 1820), 28Google Scholar: Es interesante la observacion de algunos curiosos sobre la anticipacion de edad con que los naturales de este reino verifican sus matrimonios: en efecto confrontado el censo general existente en la secretaria con el formado en la Peninsula el año de 1797 resulta, que el numero de casados de ambos sexos antes de los 16 años de edad es en esta Nueva España por cada 1 mil habitantes, cuando en España solamente llegan a . Esta aceleracion á ponerse en estado, puede considerarase no solo como un efecto del influjo flsico del clima y de los alimentos, sino tambien como una consecuencia de otros principios cuales son, la educacion y costumbres, especialmente de los indios, las ideas morales ó tal vez interesadas de algunos curas, y las persuasiones de los gobernadores y alcaldes de las repúblicas para hacer mas lucrativos sus oficios por las duplicadas gabelas que se exigen a los casados.

97 Morin, , Santa Ines Zacatelco.Google Scholar

98 It has been asserted that for Mexico City there are no differences in females ages at marriage by race (Pescador, J. J., ‘Patrones demográficos urbanos en la Nueva España, 1700–1820’, and in Consejo Nacional de Población, El poblamiento de México: una visión histórico-demográfica (Mexico City, 1993), vol. II, 124–5)Google Scholar, but the dataset used to support this argument is a biased sample, heavily tilted towards marriages involving migrants, and excludes all marriages involving Indians. The data (reported in Pescador, J. J., De Bautizados a fieles difuntos. Familia y mentalidades en una parroquia urbana: Santa Catarina de Mexico, 1568–1820 (Mexico City, 1992), 151)Google Scholar show mestizo women marrying on average one-half year younger than ‘espanolas’, and mulatto women one-half a year later (mean ages of 20.1, 20.6 and 21.1 years, respectively for 6,100 first marriages, 1720–1800). These cases refer to marriage applications which were forwarded to the ecclesiastical courts for whatever reason and thus should not be considered an unbiased sample of the quarter- to a half-million marriages which were probably registered in Mexico City during this period. Casta and Indian women were much more likely to have migrated to Mexico City (50.5–62.6 per cent) than españolas (43.9 per cent; see Arrom, The women of Mexico City, 108, 159; computed from data reported in Tables 3 and 15 there). For highly migratory populations, nuptiality measures should take into account migration status.

99 Margadant, , ‘La familia en el derecho novohispano’.Google Scholar

100 McCaa, , ‘Guestos de los padres’, 591.Google Scholar

101 The application of the edict was not absolute. Custom continued to rule in some localities. See Rosa de Ocaña contra Marcos Serrano par haverla este burlado vajo palabra de casamiento, Zacatelco, 20–iv–1808, Genealogical Society of Utah microfilm no. 0305006; upon receipt of 30 pesos recompense this ‘ynfeliz hija de una madre viuda’ (‘forlorn daughter of a widowed mother’) released the accused from his vow and permitted him to marry another ‘que tiene averes por las proporciones que de publico y notorio gozan sus padres’ (‘who has assets of the proportions which her parents enjoy as is publicly known’).

102 AMP 1658c.1553.

103 Lavrin, A., ‘Sexuality in colonial Mexico: a church dilemma’, in Lavrin ed., Sexuality and marriage, 62Google Scholar; and Seed, P., ‘Marriage promises and the value of a woman's testimony in colonial Mexico’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 13 (1988), 259ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the mid-eighteenth-century ruling of the Council of the Indies which advised Mexican courts to vary the penalties for breach of promise according to the relative equality of the parties (Martinez-Alier, , Marriage, class and colour, 101).Google Scholar

104 Seed, (‘Marriage promises’, 270)Google Scholar reads the transition to written promises as ‘foreshadowing alienation of men from their personal integrity, their honor, with the result that they no longer felt an intensely personal obligation to fulfill promises that were merely spoken’. Notarized statements were more difficult to evade, but there is little evidence for their use in Mexico. Nor are seduction and breach of promise suits found with any frequency in nineteenth-century Mexican judicial archives, although this source has been little exploited by family historians. In Parral, absence of seduction suits persists for more than a century, until 1923 when the parents of an eleven-year-old girl won a conviction against a 36-year-old man.

105 Arrom, S. M., ‘Changes in Mexican family law in the nineteenth century: the civil codes of 1870 and 1884’, Journal of Family History X (1985), 305–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Civil Matrimony Law of 23 July 1859 reduced the age of majority to 21 for males and 20 for females, but retained the provision that only notarized promises of marriage were valid (Dublan, and Lozano, eds., Legislación Mexicana, vol. 7, 691–4).Google Scholar

106 Institute Nacional de Estadistica, Geografia y Informática (INEGI), Primer censo de población de la Nueva España 1790. Censo de Revillagigedo, un censo condenado (Mexico City, 1977), 107–26Google Scholar. I do not consider regions where age distributions were estimated by the INEGI – Oaxaca, Puebla, San Luis Potosi, Yucatán, Veracruz and Guadalajara (Jalisco). Although the Revillagigedo census is the best of the colonial era, it is seriously deficient in comparison with early Spanish censuses or the first national Mexican census. Figures for 1900 are from Dirección General de Estadistica, Resumen general del censo de la República Mexicana verificado el 28 de octubre de 1900 (Mexico City, 1905), vol. 34.Google Scholar

107 See McCaa, , ‘The peopling of nineteenth century Mexico’, 622Google Scholar; unfortunately, Mexican census publications before 1930 seem to count both religious and consensual unions as unmarried.

108 McCaa, R., ‘Women's position, family and fertility decline in Parral (Mexico City), 1777–1930’, Annales de Démographie Historique (1989), 236, 238, 240.Google Scholar

109 Archive General de la Nación, Sección Gobernación, Fomento y Obras Püblicas, Ramo de Censo y Estadistica. Films are available from the Genealogical Society of Utah.

110 Quilodrán, J., ‘Mexico: diferencias de nupcialidad por regiones y tamaños de localidad’, Estudios Demograficos y Urbanos 4, 3 (1989), 597, 601, 605Google Scholar. Cruz, S. Camposortega, ‘Mortalidad en México. Algunas consideraciones sobre los diferenciales urbanorurales’Google Scholar, ibid., 576.

111 Sanchez, B. Cachinero, ‘La evolutión de la nupcialidad en España, 1887–1975’, Revista Española de Investigatión Sociológica 20 (1982), 81–99.Google Scholar

112 Moreda, Perez, ‘Matrimonio y familia’, 6.Google Scholar