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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 February 2014
In late eighteenth-century Mexico City, Spanish colonials, particularly members of the urban middle and popular classes, performed a number of weddings and baptisms on puppies (which were wearing clothes or bejewelled collars) in the context of fandangos or dance parties. These ceremonies were not radical challenges to orthodoxy or conservative reactions in the face of significant economic, political, religious and cultural Bourbon reforms emanating from Spain. Employing Inquisitorial investigations of these ceremonies, this article explores the rise of pet keeping, the meanings of early modern laughter and the implications of the cultural and religious components of the Enlightenment-inspired Bourbon reforms in late colonial Mexico.
A fines del siglo XVIII en la ciudad de México, colonos españoles, particularmente urbanos de las clases media y popular, realizaron un número de casamientos y bautizos de perritos (portando ropa o collares con joyas) en el contexto de los fandangos o fiestas de baile. Estas ceremonias no eran desafíos radicales a la ortodoxia o reacciones conservadoras frente a las importantes reformas económicas, políticas, religiosas y culturales borbónicas que emanaban de España. Empleando investigaciones inquisitoriales de estas ceremonias, el artículo explora el surgimiento de las mascotas, los significados de los inicios de la risa moderna, y las implicaciones de los componentes culturales y religiosos de las Reformas Borbónicas inspiradas por la Ilustración en el México colonial tardío.
Na Cidade do México, colonos espanhóis, particularmente membros da classe média e popular, promoveram vários casamentos e batizados de filhotes de cachorros (vestidos a rigor ou com coleiras adornadas) no contexto dos fandangos ou festas dançantes do final do século XVIII. Estas cerimônias não eram enfrentamentos radicais à ortodoxia ou reações conservadoras em virtude das significativas reformas econômicas, políticas, religiosas e culturais bourbônicas originadas na Espanha. Empregando investigações inquisitoriais destas cerimônias, este artigo explora o aumento da criação de animais de estimação, os significados da risada em tempos modernos, e as implicações no México colonial tardio dos componentes cultural e religioso das reformas bourbônicas inspiradas no Iluminismo.
1 ‘El S[eño]r Inq[uisido]r Fiscal de este S[anto] O[ffico] contra D[o]n Thoribio Basterrachea clerigo ordinado in sacri por haber hecho de ministro en el matrimonio de unos perros. Cuidad de Mexico (1771)’, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, Manuscript Collection, 96/95m, vol. 10 (hereafter ‘Contra Thoribio Basterrachea’).
2 Based on a keyword search in ARGENA II, the complete computerised index of the Ramo de Inquisición from the Archivo General de la Nación de México (hereinafter AGN INQ). Zeb Tortorici also uses these cases to explore the metaphoric meanings of animals in theological debates on the nature of animal-human relations in ‘“In the Name of the Father and Mother of All Dogs”: Canine Baptisms, Weddings, and Funerals in Bourbon Mexico’, in Few, Martha and Tortorici, Zeb (eds.), Centering Animals: Writing Animals into Latin American History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), pp. 93–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 ‘Contra Thoribio Basterrachea’, fol. 10.
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11 Patricia Seeds argues for the rise of the economically self-interested ‘modern individual’ in To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574–1821 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988); Pamela Voekel focuses on the religious origins of the rise of the modern ‘internally regulated’ or bounded individual in Alone Before God; Brian Larkin adds Foucauldian notions of modernity to Voekel's consideration in The Very Nature of God; Irene Silverblatt explores bureaucratisation and racial thinking as markers of modernity in Modern Inquisitions: Peru and the Colonial Origins of the Civilized World (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); and John Tutino, while not focused on modernity per se, argues that the world's first capitalist society developed in northern New Spain, not England, in Making a New World: Founding Capitalism in the Bajío and Spanish North America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).
12 Peter Burke warns both against seeking too clean a break between ‘festival’ and ‘leisure’ culture associated with the transition from pre-modern to modern society and against assuming continuity and projecting modern concepts back onto the past in his ‘The Invention of Leisure in Early Modern Europe’, Past & Present, 146 (1995), p. 138.
13 ‘Contra Thoribio Basterrachea’, fol. 28.
14 Ibid., fols. 4–5, 11–12.
15 Venegas, Manuel, Manual de parrocos, para administrar los Santos Sacramentos, y exercer otras funciones Ecclesiasticas conforme al Ritual Roman (Mexico: Por Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, ministro, ê impressor del Real, y Apostolico Tribunal de la Santa Cruzada, en toda esta Nueva-España, 1731), pp. 115–17Google Scholar.
16 Ibid.
17 ‘Contra Thoribio Basterrachea’, fols. 73–8.
18 San Antonio Abad's January festival day, which includes animal blessing in churches, is another possibility: see Hobgood-Oster, Laura, Holy Dogs and Asses: Animals in the Christian Tradition (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008), p. 110Google Scholar.
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20 The crown never approved this reduction: see Peñafort, Luisa Zahino, El cardenal Lorenzana y el IV Concilio provincial mexicano (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1999), pp. 146–7Google Scholar; and Concilio III provincial mexicano celebrado en México el año de 1585 (1st edition, Mexico City: Porrúa, 1859), pp. 135–7.
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23 ‘El S[eño]r. Inquisidor fiscal de este Santo Oficio contra don Antonio Balbuena, don Baltasar Garcia de Mendieta escribano mayor del cabildo de la N[uestra] C[iudad], en cuya casa de campo en la calzada de la Tlaxpana, bautizaron a dos perritos, para agasajar a una de sus hijas llamada Magdalena (la que estaba enferma de perlesia). [Ciudad de] Mexico (1771)’, AGN INQ vol. 1241, exp. 4 (hereafter ‘Contra Antonio Balbuena’), fols. 64–6.
24 See ‘“Courtship and Leisure on the Terrace of a Country Home”, Anonymous, Mexico, c. 1750–60’, in Gomar, Rogelio Ruiz and Bargellini, Clara (eds.), Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521–1821 (Denver, CO: Denver Art Museum, 2004), pp. 150–4Google Scholar; or for a representation of a festival complete with maypole, see ‘“Festival in an Indian Village”, Anonymous, Mexico, c. 1650–1700’, in ibid., pp. 226–9.
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28 Ibid., fol. 72.
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30 The mock baptisms were more problematic than the wedding. Any Christian could perform a binding baptism provided they used water and the Benediction. The wedding could never be binding because the bride and groom, not the priest, bestowed the sacrament on each other through their willing participation.
31 Diccionario de la lengua castellana, vol. 5 (Madrid: Herrederos del Francisco del Hierro, 1737), p. 320.
32 O'Hara, ‘Orthodox Underworld’, p. 237.
33 For the distinctions between the elite, middling and plebeian classes in colonial Latin America, see Socolow, Susan Migden, ‘Introduction’, in Hoberman, Louisa Schell and Socolow, Susan Migden (eds.), Cities and Society in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), pp. 8–9Google Scholar.
34 ‘Señor Inquisidor fiscal del Santo Oficio contra Jose Armas, de oficio sastre, de calidad española. Por haber bautizado unos perros. Cuidad de Mexico (1780)’, AGN INQ, vol. 1535, exp. 5 (hereafter ‘Contra Jose Armas’), fols. 172–227.
35 For the symbolic importance of the oils, see Catechism of the Council of Trent, pp. 135–6.
36 ‘Contra Jose Armas’, fols. 177–80.
37 Burke, Popular Culture, pp. 122–3, 185; Thomas, Keith, ‘The Place of Laughter in Tudor and Stuart England’, Times Literary Supplement, 21 Jan. 1977, p. 78Google Scholar; Cressy, David, Agnes Bowker's Cat: Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 173Google Scholar.
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39 ‘Contra Jose Armas’, fol. 194. Barbara Mauldin explores the modern tradition of selecting padrinos for communally and privately owned icons of El Niño Santo (the Holy Child), who were charged with clothing the idols and taking them to church to be blessed in rural Mexico: see ‘Images of the Christ Child: Devotions and Iconography in Europe and New Spain’, unpubl. PhD diss., University of New Mexico, 2001.
40 ‘Autos sobre unos bautismos y casamientos de muñecas efectuados en la ciudad de Zacatecas’ (1719), AGN INQ, vol. 777, exp. 63, fol. 473.
41 Tagle, E. Gîmez, ‘Castorena y Ursúa, Juan Ignacio de’, in New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (2nd edition, Detroit, MI: Gale, 2003), p. 218Google Scholar.
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43 I have yet to discover the significance of that phrase.
44 ‘Contra Antonio Balbuena’, fols. 64–70; ‘Contra Jose Armas’, fols. 185–7, 190–3.
45 For similar lines of inquiry, see Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre, pp. 75–104; and Clifford Geertz, ‘Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight’, in his Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 417–9.
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50 In his compelling study of Spanish intellectual discourses on or about animals, Abel Alves postulates that pampered pets ‘seem to have been kept by families of different social ranks’ in early modern Spain: see The Animals of Spain, p. 160. However, he does not explicitly consider how the history of Spanish pet keeping may have evolved.
51 Ibid., p. 56.
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58 Voekel, Alone Before God, pp. 33–4.
59 Guridi y Alcocer is perhaps most well known as a key creole advocate at the Cortes of Cádiz: see Brading, D. A., The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 574–5Google Scholar. José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi identified Guridi y Alcocer as the author when he included this tract, with commentary, in his 1818 novel, La Quijotita y su prima (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1973), pp. 193–203. For more in-depth interpretations of ‘Funerary Honours’, see Isabel Terán E, Ma.., ‘Dos sátiras del siglo XVIII contra la actitudes funerarias barrocas’, in Nogal, Bárbara Skinfill and Bravo, Eloy Gómez (eds.), Las dimensiones del arte emblemático (Michoacán: El Colegio de Michoacán and Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, 2002), pp. 247–62Google Scholar; Tortorici, ‘In the Name of the Father’.
60 ‘Honras fúnebres a la perra Pamela’ (transcribed by Edmundo O'Gorman), Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación, 15: 3 (1944), pp. 537, 542–3. Hester Hastings identified in French literature a similar tendency to satirise the ‘excessive affection’ that elite ladies bestowed on their pets: see Hastings, Hester, Man and Beast in French Thought of the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1936), pp. 210–12Google Scholar.
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62 Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre, p. 99. Umberto Eco rejects the ‘revolutionary’ nature of Carnivalesque laughter in his ‘The Frames of Comic “Freedom”’, in Carnival! (Berlin: Mouton Publishers, 1984).
63 Bakhtin, Rabelais, pp. 21, 38. Daniel Wickberg presents a model of laughter at odds with Bakhtin in The Senses of Humor: Self and Laughter in Modern America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).
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65 The author wishes to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for this specific language.
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69 ‘Contra Manuel de Cordova’, fol. 402.
