The Chimalpahin Conference 2007:
Colonial and Post-Colonial Remembering and Forgetfulness
October 16 - 18, 200
7
Masculinity, Empire, and Gender in the Genesis and Historical Memory of the Cortes Conspiracy (1566)
Jacqueline Holler
Department of History and Women's Studies
University of Northern British Columbia,
Prince George (Canada)
The Cortes Conspiracy of 1566 was a major convulsion for the elite of sixteenth-century Mexico City. The conspiracy, which can be understood as a nostalgia movement based on a wistful conqueror reimagining of Mexican history, brought at least two views of Mexican past and present (and the Spanish imperium) into serious conflict. Masculinity played an important role in the conflict and in subsequent historical rememberings thereof. During the conflict, norms of noble European masculinity such as ritual combat, exaggerated deference, and even drinking became emblems of adherence to either royalist or conspirator faction.
After the conflict, writers like Fray Juan de Torquemada and Francisco Cervantes Salazar deployed gendered behaviours as evidence both of European corruption (best embodied by Martin Cortes) and creole purity. In sometimes surprising ways, masculinity became an actor in the conspiracy and its remembering. This paper studies the role of gendered status-linked behaviours in the genesis and memory of the Cortes Conspiracy, and links its findings to recent scholarship on imperial masculinity and feminization in the early modern Spanish Empire (Sidney Donnell, Federico Garza Garvajal).
About Jacqueline Holler
Jacqueline Holler is associate professor of History and Women's Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George, Canada. She is author of Escogidas Plantas (Columbia, 2005) and of articles on early colonial New Spain. She is currently engaged in a book-length study of the Cortes Conspiracy.