“Naturalmente tímidas e inclinadas a la compasión”. Rebeldía y sometimiento femeninos en el mundo maya colonial

Abstract

Using an analysis and presentation of documents from the colonial era, this essay seeks to demonstrate, in spite of a stereotype that has been widely disseminated, that women living in the Maya area throughout this period were not always submissive, resigned and conforming to the directives of their patriarchal and androcentric societies. Rather, they found ways to manifest their inconformity and disagreements, explicitly and implicitly, through the same roles that men and communities used to condemn them. The documentary evidence used to support these suppositions comes from court proceedings, civil (in particular wills and intestates) and criminal, including references to ecclesiastic trials. It will be shown that this type evidence can help us understand the modalities of female subjugation and rebelliousness during the colonial period. This subject matter has is often avoided in the historical treatments of social cultural identities, even though it provides important insights into topics such as family and community social-economic structures, intergenerational and gender relationships in past eras and, above all, the transparency of the inequities confronting women in the sphere of the law and their constant struggle to overcome these difficulties.