Conquistadores y misioneros frente al "pecado nefando"
Year: 1992
Type: article
Abstract: The main problem facing scholars of homosexuality in Mesoamerica is the nature of the available sources. To our knowledge, there are no archaeological documents, nor any artistic or pictographic representations related to the subject. Our study, therefore, will be based essentially on writings of European origin: accounts by the Spanish conquistadors and chronicles by religious figures. We will also use the works of Indigenous authors who wrote in their own languages or in Spanish, but we must remember that these were writers converted to Christianity, who presented a positive image of the conquered civilizations in their works and, therefore, sometimes concealed their less favorable aspects from their perspective. It is thus futile to search the surviving documentation for texts in favor of or written by homosexuals. No Mayan Catullus, no Aztec Sappho left us their testimonies. We should add that the ideological or moral biases of certain editors hinder the researcher's task, as they sometimes "forget" passages relating to practices they disapprove of or consider shameful for ancient pre-Columbian societies. Finally, we should note the existence of valuable data on this topic in ethnographic literature.
Author: Guilhem Olivier
Institution: Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès
Language: Spanish
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2176238907