UCLA

Women in colonial Mexico engaged in magical practices to exert power over their households and communities. These practices often involved feeding one’s husband substances, such as menstrual blood and donkey brains, intended to tame or bewitch him. By analyzing reports made to the Mexican Inquisition about women’s use of magic substances, this thesis seeks to explain the symbolic power that these materials held in colonial Mexican society. It views love magic as a practice of primarily Iberian origin which flourished in colonial Mexico as Spanish, Indigenous, and mixed-race women sought to exert control over marriages increasingly defined by patriarchal gender roles. It thus challenges the idea that Mesoamerican women were practicing love magic prior to the arrival of Europeans. Furthermore, this study treats menstrual blood and donkey brains as “marginal” substances, both because they had crossed the boundary of the body and because they were a source of power for those who lived at the margins of society. This approach allows us to examine how Spanish anxieties around religion and gender gave rise to a host of magical practices that persisted throughout the colonial era.