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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2015
On February 8, 1785, the Gazeta de Mxico, one of New Spain's first news periodicals, published an announcement from the city of Guanajuato celebrating the recent birth of a pair of conjoined twins:
Doa Rafaela Cortshas delivered two children from one birth, joined together at the back of their heads by the skull. They received the holy waters of baptism and were christened Joseph Nepomuceno Guadalupe and Joseph Ignacio Guadalupe Many people, admiring these rare effects of nature, have visited them, and there has been no record in these twins of any deformity or defect in their separate and agile bodies The few doctors and surgeons residing in the city have considered separating them, but have not found it advisable because of the manner in which they are united, and every day more news circulates about their existence and longevity, causing ever more admiration for them given that the first one was born foot-first, and in delivering him, the midwife discovered the knot that joined the two heads.
The Fonds Qubcois de la recherche sur la socit et la culture Nouveaux Chercheurs program provided funding for this research. All translations from Spanish are my own. Thanks to The America two anonymous readers and its editorial board for their useful input as well as to Edward Osowski, Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, Christian Bcrco, Shannon McSheffrey, Jordi Montblanch, and Emma Park. Meg Leitold diligently scoured Gazeta microfilms to ensure I had missed no monsters.
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11. Castaeda, Ruiz, La tercera gaceta de la Nueva Espaa, p. 144.Google Scholar
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13. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. I, nm. 3, (February 11, 1784), p. 20.
14. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. I, nm. 43 (October 23, 1787), p. 417.
15. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. I, nm. 4 (February 25, 1784), p. 28.
16. Gazeta de Mxico,Tom. Ill, nm. 26 (February 24, 1789), p. 253.
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18. Ibid., p. 166.
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30. Gazeta de Mexico, Tom. 1, nm. 2 (January 28, 1784), pp. 12–13.
31. See Voekcl, Alone Before God.
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37. Click, Thomas F., Science and Independence in Latin America (With Special Reference to New Granada), Hispanic American Historical Review 71 (1991), p. 332.Google Scholar
38. The mortality rates in these unusual births were high. Announcements were generally published a few weeks after the births; at the time of publication, offspring were surviving in 13 out of 24 instances of multiple births and only three out of the 20 monstrous births.
39. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. V, nm. 74 (December 30, 1793), pp. 709–710.
40. Premo, Bianca, Children of the father King: Touth, Authority, and Legal Minority in Colonial Lima, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), pp. 99–100.Google Scholar
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42. Segura, Ignacio, Avisos saludables a las parteras para el cumplimiento de su obligacin, (Mexico: D. Felipe de Zuiga y Ontiveros, 1775), p. 8.Google Scholar
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54. Sneidern, Von, Joined at the Hip, p. 214.Google Scholar
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57. Adank, Drwall, Accommodation and Innovation, pp. 222–223, 240-241.Google Scholar
58. bid., p. 241.
59. AGNM, General de Parte 1799 v. 76 exp. 208, 153. This is possibly the same monstrous child as the one discussed below and pictured in Figure 4; the bodys construction is the same, and the geographic and temporal context could apply to both cases. The boys father in the earlier Gazeta notice is recorded as Antonio Ramn.
60. Daston, and Park, , Wonders and the Order of Nature, pp. 201–209.Google Scholar
61. Ledere, Georges Louis, Buffon, comte de, Natural History, General and Particular, by the Count de Buffon, translated into English. With occasional notes and observations by the translator. Vol. 2. of 9 vols. (Edinburgh: printed for William Creech, 1780–1785), p. 416.Google Scholar Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, . Last accessed February 22, 2007.
62. Daston, and Park, , Wonders and the Order of Nature, p. 172.Google Scholar Similar observations are included in Stephen Pender, No Monsters at the Resurrection: Inside Some Conjoined Twins, in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).Google Scholar
63. For example, the 1780 dictionary Diccionario de la lengua castellana compuesto por la Real Academia Espaola defines monster as something produced against nature, but also as anything excessively large or extraor-dinary in any tine.
64. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. I, nm. 30 (February 8, 1785), p. 241.
65. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. I, nm. 4 (February 25, 1784), p. 28.
66. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. I, nm. 39 (July 12, 1785), p. 349. A similar announcement originating in Chi-lapa ran a few months later in the Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. I, nm. 51 (November 22, 1785), p. 441.
67. There is a community called Santa Catarina Quiane just south of Oaxaca City. Penelope Orozco Snchez, the curator of the Biblioteca Francisco de Burgoas exhibits, informed me that the library has no means of further tracing the larger manuscript from which this page is extracted, or its author.
68. These multiple meanings are found in several eighteenth-century editions of the Diccionario de la lengua castellana published by the Real Academia.
69. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. I, nm. 30 (February 8, 1785), p. 267.
70. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. Ill, nm. 31 (May 19, 1789), p. 306.
71. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. V, nm. 74 (December 30, 1793), pp. 709–710.
72. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. VI, nm. 86 (December 23, 1794), p. 709.
73. Besides the perfectly formed and organized infant body described above, the Gazeta also reported the birth of a girl born with only one eye, all of whose members were perfect and compiete bciow the neck. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. XI, nm. 16 (August 18, 1802), p. 121. A baby born with a monstrous face and several other irregularities nevertheless possessed a perfect right arm. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. I, nm. 23 (November 17,1784), p. 185. A 1787 notice described an eight-year-old boy born without arms and only one leg who managed to move about with the most perfection. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. II, nm. 37 (June 19, 1787), p. 370. Two similar sets of fetuses arc similarly described in Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. II, nm. 40 (August 21, 1787), p. 395 and Tomo III, nm. 10 (June 17, 1788), p. 74. Martha Few found a similar case of conjoined twins born with two distinctly perfect bodies, despite their possession of three legs in Guatemala in 1675. Few, Atlantic World Monsters, p. 213.
74. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. XI, num. 45 (September 28, 1803), p. 365.
75. Gazeta He Mxico, Tom. VI, nm. 71 (November 13, 1794), p. 638.
76. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. II, nm. 13 (July 11, 1786), p. 153.
77. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. XIII, nm. 32 (April 19, 1806), p. 257.
78. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. I, nm. 21 (October 20, 1784), p. 169.
79. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. I, nm. 30 (February 8, 1785), p. 267.
80. Ibid.
81. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. I, nm. 51 (November 22, 1785), p. 440.
82. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom. VI, nm. 77 (November 13, 1794), p. 638.
83. Gazeta de Mxico, Tom, V, nm. 74 (December 30, 1793), p. 709.Google Scholar Other medical procedures arc detailed in Gazeta de Mexico, Tom, V, num. 9 (May 8, 1792), p. 84;Google Scholar Tom, I, num. 33 (February 8, 1785), p. 267;Google Scholar Tom, I, num. 25 (April 19, 1785), p. 282;Google Scholar and Tom, V, num. 9 (May 8, 1792), p. 84.Google Scholar
84. Archivo General de Indias [hereafter AGI], MP-MEXICO, 420BIS/26-02-1789/Criatura deforme. New-Spains viceroy sent another similar notice to the king of Spain with an accompanying image in 1817. AGI, ESTADO, 31, . 57/31-05-1817. Martha Few discovered that the cadaver of the 1675 monstrous child was displayed in the homes of Santiagos elite citizens. Few, Atlantic World Monsters, p. 214.
85. AGI, Mapas y Planos, Filipinas, 105.
86. Premo, Children of the father King, 137.
87. AGI, Mexico, 1426.
88. David Bradings The First America is the standard treatment of creole patriotism.
89. For a discussion of the origins of the idea of American degeneration, see Ralph, Bauer and Mazzotti, Jos Antonio, Introduction: Creole Subjects in the Colonial Americas, in Creole Subjects in the Colonial Americas: Empires, Texts, Identities, Bauer, Ralph and Mazzotti, Jos Antonio, eds. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), pp. 1–57.Google Scholar For a discussion of emergent seventeenth-century creole nationalism in the Peruvian context, see Mazzotti, Jose Antonio, El Dorado, Paradise, and Supreme Sanctity in Seventeenth-Century Peru, in Creole Subjects, pp. 407–411.Google Scholar
90. Quoted in Brading, The First America, p. 429.
91. Creole patriotism in historical writings is dealt with by Florescano in National Narratives in Mexico and by Caizares-Esguerra, in The Making of a Patriotic Epistemology. On creole patriotism and scientific writing, see Caizares-Esguerra, , New World, New Stars; David, Goodman, Science, Medicine, and Technology in Colonial Spanish America: New Interpretations, New Approaches, in Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1500–1800, Daniela, Bleichmar et al., eds. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 9–34; and Helen Cowie, Peripheral Vision.Google Scholar
92. Quoted in Brading, The First America, p. 429.
93. Brading, The First America, p. 430.
94. Leclerc, George Louis, comte de, Buffon, The Natural History of Animals, Vegetables, and Minerals; With the Theory of the Earth in General. Trans, from the French by W. Kenrick, L.L.D. and J. Murdoch., Vol. 1 of 6 vols. (London: T. Bell, 1775–1776), p. 270.Google Scholar Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, Gale Cengage Learning, . Last accessed February 22, 2007. The volume number and page cited here are for the original print edition, as scanned and posted at the website.
95. Ibid., pp. 275,286.
96. Gazeta de Mxico, (March 10, 1784), p. 45.
97. Maja-Lisa von Sncidcrn addresses the history of their reception in Joined at the Hip, pp. 213-231.
98. Gazeta de Mxico, (December 30, 1793), p. 710.
99. The Gazeta again held up New Spains ability to produce exceptional fetuses to that of Europe in a 1786 announcement that likened a girl born in Guanajuato with her heart outside her body to the boy who the celebrated physician Martn Martinez in the Imperial Court of Madrid observed in the year 1706. Gazeta de Mxico, (June 27, 1786).
100. Clavijero, Francisco Javier, Historia antigua de Mxico (Mexico: Editorial Porra, 1991), p. 455.Google Scholar For further discussion of Clavijcros writings, see Brading, The First America, pp. 450—464.
101. Clavijero, , Historia antigua, p. 511.Google Scholar
102. Cowic, Peripheral Vision, p. 150; Adank, Drwall, Accommodation and Innovation, p. 208;Google Scholar and Goodman, , Science, Medicine, and Technology, p. 27.Google Scholar For more extensive treatments of Alzate and his relationship to the notion of creole patriotism, see Fiona, Clark, Read All About It: Science, Translation, Adaptation, and Confrontation in the Gazeta de Literatura de Mexico, 1788-1795 Science in the Portuguese and Spanish Empires, 1500-1800, Daniela, Rlcichmar, Paula De, Vos, Huffine, Kristin et al., eds. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 147–177 Google Scholar and Caizares-Esquerra, Jorge, How to Write the History of the New World, pp. 281–300.Google Scholar