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Amores perritos: Puppies, Laughter and Popular Catholicism in Bourbon Mexico City

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2014

FRANK ‘TREY’ PROCTOR III
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Abstract

In late eighteenth-century Mexico City, Spanish colonials, particularly members of the urban middle and popular classes, performed a number of weddings and baptisms on puppies (which were wearing clothes or bejewelled collars) in the context of fandangos or dance parties. These ceremonies were not radical challenges to orthodoxy or conservative reactions in the face of significant economic, political, religious and cultural Bourbon reforms emanating from Spain. Employing Inquisitorial investigations of these ceremonies, this article explores the rise of pet keeping, the meanings of early modern laughter and the implications of the cultural and religious components of the Enlightenment-inspired Bourbon reforms in late colonial Mexico.

Spanish abstract

A fines del siglo XVIII en la ciudad de México, colonos españoles, particularmente urbanos de las clases media y popular, realizaron un número de casamientos y bautizos de perritos (portando ropa o collares con joyas) en el contexto de los fandangos o fiestas de baile. Estas ceremonias no eran desafíos radicales a la ortodoxia o reacciones conservadoras frente a las importantes reformas económicas, políticas, religiosas y culturales borbónicas que emanaban de España. Empleando investigaciones inquisitoriales de estas ceremonias, el artículo explora el surgimiento de las mascotas, los significados de los inicios de la risa moderna, y las implicaciones de los componentes culturales y religiosos de las Reformas Borbónicas inspiradas por la Ilustración en el México colonial tardío.

Portuguese abstract

Na Cidade do México, colonos espanhóis, particularmente membros da classe média e popular, promoveram vários casamentos e batizados de filhotes de cachorros (vestidos a rigor ou com coleiras adornadas) no contexto dos fandangos ou festas dançantes do final do século XVIII. Estas cerimônias não eram enfrentamentos radicais à ortodoxia ou reações conservadoras em virtude das significativas reformas econômicas, políticas, religiosas e culturais bourbônicas originadas na Espanha. Empregando investigações inquisitoriais destas cerimônias, este artigo explora o aumento da criação de animais de estimação, os significados da risada em tempos modernos, e as implicações no México colonial tardio dos componentes cultural e religioso das reformas bourbônicas inspiradas no Iluminismo.

Keywords

Bourbon reformspopular religionlaughterpetsdogsdance partiesReformas Borbónicasreligión popularrisamascotasperrosfiestas de bailereformas bourbônicasreligião popularrisadaanimais de estimaçãocãesfestas dançantes
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 1 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

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2 Based on a keyword search in ARGENA II, the complete computerised index of the Ramo de Inquisición from the Archivo General de la Nación de México (hereinafter AGN INQ). Zeb Tortorici also uses these cases to explore the metaphoric meanings of animals in theological debates on the nature of animal-human relations in ‘“In the Name of the Father and Mother of All Dogs”: Canine Baptisms, Weddings, and Funerals in Bourbon Mexico’, in Few, Martha and Tortorici, Zeb (eds.), Centering Animals: Writing Animals into Latin American History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), pp. 93–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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13 ‘Contra Thoribio Basterrachea’, fol. 28.

14 Ibid., fols. 4–5, 11–12.

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18 San Antonio Abad's January festival day, which includes animal blessing in churches, is another possibility: see Hobgood-Oster, Laura, Holy Dogs and Asses: Animals in the Christian Tradition (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008), p. 110Google Scholar.

19 See Burke, Peter, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London: Temple Smith, 1978), p. 182Google Scholar; and Darnton, Robert, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), p. 83Google Scholar.

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24 See ‘“Courtship and Leisure on the Terrace of a Country Home”, Anonymous, Mexico, c. 1750–60’, in Gomar, Rogelio Ruiz and Bargellini, Clara (eds.), Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521–1821 (Denver, CO: Denver Art Museum, 2004), pp. 150–4Google Scholar; or for a representation of a festival complete with maypole, see ‘“Festival in an Indian Village”, Anonymous, Mexico, c. 1650–1700’, in ibid., pp. 226–9.

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27 ‘Contra Antonio Balbuena’, fols. 64–7, 72.

28 Ibid., fol. 72.

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30 The mock baptisms were more problematic than the wedding. Any Christian could perform a binding baptism provided they used water and the Benediction. The wedding could never be binding because the bride and groom, not the priest, bestowed the sacrament on each other through their willing participation.

31 Diccionario de la lengua castellana, vol. 5 (Madrid: Herrederos del Francisco del Hierro, 1737), p. 320.

32 O'Hara, ‘Orthodox Underworld’, p. 237.

33 For the distinctions between the elite, middling and plebeian classes in colonial Latin America, see Socolow, Susan Migden, ‘Introduction’, in Hoberman, Louisa Schell and Socolow, Susan Migden (eds.), Cities and Society in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), pp. 8–9Google Scholar.

34 ‘Señor Inquisidor fiscal del Santo Oficio contra Jose Armas, de oficio sastre, de calidad española. Por haber bautizado unos perros. Cuidad de Mexico (1780)’, AGN INQ, vol. 1535, exp. 5 (hereafter ‘Contra Jose Armas’), fols. 172–227.

35 For the symbolic importance of the oils, see Catechism of the Council of Trent, pp. 135–6.

36 ‘Contra Jose Armas’, fols. 177–80.

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39 ‘Contra Jose Armas’, fol. 194. Barbara Mauldin explores the modern tradition of selecting padrinos for communally and privately owned icons of El Niño Santo (the Holy Child), who were charged with clothing the idols and taking them to church to be blessed in rural Mexico: see ‘Images of the Christ Child: Devotions and Iconography in Europe and New Spain’, unpubl. PhD diss., University of New Mexico, 2001.

40 ‘Autos sobre unos bautismos y casamientos de muñecas efectuados en la ciudad de Zacatecas’ (1719), AGN INQ, vol. 777, exp. 63, fol. 473.

41 Tagle, E. Gîmez, ‘Castorena y Ursúa, Juan Ignacio de’, in New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (2nd edition, Detroit, MI: Gale, 2003), p. 218Google Scholar.

42 See ‘El S[eño]r Inquisidor contra Manuel de Cordova, official de carpintero y demas complices en el bautismo de ciertos muñecos. Guadalajara (1735)’, AGN INQ, vol. 872, exp. 27 (hereafter ‘Contra Manuel de Cordova’), fols. 395–404; and ‘Autos sobre un bautismo de muñecos que se celebro en el pueblo de S[an] Juan del Rio (1707)’, AGN INQ, vol. 731, fols. 391–401.

43 I have yet to discover the significance of that phrase.

44 ‘Contra Antonio Balbuena’, fols. 64–70; ‘Contra Jose Armas’, fols. 185–7, 190–3.

45 For similar lines of inquiry, see Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre, pp. 75–104; and Clifford Geertz, ‘Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight’, in his Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 417–9.

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51 Ibid., p. 56.

52 Close, A. J., Cervantes and the Comic Mind of His Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 32–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Menache, Sophia, ‘Dogs: God's Worst Enemies?’, Society and Animals, 5: 1 (1997), pp. 23, 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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57 ‘Denuncia que hace Maria Dorotea Crespon, española, contra los dueños de un perrito que murio y a quien lo amortajaron de religioso Agustino, poniendole palma y corona etc. Se deprecio por un puro juguete de muchachos y no resultar delito contra persona alguna. [Cuidad de] Mexico (1768)’, AGN INQ, vol. 1072, exp. 24, fols. 385–8; ‘Contra Jose Armas’, fol. 175.

58 Voekel, Alone Before God, pp. 33–4.

59 Guridi y Alcocer is perhaps most well known as a key creole advocate at the Cortes of Cádiz: see Brading, D. A., The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 574–5Google Scholar. José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi identified Guridi y Alcocer as the author when he included this tract, with commentary, in his 1818 novel, La Quijotita y su prima (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1973), pp. 193–203. For more in-depth interpretations of ‘Funerary Honours’, see Isabel Terán E, Ma.., ‘Dos sátiras del siglo XVIII contra la actitudes funerarias barrocas’, in Nogal, Bárbara Skinfill and Bravo, Eloy Gómez (eds.), Las dimensiones del arte emblemático (Michoacán: El Colegio de Michoacán and Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, 2002), pp. 247–62Google Scholar; Tortorici, ‘In the Name of the Father’.

60 ‘Honras fúnebres a la perra Pamela’ (transcribed by Edmundo O'Gorman), Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación, 15: 3 (1944), pp. 537, 542–3. Hester Hastings identified in French literature a similar tendency to satirise the ‘excessive affection’ that elite ladies bestowed on their pets: see Hastings, Hester, Man and Beast in French Thought of the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1936), pp. 210–12Google Scholar.

61 Bakhtin, Mikhail, Rabelais and His World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984), pp. 11–12, 71Google Scholar.

62 Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre, p. 99. Umberto Eco rejects the ‘revolutionary’ nature of Carnivalesque laughter in his ‘The Frames of Comic “Freedom”’, in Carnival! (Berlin: Mouton Publishers, 1984).

63 Bakhtin, Rabelais, pp. 21, 38. Daniel Wickberg presents a model of laughter at odds with Bakhtin in The Senses of Humor: Self and Laughter in Modern America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).

64 Thomas, ‘The Place of Laughter’, p. 77; Davis, Natalie Zemon, ‘The Reasons of Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaris in Sixteenth-Century France’, Past & Present, 50 (1971), p. 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 The author wishes to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for this specific language.

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69 ‘Contra Manuel de Cordova’, fol. 402.