Women Who Live Evil Lives: Gender, Religion, and the Politics of Power in Colonial Guatemala

by Martha Few

Overview

Women Who Live Evil Lives documents the lives and practices of mixed-race, Black, Spanish, and Maya women sorcerers, spell-casters, magical healers, and midwives in the social relations of power in Santiago de Guatemala, the capital of colonial Central America. Men and women from all sectors of society consulted them to intervene in sexual and familial relations and disputes between neighbors and rival shop owners; to counter abusive colonial officials, employers, or husbands; and in cases of inexplicable illness.

Applying historical, anthropological, and gender studies analysis, Martha Few argues that women's local practices of magic, curing, and religion revealed opportunities for women's cultural authority and power in colonial Guatemala. Few draws on archival research conducted in Guatemala, Mexico, and Spain to shed new light on women's critical public roles in Santiago, the cultural and social connections between the capital city and the countryside, and the gender dynamics of power in the ethnic and cultural contestation of Spanish colonial rule in daily life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780292725492
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	11/01/2002
Edition description:	1ST
Pages:	202
Sales rank:	960,846
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Martha Few is Professor of Latin American history and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Chapter 1. Contested Powers: Gender, Culture, and the Process of Colonial Rule
• Chapter 2. Society and Colonial Authority in Santiago de Guatemala
• Chapter 3. Magical Violence and the Body
• Chapter 4. Illness, Healing, and the Supernatural World
• Chapter 5. Female Sorcery, Material Life, and Urban Community Formation
• Chapter 6. Conclusion
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index

What People are Saying About This

Grant D. Jones

This is a significant intellectual contribution that has the additional merit of being thoroughly readable and appealing to a broad [audience].... The case studies are riveting, detailed with intensely personal, often sexually and socially charged examples, and clearly integrated with Few's overarching theoretical and conceptual framework. This is wonderful historical ethnographic material.
— Grant D. Jones, author of The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom