queer masculinities

180 Queer Masculinities, 1550–1800
The questions of truth, testimony, and power fall squarely into the
milieu of a history of homosexuality in Latin America precisely because
sodomy was considered such a heinous crime. Mott’s work suggests
that in Portuguese inquisitional testimony we may find narrative histories
of unique men, therein unlocking an important clue to the overall
personal history of male friendship in Latin America. 58 Others view
such an assumption with skepticism – notably Garza Carvajal, who
argues that criminal testimony shows us more about the mentality of
the accusers than of the accused. 59 My own suggestion is that something
of a middle path may be discerned between the two. While it is
true that the prospect of execution was very real, we must also consider
the fact that under Inquisitional law, confession was a means of escaping
an execution. We must also distinguish between ecclesiastical tribunals
and civil law courts, since the latter were notoriously more
violent and meted out traditionally much more severe penalties, the
stereotypes of the Black Legend of Spanish Cruelty notwithstanding. 60
Finally, in criminal case law we have the opportunity to mine very
carefully the jurisprudential and religious framework of Latin American
society. True, it may not tell us much about the sodomites themselves,
but it reveals quite clearly the ideology of an imperial society bent on
orthodoxy and sexual purity.
Guido Ruggiero proposed a second important theoretical dilemma
for the Latin-Catholic world. In his essay on homosexuality in
Renaissance Venice, he argued that one could discern a distinct
sodomitical subculture in this city. 61 This theory has spawned a great
deal of debate. Gruzinski and Mott suggest a theory along the lines of
Ruggiero’s sodomitical subculture. 62 Vainfas argues that in a rural
culture like Brazil the opportunity for an organized sub- or parallel
culture of homosexuality was virtually impossible. 63 Rather, he contends
that only urban settings were capable of allowing such a social
milieu to develop – in bathhouses, cantinas, plazas, streets, and brothels.
Penyak, however, rejects almost entirely the notion that men in
colonial Latin America would have organized a community or separate
culture. 64 Unfortunately, as intriguing as these suggestions may be,
there is to date simply too little information to provide a strong argument
pro or contra. Rather, fine-grained analysis of both rural and
urban milieux and the prevalence (or absence) of sodomitical communities
are needed to demonstrate any conclusive evidence on this score.
Third, the debate on gay identity has always been in the forefront of
the historical scholarship for Latin America. Mott is the most forceful
proponent of the notion that men who had sex with men in colonial