To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
This chapter tells the story of two mulata women in the 1560s. Bárbola de Zamora was born in Seville and migrated to Mexico where she worked as a midwife in the mining region of Zacatecas. Inquisitional courts condemned her in 1565 and 1569 for sorcery, love magic, and for being an alcahueta. She introduced the hallucinogenic peyote into her life by paying Native men to eat it to find her escaped slaves. Her case also shows the extent to which a Spanish mulata midwife may have learned from the Nahua tradition of temixihuiliztli, or obstetrics. Beatriz de León was accused of being a sorceress in Mexico City in 1571. She used patles (herbal medicine, potion) in her spells. She faced trial before the royal magistrate and a wealthy Spanish notary (possibly her lover) came to her rescue and paid for her bail. These mulatas defied stereotypes of helpless social pariahs. Zamora’s domestic possessions revealed a woman of means who had copper cookware and Spanish soap. She also had a metate, written as such in a Spanish document. These cases reveal the earliest use of three Nahuatl loanwords in Spanish: peyote, patle, and metate.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.