| In 1614, the colonial port-city of Cartagena de Indias held its first auto de fe at which six women were condemned for sorcery. I argue that inquisitorial trials create a textual space where colonial female voices, produced under coerced circumstances, become legible and audible through the recording of their confessions. Prosecution for sorcery functions as the point of departure for (re)defining female agency in terms of social mobility, networking interactions, and urban cartographies in the racially and politically complex context of Cartagena de Indias.;I focus on the case of Dona Lorenzana, the wife of the Royal Scribe of Cartagena de Indias, whose charges and subsequent sentence, indeed, seem to contradict her social position, status as wife and mother, age, and lineage. Although Dona Lorenzana may ultimately have been condemned, it is my contention that her voluminous case---f 106 pages front and back---nevertheless reveals in its fissures the incomplete hegemony and even subversion of inquisitorial law, socioeconomic stratification, and racial codes in this auto de fe. My approach, based on extensive archival research in Spain, Colombia and the United States, opens up an interdisciplinary reading of these documents based on history, rhetorical analysis, and gender studies. |
