Female Agency and Scandal: Doña Josefa de Angulo in 17th-Century Mexico City

Linda A. Curcio-Nagy

doi:10.15460/jbla.60.2180

Authors

Linda A. Curcio-Nagy University of Nevada, Reno https://orcid.org/0009-0001-1097-404X

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15460/jbla.60.2180

Keywords:

Recogimiento, Mexico City, Mexican Inquisition, Popular Culture, Gender.

Abstract

This essay examines the life of Doña Josefa de Angulo through the lens of a 1661 Inquisition case. Josefa, whose much older husband, Juan de Vilches, deposited her at the Recogimiento de la Magdalena (the home for wayward women) in Mexico City, demonstrated a concerted effort to live life on her terms, ignoring the expectations for a married woman of some socio-economic standing. She dramatically altered life at the recogimiento and set in motion a series of scandalous events that involved employees at that institution, the archbishop and his staff, her stepchildren, the inquisitors, and her confessor Miguel de Palmares, who she accused of solicitation in the confessional. She challenged normative ideas about marriage, obedience to male authority, female agency, and the very purpose of the recogimiento. Her story illuminates the complicated relationship between gendered social control and the nature of scandal in colonial Mexico City.

Author Biography

Linda A. Curcio-Nagy, University of Nevada, Reno

Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Associate Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Reno. Curcio-Nagy's research focuses on the cultural and religious history of colonial Mexico (particularly that of the 16th and 17th centuries). She has published many articles on religiosity, gender, and popular culture and as well on the award-winning Great Festivals of Colonial Mexico City: Performing Power and Identity with the University of New Mexico Press in 2004, and with William H. Beezley, Latin American Popular Culture: An Introduction with Scholarly Resources in 2000. Curcio-Nagy’s newest work is entitled Grave Sins of Sensuality in Colonial Mexico: Sexuality and Popular Piety. She is currently working on a manuscript about the famous 17^th-century Mexican rogue, Martin Garatuza.