Erin O’Connor

of the Manuscript Project: This monograph investigates some of the historical roots of the contemporary and complicated connections between Indian men, Indian women, and the state by examining multilayered links between gender and Indian/state relations from 1850-1925. In particular, the study explains the historical foundations for Indian women’s often-peripheral status in Indian/state relations and thus the greater challenges they have faced, relative to indigenous men, in contemporary political activism by revealing ways that the early phases of state formation masculinized Indian/state relations. The period of 1850-1925 included three critical phases of nation making: first, the debate over the abolition of Indian tribute (known as the contribución personal de indígenas) culminated in the 1850s. This contest was the first national political dispute in the new republic, and its resolution was essential to forging a nation because the abolition of tribute marked a clear break with colonial practices that separated members of society according to racial status. However, because Indians faced new burdens after tribute was abolished, a period of heightened tensions between Indians and the state followed the 1857 abolition of tribute. This same time frame marked the beginning of the nation’s earliest comprehensive state building projects—the first undertaken by Conservative Gabriel García Moreno from 1861-1875, and the second under liberal rule from 1895-1925. In this period of simultaneous political transformation and interethnic struggle, state-sanctioned gender ideologies that identified men with the public sphere and women with the private sphere patterned state builders’ conceptions and descriptions of Indians. I contend that conflicting white/mestizo and indigenous gender ideas and practices were a means through which interethnic negotiations and struggles were played out in the course of Ecuadorian state formation from 1850-1925. Garcian state officials in the late nineteenth century used ideas about proper gender roles to blame Indians themselves for their plight in Ecuadorian society and politics; liberals manipulated similar gender notions to blame their competitors—Church officials and highland estate owners—for Indians’ continuing marginalization. Indians’ own ideas about gender often paralleled those held by state officials, though they tended to be more permeable and flexible, giving indigenous women both an important role in community defense against state officials and private elites, and providing them with negotiating power to use with indigenous men. The processes of state formation, however, had a differential impact on Indian women and men. As part of the evolution of interethnic politics, a shift occurred in Indian men’s and women’s capacity to interact with the emerging state: while Indian men’s roles expanded, Indian women’s roles stagnated, indicating a relative decline in these women’s influence on Indian/state relations at the time. 1 To some extent, this monograph also examines and explains indigenous women’s centrality to Indian/state relations. However, the current link between women and cultural authenticity has specific roots in the mid-twentieth century, as will be discussed in the Epilogue. BRIEF SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS: CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION PART I: MAKING ECUADOR CHAPTER 2: MAKING ECUADORIANS? THE ABOLITION OF TRIBUTE This chapter explores how and why Ecuador’s first national debate—over the abolition of tribute—was centered on (often contradictory) notions of manliness. CHAPTER 3: THE MASK OF GENDER, PART I: “WOMAN” AND STATE FORMATION This chapter addresses official government-sanctioned patriarchies under the Garcian and Liberal regimes, noting the many ways that gender helped legitimize these two distinct projects. CHAPTER 4: THE MASK OF GENDER, PART II: THE STATE AND INDIAN MEN This chapter examines how state-sanctioned gender ideals were applied to “the Indian question” under Garcian and Liberal rule. (See attached chapter) PART II: GENDER AND COMMUNITY DEFENSE CHAPTER 5: INDIGENOUS VISIONS OF PATRIARCHY This chapter identifies how indigenous gender ideas and practices both reflected and diverged from state-sanctioned gender notions, and how Indian men and women used these distinct notions in their struggles to protect their communities. CHAPTER 6: INDIAN WOMEN IN FOCUS This chapter explores Indian women’s particular place/s in community life and defense, including the ways that Indian women managed to take advantage of elite gender ideas protect their own and/or their communities’ interests. PART III: PATRIARCHAL SHIFTS CHAPTER 7: GENDER AND SOCIAL CONTROL ON SIERRA HACIENDAS This chapter evaluates Indian men’s and women’s differential experiences when they moved from peasant communities to permanent residence on haciendas and shows how hacienda structure was based on rigid interpretations of white/mestizo patriarchal concepts. CHAPTER 8: PATRIARCHY AND INDIAN ADAPTATION TO POLITICAL CHANGE This chapter summarizes the masculinization of Ecuadorian Indian/state relations from 1850-1925, especially how Indian men incorporated liberal gender notions to their own benefit. CHAPTER 9: EPILOGUE: MOVING INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY In addition to summarizing the main themes and arguments of the manuscript, this chapter outlines how the masculine precedents of Indian/state relations established by 1925 help to explain the continuing obstacles that these women faced in the midto late twentieth century in their quest to defend, dignify, and democratize indigenous political culture. Chapter 4: The Mask of Gender, Part II: The State and Indian Men ...there is a deep-seated custom among the Indians, in which a wife requires a dozen monthly blows from her husband as a token of his affection for her... The small property-owning indigene cares for his land with love...the family happily collaborates on agricultural work, singing with hope... Though the Garcian and liberal gender ideologies examined in chapter 3 were focused specifically on state officials’ notion of ideal middleor upper-class women, state-sanctioned gender ideas did affect the ways that state builders described and developed their Indian policies. Additionally, Indian/state relations from 1860-1925, particularly the liberal debates over the abolition of concertaje, show evidence of a strong legacy from the interethnic paternalism that was so central to the abolition of Indian tribute in the 1850s. As with the “woman question,” the Indian problem at first appears to differ dramatically from one state-building regime to the next—yet closer examination of documents uncovers a great many similarities as well. And, as with the “woman question,” state officials and scholars manipulated (gendered) images of Indians as a mask to hide both less-than-altruistic political agendas as well as ongoing social (especially racial) inequalities. Of particular importance was the place of Indian men in the new nation: because of the proclaimed equality of all Ecuadorians before the law, authorities in both regimes had to identify Indian men as potential citizens and show how the state worked to achieve that goal. At the same time, statesmen had to explain why Indian men were not yet fully incorporated into the political nation. Gender ideologies, especially various—and often contradictory—notions of 2 ANH/Q:Cr: December 19, 1874, ff. 3-4. 3 P. Jaramillo Alvarado, El indio ecuatoriano: Contribución al estudio de la sociología nacional (Quito: Imprenta Ecuadernación de la “Editorial-Quito,” 1922), 178-179. manliness and paternalism, proved useful in both of these tasks. Sometimes these strategies overlapped significantly: during both Garcian and liberal eras, state officials and scholars identified Indian men as helpless and child-like, and therefore in need of saving and/or civilizing. Of course, each regime’s manner and purpose with this gendered construction of “the Indian” was unique, and an even greater contrast came with interpretations of Indian men’s patriarchal roles within their own homes. Garcian officials identified Indian men as brutal patriarchs who were not fit for participation in the nation, whereas liberals (similar to statesmen arguing for the abolition of tribute in the 1850s) classified Indian men as well-meaning patriarchs who were being kept from fulfilling their paternal duties by priests and hacendados. These multi-faceted, gendered images of Indian men served both to justify Indians’ problematic place in the developing nation and to reinforce other state building agendas in each period. Denial of the “Indian Problem” from 1860-1890: Because it had made Indians legally equal to other Ecuadorian citizens, the recent abolition of tribute led to an almost deafening silence on the “Indian question” during the Garcian era of nation making. Within the space of a few years, Indians’ plight went from being a predominant consideration for the central state to an issue that was rarely mentioned, in spite of the fact that racism and ethnically based exploitation remained as strong as ever in politics, society, and the economy. Closer examination of the documents, however, shows that state officials at both the central and local government levels grappled with contradictory theory and practice that led to tense interethnic relations in the 1860s and 1870s, and that gender ideas helped to play down paradoxical Indian/state relations. Officially, no Indian problem existed during García Moreno’s rule; the abolition of tribute had technically made all Ecuadorians, Indians included, equal before the law. This legal unification of the previously ethnically divided nation was an important precedent for García Moreno’s state building agenda: without it, his claims to be forging a single Ecuadorian “family” would have been impossible to defend. But just as Garcian nation making was greatly influenced by the aboliton of tribute, so too was the significance of abolition shaped by Garcian policies. Many of the laws and practices that made abolition a negative experience for most highland Indians were either drawn up or first enforced during Garcianismo; these included the trabajo subsidiario, vagrancy laws, losses of Indian lands as “tierras baldías,” and loosened trade restrictions. Garcian state officials were, of course, careful to assert that they were upholding the spirit of fairness and equality. For example the 1860 decree that restructured the trabajo subsidiaro so that it would be more productive stated that “The contribution known as the trabajo subsidiario will be paid by all Ecuadorians, without any distinction...Indians must pay the same quota for the trabajo subsidiario that the law imposes on other citizens.” An 1865 decree regarding tierras baldías went even further, suggesting that the state protected Indian interests by issuing that “Vacant lands possessed and cultivated by indigenes and miserable persons will be freely adjucated to the possessors, each time they offer a summary of proof before [a] judge....” The same decree also indicated that indigenous people’s communal lands would remain within communities. Likewise, when the governor of Loja inquired in 1870 whether Indians had to pay sales taxes or scribal services for sales contracts, the Minister of the Interior responded in the 4 El Nacional, Número 24, April 2, 1860. For other decrees regarding the trabajo subsidiario, see Número 62, February 5, 1862; Número 68, April 1, 1862; Número 366, April 24, 1869. 5 Ibid, Número 196, October 2, 1865. affirmative specifically indicating that Indians’ obligation stemmed from the constitutional establishment of equality before the law. If in theory Indians were equal to non-Indians and colonial abuses had come to an end, in practice state officials continued to see (and treat) Indians differently than whites and mestizos, and Indians’ rights and protections were often ignored. While the law pertaining to tierras baldías legally protected Indians’ rights to land, it also left loopholes enabling hacienda owners to usurp Indian lands. Indians were vulnerable because they had to prove their ownership of land; moreover, any land lying fallow could be identified as “uncultivated” and therefore not under the protection of the decree. Indians also failed to keep lands because hacienda owners’ influence in local politics often meant that there were vast differences between the spirit of the laws written and the manner in which they were carried out at the local level. Though infrequent, the central government officials’ own occasional and indirect admissions that Indians were not truly equal to other Ecuadorians speak to the fact that statesmen themselves were aware of the contradictory position they took regarding Indians. For example, the 1861 law of political rule stipulated that among the duties of the tenientes políticos was that they “should protect indigenes or miserable persons, being careful that they are not mistreated or offended.” In the same year, members of the National Convention responded positively to a request from Indians in Molleturo for an extension of the previous exemptions they had enjoyed under the tribute system. These admissions of the ongoing protective duty of the central state stood in stark contrast to other central government communication that emphasized that Indians no longer merited “special treatment” once tribute was abolished. Occasionally, the central government even recognized that Indians needed protection from local state representatives themselves. In 6 Ibid, Número 426, May 11, 1870. 7 Ibid, Número 44, June 11, 1861. an 1870 letter to provincial governors, the Minister of the Interior remarked that local political and judicial officials often abused their power by “compelling Indians to labor on private construction work against their will.” He further indicated that “this scandal is so extreme that the aforementioned authorities oblige [Indians] to contracts that supply them with peons.” In response, García Moreno declared that any authority discovered doing this would be subject to removal from office and potentially face criminal charges. Although these orders were carefully worded to avoid any direct association with “special treatment” for Indians, the very need to discuss these matters was evidence of the ongoing marginalization and oppression of Indians in the Ecuadorian countryside. Contradictory ideas about Indians’ place in the nation also played themselves out in court: take a supreme court case in which Indian peasants complained of an hacienda owner who tried to take their land from them and had arbitrarily and privately imprisoned them on his estate. While the peasant/estate owner struggle was typical of the nineteenth century, the arguments made by the peasants’ lawyer played upon Indians’ contradictory position in the nation in the late 1850s. Most interesting in the case was the assertion that An inhuman and ignorant principle is that the indigenous class is considered outside of social guarantees, and that the other classes have the right to look upon them as brutes and exercise all forms of domination [over them], this is without a doubt the same injustice plotted against us today; to guard against this we call upon your proven integrity... As the existing court record did not include the outcome of the case, it remains unclear if the Indians were successfully defended land from hacienda expansion. Nevertheless, their lawyer’s argument rested on the assumption that, regardless of Indians’ official legal status, court officials 8 Ibid, Número 42, May 21, 1861. 9 Francisco J. León, Minister of the Interior, El Nacional (Quito), Número 449, September 21, 1870. might recognize that indigenous peoples were in fact not equal before the law—in short, that members of the state itself understood that law did not in this case reflect reality. Sometimes Indians’ paradoxical position in the nation was represented through different practices on the central versus regional or local state levels. One telling pattern is that although the central state officials proclaimed ethnic labels and distinctions unnecessary, court officials in Chimborazo province still saw ethnic difference as meaningful in court disputes, as evidenced by the fact that they continued to identify litigants by race throughout the 1870s and into the 1880s. Distinct central and regional government responses to “the Indian situation” were apparent when Joaquín Pinto, public scribe for the superior court in Riobamba, wrote to the Supreme court inquiring whether or not Indians had to pay legal fees in court cases. He pointed out that a recent decree did not specify any special status for Indians when discussing poverty exemptions, while in 1854 the state had proclaimed Indians impoverished and therefore exempt from court fees. Pinto explained that “Until the present, the practice has been that Indians are not charged with this fee...[but] it seemed prudent to seek a resolution.” Supreme court judges reasoned that Indians would have to prove poverty in each individual case, as the abolition of tribute had put an end to automatic exemptions by making Indians equal to other citizens. Though the Supreme court denied Indians’ need for special treatment, the query itself shows that at least some indigenous peasants could take advantage of persisting perceptions of their childlike vulnerability. 10 ANH/Q: Cr: April 21, 1858. 11 These patterns are evident from review of civil and criminal court cases from the superior court in Riobamba for the nineteenth century. 12 ANH/Q: I: February 15, 1873; see also ANH/R: Gb: January 14, 1874. Though Pinto claimed that Indians were regularly exempt from court fees, my review of court cases from Chimborazo province suggests that the practice was inconsistent. In spite of the official central-state position that the category of “Indian” was no longer nationally relevant, whenever the reality of racial inequalities was apparent, politicians and judges needed ways to mask them in order to reaffirm that all Ecuadorians were equal before the law. Gender was an important tool—though certainly not the only one—which helped to smooth over the inherent contradictions of late nineteenth-century Indian/state relations. Using gender to justify racial inequality was of course not new; this was precisely the purpose of colonial and early nineteenth-century state paternalisms. However, the abolition of tribute changed both the practices and rhetoric of Indian/state relations in Ecuador, leading to new challenges and requirements in the state’s attempt to cover its role in the maintenance of indigenous marginalization. Similarly, the purposes of gender ideologies shifted, and they were now used not only to justify interethnic oppression but also to blame Indians themselves for the gap between the state’s equalizing rhetoric and oppressive reality. Helpless Men or Undeserving Patriarchs? Indian Men during Garcianismo: Political and scholarly generalizations of Indian qualities in late nineteenth-century Ecuador frequently emphasized that Indians were naturally submissive, particularly in their relations with whites and mestizos. Juan León Mera—author of Ecuador’s first novel and 13 For the classic discussion of concealing state-generated oppression, see Philip Abrams, “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State (1977),” Journal of Historical Sociology, 1:1 (March 1988), particularly 72 and 76-77. For discussions of these tensions in Ecuadorian Indian/state relations, see: Galo Ramón Valarezo, “La visión andina sobre el estado colonial,” Ecuador Debate (Quito) No. 12 (1986), 82, 88, 91; Gerardo Fuentealba, “La sociedad indígena en las primeras décadas de la república: continuidades coloniales y cambios republicanos,” in Enrique Ayala Mora, ed., Nueva Historia del Ecuador, Vol. 8, (Quito: Corporación Editora Nacional, 1983), particularly 56 and 66; Martha Moscoso, “La tierra: Espacio de conflicto y relación entre el Estado y la comunidad en el siglo XIX,” in Heraclio Bonilla, ed., Los Andes en la encrucijada: Indios, comunidades, y Estado en el siglo XIX, (Quito: FLACSO/Libri Mundi, 1991), 3l67-368; Manuel Chiriboga, Jornaleros y gran propietarios en 135 años de exprotación cacaotera (1790-1925, (Quito: Consejo Provincial de Pichincha, 1980), 79, 95-111. supporter of Gabriel García Moreno’s conservative regime in the 1860s and 1870s—wrote a school text depicting Ecuadorian law, society, and history in which he claimed that: Among Indians, humiliation, timidity, and guile are predominant [traits], acquired in their long and perverse servitude, from which also comes their notable air of sadness...but they are [also] hardworking, active, long-suffering, and constant. If León Mera did not openly criticize indigenous attributes here, neither did he view Indians as equals to whites and mestizos in Ecuadorian society. Europeans, he asserted, were by nature “religious, honorable, generous, and lovers of their independence and liberty.” Mestizos supposedly fell between the indigenous and European extremes, but “as they become more civilized they continue to mold themselves more and more towards [European traits].” He used similar distinctions in his discussion of Ecuadorian customs—Indians “exceed extreme simplicity in their rural [or course] character, and superstition holds great influence over them; those of European descent maintain Spanish customs...[and] mestizos have less uncultured customs than the Indians, but different than the Europeans.” León Mera thus constructed “a world replete with social and hierarchical distinctions” in order to justify racially based social inequalities. León Mera used this text and its racial profiles to construct a vision of the nation that told Ecuadorian youth of the time the relative value of different members of society. When he asserted that mestizos were becoming more civilized by adopting European traits and discarding indigenous customs, he reinforced nineteenth-century notions of progress. European culture 14 Juan León Mera, Catecismo de geografía del Ecuador, 2a edición, (Guayaquil: Imprenta de la Nación, 1884 [1874]), 33. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., 34. 17 The quote is from Uday Mehta, “Liberal Strategies of Exclusion,” Politics and Society 18:4 (December 1990), 437, where he analyzed the assumptions in Locke’s seemingly “universalistic” claims. represented civilization and progress, and Indian (and other non-European) cultures represented barbarism and backwardness. The so-called “progressive” elites hoped that by emulating European culture, and embracing export-oriented economics, they would also be able to duplicate European economic success and political stability. Ecuador’s indigenous peoples, maintaining their own languages and customs, and either farming small subsistence plots of land or toiling begrudgingly as peons on large estates, inhibited both cultural and economic progress. Indians therefore had to assimilate into European cultural standards in order for progress to occur. In the meantime, the traits León Mera catalogued under each ethnic group suggested how they could be most useful in the quest for national development. As honorable men and lovers of liberty, those of European descent would be best to lead the nation; as timid but hardworking and constant, Indians had potential to serve as the backbone of labor in the search for national economic success. Mestizos, given their mixed qualities, could be either leaders or laborers. Indians’ submissiveness not only differed from characteristics attributed to whites and mestizos, but it was also problematic. Indians’ humility—combined with accusations of inherent dishonesty—could be used to defend cruel treatment that many Indian servants received from their employers. James Orton’s travel account elaborates: Always humble and submissive to your face...[the Indian] will do nothing unless he is treated as a slave. Treat him kindly, and you make him a thief; whip him, and he will rise up to thank you and be your humble servant. A certain curate could never trust his Indian to carry important letters until he had given him twenty five lashes. 18 For one of the more important discussions of how these notions of civilization and barbarism fit into the broader ideas of “progress” in nineteenth-century Latin America, see E. Bradford Burns, The Poverty of Progress: Latin America in the Nineteenth Century, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). 19 James Orton, The Andes and the Amazon, (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1870), 111-112. In essence, Indians were figurative children who needed patriarchal discipline lest their dishonest tendencies get the best of them. Likewise, Indians’ child-like ignorance and dishonesty supposedly made them unreliable witnesses in court: one defense attorney, for example, claimed that no Indian could be trusted as a witness because he did not understand what he had heard or observed, and in particular had no concept of how the law functioned. 20 Unmanly humility also left Indian men defenseless, as Pedro Fermín Cevallos explained when he claimed that their “...cowardice and humility are such that [Indians] allow themselves to be dominated even by the lowliest members of the other castes.” Even in his vulnerability, the Indian man was not described as a victim, since his own shortcomings were to blame for how he was treated. Yet the notion that Indians’ (presumably inherent) timidity left them susceptible to mistreatment did sometimes lead the central government to define Indians as a social sector in need of protection and guidance, as their proclamations over Indian rights communal lands and to protect Indians from abusive officials show. Another dubious attribute frequently associated with Indians was their supposed idleness or laziness, with education being the most frequent means proposed to eradicate this problem. Gabriel García Moreno himself suggested this in his 1869 message to congress when he stated that: “It is not, therefore, strange that ignorance and lack of honor are so frequently transmitted like a fatal inheritance, which perpetuates the lazy idleness with which we justly find fault, and from which the indigenous race, especially in the interior provinces, continues to be wretched, 20 ANH/Q:Cr: May 3, 1871. Also see ANH/Q:Cr: September 5, 1872 in which the defense attorney questioned Indians’ ability to understand the law, and asserted the fatherly role of employers. Both of these were concubinage cases. 21 Pedro Fermín Cevallos, Resumen de la historia del Ecuador, Tomo VI, (Guayaquil: Imprenta de la Nación, 1889), 86. depraved, and miserable.” (emphasis added) The solution was to found new primary schools that would, by teaching them, help Indians to raise themselves out of their abject positions. Literacy would also change Indian men’s political status since it would make them eligible to vote. The educational initiative did not proceed easily or smoothly, however. Just two years before García Moreno made the above declarations about the need for primary schools, the Minister of the Interior admitted that “public education has only advanced slowly...[in part because of ] the idleness of our villages...[rural schools] deserve to be called crowds of wretched beings who grow in indolence, without having their sublime destiny in the land known to them.” The submissive timidity which state officials attributed to Indians therefore placed indigenous peoples in the child-like position of being guided and protected in order to facilitate their advancement towards true civilization. Since the state identified submissiveness and vulnerability with women, making statements that Indians were innately meek and in need of protection identified all Indians, men as well as women, with a trait that was considered naturally feminine. This was evident in an 1892 statue depicting Sucre, an Independence hero in Ecuador, standing protectively over an Indian woman. Identifying Indian women as passive may have fit into general ideas about intrinsic traits of men and women, but classifying Indian men as passive—in light of state officials’ association of passivity with women and children—meant that Indian men fell short of true manly qualities. This in turn helped to justify their political and social marginalization in 22 In Manuel María Polit, Escritos, 283. García Moreno’s reference to the interior provinces here reflects an important distinction made between Ecuadorian Indians in the nineteenth century in which highland Indians were seen as “socialized” and tropical Indians as completely “savage.” 23 Exposición del Ministro de Hacienda y Relaciones Interiores...a las cámaras legislativas, 1867, (Quito: Imprenta Nacional, 1867), 14-16. 24 For an analysis of this statue, see Blanca Muratorio, “Nación, Identidad, y Etniciad: Imágines de los Indios Ecuatorianos y sus Imagineros a Fines del Siglo XIX,” in Blanca Muratorio, ed., late nineteenth-century Ecuador, as the assumption quietly condoned employers and state officials who acted as patriarchs over child-like Indians. After all, if men were the proper authorities within the family, and Ecuador was una sola familia, it followed that the national family needed reliable patriarchs. Considering that Indian men were passive and ignorant, white and mestizo men had to take charge of the Ecuadorian household, sternly but fairly ruling over all women and Indians. Though politicians and scholars of late nineteenth-century Ecuador considered highland Indians submissive on many, if not most, occasions, they also attributed darker, more violent characteristics to Indians as well, mainly regarding how Indian men treated their own families and peers. A Supreme Court case from 1874 offers an excellent example of how state officials identified and evaluated this ostensibly inherent Indian brutality. Asencio López, an Indian man from the central highland province of Chimborazo, was charged with beating his wife, María Aguagallo, and his mother-in-law, Rosa Aguagallo. Both the prosecution and defense used the trial as a platform on which to argue over Indian “otherness” and—ultimately—Indians’ place in the Ecuadorian nation. Because of its rich discussions of race and gender, the case merits detailed attention and analysis. Defense attorney Alejandro Rivadeneira admitted that López committed the crimes for which he was accused. He maintained, however, that domestic violence was a natural—and therefore unchangeable—part of indigenous life; it was from his defense argument that the first quote at the beginning of the chapter was taken. As this larger excerpt shows, Rivadeneira’s reference to domestic abuse among Indians suggested not only that such behavior was Imágines e Imagineros: Representaciones de los Indígenas Ecuatorianos, Siglos XIX y XX, (Quito: FLACSO, 1994), 169-173; a photo of the statue itself appears on 171. widespread, but it also proposed that Indian men were helpless to change these gender dynamics. He stated: Lopez’s coarseness (rural character)...which is congenital, with very few exceptions, to the indigenous class to which he belongs...there is a deep-seated custom between the poor Indians, in which a wife requires a dozen monthly blows from her husband as a token of his affection for her: a peculiar way to show love!; but...when a husband...beats [his wife], he is driven by love, rather than by hate and vengeance. (emphasis added) Rivadeneira also called upon racial stereotypes in his plea for lenience when he insisted that his client failed to understand the severity of the crime he had committed. Since he presented domestic violence as an inborn trait of this ethnically distinct group within Ecuadorian society, he could claim that such brutal displays of “affection,” while horrifying to non-Indians, should not be severely punished. Furthermore, he argued that López could not understand the brutality of his actions due to his limited intelligence and his drunken state at the time when the beatings occurred. In short, the barbaric Indian could not be held responsible for his own actions because his very nature was contrary to civilized actions. In this analysis, the Indian man was as much—if not more—of a victim than the Indian woman, because his wife instigated the crime by “requiring” violence as a sign of love and affection. Prosecutor Elias Laso maintained similar ideas about white civilization versus Indian barbarism, but he interpreted these differently than Rivadeneira. He stated: ...the judge should use all means at his disposal to contain the savage custom which unfortunately exists among our lower orders...of mistreating wives without taking into account the consideration that a man should have for a woman, not only because of religious or family obligations, but also because it is characteristic of the rational mind. In a...free republic born in the century of enlightenment and in a culture which guarantees individual rights to all within its territory...it is not impertinent 25 ANH/Q:Cr: December 19,1874, ff. 3-4. 26 Ibid. to...request that you weigh heavily these offenses which deface the customs of a faithful people, renowned through other qualities for their gentle character. (emphasis added) Laso also identified Indian domestic violence as endemic within Indian societies, but he did not recognize this as an inherent trait that absolved the Indian man from responsibility for his actions. Yet even within the prosecutor’s harsher interpretation of Indian domestic violence, the Indian woman was not the true victim of the crime. Instead, he contended that the more significant threat was that this example of barbaric behavior would reflect badly on the nation as a whole, and on civilized (read white) society in particular. Laso firmly declared that the government had to forcibly obliterate Indian domestic violence by severely punishing Indian men who were charged with the crime. The conflicts and continuities in the attorneys’ arguments related not only to their roles in the case itself, but they also reflected broader ideas about European civilization and Indian barbarism. Here, however, barbarism had a tangible consequence with the disruption of the core unit of society—the family. This helps to explain why both the prosecutor and the defense attorney in Asencio López’s case were relatively unconcerned with the plight of Indian women who were beaten by their husbands. While they did not consider the women’s suffering trivial, it was less significant than the fact that they saw Indian domestic violence as an obstacle to their aims at Europeanized progress and modernization. Yet their proclaimed concern did mean that, at least in theory, court officials had to commit themselves to eradicating domestic violence. The lawyers’ impassioned arguments in this case were simultaneously deceptive and enlightening. Their deceptiveness stemmed from the unusual circumstances and outcome of the case itself. Though López was found guilty and given the two-year maximum prison term for his crime, most cases against indigenous men for domestic violence or sexual harassment went