Medicines and the Mediation of Authority: Blacks and Mulattos in Seventeenth- Century New Spain

Medicines and the Mediation of Authority: Blacks and Mulattos in SeventeenthCentury New Spain Joan Bristol George Mason University Paper presented to WASHLA, November 8-9, 2002 THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE OR CITE WITHOUT AUTHOR’S PERMISSION. In 1618 a Spanish man named Esteban Dominguez denounced a mulatto woman named Ana de Pinto at the court of the Inquisition in Mexico City for the crime of practicing witchcraft (hechicería). He explained that de Pinto had treated a sick friend of his, a Spanish alguacil (sheriff) named Bartolome Ruíz. Her treatments included applying a poultice to Ruíz’s stomach, giving him drinks that she made, sewing a small bag embroidered with a cross into his shirt on the side over his heart, and “[making] the sign of the cross over the chest of the sick man and his ears, at the same time making crosses everywhere in the name of the Holy Trinity.” According to Ruíz’s testimony, he welcomed de Pinto’s ministrations. When an Indian observer speculated that the drink that de Pinto gave Ruíz might contain peyote, a hallucinogenic plant associated with Indians and prohibited by Inquisitorial edicts, Ruíz obediently drank it without questioning de Pinto. He also drank water that de Pinto sent him, following her instructions to drink it with his left hand after leaving it outside exposed to the daytime sun and night air. As Ruíz said in his testimony at the Inquisition, when Ana de Pinto