Usually the word ramera was used in Spain for a clandestina, while “public” as a descriptor implied that a woman worked in the brothel, and everyone in the community knew it. Rojas could work publicly without violating brothel regulations, as they did not exist, and she was not subject to penal retribution or fines. Her occupation weakened her trustworthiness as a good witness in court, but it was not illegal. Therefore, it behooved García to verbally fit Rojas to the patterns of a bad woman through her immorality, not her criminality, in order to prove that García herself was a good woman.
A group of young Spanish plebeian men who appeared to be García’s close friends (often visiting her house) attested to her good character. These men also confirmed the bad reputations of Rojas and her lovers in contrast to the perfectly respectable García. The witnesses for the defense answered the following series of typically leading questions:
[Was García] a good Christian who lived in seclusion in fear of god and her reputation, providing a good example everywhere she went? Was María de Rojas a public woman, a whore that earned her money publicly with her body, for any price that they give her, and for this should it be understood that the witnesses lied in saying that [she used] an alcahueta? Were Rojas and García enemies because Rojas said that García had a bad marriage?
Lastly, the witnesses had to provide their character judgments of Rojas’s three lovers, by definition lascivious and vile men who had lived in sin with Rojas. These questions solidified García’s reputation and established that her accusers were sinful people and not good witnesses.93 The defense claimed that Rojas had sex with lewd, libidinous men who carried on illicit affairs. They were apasionado, men enflamed by their baser passions to commit acts of lust while neglecting to call on reason to control their instincts.94
Every witness for the defense agreed that García had a good reputation and Christian character, in contrast to María de Rojas’s. In describing Rojas, the men inscribed her body with her sexual sins: her indiscriminate and evil exchange of money for sex. They denounced her because she openly monetized her body.95 While García lived a discreet and secluded life as a woman of honor, Rojas walked the streets alone, “wrapped in a sheet” like a common woman. A witness called her a public woman and a puta. She received money “with her body” from anybody and everybody who would pay. Two men testified that Rojas, a public woman and a whore (ramera), “sold her body” in order to eat.96 The witnesses interpreted her lack of selectivity to mean that Rojas did not require the services of a bawd. They opined that given her sexual proclivities, a mediator simply was not necessary. In other words, Rojas took the initiative in sexual aggressiveness, and she did not require persuading and the subtle communication arts of a bawd. This interpretation recalls the age-old Islamic and Spanish definition of alcahuetas as subtle, sophisticated go-betweens for discreet lovers, not crass high-volume ruffians of the kind that an alleged whore such as Rojas might use.
This case, because of how it recorded a fight between former friends, records the most extreme verbiage available to denounce a woman’s character. The animosity of all involved created a boldly written documentation of transactional sex. However, even with all of its specificity, some ambiguity remains. The testimonies made in her favor described García as a woman who lived an exemplary, secluded life, but at the same time she received male visitors.97 Despite the witnesses’ assertions that García was a reputable Christian, their statements leave room to consider that a respectable woman like her, who often conversed with young men at her house, men very willing to stand up for her in court, would make an excellent procuress. The witnesses never explicitly denied that García might have this occupation. They only refuted that Rojas needed help organizing her paying clients. If these young men did use García as their mediator in sexual liaisons, they would certainly wish to speak well of her in court, in order to continue enjoying her bawdy talents.
DOMESTIC PROCURING
The above cases demonstrate that without a thriving brothel, sixteenth-century male residents of Mexico City had several options for partaking in transactional sex. They could seek out women who pandered their servants or their daughters in a domestic setting, in a sense visiting informal family brothels. They could go to taverns, looking for women who had ruffians who took money in exchange for sex with their women, sometimes even their wives. This option could result in violent encounters with ruffians such as Antonio Temiño. Lastly, while walking the streets, they could look out for women selling sex (allegedly, what María de Rojas did) or contact a bawd like Catalina García. All of the above options suggest a lack of exclusivity, a level of somewhat indiscriminating sex that compared roughly with the legal brothels in Spain, aimed at a plebeian clientele satisfied to meet with “public women.”
Men who chose a more discreet path had another very appealing option that fits with the most common understandings of nonmarital sex in the viceroyalties: the servant/master relationship.98 This popular arrangement raised few eyebrows, other than when a husband openly marketed his wife as her go-between, mediator, host, and all the other third-party matchmaking roles that church and state had sought to stamp out for centuries. The archbishop’s court had to take a second look at a case labeled “lenocinio [pandering]” in 1577, when the married couple Martin de Vildosola and Juana Rodríguez openly ignored Vildosola’s previous sentence of banishment, scandalously continuing their polyamorous affairs for money.99 Nosy neighbors inscribed the tale of this couple through their testimonies. Through this written evidence, we learn both the appropriate terms for this transactional arrangement and what the neighborhood viewed as offenses worth memorializing in a file. Testimony says that Vildosola encouraged Rodríguez to entertain at least three different men in their house, serving them meals, washing their clothes, and having physical contact with them on a regular basis for extended periods.100 Rodríguez and Vildosola cultivated extramarital relationships for her that might last for years. Rodríguez’s lovers included a cleric named Miranda, a notary named Miguel de la Zaragoza, and a blacksmith by the name of Hernando de Orgaz, good earners who could afford to compensate the couple for Rodríguez’s attentions. The first two men perhaps even exerted useful power and influence to help maintain the couple’s good fortunes.
Witnesses claimed to see Vildosola asking the men for money, complaining that the couple was poor and did not have enough to eat, and observers saw him receiving it directly from the patrons’ hands to his. The deponents stated that this income provided the couple with the simple luxuries of fresh meat and chicken for their meals, as well as for Indigenous labor to make improvements on their properties.101 Despite noting the money exchanged, the neighbors did not name Rodríguez as a whore or use any other negative terms describing her sexuality. Instead, the testimonies focused on the details that showed an intimate connection between Juana Rodríguez and her clientele, and how her husband “consented to his wife’s carnal access and communication” with different men.102 The witnesses only spoke of her as amancebada, or the concubine of her visitors, using no other labels. Vildosola does not appear to have the characteristics of a ruffian, and the witnesses did not refer to him as such, nor did they use any forms of the word leno. Vildosola instead acted more like a genteel alcahuete, a sociable man out for profit but disinterested in honor or marital fidelity.
This case does not include the couple’s statements—most likely, following the pattern of all other cases of this kind, they would take the form of complete denials and excuses for all of the accusations of intimacy. But onlookers claimed that they saw very suggestive scenes between Rodríguez and Orgaz. Their nosiness narrates a story of the couple’s private activities. An open door allowed neighbors to peer inside, including two spies in the form of children, ages thirteen and fourteen.103 These children and other observers knew that Rodríguez openly committed adultery with the consent of her husband, which they proved by reports of loving personal gestures instead of sex acts