Across Borders and Bodies: Inquisitorial Perspectives on Gender Diversity and Same-Sex Desire in Early Modern Spain and Mexico

This project explores how the Spanish and Mexican Inquisitions developed distinct approaches to gender diversity and same-sex desire during the early modern era. With a special focus on the period from the start of colonial society in 1492 to the beginning of the Spanish Baroque around 1620, it traces how Spain's post-Reconquista moral framework was reshaped through the colonial encounter with Indigenous peoples in New Spain. While the Spanish Inquisition often linked sodomy to questions of honor, the Mexican Inquisition increasingly treated it as a form of social deviance. In drawing on legal records, colonist travelogs, and theological writings, this study challenges the narrative that Europe was uniformly repressive while the Americas were inherently transgressive. By highlighting overlooked protoqueer figures on both sides of the Atlantic, this paper complicates dominant colonial myths and expands our understanding of how queerness, honor, and ethnicity intersected in the formation of Spanish imperial power.