On Children of the Father King

Legal history is always really hard for me, and this book is no exception. Bianca Premo’s arguments are subtle but interesting. She does a good job of linking legal history with the history of childhood, but I wish there was more documentation available to create a social history. Of course, Premo’s decision to emphasize the law is a just one, much of what we know about children in colonial Peru, and Spanish America more broadly, comes from legal documents.

In this text, Premo argues that the position of “minority” (as in, being a legal minor) was a complex one. While it was used to prevent justices from throwing “the book” at children, the position of a legal “minor” was not something granted exclusively to children. Given the paternalistic racism involved in Spanish colonization, indigenous peoples were also frequently given the position of “minor”—for instance, one 40-year old man in Lima sexually assaulted a child and his legal defense was that he was a “minor” because he was born in Trujillo to indigenous parents, making it impossible for him to be prosecuted for what seems to be statutory rape. On the other hand, legal minors also challenged the law—one 16-year old Spanish boy documented here got into a fight with another; while he was defended on the grounds of being a minor, he contested this defense instead arguing that the fight was one of “honor between men,” and that he should therefore be shielded from prosecution.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is Premo’s discussion of “social reproduction” and the way that Spanish American education (whether formal or through socialization) maintained the structures of imperial rule. For instance, children in a Spanish household would inculcate their status and be virtually guaranteed a life of privilege. Moreover, children who were taken into what might be characterized today as “orphanages”—homes run by nuns, priests, etc.—and were classified by their skin tone, their features, and even the quality of the cloth in which they were brought. The religious official who took in the child would note these things, ultimately giving the child a caste, which then determined whether they would leave the orphanage as slaves, whether they could marry Spaniards, and even whether they could be given a dowry.

There’s also an excellent discussion of the importance of patriarchy to colonial Peruvian society and the mismatch between theory and practice. Under medieval Spanish (codified) law, the father essentially ran the household and—while not sovereign—had a great deal of power. However, in the Peruvian context, especially in the later eighteenth century, this ideal had little in common with practice. Mothers became much more important in households, uncles could sue for legal guardianship of nieces and nephews, etc.

All in all, there’s a lot of material in here that illuminates both the history of colonial Latin American childhood and the Spanish American family. The reader also gets a good sense of how both civil and criminal law played out with regard to legal minors (or those who claimed minority status). Really interesting stuff, but the overarching arguments are a bit unclear to me.