Works in Progress with Rebeca Martínez-Tibbles

“Ilícita Amistad: Women’s Plural Relationships in Bigamy Cases of Colonial Mexico”

Guest Speaker: Rebeca Martínez-Tibbles (History)

This paper examines ilícita amistad—illicit or informal romantic relationships—as a central feature of women’s lives in colonial Mexico, particularly as revealed through bigamy cases prosecuted by the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Drawing on extensive archival research in Mexico City and regional tribunals, the paper argues that women were not passive actors who moved neatly from one marriage to another. Instead, many engaged in plural romantic and sexual relationships during periods of abandonment, coercion, or marital breakdown, using ilícita amistad as a strategy of survival, resistance, and autonomy.

Through close readings of Inquisition trials involving women of Spanish, mestiza, Indigenous, and African descent, this study demonstrates that ilícita amistad functioned differently across racial and social hierarchies. While Spanish women were often afforded discretion or leniency despite engaging in multiple relationships, women of African descent faced disproportionately harsh punishments, revealing the racialized logic underpinning colonial sexual regulation. These cases complicate existing historiography on female honor by showing that inquisitors frequently prioritized violations of the sacrament of marriage over women’s prior sexual conduct, allowing evidence of plural relationships to surface without formal prosecution.

Rebeca Martínez-Tibbles is a Ph.D. candidate in History at the University of California, Los Angeles, specializing in colonial Mexico, gender and sexuality, race, religion, and legal culture. Her dissertation, Women and Bigamy in Colonial Mexico, examines female marital transgression through cases prosecuted by the Inquisition from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. She has conducted extensive archival research in Mexico City, Seville, and U.S. repositories with support from fellowships including the Fulbright-Hays DDRA and the CCWH/Berks Graduate Student Fellowship. Her work has been presented at national and international conferences, including the American Historical Association and the Western Association of Women Historians, and has appeared in public-facing and scholarly venues. At UCLA, she teaches courses on women and gender in the Americas and has served as an editorial assistant for the Hispanic American Historical Review.

This event is organized by the UCLA Medieval & Early Modern Student Association and sponsored by the CMRS Center for Early Global Studies.