Latin american Colonial household as a normative sphere

ZAMORA, ROMINA

Helsinki

Conferencia; LCoColaw lectura serie; 2022

CoCoLaw project. University of Helsinki

In this talk, I want to discuss some ideas on Colonial Latin American normative spheres that we are developing on Thomas Duve and Tamar Herzog’s project. I will be delighted to share some features I found on grassroots normative that allow understanding of a special kind of normativity. I hope you help me to think of the colonial household as a normative sphere. We are not talking about any kind of house. It is a particular type of domestic world that it had to accOmplish some rules. The “big household” that Otto Brunner referred to in his famous article “Big household and ancient Oeconomy of Europe” transferred to Latin America since the sixteenth century was a kind of enormous domestic power over a broad American multi-ethnic population. That endowed the pater familia of the prominent families with a big capacity for political decision and authority over their tErritory. The central question is to what extent and in what path a normative knowledge considered relevant within the Spanish colonial household became law. Along the same ways, it is worth asking how the rights, uses, and customs recognized for the Spanish Latin America local communities, as well as for the indigenous peoples, were integrated within the order of law, the administration of justice, and the function of government. If we observe the ius commune, the ius proprium and customs from each city must be integrated into the whole of law. However, it is necessary to check if this has really been like this concerning Spanish cities in Latin America and, even more, if it has worked in this way for the rights and customs of indigenous communities. This matter leads us directly to how normative creation was institutionalized . It was around problems related to the household and obedience to the father, such as the social status of the multi-ethnic population, work, dominion over the land and the people who inhabited it, slavery, or servitude. To what extent did theoretical problems and practical solutions given to everyday stuff under specific conditions, influence the different levels of normative display since they were necessary elements for their creation but not the norm itself?