Bestiality, Shape-Shifting, and the Human/Animal Boundary

This paper juxtaposes histories of indigenous shape-shifting, criminal cases of bestiality, and the use of animal metaphors in racial discourse in order to interrogate “nature” and the category of the unnatural (contra natura) in New Spain (1530-1821). The category of the "unnatural," especially when defined in opposition to procreative sexual desires, was an ambivalent classification at best, always threatened by its own internal contradictions. By situating the history of animal-human relations with the history of sexuality, we can better understand the fluidity that characterized early modern Spanish and indigenous Mesoamerican, specifically Nahua, physical and ideological crossings of the animal/human boundary. Given that in colonial Mexico, as far as the historical record shows, humans were executed for the crime of bestiality, special attention is paid to the nonhuman animal deaths brought about by judicial mandates to kill the animals implicated in cases of bestiality. Throughout, the essay traces historical changes in human-animal relationships, and concludes that colonial confrontations were fought out (among colonial animals) at the interstices of the animal/human boundary.