On Sunday, the thirteenth of May in 1708, Leonor Domínguez precipitated a crisis in Santa Cruz. She filed a legal complaint or denuncia in Santa Fé stating she was ill because she had been bewitched by three women living in San Juan.
The governor could not ignore such a petition. He began the sumaria asking his alcalde ordinario de segundo voto, Juan García de las Riva, to validate her claims of illness.
After he read García’s reconocimiento de heridas, the governor proceeded to the next step in the standard investigation. He had the accused women arrested on May 15.
The next day, García questioned Leonor, and then gave the three accused an opportunity to make a confesión. The women denied the charges. He questioned two again, and found slight changes in their stories. They, of course, had had time to consider their best responses.
On May 18, the governor advanced from the sumario phase to the juicio plenario, when both the accuser and the accused were asked for witnesses. He turned this part over to the sargento mayor, Juan de Ulibarrí.
Lenore was interviewed again on May 22. When asked why she suspected the women, she said she had been told one of them was the mistress of her husband, Miguel Martín. She added she also had heard of other women being bewitched and cured by people at San Juan.
Ulibarrí then questioned her witness to the initial episode, the woman who told her about the adultery, and a man who witnessed an earlier incident. Next Ulibarrí examined Leonor’s husband, Miguel.
On May 25, Ulibarrí turned to the couple at San Juan who were said to have cured women bewitched earlier. Two days later he interviewed the accused women who were being held in chains. He ordered the one who was crippled released from the irons, but kept under arrest.
By then, everyone involved was more concerned with the consequences of the investigation to themselves than they were with the truth. They probably remembered the case of Cristóbal Góngora and Ines de Aspeitia. They had come with different spouses from Mexico City. They were married and living in Santa Cruz in 1701 when he found human bones wrapped in a mantle.
After Góngora called some men to witness, the priest, Padre Alvarez, granted him a legal separation. Two years later, in 1704, another priest, Padre Arranegui, made them live together despite Góngora’s objections. The next year, José Antonio Romero came into the house with a sword, threatening the man who was there, Góngora’s step-father. Still another priest, Juan Minguez, was called to investigate.
No one wanted the church involved in their personal affairs.
The only support one any gave to Leonor’s story was an admission of events that occurred in public and could be verified by others. They denied everything else. Several of the woman said they had told Leonor not to be foolish. Two men said she was jealous.
The governor read Ulibarrí’s report and ordered the women released on May 31.
Notes: In all the items in this series, I am using translations or third party summaries of cases. Even if I had access to the original Spanish documents, I wouldn’t be able to detect the nuances of language necessary to understand everything that is meant.
Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.
_____. New Mexico Roots, Ltd, 1982.
Cutter, Charles R. The Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 1700-1810, 1995.
Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Spanish Archives of New Mexico: Compiled and Chronologically Arranged, volume 2, 1914.
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