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18-20/06/18

Workshop: Gender and Empire: A Transimperial Approach to Gender Politics and the Colonial State, 1848-1945, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.

Verónica Peña Filiu and Enrique Moral de Eusebio.

As Claude Lévi-Strauss noted, in a large number of human groups there exists a strong connection between the act of eating and the sexual intercourse. The aim of this communication is to show how, during the evangelisation and colonisation of the Mariana Islands, Spanish colonial agents targeted both activities in their attempt to “reduce” and control native Chamorro populations. Pre-contact eating and sexual practices, deeply rooted in the daily life of the natives, were radically different from European standards. Therefore, the colonisers promoted a series of policies directed to accommodate such practices to the Christian doctrine and, hence, to a “civilized” way of life. In analysing those policies, we will also discuss the canonical historiography of the Marianas by showing how the colonial agents, far from comprising a monolithic and homogeneous group that successfully imposed their goals, faced several problems and internal divisions during the development of their project.