Women of the Pimería Alta-Intersectional Bias

Credit to New York Public Library

Intersectional Bias

Not only did women in the Pimería Alta face increased gender-based violence, indigenous women also found themselves at the bottom of a new religious, sociopolitical, and racial order in society. This “intersectional” bias had an enormous influence on the lives of indigenous women.

Native people were perceived by Europeans as religiously and morally inferior. They were seen as barbaric, heathens, and lacking credibility. At best, they were treated like children. Without any social or political power, indigenous people effectively became “others” in the development of society.

This “othering” was also part of an unquestioned Western racial doctrine. Racism already had a strong foothold in European culture, nourished by the scientific revolution. By the time missionaries arrived in the New World, “scientific racism” had produced a color-coded hierarchy of people across the planet.

From the perspective of Spanish and other European colonizers, the dark skin of native peoples signified social inferiority. Missionary Pedro Font wrote in his journal, “they [the O’odham] are well-built Indians but very ugly and dark, the women even more so.” Similar comments appear in the writings of missionaries throughout the Pimería Alta. Racial biases expressed by colonists were not isolated incidents, and these attitudes heavily impacted indigenous women.

Gender-based prejudice added another layer of bias against women. Enlightenment era beliefs saw women as innately socially, mentally, and physically inferior to men. Immanuel Kant, an influential Enlightenment thinker, even suggested that his readers “notice the ease with which those in power control the masses: because the masses don’t want to think (especially the “fair sex”), and they in fact, like to be told what to do.” Women were dealing with cultural and social perspectives that considered them inferior and dismissed their contributions. Their ability to think logically and rationally was questioned, and they were seen either as frivolous, or as sexual objects with limited abilities.

This overlapping combination of biases related to religion, race and gender meant that indigenous women had to face many intersectional layers of prejudice. The system of race-based classifications known as castas, or castes, in colonial and mission society is an example of these intersections. The caste system dictated every facet of life, with social, cultural, economic, and political interactions being defined by each individual’s caste status. Caste marked what kinds of activities one could participate in, or whether a person could be in leadership roles. In the Pimería Alta, indigenous women who had not yet converted to Catholicism and enslaved Africans together made up the lowest of the caste groups and, therefore, were unable to be in leadership positions.

For indigenous women, this new order of social biases resulted in limited roles and opportunities in the social, cultural, economic, and political life of society. The complicated interplay of religious, racial, and gender prejudice was a strong force that shaped women’s day-to-day life in significant ways.