Queer Náhuatl: Sahagún’s Faggots and Sodomites, Lesbians and Hermaphrodites

This article provides a method for interpreting the place of sexuality in texts that defy analysis. The author uses one source, the Florentine Codex, a large and com plex bilingual Nahuatl and Spanish document, to decipher some elements about cross-dressing individuals, hom osexualities, and gender inversions in N ahua society at the time of the Spanish conquest. The m ethodology used combines close narrative analysis with intellectual genealogy. The author argues that decoding the texts in this w ay allows us to uncover a cross-dressing male who engaged in " pas- sive” hom osexual acts and had a degraded but institutionalized role to play.

Duke Scholars

Author Peter Sigal History