Family, Household, and Kinship

The details of Alvaro de Paredes's family and kinship relations suggest, among other things, that the family was a complex entity that functioned in different ways and on different levels. The family was a legal and economic institution that distributed property and income, but this function was mediated by the positive (or negative) feelings family members had for one another (recall Alvaro's delay in collecting the parental legacies owed him in order to assist his mother and sister). The nuclear family of parents and children stood in relation to the larger network of kin, which varied in its

relevance to the individual or family over time. And the family formed the nucleus for a household. Although the two were not identical, the familial norms of affection, loyalty, and duty often extended to include nonfamily members raised in or closely associated with the household so that, like the kinship network, the household also could broaden the scope of familial relations.

In face of such complexity it is perhaps best to begin with the most basic unit, the nuclear family. Despite the existence of large households and the importance of kin, as has been suggested, marriage usually implied that a couple should establish their own household, which meant separate living quarters of some kind, no matter how modest.^[3] The frequent inclusion in dowry agreements (as will be discussed), especially among commoners, of such items as beds and linens, as well as houses, underlines the importance of establishing a household. A newly married couple living with the parents of one spouse or the other for very long probably was exceptional.^[4] The true multigenerational (or multiple family) household was a rarity, except where a widowed parent might live with a married child and his or her family.^[5]

Couples normally married for the first time while in their early to mid-twenties. A demographic study of the city of Cáceres in the sixteenth century has shown that the average age at marriage for women was twenty and for men twenty-four,^[6] but of course there could be considerable variation in the age at which individuals married and in the difference in age between husband and wife. Teenage marriages for women were fairly common in all social groups.^[7] In 1575 Cristóbal Hernández Tripa was thirty, his wife Teresa González twenty-five, and their oldest son eight years old, so Teresa probably was sixteen or seventeen years old when they married.^[8] However, men in the process of establishing themselves or relocating might have delayed marriage. Licenciado Diego González Altamirano was ten years older than his wife doña Leonor; their first son was born when he was about thirty-five and she twenty-five, so he probably did not marry until his early thirties.^[9] Alonso Delvás, a trujillano emigrant, married a woman in Seville, where he lived for a while before going to New Granada. Witnesses described her as being "already older . . . She couldn't give birth unless it were by great chance."^[10] Presumably Delvás himself was also middle-aged when he married.

Remarriage, of course, also led to greater discrepancies in age. A thirty-year-old trujillano named Juan de Tapia petitioned to go to Peru in 1579 with his wife Isabel García, who was forty-five, and their sons aged six and eight years.^[11] Possibly this was Isabel García's first marriage, but at the least the case was rather unusual. The reverse situation was more typical; it was far more common for men who lost their wives to remarry, and they usually chose relatively young women. Hernando de Encinas at the age of fifty petitioned to go to Peru in 1591 with his second wife, Felipa de Corolla, age thirty-six; they had an infant and a four-and-a-half-year-old and also took with them Encinas's fifteen-year-old son from his first marriage.^[12] Juan de Muesas left Cáceres for Peru in 1579 with his wife and family. At the time he was forty-four and his third wife, Jimena González, was thirty. They were accompanied by the twenty-year-old son and three daughters aged eighteen, seventeen, and thirteen from Muesas's previous marriages, and the three children of his current marriage, ranging in age from two to eight.^[13]

Early age at marriage for women could mean the birth of children over wide intervals. In 1579, for example, two sons of the trujillano returnee from Peru, Pedro Barrantes, and his wife, doña Juana de Paredes, left for Peru. The older son, Alvaro de Paredes Loaysa, a priest, was thirty-six years old and his younger brother, Alonso Barrantes, was a boy of twelve.^[14] These ages were plausible if their mother married in her mid-teens. Generally birth rates were fairly high, with an average interval between births of one to two years; but high mortality rates, the death of either spouse, and probably an increase in the length of intervals between births as parents aged limited family size.^[15]

Birth rates in noble families were somewhat higher than among commoners. Wealthy nobles were likely to be healthier (because of better diet and housing), marry young wives, and use wet nurses, avoiding the relative infertility caused by lactation.^[16] The division of the legacy of doña Beatriz de Paredes after her death in 1560 involved eleven living heirs, most of them minors; however, two sons died soon thereafter.^[17] A list of births and baptisms for the family of one of doña Beatriz's sons, Cristóbal de Ovando Paredes (a returnee from the Indies) and his wife, doña Leonor de Godoy, who married at age fifteen, recorded the births of nine children between June 1589 and October 1602 (another son, not included in

the document, was born in 1605). The shortest interval between the births listed was twelve months and the longest twenty-nine. A girl born on 26 March 1592 died the same night; a son born in 1596 died within a week; and the daughter born in October 1602 died three months later.^[18] A woman's age at marriage and the age at which she stopped conceiving set the limits for childbearing; the late thirties to forty was considered to be the age of menopause. Licenciado Altamirano's wife doña Leonor de Torres could not leave for Peru with her husband in 1569 because, at the age of forty, she was seven months pregnant.^[19] Frequent and rapid remarriage, especially among hidalgos, also helped account for the large size of some families. A noble who lost his (or her) spouse was likely to remarry quickly and produce more children.

Households often extended beyond the nuclear family to include other relatives (including illegitimate ones) and nonrelatives. Large households characterized the nobility in particular because they could afford such establishments. At the age of nearly forty in 1549, Inés Alonso Ramiro testified that she had lived almost thirty years in the house of her "uncle" Cosme de Chaves; her father Diego García de Chaves and Cosme were first cousins.^[20] Because of the number of children that Captain Gonzalo Pizarro (father of Francisco, Hernando, Gonzalo, and Juan Pizarro) fathered both inside and outside of marriage, the Pizarro household in Trujillo at times must have been quite large. Captain Gonzalo recognized and raised his illegitimate sons Gonzalo and Juan. The latter had siblings on the side of their mother, María de Aguilar, who had married Bartolomé de Soto. Letters from one of these maternal siblings, Blas de Soto (who was with Gonzalo Pizarro in Peru) to his sister Isabel de Soto indicate that Isabel also had been brought into the Pizarro household and raised in part by the Pizarros' sister Inés Rodríguez de Aguilar. Isabel de Soto married a Pizarro retainer and returnee from Peru, Diego de Carvajal.^[21]

Household structure and the kinship network to some extent might have tempered the importance or centrality of the nuclear family, although probably this was more often the case for the upper and upper-middle groups than for working people—peasants, artisans, and laborers—for whom the nuclear family usually was the crucial economic unit.^[22] Yet even among working people the nuclear family usually existed in relation to other kinds of connections, not

only those of common residence, occupation, or membership in cofradías but of kinship as well. Examples of siblings who all worked in the same or related trades demonstrate the importance of economic associations and productive units based on family and close kinship ties. The architect Francisco Becerra worked with his father and his first cousin (son of his father's brother) on several projects.^[23]

Families, households, and kin groups were hierarchies under patriarchal authority. The position of the patriarch could be filled by the oldest or wealthiest adult (father or even grandfather) or oldest sibling. Usually the family patriarch was male, but women could occupy that position quite effectively and successfully. Consider the case of Inés Rodriguez de Aguilar. After the death of her father, Captain Gonzalo Pizarro, and in face of the absence (and subsequent death) of her brothers Francisco, Juan, and Gonzalo, as well as Hernando Pizarro's long-term imprisonment after he returned to Spain, Inés, who apparently never married, became the effective head of the Pizarrro household in Trujillo. She accompanied her brother Hernando to Seville when he left for the Indies in 1534. When a man named Pablo Vicencio who had come from Peru (where he seems to have known her brother Gonzalo) went to Trujillo in 1547, he visited Inés to ask if she wished to send anything to Peru when he returned. Inés doubtless was recognized as the head of household in the 1530s and 1540s. In her will of 1551 doña Graciana Pizarro (youngest daughter of Captain Gonzalo Pizarro) called Inés Rodríguez "mi señora" and made her one of her executors.^[24]

Certainly it was unusual for an unmarried woman to remain at home and become the dominant figure that Inés Rodríguez undoubtedly was. Widows more commonly could attain such positions if they avoided remarriage, and if their children were still fairly young and they sought and obtained legal guardianship. Isabel Corvacho, a vecina of Cáceres widowed by her husband Bartolomé Pizarro by 1552, was a middle-level hidalga who showed remarkable flair and success in managing her own and her family's economic affairs. In the 1550s, 1560s, and 1570s, she bought rents and properties in and around Cáceres and Trujillo. In 1579 she donated her goods and property to her three sons, but reserved 90,000 maravedís of rents for herself each year and retained the right to dispose of up to 1000 ducados in her will.^[25] But probably only the most enterprising and determined women were able (and

permitted) to take up the position of matriarch. Francisca Picón, the widow of Pedro de Sande and mother of Dr. Francisco de Sande and several other sons, in certain ways was ideally placed to assume such a role, since her sons spent years away from Cáceres in Mexico, the Philippines, or elsewhere in the Indies or Europe; but there can be little doubt that Dr. Sande effectively assumed the position of family patriarch.^[26]

A strong patriarch, especially a long-lived one, could wield considerable power by the virtue of the property he controlled, his rank, and his authority over the lineage. The great-great grandfather of the chronicler Juan de Chaves, "Luis de Chaves, mi señor, el viejo, died in [14]92, the year in which the Jews were thrown out of Castile and Granada was conquered, at the age of 90." Luis de Chaves was a powerful man, an ally of Ferdinand and Isabella and friend of the Jewish community in Trujillo, who married doña María de Sotomayor, the daughter of Gutierre de Sotomayor, master of Alcántara, and sister of the first count of Belalcázar, don Alonso de Sotomayor. A royal letter of pardon that Chaves received in 1476 underscored his position. It listed 193 people, including his two sons and two nephews, as well as his criados and the criados of his retainers.^[27]

The patriarch served as the custodian of the wealth and status of the lineage. Property in land, houses, and rents was considered to belong to a family and lineage rather than an individual as such, but the person who controlled its disposition occupied a powerful position. Given the importance of inherited property to the nobility, and the fact that children did not legally come of age until twenty-five years, a patriarch could long overshadow his progeny; until the age of twenty-five children had to obtain parental permission for most legal acts and transactions.^[28] Martín de Chaves, el viejo, entirely eclipsed his son Tadeo de Chaves. The complicated relations in this family emerged in the course of testimony regarding ownership of the dehesa of Magasca. Doña Isabel de Chaves was supposed to inherit this estate from her mother, Inés Alonso Ramiro (Inés Alonso was the mother of at least two of Martín de Chaves's children, although they apparently did not marry). The confusion over the ownership of the dehesa arose from the fact that Tadeo de Chaves, doña Isabel's brother, had asked for the usufruct of the estate because "he was poor and had no other property with which

to sustain himself" until his father Martín de Chaves died. Tadeo must have had some legacy from his mother, but his sister probably inherited the largest share. Tadeo died before his father, and his son Martín de Chaves, el mozo (who departed for Peru in 1534 with Hernando Pizarro), became heir to the bulk of the estate of his grandfather Martín de Chaves, whom he called "mi señor."^[29]

The case of Tadeo de Chaves, who had to turn to his sister because his father was unwilling to relinquish control of any of his estate, was not necessarily typical. Custom, affection, or duty usually tempered the authority and power of the head of the family, and most fathers provided some kind of income for their sons or made outright donations, especially when they married (which apparently Tadeo's father had not done), sometimes of a sizable portion of the estate. Such donations in fact represented a part of the inheritance and would be deducted when the final division of property was made.

The family patriarch not only wielded economic and legal power but was often directly responsible for the care and well-being of other family members. This aspect of the patriarchal family emerges in cases where both parents died and the oldest sibling (usually but not always male) became the head of household. Such situations can be seen in connection with the move to the Indies. The priest Bachiller Gaspar González took three of his siblings—a twenty-three-year-old brother and sisters aged thirty-two and twenty-nine—and the orphaned daughter of another brother to Peru when he left Trujillo in 1579, as well as a criada from Orellana and a criado from La Cumbre.^[30] Ana González de Cuevas, the daughter of a notary, obtained a license to go to New Spain in 1575 with her brother Hernando de Cuevas, a priest. Witnesses said she had lived with her brother since their parents had died.^[31] In both these cases a brother assumed responsibility for his siblings and kept them with him when he relocated. One might imagine that a similar situation accounted for the presence in Peru of the mother and two sisters of Fray Alonso Montenegro of Trujillo, who was prior of Santo Domingo of Quito in the late 1540s. One of his sisters, doña Isabel de Aguilar, married an encomendero of Quito.^[32]

How was the kinship network defined? In the case of commoners (and probably lower-level hidalgos as well), less concerned with lineage and property, the effective kinship network possibly did

not extend much beyond a fairly small circle of relatives—uncles and aunts, first and sometimes second cousins (or first cousins once removed). Nobles and hidalgos were aware of and kept close track of a wider range of kinship ties, sometimes up to the fourth degree;^[33] but beyond the second degree people tended to forget the precise nature of the relationship and remembered only that one existed. Generations of intermarriage between hidalgo families multiplied and complicated kinship ties. In 1573 don Francisco de Torres and his uncle Pedro Rol de la Cerda of Cáceres sought a dispensation at court for Torres to marry doña Luisa de la Peña, Pedro Rol's daughter. Torres stated that "on the one side we are first cousins and on the other we are second cousins."^[34] Doña Juana de Acuna of Trujillo married Luis de Chaves, her "nephew" (actually her first cousin once removed), the grandson of Luis de Chaves, el viejo. Nonetheless, while the majority of nobles in Extremadura married women from the same city, marriages between close blood relations (first or second cousins) were not very common. Certain families, however, did form multiple marital alliances (for example, siblings marrying siblings).^[35]

Not surprisingly, hidalgo men especially placed a strong emphasis on the male line and agnatic kin, in keeping with patriarchalism and entails that favored males. Wills and other legal documents, transactions, and even letters all contain many more references to agnatic kin than to cognates. But orientation to the male line was not a hard and fast rule; if the female side was more important, it could overshadow or at least rival the male line in importance. Francisco de Saavedra, whose mother, doña Leonor de Orellana, was the only child of Francisco de Ovando, el viejo, by his third wife, created an entail in 1528 with his wife for their son Gonzalo de Saavedra. The entail included lands and houses in Malpartida and a house within the walls of the old city of Cáceres. Saavedra and his wife, doña Marina Gutiérrez de Carvajal, stipulated that in default of their son and his descendants and of Saavedra's brothers' sons, the entail would go to Saavedra's cousins on his mother's side—Francisco, Cosme, and Cristóbal de Ovando; in their default the entail would go to whoever succeeded to the entail of his uncle Francisco de Ovando, el rico.^[36]

A number of conventions helped to maintain and reinforce the ties of kinship and recognition of a common lineage. Certain names

were traditional in families, as mentioned in connection with Alvaro de Paredes. Naming patterns often meant that in generation after generation the firstborn son and heir bore the same name, as seen in the series of individuals named Diego de Ovando de Cáceres who succeeded Captain Diego de Ovando de Cáceres, or the Francisco de Ovandos who followed Francisco de Ovando, el viejo, the brother of Captain Diego de Ovando.^[37] Another common practice was to alternate in the name chosen for the oldest son, naming a son for his grandfather rather than his father (the Ribera family of Cáceres, for example, alternated between Alvaro and Alonso). More broadly speaking certain names in conjunction with surnames might appear generation after generation or in different branches of a family, such as Diego García de Paredes and Sancho de Paredes (Golfín) (see table 2). The first sons in the direct male line were not the only ones who received these names, and illustrious names from the maternal line were likely to be used as well. One of the brothers of the chronicler Juan de Chaves was don Alonso de Sotomayor, who died of an illness contracted during the 1558 campaign against the French. Their mother, doña Juana de Acuna, was the granddaughter of doña María de Sotomayor and hence the great-niece of don Alonso de Sotomayor, first count of Belalcáçar.^[38] Gómez de Solís, a captain and encomendero in Peru, was the great-grandnephew of Gómez de Solis, a fifteenth-century master of Alcántara from Cáceres. His mother, doña Juana de Solís, was from a Trujillo family (she married in Cáceres); she was the granddaughter of another doña Juana de Solís who was the sister of the master of Alcántara.^[39] The naming of women reflected a similar process of repeating the names of important ancestors.

It might be argued that the purpose of the name given to a child was to underscore the child's relationship to the lineage and kin group rather than his or her individuality; hence two children in the same family might receive the same name. Two sons of Diego de Vargas Carvajal and doña Beatriz de Vargas were named don Diego (both survived to adulthood); Lorenzo de Ulloa, an early settler of Trujillo, Peru, was joined there by his younger brother of the same name. One Trujillo family with eight children included three daughters named María, aged nine, eight, and seven years in 1591.^[40] The designation of names and their utilization was flexible. The terms of entails sometimes specified that the successor take on

a new name, and individuals at times voluntarily changed all or part of their names. Men and women entering religious orders frequently did so. Hernán Pérez Rubio from Trujillo called himself Juan Rubio, his brother's name, when he went to live in Popayán in New Granada, even though his brother was still alive.^[41] People ascending the socioeconomic ladder might add or drop a surname; successful returnees from the Indies sometimes did this. Thus Francisco Rodríguez, a notary who went to Peru with his wife in 1575, styled himself Francisco Rodríguez Godoy on his return to Trujillo several years later.^[42] Women's surnames were even less fixed than men's; sometimes a feminized form of the surname—for example, "la Solana" or "la Ramira"—was appended.

Another practice that had the effect of drawing kinship ties closer was that of using equivalent terms for more distant relatives, as has been observed. The children of first or even second cousins usually were called nephew or niece. Such designations generally (although not always) followed generational lines. Thus in 1544 twenty-three-year-old Francisco de Villalobos testified that he was the "uncle" of a minor, Diego de Figueroa, because his father and Diego's were second cousins.^[43] In reality they were third cousins, but probably the difference in age and fairly close relations between the two families put Francisco de Villalobos in the position of "uncle" to Diego de Figueroa. It was also common to call a brother-in-law ("cuñado") brother ("hermano").

Probably most significant for the vitality and cohesiveness of kinship and marriage networks was that they provided a framework for a wide range of legal and socioeconomic functions—choosing godparents; appointing guardians for minor children; buying and selling censos, lands, and rents; lending and borrowing money; passing along important positions such as seats on the city council; perpetuating traditional professions, occupations, and callings (such as the priesthood or legal profession); choosing executors for estates; and assigning powers of attorney for specific purposes or to take charge of an individual's affairs. Naturally these transactions took place outside the network of relationship as well; but they frequently were realized within it, and probably that was most people's preference.

One can see how this preference operated in the transactions of several related families—the Vegas, Vitas, Canos, and Moragas (see table 5). The Vegas and Vitas were first cousins, and the Vitas

Table 5
The Cano, Vita, and Moraga Families of Cáceres

married members of the Cano and Moraga families. Diego Pérez de Vega made his will in 1547, naming Pedro Cano (the husband of Diego Pérez's first cousin, Catalina González, a member of the Vita family) his executor. In his will he said that his legacy should be used to establish a capellanía if his brother Andrés Vega did not return from the Indies, and he named his first cousin Macías de Vita (the brother of Catalina González) the patron. Pedro Cano also had a brother Juan Cano who had gone to the Indies; Pedro looked after Juan's affairs, and they made some joint investments. Juan Cano was an associate of Cortés who married doña Isabel Moctezuma (daughter of the Aztec emperor) in Mexico. He bought lands from the wife of Macías de Vita (his brother's brother-in-law), doña Jimena Gómez de Moraga, and from her brother Gonzalo Moraga in the 1550s. Two of Macías de Vita's Moraga brothers-in-law assigned him responsibility for the patrimony left in Cáceres by a third brother, Hernando de Moraga, who went to Peru.

Of this group of connected families, the Moragas were the wealthiest and most important, at least in the first half of the sixteenth century. Members of the family sat on the city council of Cáceres, and they held extensive properties around the village of Aldea del Cano (in Cáceres's district). The 1561 census of Aldea del Cano included Macías de Vita, Gonzalo Moraga, and Pedro Cano, so the three brothers-in-law maintained residences near one another (although they were all actually vecinos of Cáceres).^[44] Because of this close contact and collaboration, it is not surprising that members of all these families went to the Indies. In addition to those already mentioned (Andrés Vega, Juan Cano, and Hernando Moraga), Pedro de Vita and Juan de Vita y Moraga, respectively the brother and son of Macías de Vita, went to Peru in 1546 and 1574, and Bernardino de Moraga, a nephew of Hernando de Moraga, went to Chile in 1578.^[45] Of all those who emigrated doubtless the most successful was Juan Cano, who eventually returned to live in Seville. One of his sons left Mexico for Cáceres, where his father had accumulated considerable wealth in rents and properties, married into a high-ranking noble family, and built the so-called Palacio de Moctezuma in the parish of Santa María in the old city.

A final aspect of kinship networks that merits mention is that they linked individuals (and families) who did not necessarily live in

the same town or city, or even the same region. The geographical separation of relatives, of course, was one product of the move to the New World; but it should be borne in mind that the separation of family members and kinsmen resulting from emigration across the Atlantic had longstanding precedents in early modern society. Marriage patterns and the forms of mobility discussed in connection with both hidalgos and commoners meant that one's relatives might be distributed over a wide area. The presence or absence of such kinship ties might have had implications for the existence of a sense of regional cohesion or identity, as opposed to one that was strictly local. People living in towns such as Santa Cruz or Zorita in Trujillo's jurisdiction who had relatives in the city, for example, might have felt more strongly and directly tied to Trujillo than those who lacked such personal connections; this in turn might have been significant when such individuals found themselves in a very different environment, such as Peru, where local or regional identification took on a new meaning.

If it is possible to establish some sense of how kinship networks were defined and what were the socioeconomic and legal parameters of family and kinship relationships, can we also form a notion of the personal and emotional side of these relationships? Affirmations of loyalty and love for family members appear frequently in the documents and letters of the period. Regardless of whether duty and loyalty can be equated with the modern concept of love, many people formed undeniably strong attachments to family members. Use of the word "love" (amor) reflected an important emotional bond. In his will of 1534, made on the eve of his departure for Peru, Martín de Chaves left 50,000 maravedís to his brother Juan Ramiro, should he come from the Indies without enough capital, "so that he can live according to who he is. . . . because of the kinship [deudo] and love I have for him." He left the same amount to his brother Francisco de Chaves, also "por el amor que le tengo."^[46] In 1602 in Peru Juan de Vera de Mendoza donated 800 ducados to his nephews to help support them in their studies "because of the great love he had for his siblings" (the parents of his nephews).^[47] While high mortality rates at times could have engendered a certain transitoriness in family relations, they also might have strengthened the feelings of love and loyalty that surviving

family members had for one another. The letters of Andrés and Antonio Pérez from Puebla de los Angeles in New Spain in the 1550s to their brother Francisco Gutiérrez in Cáceres inviting him to join them stressed that he was the last of their stock ("nuestra generación") still living.^[48] Expressions of concern and affection for family and relatives appear constantly in letters from emigrants in the Indies (as seen in those of Alvaro de Paredes) to their siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, or children. There is no reason to believe that such expressions were purely formulaic or that emigrants were at all unusual in having or expressing such feelings.

The bond between siblings possibly was the strongest, but there is also evidence of concern on the part of children for parents (especially mothers), parents for children, husbands for wives, and vice versa. For example, in 1567, after their father's death, Alonso Delvás wrote from Victoria in New Granada urging his brother Francisco Delvás to emigrate with his family and their sister; he sent 50 pesos, to "do what is obligated for the lady our mother and our sister until I provide more." The next year he wrote saying that their mother should not worry "because I will provide for her as long as I live."^[49] Bequests in wills often included siblings, parents, nieces, nephews, and cousins, in addition to children. These again surely reflected personal feelings of affection or obligation since they were entirely discretionary. Hernando Corajo, who in his will of 1513 made his uncle Diego García de Paredes ("el Sansón") his universal heir, made bequests to the sons and daughter of his nephew Juan Corajo but explicitly barred Juan Corajo himself from inheriting anything; so there can be little doubt that personal preferences and sentiments must have figured. Alonso Bravo of Trujillo, who left a number of things to his wife, also bequeathed her 50 ducados "for the love and union and good fraternity we have had."^[50]

As the example of Hernando Corajo suggests, feelings for family members need not all have been positive. The legal, socioeconomic, and customary framework that defined family relations might have acted to minimize conflict, at least within the nuclear family itself, since this framework served to define the expectations and obligations of each family member. Thus a younger son in a hidalgo family whose estate was entailed, for example, would know from an early age that he probably could expect only a limited inheritance, that he must seek an alternative career, and that he

might never marry. Open conflict between siblings seems to have been relatively rare, although it did occur occasionally. Doña María de Alvarado in 1554 sought to prevent her brother, Juan de Hinojosa de Torres, from sending his representative to Peru to look into the inheritance of their deceased sibling, Captain Pedro Alonso de Hinojosa. Juan de Hinojosa quite reasonably pointed out that until they found out if their brother had left a will and whether he had made some provision for his illegitimate children, there would be no way of knowing if any of his family in Trujillo stood to gain from his legacy. Yet the fact that Juan de Hinojosa planned to send a representative on his own without involving his sister suggests that her anxieties were not unfounded.^[51]

Cousins were more likely to become embroiled in disputes than were siblings. In the 1550s Pedro Calderón de Vargas tried to claim the rich Vargas entail to which his cousin, doña Beatriz de Vargas, wife of Diego de Vargas Carvajal, had succeeded.^[52] Andrés Calderón Puertocarrero sued for lands in Medellín that the mestizo son of his uncle don Pedro Puertocarrero, an encomendero of Cuzco, had inherited.^[53] Cousins were more likely to become enmeshed in such conflicts because at this level of family relationships the legal complexities and loopholes of inheritance might leave some room to maneuver, whereas among siblings usually the terms of inheritance were clear-cut and incontestable. In the arena of more distant relations, a powerful and influential individual might succeed in imposing his will and bypassing legal safeguards. In Cáceres in the 1540s a lengthy suit pitted Pedro de Paredes, illegitimate son of Alvaro de Paredes Becerra, against his first cousins (his father's nieces). Their father, Alvaro's brother, had taken over the estate worth some 20,000 ducados after Alvaro de Paredes Becerra's death. An illegitimate child ("hijo natural") who had been recognized was legally entitled to two-twelfths of the father's estate if no other provision was made. Pedro de Paredes's cousins alleged that he was not their uncle's son and that he had not acknowledged him as such; but the court in Granada held that they had failed to prove their case and ordered them to pay Paredes his share.^[54]

Women and orphaned children with property probably were especially vulnerable to exploitation if they lacked the protection of someone genuinely committed to their best interests. In his will of 1534 Martín de Chaves specifically repudiated a transaction he was

said to have made under the tutelage of Gonzalo de Torres (probably a cousin): "If I did it, which I deny, it was because I was a child and did not know what I was doing . . . and was led to it and deceived and I did it against my will."^[55] Doña Mencía de Ulloa, the widow of García Holguín, in her will of 1570 complained that in 1562 she had signed certain instruments in favor of her nephews Sancho de Paredes Golfín and Pedro Alonso Golfín. She said that they had "told me that they were for my benefit and advantage . . . and I, as a woman and their aunt and very poor and more than 70 or 80 years old, believed them and trusted them and in effect they tricked me." She said that they pressured her into executing documents without her understanding what they were, and she revoked them in her will "because I am told by lawyers and theologians that I could not do it in prejudice of myself and of the legacies of my children and grandchildren.^[56]

Intergenerational conflict and disputes over property were common. Under rare circumstances a parent actually could disinherit a child. Juan Carrasco, an innkeeper of Trujillo, in 1551 left his inn and the "third and fifth" of his goods to his sons Pedro and Gaspar Carrasco, but said that Juan, the son of his first wife, should inherit nothing. According to Carrasco, his son Juan had been very "ungrateful and disobedient," married against his will, tried to attack him with a sword, and injured someone else.^[57] More commonly a parent might reduce the discretionary portion of an heir's legacy. Cristóbal de Ovando de Paredes, one of the wealthiest and most successful returnees to Cáceres from the Indies in the late sixteenth century, lived long enough to become estranged from his eldest son, don Cosme. Cristóbal de Ovando had succeeded to the entail of his father and grandfather (Francisco de Ovando, el rico) after two older brothers died without heirs. In 1602 he made a will in which he created a new entail; the original family entail was to go to don Cosme de Ovando and the new one to his second son, don Rodrigo de Godoy. But in a codicil of 1618 (by which time he probably was in his late seventies) Cristóbal changed the terms of succession radically, making don Rodrigo heir to the family entail and his third son, don Francisco, heir to the new entail, virtually cutting don Cosme off from any substantial parental inheritance. In 1635 don Cosme was still trying to claim one of the entails.^[58]

Certainly property was not at the root of all family conflicts. Leverage over property could be used as punishment, and thus property as such might come into play only in the late stages of conflict. Personality clashes could wreak havoc in domestic situations, as occurred in the disastrous marriage in 1517 of the military hero Diego García de Paredes to doña María de Sotomayor, daughter of the lord of Orellana, Rodrigo de Orellana. The marriage lasted long enough for doña María to conceive their only child, Sancho de Paredes; but before the year was out, she had fled her husband's house, taking refuge first in the convent of the Coria in Trujillo and then later in her brother's house in Orellana.^[59] The couple never lived together again, and Diego García spent most of the remaining years of his life outside Spain. The Crónicas trujillanas, especially the Hinojosa manuscript, recount a number of tales of family violence and scandal—jealous husbands who killed their wives, an argument between cousins that ended in bloodshed and the murderer's escape to "la India de Portugal"—but most of these stories belong to an earlier period. On the whole it seems likely that violence most often was directed toward nonrelatives (or distant ones) rather than close family members.

Discussion to this point mainly has focused on the structure and dynamics of the family and kinship network as units. Within these units the experience of individuals could differ notably. Two groups in particular—women and illegitimate children—occupied a position in the family (and society) that often was ambivalent and difficult. Because of the distinct and sometimes problematic nature of their position, they will be considered separately.