Religion, Politics, and the Gendering of Power in Late Colonial Guatemala

This presentation delves into the archival documentation surrounding the notorious case of the Guatemalan Carmelite nun, María Teresa de la Santísima Trinidad Aycinena. Sor Maria Teresa belongend to an-elite family with important posts in the government. Political uprisings happened in the backdrop of a miraculous occurrence, Sor María started showing the stigmata on her body. Sor Maria’s blood, described in detailed in several documents, became the medium through which the Carmelite nun communicated to the world her mystical experiences. In contrast to other nuns from the viceroyalty of New Spain, who described their visions and ecstasies through verbal language, the Carmelite nun “wrote” with her body. Sor Maria Teresa left around 150 pieces of cloth painted with the blood of her stigmas. In these, one can appreciate an iconographic language that reinforces the kind of mystical experience that could be seen in her body. Her mystical ecstasies were well documented in written form and this documentation has been preserved in several archives. In this presentation, I focus on the Inquisitorial descriptions of Sor Maria Teresa’s mystical raptures to argue that there was a clear motivation of empowerment in Sor Maria through a mostly baroque and late expression of extreme somatic spirituality, not only within convent walls but also within the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Guatemala.