ABSTRACT
The Spanish colonization of Tåno’ Låguas yan Gåni (the Mariana Islands, Western Pacific) during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries led to the patriarchalization of the archipelago's populations. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the role played by the “vicious sensibilities” of the colonizers in this patriarchalization, that is, in the increase of power inequalities between men and women. Through an analysis of letters and judicial and inquisitorial documents, the chapter shows how these “vicious sensibilities” were performed through (ethno)sexual and physical violence against those subjects that the colonizers considered inferior, such as Indigenous women, children, and men. Furthermore, the chapter analyzes how this violence exercised by colonial agents such as mayors, governors, and even Jesuit missionaries originated and sustained a new matrix of domination, which organized new gender and social hierarchies in the archipelago.
