In 1803 in the colonial South American city of La Plata, Doña Martina Vilvado y Balverde presented herself to church and crown officials to denounce her husband of more than four years, Don Antonio Yta, as a “woman in disguise.” Forced to submit to a medical inspection that revealed a woman’s body, Don Antonio confessed to having been María Yta, while continuing to assert his maleness, and to having a functional “member” that he claimed appeared when necessary.
Passing to América is at once a historical biography and an in-depth examination of the sex/gender complex in an era before “gender” had been divorced from “sex.” The book presents readers with the original court docket, including Don Antonio’s extended confession, in which he tells his life story, and the equally extraordinary biographical sketch offered by Felipa Ybañez of her “son María,” both in English translation and the original Spanish. Thomas A. Abercrombie’s analysis not only grapples with how to understand the sex/gender system within the Spanish Atlantic empire at the turn of the nineteenth century but also explores what Antonio/Maria and contemporaries can teach us about the complexities of the relationship between sex and gender today.
Passing to América brings to light a previously obscure case of gender transgression and puts Don Antonio’s life into its social and historical context in order to explore the meaning of “trans” identity in Spain and its American colonies. This accessible and intriguing study provides new insight into historical and contemporary gender construction that will interest students and scholars of gender studies and colonial Spanish literature and history.
List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Cast of Characters
Yta’s Biochronology
Introduction: Exposure
1 Confession: Self-Fashioning and the Involuntary Autobiography
2 Habits: María’s Apprenticeships in a Cross-Dressing Culture
3 Passages: The Passing Privileges of Don Antonio’s Sartorial Modernity in América
4 Means and Ends: Zenith and Nadir of a Social Climber
5 Afterlives: Alternative Emplotments of Don Antonio’s Literary Lives
6 Truth: “True Sex,” Passing, and the Consequences of Deception
Conclusion: Narrations, Enactments, and Bodily Pleasure
Appendix A: The Expediente
Appendix B: Auxiliary Documents
Glossary
Notes
References
Index
“Thomas Abercrombie’s Passing to América is the surprising story of how the materiality of clothing and the deportment associated with status and honor, rather than the body itself, defined sex in the Spanish Monarchy in the Age of Revolutions. Abercrombie brilliantly uses this story of Don Antonio Yta to challenge current interpretations of the primacy of the body in trans-gender identity.”
—Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, author of How to Write the History of the New World
