This chapter tells the stories of women from liminal-frontier regions – Andalucía and the Canaries. Some of these women were ethnic Spaniards. Others were described as Moriscas, an ambiguous term. In the stories told here, Morisca women could have been Arab–Spanish converts from Islam to Christianity; Maghrebi women; Spanish Canarians; or vaguely exotic or darker-skinned Andalucian women. Andalucía had a long tradition of female courtesan slaves, called ŷāriya. The women accused of sorcery in this chapter were often shamed for their sexual behavior. Two in particular, Esperanza de Valencia and María de Armenta, were described as being mujer enamorada, a euphemism for courtesan. Armenta in particular had affairs with two wealthy and politically powerful men of Mexico City in the 1530s. These women were accused, almost predictably, of love magic and of being too sexually free. In the context of Mexico, these Morisca and Andalucian women flouted Catholic ideas about female chastity and decorum. They were targeted by inquisitional courts not only for sorcery but also for being courtesans. At least one such Morisca was a slave of a wealthy man in Oaxaca and may have had some kind of amorous relationship with him.

This chapter examines the earliest cases of sorcery trials in Mexico in 1520s and 1530s. A discussion is presented of the ways that Spanish women learned magic from Nahua women in Mexico City. Spanish women adopted multiple Nahua cultural behaviors. These included understanding the role of the tiçitl; metaphysics of Nahua forms of healing; the god Tezcatlipoca; and invocations in Nahuatl language. Spanish women learned about the Nahua cultural significance of sweeping and brooms, associated with cosmic order and cleanliness. Spanish women also quickly learned Nahuatl, communicating with domestic servants and in the street, where the Nahuatl word for market, tianguis, became the first Nahuatl loanword in Mexican Spanish, as early as 1524. Other cases against Spanish women show that these women quickly adopted Mesoamerican plant material for spells and that these women understood the rite of corn hurling (tlapohualiztli).