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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY— PUBLICATION NO. 3 



average adult individual is supported by and helps 

 to support a "net" of at least 69 relationships con- 

 necting him by socially significant ties to as many 

 diflferent individuals in the society. He may expect 

 help from and must be ready to give help to any one of 

 these individuals. The relationships are distributed 

 as follows : 35 blood relationships, 14 affinal relation- 

 ships, and 20 ceremonial relationships. Of the 3 

 types, the ceremonial relationships are the most per- 

 manent and least likely to be broken in times of stress. 

 It is this network of kinship relationships, rather 

 than a structure of organized groups, which forms a 

 basis for the security of the individual in Moche. The 

 affinal strands may be broken by separation or elifec- 

 tive divorce, and the blood lines show a tendency to 

 burst under stress of inheritance disputes, but the 

 strong and abiding fabric is composed of the cere- 

 monial kinship bonds. Two apparent reasons for this 

 are that ceremonial bonds are not normally subject to 

 the strains of cooling "love," sexual jealousy, and 

 other emotional factors, on the one hand, nor to the 

 strains involved in property division and inheritance, 

 on the other hand. 



CEREMONIAL KINSHIP OR 

 COMPADR.\ZGO 



The SN'stem of relationships called the compa- 

 drazijo or padriuazgo (co-godparenthood and god- 

 parenthood) is perhaps the most important body of 

 interpersonal relationships in Moche. It is also the 

 most foreign to North American customs and ways 

 of thinking, for even that minority of North Amer- 

 icans who possess or are "godparents" find them- 

 selves enmeshed in no such web of relationships as 

 do the Mocheros. It is strange that this type of 

 linkage between persons and families has not received 

 more extensive treatment in the sociological and 

 ethnological literature. Its presence constitutes one 

 of the outstanding differences between the basic 

 social organizations of "Anglo-Saxon" North Amer- 

 ica and those of Latin America. °"' 



The essence of the system in Moche is an "arti- 

 ficial" bond, resembling a kinship relationship, which 

 is established between persons by means of a cere- 

 mony. The ceremony usually involves a sponsorship 

 of a person or material object by one or more of 

 the persons involved, and the ceremony itself may 



"The only analyses of a fvstem of this sort of which I am aware 

 are in Spicer (1940, pp. 91-116) and Bcals (1946, pp. 102-104). See 

 also Redfield, 1931. passim; 1941, pp. 12J-125, 192; Parsons, 19.16, 

 passim; see also Rojas Gon/.'des. 1943, for aboriginal antecetlents in 

 Mexico. 



be relatively informal. However, in Moche it seems 

 to be placing the wrong emphasis to label the whole 

 system, in Spicer"s terms, "ceremonial sponsorship." 

 In many cases the sponsorship is secondary in im- 

 portance and is merely the mechanism whereby the 

 social relationships are set up. The emphasis in 

 Moche is upon the relations between sponsors ( padri- 

 nos, madrinas) of an individual or thing, and between 

 them and other persons (the parents of the godchild 

 or the owners of the thing sponsored) — in other 

 words, relations between adults rather than between 

 adults and children or things. Sponsors and other 

 unsponsored persons so linked together are compa- 

 drcs and coiiiadrcs to each other, and the re- 

 lationship involved is coinpadracgo, whereas the 

 relationship between a sponsor and a child is that 

 of padriiiacgu. However, human beings may also be 

 sponsors to inanimate objects, such as houses, botijas 

 of cliicha. and altars, in which case no social bond 

 exists between the "godparent" and the object, but 

 only tlie bond between the "godparent" and the 

 owner or proprietor of the object, who are mutually 

 known as coiiipadrcs or cumadrcs. Not only in this 

 formal aspect, but also in everyday behavior, the 

 emphasis is placed upon the relationship between 

 adults who are linked by compadrazgo. Finally, 

 there is one type of compadrazgo which involves no 

 sponsorship whatever. There are no persons in 

 Moche who do not have coinpadrcs. and some per- 

 sons stand in this relationship to scores of other 

 persons. It is the nature of the system that, for 

 every godchild an individual may have, he will have 

 several coiiipad7-cs and comadrcs. 



The whole idea of this type of relationship has 

 been carried to extremes in Moche. There are more 

 types of padrinacgo in this communitv than in any 

 other concerning which I have seen reports. This 

 fact may be linked with the absence of spontaneous 

 community organization and solidarity. The cere- 

 monial kinship system provides security for individu- 

 als which is not provided otherwise. It would seem 

 that the ceremonial kinship ties are even stronger 

 in some respects than the relationship ties of blood 

 and marriage. Although various cases of quarrels 

 over property between blood and affinal relatives are 

 known to me, I have been unable to find a single 

 case of such feuds involving coinpadrcs. comadrcs. 

 padriiws or madrinas and ahijados or ahijadas. One 

 may speak sharply and with relative impunity to 

 one's Ijlood relatives or in-laws, but it is a cause for 



