Women and Revolutions in Latin America

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Women and Revolutions in Latin America

• Latin America at Independence

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Incorporating Women in Revolutions

• What did women have to offer to the wars of
  independence?
  
• How did women of different classes experience the
  revolutions?
  
• How did men view women as part of revolutions?
• Who did men fight revolutions for?
• How were women integrated into the new
  nation-state?

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Three Revolutions that Shook the World

• North American Revolution 1776
• French Revolution of 1789
• Haitian Revolution of 1791
• How did these revolutions deal with issues of
  gender?

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Latin American Ideas of Gender Equality

• Benito Gerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro (1676-1764)
  spoke out about female inferiority.
  
• Benedictine monk who agreed that women might be
  physically weaker, but both sexes are equal in
  intellectual capacities.
  
• His work found all over Latin America, including
  in convents
  
• During the late 18th and early 19th century elite
  educated women often ran tertulias or literary
  salons where both men and women discussed
  politics.

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What does revolution mean for women?
Tertulia (source María Sáenz Quesada, Mariquita
Sánchez Vida política y sentimental
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What Gender Issues did people discuss?

• Education for women
• Traditionally women taught to read and not to
  write-to keep them from writing love letters!
  
• 1790 Josefa Amar y Borbón of Bogotá complained
  that girls should be educated to be more than
  decorations.
  
• Womens links to convents helped them expand
  female education.
  
• In Argentina after 1823 the liberal leader
  Bernadino Rivadavia established the Sociedad de
  Beneficencia which set up schools for women.
  Some of their pupils like Rosa Guerra
  subsequently wrote on womens issue.
• Women also wrote in favor of revolution

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Women as Political Actors

• Several elite women encouraged slave revolts
• In Mexico, María Josefa Yermo de Yermo, a wealth
  landowner, liberated 500 slaves on her haciendas
  
• In Venezuela, Joaquina de España helped her
  husband in 1791-she hid him while helping slaves
  to rebel. She also worked with Isabel Gómez, a
  parda, to distribute revolutionary
  literatureboth captured and exiled.
• Ecuadorian Baltzara Chiza led a rebellion in
  1778. After being captured she was drawn and
  quartered.
  
• Wife of indigenous leader of Tupac Amaru
  rebellion in 1780-81 had to watch the execution
  of her sons and have her tongue cut out.
  
• Many women arrested for disloyalty to the crown

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Other forms of political participation

• Women contributed their sons to the
  conflictoften losing many of them
  
• Women accompanied husbands and sons to war
• Some women also supported the Spanish
• Some women fought alongside their children
• Policarpa Salvarrieta was just 18 years old when
  she was shot by the Spanish for refusing to give
  information in 1817 regarding the revolutionary
  movement.

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Was Independence a watershed for women?

• What is a watershed?
• An event that transforms the history of a place,
  group of people.
  
• Are political revolutions watersheds for women?
• If not, what would be defined as watersheds?
• Did the Latin American wars of Independence
  affect women in the same way as men?
  
• How could we measure this?