Description
Book SynopsisA collection of histories showing how women participated in Mexican revolutionary and postrevolutionary state formation by challenging conventions of sexuality, work, family life, and religious practice.
Trade Review“This anthology touches on a wide range of themes: female colonels in the revolution, machismo applied with scissor snips in Mexico City, the cinematographic treatment of indigenous women, divorce in conservative circles, women’s education, the construction of new families, labor-union life, rationalized sex, activism among women in Catholic and rural organizations, and sexism in the Popular Front. Despite the variety, the book offers a complex, coherent panorama, energetically distancing itself from generalizations. It is well known that God, the devil, and attentive readers are in the details.”—Carlos Monsiváis, from the foreword
“This path-breaking book fundamentally changes our view of the Mexican Revolution as a man-made affair. The women who struggled against patriarchal authority as workers, teachers, feminist activists, soldiers, peasants, students, and mothers come alive in these pages—as do their adversaries. The chapters brilliantly mesh theoretical analysis with fine-grained historical accounts of gendered challenges to Mexico’s social order. This book’s importance reaches far beyond the Mexican case as it grapples with universal questions of authority, gender, and revolution.”—Elizabeth Dore, author of
Myths of Modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaragua“[A] crisp, well-integrated set of articles focused primarily on the experience of women during and after the Mexican Revolution of 1910. . . . Instructors will find many of the individual essays in this collection useful for helping students appreciate the ways in which the Mexican Revolution was or was not a revolution for women. For those undertaking research, this engaging collection complements other recent work on the topic. . . .” -- Katherine Elaine Bliss * Hispanic American Historical Review *
“[A] valuable, fresh contribution to gender studies in Mexico from a perspective further removed from the revolutionary period. . . . [T]his is a remarkable volume for the scope and depth of its contents and analysis and for its documentation of the challenges by the women of Mexico to the entrenched social order. It represents a remarkable and commendable effort that contributes to our changing view of the Mexican Revolution and its long aftermath.” -- Carmen Ramos Escandón * Signs *
“One of the book ’s most notable qualities lies in the way in which it emphasises women ’ s agency in the re-negotiation of hegemonic gendered practices and cultural patterns in a variety of social situations and localities, thus contesting dominant narratives of the revolutionary period. . . . [A]n important contribution to discussions about historical patterns of gender, politics, and women’s agency and activism in Mexico.” -- Daniel Nehring * Bulletin of Latin American Research *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Foreword: When Gender Can’t Be Seen amid the Symbols: Women and the Mexican Revolution / Carlos Monsivaois 1
Introduction: Pancho Villa, the Daughters of Mary, and the Modern Woman: Gender in the Long Mexican Revolution / Mary Kay Vaughan 21
Part One: Embodying Revolutionary Culture Unconcealable Realities of Desire: Amelio Robles’s (Transgender) Masculinity in the Mexican Revolution / Gabriela Cano 35
The War on
Las Pelonas: Modern Women and Their Enemies, Mexico City, 1924 / Anne Rubenstein 57
Femininity,
Indigneismo, and Nation: Film Representation by Emilio “El Indio: Fernandez / Julia Tunon 81
Part Two: Reshaping the Domestic Sphere “In Love Enslaves...Love Ber Damned!”: Divorce and Revolutionary State Formation in Yucatan / Stephanie Smith 99
Gender, Class, and Anxiety at the Gabriela Mistral Vocational School, Revolutionary Mexico City / Patience A. Schell 112
Breaking and Making Families: Adoption and Public Welfare, Mexico City, 1938–1942, Ann S. Blum 127
Part Three: The Gendered Realm of Labor Organizing The Struggle between the
Metate and the
Molinos de Nixtamal in Guadalajara, 1920–1940 / Maria Teresa Fernandez-Aveces
Gender, Work, Trade Unionism, and Working-Class Women’s Culture in Post-Revolution Veracruz / Heather Fowler-Salamini 162
Working-Class Masculinity and the Rationalized Sex: Gender and Industrial Modernization in the Textile Industry In Postrevolutionary Puebla / Susan M. Gauss 181
Part Four: Women and Revolutionary Politics Gendering the Faith and Altering the Nation: Mexican Catholic Women’s Activism, 1917–1940 / Kristina A. Boylan 199
The Center Cannot Hold: Women on Mexico’s Popular Front / Jocelyn Olcott 225
Epilogue. Rural Women’s Grassroots Activism, 1980–2000: Reframing the Nation from Below / Lynn Stephen 241
Final Reflections: Gender, Chaos, and Authority in Revolutionary Times / Temma Kaplan
261
Bibliography 277
Contributors 303
Index 307
