In her masterwork, Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath remarked on a woman’s life as being like a many-branched fig tree, with each fruit representing a path in life – to pick one fig is to let the others wane and die, to pick none is to let the entire stock wither: to have marriage or a career, to have education or children? The Mexican Revolution against the Porfiriato in 1910 saw this question be more pressingly pushed into the lives of many Mexican women, to which their answer was not merely to be mothers, fighters, or intellectuals, but all in the same. The following argument will analyze the situation of the gender roles of Mexican women prior to the Revolution, document its change during the Revolution, and finally focus on the development of such roles through a lens of class. Through this progression, it will demonstrate that change in gender roles was felt less in the battlefield than in intellectual spheres and that there was a stark division in the nature of such changes across classes. Mexican women would increasingly be able to pick whichever and however many figs they wished.
Commencing with contextualization, one turns to Anna Macias’ paper “Women and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920”, published by Cambridge University Press, in which she states that women prior to the Revolution “had given aid and comfort and had also, when necessary, fought alongside their men in all the wars the country had … experienced. This included the independence movement of 1810-1820, the North American invasion of 1846-1848 … and the French Intervention of 1857-1867.” (1980, 54) As Macias makes clear, the middlingly popular trope that the Revolution resulted in women becoming ‘soldaderas’ for the first time is very much false. Rather, the role of the female in struggles, battles, and wars had been a rich tapestry by the time the Revolution had begun. Despite this clarification, the question remains as to why Mexican women so often did things and played roles which would be unthinkable in then-contemporary American or European society. One hears of women participating in combat in Europe and North America, but very rarely, and mostly in situations of desperate circumstances, such as the Siege of Haarlem during the 80 Years War when every last individual’s strength had to be levied to protect the city. Is there something special in the constitution of Mexican women which makes them more likely to brave danger or is Mexican society simply more accepting of the presence of women in battle? I would argue against such characterizations, as I would a) strongly oppose any suggestion that humans differ significantly based on ethnic divisions and b) underline that Mexican society was a syncretic mix of European and Native cultures, neither of which were extremely keen on women’s intrusion into traditionally male spheres. As such, it might be wise to go back to the aforementioned desperate circumstances in which women would be seen taking up arms. Would it be fair to characterize the first war which Macias notes – the independence movement of 1810-1820 – as desperate? I would certainly say that it is. The cause of the Mexican War of Independence was manifold, but it was triggered in part by Napoleon’s occupation of Spain, which gave Spain’s colonies an opportunity to rebel against a dying empire during the convergence of a moment of weakness and an interregnum. Moreover, the wide popularity of champions of independence such as Miguel Hidalgo capitalized on the extraordinary rarity of the above opportunity by whipping up the Mexican public itself into a movement for liberation, which due to said rarity, required every drop of force necessary to expel the Iberian presence. This situation, therefore, demanded the aid of the female. In consideration of this, the seminal war of independence was the purely pragmatic catalyst which saw women begin participating in conflict that led to an expectation that, in desperate times, Mexican women would become soldaderas – an expectation which would be reaffirmed by the following wars and the Mexican Revolution of 1910.
Considering that the obvious analysis of the impact of the Mexican Revolution as having had created the space for women to become involved in conflict and reach outside of expected marital and maternal duties has been successfully quashed, let us move onto a more nuanced inspection of the changes that did occur in Mexican gender roles. Returning to Macias’ paper for further reading, the subtlety of the changes which occurred during the time period around the Revolution is uncovered. She explains that “the educational and vocational opportunities offered to and accepted with such alacrity by females from 1876-1910 added a new dimension to their participation in their country’s crisis: an intellectual one.” Before analyzing her main thesis in further depth, it is useful to consider the nature of such “educational and vocational opportunities.” (1980, 54). Ward M. Morton’s book “Woman Suffrage in Mexico” published by University of Florida Press, explains that inequality between the gender roles of men and women in Mexico was fundamentally established in the Constitution of 1857, which was ambivalent on suffrage, but let election laws restrict it to men only (1962, 1). It is noteworthy to me that the Constitution was not explicit in its denial of rights to women – a stark contrast to that almighty beacon of values, the U.S. Constitution, and, I think, a piece of evidence that suggests that the participation of women in the Mexican War of Independence created a kind of respect for them in Mexican society which diverged from both its European and Native roots. Notwithstanding, Morton continues that urges for further freedoms began to take form through small, often left-leaning prints such as La Internacional which published a 12-point program for the emancipation and integration of women into society via education in 1878 (1962, 2). No laws were changed due to these efforts expressly, however, educational institutions under the Porfiriato did accept small groups of talented women (mostly from upper classes) who became professionals in law, medicine, and pharmacy (Morton 1962, 2). Furthermore, female participation in teaching began to grow in tandem, and accepted a wider breadth of backgrounds. Female empowerment grew through role-models as well, with individuals like Soledad Gonzalez and Hermila Galindo – both important typists, advisors, and secretaries to Madero and Carranza respectively. Their prominence and proximity to the national spotlight certainly helped to further the collective mindset regarding the possible extents of female excellence and achievement. In the context of legal changes, little arose. Carranza passed a law allowing divorce under certain circumstances (Morton 1962, 3), but little else came in the form of changes – still, the needle twitched forward. Notably, in 1917 important rights were given to workingwomen, ensuring childbirth benefits, protection against nightwork and against heavy labor – a cadre of changes that was rather remarkable in a time of child-run factories. Despite successes in the U.S. via the Nineteenth Amendment, no change to the political status of women came in Mexico as a result of the Revolution. Nonetheless, the increasingly educated, admired, and involved female population began to push for enfranchisement in a more collective fashion, with the first Feminist Congress of held in Mexico City in 1921. Suffrage would come in 1953. As such, I would argue that indeed, change in the battlefield was rather insignificant, yet that change did come through the combination of the educational institutions and opportunities established during the Porfiriato and expanded via the Revolution, through the somewhat sympathetic natures of Madero and Carranza, their experiences with the formidableness of the feminine, and most importantly, the desire of Revolutionary women to see change.
Through the above detailing of laws and changes in the public mindset, I sought to expose the genuine changes which arose from the shifts in power and attention during the Mexican Revolution. To gain further insight, however, it is helpful to observe the changes that did occur with more deference paid to the role of class in the role of gender, and in doing so, one returns to the work of Anna Macias. She notes the divide between the sympathies of the lower and upper class female. Citing the work of Juana Belen Gutierrez de Mendoza – a “journalist, poet and radical” (Macias 1980, 55) born to poor parents of Native and Mestizo origin – she points to the frustration which the landless peasantry had with the pseudo-feudal system of haciendas under the Porfiriato. The working classes were affected greatly by landgrabs and exploitation by hacendados, who effectively ruled as nobles with absolute authority over regions to which they technically had no legal right. Moreover, working conditions generally – for both rural and urban lower classes – were poor, with the latter often being locked into working for and living off of the generosity of their companies. As such, it is clear to see where the impetus for change through Revolution came for members of the lower classes and how the desperation for change furthered the historical thread of female participation in the push for said change. However, Macias highlights the divide between the rich and the poor. She explains that “women of primarily but not exclusively middle and upper-class origins who strongly identified with the Catholic Church became active and bitter enemies of the decidedly anti-clerical leadership of the Revolution.” Despite the nuance in her commentary, the class division is clear. Upper class women, often the wives of haciendados, professionals, or business magnates (or indeed beneficiaries of the education provided under the Porfiriato) saw little need for change. The catalyst for change and female participation was not present for them insofar as the conditions of the Porfiriato did not threaten their livelihoods and social stability. Moreover, being that the wealthy of Mexico had a more conservative bent, the participation in left-wing organizations which provided the space for feminism was less popular and a firm grip to the Catholic Church was kept and reinforced. Through this lens of class, therefore, it is possible to observe how the changes that were seen in the roles of women were not only caused by the process of the Revolution itself, but also by the underlying causes of it – the poverty, deprivation, and inequality which affected all working class people and women in particular.
In summation, the Revolution allowed for women to pick at more figs than they had previously been able to. Yet, this advancement was heralded by the factors of lower-class repression and institutions of education which were built under the Porfiriato, and support for further rights for women was not unilateral. In many ways, the struggle for enfranchisement and the shifting of gender roles was the product of class – women of lower classes had to work to support their families, women of upper classes did not. It is this distinction of class which ought to be considered when observing periods of change in history, for it often reveals a dimension of analysis that is given too little attention.
Works Cited
Macias, Anna. Women and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920. Cambridge University Press, pp. 54, 55. 1980, https://www.jstor.org/stable/981040
Morton, Ward M. Woman Suffrage in Mexico. University of Florida Press, pp. 1,2, 3. 1962, https://archive.org/details/womansuffrageinm00mort/page/8/mode/2up
Comments