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1 q Introduction: A Historical and Regional Overview of Latinas in the United States q “Comadres” Teresa Grijalva de Orozco and Francisca Ocampo Quesada, 1912. Courtesy of the Ocampo Family Collection, Chicano Research Collection, Department of Archives and Manuscripts, Arizona State University, Tempe. LATINAS IN THE SOUTHWEST Since 1540 and the arrival of the Coronado expedition, Spanish-speaking women have migrated north decades, even centuries, before their Euro-American counterparts ventured west. They participated in the founding of Santa Fe in 1610, San Antonio in 1718, and Los Angeles in 1781, all part of the Spanish borderlands . The Spanish colonial government, in its efforts to secure its territorial claims, offered a number of inducements to those willing to undertake such an arduous and frequently perilous journey. Subsidies given to a band of settlers headed for Texas included not only food and livestock but also petticoats and silk stockings . Few women ventured to Mexico’s far northern frontier alone as widows or orphans; most arrived as the wives or daughters of soldiers, farmers, and artisans . The colonists themselves were typically mestizos (Spanish/Indian) or mulattoes (Spanish/African). Indeed , more than half the founding families of Los Angeles were of African descent. Those settlers who garnered economic and social power, as well as their children, would often position themselves as “Spanish ,” putting into practice the truism “money buys color” common throughout colonial Latin America. These successful individuals not only found economic opportunity on the frontier but also reimagined their racial identities. Women such as María Feliciana Arballo and Victoria Reid illuminate this privileging of a fictive Spanish past. In the early years the concern was less about status than survival as settlements, especially in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, teetered on the brink of extinction through starvation or combative relationships with native peoples. However, the missions, pueblos (towns), and presidios (forts) took hold, and over the course of three centuries, Spanish/Mexican women raised families on the frontier and worked alongside their fathers and husbands herding cattle and tending crops. Women also participated in the day-to-day operation of area missions. Whether heralded as centers of godliness and civilization or condemned as concentration camps, the missions, particularly in California, played instrumental roles in the economic development of an area and in the acculturation and decimation of indigenous peoples. In an environment of social indoctrination, acculturation, and servitude, missions relied on Indian labor to feed the growing colony and produce essential goods for trade. While the Francis- Introduction: A Historical and Regional Overview 2 q cans were certainly zealous and energetic, they did not act alone. To support their endeavors, mission friars recruited women such as Apolinaria Lorenzana and Eulalia Pérez into their service as housekeepers, midwives , cooks, healers, teachers, seamstresses, and business managers. The close proximity between Indian and Spanish /Mexican women engendered little pretense of a shared sisterhood. Indentured servitude was prevalent on the colonial frontier and persisted well into the nineteenth century. Indians and, to a lesser extent, people of African heritage were pressed into bondage. For instance, in 1735 Anttonía Lusgardia Ernandes, a mulatta, sued her former master for custody of their son. The man admitted paternity, but claimed that his former servant had relinquished the child to his wife since his wife had christened the child. The court, however , granted Ernandes custody. In other cases this pattern continued with tragic results. As noted by historian Miroslava Chávez-García, the murder of the Indian servant known only as Ysabel at the hands of her mistress Guadalupe Trujillo in 1843 offers but one example of the violence inflicted by one group of women on another. Race and class hierarchies significantly shaped everyday life on Mexico’s far northern frontier. Spanish/Mexican settlement has been shrouded by myth. Walt Disney’s Zorro, for example, epitomized the notion of romantic California controlled by fun-loving, swashbuckling rancheros. Because only 3 percent of California’s Spanish/Mexican population could be considered rancheros in 1850, most women did not preside over large estates, but helped manage small family farms. In addition to traditional female tasks, Mexican women were accomplished vaqueras or cowgirls . Spanish-speaking women, like their EuroAmerican counterparts, encountered a duality in frontier expectations. Although they were placed on a pedestal as delicate ladies, women were responsible for an array of strenuous chores. One can imagine a young woman being serenaded in the evening and then awaking at dawn to slop the hogs. Married women on the...

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