-
2. From Feminism to Partisan Suffragist Politics
- Penn State University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Turning to the period from the 1930s to the 1950s, this chapter examines su¤ragist e¤orts, the divisions within the su¤ragist movement, and the eventual dominance of partisan politics in the larger Nicaraguan women’s movement. In addition to covering the last political battles of Josefa Toledo de Aguerri, Juanita Molina de Fromen, and María Gámez, the chapter documents the activism of Nicaragua’s second generation of su¤ragists, focusing on the discourse used by three separate—yet often overlapping —groups of women: the Central Women’s Committee (Comité Central Femenino), Conservative su¤ragists, and Liberal su¤ragists. The Central Women’s Committee was made up of nonpartisan feminists as well as women from the Liberal and Conservative Parties who came together to push for the vote and for feminist legal changes such as rape law reform. Conservative su¤ragists were also organized in the Women’s Propaganda Committee within the Conservative Party, which sought to bring down the Somoza regime through women’s votes. Liberal su¤ragists, on the other hand, sought to maintain the Somozas in power through participation in the Ala Femenina, the Women’s Wing of the Nationalist Liberal Party, thus rewarding the party that had a longstanding promise to grant them the vote. T W O FROM FEMINISM TO PARTISAN SUFFRAGIST POLITICS The Struggle for Su¤rage in the 1930s: Josefa Toledo de Aguerri’s Last Public Battle Female su¤rage captured Nicaraguans’ attention in a way no other issue did. In the twentieth century, it was as divisive a topic as it had been in the nineteenth. Feminists, of course, were the ones most interested in obtaining the vote for women. And Liberals listened to and applauded feminists’ calls for su¤rage when the Liberal Party returned to power under the presidency of José María Moncada (1929–32). Juanita Molina de Fromen and her husband, attorney and su¤ragist Gunnar Fromen, considered Liberal President Moncada a friend, and they had high hopes for the passage of a constitutional amendment granting women su¤rage during his administration. “Great news from Nicaragua!” Molina de Fromen would write in her March 21, 1930, letter to Alice Paul, a leading U.S. su¤ragist and founder of the National Woman’s Party: On the 19th, Mr. Fromen and I were received by . . . General . . . Moncada . . . and were informed . . . that he has submitted to the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate here a proposal to amend the Constitution . . . to the e¤ect that the vote be granted to all women who can read and write. . . . President Moncada is a man of unusual foresight and greatly interested in the welfare of the Nicaraguan women, realizing that this amendment to the Constitution, if passed by Congress, will mean the regeneration of our women since new ambitions and possibilities will enter into their lives.1 Molina de Fromen wanted Paul and other feminist leaders in the United States to write letters of support to Moncada “and also to the Presidents of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, asking them to pass the said amendment.”2 Unfortunately, we do not know whether Paul and others did so, nor the details of President Moncada’s e¤orts on behalf of women’s su¤rage. What we do know, of course, is that these e¤orts failed. Molina de Fromen returned to the United States in August 1930 and continued to be active in Nicaraguan feminist politics from New York for four more years, until her death at the age of forty-one. Other feminists continued to be active in Nicaragua, trying to obtain su¤rage in time for the November 1932 presidential elections. According to the New York Times, Clark Howell Woodward, the U.S. admiral in charge of supervising the November 1932 presidential and S U F F R A G I S T P O L I T I C S 3 9 [18.209.66.87] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:16 GMT) congressional elections in Nicaragua “in a letter . . . to Señora María A. Gomez, a feminist leader in Managua, announced that while he was in sympathy with her proposal that women [be] permitted to vote he could not accede to her request that they be allowed to do so in the November elections. He advised Señora Gomez to present the project of permitting women’s su¤rage to the next Congress.”3 María Gámez was not to be stopped...