Mujeres consagradas en el Buenos Aires colonial (review)

In this day and age, when one thinks of Buenos Aires, images of a cosmopolitan city, referred to by some as the Paris of South America, come to mind. Yet, during much of the colonial period, Buenos Aires was considered a dusty town located on the outermost fringe of the Iberian Empire. This reality quickly comes to the fore when one studies the foundation of religious communities in colonial Latin America. Places like Mexico City and Lima had collectively built dozens of convents by the end of the 1600s, whereas Buenos Aires did not have any convents during that time period and established only two in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Alicia Fraschina’s Mujeres consagradas en el Buenos Aires colonial sheds light on the unique situation of religious women in Buenos Aires during the colonial period. Her work, the outcome of her PhD dissertation from the University of Buenos Aires (2007), is based on years of meticulous archival research. The book offers information on the only two convents established in Buenos Aires during the late 1700s, and it also provides a comprehensive overview of beaterios (houses for religious laywomen) and beatas (religious laywomen) in the capital of Argentina. In particular, Fraschina hones in on the fascinating case of María Antonia de San José, a beata who considered herself a Jesuit and became one of the Jesuits’ biggest advocates after their expulsion from the Spanish Empire in 1767.

In addition to an introduction and conclusion, Fraschina has divided her book into nine chapters. Chapter 1 examines the first beatas in the city, and chapter 2 addresses the foundation of the only two convents: one for calced Domincans and the other for strict discalced Capuchins. Chapters 3 through 6 explore life within these convents, touching on a variety of topics such as the novitiate, daily routines, hierarchical structures, education, medical care, religious festivals, and death within the cloister. Each of the three chapters begins with an impressive historical overview of these topics in Europe and the rest of Latin America and then relates each one back to the two convents in Buenos Aires.

Chapters 7 through 9 shed light on Spain’s Bourbon reforms of the late 1700s and their effects on religious women in Buenos Aires. The last chapters contextualize the expulsion of the Jesuits from the New World and analyze the life and letters of the Jesuit beata María Antonia de San José. Most notably, she founded a beaterio in Buenos Aires and a Casa de Ejercicios, a type of ten-day religious retreat for both men and women to follow Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises.

Mujeres consagradas en el Buenos Aires colonial will appeal to two subgroups of scholars. The first will be anyone interested in women religious during the colonial period, and the second will be those who study the expulsion of the Jesuits, especially from the Southern cone. The only small issue is that it does not include an appendix transcribing some of the actual works written by these women, specifically the letters penned by the beata María Antonia. There are, however, three useful appendices outlining the prominent citizens who supported the religious communities and the nuns and family members associated with the two convents. The bibliography is very comprehensive and will not disappoint scholars interested in the unique situation of religious women of colonial Buenos Aires.