Women of the Mexican Oil Fields: Class, Nationality, Economy, Culture, 1900–1938

The Mexican oil industry during the period of foreign ownership, 1900–1938, has inspired scholarship covering a myriad of actors, but not women. This article proposes to fill in that gap, documenting the experiences of foreign and Mexican women in the cradle of the industry, northern Veracruz and Tampico, Tamaulipas. This article argues that women were not only present in the oil fields, but that they were also indispensable for the economic success of the oil enterprise as a whole. Nevertheless, the experiences of women were quite diverse, depending on such factors as class and nationality. For Mexican women in particular, life in oil country meant revolutionary changes, even if capitalist structures and patriarchal culture remained intact.