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The Americas 60.2 (2003) 276-278



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Un Siglo de Luchas Feministas en América Latina. Edited by Eugenia Rodríguez Sáenz. San José, Costa Rica: Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica, 2002. Pp. xvi, 267. Illustrations. Notes.

This collection of fifteen essays is based upon papers presented by Costa Rican and other international scholars at the "Congreso Internacional 50 Años Antes y 50 Años Después de la Conquista del Voto Femenino en Costa Rica, 1900-1999," held at the Universidad de Costa Rica in June 1999. Most of the essays in this book discuss [End Page 276] the ideological responses of some Latin American women (especially Costa Rican) in the first half of the twentieth century to the opposition they encountered in their quest for gender equality.

Feminist claims were consistently rejected in Latin America on the grounds that female identity confined women to the domestic sphere. Participation of women in the public sphere, especially in the political field, was seen as a means of destruction of female moral virtues and traditional female roles. The essay by Victoria Gonzáles, "Politica, sexualidad femenina y trabajo en Nicaragua (1855-1879)," illustrates how this cultural perception led many Nicaraguans to associate the presence of women in the public sphere with prostitution or "perdición sexual."

Latin American women redefined some of those conventional notions about their gender to emphasize the need for an active public role by women as the natural creators of an improved political morality. This is illustrated in Virginia Mora's essay, which shows how women from the Partido Reformista of Costa Rica transferred femininity to the public sphere and charged it not only with moral but also with political significance. As stated by a reformista, Cecilia Rojas Vargas, in 1923: "[s]i con devoción atendemos los deberes de la casa, también con devoción debemos atender los deberes para con la patria" (p. 122). Motherhood would not be destroyed by political activity but "enriched" and "ennobled," as Costa Rican communist women argued. They claimed—as Rosalia Herrera shows—that women would be better mothers by creating a better society for their children, rather than by "weaving anklets" for them (p. 136). The theme of motherhood was also used by Latin American suffragists, according to the four essays on suffrage by Asunción Lavrin, K. Lynn Stoner, Yolanda Marco, and Eugenia Rodríguez Sáenz.

The reworking of female identity by Latin American pioneers of gender equality is typically viewed by today's feminists as a rhetorical device by which earlier feminists avoided direct confrontation with male opponents and hence with patriarchy. Stoner shares this view in her analysis of Cuban suffragists, concluding that "[e]l movimiento feminista cubano fue exitoso en obtener sus derechos legales porque no desafiaba directamente al patriarcalismo y al machismo" (pp. 34-35). One could argue, however, that Latin American suffragists did challenge patriarchy precisely by demanding the franchise for women.

Rodríguez, for her part, emphasizes that Costa Rican feminists, like other Latin Americans, exploited the notions of "la diferencia sexual femenina" and motherhood "para poder tener un impacto más legitimador en medio de un contexto de gran oposición" (p. 93). According to Lavrin, for Latin American suffragists motherhood was "un vehículo para ganar objetivos políticos" and "un rol dentro del cual las mujeres activistas se sintieron cómodas porque también era un rol aceptable para los hombres" (p. 19).

However, the voices of Latin American women reproduced in this book and elsewhere tell us that they sincerely believed in the capacity of their "gender distinctiveness" [End Page 277] to remake society. This belief continued animating—with diverse modalities—Latin American women's movements into the late twentieth century. Gender representations by pioneer Latin American feminists were not merely conciliatory rhetorical strategies. They were and remain enduring features of Latin American feminism, whose language of women's rights has never been separated from the language of other people's rights.

The last four essays in this book address women and higher...

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