2009 CLAH Luncheon Address: Recuerdos/Remembrances

There is a special relationship between historians and remembering as an act of the will. Forgetting is not what we are supposed to do or want to do. As people, historians love to remember and act deliberately to achieve the reconstruction of the past, which is itself the product of as many forms of remembrance and memory-keeping as there are people who want to remember—about themselves, their actions, their sentiments, and their understanding of the world in which they lived. Pursuing that objective I would like to share with my audience at this luncheon and later with my readers some memories of my life as a historian. Through sharing them I know we will come closer together as friends and colleagues.

My first memorable chapter as a historian was linked to the Conference on Latin American History. I began teaching part-time in Chicago, first at Rosary College, a private Catholic college for women, and then at Roosevelt University, an urban institution serving mostly first generation university students. I was then the mother of two children under five, and unwilling to take a full-time job, being of the traditional Latin American belief that I had the duty of being with my children. One good day, as I was returning home using the “L” line, I opened a letter and read that I had won a prize for an article published in the Hispanic American Historical Review. Truth to be told, I did not quite understand the meaning of being published in the venerable HAHR; neither did I realize that the Robertson Prize was such an important achievement for a budding historian who had published only one article before. I learned all that afterwards.

Having accepted the prize, I traveled to New York, spending more money in the process than the expected financial reward for the prize. I found myself sitting at the head luncheon table high on a dais, observing all the attendants and being observed in exchange. Someone had bought a corsage for me. Those were the days when women wore hats regularly and elbow length gloves for special occasions. I think the men on the program committee must have thought that it was appropriate for me to wear a corsage. Looking around I noticed how few women were in attendance. The field was utterly in the hands of men. In contrast, today I am delighted to see that at least half of the faces belong to my sex. We are now “natural” in the CLAH environment and no longer hot-house flowers. We, the so-called “pioneers,” experienced that uneasy feeling of being “curiosities” but took seriously our task of encouraging other women to devote themselves to purse their doctorate and become professional historians. For many years I used to ask young women to join this and other budding women historians’ organizations. Whenever I went around university campuses giving my “women in historical memory” lectures I often used martial metaphors: “We need more soldiers in this field.” “Join me in the trenches” and so forth. I must confess that I enjoyed traveling around campuses invited by those who were themselves curious about the novelty of women’s history, especially since I was able to put together a combination of visuals and texts that kept everybody awake. To some extent they were inspiring and joyous years and I felt rewarded every time a young woman approached me and confessed that she had overcome her teacher’s opposition to carrying out research on a topic related to women.

There is no longer any need to rouse women to become soldiers on the field of Latin American history and I am quietly enjoying my much wished-for peace. War was not what we needed, but the enthusiastic understanding of women—and men—that there was indeed room for them in this field and in this community of scholars. I must hasten to add that none of my male colleagues—to my knowledge—ever showed any distaste for my company—or the company of women scholars, which does not mean that we did not have to...