Latin America and the Caribbean

126 Journal of women's History Spring Latin America and the Caribbean June E. Hahner Although the last decade has witnessed a growing number of publications on the history of women in Latin America and the Caribbean, enriching our knowledge of gender roles and relations, this new scholarship still neglects some important subjects of research. Until recently, in Latin American as in North America, biographical accounts of exceptional individuals , descriptive histories of institutions, and general appraisals of women's contributions to society comprised the body of the sparse historical literature on women in Latin America. Then came studies of cultural norms using prescriptive literature and legal sources. Now, analytical works generally focusing on some pre-twentieth century female activities and circumstances are appearing. But most research on twentieth-century women seems either inspired by the work of social scientists or actually carried out by them. In fact, historical studies on Latin American women have lagged noticeably behind those by sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists who have written on twentieth-century issues and who tend to concentrate on questions of development, work, fertility, population, and politics, while demonstrating less interest in values or attitudes. The Latin American section of Restoring Women to History is comprised of two essays, "Women in Pre-Columbian and Colonial Latin America" by Marysa Navarro, and "Women in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Latin America and the Caribbean" by Virginia Sánchez Korrol. The former is the more successful of the two, in large part because the colonial period is easier to synthesize than the national period, which is comprised of dozens of diverse countries ranging in size from Brazil with a current population of some 150 milUon, to Caribbean island nations with fewer than 200,000 inhabitants. Any essay on women in Latin American history must reflect the nature of existing historical writings and of the written records from which they derive. Historically, far fewer Latin American women than men had access to education no matter what their class. Before the late nineteenth century, very few women ever learned to read and write. Even literate Latin American women rarely kept diaries and did not write as many letters as North Americans or Europeans, thus largely negating the possibility of inquiries into a women's world through such personal writings. Only with the advent of the tape recorder has other than an occasional scholar shown much interest in recording the life stories of lower class, non-Uterate individuals. Historians' preferential treatment of elites reflects the difficulty of tracing ©1989 Journal of Women-s History, Vol. i, No. ι (Spring)_________________ 1989 Review 127 property-less people whose lives yielded little written documentation. Furthermore, existing documentation favors some lines of inquiry over others; although dowries and wills or records of litigation over property have provided much information on families' political and economic connections and strategies, they prove far less useful in illuminating patterns of childraising or the establishment of gender role models, limiting the subjects that can be discussed in any depth. Marysa Navarro prefaces her well-conceived discussion of women in pre-Columbian and colonial societies with succinct accounts of the two civilizations, Aztec and Inca, that most impressed the Spanish in the early sixteenth century and of Spain's and Portugal's empires in America. These accounts will prove most useful for those lacking a background in Latin American history. She rightly emphasizes the diversity of Latin American women's experiences and the complexity of race, class, and gender hierarchies in colonial society. Some subjects do receive more attention than others, such as convents, the home of a very small but significant female minority and the recipient of more serious investigation than other groups of women in colonial society. Although Navarro acknowledges the limitations and liabilities of following the traditional historical emphasis placed on extraordinary women or on their uncommon achievements, she too devotes much attention to them. Obviously, we have more information on famous and atypical women such as Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz, an outstanding seventeenth-century intellectual and the finest lyrical poet of the colonial period, or Malinche, Hernán Cortés's Indian interpreter, general aid, and companion, or Doña Marina...