Mujeres, genero e historia en America Central durante los siglos XVIII, XIX y XX (review)

Eugenia Rodríguez, who has distinguished herself in the last decade as a historian of women in Central America, here gathers a selection of works focusing on gender and history presented at the fifth Central American History Congress (2000). The 14 essays are divided in two sections—1750-1950 and 1950-2000—followed by a conclusion in which Rodríguez assesses the progress of women's history in Central America since 1957. This fine historical contribution aims at rescuing memories and continuing the development of women's history in an area that, according to Rodríguez, "took off" in the late 1990s. Her careful analysis of historiographical trends shows that research has focused on women's roles in families and daily life, state control over sexual behavior, and political participation and activism. A budding interest in masculinity and gender relations promises to develop in the future.

This collection itself reflects those trends. Of the five essays on women prior to the twentieth century, two deal with daily life, two with family life, and one with a feminist weekly in the late nineteenth century. Of those dealing with the twentieth century, five deal with politics. Three essays explore new ground, however, dealing with the professionalization of midwifery, the exclusion of women from art and culture, and the symbolism of a female figure from folklore. This work considers the immediate past as valid turf for historians. The long-term memory of women in Central America is sometimes difficult to recover due to political turmoil, poor archival resources, and lack of awareness and teaching directed at the female experience. Therefore, the contributors write with a high degree of self-consciousness about the process of remembering. Rocío Tábora offers a suggestive analysis of the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion of women in real life as well as in the memory of culture and art in Honduras. In spirit, her essay complements the title of that by Hugo Cruz Rivas on women who enter and who leave history. Having achieved consciousness of their needs and social role in the late nineteenth century, elite educated women would have to wait for many years to have any influence on their society. This begs the question of whether, one hundred years later, this group will be more successful.

Other essays seek to demonstrate how women have been denied access to activities and a place in the memory of their nations and how, when they have been remembered at all, it has been in a stereotypical fashion. And yet, by sheer protagonism, women of all walks of life have left tracks that permit the present generation to make its own statement by writing their history. Given the emphasis on recent history, the writers are sometimes part of it, a peculiar situation that can lead to severe self-criticism—such as that raised by Leticia de Oyuela, who reviewed women's activities and ideologies after the acquisition of political rights with an eye toward the pitfalls of feminism.

Other essays open vistas on the agency of poor women, gender relations within marriage, and the process of "modernization" through education and professionalization. Some of these topics have been explored elsewhere in Latin America; they are, however, new explorations in the Central American context, and they will broaden our scope of information on local nuances. For example, essays on market women and female moonshiners are "firsts" for this area. The problems of abusive relationships among couples in nineteenth-century Guatemala and Costa Rica corroborate the pervasiveness of cultural assumptions about violence within the home. Essays on the politics of education in Panama and Costa Rica illuminate the problems of inclusion and exclusion underlined by Rocío Tábora. Victoria González, in...