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chapter 7 Conflict and Cooperation among Women G This chapter begins with the story of Remigia Bermúdes and her former employer, Isabel Basauri, who came to blows in 1862. The incident sheds light on this chapter’s theme—conflict and solidarity among women—and highlights the issue of illegitimacy, the plight of single mothers, the complexity of patron-client relations, and the prevalence of violence in Cajamarcan society. Remigia Bermúdes and her five illegitimate children lived in poverty, and evidently in a client relationship with the Basauri-Cabanillas household. Bermúdes was employed as a servant by the Basauri household, and Isabel Basauri’s brother had fathered several of her children. An assault on Bermúdes and, more important, her decision to take legal action must have shaken her relations with the Basauri family. The immediate background for the quarrel was the disappearance of two eggs, which Isabel Basauri blamed on Remigia Bermúdes’ son. Fearing that Basauri would chastise her son, José Trinidad, Bermúdes sent one of her children to borrow a whip and then went to tell Basauri that she had already dealt with José Trinidad. Unwisely, she also blamed Basauri’s daughter, Sebastiana Cabanillas, for the theft of the two eggs, thus provoking the girl’s mother. Infuriated, Basauri and Cabanillas attacked Bermúdes with a heavy stick and sicced a fierce dog [perro bravo] on her. She was blinded in one eye and knocked unconscious. The incident ended when Basauri’s husband, Pedro Cabanillas, returned home for his midday meal and stopped his wife and daughter from inflicting any further injuries on their prostrate victim.1 Several of the details of this case are typical of a number of the incidences of interfemale conflict that I have come across in the trial records. The sudden eruption of aggression and the brutality of the attack on Bermúdes were 140 Conflict and Cooperation among Women recurring features in those fights among women that found their way to court. As in many other cases, the women in question were related, albeit informally. The tensions that the clash between Bermúdes and Basauri revealed clearly predated the assault and were not, as was the case in many other suits dealing with similar subject matter, elucidated during the proceedings . As in the case of the marital disputes analyzed in Chapter 6, it is more difficult to understand the causes than the nature of these conflicts, as plaintiffs, defendants, and witnesses did not always tell the judge the entire truth, and judges had little patience in dealing with women’s quarrels. The way in which this particular incident started was not atypical, as several of the trials dealing with exclusively female fights originated in women’s defense of their children. Other causes of conflict were rivalry over men and disputes over property. Unequal social status—and a relationship, either past or present, between employer and servant, especially—was a frequent component of female conflict as represented in trial records. As we shall see, oral insults were often chosen by lower-class women as a weapon against their social superiors; violence was more likely to be initiated by women who had the advantage of greater economic and human resources to back them up. The other side of the coin, as in this case, is seen in acts of support and cooperation . Isabel Basauri’s daughter assisted her in her assault on the hapless Remigia Bermúdes; the latter’s daughter, in turn, returned to the BasauriCabanillas household in order to demand an explanation for the treatment her mother had received. Neighbors and acquaintances demonstrated their solidarity by testifying in favor of one or the other of them. This trial therefore allows a glimpse at another of this chapter’s themes, namely, female solidarity and support networks. In many instances female solidarity was strongest among close relatives, such as sisters and mothers and daughters, but more distant relations and neighbors also offered help. Support could manifest itself in the form of assistance in a physical fight, as demonstrated by Isabel Basauri and Sebastiana Cabanillas, or by encouraging women to refrain from fighting. In many cases older relatives, both female and male, tried to calm a daughter or niece in order to keep heated arguments from exploding into violence. Other forms of help were entirely unrelated to conflict and took the form of care for sick or injured friends...

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