Gender and the Negotiation of Daily Life in Mexico, 1750-1856

1. Negotiating Daily Life

How does culture affect the way that individuals interact both with their surroundings and with others? That is the question that is at the center of this book. In our daily lives, we relate with both our physical environments and with other people in manners that are culturally determined. That our interactions are the product of our cultural backgrounds is made obvious when we travel to a different place and struggle with unfamiliar cityscapes and body language. The mysteries of a foreign environment highlight how much we have a comfort zone within our own surroundings. Humans not only receive messages from the buildings and the people who form their milieu but they also shape these elements in order to conform to their worldview. There is a continuous loop between the creation of a particular architecture—both of spaces and people—and then the messages that are imparted to residents; that is to say, people build cities that correspond to their ideas about rank, morality, and honor, and then those who live in this environment will function within these constraints. As a result, their living arrangements will reflect the overall pattern. In the large 1. Negotiating Daily Life Negotiating Daily Life 2 cities of Mexico, for example, the wealthy and most honorable resided on the upper floors, and young people were educated into a body language that was acceptable within these spaces. Take for example the rules of conduct that young people of the elite classes were supposed to put in practice when they entered a room. First, after climbing the stairs to the upper apartments , one should never enter the interior rooms of another person ’s residence without alerting the servants or after knocking loudly or repeatedly at entrances. After opening the door softly and greeting all the people in the room appropriately, the next major step was to choose a seat. It was not acceptable to simply sit down in the nearest armchair or perch on another piece of furniture. Rather, the newcomer had to make numerous calculations about the hierarchy of the hosts and the guests and then choose a chair, or, in the case of a young lady, a cushion that corresponded to her place within this ranking.1 One could not, for example, take a seat that was superior to that occupied by a person of higher rank. How does one calculate the status of a chair? It was an equation that had to do with the height of the seat as well as its position in relation to the door and the interior of the room. The higher the chair and the nearer to the interior, the higher it was in the hierarchy of furniture.2 Mexicans filled the spaces where they resided with messages about morality, honor, and hierarchy. It was not only their homes that operated within these frameworks but also their very persons. When any young people entered a residence following the aforementioned etiquette, they did not just have to make judgments about chairs but they also needed to make their body conform to the rules of politeness and deference. In this way, spatial understandings as well as body language worked together within the overarching construction of honor .3 It was not just young elite men and women who had to learn rules about spaces and bodies; rather, men and women of all Negotiating Daily Life 3 ranks entered into this dance of deference and jockeying for position that happened in homes, courtyards, the church atrium , the market, taverns—just about anywhere people congregated .4 These were the written and unwritten rules for gender in the negotiation of daily life. Etiquette, Power, and History History is not just about great men, wars, and revolutions; it is also about the subtle aspects of more ordinary matters. But the mundane and the grand are also related. In order to understand Mexico and Mexicans in the past and the present, it is necessary to appreciate the fundamentals—what made people tick. Etiquette is a way into these mental processes; it provides a starting point or a guide to understand the rules that governed behavior. In particular these rules show how people were expected to interact with particular spaces and how they were supposed to control their bodies. For Alejandro Cañeque, it was etiquette that provided Mexicans with a kind of “mental map to guide their behavior” but also supplied the framework for...