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21 In early 1918 Mérida’s El Correo, an “independent” daily newspaper, printed a stern warning to all Yucatecan women who desired to move beyond conventional cultural boundaries.1 Graphically informing its readers of the dangers that awaited women in the modern world, the piece discussed the shocking disappearance of three innocent women.2 According to the paper, the young friends traveled to the Gulf of Mexico port city of Tampico to meet handsome, eligible men, and evidently they had some success. Not only had the area’s finest families welcomed the lovely outsiders, inviting them to the most fashionable parties, but the young women also met a “modern” widow “of some years” at their hotel. This older woman, who wore expensive clothes and bright jewels, arrived only recently from the nation ’s capital under mysterious circumstances. Soon she and the three young women enjoyed long conversations, and on 5 May one of the city’s principal families invited the visitors to a grand soirée. There, unknown men courted the women, and, “according to rumor,” they happily returned the men’s attentions . In the nights following the dance, the “counterfeit gentlemen” frequently visited the naive women at their hotel, and the group often went for walks together around the plaza or in other parts of the city. At other times, the “opulent widow” waited for the friends at the door of the only church in the area. What the widow discussed with the three women remains a mystery, but the word around town was that she convinced them to run away with their boyfriends to Europe’s capitals, where they would enjoy a fabulous life filled with riches. And indeed, the women soon disappeared without a trace. According to police, they boarded a boat with the men and the widow, and the young women’s parents never heard from them again.3 This published fable served as dire warning to women of the consequences of entering the more urban and public spaces, clearly admonishing others One Redefining Women the making of a revolution 22 n t h e m a k i n g o f a r e v o l u t i o n not to flirt with a modern way of life outside of home and family. After leaving the safety of their parents’ homes, the three friends encountered danger and possibly even death. Naively, the young women allowed unknown men to court them and, seduced by the glamour of their wealthy paramours and high society, they vanished forever. This piece provided more than a contemporary cautionary anecdote, though, and further reflected the fact that women were living their lives with greater independence in increasing numbers, traveling away from their parents’ homes and working in occupations outside of their houses. By describing a world in which young women could not function independently in the public arena or without male authority , the article had a dual purpose. First, the author sought to reaffirm established gender relations that privileged male power over women at all times and to preserve men’s exclusive access to the world outside the home. Second, the publication testified to growing concerns over the changing status of women in Mexican society and their struggles for greater access to life in public spaces. Popular publications, such as El Correo, clearly disseminated their views on the proper roles of women throughout the state, but so did revolutionary officials. Acting in its role as the mouthpiece of Yucatán’s revolutionary authorities, La Voz de la Revolución in 1915 also published a commentary on women’s growing freedoms under General Salvador Alvarado’s newly established revolutionary regime. Extolling the revolution’s emancipation of women, the newspaper article appeared during November—only a few months after Alvarado entered Yucatán, but still long enough for new deliberations on women’s place in society to have filtered through many parts of the state.4 Although politicians, religious leaders, and ordinary people all discussed women’s appropriate duties during this time of great change, revolutionary officials broadly contrasted the nineteenth century—when backward traditions bound women to their husbands and the church—and the present era, when the new laws allowed women to actively participate in the modern world. La Voz de la Revolución aptly illustrated women’s historical transition from dependent and abused to free, educated, and secular: [Before the revolution, women’s] education was carefully limited, their heads filled with false ideas, dusty stories...

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