Las mujeres y la sociedad colonial de Santa Fe de Bogota, 1750-1810 (review)

Perhaps the strongest criticism that can be directed at María Himelda Ramírez's book is that, at less than two hundred pages, it is too short to do justice to its subject. Even so, it is a useful addition to the rapidly growing corpus of works on gender and family in colonial New Granada. Based on a master's thesis at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, the book marshals an impressive body of printed and manuscript sources. Much of the quantitative data, displayed in 28 tables, comes from Ramírez's analysis of church records in Santa Bárbara and Las Nieves, two of the oldest parishes in Santa Fe de Bogotá. The author's citations also reveal her familiarity with writings on gender and society in Mexico, Spain, and elsewhere.

Ramírez sets her study in the context of a growing and apparently prospering viceregal capital, where officials and articulate elites promoted urban change in accordance with Enlightenment prescriptions for order, rationality, and progress. At the same time, she asserts, persistent social problems and interethnic conflicts proved obstacles to projects of modernization. In 1778 the city's population totaled nearly 16 ,000 ; of these, those who were neither white nor Indian comprised a slight majority, while whites represented approximately 37 percent and Indians 11 percent. As was the case in other cities in New Granada, women outnumbered men (59 percent), a disparity probably due in part to the undercounting of men and in part to the presence of recent female migrants.

The book traces the course of women's lives from birth to death, but this broad scope means that many of the author's conclusions can be considered tentative at best. A chapter on girls in Santa Fe, for example, discusses baptismal rites, naming practices, population growth, household composition, and the work and socialization of girls. The number of baptisms in the two parishes increased during the period, a trend Ramírez attributes to female immigration and advances in public health. This trend, she declares, coincided with an increase in the mestizo population, which in turn resulted in the weakening of traditional categories of racial classification. A chapter on the feminization of urban conflict looks at poor women and migrants (forasteras), divorcées, widows, and chicheras. The author presents evidence to show that the authorities considered these classes of women to be problems, but she fails to adequately demonstrate the presence of urban conflict or its feminization. Other chapters examine working women and women at times of illness and death.

The most focused chapter is "Colegias y Maestras," which deals with New Granada's first girls' school, the Colegio "La Enseñanza" that opened its doors in 1783 under the direction of the nuns of the Compañía de María. The chapter provides information on the school's founder, doña Clemencia Caicedo, and on the school's daily schedule, curriculum, and the values it sought to inculcate. As might be expected, the school was less interested in the intellectual formation of its students than in instilling piety and preparing them for motherhood. The number of boarders (all from elite families) remained small—ranging from 11 to 24 girls between 1791 and 1801. Unfortunately, Ramírez was unable to unearth much information about the poor girls who attended an associated public school, except that it usually overflowed with more than one hundred students.

The foundation of "La Enseñanza" is but one of the modernizing tendencies of the era noted by Ramírez. She is less successful in delineating the gender and interethnic conflicts generated by these tendencies. The book also fails to identify changes across the 60 -year period studied, and it lacks a concluding chapter. Still, despite these flaws, the author's strong statistical base provides a valuable snapshot of women of diverse race and class in a changing environment...