Las mujeres en la construcción de las sociedades iberoamericanas (review)

This anthology brings together research on the history of women in diverse regions of colonial and nineteenth-century Latin America produced by scholars from throughout the Americas and Europe. Two of the articles encompass Spanish America in general; five focus on the Andean region (including Antioquia and Tucuman), four on Mexico, and one each on Brazil, Chile, and Paraguay. With one exception, the essays are thoroughly grounded in archival research and follow a social history approach, though some opt for a close analysis of a few judicial cases, while others draw from larger samples of notarial records. All the scholars aim to recover the historical agency of women, and many emphasize their central role in the construction of racially and culturally hybrid societies. A common trope contrasts women's diverse activities in practice with the image of female passivity and subordination that arises from patriarchal norms and laws.

The first two essays on mestizaje in the early colonial Andes complement each other well. Berta Ares Queija documents relationships between Spanish men and indigenous women during the conquest period; although few married and chronicles and royal orders shifted from depicting the women as victims to seductresses, she finds various degrees of recognition and compensation of the indias in testaments. Ana María Presta traces the fate of the daughters of such relationships in Charcas; while similarly emphasizing the diversity of experiences, she does conclude that mestizas were often desirable marriage partners, possibly granting them more opportunities than their male counterparts. Susan Socolow reviews the literature on migration in order to make visible women's movements, both with families to mining centers and on their own to cities where they could work as servants and vendors. Gregorio Saldarriaga follows three such women (two indigenous and one African) as they moved within the region of Antioquia, emphasizing their ability to survive without dependence on men by building networks of solidarity. Judith Farberman analyzes four trials of hechiceras in Tucuman, concluding that local officials attributed to them broad powers to cure disease, inflict magical harm, and repair those same damages. Just as judges persecuted only women of color as witches, Caterina Pizzigoni finds that an indigenous woman from Toluca found guilty of bigamy was punished more harshly than a man for the same crime. Although she has only four cases of bigamy, her article explores in greater depth the attitudes of Church authorities on marriage as expressed in confessionals and contrasts them with indigenous practices.

Several articles document the widespread participation of women from all classes in economic activity: Guillermo Lohmann Villena and Enriqueta Vila Vilar on an elite Spanish matriarch, Eni de Mesquita Samara on the São Paulo frontier, Anne Staples on post-independence Mexico, and Barbara Potthast on nineteenth-century Paraguay. In her essay on New Spain, Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru makes important caveats to a celebration of female agency, noting that women upheld the principles of male superiority and that their status did not necessarily improve over time. Although women's economic activities exhibited continuity throughout the colonial period and beyond, Sol Serrano perceptively demonstrates that the convent remained a space of relative power and autonomy for women in nineteenth-century Chile, precisely because French nuns transformed the ideal of religious vocation from cloistered contemplation to active work in charity and education.

While many of the articles contrast women's agency with a simplified stereotype of passivity, a few explore elite gender ideology in greater depth and complexity. Ann Twinam draws from the material in her book on illegitimacy to explore how Hispanic understandings of public and private differed from those in Anglo-Saxon societies. Ángela Carballeda analyzes eight lawsuits over parental opposition to marriage, based upon the 1776 Royal Pragmatic, which were appealed from New Spain to the Council of the Indies. Although one resulted in a general royal order favoring paternal authority by forbidding mothers from including in their...