Women in Colonial Mexico

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Recommended: The portrayal of women in 19th century literature

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a nun and a poet in the seventeenth-century, stated that, “Misguided men, who will chastise a woman when no blame is due, oblivious that it is you who prompted what you criticize…” perfectly described the situation of women in colonial Mexico. In colonial Mexico patriarchal ruling was applied both privately and publicly. While, men were allowed to participate in politics, obtain an education and given the power to make decisions regarding women’s life. Women, on the other hand, were controlled either by their fathers or husbands; who did not allowed them to participate in activities outside their house and their education was restricted to “how to be a good wife”. While the above was true, there are also documented cases that demonstrate that women, especially widows and unmarried, played a fundamental role in the socio-economic and political structure of colonial Mexico. Through the discussion of some exceptional women who were able to challenge men’s power, I will demonstrate that the common belief that colonial Mexico was largely dominated by men was not necessarily true.
One of the most fundamental institution of colonial Mexico was the family. According to Mark A. Burkholder and Lyman L. Johnson, “‘family’ in this context meant not only the biological family, but also the larger set of family relations created by marriages and by forging alliances through the selection of godparents…”. The nucleus of the family was the father who exerted a great deal of power over other members of the family. Both, men and women were control by their fathers but, man were given certain liberties that were not presented to women. For instance, Susan Socolow mention that “daughters had to be controlled, and the...

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...ca Women: Historical Perspectives, edited by Asuncion Lavrin, 23-60. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1978.
Socolow, Susan M. The Women of Colonial Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Tutino, John. "Power, Class, and Family: Men and Women in the Mexican Elite, 1750-1810." The Americas, No. 3 (1983): 359-381. http://www.jstor.org/stable/981230 (accessed December 1, 2013).
Twinam, Ann. “The negotiations of Honor: Elite, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century Spanish America”. In The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America, edited by Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, 68-102. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.
Twinam, Ann. Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1999.

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