Elizabeth Dore is Reader in Latin American History at the University of Southampton. She is the author of The Peruvian Mining Industry: Growth, Stagnation, and Crisis and editor of Gender Politics in Latin America: Debates in Theory and Practice.

Maxine Molyneux is Professor of Sociology, Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London. She is the author of State Policies and the Position of Women in the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, 1967–77.

Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2000 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-2434-8

Contents

Preface…………………………………………………………………………………………………………ixAcknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………………………….xvElizabeth Dore One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Gender and the State in the Long Nineteenth Century………………………3Maxine Molyneux Twentieth-Century State Formations in Latin America……………………………………………………33Eugenia Rodrguez S. Civilizing Domestic Life in the Central Valley of Costa Rica, 1750-1850……………………………..85Mara Eugenia Chaves Slave Women’s Strategies for Freedom and the Late Spanish Colonial State…………………………….108Rebecca Earle Rape and the Anxious Republic: Revolutionary Colombia, 1810-1830………………………………………….127Elizabeth Dore Property, Households, and Public Regulation of Domestic Life: Diriomo, Nicaragua, 1840-1900…………………147Donna J. Guy Parents Before the Tribunals: The Legal Construction of Patriarchy in Argentina……………………………..172Mary Kay Vaughan Modernizing Patriarchy: State Policies, Rural Households, and Women in Mexico, 1930-1940………………….194Laura Gotkowitz Commemorating the Heronas: Gender and Civic Ritual in Early-Twentieth-Century Bolivia…………………….215Ann Varley Women and the Home in Mexican Family Law………………………………………………………………….238Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt Domesticating Men: State Building and Class Compromise in Popular-Front Chile…………………..262Maxine Molyneux State, Gender, and Institutional Change: The Federacin de Mujeres Cubanas……………………………….291Jo Fisher Gender and the State in Argentina: The Case of the Sindicato de Amas de Casa…………………………………..322Fiona Macaulay Getting Gender on the Policy Agenda: A Study of a Brazilian Feminist Lobby Group…………………………..346Contributors…………………………………………………………………………………………………….369Index…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..371

Chapter One

Elizabeth Dore One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Gender and the State in the Long Nineteenth Century

This book is a response to Joan Scott’s call to examine how politics constructs gender and gender constructs politics. Its purpose is to analyze how politics of a particular type-state politics-affected gender relations and how gender conditioned state formation in Latin America from the late colony to the twenty-first century. Each chapter is a study of ways in which the state influenced gender relations and vice versa in a particular country at a specific historical conjuncture. Like all anthologies, this one aspires to be more than the sum of its parts. Its aim is to contribute to the elaboration of a systematic account of the interaction between state politics and gender politics in Latin America.

Periodizations of the state in Latin America are fairly common, typologies even more so. They highlight agreement regarding the importance of historicizing state forms and disagreement regarding how to differentiate states. Notwithstanding their diversity, the existing periodizations do not take gender into account: neither the gendered nature of states nor how states regulated gender. In light of this absence, the two introductory chapters in part 1 of this volume analyze major changes in gendered state making across Latin America.

Until recently this endeavour would have foundered on a paucity of empirical research and an underdevelopment of theory. The former obstacle has been partially overcome by a number of excellent monographs on what could broadly be called state-gender relations in Latin America; the latter has been redressed by the growth of an analytical literature concerning gender and the state. These contributions made our project not only possible, but necessary. Drawing on the twelve case studies presented in this volume and on recent scholarship in the field, the introductory chapters analyze the ways states constructed gender and how gender conditioned state making over a period of 250 years. In light of the heterogeneity of states and gender cultures in Latin America and of the time span under review, the objective of these two essays is to identify major turning points and historical continuities in the interface between state politics and gender politics.

Years ago, historians of Europe and the United States assessed the fit between “traditional” history and “gender” history. They questioned, in particular, whether conventional periodizations corresponded to major turning points in women’s lives. Joan Kelly, for instance, asked, “Did women have a Renaissance?” More recently, feminist scholars in the United States have debated whether state-sponsored research and development in the field of contraception, which culminated in the Pill, were more important in the transformation of gender relations in the late twentieth century than, say, the Cold War. Maxine Molyneux and I embarked on this cross-disciplinary project after realizing that scholars of Latin America rarely have addressed issues of long-term regional trends and turning points in the ways states influenced gender. Our conclusions, which form part 1 of this book, were written in the spirit of discovery and recovery. We hope they make a contribution to the fruitful dialogue between feminists working to transform the state and those of us studying the formation of gender relations in Latin America.

How Latin American states sought to govern gender relations during the long nineteenth century, from the late colony to the twentieth century, is the subject of this essay. It focuses on the legal regulation of gender, especially changes in family and property law. Although states enact laws to promote certain social practices and to discourage others, it goes without saying that governments are not always successful in reforming societies in accordance with their laws. Consequently, this account of long-term transformations in the legal foundations of gender relations should be read as a history of state policy, not as a history of gendered practices.

Latin American historians have tended to view the long nineteenth century as an era in which the state gradually dismantled major structural inequalities in gender relations. Studies of legal reform, education, employment, and social policy have emphasized the incremental elimination of restrictions on women’s participation in the public domain. In particular, historians have stressed the emancipatory effects of secularization, arguing that the declining prerogatives of the church and the rising powers of the state generally resulted in an expansion of women’s rights. Overall, these analyses have supported the orthodox interpretation of liberalism in Latin America, which claims that liberal states ushered in “Order and Progress.”

Yet evidence from a number of countries casts doubt on this account. Transposing Kelly’s question regarding women in Renaissance Europe to the Latin American context, I ask, “Did liberal states usher in ‘Order and Progress’ in gender relations?” I assess the implications of legal reforms and secularization for women, keeping in mind that their effects varied along lines of nation, class, and race. I conclude that, on balance, state policy had more negative than positive consequences for gender equality, which suggests the need to reassess the view that the long nineteenth century was a period of progress for women. Some legal reforms and some aspects of secularization did reduce gender inequalities for some, maybe most, women. Nevertheless, I propose that the general direction of change was regressive rather than progressive. My interpretation of the relationship between state politics and gender politics in the long nineteenth century can be summarized in the phrase “one step forward, two steps back.”

States act in myriad ways on gender relations. It is necessary, therefore, to clarify what this chapter is not about. During the long nineteenth century, Latin American states moved on a number of fronts to normalize elite, predominantly male, ideals of femininity and masculinity, especially in areas of health, education, employment, and charity-social work. This normalization provided the opportunity for national, regional, and local officials to exert pressure on men and women to conform to what the elite regarded as “proper” behavior. As a number of chapters in this volume demonstrate, “proper” was a highly fluid notion that varied by sex, class, race, marital status, age, and so on. Furthermore, state policy regarding gender has never been limited to the exercise of government. Art, literature, and cultural ceremonies in every country and in every epoch have played a central role in the construction of the official politics of gender. Despite their importance, these nonlegal and nonlegislative forms of regulation are not treated in this chapter, except in passing.

My argument-that changes in state policy increased more than decreased gender inequalities-is developed in six parts. I begin with a brief discussion about how to study the state and with a characterization of Latin American states as they emerged over the course of the long nineteenth century. The second part examines and rejects the myth of the supersubordinated female in the colonial era; the third part analyzes the early republics; and the fourth part treats the reform of property and family law enacted by liberal states. What this essay stresses and what has not been adequately explored before is that the liberal assault on the historic privileges of the church and Indian Communities was accompanied by a similar assault on the privileges of women. At a time when landed property and other resources gradually became commodities, women lost much of the legal protection to family property that they had enjoyed “from time immemorial.” The fifth part assesses secularization and its implications for marital rights, and finds that, contrary to the prevailing view, secularization of married life tended to expand inequalities between women and men. The conclusion contrasts this interpretation to the view that history is a story of progress.

Part One: Understanding the State

To understand the state, we must begin by posing three interrelated questions: What is the state? Why does it exist? How does it rule? Answering these questions involves a theoretical analysis of the role of the state in a particular society and an empirical examination of the historical development of specific social conditions. In my approach, “What is the state?” centers largely on the classic debate about the relationship between the state and class interests. “Why does it exist?” refers to the objectives inherent in the exercise of power. “How does it rule?” treats the means by which the state achieves its political domination. It is noteworthy that late-twentieth-century literature on the state tends to eschew the first two questions, moving directly to the third, “How do states rule?” In general, scholars examine fundamental issues-such as how states organize consent, suppress opposition, and protect sovereignty-without addressing the prior issues, namely, the class nature of the state and its objectives of rule. I propose that this approach leaves many substantive issues about the state unresolved.

This essay analyzes changing state policy in a variety of countries over a long period of time; it treats states of different kinds, with different objectives, and different methods of rule. In response to the question “What is the state?” I propose that despite their heterogeneity and under ordinary conditions, these Latin American states ruled in the interests of a portion of the society’s upper classes through the general interest of the populace-insofar as that was possible. By this I mean that except under extraordinary circumstances, states ruled in the class interests of an elite, but with an ideology that rule was in the wider interests of a broader portion of society.

In this interpretation, class rule does not imply that the exercise of power at all times directly promoted the well-being of the dominant classes nor that those states should be understood simply as a tool wielded by economic elites to achieve their aims or to impose their will. Rather, insofar as those states presented themselves as governing in the common good, politics involved the construction of consent alongside the imposition of authority. It is a truism that subaltern classes always endeavor to exert pressure on the state, but only in unusual historical conjunctures, and even then only briefly, have exploited classes exercised state power. I suggest, therefore, that it is useful to think of the state as operating within a gravitational field in which the pull of the exploiting classes is considerable and the pull of the exploited classes considerably less. Or, as one historian has written, the state’s many activities take place within the field of force of the dominant classes.

Turning to question two-“Why does the state exist?”-in all but extraordinary circumstances, the primary objective of rule is to enable the exploiting classes to appropriate labor and resources from the subordinate classes. How this appropriation is achieved depends upon the mode of production or the way economics, politics, and social life are organized. Finally, “how rule is accomplished” is the story of how exploiting classes, under unique historical and social conditions, establish and perpetuate their rule. In contrast to most capitalist states, premodern states in the Latin America of the long nineteenth century did relatively little to camouflage their class character. To the extent that politicians masqueraded as ruling in the common interest, they portrayed themselves as benevolent patrones who governed for the good of their subordinates. In the last twenty years, scholars have come to recognize that the exercise of state power involves the politics not only of class, but also of race and gender. Therefore, the answers to these three questions about the state-What is it? Why does it exist? and How does it accomplish rule?-rest on an analysis of changing class, race, and gender relations in society.

Recently, historians writing about state formation in Latin America have been influenced by a neo-Marxian tradition, particularly by Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer. Their book, The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution, argues that states endeavor to create a political culture that naturalizes one form of social domination. Utilizing coercion and constructing consent, states gradually make it appear that one historically specific way of organizing society is the only “natural” way. In this approach, the state-the organized power of the ruling classes-normalizes particular social relations and identities, and destroys others. As Corrigan and Sayer emphasize, states play a critical role in transforming the way ruling classes appropriate labor (or the products of labor) from exploited classes. Also, states frequently take the lead in transforming social relations, consciousness, and culture more generally. This understanding of state making is particularly relevant to gender. With its array of governmental, juridical, cultural, and overtly coercive institutions, state politics normalizes a variety of gender relations. Acceptable and unacceptable ways of being female and male may vary, depending on class and race. However, states establish a quasi-official gender regime by regulating as many aspects of life as they can reach, including sexual practices, prostitution, vagrancy, contraception, abortion, marriage, and the family. Because states are part of and act within particular societies, theories of the state in the abstract are of limited analytic value. Therefore, before examining the ways that states altered constructions of gender in the long nineteenth century, I turn to a very brief characterization of those states and societies.

This chapter treats an era that largely predated the rise of capitalism in Latin America. By capitalist, I mean a society permeated by the market and organized around relations of free wage labor. In the nineteenth century, politics and economics in most of Latin America were based largely on patronage and often involved the relatively undisguised use of force. Toward the end of the era, capitalist relations began to assume a certain importance in some of the countries, notably Argentina. But capitalism had yet to revolutionize most Latin American societies in the sense that economic and political life, as well as consciousness, still tended to be dominated by personal as opposed to market relations.

Politics in colonial Spanish and Portuguese America was based on the ideology that the legitimacy of the state derived from God. Nevertheless, state power ultimately derived from the state’s capacity to impose its rule with violence. The colonial state perpetuated a hierarchical social order differentiated primarily by gender, race, and official status. Within the limits of the autocratic state, consent of the governed was fostered by a patriarchal system in which senior males exercised authority in the home, the community, and the polity.

Liberal states came to power in most Latin American countries in the middle of the nineteenth century and ran the gamut from a more radical liberalism in Mexico to a constrained version under the empire in Brazil. To a greater or lesser extent, liberals advocated free trade, private property, and anticlericalism. In line with most of their counterparts in Europe and the United States, Latin American liberals promoted freedom of property, not freedom of persons. Consequently, liberals in power in Latin America sought to reduce corporate control over land by the church and Indian Communities in order to foster private property in land. At the same time, liberal states advocated and often directly organized unfree labor systems-debt peonage, state labor drafts, and slavery. Their promotion of forced labor rested on two pillars: first, the ideology that Indians, mulattos, blacks, and peasants in general were primitives who had to be forced out of their natural laziness into the world of work; second, the material reality that, in the absence of a market in labor power, the landed elites had to use overt violence to recruit and discipline a labor force if they were going to enrich themselves from export agriculture.

(Continues…)

Excerpted from Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America Copyright © 2000 by Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.