BOOK REVIEW: LATIN AMERICAN WOMEN. IGOR RENATO MACHADO DE LIMA

A book I’ve read recently is The Women of colonial Latin America: new Approaches to the Americas, by Susan Migden Socolow. It’s printed by University Cambridge Press, second edition, in 2015.

Socolow is a Professor Emeritus of Latin American History at Emoroy University in US. She wrote about American Indian’s History, Family’s History and Women’s History in Colonial Latin America.

This book is about female experience in Colonial Latin America. Difference and identity of women were studied according to race, class, time and spatial variation. For this book, the historian divided it in eleven chapters. Iberian women, women in Indian society, marriage, family, hierarchy, witchcraft and female education are some topics considered in this book. She mentioned and quoted a lot of other historians. Citing until traditional historiography like Ann Piscatello and Assunción Lavrin, theme introducers in 70s, to recently articles about women’s fashion (by her own, in 2012).

From my point of view, the most interesting part of the book is about the women Indian and black slavery in domestic and every day life. Mainly in the Latin American Colonial cities, women work in crafts, shops and stalls in the street.

The most exciting part of this book is about a new field in women’s history: the material culture. For example, some women consumed magical amulets, like rosary, teeth set in silver, figas and set beads.

Other characteristics of these colonial American women is a religiosity, like nuns, witches, beatas, who had specials visions. Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz (1648-1695) was the most extraordinary woman from her time. She lived in Mexico City and decided to go into a convent. In Convento de San Gerónimo, she wrote religious poetry, plays, philosophical treats and theological criticism.

At the end of the book, Socolow shows a letter from Sor Juana to Sos Filotea. In this letter, the nun deals with the problems of the Inquisition persecution. She was determined to write and study because she believed in teaching the sacred words of God in writing.

During the colonial time, the Inquisition chased a lot of female transgressors of the Roman Catholic Church ideology. Folk healers, witches, special Indian women, or female blacks slaves women, sometimes they were given in trapped, questioned, tortured, condemned and some times burned.

In the eighteenth century, new ideas about elite women’s education started in Colonial Latin America. For the patriarchal society, female education existed to make better wives, mothers and an ideal perfect woman. New schools for women were created. There, they learned the Christian doctrine, reading, writing, a little arithmetic and most important, domestic arts, like cocking, embroidery, spinning, weaving and sewing.

According to Socolow, during the Enlightenment Reform, the town council, religious authorities and the Crown tried to control the intermarriage of the elite and the behavior of upper class women in a patriarchal society.

In conclusion, this book is important to college students because they can understand the change or continuity of the women’s roles and ideological patriarchal thinking in Latin America History. Furthermore, the students can get the general idea of the Colonial Latin American History.