The years following Mexican independence in 1821 were critical to the development of social, racial, and national identities. The visual arts played a decisive role in this process of self-definition. Mexican Costumbrismo reorients current understanding of this key period in the history of Mexican art by focusing on a distinctive genre of painting that emerged between 1821 and 1890: costumbrismo. In contrast to the neoclassical work favored by the Mexican academy, costumbrista artists portrayed the quotidian lives of the lower to middle classes, their clothes, food, dwellings, and occupations. Based on observations of similitude and difference, costumbrista imagery constructed stereotypes of behavioral and biological traits associated with distinct racial and social classes. In doing so, Mey-Yen Moriuchi argues, these works engaged with notions of universality and difference, contributed to the documentation and reification of social and racial types, and transformed the way Mexicans saw themselves, as well as how other nations saw them, during a time of rapid change for all aspects of national identity. Carefully researched and featuring more than thirty full-color exemplary reproductions of period work, Moriuchi’s study is a provocative art-historical examination of costumbrismo’s lasting impact on Mexican identity and history. E-book editions have been made possible through support of the Art History Publication Initiative (AHPI), a collaborative grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The years from the Porfiriato to the post-Revolutionary regimes were a time of rising industrialism in Mexico that dramatically affected the lives of workers. Much of what we know about their experience is based on the histories of male workers; now Susie Porter takes a new look at industrialization in Mexico that focuses on women wage earners across the work force, from factory workers to street vendors. Working Women in Mexico City offers a new look at this transitional era to reveal that industrialization, in some ways more than revolution, brought about changes in the daily lives of Mexican women. Industrialization brought women into new jobs, prompting new public discussion of the moral implications of their work. Drawing on a wealth of material, from petitions of working women to government factory inspection reports, Porter shows how a shifting cultural understanding of working women informed labor relations, social legislation, government institutions, and ultimately the construction of female citizenship. At the beginning of this period, women worked primarily in the female-dominated cigarette and clothing factories, which were thought of as conducive to protecting feminine morality, but by 1930 they worked in a wide variety of industries. Yet material conditions transformed more rapidly than cultural understandings of working women, and although the nation's political climate changed, much about women's experiences as industrial workers and street vendors remained the same. As Porter shows, by the close of this period women's responsibilities and rights of citizenship—such as the right to work, organize, and participate in public debate—were contingent upon class-informed notions of female sexual morality and domesticity. Although much scholarship has treated Mexican women's history, little has focused on this critical phase of industrialization and even less on the circumstances of the tortilleras or market women. By tracing the ways in which material conditions and public discourse about morality affected working women, Porter's work sheds new light on their lives and poses important questions for understanding social stratification in Mexican history.

This collection examines the mutually influential interactions of gender and the state in Latin America from the late colonial period to the end of the twentieth century. Locating watershed moments in the processes of gender construction by the organized power of the ruling classes and in the processes by which gender has conditioned state-making, Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America remedies the lack of such considerations in previous studies of state formation. Along these lines, the book begins with two theoretical chapters by the editors, Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux. Dore opens by arguing against the prevailing view that the nineteenth century was marked by a gradual emancipation of women, while Molyneux considers how various Latin American state forms—liberal, corporatist, socialist, neoliberal—have more recently sought to incorporate women into their projects of social reform and modernization. These essays are followed by twelve case studies that examine how states have contributed to the normalization of male and female roles and relations. Covering an impressive breadth not only of historical time but also of geographical scope, this volume moves from Brazil to Costa Rica, from Mexico to Chile, traversing many countries in between. Contributors explore such topics as civic ritual in Bolivia, rape in war-torn Colombia, and the legal construction of patriarchy in Argentina. They examine the public regulation of domestic life, feminist lobby groups, class compromise, female slaves, and women in rural households—distinct, salient aspects of the state-gender relationship in specific countries at specific historical junctures. By providing a richly descriptive and theoretically grounded account of the interaction between state and gender politics in Latin America, this volume contributes to an important conversation between feminists interested in the state and political scientists interested in gender. It will be valuable to such disciplines as history, sociology, international comparative studies, and Latin American studies. Contributors. María Eugenia Chaves, Elizabeth Dore, Rebecca Earle, Jo Fisher, Laura Gotkowitz, Donna J. Guy, Fiona Macaulay, Maxine Molyneux, Eugenia Rodriguez, Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, Ann Varley, Mary Kay Vaughan

"Historians have long looked to networks of elite liberal and anti-clerical men as the driving forces in Mexican history over the course of the long nineteenth century. This traditional view, writes Margaret Chowning, cannot account for the continued power of the Catholic Church in Mexico, which has withstood extensive and sustained political opposition for over a century. How, then, must the scholarly consensus change to better reflect Mexico's history? In this book, Chowning shows that the church repeatedly emerged as a political player, even when liberals won elections, primarily because of the overlooked importance of women in politics. Catholic women kept the church alive through the wars of independence and made it into the political force it continues to be in present-day Mexico. Using archival sources from ten Mexican states, the book shows how women, who were denied the vote and expected to stay out of the political sphere, nevertheless forged their own form of citizenship through the church. After Mexico gained its independence in 1821, women self-consciously developed new lay associations and assumed leadership roles within them. These new associations not only kept Catholicism vibrant, they also pushed women into public sphere. Methodologically, this book shows the value of exploring gender in political and religious history and reveals the equal importance of informal political power to more formal activities like voting"--