Catholic Women and Mexican Politics, 1750-1940

by Margaret Chowning

Overview

How women preserved the power of the Catholic Church in Mexican political life

What accounts for the enduring power of the Catholic Church, which withstood widespread and sustained anticlerical opposition in Mexico? Margaret Chowning locates an answer in the untold story of how the Mexican Catholic church in the nineteenth century excluded, then accepted, and then came to depend on women as leaders in church organizations.

But much more than a study of women and the church or the feminization of piety, the book links new female lay associations beginning in the 1840s to the surprisingly early politicization of Catholic women in Mexico. Drawing on a wealth of archival materials spanning more than a century of Mexican political life, Chowning boldly argues that Catholic women played a vital role in the church’s resurrection as a political force in Mexico after liberal policies left it for dead.

Shedding light on the importance of informal political power, this book places Catholic women at the forefront of Mexican conservatism and shows how they kept loyalty to the church strong when the church itself was weak.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691235424
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	01/03/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	376
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Margaret Chowning holds the Muriel McKevitt Sonne Chair in Latin American History at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Rebellious Nuns: The Troubled History of a Mexican Convent, 1752–1863 and Wealth and Power in Provincial Mexico: Michoacán from the Late Colony to the Revolution.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Archives Consulted xiii

Introduction 1

Part I The Late Colony and the Aftermath of the Wars for Independence 17

Chapter 1 "Under No Circumstances Shall a Woman Be Elected": Gender Roles in Colonial Urban Cofradías 19

Chapter 2 "Our Fears That the Cofradías Will Disappear Are Not Unfounded": Gender, Lay Associations, and Priests in the Aftermath of the Wars for Independence, 1810-1860 45

Part II The Era of the Reform 71

Chapter 3 "We Ladies Who Sign Below Wish to Establish a Congregation": Priests, Women, and New Lay Associations, 1840-1856 73

Chapter 4 "Throwing Themselves upon the Political Barricades": Catholic Women Enter National Politics in the Midcentury Petition Campaigns 97

Chapter 5 "The Intervention of the Faithful Was an Unavoidable Necessity": Lay Organizing and Women, 1856-1875 123

Chapter 6 "We'll See Who Wins: Them with Their Laws, or Us with Our Protests": The Ley Orgánica and the 1874-1875 Petition Campaign 147

Part III The Porfiriato 173

Chapter 7 "Excellent Assistants of the Priest": Women and Lay Associations, 1876-1911 175

Chapter 8 "The Men Are Somewhat Preoccupied. Fortunately, the Mexican Woman Carries the Standard of Our Beliefs": Women and Catholic Politics in the Porfiriato 206

Epilogue Catholic Women and Politics, 1910-1940 232

Appendix 253

Notes 257

Bibliography 325

Index 353

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“In her splendid contribution to a proliferating literature on Catholic women’s activism in postindependence Mexico, Margaret Chowning focuses on associationalism, particularly female devotional societies that eclipsed colonial male-dominated cofradías in nonindigenous towns. Meticulous, comparative, and gendered, her analysis provides rare insight into Mexican political culture.”—Mary Kay Vaughan, author of Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930–1940

“This sweeping history reveals how the changing nature of Mexican Catholic lay associations created a parallel, non-secular civil society that offered women a space to gain a political education and assert their political voice in decision making at both the local and national levels. Chowning’s study transforms how we understand nineteenth-century political conflicts and women’s roles in shaping them.”—Jocelyn Olcott, author of Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico

“Monumental. Chowning’s important book provides a persuasive account of why gender matters to a religious history of Mexico, and why in so many ways the power of the church is, and for centuries has always been, the power of churchwomen. This is a mighty work.”—Matthew Butler, author of Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion

“This book transforms our understanding of Mexico by revealing how Catholic women were pivotal, enduring actors in the country’s political life. Chowning’s analysis leaves untenable the long-prevailing emphasis portraying Mexican politics as affairs of men only.”—John Tutino, author of The Mexican Heartland: How Communities Shaped Capitalism, a Nation, and World History, 1500–2000

Editorial Reviews

"Honorable Mention for the Howard Cline Prize in Mexican History, Latin American Studies Association"

From the Publisher

"This deeply researched monograph . . . demonstrates that women formed the majority of colonial confraternities even though men headed these groups."

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