History of Gender and Women in Mexico

In this review, I explore some of the lines of inquiry that have emerged in anthropology and closely related disciplines around the theme of drugs and gender. The critical research on drugs over the past few decades has tended to focus on how prohibition policies are racialized, which has been important for revealing the injustice and racism found in drug policies and in com-monsense notions about drugs and drug use. Drawing from intersectional theorists who have long argued that racial categories are never experienced or imposed as singular identities separate from gender, language, class, and sexuality, I argue in this article that the literature on gender and drugs has struggled with two main interrelated problems: determining (a) how to understand gender and race together and (b) how to theorize gender in relation to power when these two factors are often conflated with each other in both popular discourse and theoretical dispositions about the war on drugs.

This study examines the Singer Sewing Machine Company’s strategies for selling family sewing machines on a global scale. In marketing the sewing machine, the American-headquartered Singer focused on ornamental embroidery or “fancy” sewing, defining home sewing as art, to distance the company and the appliance from negative perceptions of women’s garment work as industrial manufacturing. Singer created its Embroidery Department in the early 1890s in response to consumers’ sewing preferences. The department reflects how the home became a site where global capitalism was constructed and articulated. Singer’s Embroidery Department had representatives in many countries, coordinating expositions and other advertising. In the case of Singer in Spain and the United States, women who took part in the department’s work were an essential part of the corporate-integrated operation. This article examines the relationship between Singer’s corporate strategies and gender and culture in Spain and the United States.

Francisco I. Madero, a cien años de su muerte México, 2013 D. R. © Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público ISBN: Se prohíbe la reproducción total o parcial de esta obra por cualquier medio o procedimiento sin el consentimiento por escrito de los titulares de los derechos. Impreso en México. Printed in Mexico. 11 15 21 53 81 111 139 CONTENIDO

bens: Relações entre clientes e importadores em Antioquia na segunda metade do século XIX Traducciones Ivonne Suárez Pinzón. Las tribus indígenas Guarano-Guaymies del itsmo de Panamá y de Centro América. Por A.L. Pinart. Transcripciones Juan Carrillo Gonzáles. Cobán, testimonios sobre la insubordinación q'eqchi' en el Reino de Guatemala (1735). María Laura Pensa. Topónimos, recursos y habitantes del espacio chaqueño en el diario de viaje de un misionero jesuita.

La participación de las mujeres en la vida política del país con los mismos derechos y obligaciones que los hombres fue uno de los propósitos centrales del feminismo mexicano de la primera mitad del siglo. Ahora, cuando la democracia ciudadana se ha convertido en el asunto central del debate político en México, la historia de la lucha por el ejercicio igualitario de la ciudadanía de hombres y mujeres adquiere una nueva relevancia.

Se analizan las posturas ante el sufragio femenino que se manifestaron entre élites políticas e intelectuales durante la primera mitad del siglo xx mexicano. Tanto defensores como oponentes al voto de las mujeres emplearon discursos maternalistas, que colocaban a la maternidad como eje de los derechos ciudadanos de las mujeres, como discuros igualitarios, que ponían el acento en la igualdad de derechos entre los individuos. El debate en torno al sufragio femenino fue, al mismo tiempo, una discusión sobre las identidades de género posibles en momentos históricos específicos.

Ocurre en raras ocasiones que un salón se inunde de risas durante un examen profesional. Eso sucedió en el aula "José Martí" del edificio de Mascarones —antigua sede de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras— el 23 de junio de 1950, cuando Rosario Castellanos Figueroa (1925-1974) sustentó la réplica de su trabajo "Sobre cultura femenina" para obtener el grado de maestría en filosofía.

Governed by a complex and interwoven hierarchy based on class, economic status, gender, and family heritage (a concept akin to race), New Spanish society imposed European ideals on a diverse American population. As colonial instruments, convents in Mexico admitted only Spanish women of the highest stratum of society who afforded a sizable dowry; however, convents were run by the women living in them and would occasionally waive the requirement of a dowry for a woman whose skills filled a particular need, for example that of a musician. Founded in Mexico City in 1740, the school of music within the women’s Colegio de San Miguel de Belem provided European musical training to girls of Spanish origins with the primary goal of facilitating their professions as nuns of the choir.

María Micaela Jerusalem and María Joaquína Jerusalem trained at Belem as professional musicians in the galant style, which their father—the composer Ignacio Jerusalem—was instrumental in importing from Europe and establishing in Mexico. Based on groundbreaking archival research at the Archivo Historico del Colegio de las Vizcaínas in Mexico City, this paper focuses on the sizable didactic manuscript “Vezerro de lecciones,” comprised of exercises composed by the three Italian teacher-composers Francesco Feo, Leonardo Leo, and Ignacio Jerusalem. It was compiled and brought to Belem by Ignacio Jerusalem and his daughters. Through “Vezerro” we see young women learning about vocal and instrumental performance, moveable clefs, hexachordal solmization, ornamentation, transposition, figured bass, ear training, improvisation, and composition. It exemplifies the galant pedagogy that prepared Belem’s students to take positions as nuns of the choir within the Mexico City’s convents.

This research contrasts the vast majority of scholarship on colonial Mexican music, which has largely focused on the male institutions of cathedrals. Two scholars have published research on Belem as part of larger surveys. My work represents a much more detailed examination of Belem’s manuscript and pedagogy and is the only research on Belem available in English.

The cultural productions of Katherine Anne Porter, Anita Brenner, Tina Modotti, Maria Izquierdo, and Juanita Guccione represent a distinctive interweaving of gender and class consciousness, national identification and political resistance, as represented in their artistic work. These five women became transnational carriers of a radical realist and modernist thought, culture, and ideology that became transported through their art when their gendered and classed bodies were left otherwise silenced and boundaried. These women, their cultural productions, and the ways in which their art generates a counter discourse to the dominant and institutionalized conceptions of transculturalism, aesthetics, and re-production, are vital to understanding the co-construction of nationhood as well as the self-determined creation of the individual self. From this overarching framework, I will explore how these women negotiated political conceptions of nationhood, artistic genres such as realism and modernism, and then created their own feminist, transcultural and working-class aesthetics to counter otherwise limited conceptions of individual agency.

El Colegio de San Miguel de Belem was home to the first female music conservatory in Mexico. Predominantly employing male music teachers from Mexico City’s Metropolitan Cathedral, Belem’s escoleta de música, founded in the mid-1700s, taught girls voice, organ, harpsichord, strings, and winds. While most alumnae of the escoleta either married or professed as nuns, two graduates, María Micaela and María Joaquina Jerusalem, daughters of the cathedral’s maestro de capilla Ignacio Jerusalem, became music teachers at El Colegio de San Ignacio de Loyola, Vizcaínas and the convent La Encarnación. This paper addresses several crucial questions: What musical pedagogy was applied at Belem? What styles and difficulty of music were performed? How did the students’ musical education contribute to their development and shape their adult lives?

My research draws on my editions of primary sources in el Archivo Historico del Colegio de San Ignacio de Loyola, Vizcaínas and secondary sources in historical musicology, music education, and colonialism and gender studies. Various pieces intended for performance in Belem’s chapel services demonstrate the girls’ musical skill level, and three unique didactic manuscripts – “Vezerro de lecciones” containing music by Francesco Feo, Leonardo Leo, and Ignacio Jerusalem; “Livro de Lelciones [sic] a Solo Violin” by Nicolas Olivari; and the anonymous “Manuscrito J.M.J” – illustrate pedagogy employed at Belem. My paper enhances our understanding of historically underrepresented foci in musicology, specifically eighteenth-century music pedagogy and the professional training of female musicians, situated within the greater context of the musical and social life of colonial Mexico City. Belem’s students performed music composed both in Mexico and Europe, trained with teachers from the cathedral, professed as nuns in the city’s convents, and became vital members of Mexico City’s society. La ¬escoleta was not an isolated island, but rather a female institution with strong ties to the world outside its walls and an active contributor to the musical life of Mexico’s capital. Belem employed a sophisticated curriculum that empowered eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women to become not just wives and mothers, but also accomplished nuns and teachers who increased their independence and autonomy by using the musical skills learned at Belem.

The Colegio de San Miguel de Belem was the home of the first female music conservatory in Mexico. Founded in 1683 as a recogimiento (a place where women withdrew from society), the school accepted criollas (girls of European heritage who had been born in the Americas). The girls were trained in skills deemed appropriate for their sex, social class, and ethnic group. Belem’s escoleta de música (school of music) employed an Italianate pedagogy with the primary purpose of enabling its alumnae to profess as nuns who offered their skills as musicians in lieu of a dowry paid to a convent.
This study discusses women’s education and social positions in colonial Mexico and considers the social impact and importance of Belem’s school of music. Archival documents and musical scores collected from the Archivo Histórico del Colegio de San Ignacio de Loyola, Vizcaínas, in Mexico City provide examples of women who trained at Belem and the music that they studied and performed. Interwoven with the story of Belem’s escoleta de música is the musically influential Jerusalem family. A biography of María Micaela Jerusalem illustrates one Belem alumna’s career path and enduring legacy.

Volume II presents music studied and performed at Belem. Complete editions of two pedagogical manuscripts—the student-copied “Manuscrito de Lecciones ‘J.M.J.’ del Colegio de Belem” and “Vezerro de Lecciones” by Francesco Feo, Leonardo Leo, and Ignacio Jerusalem—illustrate the Italian pedagogy employed in Belem’s escoleta de música and are presented in treble and bass clefs for use by today’s scholars, educators, and students. Editions of music intended for performance in Belem’s religious services include Ignacio Jerusalem’s “Non fecit taliter à dos voces y Bajo,” Guadalupe Ortuño’s “Gradual á la Santísima Virgen de Guadalupe á Duo, con acompañamiento de Órgano,” and Marcos Vega’s “Versos para el organo para tocarlos en visperas o maytines.”

El presente artículo ofrece una aproximación a la historia del establecimiento de las asociaciones escultistas juveniles impulsadas por el gobierno mexicano desde finales del siglo XIX, con los Batallones Escolares, hasta 1929, con el establecimiento de las Tribus de Exploradores Mexicanos en zonas rurales. La premisa central es que las instituciones centradas en los jóvenes, así como las tipologías elaboradas sobre dicho grupo de edad, reflejan los intereses políticos y las preocupaciones y necesidades sociales de los individuos o congregaciones que las establecieron. Por dicha razón, los objetivos del artículo contemplan el análisis del contexto histórico-político que permitió la aparición de las distintas agrupaciones scouts en México, los propósitos de su instauración, su organización y las actividades realizadas por sus miembros.

“Sisters at War: Mexican Women’s Poetry and the U.S.-Mexican War.” Latin American Research Review, Vol. 47, No. 1 (2012): 3-15. [Excerpt.] [Note: An expanded version of this essay also appears in the book Mexico in Verse, edited by Stephen Neufeld and Michael Matthews.] Abstract: A study of how Mexican women writers found a somewhat welcoming cultural space to speak out on the U.S.-Mexican War through their poetry and the construction of a 'lyrical sisterhood.'

One of the first Mexican chroniclers to describe Mexico City was priest and poet Bernardo de Balbuena (Valdepeñas, Spain 1561 – San Juan, Puerto Rico 1627), who wrote the original Grandeza mexicana (Mexican Grandeur) in 1604. In this text, Balbuena focused on the beauty of Mexico City for his readers, utilizing the very elaborate Baroque language of his time to describe urban spaces of the capital of New Spain (now Mexico City). He also utilized the literary figure of the narratee or narratario in Spanish (the person to whom the narrator directs his observations). In 1946, with the publication of Nueva grandeza mexicana, Salvador Novo continued this literary tradition. First, the author paid homage to Balbuena by borrowing seven lines from Grandeza mexicana to name the first six chapters in Nueva grandeza mexicana (Monsiváis 2001: 14). Second, Novo’s narrator directs his observations to a male friend who visits the city from Monterrey, Mexico – Novo’s narratee – as a direct homage to Balbuena.
  In Nueva grandeza mexicana, Novo drew public attention to an ironic urban relationship of cause-and-effect within early-twentieth- century Mexico City which, in the end, created inevitable – yet unwanted – social change. For example, beginning in the 1920s, the city’s modernization was made possible by foreign influences that permitted its exponential growth in infrastructure, while old traditions gave way to new ones that developed as an inevitable reaction to these influences. It was a period that Mary K. Long (1995: 175) considers utopic; the city was suddenly free to explore its new “opportunity for playful exploration and discovery.” Long concludes that at that time: “New technologies are still toys, not yet overwhelming/overpowering their surroundings.” Yet the foreign influence on the city was significant because Mexico’s national image had historically been considered an internal affair, analyzed below, which was specifically defined by virile Mexicans and not influenced by extraneous factors (a mindset that continues in the twenty-first century). Novo’s text documented that the very opposite was occurring and that Mexico’s national image and urban transformations were heavily influenced by the USA and Europe. The author focused on the effect of new social customs on Mexico City’s society, underscoring how women began to occupy public urban spaces from which they were previously prohibited.

El género como categoría de análisis permite trazas vínculos entre la Historia y el espectro cultural, las decisiones de una comunidad, sus respuestas a lo diverso y diferente así como vislumbrar en la larga temporalidad el potencial de sus usos. El propósito de la charla busca dar a conocer y concienciar al gran público de la terminología utilizada en los Estudios caracterizados o referidos al Género .

This Chapter in my Doctoral dissertation is drawing a comparative analysis between two leftist-oriented states before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Statistics are provided, such as demographics, and civic and civil society organizations in the two countries.