Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara has written an engaging study of non-elite women and how they built spiritual capital in colonial Guatemala in the post-independence period. These “poor, single, and holy” women worked endlessly—often in concert with male religious orders—to foment devotion in multiple forms. Their actions ranged from creating altars, starting girls’ schools, donning the habits of lay tertiaries, defending the clergy, leading cofradias, and living modest lives as beatas. Their efforts proved central to a lively religious life in urban Guatemala that reflected a “broader global Catholic context” (65). Their diverse activities challenged elite notions of female piety and honor. Leavitt-Alcántara contributes greatly to scholarship on the Catholic church, popular piety, and women's history.
Alone at the Altar takes place in Guatemala's capital, a city with a high proportion of mixed-race people. The ordinary women in this book draw from the same socio-economic class as “the women who lead evil lives” in Martha Few's book of the same name (University of Texas Press, 2002). Few analyzed Inquisition cases and explored the interracial female networks of sorcery, healing, and small businesses. Few's subjects challenged patriarchy in violent actions, often contested clergymen, and drew accusations of living beyond acceptable realms of female conduct. The women in Leavitt-Alcántara's book resided on the same streets and shared the same ethno-racial and economic status but led devout lives. Aside from their unmarried status, these women followed normative conduct and created spiritual security by undertaking pious works. Both books highlight non-elite women, often living outside of marriage. Rather than living “evil lives,” the women described in Alone at the Altar “enthusiastically participated in confraternities and Third Orders, invested in the spiritual economy, and cultivated alliances with priests and friars.” Leavitt-Alcántara argues that “through their religious practices and relationships, non-elite single women were able to establish their moral status” (97). While offering strikingly different views of colonial society, both works illustrate that gender intersected with religious order in dynamic and contested ways.
This book relies heavily on the study of 550 wills (dated 1700–1870, about half dictated by women). The will-makers showed a great devotion to the church. Of female will-makers, 40 percent left all their wealth to the church; by comparison just 17 percent of men left their wealth entirely to the church (87). School foundation records and spiritual biographies undergird specific chapters. Leavitt-Alcántara contextualizes her Guatemalan research within relevant scholarship on colonial Mexico. This book claims to illustrate the “protracted spiritual conquest of the New World” (33). However, because few of these wills came from the truly poor or from indigenous people, readers will find little about the beliefs and practices of Guatemala's indigenous majority.
The study places Guatemala within a larger Catholic world and European counterreformation history. The Guatemalan capital turns out to offer many examples of female tertiaries, for example. (Nearly a third of the female will-makers studied were tertiaries.) The author is attentive to connections to “a broad nineteenth-century Catholic revival of affective piety and physical displays of devotion” (142).
Leavitt-Alcántara effectively shows the “need to modify interpretations of early modern Catholicism as primarily repressive and hostile toward single women” (5). This book urges readers to examine “more flexible ideals of feminine piety than previously imagined” (40). While women are at the heart of this book, their interactions with priests are crucial. Church fathers, especially of religious orders such as the Jesuits, collaborated with poor laywomen on a variety of devotional projects. These same women fiercely defended the Jesuits when under attack by Bourbon officials and later by the Guatemalan government.
Several individual stories stand out. That of María Nicolasa, a free mulatta who became the “capitana” of the Black Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary, is one example. Likewise, I was surprised to learn of Anna Guerra de Jesús—neither nun nor virgin—renowned for her great devotion to the sacraments; her hagiography is akin to St. Rosa de Lima. A fascinating chapter examines four distinct girls’ schools in the late colonial era. Pious laywomen held responsibility for the establishment and direction of these schools (of which one was dedicated to the education of indigenous women, to serve as teachers and moral leaders in their own communities). These female schools, if short lived, exemplify the “enthusiasm, creativity, and adaptability of religious actors” often put in a traditional camp (116). Kudos to the author and the press for including a number of relevant illustrations, including a bloodstained handkerchief (dated 1816) from a stigmatic, Carmelite nun.
This book contributes to our knowledge of postcolonial Guatemala. While priests and male orders decreased in numbers after 1825, women continued their work as pious benefactors and helped to “rebuild the Guatemalan Church during the conservative era” (200). Women also took advantage of new lay devotions, including the Daughters of Mary and the Apostolate of Prayer. The epilogue briefly suggests continuities into the late nineteenth-century Liberal era, such as the persistence of lay brotherhoods, devotion to specific images, and pilgrimages. Looking to today's religious landscape, Leavitt-Alcántara briefly notes women's prominent role in Charismatic Catholic Renewal as well as in evangelical Protestant churches in Guatemala.
This generally strong volume has a few shortcomings. While I am trained in colonial Mexican history, I found sections on local politics and economy hard to follow. The book can be repetitive; at several points the same sentence was repeated within a single chapter. The text uses English language names for many of the local religious devotions. This choice opens the book up to non-Latin Americanists, but at times left me confused as to precisely which devotion was under discussion.
While set in Guatemala, this history could have unfolded in the racially heterogeneous cities anywhere in colonial Latin America. This book is essential reading for Latin Americanists, especially graduate students and scholars studying religious and gender history. Europeanists interested in Catholic women's roles in promoting affective piety will also appreciate the study.
