John Belohlavek offers an engaging study of women in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. His goal is “to explore and recognize the courage, spirit, and influence of women heralded and unheralded” (2). The book's core is a series of narratives detailing the activities of individual women. He introduces women whose collective participation in the war does not typically receive as much attention as do some. Gertrude Barceló (known as doña Tules), Susan Magoffin, and Jane Storm Cazneau are some of the many examples provided as he blends broader historical analysis with biographical vignettes of specific women.
As Belohlavek makes clear, there is no easy way to generalize about the role of women in the war. He begins by discussing the thousands of women who protested the conflict, but he also notes how many vocally supported it. As with all wars, women took on greater responsibility for managing money and households, but how this manifested itself depended on a wide range of factors, most notably income level, but also age and relationship (mother, sister, or wife). Those dynamics were also very different in the United States than in Mexico.
Beyond the household, one important role was activist. The anti-war movement quickly gained support from anti-slavery groups, who considered the war a naked land grab by slaveholders. They joined forces with religious and women's rights organizations to protest. But many other women focused more on patriotism and supporting their male family members who went off to fight. Women in the United States did not often go to the battlefield, though Belohlavek points out some notable exceptions. By contrast, Mexican women participated more directly in the war, serving as an essential logistical arm of the Mexican army.
Especially with regard to Mexican women, a drawback of the book is that there are no Mexican sources. All of the 46 periodicals and 13 manuscript collections that Belohlavek consults are in English. The accounts of individual women tilt sharply toward the United States. Thus, the depictions of Mexican women come largely through the lens of white men who knew little to nothing about them. In general, regardless of what job they were doing, US citizens viewed Mexican women with disdain. Their appearance was deemed inadequate in various ways, their manners too coarse, and their skin too dark. The language barrier and sense of superiority prevented anyone from the United States from understanding them too well. Even sympathetic versions labeling them “angels” could provide no context or understanding of their feelings or motivations. Nonetheless, even the secondhand accounts of Mexican women reveal how difficult life was for them in war-torn Mexico. Those are stories that need to be told in greater depth.
An important contribution of the book is that for the first time it highlights the countless ways women on both sides of the conflict were central to it. For better or worse, the war could not have been waged without them. Women were taking care of business at home, traveling with armies, opening businesses, and working in factories (especially textiles). They were also writing stories, plays, and music. War changed gender roles, though Belohlavek is careful to explain that such transformations were not drastic. Yet, the war represented “an incremental step toward advancing greater gender awareness and promoting female involvement within the Mexican and American societies” (243). Belohlavek succeeded in that effort. Historical studies of US-Latin American relations would benefit from more of this understanding.
