María Teresa Fernández Aceves has written a finely researched book detailing the shifting Mexican attitudes toward women and politics through the twentieth century. Her goal is to examine political trajectories through the lives of five women who were militants and feminists at the beginning of the twentieth century in Guadalajara. Fernández convincingly argues that these five women's lives and political trajectories helped create a “modern” culture in the revolutionary and postrevolutionary era—not just in Mexico, but throughout Latin America as well. She also argues that their lives show the relationship between social change, gender, and revolution, as well as how social change and revolution transformed Mexican understandings of femininity, masculinity, politics, and citizenship in twentieth-century Mexico.
The five women Fernández discusses, Belén de Sárraga (1872–1950), Atala Apodaca (1884–1977), María Arcelia Díaz (1896–1939) Guadalupe Martínez Villanueva (1906–2002), and Guadalupe Urzúa Flores (1912–2004), formed part of two cultural generations that interacted with and participated in the Mexican Revolution and in the revolutionary process of state formation. According to Fernández, all were anticlerical, and they were enriched by both Mexican and Spanish liberal traditions, including anarcho-syndicalism and free-thinking. They all confronted a liberalism that called for the subordination of women.
This work is especially nuanced because Fernández adeptly uses the tools of new biography: by focusing on the lives of these women and using tools of cultural history, we can see how the lives of these women are a source to examine language and power, as well as how these women stood up to dominant discourses about the subordination of women in order to challenge older ideas. Her work shows the variety of debates surrounding education, social policy, and labor policy, as well as Church/state conflict that the five participated in. These five women challenged stereotypes and complicated power relations.
There are six chapters. Chapter 1 focuses on “La Mujer Moderna, la politica y la revolución mexicana in Guadalajara, 1910–1920.” It examines the revolutionary context that helped shape an active civil society, which, according to Fernández, mobilized around diverse cultural, ideological, political, religious, and social interests. Women's participation in civil society changed and challenged dominant discourses about gender. Chapter 2 examines the life of Belén de Sárraga Hernández and her interactions with the anticlerical and free-thinker movement. Fernández shows how her interactions changed political and social structures in Spain and Latin America. In particular, this chapter examines how these discourses served to reshape and “modernize” patriarchy in Mexico as part of anticlerical challenges to the Church.
Chapter 3 discusses Atala Apodaca Anaya's life and political trajectory, starting with her work in the campaign to oppose Francisco Madero's re-election. It also covers her work with the Centro Radical Femenino and her radical anticlericalism. Her life work shows how different subaltern groups in Mexico were tied together. Chapter 4 looks at the life of María Arcelia Díaz as a textile worker and labor activist. Her work with many organizations shows how we can get at the voice of those who cannot speak. Chapter 5 examines María Guadalupe Martínez Villanueva's ties with Apodaca and Díaz through her labor organizing. The chapter also looks at how labor organizing affected ideas and attitudes about women and citizenship over the course of the twentieth century. Chapter 6 examines the life of a rural woman, Guadalupe Urzúa Flores, who held multiple positions of authority representing both peasants and women throughout the twentieth century. Her political path teaches us a lot about women, citizenship, power, and economic development in the countryside.
Fernández's book is an important and necessary addition to our understanding of Mexican political history. It is especially significant that it focuses on an area outside of Mexico City, giving a much-needed regional perspective. It is also an excellent example of how scholarly biography can enrich our understandings of historical processes.
