Historian Erin O'Connor has provided an eminently readable, solidly researched overview of Latin American women's history, using the lens of motherhood. In her historical synthesis, she addresses the political, religious, social, economic, and familial aspects of women's roles as mothers, in nations from Cuba to Chile, from Mexico to Argentina. Her nuanced analysis incorporates extensive attention to the differential impact on mothers’ lives of class and race, of rural and urban location, of national and chronological placement. Throughout the book, she keeps her focus on the ways in which “motherhood reveals diversity, struggle, and agency in Latin American history” (251). The book includes both chapter endnotes and an extensive bibliography of historical scholarship and selected published primary sources.
O'Connor begins each chapter with a case study of a woman or group of women whose experiences encapsulate themes from that chapter, and closes each with a historical document providing her intended undergraduate readers with the opportunity to delve into first-hand accounts of the lives of women from places as diverse as Chile, Peru, Mexico, Costa Rica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Argentina. Each document is introduced with a headnote and questions for students to consider as they read the source.
In addition to introductory and concluding chapters, O'Connor provides eight substantive chapters that proceed chronologically, incorporating analysis of women from multiple Latin American nations into each chapter. An initial chapter focuses on the impact that the transition from colony to nation had on women of all classes and races in Spanish and Portuguese colonies. The author next treats nineteenth-century motherhood in two chapters, one focusing on poor women (“Mothering the Majority”) and one focusing on middle-class and elite women, including the relationship of some of the latter to feminism, the educational opportunities available for select women, and the charitable work in which they engaged, enabled by their ability to employ poor women to care for their children.
The author provides two chapters on motherhood during the period from 1900 to 1950, again divided by class, with extensive attention to differential employment opportunities. Her analysis of the eugenics movement is particularly insightful, providing an important reminder of the impact this movement had in the twentieth century. Similarly, her discussion of the mixed-race chola market women of the Andean nations of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador provides valuable insights into the complexities of motherhood, economics, and government in those nations.
A separate chapter on the twentieth-century revolutions in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua allows the reader to explore the different ways in which women participated in and were affected by the revolutions in each of these three nations. O'Connor argues that “despite their differences, all three revolutions promised reforms and greater rights for women to one extent or another, and all three failed to live up to their promises” (162), pointing out that “revolution and motherhood may indeed make strange bedfellows, but they are often intertwined” (185).
A chapter on “Maternalizing Politics, Politicizing Motherhood” in the second half of the twentieth century incorporates case studies of the political experiences of individual women and groups of women representing multiple classes in many nations, including Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. O'Connor focuses both on the ways in which the imagery of motherhood was used for political ends and on the reality of governments’ impact on mothers in mid to late twentieth-century Latin American nations.
O'Connor's in-depth attention to contraception, abortion, and sexuality in the later twentieth century provides a valuable historical window into debates over reproduction in Latin American societies, and the impact of those debates on the lives of women. The author demonstrates the ways in which “Latin American women have been caught between tradition and modernity with regard to birth control and abortion, just as they have been with regard to other aspects of modernization in Latin America” (241). Her thoughtful attention to the religious, international, and medical aspects of these debates further enhances the chapter.
Throughout this comprehensive yet compact volume, O'Connor gives welcome attention to the chronological continuities and geographical similarities among nineteenth-, twentieth-, and early twenty-first-century Latin American women in Caribbean, Central American, and South American nations, without neglecting careful examination of the historical changes and national differences they faced. Those seeking a supplemental text for a modern Latin American history survey, a modern global history course, or a women's history overview would do well to consider this useful historical synthesis of modern motherhood in Latin America.
