Full Description
Sex in Revolution challenges the prevailing narratives of the Mexican Revolution and postrevolutionary state formation by placing women at center stage. Bringing to bear decades of feminist scholarship and cultural approaches to Mexican history, the essays in this book demonstrate how women seized opportunities created by modernization efforts and revolutionary upheaval to challenge conventions of sexuality, work, family life, religious practices, and civil rights.Concentrating on episodes and phenomena that occurred between 1915 and 1950, the contributors deftly render experiences ranging from those of a transgendered Zapatista soldier to upright damas catÓlicas and Mexico City's chicas modernas pilloried by the press and male students. Women refashioned their lives by seeking relief from bad marriages through divorce courts and preparing for new employment opportunities through vocational education. Activists ranging from Catholics to Communists mobilized for political and social rights. Although forced to compromise in the face of fierce opposition, these women made an indelible imprint on postrevolutionary society.
These essays illuminate emerging practices of femininity and masculinity, stressing the formation of subjectivity through civil-society mobilizations, spectatorship and entertainment, and locales such as workplaces, schools, churches, and homes. The volume's epilogue examines how second-wave feminism catalyzed this revolutionary legacy, sparking widespread, more radically egalitarian rural women's organizing in the wake of late-twentieth-century democratization campaigns. The conclusion considers the Mexican experience alongside those of other postrevolutionary societies, offering a critical comparative perspective.
Contributors. Ann S. Blum, Kristina A. Boylan, Gabriela Cano, MarÍa Teresa FernÁndez Aceves, Heather Fowler-Salamini, Susan Gauss, Temma Kaplan, Carlos MonsivÁis, Jocelyn Olcott, Anne Rubenstein, Patience Schell, Stephanie Smith, Lynn Stephen, Julia TuÑÓn, Mary Kay Vaughan
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Foreword: When Gender Can't Be Seen amid the Symbols: Women and the Mexican Revolution / Carlos Monsivaois 1
Introduction: Pancho Villa, the Daughters of Mary, and the Modern Woman: Gender in the Long Mexican Revolution / Mary Kay Vaughan 21
Part One: Embodying Revolutionary Culture
Unconcealable Realities of Desire: Amelio Robles's (Transgender) Masculinity in the Mexican Revolution / Gabriela Cano 35
The War on Las Pelonas: Modern Women and Their Enemies, Mexico City, 1924 / Anne Rubenstein 57
Femininity, Indigneismo, and Nation: Film Representation by Emilio "El Indio: Fernandez / Julia Tunon 81
Part Two: Reshaping the Domestic Sphere
"In Love Enslaves...Love Ber Damned!": Divorce and Revolutionary State Formation in Yucatan / Stephanie Smith 99
Gender, Class, and Anxiety at the Gabriela Mistral Vocational School, Revolutionary Mexico City / Patience A. Schell 112
Breaking and Making Families: Adoption and Public Welfare, Mexico City, 1938-1942, Ann S. Blum 127
Part Three: The Gendered Realm of Labor Organizing
The Struggle between the Metate and the Molinos de Nixtamal in Guadalajara, 1920-1940 / Maria Teresa Fernandez-Aveces
Gender, Work, Trade Unionism, and Working-Class Women's Culture in Post-Revolution Veracruz / Heather Fowler-Salamini 162
Working-Class Masculinity and the Rationalized Sex: Gender and Industrial Modernization in the Textile Industry In Postrevolutionary Puebla / Susan M. Gauss 181
Part Four: Women and Revolutionary Politics
Gendering the Faith and Altering the Nation: Mexican Catholic Women's Activism, 1917-1940 / Kristina A. Boylan 199
The Center Cannot Hold: Women on Mexico's Popular Front / Jocelyn Olcott 225
Epilogue. Rural Women's Grassroots Activism, 1980-2000: Reframing the Nation from Below / Lynn Stephen 241
Final Reflections: Gender, Chaos, and Authority in Revolutionary Times / Temma Kaplan
261
Bibliography 277
Contributors 303
Index 307
