Women

The restrictions imposed on women in colonial Mexico reflected the value system then prevalent in the Western world, of which Spain and its colonies formed a part. Gender inequality in countries bordering on the Mediterranean, such as Spain, exceeded that of northern Europe. Spanish society viewed the family as a miniature state, which had as its head the father, who exercised complete authority over his wife and children. He was legally entitled to administer corporal punishment to his wife and children as long as he did not endanger their lives.161

Many factors, such as wealth, divided colonial women, complicating generalizations about them. A contemporary observer commented:

The luxury and munificence of the mine-owners is something wondrous to see. As a rule the wife of a mining man goes to church escorted by a hundred servants and twenty ladies and maids in waiting. She keeps an open house, and all who wish to do so may come to dine: a bell is rung for dinner and supper.162

Urban-rural, Indian—Creole (or mestizo), and slave-master divisions also separated women. Some men had Spanish wives and Indian mistresses. Some women lived on the northern frontier and others resided in Mexico City. Finally, the experience of women differed as the colony evolved over three centuries.163

Spanish law, a derivative of Roman Law, defined a woman’s status. With a few exceptions, these laws remained in effect until the passage of the 1870 Mexican Civil Code. Women could not hold public office, vote, or be judges or priests. Regulations prohibited women from joining craft guilds, which prevented them from entering numerous occupations. Except for convents, women lacked groups that would further their interests in the way that the political system, the church structure, and guilds furthered male interests.164

Parents exercised authority over both male and female children until age twenty-five or until they married. However, after marriage, women only transferred their dependence, becoming subject to their husbands’ authority. Married women required their husbands’ permission to carry out legal proceedings, such as selling property, borrowing money, founding a charity, or freeing a slave. During the marriage, the husband administered communal property, including any income his wife might earn. He could dispose of this property without her consent. Wives could inherit property, but husbands had the right to administer it.165

Some laws did protect women’s interests. Inheritance laws guaranteed female children an equal share of their parents’ wealth, including land. Women could defend their interests, such as their right to an inheritance, in court. A widowed woman received half of the property accumulated during the marriage and any other personal property she might have brought to the marriage, such as her dowry.166

Unmarried women over age twenty-five, and, especially, widows, enjoyed the most freedom. They could carry out their own legal transactions, manage property, and choose their residence. The 1811 Mexico City census indicated that a fifth of women aged eighteen and over, primarily widows, headed their own households. The lucky minority of widows with assets could and did administer ranches, haciendas, shops, pulque taverns, and other urban businesses. They either exercised direct control of such properties or hired an administrator.167

The concept of honor exercised a strong influence on women of European ancestry, Creole and Spaniard. Honor demanded that women remain virgins until marriage. Male relatives, who suffered a loss of honor if a female relative lost her virginity, kept sisters and daughters under tight control to avoid this. After marriage, to preserve a wife’s honor, a life of modest withdrawal was the ideal. As a result, upper-class women, who left business matters to their husbands, remained at home and supervised family members, administered money that the husband doled out for household expenses, and inculcated acceptance of these norms in their children. In addition, they administered servants, performed domestic tasks, embroidered, and read religious works.168

Income-generating activities for women, married and unmarried, varied according to class and ethnicity. The 1811 Mexico City census reported that only 13 percent of Spanish and Creole women declared an occupation, while 36 percent of mixed-race and 46 percent of Indian women did. Women frequently worked as domestics or as cigarette makers, wet nurses, washerwomen, and ambulatory vendors. Mine operations depended on women serving as cooks, servants, and prostitutes. Many slave women worked in sugar mills. Indian women produced and sold poultry, vegetables, and textiles in traditional weekly markets. Poor Creole and mestizo women worked as seamstresses, or sold cigars, sweets, candles, trinkets, and alcoholic beverages from small stalls. In the first half of the eighteenth century, women comprised a third of the textile labor force in Puebla. At the end of the colonial period, half of the 7,000 employees at the royal tobacco factory were women, a harbinger of the opening of salaried occupations for women in the nineteenth century.169

Elite women administered family property if no adult males were available. For example, the heiress to the Count of Santiago and Marquisate of Salvatierra, Maria Isabel de Velasco Altamirano y Ovando, was the unmarried holder of two titles and three entails, and ran the family business, along with a younger sister, between 1797 and 1809. In urban areas, women owned bakeries, print shops and textile workshops known as obrajes. Sixteen of the thirty convents founded in New Spain between 1600 and the end of the colonial period were the work of women. Upper-class women also administered nunneries.170

During the late colonial period, the Crown favored expanded female employment to increase family spending money, to provide a greater market for manufactured goods, and to free men for mining, farming, and military service. In 1799, to increase female employment, Viceroy Miguel Jose de Azanza decreed that women could hold a job regardless of guild rules excluding them. The percentage of the female workforce working as servants and seamstresses declined from 88 percent in 1753 to 54 percent in 1811, indicating an increase in female employment opportunities. With the exception of cigar making, women workers at the end of the colonial period predominated in the same sectors as today—domestic service, the apparel industry, and food processing and distribution.171

Indian women faced restrictions imposed by sex, class, and race. In the early colonial period, Spanish men sought Indian noblewomen as wives and took Indian women of lower status as concubines. Many early tribute obligations, such as grinding corn and making tortillas, fell upon Indian women.172

Throughout the colonial period, peasant families shared power more evenly than more affluent ones. Men cultivated the family cornfields, while women tended gardens, raised small animals, wove cloth, made clothing, and prepared meals. Peasant women often sold goods in local markets. The landed estates mainly hired men, leaving women with increased power in the home and the community. As a result, women constituted a majority of the participants in many of the local peasant rebellions that erupted during the eighteenth century. Women often led these movements, which protested encroachments on community autonomy.173

Marriage for the more affluent in colonial Mexico generally involved a dowry. The custom of providing dowries came from medieval Spain. The dowry could be in the form of cash, jewelry, slaves, clothing, household furnishings, or real estate. Upon marriage, the husband managed, but did not assume ownership of this wealth.

The dowry served as a means of parental control, since if the bride’s parents disapproved of the marriage, they could deny a dowry. It also served to indicate social standing, since only the elite could afford a large dowry, which would attract a husband from a family of high standing. The dowry helped offset the cost of establishing the new household. When a couple legally separated or the husband died, the dowry reverted to the wife. As in other Latin American countries, in eighteenth-century Mexico, the use of dowries declined.174

The Church required married couples to live together. Religious authorities could force a wife to live with her husband, even if both spouses preferred to live apart. However, either spouse could petition for “ecclesiastical divorce,” akin to a modern legal separation. Before the petition could be granted, a spouse had to present evidence of some specific offense. Grounds for an ecclesiastical divorce included: 1) one spouse being cruel or physically abusive; 2) a spouse having an incurable contagious disease, such as leprosy; 3) one spouse forcing the other to commit criminal acts, such as being a prostitute; 4) a spouse embracing paganism or heresy; 5) adultery; or 6) abandonment by the husband. The deterioration of the relationship alone could not serve as grounds for the divorce.175

This proceeding differed from divorce in the modern sense. The Church controlled both marriage and ecclesiastical divorce. Catholic doctrine regarded the couple as still married, so a spouse could only remarry upon the death of the other spouse. It did allow the spouses to establish separate households. In early nineteenth-century Mexico City, roughly 1 percent of marriages ended up in the divorce court.176

Reading and writing were deemed superfluous for poor women. Even the privileged elite girls of European ancestry received only a minimal education—in reading, writing, arithmetic, and domestic arts—which was considered all the knowledge they needed. Frequently nuns in convents imparted such instruction. In other cases, lay women taught girls until the age of eleven or twelve. The low educational level of these women, known as amigas, prevented them from dispelling the prevailing ignorance. Only the most fortunate received instruction from the amigas. In 1753, fewer than 25 percent of girls in Mexico City received any instruction at all.177

Even fewer educational opportunities existed in rural areas. Generally girls (and boys) received no formal schooling in rural Mexico, where the majority of the population lived. For Indian girls, family and community provided knowledge. Illiteracy among rural women remained the norm through the end of the nineteenth century.178

Educators did not design the curricula to uplift female status, but to foster acceptance of socially assigned roles. To prepare for the woman’s assigned task of providing religious training to children, girls’ schools emphasized memorizing catechism. Girls’ education also stressed domestic skills such as weaving, embroidery, and sewing. As historian Asuncion Lavrin emphasized, “Knowledge beyond these narrowly defined parameters was not for women.”179

Colonial society considered marriage the norm. However, especially among the upper classes, many chose not to marry. Family wealth allowed affluent women to establish separate households. Other family members benefited by the reduction in the number of descendants who would claim the family wealth. Among the less affluent, especially those of mixed race, priests had less influence. This allowed many couples to simply begin living together. Throughout the colonial period, numerous adult women remained unmarried—living with a man, living alone, or widowed. An early eighteenth-century census in Guadalajara indicated that 64 percent of women were unmarried.180

By the end of the colonial period, the number of nuns in New Spain exceeded 2,400. Although only a small proportion of all women became nuns, a much higher percentage of the elite did. Convents generally accepted only daughters of the elite, since the convent required a substantial initial payment to cover the costs of a lifetime of care. To be admitted to the convent as a nun, aspirants had to prove pure Spanish ancestry— those whose ancestries included black, Indian, or Jewish bloodlines were excluded. Castas only entered convents as maids and servants. Convents often owned black slaves to perform communal tasks. In addition, nuns could bring in slaves who worked as personal servants.181

Convents played an economic as well as a religious role. They sold produce from their orchards and gardens to the public. The wealthy endowed or bequeathed assets to individual convents. Such wealth included haciendas, ranches, livestock, sugar mills and flourmills, and, especially, urban real estate. Convents often retained and managed this urban real estate. Other property was generally sold. As a result of selling such property, donations, income from real estate, and payments made by nuns upon entering the convent, convents amassed sizable amounts of cash. This money became an important source of credit for business activity.182