Any Latin American history or politics professor attempting to find a good, solid textbook or monograph on Latin American women will find a serious lack of choices. Casual readers searching for interesting, comprehensive books on women in Latin America will find the same issue. Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, by Marysa Navarro and Virginia Sanchez Korrol is one of the few options.
Latin American Women
Published in 1999, and part of the Restoring Women to History series initiated by the Organization of American Historians, Navarro and Sanchez Korrol attempt to weave a narrative and an analysis that covers the many roles women held in the development of Latin America, and their book is, by far, the closest analytical tome in the field.
Colonial Latin American women are reviewed in depth in a few textbooks, while anthologies on women and Latin America, such as June E. Hahner's Women in Latin American History, give great vignettes on women's experiences, but no comprehensive treatment of the role of women in political, economic, and social history in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Women in Latin America and the Caribbean starts off with a whopping 34 page introduction from the series editors, which represents nearly 25 percent of the entire manuscript, minus chronology, end notes, and index. The introduction addresses major themes and holes in the coverage and inclusion of women in history books overall, and is beautifully written and executed, yet seems out of place in an already-slim book on Latin American women. The space might have been better used by more substance on women in the specific region rather than an overall discussion of themes such as religion, sexuality, work, culture, and politics for women in general.
South American Women
The meat of the book, 106 pages on women in Latin America, is split into two sections: "Women in Pre-Columbian Latin America and the Caribbean" and "Women in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Latin America and the Caribbean". The treatment of pre-Columbian and colonial periods, and women's roles within these periods, is solid and analytical but also information that can be found in other books such as Susan Midgen Socolow's The Women of Colonial Latin America.
Where Navarro and Sanchez Korrol's book stands out is in its final 47 pages on 19th and 20th century women, South American women and those in the Caribbean, and political developments as they affect cultural and social roles.
The authors posit in the first paragraph of this section that "the social, political, and legal status of women would remain virtually unchanged despite their valiant efforts and highly visible presence in the struggles for independence" (p. 59) and proceed to provide exquisite explication, with ample examples, for how this is so. From Mexico to Venezuela to Colombia, from nurses to elite women hosting salons (tertulias or veludas), the vignettes used to support the authors' point provide breadth to the deeper, simple point.
Development in Latin America, for women, meant marginalization in many arenas. The best section in the book is, by far, the section on education for women in Latin America. It's no surprise that elite women had better chances for better educations in the region, but the authors also discuss more obscure influences on women's education.
For instance, under the Argentine Civil Code a "married woman had to receive her husband's permission before engaging in any profession" (p.77), while paradoxically higher education was opened to women in 1832, quite early in Latin American history.
The role of race and South American women, with a deep focus on Brazil, also receives considerable attention in these short 47 pages.
Central American Women
While Mexican women receive extensive attention, Central American women lose out in this section, and the reader is left wanting more. Overall, Women in Latin America and the Caribbean is a marvelous, complex, analytical narrative but it is not enough. The book could easily have been twice as long and have covered more countries to illuminate the experiences of Latin American women during various periods, especially 19th-21st century aspects. Perhaps future editions will expand and cover more Central American women examples. In the end the book does "restore" women to history, but it could go further.
To Buy the Book Women in Latin America and the Caribbean:
Women in Latin America and the Caribbean by Marysa Navarro and Virginia Sanchez Korrol, Indiana University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-253-21307-X
Melanie Zoltan - Melanie Zoltan is a former college professor and administrator who has written for About.com, PCWorld, Brain Child, Thomson Gale, and ...
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