Women and the Post Independence State

1. Women and the Post Independence State • Women and Civil War • With the exception of Chile and Brazil, most Latin American nations experienced decades of civil wars • How could the colonial order continue in the midst of war? • What could politicians promise women? • White women • Casta women • How can we measure women’s importance to the new nation state? • Examine legislation regarding gender • Look at efforts to educate women • Examine women in the national family • Women as subjects and citizens

2. What do we mean by the national family? • If the family was the basic unit of society during the colonial period, how could that be continued after independence? • Did the family need to be reinvented?—Look at the first novels men wrote in Latin America • Did mothers have a new role in post independence Latin America? • Benedict Anderson’s ideas of an “imagined community”

3. An image of a nation: the statue of liberty

4. Marianne, Symbol of France

5. Is the Virgin of Guadelupe a symbol of Mexican nationality?

6. Republican Motherhood • How do we define “Republican motherhood?” • How do we invent a new nation? Benedict Anderson’s concept of the Imagined Community • Who will be its citizens? • What is the role of reproduction compared to patriarchy? • How does a state promote reproduction? • Does it challenge patriarchy and/or the Church to advance state needs?

7. Imagining a New Nation with Women-The Religious Masculine View

8. La Milagrosa—Havana, Cuba

9. The modern and even feminist view—Elvira Dellepiane de Rawson

10. How did concepts of liberalism affect women? • Is liberalism in the 19th century the same as liberalism in the 20th century? • Did it vary from country to country? • How would issues such as gender, race and ethnicity be factors in thinking about liberalism in Latin America?

11. Political Liberalism • Contract between the governed and the leaders • Male equality • Guarantee of economic freedom from monopoly, onerous taxation • Elimination of special privileges for specific groups of men—church, military, merchants

12. Church and State Relations • In Latin America, many liberals are anti-clerical • By the late nineteenth century the keeping of birth and death records, as well as the recording of marriages taken away from the church • In some countries anti-clericalism could take a violent form • How does this affect women?

13. Liberalism and the Family • In the US and Great Britain, the family was not given special privileges by liberal governments • Look at US constitution and define the family • Look at the French Civil Code of 1804, however, and you see something quite different • Where does Latin America fit in?