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FINAL PROJECT PROPOSAL WITH PRIMARY SOURCE ANALYSIS Due 2/3 by 5pm via CCLE Turnitin Format: 1” margins, 12-inch font, your name and date at top of the page. The purpose of this assignment is to help launch you on your research project and to start finding primary sources that will help you complete it. If you ultimately pursue a different research question/agenda than the one you lay out here, that is okay. Research often evolves in unexpected ways. The primary source you analyze also might not be one that you include in your final project, and that is okay. This assignment helps you to start exploring a topic that is of interest to you. However, it is good to be as focused as possible given the time constraints of conducting a project like this during a 10-week quarter. This assignment is composed of two parts—project proposal and brief primary source analysis. PART I: Final project proposal In 3 paragraphs, address the questions below. Make sure to address all questions below for full credit. 1. Explain the feminist issue you will be exploring. Try to be specific in terms of the regional/geographic and chronological scope—where will you focus? Will you be studying the issue locally, regionally, nationally, or internationally? Will you be studying the issue within a certain time period or decade? Try to be specific. For instance, if you’re interested in histories of reproductive justice or LGBTQ activism, think about focusing on a particular issue, in a specific time period and place, home in on a key debate, or explore a key person and/or event. Make sure to include what specific question(s) you are thinking of exploring through your research. 2. Explain the sorts of primary and secondary sources you hope to find and where you plan to look for them. Explain how these sources will help you determine the answers to the question(s) you are asking. 3. Explain the potential form your final project might take (will you be writing a research paper or doing a creative assignment, and if the latter, what kind of creative assignment?). Explain any problems you expect to encounter in the project design, form, research questions, availability of sources, etc. PART II: Brief primary source analysis You will compose a 1.5 - 2 page, double-spaced analysis of a primary source you have actually located and studied that you think might be relevant to the final project you have proposed. 1 Include a Chicago style bibliography or endnote citation for your primary source at the top of the page. (If you have questions about Chicago format, see “HOW TO CITE SOURCES” under HANDOUTS on our CCLE page.) Here are the steps: 1) FIND A SOURCE: Choose one primary source that you would like to analyze and that relates in some way to the topic you are interested in exploring. The source could be a speech, diary entry, letter, conference proceeding, essay, memoir, newspaper article, novel, poem, political cartoon, image, or other item. If it is a long work, like a book or memoir, choose a relatively short passage (of around 5-10 pages) to analyze closely. If it is an oral history, choose a period of about 15-20 minutes of that oral history to analyze closely. You can find primary sources by using an online database or a UCLA or L.A. Archive. (For guidance on databases, see HANDOUTS on CCLE “ONLINE DATABASES OF PRIMARY SOURCES” and “UCLA FEMINIST ARCHIVES”) 2) WRITE THE ANALYSIS: Analyze your source by putting it into historical context. Utilize the questions below to probe your source, and make sure to address these questions in your essay. Synthesize these questions as you address them in your essay; do not just answer these questions in a row: Authorship: Who is the author of the document? (Think about gender, race, class, nationality, age, and other forms of identity.) What do you know, or what can you find out about the social location of the author – where, quite literally, are they coming from? How do the author’s gender, socioeconomic class, race, ethnicity, etc., compare to those of the people about whom they are writing? Time period and historical context: When was it composed/published? Why/how is the time period significant to understanding its content? In what ways does the document describe, grapple with, endorse, contest, or ignore contemporaneous events and attitudes? Place and Audience: Where was the source produced and published? What can you understand about the intended audience based on where it was published? Who is the intended audience? Plot or argument: What is the purpose of the source? Many times, primary sources tell a story, or perhaps several stories, or make an argument. What kind of argument is it, or what kind of story is it (e.g. romance, comedy, tragedy, etc.)? Material production: How was the text/source originally produced? Was it published? Performed? If so, where and how? How was it disseminated? What sort of pressures – technological, economic, practical, political – might have shaped the way it was produced and disseminated? 2 Narrative voice: Is the narrator or narrative voice in the document distinguishable from that of the author? If not, how might you explain the gap? What sort of language is being used – personal or impersonal? Formal and complex, or simple and concrete? Is it active and direct, or passive and oblique? Imagery: Look more closely at the figurative dimension of the document: the metaphors, similes and other rhetorical devises the author uses to render his or her narrative or argument vivid, compelling, or even commonplace. What is the effect of this imagery? What kind of work do these images do in the text? Genre: What is the genre that the author has chosen to express their message? Why do you think the author has chosen this genre and not another one? Are there certain issues that the genre allows the author to address, or to exclude? Or to address in a particular way? What would have been gained or lost had the author chosen, or been required to choose, a different genre, a different form of exposition? Content: What is the document saying? Taking all the formal strategies of the text into consideration – voice, imagery, genre, plot, etc. - what is the author telling their audience(s) about the world they inhabit? What are the most prominent themes in the document? How are they connected to one another, and with what effect? What unspoken assumptions does the text contain? What biases are detectable in the source? How do the document’s explicit and implicit statements about the world square with what you have learned from other sources: lectures, readings, etc.? If the document departs from what you otherwise know of the world it describes, how would you account for this? Larger Take-Aways: At the broadest level of interpretation, how does this source (as you read it) square with other documents and information you know about the period from lectures, other classes, other readings? Utilizing the Source: If you were to write a research paper and include this primary source in that paper, what might some of your research questions be? What other primary sources would you want to consult in order to write such a paper? Again, do not answer these questions in a row. First, think through these questions yourself, free-writing, and taking notes. Your goal is to write a brief analysis of the source that logically flows. You may not answer all of these questions in the paper because not all of them might be relevant to your source and/or answering all of them in detail might not fit into a brief 1.5-2 page paper. Make sure to convey the basic who, what, where, when, and why of the document, and then integrate the most relevant and important details as concisely as you can. Tell us the most meaningful information about your source. 3 Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 VICKI L. RUIZ AHA Presidential Address Class Acts: Latina Feminist Traditions, 1900–1930 VICKI L. RUIZ I thank Valerie Matsumoto and Asunci on Lavrin for their incisive comments. I also appreciate the editorial care given this manuscript by Alex Lichtenstein and Jane Lyle. I refer readers to Lavrin’s foundational work Women, Feminism, and Social Change in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, 1890–1940 (University of Nebraska Press, 1995). Note: I use the term “Latina” as distinct from “Latin American” to denote nativity or long-term residence in the United States and its commonwealth, Puerto Rico. 1 Luisa Capetillo, A Nation of Women: An Early Feminist Speaks Out/Mi opini on sobre las libertades, derechos y deberes de la mujer (My Opinion on the Liberties, Rights, and Duties of Woman, as Companion, Mother and Independent Being), ed. Félix V. Matos Rodrı́guez, trans. Alan West-Duran (Houston, Tex., 2004; original Spanish ed. 1911), 103. 2 Rosa Rodrı́guez L opez, “La necesidad del feminismo en el orientaciones para la mujer guatemalteca,” El Imparcial, November 21, 1925. (El Imparcial is Guatemala’s national newspaper, published in Guatemala City.) C The Author(s) 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical V Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail journals.permissions@oup.com. 1 Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 “[W]OMEN ARE CAPABLE OF everything and anything,” declared labor radical Luisa Capetillo in her landmark feminist treatise, Mi opini on sobre las libertades, derechos y deberes de la mujer (My Opinion on the Liberties, Rights, and Duties of Woman).1 Published in 1911, this manifesto articulated a radical vision that promoted a variant of republican motherhood alongside free love and proletarian revolution. Capetillo emerged as a passionate labor leader in Puerto Rico at the turn of the twentieth century. She would later extend her reach into the Caribbean and the United States. Less bold in her pronouncements, Guatemala-born feminist Rosa Rodrı́guez L opez in 1925 stressed the importance of education across class: “the woman continues to be attached to ignorance; her emancipation is necessary. Feminism will make her become Conscious . . . , and . . . by obtaining an adequate education, she will be prepared [for] . . . a much more ambitious future.” Mirroring her generation, pez stressed the importance of reaching the “proletarian woman who Rodrı́guez Lo continues to live miserably in darkness with no other light than a vague reflection of love”—a striking statement from a young woman who twenty years later would be an influential leader in the California labor movement.2 Known by that time as Luisa Moreno, having changed her name after her move to the United States, she was the first Latina vice president of a major Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) union and applied her considerable skills to spearheading the 1939 el Congreso del Pueblo de Habla Española (the Spanish-Speaking People’s Congress), the first national U.S. pan-Latino civil rights conference. The genealogy of Latina feminist traditions has typically focused on Mexican women, beginning with the seventeenth-century poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and then fast-forwarding to Chicana feminists of the 1960s and 1970s (with maybe a nod to 2 Vicki L. Ruiz 3 Patricia Faith Harms, “Imagining a Place for Themselves: The Political and Social Roles of Guatemalan Women, 1871–1954” (Ph.D. diss., Arizona State University, 2007); Marta Elena Casaús Arzú, “Las redes teos oficas de mujeres en Guatemala: La Sociedad Gabriela Mistral, 1920–1940,” Revista Complutense de Historia de América 27 (2001): 219–255. I owe an enormous debt to Patricia Harms for sharing with me her primary materials on la Sociedad Gabriela Mistral. 4 Examples of this transnational turn include Emma Pérez, The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History (Bloomington, Ind., 1999); Laura Briggs, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico (Berkeley, Calif., 2002); Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Migrant Imaginaries: Latino Cultural Politics in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (New York, 2008); Patricia A. Schechter, Exploring the Decolonial Imaginary: Four Transnational Lives (New York, 2012). 5 For biographical information on Capetillo, see Yamila Azize, La mujer en la lucha (Rı́o Piedras, P.R., 1985); Norma Valle Ferrer, Luisa Capetillo: Historia de una mujer proscrita (San Juan, P.R., 1985); Nancy A. Hewitt, “Luisa Capetillo: Feminist of the Working Class,” in Vicki L. Ruiz and Virginia AMERICAN HISTORICAL R EVIEW FEBRUARY 2016 Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 Tejanas Sara Estela Ramı́rez and Jovita Gonzalez). Remembered in Latino history for their prowess in organizing farm and factory workers, Capetillo and Moreno were also pathbreaking feminist intellectuals whose writings expand our understanding of transnational feminist ideas emanating from Latin America. Literally and figuratively, they acted as bridges across the Américas, representing rich historical connections between women in Latin America and U.S. Latinas. Despite a florescence of Latino American historiography over the past forty years, Latino narratives remain on the periphery of U.S. history. Capetillo and Moreno are no exception. The lack of familiarity with available secondary, archival, and community sources accounts for some of the silences. For example, not until 2004 did Luisa Capetillo’s Mi opini on become accessible for an English-language audience; and beyond a single dissertation and one journal article, the writings of Luisa Moreno have languished in the Biblioteca Nacional in Guatemala, where they are housed.3 Though these two iconic figures in Latino labor history never met (Capetillo died when Moreno was fifteen), their legacies intersect in multiple ways, especially in terms of their unwavering commitment to a radical labor politics predicated on the dignity and self-determination of the working class. Starkly divergent but at times hauntingly similar, their feminist writings reveal threads of a Latina transnational consciousness that reaches across nationalities and generations.4 On October 28, 1879, Luisa Margarita Perone and Luis Capetillo Escheverrı́a, a common-law couple, welcomed their only child, a daughter they named Luisa. Both parents were relative newcomers to Puerto Rico; Margarita had arrived from France, Luis from northern Spain. Their European heritage and education, however, provided no guarantees of social mobility, as Luis did odd jobs and Margarita took in laundry. Though she grew up in modest circumstances, Luisa was surrounded at an early age by great books. Margarita, in fact, had elbowed her way into a local tertulia (literary salon), setting a path for her daughter to follow. As an adolescent, Luisa became romantically involved with Manuel Ledesma, a member of an elite, politically powerful family. By the age of twenty she had given birth to two children with him. But two years later, in 1901, the relationship ended when Ledesma bowed to maternal pressure and assumed the patrimonial roles expected of him, which included a suitable marriage. While he provided financial support for their children, Manuela and Gregorio, Luisa placed them in the care of her mother and went to work. Given her rich homeschool education, she secured a coveted job as a reader in cigar-making factories in the city of Arecibo. She would use this position throughout her career, and in several locales within and beyond the island, in order to cultivate and reinforce workers’ consciousness of trade unions, socialism, anarchism, and women’s rights.5 Class Acts 3 Sanchez Korrol, eds., Latina Legacies: Identity, Biography, and Community (New York, 2005), 120–134; and Ivette Marie Rivera-Giusti, “Gender, Labor and Working Class Activism in the Tobacco Industry in Puerto Rico, 1898–1924” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Binghamton, 2004). 6 Hewitt, “Luisa Capetillo,” 128–132; Schechter, Exploring the Decolonial Imaginary, 3–5; Shirley Aldebol, “Luisa Capetillo Was Early Puerto Rican Labor Leader[;] She Lived Life on Her Own Terms,” The Lucy Parsons Project, http://flag.blackened.net/lpp/anarchism/aldebol_luisa_capetillo.html, including quote. For politicization of young women in the 1940s, see Catherine S. Ramı́rez, The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory (Durham, N.C., 2009); and Elizabeth R. Escobedo, From Coveralls to Zoot Suits: The Lives of Mexican American Women on the World War II Home Front (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2013). AMERICAN HISTORICAL R EVIEW FEBRUARY 2016 Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 In the midst of the social and economic upheaval that followed the Spanish-Filipino-Cuban-American War, a militant trade union movement emerged in Puerto n Rico, one with strong anarchist leanings. Its standard-bearer was the Federaci o Libre de Trabajadores (Free Federation of Workers), whose principal organizers included Luisa Capetillo. For a decade she traveled across the island mobilizing workers in agriculture and cigar factories, as well as writing essays on proletarian and feminist issues. Capetillo’s homilies were unconventional, especially those on free n had adopted women’s suflove (a pillar of anarchism), but by 1908 the Federacio frage as part of its platform. Three years later, Capetillo published Mi opini on, a collection of her itinerant essays. Ironically, the book’s appearance coincided with the birth of her third child, Luis, by a married lover. Driven out of Puerto Rico by a government crackdown on anarchists, Capetillo departed for New York City in 1912. She would spend the rest of her days as a truly transnational labor radical and feminist intellectual: she moved a number of times, organizing workers in Florida, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. In Tampa, Florida, in 1913, she was welcomed to the multiethnic cigar community of Ybor City, which was heavily Latino, but as historian Nancy Hewitt points out, Capetillo stood out not only for her feminist and anarchist beliefs, but also for her appearance. Whether out of expediency (to blend in with male workers), comfort, safety, or a deliberate political statement (like the “Lady Zooters” of the 1940s), she dressed in men’s clothing, complete with a vest and necktie. In Cuba she was arrested for “causing a public disturbance” by wearing manly attire, but a judge acquitted her of all charges. Charismatic and passionate, Capetillo proved to be a fearless labor organizer, helping tens of thousands of workers secure significant wage increases, including during Puerto Rico’s Great Sugar Cane Strike of 1916. Before her final return to the island, she ran a New York City boarding house and adjoining restaurant, dishing up revolution and vegetarian fare. At some point during her many journeys, she contracted tuberculosis, to which she succumbed in 1922, at the age of forty-two. A radical intellectual who challenged the ramifications of empire in the day-to-day, Luisa Capetillo was far more than a Spanish-speaking Emma Goldman, though the parallels seem obvious. More importantly, she embodied a “decolonial imaginary,” as a transnational feminist unmoored from nation, race, or gendered convention.6 pez, by contrast, advocated a more conventional path Blanca Rosa Rodrı́guez Lo to women’s emancipation. Like other middle-class and elite Latin American feminists, she anchored her hopes on education as the key to securing equal rights for women. Born on August 30, 1907, she had a most unlikely childhood for a future trade union leader. She grew up surrounded by wealth and privilege in her native 4 Vicki L. Ruiz 7 Vicki L. Ruiz, “Of Poetics and Politics: The Border Journeys of Luisa Moreno,” in Sharon Harley, ed., Women’s Labor in the Global Economy: Speaking in Multiple Voices (New Brunswick, N.J., 2007), 28– 45, here 29–34. AMERICAN HISTORICAL R EVIEW FEBRUARY 2016 Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 Guatemala, the daughter of a powerful coffee grower, Ernesto Rodrı́guez Robles, and his socialite wife, Alicia L opez Sarana. Educated by nuns in a California boarding school and by private tutors at home, she desired a university education in Guatemala, but discovered that women need not apply. So she organized her elite peers into la Sociedad Gabriela Mistral (the Gabriela Mistral Society, named after a famous Chilean education reformer and poet) to push for greater educational opportupez was nities for women. Despite some success in that effort, however, Rodrı́guez Lo gone by age nineteen, having left for Mexico City. Enrolling as a student at the Uninoma de México (UNAM) and working as a journalist for a versidad Nacional Auto Guatemalan daily, she participated in a burgeoning cultural renaissance taking place in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution, enjoying the heady avant-garde atmosphere and consorting with the likes of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. In 1927 she published a poetry collection, El vendedor de cocuyos (Seller of Fireflies), and married n, an artist sixteen years her senior. The next year would find Miguel Angel de Leo the artistic couple in New York City, searching for their own version of the American dream. It was not a particularly propitious time for such a move, given the looming economic calamity. When their daughter Mytyl arrived in 1929, their fortunes had declined to the extent that they were living in a crowded tenement in Spanish Harlem, where Rosa found employment as a seamstress. The death of a work friend’s infant from rat bites compelled her to do something to change the material conditions of her fellow workers. She organized a small garment union local and joined leftist community groups, and by 1930 she was a member of the Communist Party. n accepted a job In 1935, leaving a tattered marriage, Rosa Rodrı́guez de Leo with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) to organize cigar workers in Florida. Arriving with Mytyl, she chose yet another transformation—she changed her name, becoming “Luisa Moreno.” Deliberately distancing herself from her privileged past, she adopted the alias “Moreno” (Dark) as a surname, one diametrically opposite her given name, “Blanca Rosa” (White Rose). For her new first name she selected “Luisa,” perhaps to honor Capetillo, who had preceded her to Florida two decades earlier and whose legacy she undoubtedly knew and built upon in her daily work as a trade union organizer. Moreno placed her daughter with a pro-labor family, a practice that would continue until Mytyl was a teenager.7 In Florida Moreno honed her skills, negotiating a contract covering 13,000 cigar workers. Given her organizing experience in New York and especially Florida, the newly formed United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), an arm of the CIO, hired her in 1938. Moreno quickly asserted leadership in the new union, taking charge of the Pecan Shellers’ Strike in San Antonio, Texas. She also became a driving force behind el Congreso del Pueblo de Habla Española, a civil rights assembly attended by more than 1,000 delegates. They hammered out a comprehensive platform that called for an end to racial segregation in public facilities, housing, education, and employment. During World War II, Moreno mobilized cannery workers in southern California, many of whom were Mexican and Jewish women, earning the nickname “the California Whirlwind.” Union members Class Acts 5 FOR A FULLER UNDERSTANDING of the transformation of Blanca Rosa Rodrı́guez de n into Luisa Moreno, we must look to her early life. The 1920s marked the first Leo period of reform in Guatemala, and a group of young urban elites took advantage of this opening to advocate for women’s rights and educational uplift. La Sociedad Gabriela Mistral was formed in November 1925, with Rosa, who was only eighteen years old at the time, at the helm. During its short life, according to Latin American historian Patricia Harms, la Sociedad would represent “the most recognizable women’s group” of its era in Guatemala.11 Laden with noblesse oblige, the pronouncements of these adolescent feminists cut both ways, taking aim at women of their own 8 Luisa Moreno, interview by author, August 3, 1984; Luisa Moreno, interview by Albert Camarillo, August 5, 1976. From that time forward, she became Rosa Rodrı́guez de Bemis. 9 See, for example, Schechter, Exploring the Decolonial Imaginary; and Katherine M. Merino, “Martha Vergara, Popular-Front Pan-American Feminism and the Transnational Struggle for Working Women’s Rights in the 1930s,” Gender and History 26, no. 3 (2014): 642–660. 10 Vicki L. Ruiz, “Una Mujer Sin Fronteras: Luisa Moreno and Latina Labor Activism,” Pacific Historical Review 73, no. 1 (2004): 1–20, here 10–19; Ruiz, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930–1950 (Albuquerque, N.Mex., 1987), xiii, 78–79, 103–113; Luisa Moreno, interview by author, September 6, 1979. For more detail on El Congreso del Pueblo de Habla Española, see David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley, Calif., 1995). 11 Harms, “Imagining a Place for Themselves,” 97. AMERICAN HISTORICAL R EVIEW FEBRUARY 2016 Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 achieved significant improvements in their working conditions, wages, and benefits, and Moreno became the first Latina to serve on a state CIO council. In 1945 she faced her biggest professional challenge, going head to head with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in organizing northern California canneries. After a campaign of sweetheart contracts, red-baiting, and physical assaults, the Teamsters emerged victorious. Though she retired from union life in early 1947, Moreno could not escape the Cold War’s chill. A year later she found herself facing deportation proceedings on the grounds of her former membership in the Communist Party. Together with her third husband, Gray Bemis—a fellow radical whom she had met during her years in New York as a self-described “junior organizer”—she left the United States in 1950 and returned to her native Guatemala, signaling in her words “the death of Luisa Moreno.”8 While Moreno and Capetillo both made their mark on the U.S. labor movement, they came to their meaning of feminism within a Latin American context. However, they were not part of the Pan-American networks that fostered exchanges between U.S. feminist leaders and their Latin American and Caribbean counterparts.9 Their capacious education and intellectual appetites seem to have fed their transnational feminist imaginaries, for they drew upon European, U.S., and Latin American examples in their essays outlining the paths to women’s equality. While Luisa Capetillo combined the grinding work of labor organizing with her unconventional feminist pez, and anarchist essays, there was a distinct separation between Rosa Rodrı́guez Lo the sheltered adolescent intellectual, and Luisa Moreno, the fearless labor leader. Though writing feminist essays ended with her adolescence, Moreno always cultivated women’s grassroots leadership and made sure their issues were at the forefront in collective bargaining.10 6 Vicki L. Ruiz 12 R. Rodrı́guez L opez, “La necesidad del feminismo en el orientaciones para la mujer guatemalteca”; Graciela Rodrı́guez L opez, “La mujer y la ciencia,” Vida, January 23, 1926. Incomplete copies of El Imparcial and Vida are housed at the Biblioteca Nacional de Guatemala. Importantly, while the 1920s mark the “doldrums” for women’s rights in the United States, on a global stage, women from Latin America, India, and the Middle East were at the forefront of truly transnational exchanges facilitated by the League of Nations. See Ellen Carol DuBois, There Are No Waves: International Feminist Flows from 1923 through 1950 (forthcoming). 13 Graciela Rodrı́guez L opez, “La falta de cultura intelectual entre la gente bien de Guatemala,” Vida, January 30, 1926. 14 Marta Josefina Herrera, “Civilicemonos,” Vida, December 19, 1925. 15 R. Rodrı́guez L opez, “La necesidad del feminismo en el orientaciones para la mujer guatemalteca”; Luisa Moreno, interview by author, July 27, 1978. Their barbs against their mothers’ generation clearly differentiate them from their counterparts in other Latin American nations and the world. 16 G. Rodrı́guez L opez, “La falta de cultura intelectual entre la gente bien de Guatemala.” 17 Ibid.; Rosa Rodrı́guez L opez, “La mujer culta,” Vida, December 2, 1925; Herrera, “Civilicemonos.” AMERICAN HISTORICAL R EVIEW FEBRUARY 2016 Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 class as well as the plight of the downtrodden. In essays published in Guatemala’s national newspaper, El Imparcial, and the literary journal Vida, they decried the intellectual poverty prevalent among their peers. Their articles featured role models of womanly achievement who reflected their own expansive education—from the Greek philosopher Hypatia to the French novelist George Sand to the Uruguayan physician Paulina Luisi to the famed Polish scientist Marie Curie.12 Moreover, they railed against the impact of Hollywood and popular fiction on their generation’s cultural tastes. “What sort of future awaits Guatemalan youth, especially the women, for today they are nothing but puppets who care only about their friends, their boyfriends, the movie stars, fashion, and dancing. We still have time to be educated, to be worthy pez, of something better than just looking pretty,” wrote Graciela Rodrı́guez L o Rosa’s sister. Indeed, she would go so far as to characterize such cheap amusements as “Westerners’ opium.”13 The members of la Sociedad Gabriela Mistral also targeted their mothers’ generation, those “useless women” caught up in society soirees and petty intrigue: “women gossip with our mouths . . . with our thoughts, with our eyelashes, with our hands, pez leveled even harsher criticism in and even with our feet.”14 Rosa Rodrı́guez Lo the pages of El Imparcial for all to read: “These are mothers by name only, for they have no conscience of their maternal condition. How many of them abandon their children to stupid servants for a life of frivolity or laziness?” For the Rodrı́guez pez sisters, these observations struck home. In an interview later in life, Rosa Lo remembered her father as “a real person,” but her mother as “a peacock” who never emerged from her boudoir until eleven o’clock in the morning.15 To promote “The Educated Woman,” the members of la Sociedad opened a small library filled with classic literary texts that would instruct and inspire. “La Sociedad Gabriela Mistral aims to educate the woman, to train her so that she can take part in the great game of life. Why should there exist an educational difference between women and men?”16 To prepare themselves for “the world and the household,” women should have knowledge of proper grammar, literature, and foreign languages, as well as child development and “hygiene” (an umbrella term that included sex education). On a more abstract level, education would “purify” women and make them companions, not objects or property, of men.17 As young adult women, they understood the potential impact of their transgres- Class Acts 7 18 Josefina Saravia E., “>Puede la mujer participar en los nuevos campos del trabajo social sin dejar de conservar por ello la esperitualidad y attractivos peculiares de su sexo?,” Vida, January 9, 1926. 19 Herrera, “Civilicemonos,” including quote; Casaús Arzú, “Las redes teos oficas de mujeres en Guatemala,” 232–233.The influences of Southern Cone feminists seem striking in these writings, especially the work of Uruguayan feminist and health reformer Paulina Luisi. Asunci on Lavrin, Women, Feminism, and Social Change in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, 1890–1940 (Lincoln, Nebr., 1995). 20 For the larger context, see Francesca Miller, Latin American Women and the Search for Social Justice (Hanover, N.H., 1991), especially chap. 4, “Feminism and Social Motherhood, 1890–1938.” K. Lynn Stoner, From the House to the Streets: The Cuban Women’s Movement for Legal Reform, 1898–1940 (Durham, N.C., 1991); Lavrin, Women, Feminism, and Social Change in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Greg Grandin, Deborah T. Levenson, and Elizabeth Oglesby coined the term “caffeinated modernism” in The Guatemala Reader: History, Culture, and Politics (Durham, N.C., 2011), 107. It is not inconceivable that a few of the members of la Sociedad had participated as children in the academic competitions associated with the Minerva festivals of the 1900s. See Catherine Rend on, “Magical Modernism,” ibid., 162–166. The term ladino means an individual not of indigenous background or a Hispanicized native. 21 Magda Mabarak, “Por la mujer del pueblo,” Vida, January 2, 1926. 22 Ibid.; “Escuela feminina de artes y oficios empeño de la Sociedad G. Mistral,” El Imparcial, April 12, 1926; Harms, “Imagining a Place for Themselves,” 102. Quotes from Mabarak, “Por la mujer del pueblo,” and Harms, “Imagining a Place for Themselves,” 102. AMERICAN HISTORICAL R EVIEW FEBRUARY 2016 Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 sive writings and responded to criticism that their activities might decrease their value on the marriage market. In the words of Josefina Saravia, “I firmly believe that a man will never attain relative happiness . . . unless he is next to a well-educated woman of very strong moral convictions.” And with confidence, she predicted that “every special woman, morally and intellectually, will find her corresponding kind of man.”18 Cloaking their efforts in a rebozo of enlightened motherhood, these young feminists emphasized the value of education from literature to child development as essential to creating “noble citizens for the homeland.”19 Fusing maternalism and feminism, Sociedad members claimed and valorized their place and their obligations as well-educated women. Perhaps with a twist of irony, daughters of ladino coffee planters, men who ushered in a “caffeinated modernism,” would themselves gravitate toward a tangible imaginary of a benevolent modern state where properly educated women as citizen-mothers would exercise considerable moral authority for their children’s welfare and for national progress.20 Such a vision was not new, but it reverberated throughout Latin America. What role would “proletarian women” play in this bourgeois feminist future? Here is where Sociedad members made their boldest statements. In addressing the deplorable conditions of the poor, they blamed the state: “It is the Government’s obligation, the same moral and material obligation that a father has with regard to his sons, to deal with the progress and culture of its people.”21 Moreover, workers should be paid a living wage. These were strong claims coming from a very privileged group whose words dripped with a sense of responsibility to the less fortunate. While urging the government to provide instruction in nutrition and sanitation, they also called for greater access to education for proletarian women and expressed a “passionate desire” to do their part. Recognizing the importance of vocational training, la Sociedad Gabriela Mistral began a small-scale secretarial school that would prepare women “for business employment, the new cutting edge in Guatemala.” Classic books and clerical work were two avenues for moral uplift, social equality, and national progress.22 Calling for “the destruction of all social prejudices, of all absurd fanaticism,” pez understood that the fates of rich and poor women were inexRosa Rodrı́guez Lo tricably related. Blaming “ignorance” for women’s slavery, she launched biting Vicki L. Ruiz 8 R. Rodrı́guez L opez, “La mujer culta.” Rosa Rodrı́guez L opez, “El problema de la mujer caida,” Vida, February 27, 1926. 25 R. Rodrı́guez L opez, “La mujer culta.” Though a self-styled modern woman, Rosa Rodrı́guez L opez invokes a nineteenth-century cliché with the phrase “romantic race.” 26 Harms, “Imagining a Place for Themselves,” 104–107, chap. 6; Moreno interview, July 27, 1978; Moreno interview, August 3, 1984; Patricia Harms, e-mail to author, April 5, 2004; Azul, September– October 1949, as quoted in Harms, “Imagining a Place for Themselves,” 104. 27 R. Rodrı́guez L opez, “La mujer culta,” including quote; Saravia E., “Puede la mujer”; Harms, “Imagining a Place for Themselves,” 102–103. The influential intellectual Epaminondas Quintana bluntly asked, “Now tell me, women, if you have a single reason to be jealous of men. Tell me if your unique and sublime mission is not that of giving to mankind another Muhammad, another Jesus Christ, a 23 24 AMERICAN HISTORICAL R EVIEW FEBRUARY 2016 Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 critiques of the double standard and predatory men (“ravenous wolves”).23 In her essay “The Problem of the Fallen Woman,” she notes how “the glitter of jewelry” or “the wonders of love” could seduce an “ordinary” woman, while “gold also works as a discreet shield for the prostitution of elite women.” In calling for compassion, Rosa viewed meaningful employment or “the temple of work” as critical to Guatemala’s advancement. 24 In a rare display of essentialism, she dismissed “that so-called practical feminism of the North American woman, which would be inappropriate to our . . . romantic race.” She believed that Guatemalan women did not yet possess the education required for suffrage. Yet, in the same breath, she called for “the abolition of the woman’s ‘inferiority,’” asserting that women were as “worthy and capable” as men, and they deserved “justice and political and social equality.”25 This tension between the ideal woman and the women they knew runs throughout the writings of these feminists. As self-anointed leaders, la Sociedad’s young women drew upon their rare capacious education to exhort, to uplift, and to dream. La Sociedad Gabriela Mistral existed for at most two years, reaching its zenith of activism within its first six months. When its charismatic president abruptly left for the cultural and intellectual lights of Mexico City in 1926, the group began to flounder. As Guatemala’s first explicitly feminist organization, la Sociedad had brought issues of women’s rights, economic disparities, and racial prejudice to the pages of the national newspaper. Through petitions and informal lobbying, members had played a part in opening up, albeit ever so slightly, educational opportunities for women, with Rosa herself scheduled to enter the university before her departure. More importantly, some members of la Sociedad, including Rosa’s sister Graciela, would emerge after the 1944 revolution to expand on what they had started as young adults. Indeed, two years later, women in Guatemala gained the right to vote. In a 1949 interview, Graciela reflected on the decline of la Sociedad Gabriela Mistral, explaining that after the initial burst of enthusiasm, many of its young members lost interest and “the society simply quietly faded away.”26 There are several layers of meaning one can read into that simple statement. First, as adolescents, they grew impatient for results, perhaps in their privilege not recognizing that reform rarely occurs overnight. Also, they did not anticipate the level of criticism they would receive from educated elite men, who they had assumed would be their allies. It was one thing for the men of “la generacion de 1920” to encourage women to become more well read, but quite another to support their budding aspirations of social and political equality. Indeed, these feminists, like their counterparts in other parts of Latin America, went out of their way to assure their readers that they were not (in Rosa’s words) “smug women of letters” or “mannish suffragists.”27 Perhaps, too, their resolve buckled under familial or political pressures Class Acts 9 Mahatma Gandhi . . . or an Einstein.” Epaminondas Quintana, “Trascendenica de la puericultura en la educacion de la mujer guatemalteca,” El Imparcial, January 16, 1926. 28 Ruiz, “Of Poetics and Politics,” 30; letter from unknown sender to Rosa Rodrı́guez L opez, October 23, 1927 (in author’s possession); Marco Augusto Recinos, “El vendedor de cocuyos,” Almamérica, n.d. (in author’s possession); “Cumpleaños” (unidentified news clipping, ca. August 30, 1928). 29 Moreno interview, August 3, 1984; Moreno, interview, August 5, 1976; and interview with Luisa Moreno, August 12–13, 1977, conducted by Albert Camarillo. This concept of conjugating identities derives from interviews with Luisa Moreno and her daughter Mytyl Glomboske, as well as my reading of the scholarship of Rebecca Lester, Michael Kearney, Chela Sandoval, Stuart Hall, Paula Moya, and Ram on Gutiérrez. I also thank my colleagues in the University of California Humanities Research Institute “Reshaping the Americas” Residency Group (Spring 2002). Moreno’s transformation occurred in an environment that was marked by an element of danger. The Ku Klux Klan in Tampa had murdered a labor sympathizer shortly before she arrived. And in “On the Road,” one of her few surviving poems in English, Moreno addressed the exploitation of African American workers in the American South. (Unpublished poem in author’s possession.) To close friends she remained “Rosa,” and by identifying myself as a friend of Rosa’s (not Luisa’s), I created an almost instant rapport with her colleagues in the labor movement whom I interviewed. AMERICAN HISTORICAL R EVIEW FEBRUARY 2016 Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 given their pronouncements on poverty and government culpability. Catholic priests no doubt looked askance at the not so lightly veiled anticlerical observations that cropped up in their published essays. In addition, the organization did not appear to replenish its membership, relying solely on a tight cadre of friends. Nevertheless, la Sociedad Gabriela Mistral laid the foundation for future work. pez leave, especially when her goal of a college eduWhy did Rosa Rodrı́guez Lo cation in Guatemala was within her grasp? Despite her youthful activism, she understood her family’s place in Guatemalan society; its cultural and class expectations weighed heavily on her own future. When one of her siblings married, her father had the fountain in the family compound filled with expensive Veuve Clicquot champagne. For Rosa, there was no retreat, no returning to the life she had so passionately critiqued. But her departure was more than an act of rebellion; she sought to pursue her gifts as an intellectual and poet in Mexico City. Motivation aside, traveling unchaperoned was a radical act that would mark her as a prodigal daughter for the remainder of her life. One admirer considered her a bright light in women’s literature both in her home country and throughout Latin America, even comparing her pez treasured her good rewith Gabriela Mistral. Like most writers, Rodrı́guez Lo views, and throughout her many journeys, she kept a small bundle of news clippings and correspondence. On the occasion of her twenty-first birthday, one newspaper article made reference to her beauty, poetry, and vanguard feminism.28 pez would In the course of her transnational feminist journey, Rosa Rodrı́guez Lo invent and then reinvent herself. A decade after leaving Guatemala, she would take Luisa Moreno as her professional name as she fashioned a new persona. In doing so, she conjugated her identity. Conjugating one’s identity entails a self-reflexive and purposeful invention or inflection of one’s sense of self, taking into account such constructions as race, class, culture, language, and gender. Simply put, Rosa made strategic choices regarding her class and ethnic identification in order to facilitate her life’s work as a trade union and civil rights advocate. With her light skin, education, and flawless English, she could have “passed” as a white woman of ambiguous heritage. Instead, she took a very risky job as a trade union organizer working with African pez Americans and Latinos in the anti-union Jim Crow South.29 Rosa Rodrı́guez Lo was a woman of privilege; Luisa Moreno was a woman of the people. 10 Vicki L. Ruiz 30 Lisa S anchez Gonzalez, “Luisa Capetillo: An Anarcho-Feminist Pionera in the Mainland Puerto Rican Narrative/Political Tradition,” in Erlinda Gonzales-Berry and Chuck Tatum, eds., Recovering the U. S. Hispanic Literary Heritage, Vol. II (Houston, Tex., 1996), 148–167. 31 Capetillo, Mi opini on sobre las libertades, derechos y deberes de la mujer, 25. 32 Ibid., 39. 33 Hewitt, “Luisa Capetillo,” 122. 34 Capetillo, Mi opini on sobre las libertades, derechos y deberes de la mujer, 8, quote from 124. 35 Ibid.,11. 36 Ibid., 17. 37 Ibid., 28. Capetillo’s sentiments about same-sex love mirrored such prejudice across Latin America. AMERICAN HISTORICAL R EVIEW FEBRUARY 2016 Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 WHILE MORENO’S WORK AS a labor leader echoed the legacy of Luisa Capetillo, Capetillo’s “anarcho-feminism,” rooted in the politics of the body, could not be replicated.30 For Capetillo, women’s autonomous control over their bodies was essential for liberation. In Mi opini on she argued that “women get married only to follow the custom. And men do so to have a helper or a slave.”31 Quoting French feminist Madeleine Vernet, she wrote: “The slave can never love the master.”32 In her utopian view, men and women would come together as virgins and establish loving, committed relationships without the sanction of church or state. Perhaps her parents’ example influenced her thinking, which was also in line with her anarchism. Nancy Hewitt offers another explanation: that Capetillo’s disappointment with Manuel Ledesma “fueled her critique of traditional . . . marriage, motherhood, and family.”33 Indeed, in a letter written to Ledesma a decade later, she reveals her “yearning” for him, which she said “destroyed my illusions, and cruelly mortified me, beset by desire to have . . . the one who made life bloom in me, sprouting into two souls, product of my spontaneous love without fetters.” Speaking from her own experiences, Capetillo claimed that women were ultimately responsible for their own happiness.34 By turns feminist manifesto and advice manual, Mi opini on has a cadence reminiscent of nineteenth-century prescriptive literature, in which scenarios are presented and guidelines for behavior offered—gendered parables, so to speak. If a woman has a neglectful spouse, for example, and “in her solitude” she finds comfort in the arms of another man, she should not be blamed or punished for “following her natural impulses.”35 Though Capetillo did not always practice what she preached, she warned women about getting involved with a man “who is in a committed relationship, without demanding that he . . . give up his wife or lover.” With a dash of melodrama, she continued, “if this wife . . . does not want to leave him, she will have to admit . . . that her husband has another woman, because she cannot force him to love her if she has not had the charm or persuasiveness to keep him herself.”36 This latter statement seems rather uncharitable and not very feminist, even bordering on conventionality. It also seems a bit self-serving, given her own relationship with a married lover. Indeed, Capetillo’s pronouncements on free love did not extend to same-sex relationships, which she deemed “criminal, odious, and shameful against nature.”37 These blind spots in her writings notwithstanding, we cannot discount her courageous stands against women’s exploitation across all facets of their lives. Demonstrating a level of pragmatism, Capetillo also endorsed reforms familiar to feminists across the hemisphere, including women’s suffrage, protective legislation, and temperance. She broke with other anarchists, such as Emma Goldman, in her support of suffrage. Her experiences as a labor leader seem to have steeled her con- Class Acts 11 Long before the “grapes of wrath” had ripened in California’s vineyards, a people lived on highways, under trees or tents, in shacks or railroad sections, picking crops—cotton, fruits, vegetables—cultivating sugar beets, building railroads and dams, making a barren land fertile for new crops and greater riches . . . These people are not aliens. They have contributed their endurance, sacrifices, youth, and labor to the Southwest. Indirectly, they have paid more taxes than all the stockholders of California’s industrialized agriculture, the sugar beet companies and the large cotton interests that operate or have operated with the labor of Mexican workers.40 Shades of Luisa Capetillo, who thirty years before had penned the following lines: Don’t beg, you destitute workers, you victims of . . . exploitation; exploited by political parties, by religions, by commerce, you are the eternal mine, from which the bourgeoisie and the religions extract enormous treasures.41 Fiercely anticlerical, Luisa Capetillo imagined a world where “[c]hurches can become schools and libraries. And the worthy images in them will be consigned to museums.” Without class distinctions, society would reject nationalism and the state (“the absurd and idolatrous respect shown to governments”). She continued: “The religious ideal to be established in the schools will be brotherhood as supreme law, 38 Hewitt, “Luisa Capetillo,” 126; Capetillo, Mi opini on sobre las libertades, derechos y deberes de la mujer, 15. 39 Ibid., 8–9, 15. 40 Luisa Moreno, “Caravans of Sorrow: Noncitizen Americans of the Southwest,” in David G. Gutiérrez, ed., Between Two Worlds: Mexican Immigration in the United States (Wilmington, Del., 1996), 119–123, quotes from 120, 122. 41 Capetillo, Mi opini on sobre las libertades, derechos y deberes de la mujer, 87. AMERICAN HISTORICAL R EVIEW FEBRUARY 2016 Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 viction that women would join their compañeros as workers and vote in the interests of their class, not their gender. Like most feminists of her day, she put her faith in an “enlightened,” educated motherhood as the foundation for social progress. In addition to hygiene, women should have a thorough knowledge of “Physiology, Geology, Geography, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Engineering, Agriculture, Geometry, History, Music, and Painting.”38 Yet Capetillo emphasized that someone could “be learned but not educated.” In her words, a proper education extended to “cultivating patience, tolerance, [and] a sweet disposition.” In seeking feminine perfection, she even offered beauty advice: “Women must strive by all natural methods to become more beautiful, but it must be a true beauty . . . achieved by a healthy diet, without eating meat or drinking alcoholic beverages, by practicing gymnastics, and taking walks in the open air.” Like the young feminists of la Sociedad Gabriela Mistral, Capetillo rebuked women who indulged in conspicuous consumption, describing one apocryphal figure as “so loaded with bracelets and lace that she looks like a bazaar.”39 Close readings of selected passages in Mi opini on, however, should not overshadow Capetillo’s commitment to proletarian revolution based on anarchist principles. As a grassroots activist, she encouraged working-class men to accept women into their ranks as full partners in the struggle against exploitation. Both Luisa Capetillo and later Luisa Moreno believed in the dignity of the working poor, who by their labor enriched the wealthy. In her only surviving speech, “Caravans of Sorrow” (1940), Moreno spoke passionately about the rights of Mexican immigrant workers: Vicki L. Ruiz 12 WITH ALL OF THEIR TENSIONS, the writings of Luisa Moreno and Luisa Capetillo reveal a thirst for women’s equality. Well-educated, las dos Luisas placed their faith in an Ibid., 98, 119. Ibid.,18. 44 Eileen J. Su arez Findlay, Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870–1920 (Durham, N.C., 2000), 164–165, quotes from 165. 45 Hewitt, “Luisa Capetillo,” 133; Félix Matos Rodrı́guez, “Introduction,” in Capetillo, Mi opini on sobre las libertades, derechos y deberes de la mujer, vii–li, here xxii, xliv; Matos Rodrı́guez, “Capetillo, Luisa,” in Vicki L. Ruiz and Virginia Sanchez Korrol, eds., Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia (Bloomington, Ind., 2006), 119; Voces de Liberaci on (Buenos Aires, 1921). 42 43 AMERICAN HISTORICAL R EVIEW FEBRUARY 2016 Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 regardless of national boundaries or divisions of race, color, or language.”42 Feminism would play a vital role in such a revolution, and Capetillo set the stage not just on the shop floor or at home, but within the individual: “The woman who feels wounded in her rights, liberties, and womanhood has to recompose and reclaim herself, change her situation, no matter how high the cost.”43 Scholars have disagreed on the reception of Capetillo and her writings during her lifetime. Eileen Suarez Findlay characterizes her as a lone wolf who routinely alienated multiple constituencies: working-class women, middle-class feminists, and her male union colleagues: “Despite her call for women’s alliances, judgment seems to have come more easily to Luisa Capetillo than did empathy.” Calling women idiots, slaves, or just plain stupid because they remained in unhappy marriages out of economic necessity and social convention certainly did not further her cause. Suarez Findlay asserts that Capetillo “fought an extremely steep uphill battle” in her daring feminist campaign. She astutely points out the fears of proletarian women, who believed that without marriage, men would feel fewer obligations toward their children. 44 Two further points accounted for the skepticism Capetillo encountered among the women she organized. First, most working women wanted a measure of respectability, to be viewed as gente decente (decent people), and raising children alone would taint such standing. Second, the power of religion in influencing Latina worldviews cannot be underplayed given the vital role that Catholicism played in women’s daily lives, from home altars to church clubs. Cavils aside, Luisa Capetillo had exceptional gifts as a labor leader, and as scholars Félix Matos Rodrı́guez, Nancy Hewitt, and Ivette Rivera-Giusti emphasize, she inspired a generation of Latina feminist union organizers, with perhaps more than twenty women having followed in her footsteps. According to Hewitt, Capetillo proved “the lynchpin in a vast network of Latina anarchist and socialist feminists who sought to advance the interests of workers and women internationally.” Matos Rodrı́guez places her legacy on a philosophical level: “Mi opini on shows that Capetillo as an author was convinced of the power of humanistic thought—in her case based on anarchism and feminism—as an effective tool to bring about change in the world.” Capetillo’s impact as a labor organizer and writer reached beyond Latino communities in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and the eastern United States. A year before her death, one of her essays appeared alongside those of more familiar radicals Emma Goldman and Rosa Luxemburg in a feminist collection from Argentina, Voces de Liberaci on.45 Class Acts 13 Moreno interview, August 12–13, 1977; Moreno interview, August 3, 1984. Schechter, Exploring the Decolonial Imaginary, 4. 48 Pérez, The Decolonial Imaginary, 5–7; Schmidt Camacho, Migrant Imaginaries, 12–17; “The Case of Luisa Moreno Bemis,” Labor Committee for Luisa Moreno Bemis pamphlet (in author’s possession); Steve Murdoch, “A Question of Deportation,” Our Times, September 9, 1949, Robert W. Kenny Papers, box 7, file 53, Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, Los Angeles, Calif. Steve Murdoch was a San Francisco–based labor journalist who wrote for local labor periodicals like Our Times. 46 47 AMERICAN HISTORICAL R EVIEW FEBRUARY 2016 Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 enlightened womanhood for either national progress or proletarian revolution. In their writings, they valorized motherhood, but they themselves did not practice what they preached. By the time she published Mi opini on, Capetillo had lived apart from pez and her peers waxed her older children for ten years, while Rosa Rodrı́guez Lo poetically (and presumptuously) about maternal duties purely in the abstract, given their own positionality as sheltered adolescents. As an organizer who was always on the move, Moreno was an absentee parent throughout most of her daughter’s childhood. Exile, whether forced or self-imposed, figured prominently in the two women’s life scripts. While Capetillo integrated her writings within her world as an organizer, Moreno compartmentalized her life, believing that her poetry and feminist essays belonged to her adolescent past. As she fostered women’s rank-and-file leadership and incorporated their issues at the bargaining table, she practiced a labor citizen model, a feminism grounded in their experiences rather than hers. Perhaps she understood pez, she had borne much of the responsibility that as the youthful Rosa Rodrı́guez Lo for the demise of la Sociedad Gabriela Mistral, but as Luisa Moreno, she no longer placed herself front and center, preferring a team approach that downplayed her own contributions. In her words, “One person can’t do anything; it’s only with others that things are accomplished.”46 Luisa Capetillo certainly fits within a decolonial imaginary as defined by such scholars as Emma Pérez, Alicia Camacho Schmidt, and Patricia Schechter. Indeed, the fiercely anticolonialist Capetillo challenged “the dominant ordering schemas of modern society, especially the binaries of colonizer/subaltern and citizen/alien,” writes Schechter, who further elaborates that “the decolonial can name resistance to racialized categories of state and empire.”47 The young women of la Sociedad Gabriela Mistral fall outside of this decolonial paradigm, but within the constraints of 1920s Guatemala, their pronouncements were quite radical. In interviews given later in life, Luisa Moreno underscored her feminist identity as a leader in la Sociedad, but claimed that she did not consider herself “political” during her youth in the capital cities of Guatemala and Mexico. In the United States, her advocacy for the rights of workers, especially immigrants, certainly challenged the state, a fact that was not lost on the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which began tracking her movements in the late 1930s because of her work as a labor leader, a civil rights activist, and for a time a member of the Communist Party. In preparing for her deportation hearings, which resulted in her departure from the United States in 1950, Moreno clearly articulated her own legacy: “They can talk about deporting me . . . but they can never deport the people that I’ve worked with and with whom things were accomplished for the benefit of hundreds of thousands of workers—things that can never be destroyed.”48 Though they shared a common vision of labor empowerment and gender equal- 14 Vicki L. Ruiz Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 FIGURE 1: Luisa Capetillo in man’s attire, ca. 1919. AMERICAN HISTORICAL R EVIEW FEBRUARY 2016 Class Acts 15 ity, Capetillo and Moreno embodied divergent styles of self-representation. Capetillo, whether as an act of camouflage or as a deliberate political statement, at times wore men’s clothing. Her bold pronouncements were thus not limited to her words and deeds, but also found expression in her public appearance. In contrast, Moreno could never quite escape her upbringing, as reflected by the terms cannery workers used in referring to her (“a real lady,” “a classy dame”), which suggest a cosmopolitan bearing. A romantic woodcut depicts Moreno in action—carrying union leaflets into the fields, she sports a fashionable, immaculately coifed hairstyle, a business dress, and kitten heels. More than a selfless labor heroine, Luisa Moreno was above all an elegant radical.49 In No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women, Estelle Freedman breaks through the familiar episodic approach to women’s activism, one defined and confined by region or temporal period, by her deliberate global framing of issues and her construction of thematic cross-cutting conversations. Conceptualizing feminism as circuits of knowledge resulting in generative connections as well as fissures opens up the field in exciting, creative ways. “Historically, Latin American feminists have also had ties with other cultures that served as inspirational beacons,” explained the distinguished historian Asunci on Lavrin. “Latin American feminists developed a strong vocation for internationalism, not only as an intellectual orientation, but as a validation of their aspirations for a political and juridical personality.”50 Though they worked outside of established Pan-American and pan-Latin American 49 Carmen Bernal Escobar, interview by author, June 15, 1986; Lucio Bernabé, interview by Patricia Zavella and the author, August 29, 1980. 50 Asunci on Lavrin, “International Feminisms: Latin American Alternatives,” Gender and History 10, no. 3 (1998): 519–534, quote from 520. AMERICAN HISTORICAL R EVIEW FEBRUARY 2016 Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 FIGURE 2: A woodcut illustration from “The Case of Luisa Moreno Bemis.” Labor Committee for Luisa Moreno Bemis pamphlet (in author’s possession). Vicki L. Ruiz 16 51 Estelle B. Freedman, No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women (New York, 2002); DuBois, There Are No Waves; Merino, “Martha Vergara, Popular-Front Pan-American Feminism and the Transnational Struggle for Working Women’s Rights in the 1930s.” 52 Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874–1939 (New York, 1990), xxiii; R. Rodrı́guez L opez, “La necesidad del feminismo en el orientaciones para la mujer guatemalteca.” Vicki L. Ruiz served as President of the American Historical Association in 2015. She is Distinguished Professor of History and Chicano/Latino Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She earned her Ph.D. in History from Stanford University in 1982. She is the author of Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930–1950 (University of New Mexico Press, 1987) and From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Women in Twentieth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 1998; 10th anniversary ed., 2008), and co-author of Created Equal: A History of the United States (Longman/Pearson, 2003; 2nd ed. 2005, 3rd ed. 2008, 4th ed. 2013, and 5th ed. forthcoming). She and Virginia Sanchez Korrol co-edited the threevolume Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia (Indiana University Press, 2006). On September 10, 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Ruiz the National Humanities Medal. AMERICAN HISTORICAL R EVIEW FEBRUARY 2016 Downloaded from http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Harvard Library on March 8, 2016 feminist networks, these two radical intellectuals were influenced, nonetheless, by these international circuits, especially by the feminist writings and deeds emanating from (or filtered through) the Américas. They framed their advocacy in their own circumstances and in their hopes. Luisa Capetillo and Luisa Moreno are powerful examples of the many Latina transnational feminists who have contributed to a more expansive view of gender equality on a global stage.51 Looking to the past to inform our present and future—what the late Peggy Pascoe referred to as the conversational nature of history—is a time-honored feminist tradition. Despite belonging to the largest racial/ethnic group in the United States with a history dating back to the 1500s, Latina narratives barely appear in the historiographical register. Over the past thirty years, I have felt privileged to belong to an ever-growing number of scholars involved in this reclamation and reinterpretation of the past. Pushing beyond the nation-state, trans-hemispheric perspectives offer a fulpez ler recounting of Latina feminist traditions. In the words of Rosa Rodrı́guez Lo (aka Luisa Moreno), “[I]f we kept searching, we could find an extensive list of audacious and determined feminists . . . We could see them planting seeds on stones, the same seeds that have today flourished and will tomorrow give the world the sweetness of its perfect fruit.”52 ABC-CLIO eBooks Page 1 of 4 ABC-CLIO eBook Collection x close IPRINTI (select citation style below) Feminist Writings from Ancient Times to the Modern World: A Global Sourcebook and History By: Tiffany K. Wayne, Editor 131. Mi Opinion (1911) Dara Nix-Stevenson Luisa Capetillo Born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Luisa Capetillo (1879-1922) was a leader in the political and labor struggles of the working class. In 1898 at the age of 19, she took Manuel Ledesma as her lover and conceived a daughter, Manuela; in 1900, their son Gregorio was born; and in 1911, Capetillo gave birth to a third child, Luis. Capetillo and Ledesma never married and separated years. Capetillo's after three mother cared for her children while Luisa worked in the textile and tobacco industries to support the family. In 1905, while working as a reader at a tobacco factory (reading books and newspapers to cigar rollers and other workers), Capetillo first encountered organizing efforts in La Federacion de Torcedores de Tabaco (Federation Capetillo's life as a mother, inform the sentiment lover, factory worker, union organizer, behind the document, union of Tobacco Rollers). and community organizer Mi Opinion, which was published in its first edition in 1911. She died in 1922 after a bout with tuberculosis, 438 Document Nowadays, all this talk about the "silence and seclusion of woman" the European woman aspires to public office, to government, losing her feminine personality, nor her motherly is unacceptable to administering and wifely duties. It is has been said countless times, that women in the public sphere and workplace ground, jeopardizing because today towns, without would lose their home, their family and their children! But those who think in this way forget that the lady of high and well-off visits friends, museums and theaters, and dressmakers position goes to the stores, and the home is left alone, her children with the servants or their nannies only. The mothers see their children for only a moment, they give them a kiss, and go out again, and this is their daily routine. Why should one think that home life will be in jeopardy Is home life not jeopardized doesn't want to accompany her husband to the theater, And isn't the family jeopardized the home is not jeopardized development by women working? when a woman does not want to breast feed her child, or when she because she went to church to confess? when she occupies her day in church, social visits, and strolls? But when the woman contributes her talent and activities to the of nations. And the working class woman who leaves her children at home in order to tend to those of the rich, and who works in factories The working-class and workshops, doesn't she jeopardize her home? home, the peasant and his wife, who abandons her home and has no one to leave behind to care for the children, and who returns home to find her child burned in an accident, this home is not in jeopardy? http://ebooks.abc-clio.com/print.aspx?isbn=9780313345814&id=B4966C-5118 1117/2012 Page 2 of 4 ABC-CLIO eBooks So they say it endangers the household! It endangers for men! But this is the home of the wealthy, But what about the poor home, the working the family! class family, mistaken It is the highborn lady: does it not harm itself? The unhappy servant or peasant woman who rents herself out to breastfeed must abandon her own children, Women are confused, the family of the aristocrat! the son of the wealthy and who doesn't she suffer? Doesn't she have natural feelings? The poor woman who must push a cart in the mines, mixed in with male workers, who goes and comes back alone, does not become a man. And neither do the women who go off to work the land. No way! These people are made of bronze, and are tempered road worker, by adversity! The poor wife of a sugar mill or who only makes 50 or 60 cents a day and who does not make enough to look after four or six children whom she has to dress and cannot, so to help out she washes others' clothes and does odd jobs, and thus leaves her children unattended, doesn't she bring harm on herseIP ... A woman whose husband owns a sugar mill or hacienda and calls herself a Spiritist should not seek to load herself down with jewelry, nor make useless purchases. or Christian She should visit the families of her peons, who produce the wealth she and her husband possess and who continue increasing it, and observe beds, and other utensils. how they live, if they lack items that are useful or necessary, like chairs, And she should notice if their roof doesn't leak, and if the inhabitants live in the house in sanitary conditions, that it is sufficiently can clean so that she would want to live there herself. And if you find opposition from your husband, obstacle to your great and just aspirations, you will see the symbol of ignorance, Dh woman! the symbols Equality, and Fraternity, symbols and becomes an trying to hold on to its power. You will set a great and dignified unjust and tyrannical, if he is cruel and egotistical do not blame him and do not fear him; because in him, example of ignorance, by breaking traditional in order to establish customs, which are the realm of Freedom, of truth and justice! 438 439 I cannot explain why a man always feels he has rights over a woman. regardless Although he has tasted and enjoyed thinks it perfectly all types of pleasures and knows of all types of vices, he by social formulas. because of our supposed weaknesses We women have to change this system, Luisa. "Mi Opinion" translated Copyright these customs. No woman should and if men do not want to give up these upon us the same liberties. (1911). In A Nation of Women: An Early Feminist Speaks derechos y deberes de la mujer, edited by Felix V. Matos by Alan West-Duran. Reprinted with permission Rather, this is what we women have tolerated, we have to transform practices, they will have to agree in bestowing Out: Mi opinion sobre las libertades, and honest. that we have always been accused of. accept a man who is not up to her moral stature; Source: Capetillo, a young man, life experience. natural to form a bond with a young woman who is temperate This is what has been allowed Rodriguez; For example, of age, always aspires to form a bond with a young virgin without Houston, TX: Arte Publico Press, 2004, 19-23, 28. from the publisher C¢) Arte Publico Press - University of A Nation of Women by Felix V. Matos Rodriguez. of Houston. Analysis Mi Opini6n is autoethnographic, birth to her three children addresses the "silence based on essays written and was employed and seclusion of women." factory worker and union organizer, working-class and affluent women. class women who are demoralized she argues that affluent by Capetillo as a factory worker. during the years she gave Her opening statement In her subsequent arguments! Capetillo is careful to emphasize as a working-class the distinction between In Mi Opinion, Capetillo writes from the experience of working- by their husbands and lovers for taking jobs outside the home; women do not face similar demoralization because they are spared from taking jobs outside the home to support their families or they have the funds to hire domestic http://ebooks.abc-clio.com/print.aspx?isbn=9780313345814&id=B4966C-5118 1117/2012 Page 3 of 4 ABC-CLIO eBooks workers to care for their children, which raises problematic think that home life will be in jeopardy questions, such as, "Why should one by women working?" Critical Response Utilizing her voice and the pen, Capetillo condemned the exploitation parties, religious institutions, philosophical tutor and domestic, a tradesman. and capitalism. ideology of her mother, and her father, of workers by political Capetillo's activism evolved from the shared the Luisa Margarita Peron, a French immigrant who worked as a Luis Capetillo Echevarria, a Spanish immigrant who worked as Raised as an only child, Capetillo's parents exposed her to a more liberal education than most young women could receive at the time and encouraged issues, ideologies, and philosophies. Ultimately, open and free debate on many Capetillo adopted an anarchist was those ideals that she lived by. She was baptized a Catholic, but rejected she was not an atheist. Unlike other anarchists, Capetillo considered philosophy, religion. and it However, herself a good Christian, although she did not agree with the rigid dogmas and rituals of 439 440 the church. She insisted instead that true Christianity oppression and exploitation. was to be found in the eradication To be a Christian meant that one believed in justice of and equality. Impact and Legacy Luisa Capetillo was the first Puerto Rican woman to commit to writing her feminist ideas and theories on the rights of women when she published Mi opinion sobre las libertades, deberes de la mujer como cornpehere of Women"). Although herself a feminist, ("My Opinion about the Liberties, history considers her the first Puerto Rican suffragist, Capetillo did not join feminist organizations her efforts to the labor movement, part of her unionizing that equitable opportunities and she considered of the day. Instead, she dedicated believing that the union was the best vehicle for poor working women to obtain justice and equality. pants in public. Moreover, derechos y Rights and Responsibilities In a challenge to the social mores of the time, she wore she advocated for free and liberal education for all men and women. As activities, Capetillo noted that a living wage was a worker's pay would lead to happier families, less domestic violence, right and insisted and more educational for children. The focal point of her advocacy was the plight of the female worker. Capetillo was successful in her organizing that issues of the private world (family, with those of the public world (politics, because she used an intersectional single motherhood, strategy, stressing and women's status) are intertwined wages, and education). Her message was simple-workers must unite under one banner to defend their rights to dignity and equality. Suggested Reading Acosta-Belen, Edna. The Puerto Rican Woman: Perspectives on Culture, History, and Society. New York: Praeger, 1986. Roy-Fequire, Magali. "Contested Life ill the Early Twentieth West-Duran, Territory: Century." Puerto Rican Women, Creole identity, Callaloo 17, no. 3 (Summer Alan. "Luisa Capetillo in Translation." and Intellectual 1994): 916-34. Centro Jouma/19, no. 2 (2007): 140-49. APA Nix-Stevenson, D. , L. Capetillo (2011). 131. Mi Opinion (1911). In T. K. Wayne (Ed.), Feminist Writings from Ancient Times to the Modem World: A Global Sourcebook and History. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood. Retrieved from http://ebooks.abc-clio.com/reader.aspx? isbn =9780313345814&id = B4966C-5118 Select Citation Style: MLA http://ebooks.abc-clio.com/print.aspx?isbn=9780313345814&id=B4966C-5118 1117/2012 ABC-CLIO eBooks http://ebooks.abc-clio.com/print.aspx?isbn=9780313345814&id=B4966C-5118 Page 4 of 4 1117/2012 Maria W. Stewart was an African American domestic servant who became a teacher, journalist, lecturer, abolitionist, and women’s rights activist. The first known American woman to speak to a mixed audience of men and women, whites and black, she was also the first African-American woman to make public lectures, as well as to lecture about women’s rights and make a public anti-slavery speech. The Liberator published two pamphlets by Stewart: Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build (which advocated abolition and black autonomy) in 1831, and another of religious meditations, Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria Stewart (1832). In February 1833, she addressed Boston’s African Masonic Lodge, which soon ended her brief lecturing career. Her claim that black men lacked "ambition and requisite courage" caused an uproar among the audience, and Stewart decided to retire from giving lectures. Seven months later, she gave a farewell address at a schoolroom in the African Meeting House ("Paul's Church"). After this, Stewart moved to New York City, then to Baltimore, and finally Washington, DC, where she worked as a schoolteacher, and then head matron at Freedmen’s Hospital, where she ultimately died. Excerpt from Maria W. Stewart, Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality (1831) Shall it any longer be said of the daughters of Africa, they have no ambition, they have no force? By no means. Let every female heart become united, and let us raise a fund ourselves; and at the end of the one year and a half, we might be able to lay the corner-stone for the building of a High School, that the higher branches of knowledge might be enjoyed by us; and God would raise us up, and enough to aid us in our laudable designs. Let each one strive to excel in good housewifery, knowing that prudence and economy are the road to wealth. Let us not say, we know this, or we know that, and practise nothing; but let us practise what we do know. How long shall the fair daughters of Africa be compelled to bury their minds and talents beneath a load of iron pots and kettles? Until union, knowledge and love begin to flow among us. How long shall a mean set of men flatter us with their smiles, and enrich themselves with our hard earnings; their wives' finger's sparkling with rings, and they themselves laughing at our folly? Until we begin to promote and patronize each other. Shall we be a by-word among the nations any longer? Shall they laugh us to scorn forever? Do you ask, what can we do? Unite and build a store of your own, if you cannot procure a license. Fill one side with dry goods, and other with groceries. We have never had an opportunity of displaying our talents; therefore the world thinks we know nothing. And we have been possessed of by far too mean and cowardly a disposition, though I highly disapprove of an insolent or impertinent one. Do you ask the disposition I would have you possess? Possess the spirit of independence. The Americans do, and why should not you? 1 Possess the spirit of men, bold and enterprising, fearless and undaunted. Sue for your rights and privileges. Know the reason that you can attain them. Weary them with your importunities. You can but die, if you make the attempt; and we shall certainly die if you do not. The Americans have practiced nothing but head-work these 200 years, and we have done their drudgery. And is it not high time for us to imitate their examples, and practisehead-work too, and keep what we have got, and get what we can? We need never to think that any body is going to feel interested for us, if we do not feel interested for ourselves. That day we, as a people, hearken unto the voice of the Lord our God, and walk in his ways and ordinances, and become distinguished for our ease, elegance and grace, combined with other virtues, that day the Lord will raise us up, and enough to aid ago befriend us, and we shall begin to flourish. Did every gentleman in America realized, as one, that they had got to become bondmen, and their wives, their sons, and their daughters, servants forever, to Great Britain, their very joints would become loosened, and tremblingly would smite against another; their countenance would be filled with horror, every nerve and muscle would be forced into action, their souls would recoil at the very thought, their hearts would die within them, and death would be far more preferable. Then why have not Africa’s sons a right to feel the same? Are not their wives, their sons, and their daughters, as dear to them as those of the white man? Certainly, God has not deprived them of the divine influences of his Holy Spirit, which is the greatest of all blessings, if they ask him. Then why should man any longer deprive his fellow-man of equal rights and privileges? Oh, America, America, foul and indelible is thy stain! Dark and dismal is the cloud that hangs over thee, for they cruel wrongs and injuries to the fallen sons of Africa. The blood of her murdered ones cries to heaven for vengeances against thee. Thou art almost become drunken with the blood of her slain; thou hast enriched thyself through her toils and labors; and now thou refuseth to make even a small return. And thou has caused the daughters of Africa to commit whordomes and fornications; but upon thee be their curse. O, ye great and mighty men of America, you might and powerful ones, many of you will call for the rocks and mountains to fall upon you, and to hide you from the wrath of the Lamb, and from him that sitteth upon the throne; whilst many of the sable-skinned Africans you now despise, will shine in the kingdom of heaven as the stars forever and ever. Charity begins at home, and those that provide not for their own, are worse than infidels. We know that you are raising contributions to aid the gallant Poles; we know that you have befriended Greece and Ireland; and you have rejoiced with France, for her heroic deeds of valor. You have acknowledged all the nations of the earth, except Hayti; and you may publish, as far as the East is from the West, that you have two millions of negroes, who aspire no higher than to bow at your feet, and to court your smiles. You may kill, tyrannize, and oppress as much as you choose, until our cry shall come up before the throne of God; for I am firmly persuaded, that he will not suffer you to quell the proud, fearless and undaunted sprits of the African forever; for in his own time, he is able to plead our cause against you, and to pour out upon you the ten plagues of Egypt. We will not come out against you with swards and staves, as against a thief; but we will tell you that our souls are fired. We will tell you that too much of your blood flows in our veins, and too much of your color in our skins, for us not to possess your spirits. We will tell you that it is our gold that clothes you in fine linen and purple, and causes you to fare sumptuously every day; and it is the blood of our fathers, and the tears of our brethren that have enriched your souls. AND WE CLAIM OUR RIGHTS. We will tell you, that we are not afraid of them that kill the body and 2 after that can do no more; but we will tell you whom we do fear. We fear Him who is able, after he hath killed, to destroy both souls and body in hell forever. Then, my brethren, sheath your swords, and calm your angry passions. Stand still, and know that the Lord is God. Vengeance is his, and he will repay. It is a long lane that has no turn. America has risen to her meridian. When you begin to thrive, she will begin to fall. . . 3 Margaret Sanger, "Notes on Address before the Woman Rebel Trial," [Jan] 1916. Autograph Draft Speech. Source: Margaret Sanger Papers, Library of Congress , Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm, Library of Congress, L130:0342 . https://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/webedition/app/documents/show.php?sangerDoc= 143701.xml A handwritten note by Sanger reads: "Notes on address when contemplating trial re Woman Rebel 1916." At the top of the 4th page, Sanger wrote "buck up." Portions of this text were used again in the stump speech she gave on her 1916 national tour. For an example see Condemnation is Misunderstanding Apr.-July, 1916. HISTORY OF EDUCATION. It would ↑might↓ be surprising to me that in the year 1916 a woman who is a trained nurse and a mother, must be brought into this Court as a criminal and plead with you for her liberty, ↑because she↓ advances a subject of the greatest importance to womankind. Were I not acquainted with the long struggle education has had against the powers of government and the tyranny of Authority. As we look back to the past we find from the beginning of time governments persistently sought to stifle all new ideas as well as to suppress all attempts of their expression. We look back with horror at the persecution, champions of new ideas have endured at the hands of authority. Only thirty years ago Annie Besant was prosecuted in England for vindicating ideas of liberty and for publishing literature which was then deemed obscene. The results of her educative work were to give the English people ↑and the English Press↓ the utmost liberty for the free discussion of subjects which the Post Office authorities in this country deem to be ↑obscene↓ " non-mailable matter." To what extent the right of the press is ↑now↓ recognized in England may be seen by the following extracts from the summing up of immigrants ↑idealists↓ caused a change in conditions here and a second battle took place for the freedom of religious expression and now to-day with our rapidly increasing commercial lives, with women out in the industrial field, standing side by side with their brothers in the world's work, a new demand has come forth for the freedom of moral discussion. The three events are epoch-making in the history of the moral progress of every country and you are indeed privileged men that you have the opportunity to be instrumental in saying that ↑whether↓ the United States of America shall go on the map beside other civiliszd nations or whether it shall still lag behind in all moral issues as it has continuously done for the past fifty years. WOMAN AND MORALITY. 1 The moral issue is mainly of greatest concern to women. For centuries woman has gone forth with man to till the fields, to feed and clothe the nation. She has shared with him the struggles and hardships of his efforts. She has sacrificed her life to populate the Earth. She has overdone her labors. She has entrusted Man with the wealth of her offspring. He has failed her. He has allowed their ↑her↓ children to die by the thousands in the social system he has constructed and maintains. Woman at last steps forward to demand that she have a word to say in her function of Motherhood and her first request is that woman cease to produce children in ignorance. For this ↑Because↓ twentieth century sees woman emerge from the cave of ignorance into the light of knowledge. She demands that she shall have control over her own body; that she shall be a mother when she desires to be one, consciously and voluntarily. In order to do this she must have the knowledge to control birth. Man has seen fit to place the most sacred function of her body on a footing with pornography and he calls any education bearing upon it as "Filthy, vile, obscene". Woman must undo that crime. She must raise Man's standards in this as she has done in the past to a still higher level and place the function of motherhood and its physiology where it rightly belongs. She can only do this through education. And this paper, the "Woman Rebel" was a pioneer attempt to give her that education. It has been said that the issue advocated in this paper is fifty years ahead of the times. But this I deny. Rather is it a few narrow-minded officials who are fifty years behind the times, for I have found that the great mass of people desire this education knowledge, and it is only the existence of an anti-social law inspired by the late Mr. Comstock that is keeping them in ignorance. From all over this country letters have come to me from women in all departments of life's work, expressing their opinions that the knowledge to prevent conception is a great social necessity and is far removed from obscenity. DIFFERENCE IN INTERESTS. As a trained nurse and mother of three children I have reason to consider my views on this question far superior to those of the prosecution whose interest in this question are so removed from mine, for he is not concerned with the fifty thousand women who die each year from abortion in this country. He is not concerned with the 150,000 abortions that occur each year. He is not concerned with the fact that 95% of them are performed on women of the working class; neither is he concerned with the tremendous number of babies who die each year before they are one year old. He is concerned only in winning a verdict in this case while my interests are prompted by the most piteous cry ofthe women of this country have ever uttered. What can Man know of the mental agony of carrying beneath one's heart a little life which every instinct tells the mother it cannot survive? Little can he know of the mental agony and fear of unwanted pregnancy. Why then should he dictate to her in a function which chiefly concerns her. CHARGES. 2 The indictments charge me with publishing and circulating ↑indecent↓ obscene literature. What is the meaning obscenity of this word "Obscene"? The average men and wocitizen is not familiar with the definition given in law books but must rely upon the only available source, that is in dictionaries and encyclopedias. I refer you to a standard authority The Encyclopedia Britannica which defines says of "obscenity":"The precise meaning of the word is decidedly ambiguous. It has been defined as something offensive to modesty or decency or expressing or suggesting unchaste or lustful ideas or being impure, indecent or lewd, or tends tending to deprave and corrupt those whose minds ↑which↓ are open to immoral influences." I deny the charge. I deny that there is one word or sentence or article in any of these papers, which can be termed obscene or which in any way violates this law or the intent of this law. I have read Section 211 many times and by the wildest stretch of the imagination there is nothing from the pages of "The Woman Rebel" which in any way incites to passion or immorality. The law distinctly says that no one shall give any information to prevent conception or to produce abortion and nowhere in the columns of this paper has this information been given. The law does not prohibit a discussion of these questions, but that is what Mr. Content wants you to believe. I advocate that the knowledge to prevent conception be placed in the hands of women. I advocate small families for ↑the↓ working mothers class mothers and have encouraged them not to have more children than they can feed, clothe and care for. Is this obscene? Why is it that I am indicted for advocating small families when others quite prominent in the world's affairs are allowed to go up and down the length of the land advocating large families. Certainly if the picture brought to ↑a↓ young girl's mind by telling her not to have many children is in any way inciting to immorality, what must it be to be told that it is her duty to have many children? Which is the most moral? Is it obscene ↑indecent↓ to help educate people; to have a responsibility towards their actions and towards their offspring or is it not more obscene to keep them in ignorance, misery and poverty. This law does not say that one cannot advocate small ↑families↓ and therefore nothing that has been read to you from the pages of "The Woman Rebel" violates that law. Is it moral for two adult people to bring children into the world knowing that there is no possible provision made for their survival? Is it moral to leave the welfare and health of your offspring to the charity of a few kindly and well-intentioned philanthropists or is it not the duty of two people to be responsible for and the consequences of their acts, securing to the best of their ability all advantages for their children's development? Is this not the greatest moral step forward which the working people of this generation are desirous of taking. For it is a noted fact that as soon as a woman raises herself out of the lowest stages of poverty and ignorance where the present system of society has placed her, her first step is to seek knowledge whereby she shall have control over the size of her family? Where can she go for this knowledge? She knows that the woman of the upper-class has this information, which she in her poverty cannot afford to pay for. Consequently she must bring forth children who either die in infancy or grow up to fill the reformatories jails and poor-houses, or she must resort to abortions! Abortions and 3 their horrible consequences are unnecessary. The "Woman Rebel" has said this and the District Attorney has chosen to call it "obscene" ↑indecent↓ . I trust you do not feel that I would have the impertinence to go into a work of this kind without realizing the responsibility which the dissemination of such knowledge brings; without a thorough study of the question from all points of view. For the past four years I have studied this subject and visited different countriesFrance, Holland, England and Spain where the subject is considered from the family, the moral, the individual and the racial point of view, and before I go any further I should like to give you a brief summary of my life's work and the conditions that I met with which made me study this question and has brought me here today. ↑intent↓ For in bringing in a verdict it will not be enough for you to decide whether these papers are obscene in character but it will also be necessary to get at the intent. The prosecution in drawing up the indictment has used great cunning in carefully extracting parts of the paper which do not dwell on the bigness of the Cause. He has said that the intent was good but that the intent does not matter. I claim that the intent is a very vital part of this charge. I further claim that these indictments should never have been brought against me, and were those who are back of this prosecution really interested in the welfare of the people as they pretend to be, they would not be wasting your time here to-day and piling up the enormous costs on the people's backs by such proceedings. The intent is the very essence of the character of this paper. It may be defiant; it may be bold; it may be much that you do not approve of but ↑ [you do not want to agree?] ↓ . the intent is certainly not obscene! ↑The question you are to decide is-- Is it obscene?↓ HISTORY. Far back in my early childhood days, my first impression of life was that large families and poverty went hand-in-hand. I was born and brought up in a small factory town in the western part of New York State. I was one of eleven children, so that I had some personal knowledge of the struggles and hardships which a large family endures. At the age of seventeen my mother died from the results of overwork and the strain of toofrequent child-bearing which left me with the care of four younger children to share the burdens with a lovely poetic Irish father. A few years later I entered a hospital to take up the profession of nursing. It is impossible for anyone↑woman↓ to go through a general training without realizing that ↑she must revalue ideas of life--↓ 75% of the diseases of men and women are the results of their sex lives. This discovery decided me to specialize in women's diseases and I devoted myself to gynecological and obstetrical work. A few years of work in this special line gave me a still greater discovery, i.e. that knowledge to prevent conception was obtained and practiced among the women of wealth while the working women were kept in ignorance of this knowledge. I found that the women of wealth were able to have 4 abortions performed if it became necessary and such care and attention was given them by the medical profession that seldom did a death occur among them. I found that the women of the working-class were as anxious to obtain this information as their sisters of wealth but that there were laws upon the statute book against imparting this information, and the medical profession was most religious in obeying the laws when the patient was a poor woman. I found that the women of the working-class had emphatic views on the crime of bringing children into the world to die of hunger and were willing to risk their lives through abortions rather than give birth to unwanted offspring. I found that 300,000 children die each year from poverty and neglect, while the parents remain in ignorance of the means of preventing 300,000 more from coming into the world to die the following year. I found that the children who toil in factories and mills all come from parents who average 9 living children. I found that ↑from↓ the records concerning the woman of the underworld; the so-called prostitute--that 85% of them come from parents who average 9 children. I found that the laws against imparting knowledge to prevent conception had forced women into the hands of filthy midwives and quack abortionists unless they would bear unwanted children, with the consequences that the deaths from abortions were almost wholly among women of the working-class. I found that no other country in the world has so large a number of abortionists nor so large a number of deaths resulting therefrom, as the United States of America, and that the quacks and abortionists were rolling in wealth while our lawmakers were closing their virtuous eyes. What did I find that Society was doing to alter these conditions. I found that it was treating with the symptoms instead of the disease ↑causes↓ . They founded the Little Mother Leagues, Babies Nurseries, Better Baby Leagues, and hundreds of well-intentioned philanthropic and charitable organizations are trying to ↑tried to�...
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Final Project Proposal with Primary Source Analysis
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Part I
Women’s Suffrage in the US
The feminist issue that I will be exploring is Women’s suffrage in the US. It can be
defined as the right of women to vote. Women’s suffrage was ratified on 18th August 1920.1 The
19th Amendment granted American women the rights to vote. Before that, women could not vote
because they were denied this basic right that their male counterparts enjoyed. Society expected
women to focus on motherhood and housework and not politics. The project will mainly focus
on the time period between 1869 when the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was
formed, and 1920, when Women’s suffrage was ratified. Based on the regional scope, the project
will focus on America, studying the issue nationally. One question that I will explore in this
project is how did women’s suffrage impact America?
For this project, I hope to find reliable primary and secondary sources from reputable
sources. The primary sources could be newspaper articles that reported this issue, speeches,
images, recordings and politi...


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