SINGLENESS AND THE STATE:
UNMARRIED AND WIDOWED WOMEN IN GUADALAJARA, MEXICO, 1821-1910
By
Andrea Vicente

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
History
2012

ABSTRACT
SINGLENESS AND THE STATE:
UNMARRIED AND WIDOWED WOMEN IN GUADALAJARA, MEXICO, 1821-1910
By
Andrea Vicente
This is a study of women who lived without men between 1821 and 1910 in Guadalajara
Mexico. In these years single and widowed women consistently outnumbered men in the city. I
argue that disproportionate sex ratios created obstacles to legal marriage at a time when Mexican
political leaders and reformers promoted marriage and motherhood as an important, idealized
part of a solution to political instability in the aftermath of Independence in 1821. The same
liberal political philosophies that motivated the fight for national Independence, promoted new
economic and social reforms that displaced rural peasants forcing many to seek employment in
cities. It was a trend that added to the demographic growth and industrialization of Guadalajara
and created a growing class of poor urban workers. Among these new migrants were women
who arrived to the city widowed and single. Some women never married, or remarried. Others
lived in consensual unions and mothered illegitimate children. City officials grew anxious over
the presence of unmarried working women who lived outside the boundaries of traditional
marriage and patriarchal control. Increasingly, politicians, clergymen, women’s magazines,
police and judges of various political stripes debated the role of unmarried women in their efforts
to reform what they believed to be the wayward lifestyle that typified the urban poor. For these
powerful actors unmarried women became a symbol, symptom, and a cause of rising urban
problems including immorality, crime and poverty. Overall, my research demonstrates that
authorities in nineteenth-century Guadalajara organized institutions of power such as city police,

criminal courts and Guadalajara’s poorhouse to target unmarried women as a group in need of
greater protection, punishment and reform.
This dissertation combines extensive demographic data with fine-grained qualitative and
statistical analysis of the lives of mostly poor unmarried women in Guadalajara. It draws on a
wide variety of sources to attempt to capture a sense of the lives of women, many of whom
found it impossible to conform to the standards of elite gender expectations. Sources utilized
here include unique household-level censuses from Guadalajara, religious writings, political
essays, proscriptive literature from Latin America and Europe, legal codes, criminal and civil
court proceedings, maps, newspapers and state institutional records. Overall, the project is one of
the first to focus exclusively on unmarried adult women in Latin America.

Acknowledgments

I have never been able to study anything that was not a personal experience as much as it
was an intellectual one. My journey toward the study of Latin America has been a long one,
influenced by many individuals along the way. I thank them for the experiences of getting to
know them and for their many stories which left me with a greater desire to know and understand
Latin American history and culture. To Miyuki Hasegawa and her family I would like to thank
first and foremost, for all those wonderful Cuba stories that got this whole thing started so many
years ago in Tampa. Also, I wish to express my gratitude to my good friends Claudia Rivas and
Juan Manuel Franco along with their sons Fernando and Santiago. Thank you for sharing a bit of
Guadalajara with Doug and me, and helping me on my way to what you see here. Their
companionship provided us with a sense of family during our stay in Guadalajara and made the
research process an enjoyable one.
Of course, where I am today would not be possible without the many mentors who
inspired and encouraged me on my path. My high school history teacher, William Hartley, at
Lecanto High School was the first to make me realize that studying history could lead to a viable,
albeit meager, career. The four years I spent taking his history courses truly shaped and piqued
my own interests and left me wanting to know more. His thought provoking and very personal
relationship to history, not only more than prepared me for college, it motivated my own studies.
He is truly a model for what great teachers and teaching is all about.
Dr. Rodney Anderson at Florida State University is probably most responsible for this
project. If not for the assignment he handed me of researching widows and single women as part
of a paper written for the Guadalajara Census Project this dissertation might not have happened.

iv

His enthusiasm and zeal, as well as his wit, helped make my time at Florida State University an
incredibly rewarding and enjoyable place to study. Who can thank Dr. Anderson without his
partner in crime, Matt Childs (or is it the other way around?). I had the privilege and joy of
working with Matt on my Master’s Degree while at FSU. Even though his job as my advisor at
ended years ago, Matt continued to mentor me throughout grad school, reading drafts, offering
commentary, sharing advice and academic know-how, and listening to occasional freak-outs
when I thought I had made an error. Thank you both for giving me some of the most important
lessons in being the kind of professor I hope to someday be.
Here at Michigan State University, I’ve been privileged to work with some amazing
professors. I would like to thank all of the members of my committee, Peter Beattie, Walter
Hawthorne, Miguel Cabañas and Erica Windler. Peter Beattie and Erica Windler really helped
me find my niche and interests in Latin American history. Their critiques were always sharp, yet
at the same time very constructive. In Guadalajara, Professors Claudia Rivas Jimenez, Juan
Manuel Franco, Robert Curley and María Teresa Fernandez Aceves at the Universidad de
Guadalajara provided thought provoking insight that helped shape this project.
I would also like to sincerely thank all of the kind archivists in Guadalajara who
facilitated my research. They truly made it a wonderful place to carry out my work. At the
Bíblioteca Pública, I would like to thank Juana Irma Flores for permitting me access to the
wonderful collection. Most importantly I wish to extend my gratitude to Heriberto Saucedo and
Rosa María Tavera for retrieving my many cajas on a daily basis, and always with a smile. At
the Archivo Histórico thanks is an order to Susana Pacheco for truly making me feel welcome. In
addition, I’d like to thank Gaby Sálazar Hernández and Alejandro Télles Vasquez for some
wonderful conversation and recommendations while researching. Juan Pablo Torres provided

v

me access to an amazing set of historic maps. I also enjoyed razzing Miguel Santillan Castro
who begrudgingly made me numerous copies and jokingly asked on a daily basis when on earth I
would be leaving. Last but not least my favorite place to work was the Archivo Arzobispado due
to the kindness of Sister María Teresa Morales. I most enjoyed when she came around at noon
each day to give us all a piece of candy.
I have also been blessed with great friends who have helped me along the way, and were
as much a part of this process as they did encourage it. My dearest friends and now “colleagues”
who are now scattered about the country and world were my original support network. I will
always have our great GCP memories, dance breaks, lunch dates, and gatherings to look back on.
Claudia, Monica, Sarah, and Tam have been there through thick and thin and have advised me as
both friends and mentors. I do not know what I would have done without them, and although I
will always be “little Andrea” in their eyes, I owe much of my success to their constant wisdom.
Finally, I wish to thank my Michigan cohort of graduate students. My years there,
especially during those long, cold, gray winters were made easier and much more fun through
the companionship and collegiality of friends like Ben, Brandon, Jaime, Jill, Lindsey Gray,
Lindsey Gish, and Micalee. Not to mention my great group of supportive fellow Latin
Americanists Aaron, Alberto, Carlos, Cristían, Jennifer, Nora, Nikki and Sonia.
I must also thank the U.S. Department of Education for supporting my research through a
2008-2009 Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant, which allowed me to consult
the archives of Guadalajara and Mexico City. The support system in place at Michigan State
University, including Fulbright advisors Frank D’Itri and Joanne Martin, made my success
possible. Once in Mexico, la Comisión México-Estados Unidos para el Intercambio Educativo y

vi

Cultural (COMEXUS) and its wonderful student advisor Jessica Mendiola, eased the logistical
aspects of my time in Mexico.
In addition, I would like to thank the History Department at Michigan State University
for being so wonderful and supportive of its graduate students. A special thanks especially to
Professor Keely Stauter-Halsted who helped me not only as the graduate student advisor
throughout my time at MSU, but also during her tenure as Chair of the department. She aided the
writing process with much needed financial and academic support. Further assistance in the
writing process, came from the Graduate School at MSU and the Center for Gender in Global
Context. I wish to extend my gratitude to them for finding my work worthy of a 2009-2010
Dissertation Completion Grant.
In the course of writing these past years I have found great strength in the love and
support of family members. My in-laws, Stephen and Nancy Ponticos, who treat me like their
own daughter, have always supported me in my graduate career and were gracious as I got
through the final hectic months of writing. Other family members provided important writing
breaks and even visited me in my cubby hole at the library—Dan and Valerie Torres and my
niece and nephew Stephania and Elijah. I also owe much gratitude to my parents, Antonio and
Noreen Vicente, and my siblings, Antonio, Nina and Nicalou, who have all strongly supported
my research and lifelong dream to teach history. Even though they may have not quite
understood what the heck I was doing all this time, they never wavered in their desire to see me
achieve my goals. My mother has played a strong role not only as my best friend, but also in my
historical interests. Her own curiosities about history are what both inspired and encouraged my
sometimes “strange” interests as a young child. She has been there every step of the way
accompanying me to museums, oral history interviews, and research trips. My father, as both the

vii

perfectionist and politician of the family, has had a tremendous influence over my life and
ideology. He never told me what I could not do and has had great faith in me from the beginning.
Last but not least, I must thank my husband Doug. In the time it took me to finish this
dissertation we have made a family and home of our own. Doug has never failed to provide
constant encouragement and support in this process. He was there every step of the way from
graduate school applications to hot and humid afternoons in the archives. No matter how sick
and tired he got of traveling or lurking in libraries with me he never let it show. He made do
with his books and his trees and helped to balance out my bouts of lunacy. Through all the sad,
painful and difficult moments along this journey, we always found the bright spots. You made
this possible, and most importantly you made this fun. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………………………..xi
LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………………..xiii
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction: Female Singleness in Nineteenth-Century Guadalajara…………………………… 1
Singleness in Latin America……………………………………………………………... 7
CHAPTER TWO
Guadalajara in the Long Nineteenth Century…………………………………………………... 14
Colonial Guadalajara, 1529-1821………………………………………………………..17
From Independence to Reform, 1821-1867……………………………………………...26
The Porfiriato, 1876-1910……………………………………………………………….40
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….47
CHAPTER THREE
Discourses on Marriage and the Role of Women in Liberal Society, 1855-1910………………50
The Rhetoric of the Liberal Family……………………………………………………...52
Civil Marriage……………………………………………………………………………55
The Making of the Ideal Family…………………………………………………………62
Husbands, Wives & Mothers…………………………………………………………….69
The Marriage Contract in Guadalajara…………………………………………………..77
Mothers…………………………………………………………………………………..81
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….88
CHAPTER FOUR
The Stigmatization of Singleness: Work, Public Space and Danger…………………………….91
Unattached Women’s Households in Nineteenth-Century Guadalajara…………………96
Household Strategies…………………………………………………………………...106
Ethnicity, Class and Age……………………………………………………………….112
Public Space, Danger and Working Women…………………………………………...126
Immorality and Dishonor………………………………………………………………132
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...142
CHAPTER FIVE
Immorality and Singleness: Sex, Crime and Prostitution………………………………………144
The Discourse on Poverty and Immorality in Nineteenth-Century Guadalajara……….145
Singleness and Immorality……………………………………………………………..152
Singleness and the Regulation of Crime……………………………………………….166
Prostitution……………………………………………………………………………..199
ix

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...206
CHAPTER SIX
Poverty, Singleness and Public Welfare………………………………………………………..207
The Casa de Caridad y Misericordia…………………………………………………..210
The Discourse on Poverty and the Marginalization of the Poor………………………..216
Singleness and the Casa de Caridad……………………………………………….......225
The Rhetoric of Protection……………………………………………………………...231
Defining Proper Mothers……………………………………………………………….240
Preserving the Patriarchal Family and Home…………………………………………..252
‘Sola’: Women without Family in the Casa de Caridad……………………………….260
Women’s Agency………………………………………………………………………265
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...273
CONCLUSION
Singleness and Nineteenth-Century Politics in Mexico………………………………………...274
BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………284

x

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1 Adult Marital Status by Sex, Guadalajara, 1821-1895 ………………………………..7
Table 2.1 Population of Guadalajara, 1629-1910………………………………………………. 18
Table 2.2 Marital Status According to Sex and Age, Guadalajara, 1821…………………….… 25
Table 2.3 Average Age of Female Widows in Guadalajara by Year………………………….…38
Table 2.4 Ratio of Men to Women by Year, Guadalajara 1811-1895...........................................38
Table 3.1 Education in Guadalajara, 1895…………………………………………………….…85
Table 4.1 Marital Status According to Sex and Age, Guadalajara 1821 ……………………..…94
Table 4.2 Marital Status Guadalajara, 1895…………………………………………………...…95
Table 4.3 Adult Female Headship by Marital Status, 1811-1850………………………………..95
Table 4.4 Adult Marital Status by Sex, Guadalajara 1821-1895………………………………...98
Table 4.5 Ratio Male to Female by Year, 1811-1895……………………………………………98
Table 4.6 Industrial Factories in Guadalajara, 1856-1880 ……………………………………... 99
Table 4.7 Common Female Jobs by Marital Status 1821…………………………………...… 108
Table 4.8 Most Common Female Occupations, 1895 ………………………………………… 109
Table 4.9 Widow Headed Household Structure by Calidad, 1821……………………………..113
Table 4.10 Position in Household by Ethnicity, Single Women, 1821……………………….. 115
Table 4.11 Widow and Single Women’s Residence Patterns by Age, 1811-1850………….….119
Table 4.12 Adult Widow and Single Women’s Position Within Another Household, 18111850… ………………………………………………………………………………………….121
Table 4.13 Widow Headed Household Composition by Age, 1821….. ……………………….122
Table 4.14 Widow Household Composition by Sex, 1821……………………………………..123

xi

Table 4.15 Civil Status of Registered Prostitutes Treated at the Hospital Civil, 1902 ………...135
Table 4.16 Working Women, Guadalajara, 1821-1895……………………………………….. 139
Table 4.17 Ethnicity and Marital Status of Working Women in Guadalajara, 1821 …………. 140
Table 4.18 Class Status of Working Women, Guadalajara, 1821……………………………...140
Table 5.1 Single Women in the 1821 Guadalajara Census……………………………………..155
Table 5.2 Marital Status of Female Inmates at the Jalisco State Penitentiary, 1868-1903……..176
Table 5.3 Occupations of Female Inmates at the Jalisco State Penitentiary, 1868-1903………177
Table 5.4 Origin of Female Inmates at the Jalisco State Penitentiary, 1868-1903……………..178
Table 5.5 Skin Color at the Jalisco State Penitentiary, 1868-1903……………………………..178
Table 5.6 Women Sentenced in the Jalisco State Penitentiary, 1868-1903…………………….179
Table 5.7 Crimes Committed by Female Inmates at the Jalisco State
Penitentiary, 1868-1903……………………………………………………………………….. 184
Table 6.1 Occupations and Crimes Committed by Female Inmates at the Jalisco State
Penitentiary …………………………………………………………………………………… 230

xii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 City Plan of Guadalajara, 1842……………………………………………………... 20
Figure 2.2 Urban Growth of Guadalajara, 1542-1906 …………………………………………. 48
Figure 2.3 “La Calle de San Francisco” in the Late Nineteenth Century ……………………… 49
Figure 4.1 “La Plaza Principal de Guadalajara Hacia 1835”…………………………………...111
Figure 4.2 “La Plaza Principal de Guadalajara en 1864” ……………………………………...111
Figure 4.3 “La Casera” ………………………………………………………………………...118
Figure 4.4 “La Lavandera”……………………………………………………………………..128
Figures 5.1-5.5 Skin Color in Jailhouse Photographs…………………………………………..180
Figure 6.1 “El Hospicio” ……………………………………………………………………….209
Figure 6.2 Cuartel Divisions and Notable Buildings in Guadalajara, 1896 …………………... 222

xiii

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION: FEMALE SINGLENESS IN GUADALAJARA MEXICO, 1821-1910

On the morning of the eighteenth of October 1886, Dominga González, a thirty year old
widow originally from the nearby village of Tlajomulco found herself in a Guadalajara police
station calling for the apprehension and arrest of Lucio Cabrera for rapto, or kidnapping with the
1

intention to seduce her sixteen year old sister Prejedis. The case sheds light on the dangers and
dilemmas of being unmarried women and the challenges and contradictions they presented to
state and local officials as “un-protected” females in a patriarchal society. As such, it provides a
revealing introduction to this dissertation’s unique focus on the lives of unmarried women in
nineteenth-century Mexican society.
It was Dominga who first became worried after hearing rumors from a neighbor that
Lucio intended to have relations with her sister. Indeed, between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. the previous
evening she tracked down her “honorable” sister in the company of Lucio. She went on to
explain that she and Prejedis had migrated from their natal village of Tlajomulco alone. Their
parents, Medardo González and Ricarda Mondragon, still lived in Tlajomulco and were unable to
come to court. Therefore, to “preserve her father’s honor” she had come to ask the court that the
defendant be charged with rapto. Lucio, a twenty-six year old married brick-maker had lodged
with the González sisters after migrating to Guadalajara a year earlier from Tlajomulco,
describing them as fellow “paisanos,” or fellow provincials. He admitted to having relations with
1

BPEJ Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919, Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Lucio Cabrera por rapto,” Caja 11, Exp 88,208. The 1871 Mexican Penal Code defined
rapto as the abduction of a woman against her will by the use of physical violence, deception, or
seduction in order to satisfy “carnal desires” or to marry. See, Código Penal para el Distrito
Federal y Territorios sobre delitos fuero común y para toda la República sobre delitos contral la
Federación (Mexico City: Imprenta de Flores y Monsalve, 1874), 194.
1

Prejedis, but argued she was already a “dishonored” woman who had “illicit relations” with him
of her own “free will.” In response, Dominga insisted that her sister was “honorable” and that
even though she did go with Lucio she did not have “romantic relations” with him or any other
man. In a shocking turn of events, Prejedis’ turned on her sister and admitted to having a sexual
relationship with Lucio. She further stated that she never asked her sister to bring a case against
Lucio, nor did her sister have the authority to do so because she no longer lived with Dominga.

2

The story of these two sisters reveals intriguing aspects of a much larger phenomenon.
3

From 1820 to 1910 widowed and unmarried adult women made up fifty to sixty per cent of the
4

entire urban population of Guadalajara, Mexico’s third largest city at the time. Like Dominga,
5

almost half of these women headed and managed their own households. Mexican authorities
associated unmarried women with danger, prostitution, disorder, poverty, and an unnatural state.
Mexico’s long struggle for Independence was followed by decades of civil war and instability.
War, inflation, epidemics, famine and banditry contributed to the conditions that made female
headed households more common and simultaneously fueled a sense of moral panic that many
2

“Contra Lucio Cabrera por rapto,” Criminal, 1886, f. 88,208; For a discussion of honor through
rapto cases see William French, “ ‘Te Amo Mucho:’ The Love Letters of Pedro and Enriquetta,”
in The Human Tradition in Mexico, edited by Jeffrey Pilcher (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly
Resources, 2003), 123-136.
3
Unless otherwise state, in this work I define an adult in accordance with the legal age of
majority, which by 1866 was twenty-one years old. For more on changes to this law see Silvia
Arrom, “Changes in Mexican Family Law in the Nineteenth Century: The Civil Codes of 1870
and 1884,” Journal of Family History 10, no. 3 (1985), 308.
4
Lilia Oliver Sánchez, “Intensidad de la crisis demográficas en las ciudades de México y
Guadalajara, 1800-1850,” Takwá 8, (Fall 2005), 23.
5
Data was collected for the years 1811 to 1895. Sources for 1811-1850 come from Censuses of
Guadalajara, 1821-1822, CD-ROM Database (Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University, 2006);
Censuses of Guadalajara, Volume 2 1791-1930, CD-ROM Database (Tallahassee, FL: Florida
State University, 2008). For 1895, see Archivo Histórico de Jalisco (AHJ), Mapoteca, “Computo
General del Censo,” Oficio del Concentración del Censo (Guadalajara, 1895); See Table 1.1.
2

attributed to the breakdown of the traditional male-headed family household. Ironically, these
observers misidentified the causes of this social phenomenon in urban Mexico where many
unmarried females migrated for greater security and employment opportunities. A growing
majority of urban single and widowed women did not fit easily into national development
projects of Mexico’s nation builders who idealized strong patriarchal families as the foundation
of stability and a just social order. As a metaphor for patria the patriarchal family became a
symbol for “good public order” across nineteenth-century Latin America, and the ideal engine
for the reproduction and education of the nation’s future generations destined to “govern and
populate” the fatherland’s territory. Doris Somner suggests that this preoccupation was not
limited to the foundational romance novels of Mexican nation, but it was magnified by the fact
that for much of the nineteenth century war, famine, force migration and disease stymied the
6

national population growth. Part of the problem however, was that the rhetoric of the patriarchal
family emphasized marriage and motherhood within the domestic sphere at a time when more
and more poor women found it difficult to remain within the traditional family or find suitable
partners. In this work I posit that rising numbers of single and widowed women not only
contradicted stereotypical models of the ideal family, but posed challenges which forced local
and state officials to deal with a growing number of women who lived without men. Previous
studies of gender during this period focus on singular themes such as crime, honor or inheritance
laws as a means to analyze single or widowed women. This work focuses exclusively on the
social status of being unmarried women, be it widowed or never married, a state which I refer to

6

Doris Sommer, Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993), 92.
3

7

as “singleness.” I use this term because I wish to suggest that there was a growing number of
poor women throughout the nineteenth century who did not contract legal marriage and many
who lived apart from male authority, or “unattached” from men. This signaled a major shift for
women from previous periods. Such an approach allowed me to give greater depth of analysis to
the lives of unattached women to determine how they navigated the dangers and opportunities
that the tumultuous circumstances of nineteenth-century Mexico presented them. At the same
time it allowed me to better understand how Conservative ideals of family and Liberal ideals of
individualism in relation to the family both took a dim view of unattached women. In this way,
stories like those of Dominga and Prejedis are emblematic of a much larger conflict over family
and appropriate gender roles in nineteenth-century Mexico.
Dominga’s story, a middle aged widow and her young single sister, is more than a story
about rapto. It reveals aspects of a common narrative about migration, widowhood, singleness,
working class life, danger, sexuality, urbanization as well as women’s individual and family
honor. These were themes that affected many unattached urban women in nineteenth-century
Mexico. The González sisters and Lucio shared a similar rural-urban migratory experience that
many nineteenth-century tapatíos, individuals from or of Guadalajara, faced which was the result
of economic change and urban growth. The participants in Dominga’s testimony all haled from
the nearby village of Tlajomulco, a small mestizo pueblo approximately thirty kilometers south
of the city, and their shared origins brought them together in Guadalajara. Both sisters, without
husbands, had likely migrated to urban Guadalajara out of necessity. While we do not know the
7

At the time there were numerous ways to identify an unmarried woman in official documents
including single, alone or “free from marriage.” Widows, although women who were once
married, are categorized with a group I refer to as unattached, as they were frequently part of the
growing population of women who lived outside of patriarchal authority. For more on status, see
Chapter 3.
4

sisters’ occupations their residence was in district seven, a poor borough of the city, and their
8

friendship with Lucio, a brick-maker, is an indication of their working class status. The sisters
also depended on each other, migrated together, lived together, and helped each other maneuver
daily life in the city. In Guadalajara Dominga became the head of the household in the absence
of their father, taking her responsibilities for protecting her sister’s honor seriously. It was she
who brought the trial against Lucio to court to preserve the patriarchal honor of her family
against the wishes of her sister. Despite Lucio’s previous run-ins with the law and his status as a
married man, it was Prejedis’ honor, as a young single woman, that came under scrutiny in a
Guadalajara courtroom. She and her family had the most to lose from her romantic encounter
with Lucio, and it is likely the reason Dominga so adamantly insisted on her sister’s honorable
reputation. Prejedis challenged her sister’s authority to do so, however, observing that she no
longer lived with her sister. Although the charges did not end in a conviction and created tension
between the two sisters, the testimony reveals how these two “independent” women navigated
changing circumstances and lines of authority.
Autonomous women, like Dominga and Prejedis who lived outside of the vigilance of a
male patriarch, were a vibrant part of the public urban landscape. A growing population of poor
urban single and widowed women hocked their wares, commuted to work in city factories, did
errands, washed laundry in public fountains and rivers, and ran businesses outside their homes
and in city streets and plazas. For these reasons, widowed and single women were much more
visible in public and the historical record than their married counterparts. In nineteenth-century
Guadalajara, they were six times more likely than married women to end up as defendants in
8

In court testimony the sisters reside in Cuartel 7 in small one-room efficiencies. The district is
described by Claudia Rivas Jiménez as a growing urban neighborhood of lower class craftsmen
by 1888, see “Defense of Craft: Guadalajara’s Artisans in the Era of Economic Liberalism, 18421907” (PhD Dissertation, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 2008), 153.
5

courtrooms. They made up the majority of females who were inmates in prison, beggars on the
street, and residents of state-run nursing homes. In addition, as single and widowed mothers their
children were over represented in orphanages and state-run schools.

9

Although the reformers

who preached that a strong patriarch in the home maintained order in society at the microlevel,
my work demonstrates that the patriarchal dialogue was pervasive outside of the home. In city
courts, newspapers, censuses, jails, hospitals, schools and behind the walls of the city poor
house, judges, lawyers, journalists, doctors, reformers, writers and clergy sought to re-create a
sense of patriarchal control over unattached women.
This is a study of those unmarried and widowed women and the institutions they came
into contact with. Through my analysis of a wide variety of sources I uncover a public discourse,
a set of ideas infused in official language, practices, attitudes and behaviors, that attempted to
marginalize unmarried and widowed women as dishonorable, immoral, dangerous, impoverished
and in need of reform and protection. In this way, my approach employs a Foucauldian
methodology of history, embracing the relationship between public discourse and power. As
Michel Foucault explains, “in any society there are manifold relations of power which permeate,
characterize and constitute the social body, and these relations of power cannot themselves be
established, consolidated nor implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation and
functioning of a discourse.”

10

The dialogue that took place in Guadalajara, often by well-to-do

men in positions of power such as lawmakers, preists, judges, lawyers, police and reformers,
9

For working women see Chapter 3; For women in the poorhouse, see Chapter 5; Archivo
Histórico de Jalisco, Libros de Penitenciaria, “Album de sentenciados: Departamento de
Mujeres, 1868-1905. According to documents 53% were single,14% widowed, 34% married, and
14% were unknown or did not not provide marital status. Overall, the total number of girls
detained were 646 women between these years.
10
Michel Foucault, “Two Lectures,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other
Writings by Michel Foucault (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 93.
6

sought to structure women’s daily life and played a significant role in historical change. While
my research emphasizes the ways in which the state encroached on women’s lives, it also
suggests that the existence of great numbers of unattached women influenced the politics of
nineteenth-century Mexico by pushing the boundaries of the ideal family.

11

Table 1.1
Adult Marital Status by Sex, Guadalajara, 1821-1895
1821
1824
1838
1842
Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female

1895
Male Female

Single

2102
37%

3535
63%

826
34%

1601
65%

339
43%

440
56%

1465
41%

2112
59%

12665
47%

14213
53%

Married

5896
50%

5886
50%

2230
50%

2244
50%

1250
51%

1185
48%

3156
51%

3056
49%

11837
50%

11996
50%

Widowed

454
15%

2572
85%

222
16%

1159
83%

66
14%

390
85%

329
16%

1716
83%

2371
24%

7348
76%

Singleness in Latin America
Others have noted the phenomenon of single and widowed women and their children as a
common feature of nineteenth-century Latin America.

12

Scholarship on the subject links social

and political changes to a changing economic system which greatly impacted women in
11

Each column represents the rate of adult women compared to men that were single, married or
widowed for the years listed. The most complete years are those for 1821 and 1895. 1824, 1838
and 1842 are used for ratio comparison as the data collected for those years is a sample and does
not include all city districts. Sources for 1821-1850 were taken from Censuses of Guadalajara,
1821-1822, CD-ROM Database (Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University, 2006); For 1895, see
Archivo Histórico de Jalisco (AHJ), Mapoteca, “Computo General del Censo,” Oficio del
Concentración del Censo (Guadalajara, 1895).
12
Nara Milanich, “Whither Family History? A Road Map from Latin America,” American
Historical Review (April 2007), 451-2.
7

particular. In the early nineteenth century, labor demands on women shifted from subsistencebased agricultural production to domestic and eventually industrial manufacture. Many scholars
attribute increases in rural-urban migration to this shift. In parts of Mexico the transition to
industrial manufacture created “cities of women” made up primarily of widows and young single
women working in the growing textile industry.

13

High proportions of women living without

men in cities across Mexico were also the result of years of war, leaving many women of all ages
widowed and reducing the numbers of potential marriage partners. Like Guadalajara, in many
nineteenth-century Mexican cities females headed more and more households. Widows headed
up to 85% all female-headed households in Mexico City.

14

Mexico City also boasted a higher

proportion of single and widowed women than men in the nineteenth century.

15

Such findings

demonstrate that despite the rhetoric of powerful urban actors who sought to promote the model
of a male headed household, many single women could not achieve this status even if they were
desirous of doing so. The reality was that female headed households were a much more common
phenomenon in nineteenth-century Latin America. Recent scholarship finds that the Latin
13

For Mexico see Carmen Ramos Escandón, Industrialización, género y trabajo femenino en el
sector textile mexicano: El obraje, la fábrica, y la compañía industrial (Mexico City: CIESAS,
2004); This shift occurred in other parts of Latin America, see Elizabeth Kuznesof, “The Role of
the Female-Headed Household in Brazilian Modernization: Sao Paulo 1765 to 1836,” Journal of
Social History 13, no. 4 (1980): 598; Elizabeth Kuznesof, “Household Composition and
Headship as Related to Changes in Mode of Production: Sao Paulo 1765 to 1836,” Comparative
Studies in Society and History 22, no. 1 (1980): 78-108; For a discussion of single and widowed
women and industrial manufacturing see Guy Thomson, “Cotton Textile Industry in Puebla
during the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” in Jacbosen, Nils and Hans Jurgen Puhle
Stages, The Economies of Mexico and Peru During the Late Colonial Period (Berlin: Collouium
Berlag, 1986).
14
Elizabeth Kuznesof, “Gender Ideology, Race, and Female-Headed Households in Urban
México, 1750-1850,” in State and Society in Spanish America During the Age of Revolution,
Edited by Victor Uribe-Uran, 149-169 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2001), 161.
15
Marie Eileen Francois, A Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and
Governance in Mexico City, 1750-1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 156-57.
8

American family had higher rates of “non-marriage,” illegitimacy and female household
headship than formerly imagined. This data is evidence of the “contentious co-existence”
between female singleness within the Latin American family and the ideal of a male-headed
household.

16

Patterns in urban Guadalajara mimic the difficulties that state leaders had in reconciling a
reliance on the patriarchal family with the urban realities of large populations of single and
widowed women living outside of male authority. Historiography on unattached women in Latin
America explains the commonly held stereotypes that existed regarding single and widowed
women in the past. In colonial Mexican society there was an “overall resentment of female
loners,” especially widows and single women who did not submit to a male patriarch and
maneuvered independently within society.

17

Similarly, in times of political instability the

existence of unprotected women, such as widows and single women who lived outside of a
patriarchal family, created concern within an already unstable environment.

18

While the stigma

of being “dangerous loners” often befell single men as well as women, tensions over their
presence in society can be traced to political motivations.

19

In the chaos that followed

Independence new discourses emerged that tied nation, family and state together. In large
measure unmarried women and poor working women threatened national growth and plans to
16
17

Milanich,“Whither Family History,” 451-2.

Steve Stern, The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men and Power in Late Colonial México
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 60.
18
Rebecca Earle noted heightened concern over single and widowed women’s honor in war torn
Independence-era Colombia. See Rebecca Earle, “Rape and the Anxious Republic” in Hidden
Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America (Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, 2000).
19
Peter Beattie, “Measures of Manhood: Honor, “Enlisted Army Service, and Slavery’s Decline
in Brazil, 1850-90,” in Changing Men and Masculinities in Latin America (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2003), 241; Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 139.
9

make a strong family the foundation of a strong nation. High proportions of spinsters in Mexican
society went against expectations that “women were born to be wives and mothers,” in order to
“nurture future generations” of young citizens.

20

While there is considerable debate over how powerful the Mexican state really was in the
nineteenth century, there is little doubt that liberalism influenced state policy and ideology.

21

The following chapter chronicles the ways in which political theory was put into action between
1821 and 1910.

22

The chapter demonstrates the importance of the nineteenth century, as drastic

changes in the direction of Mexico’s federal government affected single and widowed women
through various legal, economic and social reforms. The section also provides a more detailed
history of Guadalajara, addressing specific factors that led to its emergence as a major urban
industrial center which increased the rate of single, unmarried and widowed women living there.
In chapter three I demonstrate the value that national leaders placed on marriage and
reproduction in legal and political contexts that stigmatized single women and widows, as an
emerging Liberal rhetoric emphasized an ideal monogamous, nuclear, and legally married

20

Ibid; Carmen Ramos Escandón, “The Social Construction of Wife and Mother: Women in
Porfirian Mexico, 1880-1917,” in Gender, Kinship, Power: A Comparitive and Interdisciplinary
History, edited by Mary Jo Maynes, Ann Waltner, Birgitte Soland, and Ulrike Strasser (London:
Routledge, 1996), 276.
21
Silvia Arrom suggests that many works have overestimated the actual authority of the
Mexican state in the nineteenth-century. See Silvia Arrom, Containing the Poor: The Mexico
City Poor House, 1774-1871 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 285.
22
Tenets of classical liberal theory which took effect in Mexico emphasized democracy, the
separation of church and state, private property, free trade, and capitalist development. See
Charles A. Hale, Mexican Liberalism in the Age of Mora, 1821-1853 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1968); Ramos Escandón, “The Social Construction,” 275.
10

family.

23

It firmly establishes that the study of unattached women during the transitional period

of 1821 to 1910 is particularly significant because of the influence that liberalism had not only
on Mexican society and culture, but in the propping up of legal marriage and motherhood as the
solution to instability.

24

For this reason, alarming rates of singleness and non-marriage among

Mexican women became one of many new urban social “problems” to be dealt with by city
officials and moral reformers.

25

Chapter four explores the ways in which single women who lived outside the supervision of
a male patriarch became a nineteenth-century urban “problem.” The growing presence in the
public sphere of poor, single and unmarried working women stirred panic in a society focused on
marriage and motherhood. As women who lived and worked outside of the protection of
patriarchy, their honor came under scrutiny by city officials who grew anxious over spikes in
prostitution, crime, disease, and poverty. New reforms targeted particular elements of
Guadalajara’s poor population. Among those would be the numerous urban working women,
petty criminals, prostitutes, and single and widowed mothers believed to be in need of
23

Carmen Ramos Escandón argues that in both ideological and legal terms state leaders sought
to strengthen the role of the family from the late colonial period into the twentieth century (17901911) see Ramos Escandón “The Social Construction,” 278.
24
Numerous other works emphasize the transition from colony to nation as pivotal in the history
of Latin America, see Sarah C. Chambers, From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender, and
Politics in Arequipa, Peru, 1780-1854 (Pennsylvania State UP, 1999); Brooke Larson, Trials of
Nation Making: Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in the Andes, 1810-1910 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004); For Mexico, see John Tutino, From Insurrection to
Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750-1940 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1986); Chassen de López, Francie R. From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca
the View from the South, Mexico 1867–1911 (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press,
2004); Thomas Benjamin and William McNellie, eds. Other Mexicos: Essays on Regional
Mexican History, 1876-1911 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984).
25
Francisco Bulnes, La verdad acerca de la revolución Mexicana (New York, 1916), 302;
Robert Buffington, Criminal and Citizen in Modern Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 2000), 25.
11

punishment, protection and reform by a paternalistic state. The subsequent chapters, five and six,
explore changing approaches throughout the nineteenth century designed to eliminate poverty.
Such plans often targeted the poor and their way of life for reform through a paternalistic rhetoric
that was steeped in race, class and gender biases. It was a discourse that would filter through city
courts, jails and the Casa de Caridad and impact the large population of single, unmarried and
widowed women it came into contact with.
This work firmly positions itself within recent scholarship that identifies two strands of
debate surrounding whether or not the impact of liberal change was positive for women. The
seminal works on women in Mexico written by Silvia Arrom imply that liberal reforms, because
of their emphasis on the individual decreased patriarchal control over women.

26

On the other

hand, Elizabeth Dore suggests in fact, “state policies had more negative than positive
consequences for gender equality,” and calls on scholars to reassess women’s lives in the long
nineteenth century.

27

I argue that when examined through the lens of single and widowed

women, a growing discourse emerged in the nineteenth century to protect the patriarchal
institution of marriage and marginalize those who lived outside of it. This is not to suggest that
marriage and patriarchy were unimportant in the colonial period, but they took on heightened
significance in the chaotic years following Mexican Independence. At the same time, urban
industrial growth brought rural women into Guadalajara increased rates of non-marriage by
26

Silvia M. Arrom, “Cambios en la condición juridical de la mujer Méxicana en el siglo XIX,”
in Memoria del II Congreso de Historía del Derecho Méxicano, ed. José Luis Soberanis
Fernandez (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1980), 493-518; Silvia
Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 1790-1857 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985);
Silvia Arrom, “Changes in Mexican Family Law in the Nineteenth Century: The Civil Codes of
1870 and 1884,” Journal of Family History 10, no. 3 (1985): 305-17.
27
Elizabeth Dore, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Gender and the State in the Long
Nineteenth Century,” Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux, eds. in Hidden Histories of Gender
and the State in Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 5.
12

skewing an already imbalanced sex ratio and diminishing women’s marriage options. Urban
living also forced women into low paying and demanding work that often left them vulnerable to
attacks on their personal honor and added to new social problems such as child abandonment,
infanticide, criminality, prostitution and poverty. This is not to suggest that women did not learn
how to re-appropriate the rhetoric that conspired against them, or carve out opportunities for
personal and economic independence. Admittedly, life for poor and unattached women did not
become easier throughout the long nineteenth century despite a changing liberal political climate.
Ideologically however, I suggest that as a case study an examination of Guadalajara’s unattached
women offers a unique perspective from which to re-examine the process of nation building
through a gendered lens.

13

CHAPTER TWO
GUADALAJARA IN THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY

This chapter examines the political foundations of nineteenth-century Guadalajara in
order to understand why the time period of 1821 to 1910 is central to understanding a new
discourse regarding female singleness. It was a discourse heavily influenced by nineteenthcentury classical Liberalism, and resulted in the growth and development of the city into one of
28

the most important in Mexico.

I argue that the roots of liberalism extend from the late

eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, a period often referred to as the long nineteenth
century.

29

Guadalajara, located in the western state of Jalisco over six hundred kilometers from

the nation’s capital of Mexico City, was one of the most economically and politically important
in the nation.

30

It was often at the local level, in Guadalajara’s streets, plazas, courtrooms, jails,

hospitals, churches and other social institutions where the politics of the age touched the lives of
single and widowed women. For example, it was Liberal economic and political reforms that

28

In this chapter I use the term Liberalism to reference the nineteenth-century political
philosophy. Although at the the time it inspired both liberal and conservative wings, it should not
be confused with contemporary definitions of “liberal.”
29
Numerous historians make note of this period, as well as many gender historians. The idea is
that the transition from a colony to a nation was a process that evolved over time, often
borrowing from previous eras. Elizabeth Dore, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Gender and
the State in the Long Nineteenth Century,” Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux, eds. in
Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press,
2000).
30
Lilia Oliver Sánchez, “Intensidad de la crisis demográficas en las ciudades de México y
Guadalajara, 1800-1850,” Takwá 8, (Fall 2005), 23; Torcuato Di Tella, National Popular
Politics in Early Independent Mexico, 1820-1847 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1996), 138-9; Brian Connaughton Hanley, Clerical Ideology in a Revolutionary Age: The
Guadalajara Church and the Idea of the Mexican Nation (1788-1853) (Calgary: University of
Calgary Press, 2003), 17.
14

displaced rural people and spurred a massive migration of poor women to urban centers in search
of work in places like Guadalajara. It was here among members of the church clergy, moral
reformers, writers and municipal and state officials that Liberal ideas motivated a discourse on
marriage and family that was hostile toward many of these women and suspicious of the growing
presence of poor, unattached, working women in places like Guadalajara. New ideas inspired by
Liberal philosophy led many nineteenth-century city planners and social reformers in the city to
turn their attention toward the poor, often blaming them for new urban social problems like
crime, disease, prostitution and immorality. Unmarried women became a focal point for
modernization projects in Guadalajara, as judicial, correctional and welfare institutions promoted
patriarchy and espoused a rhetoric of reform and protection.

31

In this study I argue that the seeds of such initiatives, which most studies associate with the
Porfiriato (1876-1910), were planted much earlier in the tumultuous years that proceeded
Mexico’s Independence in 1821. From 1821 to 1910 Mexico and its states experienced a period
of great transition as the national government evolved from a colonial vestige of Spain into an
independent and centrally governed nation. Most histories divide this period into two distinct
eras: the chaotic and tumultuous years after Independence from 1821 to 1876, and the more
orderly time of the Porfiriato from 1876 to 1910. Most scholars highlight the obvious political
markers of Mexico’s Independence wars (1821), the War of Reform (1858-1861), the French
occupation (1861-1867) and the return of Benito Juarez to power by 1867.

31

32

Much of the

These themes serve as the basis for the rest of the dissertation and are discussed in greater
detail in chapter 4, 5 and 6.
32
Examples of this periodization are numerous. See Charles A. Hale, Mexican Liberalism in the
Age of Mora, 1821-1853 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968). More recent works are
numerous, see Timothy Anna, The Forging of Mexico, 1821-1835 (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska, 1998); Christon Archer, The Wars of Independence in Spanish America (Wilmington:
15

scholarship for the early Independence period focuses on political violence and instability. The
second period coincides with the presidency of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1910), often referred to as
the Porfiriato, and includes a much more diverse body of political, social and cultural
scholarship.

33

I argue that it is important to view the period (1821-1910) as a whole to best

understand how Liberal political ideas evolved and affected women, rather than to view it as
separate eras with disparate political influences.

34

My work paints a broader picture of female

singleness by examining both the early period of post-Independence in 1821 and the time leading
up to the Mexican Revolution by 1910. In doing so I argue that the two periods are intrinsically
linked by Liberal political theories which evolved into various social, cultural and economic

Scholarly Resources, 2000); D.A. Brading, The First America: Spanish Monarchy, Creole
Patriots, and the Liberal State 1492-1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991);
Alicia Hernández Chavez, La tradicion republicana del buen gobierno (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993); Michael Costeloe, The Central Republic in Mexico,1835-1846:
Hombres de Bien in the Age of Santa Ana ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993);
William Fowler, Mexico in the Age of Proposals, 1821-1853 (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press,
1998); Peter Guardino, Peasants, Politics, and the Formation of Mexico’s National State:
Guerrero, 1800-185 ( Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); For the second period see,
Charles A. Hale, The Transformation of Liberalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexico,18671910 (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1989); John Tutino, From Insurrection to
Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750-1949 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1986); Eric Van Young, The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and
the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810-1821 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001);
Jaime E Rodríguez, ed. Mexico in the Age of Democratic Revolutions, 1750-1850 (Boulder:
Lynne Rienner Press, 1994).
33
The period of the Porfiriato is even more numerous, a general overview is Charles Hale, The
Transformation of Liberalism.
34
It is not my intention to suggest that liberalism was a coherent ideology. It had multiple
strands of influence throughout the period. However, while liberalism cannot neatly define
nineteenth-century Mexican institutions or politics, it may best explain the political, ideological,
and institutional changes taking place in the nineteenth-century that affected unattached women.
For a broad definition of Liberalism see James Dunkerley, Studies in the Formation of the
Nation-State in Latin America (London: Institution of Latin American Studies, 2002), 4;
Norberto Bobbio, Liberalism and Democracy, trans. Martin Ryle and Kate Soper (London:
th
Verso, 1990). A classic study of liberalism in early 19 century Mexico is Charles Hale,
Mexican Liberalism in the Age of Mora, 1821-1853 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).
16

reform measures as the century progressed. These reforms directly impacted the growth of
Guadalajara and increased female singleness, non-marriage and widowhood. My approach
reveals the origins and longevity of a dialogue that would increasingly marginalize and attempt
to reform poor, unmarried and unattached women.

Colonial Guadalajara, 1529-1821
The city of Guadalajara mirrored the process of political transition and incipient
industrial growth that attracted unattached women to urban centers across Latin America. While
most studies on women in México and other Latin American countries have been largely capitalcentric, this work draws more comparative conclusions about women’s lives and roles in
35

México.

By the late colonial period Guadalajara emerged as an essential commercial,

financial, political, and cultural center.

36

The city experienced a nearly three hundred percent

rate of growth in population between 1821 and 1910. The city’s economic and social
opportunities attracted unmarried and widowed women.

37

Eighteenth century travelers to the

city commented that residents thought of their city as the “la segunda de México,” or second
only to Mexico City.

38

By this time too, its political influence extended north to the provincias

internas and to the intendancies of Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí. Economically it was the

35

María Teresa Fernández Aceves calls attention to this as a problem with ,“Imagined
Communities: Women’s History and the History of Gender in Mexico.” Journal of Women’s
History 19, no. 1, (2007).
36
th
Eric Van Young, Hacienda and Market: 18 Century Mexico (Berkeley, University of
California Press, 1981), 23.
37
See Table 2.1
38

Juan B. Iguiniz, ed., Guadalajara a través de los tiempos. Relatos y descripciones de viajeros
y escritoires desde el siglo XVI hasta nuestros días, 2 vols (Guadalajara, 1950), 124.
17

second or third largest contributor of national wealth after Mexico City and Puebla.

39

Its

significance as an important city in the history of Mexico would expand into the nineteenth
century.
40

Table 2.1
Population of Guadalajara, 1629-1910
Year
Population
1629
600
1651
5,000
1738
12,000
1777
22,163
1792
24,249
1821
38,087
1851
51,185
1858
75,000
1895
82,655
1900
101,208
1910
119,468

The importance of the region can be traced back to the colonial era. The area of western
Mexico all the way up the Pacific coast to present day Sinaloa was the target of conquest by
Nuño de Guzmán in 1529. Naming the region Nueva Galicia after his native province of Spain,
Guzmán established several towns and gave out encomiendas.

41

It was here that the city today

known as Guadalajara was founded in 1530, in what was then the indigenous town of
Nochistlán. In 1541 it relocated to its present location in the Valley of Atemajac, 675 kilometers
39
40

Di Tella, National Popular Politics, 139.

Printed data on the population of Guadalajara varies and most data is based on estimates. The
table presented here is accumulated from the following sources; For the years 1600, 1858, 1900
and 1910 see Luis Páez Brotchie’s prologue in Maríano Bárcena, Descripción de Guadalajara
en 1880. (Reprint ITG, Guadalajara, 1954), xxxv; For all other years see Oliver Sánchez,
“Intensidad de la crisis demográficas,” 23.
41
Jean Pierre Berthe, “Introdución a la historia de Guadalajara y su region,” in Lecturas
históricas sobre Jalisco antes de la Independencia (1976), 69.
18

northeast of Mexico City. By 1560, Guadalajara became the capital of Nueva Galicia. Becoming
a capital city was fundamental to Guadalajara’s expansion. That same year the crown established
an audiencia (royal court) making it the second most important town in New Spain, second only
to the viceregal capital of Mexico City. As an audiencia, it functioned as a legal and
administrative body of the Spanish crown in order to keep the colonies connected to Spain.
Mexico City was the first and only other Mexican audiencia. In addition, the Catholic Church
established a bishopric in Guadalajara which made it both a religious and political center. Both
the presence of the audiencia and the bishop gave the town a considerable territory for which it
wielded great political, legal and administrative power. Such authority was critical to its future
development.

42

From its inception the organization of the city followed a similar pattern to Spain, in which
streets ran in a traditional grid pattern around the central plaza.

43

The plaza was home to the

city’s ecclesiastic and civil authorities, showcased by its main buildings: the cathedral, city
council and court. Around the plaza resided the houses of important families, those of the
conquistadors, bureaucratic employees, encomenderos, and later elite hacendados. Urban poor
and working class residents congregated on the periphery. In this way the spatial layout of the

42

From Nochistlán Guadalajara was moved in 1533 to Tonalá. Shortly after in 1535, it moved
to Tlacotán. From Tlacotán it was moved to its present location; See Luis Pérez Verdía, Historia
particular del estado de Jalisco, 2ª ed., (Guadalajara, Imprenta Gráfica, 1951), 125; Carmen
Castañeda, La educación en Guadalajara durante la colonia, 1552-1821, México, El Colegio de
Jalisco, El Colegio de México, 1984, p. 33; It took several years for Guadalajara to become the
eventual capital of Nueva Galícia and there was some back and forth between the city and
Compostela for the honor. See José Cornejo Franco, “Guadalajara colonial”, en Obras completas
(Guadalajara: UNED, 1985), 43.
43
See Figure 2.1
19

city was intended to not only organize space, but support longstanding and new social
hierarchies.

44

Figure 2.1 City Plan of Guadalajara, 1842

44

45

Eduardo López Moreno, La cuadrícula en el desarollo de la ciudad hispanoamericana:
Guadalajara, Mexico (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 1992), 19.
45
Reprinted in Moreno, La cuadrícula, 143.
20

In its early years Guadalajara’s merchants made the city a trading hub for the northern
mining camps in Zacatecas, which depended on Nueva Galicía’s agricultural goods. Due to
problems with water and poor soil quality, agriculture in Guadalajara was primarily based on
raising livestock.

46

Eventually the region became involved in a long distance and lucrative trade

in cattle, mules, and horses. Throughout the colonial period the livestock economy would be the
region’s mainstay.

47

It would be cattle ranching that would come to define Jalisco both

ethnically and culturally. Animal husbandry was less familiar than cultivating crops among the
indigenous populations of Mexico, and therefore Jalisco’s ranching culture attracted a more
mestizo population, or those of mixed race.

48

This helps to explain the racial makeup of

Guadalajara and Jalisco. Consequently, cattle ranching would also give rise to the iconic charro,
or cowboy culture, still celebrated today as unique to the region and adopted as a national
symbol of Mexican identity. At its core, the charro mystique embraces an intense attachment to
regional homeland, or patria chica; a passion for horses, weapons and risk-taking; love for
freedom; and a fierce, aggressive and proud individualism.

46

49

For this reason, the region gained a

Helene Riviere D’Arc, “Las fases del crecimiento y del desarollo de Guadalajara y de su
region durante la colonizacion,” in José María Muria, ed., Lecturas Historicas de Jalisco Antes
de la Indpendencia, Tomo II (Guadalajara: Unidad Editorial, 1982), 29-46.
47
Ramón María Serrera, Guadalajara ganadera. Estudio regional novohispano, 1760-1805
(Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos, 1977), 75-76.
48
The work of Chevalier argues that the attraction to ranching was connected to the use of
horses to perform many duties. Horses granted indviduals with status and a sense of freedom and
allowed many of the castas to move up in status during the colonial period. See Francois
Chevalier, Land and Society in Colonial Mexico: The Great Hacienda (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1963), 112.
49
Jean Meyer, “Perspectivas de análisis sociohistórico de la influencia de Guadalajara sobre su
región” in Regiones y ciudades en América Latina (México: SEP), 157-158.
21

reputation and association with banditry and rural uprisings often provocation larger rebellions.
In particular, the region is most known for those that spurred Independence beginning in 1810.

50

For the most part, Guadalajara remained a rural agricultural and artisan center up until the
eighteenth century. Eventually, the city diversified its economic base as the western region’s
mercantile, financial, bureaucratic, and cultural center thanks in part to the Bourbon reforms.

51

The Bourbon reforms were a series of economic and social reforms that attempted to modernize
Spain and its colonies under the reign of Charles III (1759-1788). Ultimately the crown hoped to
concentrate its wealth through a series of economic and social reforms that would reassert royal
domination over colonial resources by gaining greater control over trade and weakening wealthy
sectors like the Catholic Church.

52

In the Jalisco region these new measures stimulated the

city’s early commercial expansion, urban development and population growth. Prior to 1759 all
commercial transactions in Mexico processed through the eastern port of Veracruz on the Gulf of
Mexico or the Pacific port of Acapulco. Due to Spanish mercantilist trade policies which
fostered monopolization, until 1768 Mexico City merchants handled most trade leaving the
country, which prioritized the early growth and development of Mexico City over Guadalajara.
Bourbon trade reforms opened up the port of San Blas to local Guadalajara markets and trade
with Mexico City and California in 1768.

53

Between 1791 and 1804 the state constructed

several bridges connecting Guadalajara to nearby towns of La Laja, Zapotlanejo, Calderón, and
50

Some of the most notable works on rural violence and uprisings are Tutino, From Insurrection
to Revolution; Van Young, The Other Rebellion.
51
Peter J. Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico (1971), 17-19; 61; Van
Young, Hacienda and Market, 14.
52
For more on their impact in Mexico see David Brading, Church and State in Bourbon Mexico:
The Diocese of Michoacan 1749-1810 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
53
Águeda Jiménez Pelayo, Jaime Olveda and Beatriz Núñez Miranda, El Crecimiento Urbano
de Guadalajara, (Zapopan: El Colegio de Jalisco, 1995), 107-109.
22

San Juan de los Lagos. Around the same time state road projects cleared direct routes to Colíma,
Tepíc and San Blás.

54

This opened up Guadalajara economically to other parts of the state and

solidified its power over the region, but it also opened up Guadalajara to rural in-migration.

55

The result of these economic changes shifted Jalisco’s economy away from subsistence
toward commercial agriculture on elite owned haciendas, or rural estates. By this time trade
increased the city’s merchant class and stimulated greater commercial growth. The new class of
prosperous merchants combined forces with old elite families through intermarriage and credit
relations to control the largest and richest haciendas of central Jalisco that produced for the urban
markets.

56

The rise of these haciendas forced neighboring rural villages into an expanding

urban economic and social network by the early nineteenth century, and began the earliest waves
of rural to urban migration. Indeed, the city’s population increased by almost fifty percent in
1823.

57

This also fostered the development of textile manufactures. Mainly focused on cotton,
Guadalajara and other cities such as Mexico City, Puebla, Veracruz, Tlaxcala, and Querétero
capitalized on this industrial growth from the late 1700s to 1821. By the late eighteenth century
there existed a small scale industry in Guadalajara. Textile factories employed predominantly
women because they could be paid less than men. Single and widowed women comprised a
54
55
56

Ibid.,108.
Ibid.,129.

William Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred: Preists and Parishioners in Eighteenth Century
Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 39.
57
The population of the city went from 22,163 inhabitants in 1777 to 46,804 by 1823. See Luis
Páez Brotchie’s prologue in Descripción de Guadalajara en 1880, xxxv.. See also Rodney D.
Anderson, Guadalajara a la consumación de la independencia: studio de su población según los
padrones de 1821-1822 (Guadalajara, México: Gobierno de Jalisco, Secretaría General, Unidad
Editorial, 1983), 45.
23

majority of these new textile workers. As early as the mid-eighteenth century urban textile
centers across Mexico essentially became “city of women.” In Puebla for example, the majority
of the city were widows and young single women. The process extensively tilted the sex ratio
and increased singleness, as it would by 1821 in Guadalajara. In such places women faced few
options for marriage and devoted their lives to spinning.

58

Young women in particular, between

the age of fifteen and twenty four outnumbered young single men in Guadalajara by twenty
percent in 1821. The pattern only increased with female age. At the same time, marriage rates
among men and women aged twenty five to fifty four were comparable. With few available men
to marry, those who arrived in Guadalajara single had limited choices.

59

I believe the patterns

demonstrate the existence of a large, and often young, female labor pool. In fact, studies of early
Mexican industrialization suggest that the use of female labor was so extensive that it slowed the
pace of economic progress. The widespread availability of cheap labor performed by female
hands made it unnecessary to mechanize production.

60

Ultimately many of these changes laid

the groundwork for future Liberal economic reforms.

58

Guy Thomson, “Cotton Textile Industry in Puebla during the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth
Centuries,” in Jacbosen, Nils and Hans Jurgen Puhle Stages, The Economies of Mexico and Peru
During the Late Colonial Period (Berlin: Collouium Berlag, 1986).
59
See Table 2.2.
60

Carmen Ramos Escandón, Industrialización, género y trabajo femenino en el sector textile
mexicano: El obraje, la fábrica, y la compañía industrial (Mexico City: CIESAS, 2004), 25.
24

61

Table 2.2
Marital Status According to Sex and Age, Guadalajara, 1821
Age 15 - 24
Status

Age 25 - 34

Age 35 - 44

Age 45 - 54

Age 55/over

Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women
376

715

132

330

85

196

71

148

60%

34%

66%

27%

71%

30%

70%

32%

68%

727

1654

2022

2263

1615

1230

960

534

572

205

70%

47%

53%

57%

43%

64

36

73%

26%

15

139

66

458

107

735

131

679

135

561

10%

Widowed

2146

30%

Married

1438
40%

Single

90%

13%

87%

13%

87%

16%

84%

20%

80%

The Bourbon reforms emphasized social change, believing that an orderly citizenry
contributed to economic growth. As a result, many new ideas promoted “rational reform,
education, orderliness, and empirical analysis [which] maintain[ed] that humans had the power to
change the environment and reform society.”

62

These early reforms targeted social problems

such as disease, overcrowding, crime and poverty created by the growth of urban cities and
populations in places like Mexico City and Guadalajara. They aimed to “civilize” and educate
the lower classes in order to foster economic development and establish civil obedience.
Therefore, they had a social welfare element which catered to a growing number of poor women,
many unmarried, single and widowed and some with children. It was in this period that Mexico
City opened a central orphanage (1767), poorhouse (1774), hospital (1779) and state pawn shop

61

Data for the table was compiled using the Censuses of Guadalajara, 1821-1822. CD-ROM
Database. (Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University, 2006).
62
Claudia Agostini. Monuments of Progress: Modernization and Public Health in Mexico City,
1876-1910 (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2003), 2; Silvia Arrom, Containing the Poor:
The Mexico City Poor House, 1774-1871 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000).
25

(1775).

63

Guadalajara also saw the expansion of its social welfare institutions with a hospital

(1781), soup kitchens (1784) and poorhouse (1805). All of which would continue to be run by
religious orders until the mid to late nineteenth century.

64

Many of the social transformations of

the colonial period set a precedent for reforms that would take root after 1821.

From Independence to Reform, 1821-1875
It was in the aftermath of Independence in 1821 that state, military, and even religious
leaders looked to chart a new political course for the young nation of Mexico, leading to years of
heated debate, factionalism, and political disorganization. In these years, members of emerging
liberal and conservative parties disputed the direction of the newly formed nation.

65

Divisions

arose over whether the new government would be centralist or federalist. Federalists desired
greater autonomy for states, and were generally rural in their allegiances, while Centralists
argued for a stronger Federal, or central government, and tended to be more cosmopolitan.

66

In

reality however, these divides were superficial as both “liberals” and “conservative” ideals of the

63

Arrom, Containing the Poor, 14-15; See also J. P. Viqueira Albán, ¿Relajados o reprimidos?
Diversiones públicas y vida social en la ciudad de México durante el Siglo de las luces (Mexico
City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987); Pamela Voekel, “Peeling off the Palace: Bodily
Resistance to Bourbon Reforms in Mexico City,” Journal of Historical Sociology 5, no 2 (1992).
64
For Guadalajara see, Jiménez Pelayo et al, El Crecimiento Urbano, 109-122; Jesús
Hernández Padilla, “El Hospicio Cabañas,” in Iglesias y edificios antiguos de Guadalajara
(Guadalajara: Ayuntamiento de Guadalajara, 1979), 261-2.
65
Recent works address the notion that there existed a multitude of factions making the debates
much more complex than just liberalism and conservativism. For a discussion see, William
Fowler, Mexico in the Age of Proposals, 1821-1853 (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1998),
267, 226. Donald Stevens, Origins of Instability in Early Republican Mexico (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1991); Timothy Anna, The Forging of Mexico, 1821-1835 (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska, 1998).
66
Anna, Forging of Mexico.
26

period derived from the same political roots, Liberalism.

67

Therefore the tenets of Liberalism,

while varied, pervaded Mexican politics from its earliest efforts at self-government in 1821 well
into the stable years of the Porfiriato. Ultimately Mexicans became solidly influenced by
Liberalism, evidenced by the dramatic period of Liberal reform known as La Reforma. Such
events were precipitous of the form that government and politics would take in Mexico after the
wars for Independence. New reforms that focused on greater representative government,
individual rights, secularism, anti-corporatism and capitalist economic development had a
tremendous impact on Mexican society and women. The secularization of Mexican society
limited women’s involvement in decisions about marriage, divorce, education and charity. In
addition, land and economic reforms displaced rural peasants forcing them out of their natal
villages, a majority of whom were women, to seek employment in cities. During this middle
period, political leaders laid the foundations for liberal ideas that would eventually filter into a
public discourse that propped up patriarchy and marriage.
Mexico first became a constitutional monarch under the emperor of Iturbide in 1821. In
1824 after passage of the first Constitution a Republican government replaced Iturbide,
organizing Mexico as a federal republic composed of nineteen states and four territories, with
separations of powers, executive, legislative and judicial branches. In many ways, Mexican
Independence and state formation drew inspiration from the European Enlightenment. This is
one reason why scholars frequently term the era the “long nineteenth century,” due to some of
the continuities from the late eighteenth century that followed Latin America into the nineteenth
and eventually twentieth centuries. The Mexican constitution of 1824 is one example of the
strong influence that Spain continued to have, as it borrowed heavily from the Liberal Spanish
67

Karen D. Caplan, Indigenous Citizens: Local Liberalism in Early National Oaxaca and
Yucatán (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 4.
27

charter of 1812.

68

Many events taking place in Spain had lasting impacts for Mexico (and much

of Latin America). In Mexico the demise of the Spanish monarchy in 1808 led to the creation of
a parliament, known as the Cortes. The Constitution of 1812 established a representative
government for the worldwide Spanish Nation in which all free men, regardless of race or status,
became Spaniards.

69

Other examples include the establishment of jails, hospitals and poor

houses under the Spanish that retained their original objectives decades after Independence.

70

Beginning in 1833, more “conservative” and centralist caudillo (rural political bosses) presidents
ran Mexico, such as the once liberal turned conservative Santa Anna, who served eleven
different times as president between 1833 and 1855. In Jalisco, the gubernatorial seat shifted
frequently between 1846 and 1853.

71

Liberals returned to power in 1855, passing sweeping

Liberal legislation known as “The War of Reform,” or La Reforma.

72

In 1861, foreign

intervention by the French established a constitutional monarchy under the emperor Maximillian,
temporarily halting Liberal projects. Mexican Liberals finally restored a federalist Republican
government under the leadership of Benito Juarez in 1867. Despite chaotic shifts between 1821
and 1867, Mexico’s federal government was in agreement of the fact that it would embrace the

68

Jaime Rodríguez, “The Constitution of 1824 and the Formation of the Mexican State,” in The
Origins of Mexican National Politics, 1808-1847 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1997).
69
Rodríguez O., Jaime E. The Independence of Spanish America (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), 2.
70
See Chapter 6.
71

José María Múria, Breve Historía de Jalisco. (Colegio de Mexico, México, D.F.: 1994), 9294.
72
Hale, Mexican Liberalism.
28

idea that el buen gobierno would be representative and built on Liberal republican principles.

73

Social, legal and economic reforms passed during the period are indicative of these Liberal
foundations and demonstrate the ways in which the political realm trickled down into the
everyday lives of Mexican citizens, especially women.
A central tenet of Liberalism was the secularization of society and the debates between
church and political leaders over this process frequently hinged on issues and institutions of great
concern to women, such as marriage, divorce, education and social services for the poor.
Moreover religion had a tremendous influence in Guadalajara politics. Prior to la Reforma the
Catholic Church wielded a great deal of power and influence in Mexican society. Not only was
the Church a large landholder, it also played a great role in civil society; in charge of the
registration of all births, marriages and deaths, operated an ecclesiastical court system and held a
near monopoly in education and charity.

74

The Church’s wealth, generated by the income that

came out of fees for marriages, masses, baptisms and funerals, as well as their opportunities to
profit in commerce, real estate, mining, agriculture and manufacturing led to efforts to diminish
Church power. As the second largest diocese, serving a population of over 600,000 members, the
diocese of Guadalajara was a target of reforms aimed at weakening the Church’s influence in the
financial and judicial affairs of society.

75

Traditional debates place the church in a conservative role, but many authors maintain
that the Catholic Church in Guadalajara was influx with many of the political ideas of the age,
73

Alicia Hernández Chavez, La tradicion republicana del buen gobierno (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993).
74
For more on the Church’s influence in Colonial Mexico, see Brading, Church and State;
Nancy Fariss, Crown and Clergy in Colonial Mexico, 1759-1821. (London: University of
London Press, 1968).
75
Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred.
29

and in some cases evolved with Liberalism. As early as the mid-eighteenth century many clergy
drew on ideas of rationality, reason, and individual rights in their debates with Church leadership
over the spiritual direction of churches and convents. In addition, some clergy sought to translate
these ideas into less Baroque forms of religious practice.

76

There is much evidence to suggest

that changing political and social ideologies influenced the Catholic Church in Guadalajara.
New forms of “enlightened Catholicism” rejected baroque sentiment centered on public piety
and pomp in favor of modesty, humility, self-control, and the individual conscience—casting out
vanity and formulaic rituals. Elites and many early Liberals in the city embraced these ideals.

77

Until the 1850s the Church in Jalisco attempted to position itself within Liberalism rather than
fight against it.

78

For example, the diocese of Guadalajara was neither conservative nor

reactionary in its views toward Liberalism, but combined a “providential understanding of
nationalism with Liberal concepts of good government, especially constitutionalism and liberty.”
In this way it hoped to both make the Church relevant and protect its institutions from state
intervention.

79

As evidence, members of the clergy in Guadalajara served in political office

until reforms laws prevented them from doing so.

80

76

Margaret Chowning, Rebellious Nuns: The Troubled History of a Mexican Convent, 17521863 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); See also Brading, Church and State.
77
Pamela Voekel, Alone Before God: The Religious Origins of Modernity in Mexico (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2001).
78
Brian Connaughton, “The Enemy Within: Catholics and Liberalism in Independent Mexico,
1821-1860,” in The Divine Charter: Constitutionalism and Liberalism in Nineteenth-century
Mexico, ed. Jaime E. Rodríguez O. (Langham, UK: Rowan & Littlefield, 2005), 183-202.
79
Connaughton, Clerical Ideology, 308; 16.
80

Anne Staples, “Clerics as Politicians: Church, State and Political Power in Independent
Mexico,” in Mexico in the Age of Democratic Revolutions, 1750-1850, edited by Jaime E
Rodríguez (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Press, 1994); Marta Eugenia Garćía Ugarte, Liberalismo e
30

By 1859, however, the Mexican state and Catholic Church parted ways over legal codes
that instituted civil marriage and divorce. In response the church produced extensive literature
that questioned the legitimacy of civil marriage and expressed concern for women who would
suffer a loss of honor without the protection of religiously sanctioned marriage. They argued that
without the inherent threat built into religious marriage, which could determine salvation, men
would be less likely to marry.

81

In addition to legal reform the state intended to remove the

influence of the church in matters of education. New reforms regarding mandatory education
were passed as early as 1842 in Jalisco, mandating obligatory education for boys and girls
between the age of five and twelve.

82

Although lawmakers intended to prohibit religious

interference in education, many studies concur that most of the reforms would not sustain any
real social impact until late century, and even into the twentieth in rural areas. Although state
leaders passed education reforms, primary education in Mexico would remain profoundly
hierarchical and religious throughout the nineteenth century.

83

In addition to schools, the state also took measures to weaken the role of the Catholic
Church in private charity as part of its goal to fully separate Church and state. This was an area
of great consequence to the rising numbers of single, widowed and unmarried women with

iglesia Catolica en Mexico : 1824-1855 (México, DF: Instituto Mexicano de Doctrina Social
Cristiana, 1999).
81
“Ley del Matrimonio Civil 23 de Julio de 1859,” Legislación Mexicana, vol 8, 696; For
church literature in Guadalajara see Chapter 3.
82
José María Múria, Breve Historía, 119; Obligatory education is mentioned in BPEJ, Misc.,
#73, 1“Instruccion PriMaría, informe que el Inspector general de Instruccion PriMaría del Estado
de Jalisco” by Lopez Cotilla. (Guadalajara, 1851), 20.
83
Anne Staples, “La educación como instrumento ideologíco del estado. El conservadurismo
educativo en el Mexico decimonónico,” in El conservadurismo mexicano en el siglo XIX, edited
by Will Fowler and Humberto Morales Moreno (Puebla: Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de
Pueblo, 1999).
31

children who benefitted from Church-run medical and childcare services. Previously church-run
institutions in Guadalajara such as hospitals, jails and the Casa de Caridad, which functioned as
an orphanage, school, and nursing home would now fell under state management by 1874. With
this shift also came a new agenda of “civil Liberalism” toward the benefactors of state welfare,
many of them women. State run institutions eliminated religious rituals and continued to
emphasize a need to reform and educate the poor in order to become more productive citizens in
society.

84

The authorities who issued ordinances from institutions like the city poorhouse in

Guadalajara, known as the Casa de Caridad, upheld a patriarchal perception of needing to
protect deserving single and widowed women that utilized its services.

85

Perhaps the government’s Liberal economic reforms of 1856 had the greatest impact on
women in Jalisco, as they spurred increased growth of the city and the development of even
more industries. New measures repealed ecclesiastical fueros (special dispensations which
exempted clerics from standing trial), nationalized and sold church property, limited fees for
religious sacraments, and secularized the registry of births, marriages, adoptions and deaths.

86

One school of thought argues that from 1856 to 1863 Mexico underwent a “revolution” aimed at
moving away from the Church’s more feudalistic economic, social and political institutions in
order to make room for economic developments that transformed Mexico into a more capitalist

84

Arrom, Containing the Poor; Anayanci Fregoso Centeno, “Hospicio Cabañas: la instrucción y
la caridad como productoras de representaciones de maternidad y niñez, Guadalajara, Siglo XIX”
(paper presented at the Congress of Latin American Studies Association, Montreal, Canada,
September 5-8, 2007).
85
See chapters 5 and 6.
86

Michael Meyer, William Sherman, and Susan Deeds, The Course of Mexican History. 7
Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 359-363.
32

th

society.

87

Others argue that the reforms served only to consolidate wealth in the hands of

Mexico’s elite and failed to alleviate national debts. If anything, Liberal economic reforms
fueled many of the problems that rural peasants faced over land disputes and economic
disenfranchisement in the build up to the Mexican Revolution by 1910.

88

Reforms focused on securing private property rights such as the 1856 Ley Lerdo de
Tejada, which privatized large amounts of land formerly owned by the church, and incidentally
those held collectively by rural communities, aimed to decrease both the economic and political
power of the Catholic Church in favor of a more secular state.

89

It also served to produce badly

needed revenue for the indebted young nation by requiring that a 5 percent commission be
returned to the government for each land sale, as well as increasing tax revenue for each newly
privatized property.

90

The new law inadvertently monopolized land in the hands of Mexico’s

wealthy and stripped many rural indigenous villagers of their land. As happened elsewhere, in
Guadalajara local and foreign elites took advantage of their newfound opportunity to purchase
land, buying up large parcels of previously owned Church property.

91

In one instance, the

wealthy Guadalajara merchant José Palomar purchased the entire block where the Molino de
87

Jan Bazant, Alienation of Church Wealth in Mexico: Social and Economic Aspects of the
Liberal Revolution, 1856-1875 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 287.
88
Ibid.
89

Mark Wasserman, Everyday Life and Politics in Nineteenth-century Mexico: Men, Women
and War. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), 134.
90
Barbara Tannebaum, “El poder de las fianzas y las finanzas del poder en México durante el
siglo XIX,” Siglo XIX 3, no. 5 (1988), 216.
91
Jaime Olveda, “Segunda Parte 1768-1910. La Transformación Urbana. La Modernización
Urbana,” in El crecimiento urbano de Guadalajara (Guadalajara, Mexico: El Colegio de Jalisco:
CONACYT: Ayuntamiento de Guadalajara, 1995), 155-156; Robert Knowlton, “Dealing in Real
Estate in Mid-Nineteenth-century Jalisco, The Guadalajara Region” in Liberals, the Church, and
Indian peasants : corporate lands and the challenge of reform in nineteenth-century Spanish
America , Robert Jackson, ed., (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997), 24.
33

Chocolate factory had stood, and the Frenchman Emilio Signoret purchased twenty-one houses
in a single day.

92

In the hinterlands around the city as well, those with means purchased the

large ranch estates formerly run by the Church. The impact on Jalisco’s indigenous and peasant
populations was devastating, many lost lands they had inhabited for centuries. Without access to
land for agricultural production, they faced poverty and forced migration.

93

The Ley Lerdo

became integrated into the 1857 national constitution, cementing the Liberal ideals of individual
rights, property ownership and free trade into Mexico’s economy as part of sweeping Liberal
changes that took place.

94

In Jalisco, the chain of economic events to come out of these reforms

hit rural peasants and the urban poor the hardest, expanding rural to urban migratory chains,
many of whom would be women, and widening the gap between the rich and poor.

95

Years

later, even lawmakers in Jalisco recognized the disastrous consequences and contradiction of
many laws to come out of the War of Reform, or La Reforma, which frequently served elites. In
1873, the Guadalajara lawyer Anastasio Rojas called attention to what he termed “a state of
tyranny” in Jalisco, arguing that public leaders aligned themselves with the state’s aristocracy

92

Jaime Olveda, La oligarquía de Guadalajara. De las reformas borbónicas a la reforma
liberal. (Mexico: Colegio Regiones, 1990), 316-17.
93
José María Muríá, Sumario Histórico de Jalisco (Guadalajara, Mexico: Editorial Gráfica
Nueva, 1996), 285-6.
94
Antonio Gómez Cuervo, “Memoria sobre el estado de la administración pública formada por
el ejectivo del Estado de Jalisco, 1870,” in Alda Urzúa Orozco and Gilberto Hernández Z. eds.,
Jalisco, testimonio de sus gobernantes, 1826-1989, vol 1.
95
Several scholars of Guadalajara point to the reforms as creating a more capitalistic society that
widened the gap between the rich and poor, for example see Trujillo, “Léperos,”, 207; Jiménez
Pelayo et al, El Crecimiento Urbano, 107-163.
34

and had “forgotten the cause” of “real democracy” in which they had been fighting for the past
sixty years.

96

As indigenous community members and small landholders lost access to land the
economic structure shifted even farther away from subsistence-based to market-driven
economies, and more than ever, rural peasants needed to earn money to subsist. In the process,
the city of Guadalajara began to rapidly grow in size. Rural towns around the city were wellestablished and sustained this growth into the eighteenth century, but the land reforms of the
1850s shifted the balance dramatically in favor of the haciendas, the large rural estates of
wealthy landowners, at the expense of rural peasants.

97

The loss of agricultural lands, combined

with efforts by state-leaders toward modernization and industrialization, led to waves of
migration into the city. By 1858, the city had grown by three hundred percent, making it the third
most densely populated city in Mexico, after the capital and Puebla.

98

In numerous cities across Latin America the changing economy of the countryside and
the movement toward early forms of industrial production increased rural to urban migration,
bringing more single and widowed women into cities looking for work alongside men. It was a
documented phenomenon that scholars argue took place elsewhere in Mexico such as Mexico
City and Puebla, as well as Latin America in São Paulo and Buenos Aires

99

Evidence from

96

BPEJ, Anastasio Rojas “Observaciones contra el proyecto de Ley sobre reformas a la
Constitucion del Estado. Opúsculo dedicado al pueblo y a los municipios por el C. Lic”
Miscellaneous 186, doc 5, (Guadalajara, 1873).
97
Gómez Cuervo, “Memoria,” 1-6.
98

In 1792 the city had 24, 249 residents and by 1858 the number grew to 75,000. Oliver
Sánchez, “Intensidad de la crisis demográficas,” 23; See Table 2.1 and Figures 2.1 and 2.2.
99
Several studies highlight this process as it occurred across Latin America and Mexico. For
examples see, Ramos Escandón, Industrialización, género y trabajo femenino; Elizabeth
Kuznesof, “Household Composition and Headship as Related to Changes in Mode of Production:
35

Guadalajara indicates that often more women than men migrated to cities. Likely this had to do
with the fact that rural men frequently remained in the countryside to work jobs in mines or on
haciendas, whereas common work for poor women, like domestic service and factory work
shifted to cities.

100

Single and widowed women were especially attracted to jobs in the

burgeoning textile industry in Guadalajara.

101

Although the wars for Independence destabilized

industry in Jalisco, there was a resurgence after the 1840s that attracted even greater numbers of
female workers.

102

Between 1821 and 1850, there were ten percent more women of

marriageable age than there were men in Guadalajara.

103

Therefore, many women who arrived

unmarried likely remained so given the limited pool of potential male suitors.
Some might question whether or not the increase in adult female singleness and
widowhood in Guadalajara was a result of the wars for Independence. It is true that in these years
violence plagued Mexico and resulted in abnormally high mortality rates among young men. By
1821 eleven years of war ended as Mexico celebrated its victory over Spain for national
independence. However, in Jalisco most fighting occurred in the countryside and by 1816 had

Sao Paulo 1765 to 1836,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22, no. 1 (1980): 78-108;
Szuchman, Mark D. “Household Structure and Political Crisis: Buenos Aires, 1810-1860.”
LARR, Volume 21 (no. 3) 1986, 87; Moya, José. Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in
Buenos Aires, 1850-1930 (University of California Press, 1998).
100
For Mexico see Wasserman, Everyday Life and Politics, 23-33; Elizabeth Kuznesof found
similar patterns for Brazil, see “The Role of the Female-Headed Household in Brazilian
Modernization: São Paulo, 1765-1836,” Journal of Social History 13, no. 4 (1980), 598
101
Guy Thomson, “Cotton Textile Industry.”
102

Overall this allowed the city of Guadalajara greater integration into the regional economic
system, which relied upon it as a market for its rural agricultural goods and a source of credit and
capital; See Ramos Escandón, Industrialización, género y trabajo femenino, 71; 162; Muría,
Breve Historía, 100-109; Van Young, Hacienda and Market, 1-6.
103
See Table 2.4; For a discussion of female work during this period see Chapter 4.
36

come to a halt in the region all together.

104

While this might account for larger numbers of

single and widowed women migrating into the city, it does not address the consistent presence of
single and widowed women there after 1821.

105

Although there was a slight increase in young

widows in 1813, the overall percentages of widowed and single women steadily increased across
the nineteenth century.

106

In Mexico and other parts of Latin America scholars have

consistently argued that a growing demand for female labor in urban centers maintained the
unequal sex ratio. My research confirms that this was true for Guadalajara’s female migrants.
While there appears to have been a consistently increased number of single and widowed women
of all ages, the sex ratio narrowed throughout the decades.

107

Other studies of Guadalajara

suggest higher mobility rates among the rural poor in the less turbulent 1840s than in 1821.
Therefore, rural women did not come because of war, but rather as a part of a consistent cycle of
migration connected to economic survival.

104
105
106
107
108

108

For insurgency in Guadalajara see Van Young, The Other Rebellion, 9.
See Chapter 1, Table 1.1.
See Table 2.3.
See Table 2.4.

Rodney Anderson and Tamara Spike, “Archival Report: Making History Count, The
Guadalajara Census Project, 1790-1930,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 87, no 2. (May
2007) 337.
37

109

Year
1811
1813
1821
1824
1838
1842

Table 2.3
Average Age of Female Widows in Guadalajara by Year
Age 11 - 25 Age 26 - 35 Age 36 - 45 Age 46 - 55 Age 56 - 65
%
%
%
%
%
2.9
15.8
28.4
41.7
38.5
3.8
22.2
36.2
51.3
53.6
3.5
13.3
32
48.5
60
4.4
19.3
34.8
44.4
75
2.5
13.1
31.3
57.1
71.4
4.3
17.2
38.2
49.4
63.3

65/over
%
20.6
41.2
35.6
41.7
50
61.7

110

Table 2.4
Ratio of Men to Women by Year in Guadalajara, 1811-1895
Male
Female
Year
N
%
N
%
1811
517
40.6
731
57.5
1813
2265
43
2917
55.3
1821
15358
43.5
19309
54.7
1824
5144
41.6
6824
55.2
1838
2568
46
2945
52.7
1839
1891
42.5
2528
56.8
1842
8315
44.7
10058
53.7
1850
1111
44.3
1393
55.6
1895
37813
45.9
44642
54.1

109

See Censuses of Guadalajara, 1821-1822 and Censuses of Guadalajara, Volume 2 17911930, CD-ROM Database (Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University, 2008).
110
The most complete data is reflected for 1821 and 1895. The years in between are used only
to show rational patterns, but is based on data from a sample rather than a complete set of
censuses. Data for the table was compiled using Censuses of Guadalajara, 1821-1822; Censuses
of Guadalajara,1791-1930, Volume 2; Data for 1895 was taken from the AHJ, Mapoteca,
“Computo General del Censo,” Oficio del Concentración del Censo (Guadalajara, 1895). The
most complete data sets exist for 1821 and 1895; For more on this discussion see Chapter 4.
38

Once in the city migrants and the urban poor typically congregated in neighborhoods
close to factories, where many worked. For this reason, particular neighborhoods including the
outlying barrios of San Juan de Diós, Analco and Mexicaltzingo were notoriously crowded by
“poor people and factory workers.”

111

Overall, Liberal reforms intensified an existing cycle of

rural to urban migration and the city’s growth. The process and the proportion of growth did
little to alleviate problems with overcrowding and poverty in Guadalajara.

112

In fact, although

many historians ascribe extensive social reform measures with the Porfiriato, municipal codes
and construction projects from Guadalajara during the reform years suggest a sustained concern
with the rapidly growing poor and immigrant populations. Disease was of major concern in the
city by 1850, as an epidemic of cholera killed over three thousand residents. Most of those killed
lived on the periphery in city’s the poorer barrios. Public health officials blamed the hygiene of
the poor who they argued accumulated trash and excrement in their homes and frequently threw
it into city streets.

113

It was common of all city residents to deposit excrement into city streets

where a cart pulled by mules came to collect it and deposit it outside the city. Other sources of
contamination included public fountains, where the poor gathered water, bathed, and washed
laundry.

114

To combat the spread of disease, new laws focused on the poor and the areas where

they lived. For example, in 1852 Jalisco’s governor published a mandate to curtail disease and
strictly enforced the washing of city streets. The code applied to all small plazas, markets, and
111
112

Archivo Municipal de Guadalajara, Ramo Obras Públicas. Paquete 62, legajo 91, 1840.

Trujillo, “Léperos,” and Jiménez Pelayo et al, El Crecimiento Urbano, 107-163; For
information regarding increases in population see Table 2.3.
113
Lilia Oliver, “La mortalidad, 1800-1850,” in Lecturas históricas de Guadalajara:
Demografía y Urbanismo, eds. José María Muriá y Jaime Olveda (México: Colegio Regiones de
México, 1992),106. Lilia Oliver, Un verano mortal (Guadalajara: Unidad Editorial del Gobierno
de Jalisco, 1986), 42.
114
Jiménez Pelayo et al, El Crecimiento, 140.
39

carriage sites and imposed fines on those caught throwing trash or water into public streets. In
addition, the law prohibited washing and drying clothes on sidewalks and the sale of food on the
streets.

115

Such laws undoubtedly had major consequences for poor working women because

women predominated in occupations such as laundry services and food sales. In that same year
the mayor of Guadalajara sanctioned the building of a fortification on one side of the city to deter
thieves and smugglers from entering the city. Early measures undertaken during the reform
years focused on the poor as the source of disease, filth and crime in the city. The state
simultaneously embarked on a series of projects to improve and beautify the city by caring for
existing sidewalks and constructing a new western alameda (or tree-lined avenue). In 1856 the
city employed contractors to build the Teatro Degollado, bringing theater and opera to elite
residents. City leaders also took some initiatives to secularize Church property; they ordered a
number of churches to be demolished and repurposed others. For example, El Beaterio de Santa
Clara which had been a school of Christian doctrine and manual arts for girls became a military
hospital. While there was some attempt at social reform projects during these years, Guadalajara
experienced economic downturn between 1860 and 1876 that temporarily halted the efforts of
116

city officials until the more stable years of the Porfiriato.

The War of Reform and the French

intervention were bloody and devastating not only to Mexico’s population but to its economy.

The Porfiriato, 1876-1910
The Porfiriato was known and named for the dictatorial leadership of Porfirio Díaz, who
held the presidency in Mexico from 1876 to 1910. Politically speaking, although still heavily
115

BPEJ, Miscelánea, 157, Jesús Lopez Portillo (governor at the time), Bando de buen gobierno
del gobernador constitucional del estado de Jalisco (Guadalajara, 1852).
116
Jiménez Pelayo et al, El Crecimiento, 156-163.
40

influenced by early nineteenth century Liberal goals of political freedom, secular society,
individualism and free market economics, in this period Liberalism became more heavily
117

influenced by Positivism.

Positivism was not a separate ideology, but a “scientific method”

for formulating and adapting earlier Liberal ideas.

118

In Mexico, an elite cosmopolitan group of

Mexico City científicos, or scientists, transformed it into the ideals of “order and progress” that
were the centerpiece of the Díaz regime. Hence, it did not replace Liberalism, which remained
the basic ideology among científicos and government leaders throughout the Porfiriato. Instead
it became less ideological, and there was an ascendancy of ‘scientific politics’ over doctrinaire
Liberalism.

119

For this reason, most studies of women in nineteenth-century Mexico focus on

the Porfiriato because under the heavy-handed dictatorship of Díaz, the Mexican state was well
organized and had the authority to carry out Liberal legislation. To maintain power and enforce
laws he used his secret police to torture and suppress uprisings, rig elections and subdue the
freedom of the press.

120

Nevertheless, it is important to understand that the notions of order and

progress which are so often ascribed to the age of Díaz were rooted in important historical
transitions in Mexico and around the world; namely those that took place after Independence and
during the Reforma, and in some cases even earlier.
By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Porfirian social reformers and politicians
promoted notions of “order” and “progress” as a means to modernize Mexico and keep pace with
European nations. Díaz and the científicos frequently defined progress in economic terms, and
117
118
119
120

Hale, Mexican Liberalism.
Hale, The Transformation of Liberalism,14.
Ibid.

Mark Overmeyer Velazquez, Visions of the Emerald City: Modernity, Tradition, and the
Formation of Porfirian Oaxaca, Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).
41

therefore reforms focused on opening avenues to free trade, private property, and economic
expansion on a global scale. They placed much emphasis on order, as they believed that an
ordered society and citizens was the best avenue for political stability and by consequence
economic growth.

121

In response to the weakened state of the Mexican economy after the Wars

for Independence and years of upheaval, Porfirian economic policies focused on opening up the
country to foreign investment and trade. These policies often favored foreign sponsored
technology and industrialization, in addition to trade agreements which introduced cheaper goods
into Guadalajara that local artisans had once produced. Much evidence suggests that during this
period these policies shifted capital away from agriculture, mining, and local craft sectors,
further weakening the rural economy.

122

Much of the focus of policy by state and local

governments centered on cities, as places where elite residents and politicians lived and where
commercial transactions were made. In this way, Mexican cities could demonstrate and
represent progress to foreign investors. In Guadalajara, for example, municipal governments
installed telegraphs and cut down many of the city’s notorious tree-lined avenues to
accommodate streetcars by 1878.

123

Other modern imports included wider sidewalks,

telephones, and electric lighting by 1884. Innovations fostered greater communication for
business and commerce, and beautified the city. To maintain these standards city officials passed
laws that mandated the maintenance and care of sidewalks by city residents. Elites enjoyed
shopping in the newly renovated downtown, often at foreign owned department stores that

121
122

Agostini, Monuments of Progress, xi-xii.

María de los Angéles Pérez-Salcedo,“La mujeres violadas en Jalisco, 1857-1910,” Thesis
(Universidad de Guadalajara: Guadalajara, 1993), 27; See also Rivas Jiménez, “Defense of
Craft,” 177.
123
Jiménez Pelayo et al, El Crecimiento, 166.
42

introduced them to the latest European fashions. Shortly thereafter the city welcomed the first
124

railroad, the Ferrocarril Central in 1888.

The arrival of locomotive transportation increased

commercial activity by connecting Guadalajara with the rest of the country, and increased
industrial production by bringing in foreign machinery needed for manufacturing. At the same
however, it allowed for more and more goods to be imported from Europe and the United States,
such as clothing, groceries, medicine, mechanical equipment, notions and hardware. This too
undercut the local economy as certain goods once made by hand by artisans in Jalisco could not
compete with the cheap price of mass-manufactured goods.

125

It was also by 1898 that elites

began to construct some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city. With telling names such as
Colonia Americana, Francesa, Moderna and Reforma, the impressive mansions built in these
new divisions with their mammoth courtyards, gardens and iron gates, broke up the colonial
cuadrícula pattern and introduced even greater class distinctions and segregation among urban
inhabitants.

126

The other aspect of Porfirian ideals was a notion of progress that excluded sectors of society
deemed undesirable and adverse to modernization. In addition to making the city more attractive
for investment and appear more cosmopolitan, elite residents in conjunction with municipal
government officials hoped to create greater divisions in society to identify and isolate those
inhabitants who did not their proscribed vision. For example, in 1881 public works departments
installed public baths and showers around the city as a way to dissuade urban residents

124

Ibid., 169-70; 161; Jaime Olveda, “Los francesas y afrancesamiento de Guadalajara a finales
del siglo XIX,” Eslabones, no 9 (Mexico: Sociedad Nacional de Estudios Regionales, 1995), 64.
125
Rivas, “Defense of Craft,” 177.
126

Jiménez Pelayo et al., El Crecimiento Urbano, 190.
43

accustomed to bathing in the city’s San Juan de Diós river.

127

City planners also attempted to

build on existing codes to improve sanitation and prevent the spread of disease.

128

Other

measures, such as an increased presence of city police and state takeover of welfare and reform
institutions such as the poorhouse, hospital and penitentiaries (although they did not originate
during the Porfiriato) demonstrated a desire on the part of city officials to “clean up” and reform
uncivilized elements of society to better fit modern notions of progress.

129

Overall, Porfirian economic reforms had the greatest influence on Guadalajara and brought
even greater numbers of rural migrants to the city, many of them widowed and single women.
New economic policies led to continued urban growth in Guadalajara.
131

cosmopolitan tapatíos

130

By the 1880s

believed their city was fully “modern,” and prided themselves on the

fact that during the warfare of the previous decades they were the only Mexican city to initiate
new construction projects, including a poorhouse, impressive opera house and state prison. By
1890, the city added an additional five hundred city blocks compared to its dimensions in 1800,
and boasted over twenty-four churches, twenty public plazas and over fourteen bridges to
connect the city to the other side of the Río San Juan de Diós.

132

Economically Jalisco faced

major transitions in agriculture that shifted the region’s economic focus toward industrial

127
128

Ibid., 166.

BPE, Miscelánea, 157, Jesús Lopez Portillo (governor at the time), Bando de buen gobierno
del gobernador constitucional del estado de Jalisco (Guadalajara, 1852); Ibid, 1
129
Jorge A. Trujillo and Juan Quintar, Pobres, Marginados y Peligros (Guadalajara:
Universidad de Guadalajara, 2003), 205; Subsequent chapters go further in depth on this subject,
see Chapters 4, 5 & 6.
130
Rivas Jiménez, “Defense of Craft,” 26-7.
131
132

Tapatío is a nickname to describe a person from Guadalajara.
Bárcena, 22-39; 81.
44

manufacturing by the turn of the century. Throughout the Porfiriato the state of agriculture was
miserable. Although it remained the biggest industrial sector for the state, several crises,
including freezes and droughts occurred in 1886, 1889, 1891, and 1893 created imbalances for
the Jalisco economy. Overall, the local cultivation of corn, wheat and beans diminished and
caused widespread price increases for basic foods.

133

Porfirian trade policies welcomed foreign

investment which made Guadalajara a more attractive place for entrepreneurs to build modern
factories. Indeed, between 1876 and 1905 Jalisco became one of the most important zones of
textile production in the nation.

134

Although textile factories began to arrive in Guadalajara as

early as the 1840s, by 1878 ten new factories opened which specialized in the construction of
yarns and fabrics. By 1889, strong capitalists from France formed the Industrial Company of
Guadalajara, merging two major factories in the city. Other burgeoning industries included soap,
electric, oil, tequila and tobacco factories.

135

By the 1880s, new factories also began to mass-

produce goods once made by artisans in trades like carpentry, furniture making, shoemaking,
meatpacking and blacksmithing.

136

The rise of these new industries and the introduction of

factory jobs combined with a weakened agricultural sector and inflation, led to massive
migrations of rural peasants from Jalisco into Guadalajara. While urban and rural residents
watched the prices of corn, beans and chile rise in upwards of one hundred percent, wages only

133

María A. Aldana Rendón, Desarollo económico de Jalisco 1821-1940 (Universidad de
Guadalajara, 1979), 83.
134
Jan Bazant, “Estudio sobre la productividad de la industria algodonera mexicana, 18431845.”; Lucas Alemán y la Revolución Industrial en México,” in La industria nacional y el
comercio exterior (Mexico: Banco nacional de comercio exterior, 1977), 31; Ramos Escandón,
Industrialización, 162-164.
135
Aldana, 141.
136

Bárcena, Descripción de Guadalajara en 1880, 147-48; Also see Chapter 4, Table 4.6.
45

increased by sixty percent throughout the Porfiriato.

137

Therefore, the option of factory work

appealed to an ever expanding class of industrial workers made up of rural migrants and artisans.
Overall, single and widowed women continued to make up a majority of the growing
urban population. As the city began to grow by 1895, adult women continued to outnumber men
by five percent.

138

Therefore, adult female singleness remained a constant throughout the

century. The need to earn wages and the availability of commonly held female jobs as domestic
servants, laundresses, cooks and factory workers attracted women to Guadalajara. Textile work
in particular was a female-dominated and growing industry. Textile factories and their products
varied as did skills required to perform certain jobs. For example, La Prosperidad Jalisciense
and La Escoba supplied yarn and cotton to local artisans, while others specialized in finer textiles
and skills, such as La Caja del Agua which produced silk rebozos (shawls). Jobs in these
factories included positions as combers, spinners, dyers, and weavers which were predominantly
female, but occasionally included men. Women worked exclusively as canilleras, or spoolers.

139

Cigar factories also commonly employed female workers. By 1880, the city had five tobacco
factories, all with a majority of female workers. The El Buen Gusto, founded in 1864, employed
mostly women, having 540 female workers and only 60 male. The same was true for, La
Simpatía which employed over 300 women, La Flor de Orizaba, hired 150 women and 25 men,
and La Esperanza, which took on 80 women and 16 men.

137

140

Thus, rapid industrialization by the

It is estimated that corn rose by 108%, beans by 63% and chile by 147%. See Estadísticas
Económicas del Porfiriato. Fuerza de Trabajo y actividad por sectores (Mexico: El Colegio de
Mexico, 1965), 17.
138
See Chapter 1, Table 1.1; Table 2.4.
139

140

Bárcena, Descripción de Guadalajara, 147-165.
Ibid.
46

latter part of the century played an important role in the increased migration of women to the
city, many of whom were single or widowed and unattached.

Conclusion
It is undeniable that the transformations of the long nineteenth century contributed to the
growth of Mexican cities and encouraged the increased migration and presence of unattached
women in Guadalajara. Industrial and urban growth led rural women to seek opportunities in the
city. Single and widowed women in particular, frequently driven by a lack of familial or spousal
support, ended up in Guadalajara to work as domestic servants, laundresses, cooks or as factory
workers. Their lives were deeply entangled in an evolving political and economic climate that
pervaded all facets of life. The next chapter explores how unattached adult single women became
a common yet stigmatized part of Guadalajara’s urban population.

47

Figure 2.2

141

Urban Growth of Guadalajara, 1542-1906

141

AHJ, María de los Angeles Partida Flores, “Mapa del Crecimiento de Guadalajara,” PL 7.
895.599. 2002; For interpretation of the references to color in this and all other figures, the
reader is referred to the electronic version of this dissertation.
48

Figure 2.3

142

“La Calle de San Francisco” in the Late Nineteenth Century

142

These images of a street located in the center of town depict some of the new innovations
brought to Guadalajara by the late nineteenth-century. Notice the trolley tracks, widened
sidewalks and European style architecture. Photo reprinted in Iguiniz, Guadalajara a través de
los tiempos.
49

CHAPTER THREE
DISCOURSES ON MARRIAGE AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN LIBERAL
SOCIETY, 1855-1910

The role of single women in Mexican society became more relevant in the context of its
Liberal political and legal changes. The strength of Mexico’s traditional patriarchal family
represented the last semblance of order in society after Independence. Facing political
disintegration the early Republic looked to male household heads to maintain order in their
homes to counter political instability and enforce changing notions of behavior and conduct in a
modernizing nation.

143

Although the importance of the family within the social and political

culture of the colonial period cannot be underplayed, in post-Independence Mexico the role of
women as wives and mothers took on greater nationalistic tones.

144

Young governments across

Latin America looked to “male elders to represent both the family to the state and the state inside
the family.”

145

Thus, an ideal patriarchal household was comprised of a husband who headed

the family, a wife and children. This ideal family would become the centerpiece of a modern
society founded on the principles of Liberalism. In effect, state leaders became more involved in
ideological debates and legislation regarding the function of marriage. Increasingly, as Liberal

143

Carmen Ramos Escandón, “The Social Construction of Wife and Mother: Women in
Porfirian Mexico: 1880-1917,” in Kinship, Gender, Power: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary
History Mary Jo Maynes, Ann Walter, Brigitte Soland, Ulrique Strasser, eds., (London:
Routledge, 1996) 275-286.
144
Ibid., 276.
145

Elizabeth Dore “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Gender and the State in the Long
Nineteenth Century,” in Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America, (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2000) 15.
50

ideology influenced greater secularization in Mexican society, the state slowly attempted to
replace the role of the Catholic Church in private life. This chapter reveals that legislation
intended to strengthen marriage and the family in nineteenth-century Mexico sparked
contentious debates among politicians, the Catholic Church and women themselves.
By the time of La Reforma in the 1850s, politicians took a greater interest in marriage
because they argued that national progress rested on the family, with fathers and mothers who
passed on the ideals of civic responsibility to their children. New legal codes and popular
rhetoric served to strengthen the role of patriarchs within the family, and reinforce already
proscribed gender roles for women as wives and mothers living under the surveillance and
protection of a strong patriarchal head. Although politically marginalized, Liberal governments
mobilized women around the notion that fathers were the authoritative figures within the family,
while mothers and wives were the “moral compass.” Through similar reforms the state sought to
promote wives and mothers as the chief managers of their households and educators of the
nations’ future citizens, their male children.

146

Greater emphasis on marriage and family left

little room for a growing population of unmarried, widowed and single women in Guadalajara.
The political rhetoric of liberals and conservatives marginalized the growing population of single
women who, even if they desired to marry, found it increasingly difficult to find a partner.
Indeed by late century, between 1895 and 1908 legal marriage was on the decline in Mexico.

146

147

Marie Eileen Francois, A Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and
Governance in Mexico City, 1750-1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 22-23.
Silvia Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 1790-1857 (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1985), 14-52.
147
Moíses González Navarro, “El Porfiriato, vida social,” Historia Moderna de México
(Mexico: Editorial Hermes, 1957), 320.
51

The Rhetoric of the Liberal Family
Family and marriage have always been important in Mexican society. Compared to
studies of family history in the United States and Europe, the Latin American family played a
more central and active role in national development from the colonial period onward. The
colonial Mexican family was deeply patriarchal, with husbands wielding considerable control
over their wives and children. Women held greater responsibility in preserving the honor of the
family by maintaining sexuality purity before marriage and restraint afterward. For men honor
defined his power and hierarchy within the family rather than his virtue.

148

Colonial legal codes

placed men as legal heads of household. For these reasons, husbands controlled all assets
including their wife’s property and held legal guardianship rights over children. Fathers also
played an important role in choosing marriage partners for their children by the mid-eighteenth
century. Wives enjoyed extremely limited juridical power and legal codes mandated “obedience”
to husbands. She did however have some legal identity within ecclesiastical courts where wives
could file for annulment and write their own will. Colonial law also provided legal protection
over women’s dowry and any property she brought with her to marriage.

149

As a whole

however, studies of the colonial Mexican family suggest that prior to the nineteenth century, the
family maintained a more “corporate” identity and political leaders preferred problems be

148

Sarah Chambers and Lara Putnam, eds. Honor, Status, and Law in Modern Latin America
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 3.
149
Carmen Diana Deere and Magdalena Léon, “Liberalism and Married Women’s Property
Rights in Nineteenth-century Latin America,” Hispanic American Historical Review 85, no. 4
(November 2005), 645-49; See Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico:
Conflicts Over Marriage Choice, 1574-1821 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1988);
Susan Migden Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000).
52

handled in the privacy of the home or within the church.

150

Work by historians like Elizabeth

Kuznesof however, suggest that by the nineteenth century the family became a much greater
“agent” of social change. Both the Catholic Church and Mexican state viewed the family as the
“pillar of society” and for this reason they had a deep-seated interest in the preservation of
marriage.

151

Increased importance given to the family and marriage became part of the political
debates of Mexico’s mid-nineteenth-century reform years and continued into the Porfiriato. As
early as 1859, the Guadalajara-born writer and priest Agustín de la Rosa professed that the
family was “one of the most powerful elements of decorum in society, of honor and morality, of
well-being, of power and prosperity of nations and the universe.”

152

De la Rosa was deeply

inspired and wrote extensively on the virtues the European Enlightenment. As with many of the
ideas floating around in the period, Latin American intellectuals looked toward Europe for
models of development. Evidence of the fact abounds in the collection of rare books housed in
Guadalajara’s public library. In La Familia, first published in Italy and republished in Spanish by
the Italian born writer Lorento del Pozzo by 1888, a chapter titled “Government and Family:
Fountains of Individual and National Prosperity,” explained that he felt the need to have the book
translated as Italy and Mexico were experiencing similar problems which required immediate
solutions. Living in México City, he argued that the family was a “fundamental pillar in the
social foundation,” and emanating from this “natural institution” the nation was bestowed with

150
151

Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey.

Elizabeth Kuznesof, “The History of the Family in Latin America: A Critique of Recent
Work,”Latin American Research Review 24, no. 2 (1989), 216-17.
152
BPEJ, Num de Misc: 12, # of doc: 4, Agustín de la De la Rosa , “El Matrimonio Civil,
considerada en sus relaciones con la religion, la familia, y la sociedad,” Guadalajara, 1859.
53

the great civil institutions of marriage, inviolable patria potestad, ideas of property, supreme
authority, and inheritance rights.”

153

Like many political theorists of the age, Del Pozzo saw the

family as a model of society and believed that the “purpose of the family was to form a cohesive
unit in order to serve a common good and to propel the “ever increasing progress" of the nation.
154

In fact, well into the twentieth century legislators and reformers would rely on the model of a
strong family in times of political chaos in Guadalajara. In 1912, Miguel Palomar y Vizcarra
brought forth a proposal to the Jalisco congress to implement a homestead act in the state of that
revolved around the family. The premise of the act was to allow disenfranchised rural peasants
and the poor working classes of Guadalajara an opportunity to settle and cultivate land, with the
only stipulation being that homesteaders be married. In his initiative “El Bien de Familia,” he
suggested that his ultimate goal was to “protect the domestic home and preserve the power of the
family” in society. At the same time, he intended for the plan to fix Jalisco’s problems in the
Revolutionary period.

155

Indeed nineteenth-century thinkers believed that an ordered and disciplined family would
pave the way for progress, economic growth and social stability in Mexican society. They
believed the solution to the ills of Mexican society lay within the family through husbands and
wives, who were both expected to contribute to the rearing and raising of good citizens. This
responsibility was critical, as a lack of proper guidance within the home could have a negative
153

BPEJ, Miscellaneous, #291, doc 2, Lorento del Pozzo,“La Familia: Preceptos de educación
de un padre a su hijo: Enseñadelo á ser buen ciudadano, buen marido, buen padre,” in La
Famila: Preceptos de educacion de un padre a su hijo (Mexico, 1888), 4-5.
154
Ibid., 5.
155

BPEJ, Miscellaneous, 752, doc 1, Miguel Palomar y Vizcarra, “El bien de familia,” Initiative
presented at the Congress of the state of Jalisco, 1912, 21.
54

impact on society. As del Pozzo lamented, "if we consider that the family is the compendium of
the nation, it would be easy for us to understand that domestic disorder and confusion would lead
to many evils that afflict the entire social body."

156

Therefore, the family became central to the

narrative on state formation.

Civil Marriage
By mid-century, law makers in Mexico challenged the role of the Catholic Church as
guardian of family laws. In keeping with its political goals to secularize society and increase the
ability of the national government to control the population it created the civil register in 1859,
known as the Ley Orgánico del Registro, it required state registry of all marriages, births and
deaths. In this way, the state aimed to seize family organization away from church control. For
many, full Independence required that religious and political matters be separated.

157

Much

debate between religious and political leaders ensued in Guadalajara in the aftermath of these
new laws. The most heated were those regarding civil marriage. Despite attempts at similar
reforms during the Bourbon era,

158

the civil marriage law was unique in that state governments

no longer entrusted the registration and annulment of marriage to the Catholic Church.

159

The

law also had broader implications for state involvement in the family. As Carole Pateman
argues, the rise of the modern nuclear family consisting of father, mother and children,
156
157

del Pozzo, “Gobierno,” 7.

BPEJ, “Ley Orgánico del Registro Civil del 23 de julio de 1859,” Legislación Mexicana, vol
8, 691.
158
See Verena Martínez Alier, Marriage, Class and Colour in Nineteenth-Century Cuba: A
Study of Racial Attitudes and Sexual Values in a Slave Society (London: Cambridge University
Press, 1974); Ann Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality and
Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).
159
“Ley del Matrimonio Civil 23 de Julio de 1859,” Legislación Mexicana, vol 8, 696.
55

originated in the nineteenth-century “marriage contract.”

160

Legislative debates over civil

marriage illuminate the controversies that surrounded a sacrament that some desired to
secularize. In Mexico, increased state emphasis and regulation of a nuclear, monogamous family
model, both legally and ideologically, worked in tandem with the overall process of state
consolidation.

161

Many intellectuals and politicians believed that marriage sustained order in

society and bred a strong and patriotic citizenry. The Catholic Church however, seeing marriage
as a sacrament, found the political utility arguments employed in legal and popular dialogue
sacrilegious. In addition, they believed marriage unified “the precious values of family with
society.”

162

Both sides of the debate however, validate the trust that state leaders placed on

marriage and family for the future development of Mexico.
Although the 1859 law did not ban religious marriage, it required that all church marriages be
registered with civil authorities to legalize the union.

163

Conservatives in Guadalajara like

opposed civil marriage and argued that Liberal notions of “progress” and individual “happiness”
coming out of Europe were not only irreligious, but harmful to the family. Indeed, they relegated
Mexicans to a state of “bastardy.” From a Catholic perspective, marriage was a sacrament of the
heart and conscience, and individuals should not be “focused on the material utility that results

160
161
162
163

Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 16.
Ramos Escandón, “The Social Construction,” 278.
De la Rosa, 31.

France was the first Catholic nation to institute Civil Marriage in 1804. See Carmen Diana
Deere and Léon, “Liberalism,” 636-38.
56

from marriage.” According to de la Rosa, the legislation of civil matrimony was based in “purely
material interests,” not only for individuals themselves, but also for the state.

164

Religious thinkers like de la Rosa provide historical snapshots of how church leaders and
their ley allies interpreted the state’s agenda through its reform laws. De la Rosa’s arguments
draw attention to the growing presence of the state in what he felt were the personal lives of city
residents, not to mention a matter of one’s soul. He contested what he saw as the manipulation of
the conjugal union between man and woman for political and economic ends, believing that
marriage was not intended to “propagate wealth for men—as if it were plants or beasts; nor is it
to provide to society good and complete citizens—as is the intention of an irreligious politic.”

165

He found the concerns placed in marriage on financial well-being disheartening, and noted that
for some politicians it was the “supreme end of society.” Citing articles of the law, he chided the
proponents of civil marriage, and their belief that it be “written on paper, not in the heart.” He
was also critical of the state’s interpretation of marriage as a means intended to produce
legitimate offspring, order procreation around sons and educate children to serve the needs of the
state.

166

He found these goals to be in contrast to the teachings of the Catholic Church, whereby

“marriage was intended to conserve and multiply man, but in a dignified and rational manner,
propagating fathers and sons of virtue.” Although he too believed that marriage played an
important role in shaping society, he emphasized a religious one “of dignified men . . . worthy of

164

BPEJ, Miscelleanous, Agustín de la De la Rosa , El Matrimonio Civil, considerada en sus
relaciones con la religion, la familia, y la sociedad (Guadalajara, 1859), 4.
165
Ibid, 13.
166

Ibid., 15. De la Rosa cites section 4, article 2 of the Ley Ortega, written by Sr. González
Ortega, 1859.
57

inheriting the earth.”

167

Thus, the law and the debate it fomented suggest that both the church

and civil government began to weight the value of marriage more heavily.
De la Rosa’s interpretation of the law echoed the political concerns widely of numerous other
clergy members in Mexico that feared civil marriage might weaken the significance of religious
unions.

168

Unlike liberal leaders, the church hierarchy believed that marriage was a sacrament

sanctioned by God. In the eyes of the church the “union of two hearts” was based on conjugal
169

love, something that was “inaccessible to politics.”

The direct intervention of the state in

civil marriage replaced a sacrament with which Catholics believed to be “a profane contract.”

170

For the Catholic clergymen and their supporters in Guadalajara, marriage was a religious pact,
and they feared the presence of the state in matters of religion, as it threatened their own role in
private life. If “marriage was an object of religion, and Christians were an object of faith,” then
“the church depend[ed] on the propagation of children … raised and educated as Christians” in
the continuation of Catholic belief and ritual.

171

Rather than a sacrament, de la Rosa believed

that civil marriage having become a “simple civil negotiation” stripped of its religious “sanctity”
governed and legislated by the state according to the “pompous science of [the] decade,” would
open “up Mexican domestic society to an age of degradation, immorality, and misfortune.”

172

Marriages without religion would lead to “unions of fleeting passions, fake marriages of interest,

167
168
169
170
171
172

Ibid.
Wasserman, Everyday Life and Politics, 139.
De la Rosa, 26.
Ibid., 44.
Ibid., 14.
Ibid.
58

or feigned and forced marriages.”

173

In this way, de la Rosa argued that the new laws had a

direct impact on the honor of the family, and by extension women. If left up to the state
“passions” might rule society, increasing the rate of non-marriage.
Women also feared that the push toward civil marriage would undermine sacramental
marriage and put the honor of wives in jeopardy. Without the fear of breaking a sacred vow,
women believed it could also make it easier for husbands to abandon their wives. A husband
who no longer respected the conjugal union “would begin to act on his whims . . . leaving his
young and inexperienced companion in solitude and loneliness.” With this set of values
“marriages will lack love and confidence,” and husbands and wives will be denied “a true
union.” Essentially, from a religious perspective, women feared that civil marriage would ruin
the “faith of marriage” and “each day make more impossible the holy alliance blessed by the
church through the sanction of heaven.”

174

In line with the Catholic Church, women also

believed that marriage served as a “blanket” of protection as “marital authority . . . protects and
supports [women’s] feeble nature, [and] inexperienced youth.”

175

From this perspective, the

diminished importance of religious marriage was not only a potential threat to the family, but
also a danger for women. It had the potential to leave even more women involuntarily single and
abandoned.
In 1856, over five hundred women in Guadalajara raised their voices in protest over what
they believed was an assault on private life and Catholicism in Mexico. In a tone that was
ardently xenophobic and anti-protestant, a group of Catholic women from the city went before

173
174
175

Ibid., 33.
BPEJ, Miscelleanous #758, doc 1, Saez de Melgar, Manuel de la jóven adolescente, 23.
Ibid., 24-25.
59

the Jalisco state congress to argue against recent liberal changes to the state constitution. These
women feared that the liberal direction of the nation was anti-Catholic. Among their complaints
were inclusions made to the national constitution by liberal lawmakers favoring greater religious
tolerance. They argued the necessity for a strong Catholic culture in Guadalajara. In a petition
presented to Congress, signed individually by a group of married, widowed and single women,
they made their case for religious “intolerance.” The women argued that “men more interested
in liberty than conscience” had infiltrated national and state politics. The women who signed the
petition strongly believed that Mexico was a Catholic nation, and the extension of the state into
religion would lead to the spread of Protestantism in the country and a lack of respect for the
sacrament of marriage. They argued that “the ladies (of Guadalajara)” refused to fall into “a cult
like Protestantism, that detests the most sacred rituals [and] that supports the union of marriage
as only a law of convenience.”

176

The petition offers important historical insight into how a group of activist conservative
women perceived Liberal reforms. For them, liberal ideas were as foreign to Guadalajara as
Protestantism. They expressed their outrage over politicians who wished to “take advantage of
the examples that other nations have given us,” but insisted that “after the vertigo that causes the
furor to innovate, they will return again to hear the voice of reason.” Although civil marriage
laws had not yet been enacted, debates over the issue had begun and these women felt compelled
to address it. They argued that rather than mettle in the affairs of the home, state legislators
“should busy themselves with building canals, railroads, eliminating thieves and killers, and try
to govern without the blindness of political parties who only care about administrative measures”
176

BPEJ, Miscelleanus 12, doc3, Real Cedula, “Representacion que las senoras de Guadalajara
dirigen al Soberano Congreso Constituyente, sobre que En la Carta Fundamental que se discute
no quede consignada, La Tolerenica de Cultos en la Republica” (Guadalajara, 1856), 8.
60

rather than “to distract and pacify those that come to do good work and uphold the family.”

177

The women of Guadalajara believed that religious marriage played an important role in the
family, and that it was not a matter of state consideration but a private one, and a Catholic one at
that. In this way there were also elite class considerations in their arguments. Part of their
aversion to civil marriage originated in their belief that it gave license to the widespread practice
of informal unions and the practice of amasiato (taking a mistress or consensual lover) that was
common and frequently associated with the urban poor and mestizo classes.

178

Overall, these women rejected the influence of Liberalism in Mexican governance as the
state became more involved in matters that were once the domain of the Catholic Church. Given
the limits of the documentation, it is difficult to ascertain the extent to which these female
protesters from Guadalajara were representative of the larger population of women. Their
message does however seem to make a strong case for Conservative values. In this way the
women do share a characteristic regional conservatism often associated with Guadalajara.

179

Those who came before congress in 1856 evolved into new women’s Catholic confraternities.
Most notable was the very active Sociedad Católica Nuestra Señora de la Rosa Hijas de María,

177
178

Ibid., 5.

Milanich, “Whither Family History,” 451-2; Jorge A. Trujillo, “Léperos, pelados, ceros
socials y gente de trueno en el Jalisco Porfiriano,” in Pobres, Marginados y Peligros, edited by
Jorge A. Trujillo and Juan Quintar (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2003).
179
Studies of the period in Mexico note Guadalajara as a place where conservatism and
liberalism were frequently at odds. For example see Brian Hanley Connaughton, Clerical
Ideology in a Revolutionary Age: The Guadalajara Church and the Idea of the Mexican Nation
(1788-1853). (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2003); Jan Bazant, Alienation of Church
Wealth in Mexico: Social and Economic Aspects of the Liberal Revolution, 1856-1875
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); Dawn Fogle Deaton ,“The Decade of Revolt:
Peasant Rebellion in Jalisco, Mexico, 1855-1864” in Liberals, the Church, and Indian
peasants : corporate lands and the challenge of reform in nineteenth-century Spanish America,
edited by Robert Jackson, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997).
61

which was active in the city from 1894 until 1926. Other studies demonstrate a strong political
activism among conservative women in Guadalajara well into the twentieth century.

180

Aside from the cultural backlash opened up by the civil marriage debate in Guadalajara,
arguments concerning the function of marriage in Mexican society are revealing in other ways.
The debate reflected not only a growing involvement of the state in women’s lives, but the way
in which the significance and purpose of the union between men and women shifted to support
national goals. The church and religious community criticized the state for its intentional
manipulation of the marriage contract, and its involvement in matters which had both moral and
eternal consequences. In its view, civil marriage regulated by the government infringed on
spiritual laws. As a whole, however, the civil marriage debate shed new light on marriage itself,
both by civil and religious mandate. This new vantage point would only heighten the importance
placed on marriage in nineteenth-century Mexican society.

The Making of the Ideal Family
Although the Church and many women in Guadalajara opposed state sanctioned marriage
and the role that the state assumed within the family, Liberals and Conservatives agreed that the
power and role of husbands within families should be strengthened. The cornerstone of stability
in society would be the family, but a strong family depended on a strong patriarch and reformers
believed women should yield to male authority because it was conducive to the progress of the

180

AHA, Gobierno, Cofradías, “Sociedad Católica Nuestra Señora de la Rosa Hijas de María,”
(1894-1926), Caja 1; María Teresa Fernández Aceves, “The Political Mobilization of Women in
Revolutionary Guadalajara, 1910-1940,” (PhD Dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago,
IL., 2000), 107-109.
62

nation.

181

The family constituted one of the first sites of power in society, and marriage

established the “social organization regulated by specific legislation” necessary to delineate
power relationships among family members.

182

In nineteenth-century Mexican society law and

custom granted husbands considerable authority over wives and children. In his analogy between
governing and fatherhood, the Guadalajaran religious writer Agustín de la Rosa commented that
like “a father that is not well possessed of his Christian values, a lax government . . . permits the
entrance and development of corruption.”

183

Given the connections that state leaders made

between maintaining order in society and the patriarchal family, “a repressive society” would
require a “a repressive family.”

184

Such a family required a strong male leader. These goals

served only to further stress the importance of marriage and family over singleness and nonmarriage. In turn, new legal codes, reforms, and proscriptive literature intended to strengthen the
role of male heads of household and set the perimeters for individuals within the family.
These conceptions of family became idealized at a time when fewer and fewer Mexicans
lived in a male-headed nuclear family. In Guadalajara between 1821 and 1888, less than half of
urban residents resided in a male-headed nuclear family. Widowed or unmarried women headed
the other half.

185

Female-headed households threatened liberal goals that counted on male

181

Kristin Ruggiero, Modernity in the Flesh: Medicine, Law, and Society in Turn-of-theCentury Argentina. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 23.
182
Carmen Ramos Escandón, “Gender and Family Power Structure in Nineteenth-century
Mexico,” (paper presented at Mexican International Family Strengths Conference, Cuernavaca,
rd
Mexico, June 1-3 , 2005), 5-6.
183
184
185

De la Rosa , El Matrimonio Civil, 19.
Ramos Escandón, “Gender and Family Power,” 6.

Data from the census reveals that by 1821 41% lived in a nuclear family model, and from
1838-1842 42%, and by 1888 46.5%. See Claudia Rivas Jiménez, “Defense of Craft:
63

domination within the private sphere.

186

For this reason, legislators focused their efforts on

new laws after 1859 to heighten men’s control over wives and daughters and promote the maleheaded household as an ideal for Mexican society.

187

In many ways, the reorganization of the Mexican family in the nineteenth century is reflected
in the reform of its legal codes. As already noted, a main point of contention over these new laws
began in 1859 between state and church officials over civil matrimony and divorce. One of the
first Latin American countries to do so, Mexico mandated obligatory civil matrimony in 1859
and eventually adopted a civil divorce by mutual consent law in 1870.

188

Recent interpretations

of the laws suggest that their official intention was to make marriage more appealing through the
option of divorce and re-marriage. The Catholic Church opposed civil marriage because it feared
it would lead to the legalization of divorce, and “civil divorce” would “harm and degrade women
by taking away the protection and security of un-dissolvable marriage.”

189

In this way they

Guadalajara’s Artisans in the Era of Economic Liberalism, 1842-1907” (PhD Dissertation,
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 2008), Appendix L, Table 4.11.
186
Claudia Lizette Castellanos Sánchez, “La sumisión como condición femenina: el divorcio de
Refugio Rodríguez,” in Mujeres jaliscienses del siglo XIX. Cultura, religion y vida privada,
edited by Vázquez Parada, Lourdes Celina and Darío Armando Flores Soria (Guadalajara:
Universidad de Guadalajara, 2008), 286.
187
Dore, “One Step Forward,” 21; See Ramos Escandon, “The Social Construction,” 278;
Arrom, “Changes in Mexican Family Law,” 308-22.
188
Mexico. “Ley de 23 de junio de 1859,” in Legislación mexicana: Coleción completa de
lasdisposiciones legislativas expedidas desde la independencia de la República, vol. 8, ed.
Manuel Dublan and José María Lozano (Mexico City: Imprenta del Comercio, 1877); also in
María de la Luz Parcero, Condiciones de la mujer en México durante el siglo 19 (Mexico City:
Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1992); art. 101 in 1866 Mexican code; Manuel
Mateos Alarcón, Código Civil del Distrito Federal, 27, 81; art. 267, 1928 code in Michael
Wallace Gordon, The Mexican Civil Code (London: Oceana, 1980). For divorce, see Deere,
“Liberalism,” 644; Arrom, “Changes in Mexican Family Law,” 311.
189
Deere and León, “Liberalism,” 642.
64

argued that civil marriage with the option to divorce gave men a considerable amount of
authority and stripped away some the safeguards that religious marriage afforded women.
Evidence from Guadalajara indicates that many women opposed civil matrimony and divorce
as well. Some feared that divorce made marriage a contract between individuals and less focused
on Catholicism’s emphasis on the union of two souls.

190

While the option to divorce might

potentially give women leverage within marriage, it also required that they had enough economic
resources outside of marriage to separate from their husbands.

191

The introduction of divorce in

the Latin America was a radical transformation as it suggested, unlike Catholicism, that the
individual happiness of men and women was greater than that of the family. Some studies
suggest that men benefited more from new divorce laws, and that liberal lawmakers did not
envision it as a boon for women. It allowed men the freedom to extinguish unwanted marriages
without suffering the loss of honor that so often afflicted women.

192

Conversely, for religious

Conservatives, female initiated divorce was a “repeal of the rights of husbands," and rebellion
against "marital authority.”

193

Although women in Guadalajara petitioned for divorce more often than men in the years after
the passage of the law, divorce proceedings remained rare. Between 1879 and 1886 sixteen
women and only four men sought a civil divorce in Jalisco’s civil court. The majority of
divorces occurred from 1879 to 1884 and declined in frequency in subsequent years. Fifty
190

BPEJ, #758, doc 1, Saez de Melgar, “Manuel de la jóven adolescente ó un libro para mis
hijas. Educación cristian y social de la mujer” (Barcelona, 1883), 21.
191
Deere and León, “Liberalism,” 642.
192

For a discussion see Dore, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back,” 25; and Deere and León,
“Liberalism.”
193
BPEJ, Miscellaneous, #758, doc 1 Faustina,Saez de Melgar, Manuel de la jóven adolescente
ó un libro para mis hijas. Educación cristian y social de la mujer (Barcelona, 1883), 24.
65

percent of the cases cited abuse as the main cause and twenty five percent filed due to
adultery.

194

It is important to note however, that even before civil divorce became an option for

women ecclesiastical divorces, or annulments, did increase between 1840 and 1862. Like civil
divorce, most were brought by women for adultery or abuse against their husbands.

195

Records

indicate that after the passage of the divorce law annulments ceased between 1871 and 1885, but
resumed again after 1886. It appears that annulments declined in the latter years of the century,
likely a result of the availability of civil marriage and divorce.

196

Overall, I would argue that

women typically reserved divorce and annulment for extreme cases of abuse or infidelity, and
the infrequency of these cases indicate that divorce laws only offered a few women recourse
within marriage. Ultimately the evidence indicates that men still held the upper hand in marriage
despite greater opportunities for women to contest abuse. Furthermore, the data does not reflect
involuntary separation, such as the spousal abandonment frequently described by women to
judges and welfare agencies. In these cases men often fled to other cities or parts of town and
failed to provide for their wives. While many women attempted to seek justice or assistance in
these cases, there was often little that could be done to ensure husbands fulfilled his duties to
provide for his wife and family.

197

One of the most consistent liberal legal reforms across Latin America was the change made
to the legal age of majority and consent, the age when a son or daughter no longer required
parental permission to marry. This change had a significant impact on the role of male patriarchy
within the family. By 1866, both the age of majority and consent shifted from age twenty five to
194
195
196
197

Ramos Escandón, “Gender and Family Power,” 8-14.
Castellanos Sánchez, “La sumisión,” 263-4.
AHA, Justicia, “Matrimonio/Nulidad,” Caja 9, Exp 7-8.
See Chapter 5 and 6.
66

twenty one for men and women in Mexico. With the exception of voting, this change gave
single women equal rights with single men, who now at the age of twenty one were permitted to
inherit and manage their own property and income, as well as marry without the consent of a
guardian. The 1870 code also mandated that until the age of thirty, single women required
permission to move out of their parental home.

198

Lowering the age of consent may have

increased individual freedom, but at the same time the protection of the church over consent
diminished, opening potential loopholes for patriarchal control over children and single
daughters.

199

With few inheritance protections built into the law for married women, dowries functioned as
a support system in case of widowhood or ecclesiastical divorce. The 1870 Civil Code in Mexico
made dowries an optional part of civil marriage, and women loss special dispensations from the
colonial period that had protected their dowries from their husband’s creditors in the case of
widowhood or divorce. Although it is important to note that the dowry was already in decline as
a cultural practice in Latin America beginning in the eighteenth century, control over a wife’s
financial resources gave husbands a considerable new advantage in the marriage contract.
Furthermore, the 1870 codes maintained restrictions that prevented married women from
entering into legal contracts, undertaking litigation or selling or buying property without her
husband’s permission.

200

198

Manuel Mateos Alarcón, Lecciones de derecho civil: Estudios sobre el Código Civil del DF,
promulgado en 1870, con anotaciones a las reformas introducidas por el Código de 1884
(MexicoCity: Libreria de J. Valdes y Cueva, 1904), 34; Arrom, “Changes in Mexican Family
Law,” 308.
199
Bianca Premo, “Misunderstood Love’: Children and Wet Nurses, Creoles and Kings in
Lima's Enlightenment,” Colonial Latin American Review 14, no. 2 (2005).
200
Ibid, 650; See also Nazzari, Muriel. Disappearance of the Dowry: Women, Families, and
67

By 1880, liberal legislation introduced the separation of property and testamentary
freedom.

201

Despite these changes, many new laws had stipulations that required prenuptial

agreements in order for true separation of property laws to be enacted. While the new mandates
may have increased women’s access to their own property and income, it may also indicate a
potential loss of income for women who married with little resources. In accordance with Liberal
thought, the law served to protect men’s private property before marriage through a prenuptial
agreement. In addition, women who did not work outside the home lost some of the recognition
of their domestic labor, embodied in previous laws such as the gananciales regime which
mandated husbands had to share their possessions with wives.

202

The separation of property

was likely promoted as an option in Mexico because it “fit the more flexible, diversified
economy, and society of the nineteenth century.”

203

At the same time, María Francois’ study of

credit in nineteenth-century Mexico suggests that throughout time the decline in the dowry
contributed to an overall decline in women’s movable property. Thus, changes to property and
inheritance also served to strengthen the financial role of husbands in marriage.

204

Therefore, while nineteenth-century reform laws did add many benefits for married women,
legal studies confirm that they also served to reinforce men’s position in Mexico as heads of
household and family. Married women were still legally required to reside with their husband’s
in the same residence, and husband’s maintained patria potestad over children in cases of
Social Change in São Paulo, Brazil 1600-1900 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1991)
and Mark Szuchman, “Household Structure and Political Crisis: Buenos Aires, 1810
1860” Latin American Research Review, Volume 21, no. 3 (1986); Ramos Escandón, “Social
Construction,” 279.
201
Arts. 2009, 2102, 2110–13, 2120, 2121, 2205, and 2208–9, 1870 Mexican civil code.
202
203
204

Deere and León, “Liberalism,” 668.
Arrom, “Changes in Mexican Family Law,” 313.
Francois, A Culture of Everyday Credit, 10.
68

divorce or separation. Some arguments suggest that married women truly suffered a loss of legal
capability through these new legal codes, reverting them to a state of “incapable persons or
minors” in the eyes of the law.
not go unchallenged,

206

205

Although numerous works argue that patriarchal control did

Mexican women’s full legal independence would not take place in

Mexico until 1917. Additionally, social and cultural shifts in the use of dowries and the
introduction of testamentary freedom put daughters in more uncertain positions, offering fewer
guarantees and greater vulnerability because it reduced their bargaining power in marriage.

207

While many changes to the legal code in Mexico served to enhance individual freedom, many
proved to strengthen patriarchy in order to firmly establish the family as a centerpiece of the new
state.

Husbands, Wives & Mothers
As the family took center stage in Mexican national politics, the role of marriage also took
on new significance by the 1850s.

208

Overall, the introduction of civil marriage and divorce

increased state intervention in the domestic sphere, bringing the public into the private
205
206

Dore, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back,” 26.

Several recent studies make visible women’s voices and their ability to contest unfettered
patriarchal control, exploring the ways in which women, although less legally capable, did
contest patriarchy. For Guadalajara see Gabriela E. Abascal Johnson, “Entre la sevicia y la
dignidad: el juicio de divorcio de Teresa Colza. Guadalajara, 1837,” en Mujeres jaliscienses del
siglo XIX. Cultura, religion y vida privada, edited by Vázquez Parada, Lourdes Celina and
Darío Armando Flores Soria (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2008), 233-254;
Christine Hünefeldt, Liberalism in the Bedroom: Quarreling Spouses in Nineteenth-Century
Lima (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000); Sandra Lauderdale Graham,
Caetana Says No: Women's Stories from a Brazilian Slave Society (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2002); Asunción Lavrin, ed. Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989).
207
Ibid., 669-671.
208

Dore, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back,” 26.
69

domain.

209

The changes had a profound impact on women, particularly in terms of marital

status. Legal codes sought to strengthen the family by giving greater authority to husbands. This
too brought about a redefinition of women’s role in the home as wives and mothers.

210

Nineteenth-century Mexican liberals believed women, in conjunction with their duties in the
family as wives and mothers, had an important role to play in national development as educators
of productive citizens, efficient managers of the home, and sources of comfort for their working
husbands.

211

Liberal and conservative reformers, journalists, and religious activists all utilized a

rhetoric intended for elite audiences which emphasized highly class-based and gendered ideals
for married women to set them far apart from the numerous poor and unattached women in the
city.
The belief that biologically men and women served different functions in society which
relegated them to different spheres was the foundation for the ideal patriarchal family. An 1866
Guadalajara editorial described male and female character as diverse, ascribing men the qualities
of “strength and power,” while women were “delicate and beautiful.” According to the article
this explained why “the theater of the man was the world, and for women it was the domestic
home.” In the home, a woman’s role was a private one and facilitated her husband’s public
duties; in return her husband would protect and provide for his family.

212

In this regard, liberals,

conservatives, and clergy agreed. In his lecture on the education of girls, a Guadalajara bishop
209

A similar argument has been made by Abascal Johnson, “Entre la sevicia y la dignidad,” 240.
In her article she utilizes an ecclesiastical divorce case to show how this process was occurring
as early as the 1830’s by the Catholic Church. A similar argument can be made now for the state.
210
Dore, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back,” 23; Escandón, “The Social Construction.”
211
212

Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 15-52.

“¿Por qué la mujer debe ser más pura que el hombre?” in El Imperio, núm 24, Guadalajara,
March 24, 1866.
70

took his reasoning further and suggested women could not be educated or perform jobs the way
men do because their curiosities are often “vain and pretentious.” Because women suffered from
a “more feeble and curious spirit than men,” it made it difficult for them to dedicate themselves
to their studies. In essence, women’s function in society was to “manage their households well
and obey their husbands.” Given women’s inability to “govern the state, fight wars, or enter the
priesthood,” they had no need of learning the affairs of men such as “politics, the art of military,
jurisprudence, philosophy or theology.” He reasoned further that women could not perform
physical labor because their bodies, like their spirits, were less strong and robust and instead
must resign themselves to things they can perform “tranquilly” in the home.

213

These

biologically determined gender differences suited women for the duties of wife and mother, and
better prepared men to be leaders inside and outside the home.
While women’s biological differences warranted the separation of male and female space
in society, early modern scientific studies backed notions that women and men occupied
different roles in the home.

214

Despite seeing women as physically, mentally and emotionally

incapable of performing duties outside of the home, women’s most important role would be as
supportive wives and mothers within the home. Much of the proscriptive literature on gender
directed its attention toward elite society. It was in these homes where women, freed from the
necessity of working outside the household could best perform such duties. Although they
disagreed on the intentions of marriage, the Guadalajara church and state agreed that “a judicious
woman . . . is the soul of a great house. She maintains order to maintain the well-being and
health of her family, and men, who have all the public authority would not be able to do their

213
214

BPEJ, #286, doc 3 “La educación de las niñas,” 2-3.
Ruggiero, Modernity in the Flesh, 24.
71

jobs without the help of women.” Therefore, if Mexico was going to be “unified” with the help
of the patriarchal family, women’s role would be fundamental “in civilizing [the family] through
her care, attention and natural authority.” Her “consistency in the house and attention to the
minutia” was paramount to its success.

215

The gendered rhetoric promoted by both state and

ecclesiastic officials established bourgeois married women’s roles as fundamental to the
achievement of national progress.
According to liberal reformers, a successful marriage required a wife who put the interests of
her husband and children first and maintained honor within the home. Such ideas were not new
to nineteenth-century Mexico, but were passed down from the colonial period and based on the
ideals of the elite patriarchal family model. It was an ideal established for the privileged. This is
not to say that the working classes and poor did not share similar beliefs regarding the honor of
wives and mothers.

216

However, the messages geared at elite women emphasized household

management and education, whereas instructions for poor women focused on proper hygiene and
childrearing.

217

By the 1880s, the idealized elite female world was to be centered entirely on

family life and marriage.

218

In 1883, the widely popular Spanish novelist, journalist and liberal reformer Faustina Saez de
Melgar advised Latin American women of both their Christian and social obligations to modern
215
216

Ibid., 4.

Several scholars of Latin America suggest that gender ideals set forth for elites were not
ignored by sectors of the lower classes and poor, See Lyman Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera,
eds., The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America.” (Albuquerque,
New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 1998).
217
Ramos Escandón, “Social Construction,” 281.
218

Francoise Carner, “Esterotipos femeninos en el siglo XIX,” en Carmen Ramos Escandón,
Presencia y transparencia: la mujer en la historia de México (Mexico, El Colegio de México,
1987), 95-96; Arrom, The Women of Mexico City.
72

society in her manual on women’s education. Melgar published extensively in Spain and Latin
America. As a liberal woman she advocated strongly on behalf of the education of middle class
women. Ironically, she made a name for herself in the publishing world by instructing women on
their place within the home.

219

Believing in the progress and advancement of liberal ideologies,

she promoted the notion that if one wished to reform society, they had to begin with the family.
In her view, domestic virtues could translate into public ones.

220

Foremost she recognized

women’s primary obligation to her husband, noting that only through marriage could women
fulfill their “maternal” role in life. According to Melgar and in teaching with the Catholic
Church, "woman was born to obey man; not to be his slave, but his only companion and sister, to
which he owes protection and all class of consideration."

221

Thus, Melgar believed the marriage

union was a reciprocal one, whereby both wives and husbands shared obligations and duties to
one another. Although she agreed that the home was a man’s “empire,” had to provide and
222

protect his wife and children in exchange for submission.

Part of the political backdrop of nineteenth-century Mexican life was a greater emphasis on
new sciences as guarantees of advancement, and women’s expected role in the home was to be
conducive to that progress.

223

In keeping with the times, the writing of Saez de Melgar

professed a “domestic science,” which argued that women were responsible for ordering the
home. Similar to arguments made for state organization, a prosperous home was the product of

219

Catherine Jagoe, Ambiguous Angels: Gender in the Novels of Galdós (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1994), 34-5.
220
BPEJ, Miscelleanous #758, doc 1, Saez de Melgar, Manuel de la jóven adolescente, 5-6; 8.
221
222
223

Ibid, 25.
Ibid., 26.
Ruggiero, Modernity in the Flesh, 2; 23.
73

hard “work, economy and order.” Like so many biological arguments made by state and Church
leaders Saez de Melgar believed these were not only the central tenets of domesticity but
women’s “domestic virtues.”

224

In order for a "woman to be respected and esteemed, she should

be kind, attentive and respectful in society, [and] complacent, affectionate and good " in the
home.

225

Thus, the prosperity of a man’s home was tied to the virtue of his wife.

Wifely expectations expected women to be good household managers, as the “good order
and handling of the house contributes and sustains the work of the father.”

226

According to

Saez de Melgar, economy in this regard meant that women manage a household budget and
avoided extravagance by “quieting their minds of ridiculous vanity.” She believed women’s
virtue was selflessness to her family, and that the vanity of the time stemmed from fashion and
other false idols, which she argued allowed for acceptable forms of narcissism among women. In
addition to thrift in maintaining the household income, women should be selfless in domestic
duties. A wife should wake before her husband and perform chores regularly to ensure
227

“cleanliness and order” at all times.

Outside of household duties, a Christian wife with her

virtues closely tied to her family’s honor, was expected to venerate “the aged and priests,”
devote all of her “eternal affection” to her children, and “her charity to the poor.”

228

Domestic science in concert with Christianity easily filtered into Mexican society.
Writers in Mexico believed that man was the head of the household, in the same way that Christ
was the head of the church. Similar to the relationship between individuals and God, man and
224
225
226
227
228

BPEJ, Miscelleanous #758, doc 1, Saez de Melgar, Manuel de la jóven adolescente, 84.
Ibid., 94.
BPEJ, Miscellaneous, #291, doc 2, Lorento del Pozzo, “La Famila,” 142.
Ibid., 85; 86; 89.
Ibid., 93.
74

woman provided for each other and were both obligated to one another.

229

Indeed, the

reciprocal relationship between man and wife was closely tied to women’s honor. According to
one newspaper article, “a dignified, pure, and modest woman has on her side the protection and
boldness of her husband.”

230

Likewise, writers in Guadalajara linked the honor of the household

to its women, as women represented “affection and kindness” in society, and their greatest
qualities found in their “modesty, moral beauty and honor.”

231

At the same time, with so much

of a household invested in its females, a home could be as easily corrupted by a bad wife and
mother who brought “dishonor into the home.”

232

Conservative privileged women in Guadalajara tended to believe in many of the basic ideals
set forth in Saez de Melgar’s manual, and utilized the importance given to their role in society as
wives and mothers to protest in their petition to congress over religious rights in Guadalajara.
The women prefaced their complaints by saying
How strange it seems that women, who do not enjoy full rights of citizenship, would take
part . . . in a public debate; strange is right, it seems to our sovereignty that the woman,
whose destiny is believed in society to be reduced to the care and concerns of the
domestic home (hogar doméstico), now manifest excessive interest because they cannot
233
agree to the law of tolerance of religions in our Republic.

229

Montsabre. El Matrimonio. Pedro Armengol y Cornet (traductor) ( México, Juan de la Fuente
Parres, Editor, 1888), 120.
230
“Lo que piensa una mujer de las mujeres” en El Album de la mujer. Illustración hispano
American, Año vii, 4 (México, 27 de Enero de 1889), 26.
231
“Muy importante par las señoras y señoritas,” en La Gaceta de Guadalajara, año vii, núm 30
(Guadalajara, 23 de Octubre de 1904), 11.
232
“Unas palabras a las madres” en La linterna de Diógenes, año v, 198 (Guadalajara, 25 de
Abril de 1891), 2.
233
BPEJ, Misc #12, doc3. Real Cedula, 172, “Representacion que las señoras de Guadalajara
dirigen al Soberano Congreso Constituyente, sobre que En la Carta Fundamental que se discute
no quede consignada, La Tolerenica de Cultos en la Republica” (Guadalajara, 1856), 3.
75

The over 500 widowed, single and married women who signed the petition would later form The
Catholic Society of Our Lady of the Roses, an organization that promoted Catholicism in the
face of increasing secularization during the latter part of the century. In addition to operating a
religious school, they published a newspaper that provided religious news, advice to women and
religious devotions. Few records exist for the period, but the well-organized structure of the
association consisted of a president, vice president, several secretaries, and a social as well as
foreign relations committee.

234

Before their formal organization in 1894, the group of women

that presented themselves before congress were not contesting their role as wives and mothers,
but rather utilized the rhetoric of dutiful wife and homemaker to make a case for their arguments
concerning religion in the city. Their petition goes on to say that,
It seems convenient that the woman, shut away in the confines of the domestic home,
occupied only by her sacred duties of the family, far enough away to participate in the
vehement passions which move men to fight for their respective flags with frenzy, instead
before invoking in her house and in the temple with fervent and continued deprecations to
the true God, so that the children of the same motherland are not torn apart from within
their own womb; it seems convenient that the woman with that solemn voice and love of
religion given to her by nature, would speak to destroy irreligious fascination, imparting
the most sweet affections of wife, of mother and of sister; telling men with simplicity
who have made such precious links [in their mind regarding religion] to open their eyes
235
and look.
While the petition hints at some of women’s displeasure and sense of confinement at being
“shut away” in the home, it also upholds their belief in homemaking as a grave responsibility.
From what they do say however, it is not as easy to determine whether or not they were actually
critical of their expected role within the home. In their appearance before the Jalisco Congress in
1856 they seem to concur with set ideals regarding both their natural and idealized position in the
234

Archivo del Arquidióscesis de Guadalajara (AHA), Gobierno, Cofradías, Sociedad Católica
Nuestra Seora de la De la Rosa Hijas de María, 1894-1926, Caja 1.
235
“Representacion que las señoras,” 4.
76

family, and use it to benefit their credibility in state politics. They argued that as wives, mothers,
and sisters whose central job it is to instill Christian virtues in the home they have a particular
foresight. It is not only their belief, but their duty to make the male politicians making decisions
aware of the potential disharmony they may cause within society. Although the issue at hand was
not whether or not individuals would go against all religion, they understood a separation from
Catholicism went against their own education and teachings.

The Marriage Contract in Guadalajara
The 1859 civil marriage law and subsequent reforms to the Mexican civil code in 1870 and
1884 upheld and wrote into law that men and women had a legal duty to be faithful and to
contribute to marriage’s primary objective, which was mutual aid. The basis of which was a
system of honor in which men provided financially and emotionally for their wives, while
women remained faithful and virtuous as spouses and mothers.

236

Civil and criminal court

litigation between husbands and wives in Guadalajara confirms that they ascribed to these legally
defined roles. In a random sample of divorce and adultery cases from 1855 to 1910, women and
men of all classes used discourses which placed great value on honor within marriage.
In the 1870 divorce of María Antonia Madrigal and Santiago Vallarta in Guadalajara,
María claimed the reason she filed for separation against Santiago was his failure to provide for
her financially throughout their four year marriage. In her testimony, she claimed that “he never
fulfilled his obligations.” In her inventory of reasons she cited he did not provide her a daily

236

Código Civil del Distrito Federal y Territorios (Mexico: Imprenta de José Batiza, 1870), Art.
98, 45.
77

237

allowance, nor a “home, clothing, or companionship.”

Her husband’s inability to support her,

forced her to start her own small business out of their small rented home. She did not elaborate
further on the type of business she started, but noted that she had to work in order to provide her
with the basic necessities of clothing and food. The socio-economic status of María and her
husband is unclear, although running her business from home was likely an indication of their
lower income level. As a secondary charge, she also admitted to being abused by her husband,
who at times beat her so severely she was forced to go out with bruises and cuts on her body,
causing her great shame. Several of María Antonia’s admissions allude to her belief in reciprocal
and honorable obligations by both husband and wife. His failure to provide financially forced her
to work outside of the home, and his mistreatment, witnessed publicly, caused her to feel a sense
of dishonor.
While the abuse María faced tested her own honor, men in her same situation felt that
cheating wives brought great shame to their households. Such was the case for Gabriel
Delgadillo who filed a divorce case against his wife Juliana Robledo in 1894. The couple was
likely of a higher social status because Gabriel owned his own farm, listed as a hortelano, yet he
lived in the city. For an elite landowner like Delgadillo, acknowledging the affair publicly dealt a
blow to his honor as a man. In his testimony he concedes that he does not wish to “make [his]
dishonor public,” but given that his wife now accuses him of infidelity “with the cynicism of a
prostituted woman,” he now seeks the state’s intervention. Several witnesses testify to seeing
Juliana in public places with her long time sweetheart, Esteban Ramos. Evidence from their
testimony suggests the two had over a year-long affair. Particularly damning testimony came
from the widow Hilaria Henriquez who claimed that Juliana had an affair with her seventeen
237

BPEJ, Archivo del Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Civil, “Peticion para
divorcio contra D. Santiago Vallarta,” 1870, Caja 1: 148,084.
78

year old son. In the end the case goes unresolved as Delgadillo chooses to close the case out of
fear of “creating a public scandal.” Delgadillo understood that his wife’s actions were a
detriment to his personal honor. As the head of the household, his role as patriarch warranted
greater control and order within the home. At the same time however, he felt Juliana’s actions
justified the title of “prostitute” and a loss of her honor as a wife. Not only was a woman’s
promiscuous behavior a failure to abide by the sexual honor codes established for marriage, but it
also served as a social commentary on their abilities as good wives and homemakers.

238

A failure to fulfill the expectations for honor within marriage was at the heart of most of
the marital disputes heard before the Jalisco Supreme Tribunal. In 1874, José María Villareal
filed an adultery case against his wife Guadalupe Escota. Although testimony did not indicate
Villareal’s occupation, the couple resided in a poor neighborhood on the periphery of town.

239

In the case Villareal made mention of the fact the he and Escota were legally married. He
expressed devastation regarding his wife’s infidelity remarking that her actions caused him
“personal harm,” injuring “the most delicate honor of a man.” When his wife of twenty years ran
off with a family friend, a man almost twenty years her junior in a two week escapade to the
countryside, he felt she betrayed the “most sacred obligations that the laws, morality, and society
imposed” upon husbands and wives. Through his testimony he revealed not only his own shame,
but the embarrassment that Escota caused their family. According to Villareal, in addition to
infidelity, she abandoned the “domestic home” and left her children orphaned. In his defense, the
twenty year old accused lover of Escota, Pablo Sánchez, told the court that Escota told him her
238

BPEJ, Archivo del Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal, “Contra
Esteban Ramos y Juliana Robledo por adulterio,” (Guadalajara, Oct. 12, 1894), Caja 5: 107,923.
239
Both resided in Cuartel 7 also known as Mexicalzingo. Cuartel observations are taken from
Eduardo López Moreno, La cuadrícula en el desarollo de la ciudad hispanoamericana:
Guadalajara, Mexico. (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 1992), 22.
79

husband mistreated her and was so aged he could not leave the house to catch them. For the two
lovers, these reasons were justification to carry on the affair. In his closing arguments, Villareal
commented that he never imagined he would be in criminal court, divulging his own dishonor,
accusing his wife and friend of adultery and feeling the weight of embarrassment it would cause
his family. Perhaps for these reasons, he pardoned the accused of their crimes releasing them
from prison after serving only twenty two days and the case was dismissed. While Villareal felt
that his wife’s affair brought shame upon himself and his family and that as a mother she was a
“bad example” to his children, she also believed that his mistreatment and old age justified her
actions.

240

Cases of divorce and adultery provide rare opportunities to examine perceptions of honor
within marriage since few cases actually went to trial prior to the twentieth century. Even fewer
involved female adultery. Court cases are also rich in details on daily life, and their examination
reveals not only a private sense of marital right and wrong, but the “official construction of
gender relations” imposed by the state.

241

This would become important in the state’s treatment

of women it perceived of as lacking honor; the female poor, unmarried, single or widowed
women they encountered in criminal courts and state welfare agencies who lived outside the
confines of a patriarchal household and did not ascribe to proper gender roles. Just as these
women would become associated with poverty, shame, and immorality, so too could a broken
marriage lead to a similar loss of status among married men and women. At the same time the
cases highlight that not only did state and church officials uphold an ideal sense of honor for

240

BPEJ, Archivo del Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal, “Contra
Guadalupe Escota y Pablo Sanchez por el delito de adulterio,” (Guadalajara, January, 29, 1874),
Caja 25: 49,475.
241
Ramos Escandón, “The Social Construction,” 277.
80

male and female gender roles within marriage, but that common residents of the city of varying
classes also believed in their validity. Studies of other parts of Latin America reveal similar
patterns, in that members of the poor classes maintained a sense of honor similar to elites.

242

Therefore, reform laws like the 1859 Civil Marriage law followed by subsequent legislation
governing separation and eventually divorce increased the participation of the state in the affairs
of husbands and wives, both literally and figuratively. In effect, it increased the state’s presence
in women’s lives and its expectations for them as wives and eventually mothers.

Mothers
The value that church and state leaders placed on women in national projects is also revealed
in their efforts to proscribe women’s roles in the family as good mothers. Across Latin America
efforts centered on mobilizing women around notions of “republican motherhood,” an idea that
women needed to become educated in order to produce educated, orderly and productive
243

citizens.

Even in Guadalajara, the popular politician and educator Manuel López Cotilla,

argued that the education of Mexican citizens had a direct impact on the “material progress” of
individuals and of modern governments. Not only did he believe that education could promote
the “general good,” but that it could influence “the destiny of society.”

244

Reformers of the time

believed that “a nation is happy, flourishing and powerful when . . . its citizens are educated,

242

Sandra Lauderdale Graham, “Honor Among Slaves,” in The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame,
and
Violence in Colonial Latin America.” Lyman Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, Eds.
(Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 1998).
243
See Ruggiero, Modernity in the Flesh, 27; Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 15.
244

BPEJ, Misc, #73, 1“Instruccion PriMaría, informe que el Inspector general de Instruccion
PriMaría del Estado de Jalisco” by Lopez Cotilla. (GDL, 1851).
81

industrious and moral.” On the contrary, a "weak, poor and disdainful” nation produced
"ignorant, lazy and corrupt" citizens.

245

If Mexican society were to advance politically and

economically, it required instilling new values in the way people thought, their work habits, and
civic obligations. This type of transformation required education at an early age, and therefore
imbued motherhood with a newfound civic obligation. Thus, women were given the task and
responsibility of churning out good citizens. While this was not necessarily a nineteenth-century
phenomenon, within the political context of the period the importance attached to Republican
motherhood became increasingly significant.

246

The changing emphasis on mothers from caretakers to teachers began as enlightenment
thought influenced changing concepts of childhood and children which promoted “childhood as
an innocent stage of life, combined with a new attentiveness to children in order to create orderly
clans.”

247

Heightened attention to children came across in colonial reforms aimed at reducing

child mortality (often condemning hygiene and the use of wet nurses by mothers) and the
introduction of new pedagogies that promoted rational education. As the Independence period
led to even greater instability in society, the pre-occupations of the colonial period would spill
over into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the achievements of a country’s youth began
to be synonymous with its progress.

248

Well into the twentieth century, state leaders believed

the education of children was a tool for nation building in Mexico, “subordinating the household
245
246
247

BPEJ, Miscellaneous, #291, doc 2, Lorento del Pozzo, “La Familia,” 109.
Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 15.

Premo, “Misunderstood Love,” 240; Tobias Hecht, ed. Minor Omissions: Children in Latin
American History and Society. Living in Latin America (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 2002), 234.
248
See Mark Szuchman, “Childhood Education and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Argentina:
The Case of Buenos Aires,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 70, no. 1 (1990): 111115.
82

to the interests of national development.”

249

An increased emphasis on children, however, also

heightened the role of mothers as the educators of their children. The notion of “republican
motherhood” implored women to raise and educate their children to become good citizens, the
implications of which influenced women’s education and modified gender roles as a whole.

250

Reformers and writers believed that the way to move Mexico forward was through the
education of women and by extension their children. The project of liberal education began in
Mexico during the Bourbon era (1700-1821), but it took on new meaning in the nineteenth
century as a way for Mexico to overcome the political chaos of the period, progress as a modern
nation, and instill Liberal values in its citizenry.

251

In many ways, the type of education that

reformers referenced was not necessarily a formalized education. As del Pozzo argued the type
of education required of "civilized nations" was “cultivated of the heart,” and therefore it did not
happen in schools but "in the intimacy of the family, where the good or bad qualities of children
manifest themselves plainly, and they are of the father and the mother.” It was the duty of the
mother to be gentle and loving, and the father to discipline and show paternal authority over his
children. Both parents however were to lead with examples of good and virtuous behavior.

249

252

In

Mary Kay Vaughn,“Modernizing Patriarchy: State Policies, Rural Households, and Women
in Mexico, 1930-1940,” in Dore, Elizabeth and Maxine Molyneux, eds. Hidden Histories of
Gender and the State in Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 194.
250
For more on the idea of Republican Motherhood in Mexico see the writings of Carmen
Ramos Escandón, “The Social Construction,” and “Señoritas Pofirianas,” Presencia y
Transparencia (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 1987), 143-161. Much of the work written on
the subject has been discussed in the context of the United States and England, see Linda Kerber,
“The Republican Mother: Women and the Enlightenment—An American Perspective,”
American Quarterly, 187-205.
251
Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 14-15. For the colonial period see Bianca Premo,
Children of the Father King: Youth, Authority & Legal Minority in Colonial Lima. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
252
del Pozzo, “Gobierno,” 7-10.
83

the same year similar attitudes existed in Guadalajara, in a column on the purity of women, a
journalist placed great emphasis on women’s role in leading their children by virtuous
example.

253

Therefore, the family comprised of a husband, wife and children would be the

focus of the new nation, and through education and examples set by mothers and fathers a young
citizenry would learn its new role in society.
The post-Independence era ushered in a wave of progress for Jalisco’s education system,
introducing the sciences to school curriculum in 1827, followed by obligatory education for boys
and girls aged six to fifteen by 1842.

254

As expected, female education centered on the

proscribed ideal gender roles laid out for women both in the family and society. Early education
in Guadalajara was segregated by sex, with girls taking courses in the humanities, fine arts, math,
religion, home economics and French with “appropriate” electives such as cooking, sewing and
embroidery. While women and men took similar classes for primary education, men had
opportunities to advance into secondary and professional study, learning advanced math,
philosophy and science.

255

In 1895, while almost as many young boys as young girls attended

primary school, of all secondary school students, boys outnumbered girls four to one. Even fewer
women entered professional school, making up only 141 students that year.

256

As a result, the

limited nature of women’s education served to instill dominant ideals on women’s proper role in
society as well as prevent them from moving beyond dictated proscriptions.
253
254

“¿Por qué”, El Imperio, 3.

The introduction of science is noted in BPEJ, #73, doc 15 “Manifestacion La Junta Directiva
de Estudios por conducto del Ministerio de Instruccion Pública” (Guadalajara, 1865).Obligatory
education is mentioned in BPEJ, Misc., #73, 1“Instruccion PriMaría, informe que el Inspector
general de Instruccion PriMaría del Estado de Jalisco” by Lopez Cotilla. (Guadalajara, 1851), 20.
255
BPEJ, #73, 11, Misc. “Enseñaza pública” (GDL, 1863), 17.
256

See Table 3.1.
84

257

Table 3.1
Education in Guadalajara, 1895
Boys Girls
Primary (age 6-15)
2673 2298
Secondary (15+)
962
253

Just as the family would play a strong role in maintaining order in nineteenth-century
Mexico, it would also be expected to reproduce the values and norms of a new Liberal society. In
order to raise a strong citizenry that would promote national development and the ideals of
Liberalism mothers were to become teachers to their children. While the government would
provide formal institutional education and the moral and material support that families needed, it
was the role of mothers as the "heart" of the family, to provide life lessons, nurture their children,
teach them virtues and good behavior, and help them to improve themselves. Only parents, given
the capacity to govern within the home, could prevent laziness in their children and instill the
values of "volition, valor, activity and work… for the common good." Del Pozzo, like many
reformers of the period, believed that the family had an obligation to the state and the state to the
family, together they could “form capable, active, proven and apt men in order to give back to
the country and follow its laws.”

258

He indicates that the state and family were intertwined and

their combined efforts would reap the benefits of a prosperous family and state. While the
relationship was a supportive one, the state needed the family to succeed, while the family did
not necessarily depend as heavily on the state.
257

Archivo Histórico de Jalisco, Mapoteca, “Computo General del Censo,” Oficio del
Concentración del Censo (Guadalajara, 1895).
258
BPEJ, Miscellaneous, #291, doc 2, Lorento del Pozzo, “La Famila,” 117; 111-112.
85

In order to possess children of good habits, del Pozzo advised mothers to assign their children
jobs within the home to accustom them to the habit of work, and prevent laziness and oversleeping from a young age. She should constantly monitor her children and provide correction
when necessary, and instill the habits of “honesty and virtue” through her own example.

259

If a

mother were too docile her children would become lazy and lack a desire to work. Part of a
mother's job was also to teach her daughters "the necessary rules of governing a house" as a
means of reproducing notions of an ideal wife and mother.

260

Young children were to be given

basic education by their mothers through example, teaching them lessons from daily life to
accustom them to work, make good use of time, how to work the most efficiently so that they
will have these skills in their future occupations.

261

The liberal rhetoric placed a great weight of responsibility on women as mothers. Their
mothering skills, or lack of them, had the power to produce both good and bad citizens and was
reflection of their own honor. Scientific thinking emphasized the early years of children’s lives
as critical to their development and without mothers or with bad rearing, some in Guadalajara
feared children could become “corrupted” at a young age.

262

For this reason, the education of

women became critical. According to one Guadalajara archbishop, a poorly educated woman
could do more harm in society than a man because she would pass on “disorder” to her children.
He commented that “poorly instructed” children not taught to apply themselves “will always
have an errant imagination.” Such children, forever needing to “feed their curiosity” would
259
260

BPEJ, #286, doc 3 “La educación de las niñas,” 6-7; 10.

BPEJ, #758, doc 1, Saez de Melgar, “Educación cristian y social de la mujer,” 34; 89; BPEJ,
Miscellaneous, #291, doc 2, Lorento del Pozzo, “La Famila,” 142.
261
Ibid., 143.
262

BPEJ, #286, doc 3 “La educación de las niñas,” 5.
86

“consume themselves with the vain and dangerous.”

263

Therefore, as the “soul of the house,”

responsibility lay with mothers for the rearing of both good citizens and criminals.

264

Consequently, social reformers of the time believed a women’s role in the family was paramount
to its success and had the potential to erase social tensions and remedy social evils in society.

265

Motherhood not only had the power to effect positive change in society, it was also a
female “virtue.” Christian reformers prized it as a “holy mission” and gift from God, requiring
complete and total selflessness on the part of women. As dutiful wives and mothers, women
were “the sacred tree of the family, which infused faith, charity, and love in the domestic
home."

266

She was to be an example to her children, exemplifying the qualities of “moderation,

temperance and kindness” to avoid "planting bad seeds" in them. Advice for mothers varied
according to class. Literature and sermons directed to poor women emphasized proper hygiene in
child rearing, while advice for elite women warned against amusements and diversions outside
the confines of the home.

267

Anything else was believed to "only satisfy the senses,” unlike the

true pleasures of the family, “which were rooted in the soul and make the heart beat,” which is
the "pleasure women feel each moment in the domestic home; a pleasure enjoyed by all mothers
all hours of the day.”

263
264
265

268

Ibid.; Ibid., 9.
BPEJ, #758, doc 1, Saez de Melgar, “Educación cristian y social de la mujer,” 89.

Julio Guerrero, La génisis del crimen en México (Paris, Mexico: Vda de Bouret, 1901);
Carlos Roumagnac, Los Criminales en México (Mexico: El Fénix, 1904).
266
BPEJ, #758, doc 1, Saez de Melgar, “Educación cristian y social de la mujer,” 27-28; 36.
267
268

Ramos Escandón, “The Social Construction,” 277; 281.
BPEJ, #758, doc 1, Saez de Melgar, “Educación cristian y social de la mujer,” 33; 30.
87

Liberal and Christian reformers laid out expectations of motherly virtue and honor for
women to follow and re-produce in their daughters. As mothers, women were responsible for the
education of their girls as well as their actions. From a mother, girls learned the example of
"submission and respect for their husband as head of the house,” as well as “obedience and
269

respect for their superiors.”

It was also a mother’s obligation to protect her daughter’s

virginity and seduction by men through teaching them proper feminine behavior and leading by
example and advice. The responsibility of mothers over their daughters was to constantly
monitor them, never leave them alone, prevent any deception by men and make them aware of
the dangers of life and consequences of falling into situations of sexual deception.

270

Just as

hard-working, honorable and educated children became reflections of the nation, so too did they
echo the honor and behavior of their own mother. This made the task of motherhood all the more
important to state leaders and reformers.

Conclusion
As a means to achieve their own goals of national progress, government officials
intervened in spaces where the church had previously occupied. While it upheld long-standing
ideals of gender appropriate roles, civil marriage was symbolic of the state’s position that legally
binding marriage between man and women would be the foundation of the new nation. As a case
study, strong conservatism of Guadalajara reveals that the transition to secularism was not a
smooth one. The ideological transformations and reforms of the century were often met by
269
270

Ibid., 30; 33.

Laura Benítez Barba, “Raptadas tapatías. Mujeres fuera del estereotipo, 1885-1933,” in
Mujeres jaliscienses del siglo XIX. Cultura, religion y vida privada, edited by Vázquez Parada,
Lourdes Celina and Darío Armando Flores Soria (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara,
2008), 294-295; 301.
88

confrontation from clergy and lay society, including women. Despite the fact that Liberal ideals
of individual liberty and happiness influenced the process of modernization and state
organization, women’s rights continued to be defined in terms of their relationship to fathers,
husbands and children. Debate over civil matrimony and divorce among liberals and
conservatives shows that religious and civil authorities shared archetypes on the family,
marriage, and ideal gender roles for men and women. Legal and popular rhetoric of the time
promoted both harmonious and hierarchical relations between husband and wife as the basis of
the nuclear family. State leaders and local authorities believed the family and marriage were
indispensable to the order, peace, and progress of the nation. According to Silvia Arrom, the
family was “the basic social unit on which the entire structure rested, with men governing wives
and children just as they were in turn governed by the state.”

271

Both legal and popular

discourse promoted the idea that women’s honor was paramount to the preservation of family
honor, and that despite their nature as “ethereal, fragile, [and] dependent beings,” their function
was to reproduce within the context of legal marriage.
this role.

273

272

Neither church nor state questioned

As the century progressed, the importance of women’s roles as wives and mothers

deepened as it became linked with state efforts to improve and reproduce a sense of order and
obligation in society. By utilizing the rhetoric and popular image of patriarchal fathers, devoted
271
272

Arrom,“Changes in Mexican Family Law,” 310.

“Ley del Matrimonio Civil 23 de Julio de 1859,” Legislación Mexicana, vol 8, 696; Ramos
Escandón, “The Social Construction, 278.
273
Eugenia S. Rodríguez, “La aprobación del divorcio civil en Costa Rica en 1888,” in Fin de
siglo XIX e identidad nacional en México y Centroamérica, comp. Francisco Enríquez Solano
and Iván Molina Jiménez (Alajuela, Costa Rica: Museo Histórico Cultural Juan Santamaría,
2000), 143–76; Eugenia S. Rodríguez, “Reformando y secularizando el matrimonio: Divorcio,
violencia doméstica y relaciones de género en Costa Rica (1800–1950),” in Familias
iberoamericanas: Historia, identidad y confl ictos, coord. Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru (Mexico City:
El Colegio de México, 2001), 231–75.
89

wives, and educated and virtuous mothers, reformers, writers, religious leaders and politicians
promoted an ideal Liberal family to advance the goals of the nation. At the same time that state
leaders and legislators firmly established the patriarchal family model, centered on a nuclear
monogamous arrangement between husband and wife as the solution to state ills, female
singleness was on the rise in Mexico. By the latter part of the century, more adult women would
be single than married, and the overall increase in the number of single women would rise nearly
ten percent by the close of the decade.

274

A discussion of the rhetoric of the liberal family has

important implications for the study of single women. With growing emphasis directed at the
family and women’s ideal role within it, those who remained single into adulthood became
increasingly marginalized as the century progressed. As neither wives nor mothers in some
cases, singleness was looked upon as an abnormality, a way of life for women of loose morals or
poverty. By and large as the family became fundamental in matters of state organization, and the
ideal patriarchal family took center stage, little room existed for unmarried women in liberal
society.

274

See Chapter 1, Table 1.1.
90

CHAPTER FOUR
THE STIGMATIZATION OF SINGLENESS: WORK, PUBLIC SPACE AND DANGER
It was work that attracted poor single and widowed women to Guadalajara in the years
after Independence, and work which distinguished and marginalized them as a threat to the
Mexican family and society. Compared with men, Guadalajara’s adult female population was as
often widowed and single, as it was married.

275

Many lived and worked “unattached”

male patriarch, with large numbers heading their own households.

277

276

from a

These factors

distinguished them from traditionally married women. City officials and reformers did not value
their labor as women who worked in the public sphere, a space reserved for men and deemed
dangerous for proper women. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century both liberals and the
Catholic Church exalted women’s roles as wives and mothers. As the role of the patriarchal
family became an integral, if contentious, part of state development plans so too did the value
placed on marriage. Evidence from legal reforms, court cases, and writings on motherhood and
women’s education in Guadalajara demonstrated that the family served as the centerpiece of
stability and progress, and women’s rights were circumscribed within that sphere.

278

For most

educated Mexicans, to be a single woman was unnatural. Although many women would spend at
least part of their adult lives unmarried, cultural expectations pressured women to marry before
they grew too old and became spinsters. Newspaper columnists in Guadalajara argued that

275
276

See Chapter 1; Also see Table 4.1 and Table 4.2.

The use of the term “unattached,” is meant to incorporate single and widowed women who
did not live with a spouse or partner, and instead headed their own household or lived with other
women.
277
See Table 4.3.
278

Dore, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.” 25.
91

singleness was involuntary, and at some point all women’s desired goal was marriage. This
belief was so strong that writers demeaned early feminist movements in Latin America as
something supported only by “ugly and single women.”

279

Indeed, stereotypes of the time

associated the married population with the ideals of honor, order and prosperity, and unmarried
individuals with “irresponsibility, intemperance, and sometimes revolution.”

280

Such

stigmatization left little space for poor single and widowed women to navigate nineteenthcentury life in Guadalajara.
It is important to note that women have always worked, but it was not until the nineteenth
century that the work of the poor and lower classes left the home, introducing a new dimension
by living outside the traditional supervision of patriarchs or relatives.

281

Prior to that time

women’s work, outside of domestic chores, concentrated in agriculture and pre-industrial
manufacturing, as artisans of spinning, knitting and sewing. Frequently, women conducted these
jobs in the home to contribute to family subsistence. Beginning in the 1840s and peaking by the
1870s, industrialization radically transformed this system in Mexico. Technological changes and
accelerated production transformed the conditions under which they labored, both economically
and socially. As women converted from “independent artisans” to factory workers, their work
moved from the home to factories in the city.

282

279

It was this new type of work that differentiated

“Problemas sociales. La mujer, la ciencia y el trabajo,” El Jalisciense II, 139 (Guadalajara,
May 2, 1907), 1.
280
Kristin Ruggiero, Modernity in the Flesh: Medicine, Law, and Society in Turn-of-theCentury Argentina (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 23.
281
This is a point that Carmen Ramos Escandón is careful to draw attention to, see
Industrialización, género y trabajo femenino en el sector textile mexicano: El obraje, la fábrica,
y la compañía industrial (Mexico City: CIESAS, 2004), 29.
282
Ibid., 29-30. For a general historiography of how nineteenth-century industrialization
impacted women see, Daryl Hafter, European Women and Preindustrial Craft (Bloomington:
92

the unattached working woman from the honorable married one. Despite the fact that working
class and poor married women frequently labored alongside single women, household headship
and solitary living separated the two groups. While both groups might find it necessary to work,
a woman without a spouse found it absolutely essential for survival. Between 1811 and 1850,
more than half of all married and single women headed their own household in nineteenthcentury Guadalajara. Although it was not possible to gather this type of data for later years due
to source limitations, the assumption can be made that this number only increased as more
283

women entered the city and the rate of legal marriage declined during the Porfiriato.

Deeper

analysis of these women’s households in Guadalajara reveals an overwhelming presence of
single and widowed women, and also draws attention to the strategies they employed to survive
in a society that marginalized them and demeaned their labor. Often their ability to do so
depended on factors such as age, class, proximity to kin, or race and ethnicity. As the century
progressed laboring and independent women became the target of scrutiny by jurists, reformers,
journalists, lawyers, doctors, lawmakers, writers, and census takers who viewed them as a stark
contrast to the ideals of maternity and the laws of nature. Moreover, their heightened presence in
public spaces as working women raised questions about their potential to threaten the Republican
foundations of family honor and society. Single and unmarried women’s socio-economic status
Indiana University Press, 1995); Gretjan de Grott and Marlou Schorever, eds., Women Workers
and Technological Change in Europe (London: Taylor & Francies, 1995); Judy Lown, Women
and Industrialization: Gender at Work in Nineteenth-century England (London: Polity Press,
1990); Bridget Hill, Women’s Work and Sexual Politics in Eighteen Century England (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1989); Fernand Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life 1400-1800 (Baltimore:
John Hopkins Press, 1973).
283
See Table 4.3. The data reflects the overall percentage of single, married or widowed women
who were noted in the census as the head of the household. This was often indicated by the order
in which residents were listed. Later census material in this study did not give the detail level that
many of the earlier censuses provided, making an assessment regarding headship difficult; For
the drop in legal marriage see Moises Gonzalez Navarro, “El Porfiriato, vida social,” Historia
Moderna de México (Mexico: Editorial Hermes, 1957), 320.
93

often shaped the debate. Many feared that poor single working women in particular were at a
greater risk of becoming prostitutes. By the nineteenth century civil and social status intertwined,
often at the expense of the honor of many single and widowed women. The negative stereotypes
that surrounded them focused on their roles as working women, their presence in public space
and the questions it raised about their overall character.

284

Status

Table 4.1
Marital Status According to Sex and Age, Guadalajara, 1821
Age 15 - 24
Age 25 - 34
Age 35 - 44
Age 45 - 54
Age 55/over
Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women
376

715

132

330

85

196

71

148

60%

34%

66%

27%

71%

30%

70%

32%

68%

727

1654

2022

2263

1615

1230

960

534

572

205

70%

47%

53%

57%

43%

64

36

73%

26%

15

139

66

458

107

735

131

679

135

561

10%

Widowed

2146

30%

Married

1438
40%

Single

90%

13%

87%

13%

87%

16%

84%

20%

80%

284

Data for the table was compiled using the Censuses of Guadalajara, 1821-1822. CD-ROM
Database. (Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University, 2006).
94

285

Table 4.2
Marital Status Guadalajara, 1895
Men
Women
Single
12665
14213
47%
53%
Married
11837
11996
50%
50%
Widowed
2371
7348
24%
76%
Minors
10768
10872
Missing
172
213

286

Table 4.3
Adult Female Headship by Marital Status, 1811-1850
Single
Widowed
Year
N
%
N
%
1811
9
14.7
37
42
1813
30
21.2
116
54
1821
227
16.4
1120
46.1
1824
111
17
520
47.6
1838
26
21
156
43
1839
47
20.3
199
44.8
1842
119
15.2
663
42
1850
29
17.4
89
56.6

285

Data available for 1895 did not allow for a breakdown of individuals by their age groups,
although it did separate minors. Data for the table was taken from the Archivo Histórico de
Jalisco, Mapoteca, “Computo General del Censo,” Oficio del Concentración del Censo
(Guadalajara, 1895).
286
Ibid; Data was collected using census data. For some years, such as 1811, 1813, 1838, 1839
and 1850 only a sample of cuartels is available. The most complete data exists for the years
1821.
95

Unattached Women’s Households in Nineteenth-Century Guadalajara
Between 1821 and 1910, Guadalajara’s population grew from 38,087 residents to
119,468.

287

Most studies do not attribute this growth solely to natural increase, but emphasize

continued patterns of rural to urban migration.

288

Economic downturn after Independence

followed by land reform in the 1850s and Porfirian economic policies by the 1870s stripped
rural peasants of land and crippled rural agricultural markets. These changes coincided with a
growth in industrial manufacturing leading to an “explosion” in “las clases productoras,” or the
working classes in Guadalajara by the 1880s.

289

Throughout the period large numbers of rural

peasants migrated into the city to seek employment. Those who migrated were often single or
widowed.

290

In earlier years, it appears that more women than men arrived in the city. On

average, between 1821 and 1842 the adult female single population outnumbered single men by
upwards of twenty percent.

291

In these years studies suggest that while men might take up jobs

in mining or migrate to outlying large-scale farms or haciendas,

292

popular occupations such as

287

Luis Páez Brotchie’s prologue in Maríano Bárcena, Descripción de Guadalajara en 1880.
(Reprint ITG, Guadalajara, 1954), xxxv; Lilia Oliver Sánchez, “Intensidad de la crisis
demográficas en las ciudades de México y Guadalajara, 1800-1850,” Takwá 8, (Fall 2005), 23.
288
Ellen McAuliffe Brennan, Demographic and Social Patterns in Urban Mexico:
Guadalajara, 1876-1910 (Ph. D. diss., Columbia University, 1978), I; Rodney D. Anderson,
Guadalajara a la consumación de la independencia: studio de su población según los padrones
de 1821-1822 (Guadalajara, México: Gobierno de Jalisco, Secretaría General, Unidad Editorial,
1983), 45; Águeda Jiménez Pelayo, Jaime Olveda and Beatriz Núñez Miranda, El Crecimiento
Urbano de Guadalajara, (Zapopan: El Colegio de Jalisco, 1995), 107-163.
289
Bárcena, Descripción de Guadalajara en 1880, 148.
290

José María Muríá, Sumario Histórico de Jalisco (Guadalajara, Mexico: Editorial Gráfica
Nueva, 1996), 285-6.
291
See Table 4.4.
292

Mark Wasserman, Everyday Life and Politics in Nineteenth-century Mexico: Men, Women
and War (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), 23-33.
96

domestic or factory work for women often centered in cities.
and women decreased to about five percent.

294

293

By 1895, the ratio between men

The aggregate data should be read carefully

however, as I do not believe it suggests that less women migrated to the city in these years.
Instead, I would argue that it reflects the increased scope of industrialization that attracted more
men into the growing urban manufacturing sector during the Porfiriato. Between 1856 and 1880,
Guadalajara introduced a number of new industrial sectors. A rise in mass-production of former
artisanal trades, such as carpentry, shoemaking, meatpacking and ironworks likely brought more
men to the city.

295

Despite this difference, the overall data from 1821 to 1895 suggests not only

high rates of female migration, but the existence of a pattern which left many urban single and
widowed women fewer marriage (or remarriage) options than men. Women in the city
consistently outnumbered men throughout the century, perpetuating a cycle of singleness.

293

296

Ramos Escandón, Industrialización, 162-64; Elizabeth Kuznesof, “A history of domestic
service in Spanish America, 1492–1980,” in Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin
America and the Caribbean (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 25;
294
See Table 4.4.
295
296

Bárcena, Descripción de Guadalajara en 1880, 147-48; See Table 4.6.
See Table 4.5.
97

297

Table 4.4
Adult Marital Status by Sex, Guadalajara, 1821-1895
1821
1824
1838
1842

Year

Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women

1895
Men

Women

Single

2102
37%

3535
63%

826
34%

1601
65%

339
43%

440
56%

1465
41%

2112
59%

12665
47%

14213
53%

Married

5896
50%

5886
50%

2230
50%

2244
50%

1250
51%

1185
48%

3156
51%

3056
49%

11837
50%

11996
50%

Widowed

454
15%

2572
85%

222
16%

1159
83%

66
14%

390
85%

329
16%

1716
83%

2371
24%

7348
76%

298

Table 4.5
Ratio Male to Female by Year, 1811-1895
Male
Female
Year
N
%
N
%
1811
517
40.6
731
57.5
1813
2265
43
2917
55.3
1821
15358
43.5
19309
54.7
1824
5144
41.6
6824
55.2
1838
2568
46
2945
52.7
1839
1891
42.5
2528
56.8
1842
8315
44.7
10058
53.7
1850
1111
44.3
1393
55.6
1895
37813
45.9
44642
54.1

297

Data for the table was compiled using the Censuses of Guadalajara, 1821-1822. CD-ROM
Database. (Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University, 2006); For some years, such as 1824-1850,
only a sample of cuartels is available. The most complete data sets exists for 1821 and 1895.
298
Ibid; Data for 1895 was taken from the AHJ, Mapoteca, “Computo General del Censo,”
Oficio del Concentración del Censo (Guadalajara, 1895).
98

299

Table 4.6
Industrial Factories of Guadalajara, 1856-1880
Number of Factories
Factory Type
1856
1880
Meatpacking
4
12
Carpentry/Furniture
n/a
80
Gilding (Gold)
0
2
Bookbinding
4
4
Pasta & Wheat
3
3
Candle
5
12
Hat
14
0
Ironworks
21
38
Printing
4
5
Brass work
1
2
Dry Cleaning
4
2
Silversmithing
12
12
Shawlmaking
71
38
Clothing
32
n/a
Tanneries
11
4
Textile
12
4
Shoe
21
57
Silk Stocking
0
1
Soap
0
4
Fine Pottery
0
1
Glue
0
3
Ice
0
1
Lumber
0
2
Card
0
2
Musical Instrument
0
1
Barrel
0
3
Varnish
0
1
Metalworks
0
3
Chocolate
0
1
Tinworks
0
14
Lithography
0
6
Tobacco
n/a
12
Leatherworks
0
11

299

Data was collected from Bárcena, Descripción de Guadalajara en 1880, 147-48. Data for
1856 is not as complete as for 1880, although in some areas it appears that new factories
emerged in industries which had not previously existed.
99

The presence of so many single women in a period of chaotic political shifts in which
Liberal reformers ardently pushed for reforms that strengthened the marital unit and emphasized
the family as the centerpiece of a new liberal Mexico, raises important questions regarding where
single women fit into the newly Independent nation. Unattached women in Guadalajara lived
and worked outside the boundaries of a traditional patriarchal family evidenced by the interworkings of their households. In this section I hope to offer a snapshot of their daily lives by
taking a closer look at what they were doing, who they lived with and how they got by. While
most studies rely on censuses to gather quantitative information, the Guadalajara censuses offer
rare opportunities to read between the lines and open a window into the daily lives of single and
widowed women.

300

Unlike other censuses taken at the time, data from Guadalajara’s 1821 to

1850 censuses includes all members of the household and provides information on ethnicity and
class (for 1821 and earlier years).

301

A census of such detail was rare outside of Mexico for the

time period, and even cities in the United States did not take an individual-level census until
1845.

302

The best and most complete data available is for 1821. It would not be until 1895, that

the city conducted a similar and complete census. Historians of Guadalajara note that the
300

B.J. Barrickman’s work on a rural Brazilian census showcases the ways in which census data
can also be read qualitatively. In Brazil, he contends that the census served as a political tool,
identifying individuals and households to determine citizens from non-citizens, and as a social
lens, as census takers ordered and classified the population reinforcing the hierarchical structures
of Brazilian society. B.J. Barickman, “Reading the 1835 Parish Censuses from Bahia:
Citizenship, Kinship, Slavery and Household in Early Nineteenth-Century Brazil.” The
Americas. Vol. 59, no. 3, (2003).
301
In the aftermath of Independence lawmakers eliminated the category of calidad (quality) to
denote one’s caste from official records. For more on the caste system in the colonial period see
Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 16601720 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1994).
302
Rodney Anderson and Tamara Spike, “Archival Report: Making History Count, The
Guadalajara Census Project, 1790-1930,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 87, no 2. (May
2007), 337.
100

political disorganization from 1857 to 1895 created inconsistencies in systems of government
and instability within public administration. Therefore, most census data between those years
would have many errors.

303

When read qualitatively, however, for the data that is available

census categories for, estado (marital status) and officio (occupation) demonstrate an official
concern with singleness and widowhood that emphasized their state of poverty, virtue and a
pervasive disregard for female work. Census takers often viewed single and widowed women in
a paternalistic manner and made no qualms about expressing their views in writing, commenting
on female occupations and the sexual honor of their widowed and single neighbors. A closer
examination of women’s households suggests that despite many of the obstacles they faced, they
utilized economic strategies to build strong and independent homes. Some retained household
headship, replacing the need for a patriarch in their lives. Many also relied on the advantages of
class, ethnicity and age to maintain their households and create important female networks.

304

What it meant to be “unattached” by the nineteenth century frequently hinged on what a
single or widowed woman lacked when compared to being married. The lived difference for
women was very different than for men, and had important economic and social consequences.
The lack of or loss of a spouse severed several forms of presumed support within the marital
unit, such as economic, service, social and even emotional support. Without a spouse, single or
widowed women were more likely than men to experience economic hardship.

303

305

This is an

María de los Angéles Pérez-Salcedo, “La mujeres violadas en Jalisco, 1857-1910,” Thesis
(Universidad de Guadalajara: Guadalajara, 1993), 33.
304
Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, (New York: Columbia University, Press,
1990), 26.
305
Ida Blom, “Widowhood: From the Poor Law Society to the Welfare Society: the Case of
Norway, 1875-1964,” Journal of Women’s History 4 (1992), 52-3 and “The History of
Widowhood: A Bibliographic Overview,” Journal of Family History 16 (1991), 191-210; Gísli
101

especially important point for widows in Mexico, who lived under the Hispanic legal system. In
the colonial period a woman of good to moderate means might depend on her dowry to support
her after the death of a spouse. Colonial laws in Spanish America mandated that the first fourfifths of an estate be passed down to a man’s legitimate children, known as the legítima. This left
only one-fifth to be freely willed to someone of the testator’s choosing, but even this amount was
not guaranteed for wives. As a result, colonial tradition dictated that, despite the law, up to onefourth of the estate of a wealthy husband could be given to widowed women who lacked a dowry
in circumstances where husbands “did not leave [them] the means to live honestly.” By the
1880s, new liberal governments in several Latin American countries modified these laws to
include wives as necessary heirs.

306

Mexico did not, and therefore poverty during widowhood

continued to be a problem for many women.
Ultimately, for many women the loss (or lack) of a spouse resulted in less control over
economic resources.

307

A common thread in studies of widowhood in Europe was the poverty-

stricken nature of widow’s lives. Around the same period in parts of France, for example, twothirds of all widows had below average income levels, and many made up the majority of those

Gísli Ágúst Gunnlaugsson and Ólöf Gardarsdóttir,“Transition into Widowhood: A Lifecourse
Perspective on the Household Position of Icelandic Widows at the Beginning of the Twentieth
Century,” Continuity and Change 11, no. 3 (1996), 435.
306
Carmen Diana Deere and Magdalena Léon, “Liberalism and Married Women’s Property
Rights in Nineteenth-Century Latin America,” Hispanic American Historical Review 85, no. 4
(November 2005), 656-8. Countries that did include wives in inheritance included Argentina,
Bolivia and Venezuela.
307
For a comparison of Spanish civil law versus English common law systems as they pertained
to women during this time period see Deborah Rosen, “Women and Property across Colonial
America: A Comparison of Legal Systems in New Mexico and New York,” The William and
Mary Quarterly 60, no. 2 (2003).
102

receiving public assistance.

308

In other parts of Mexico scholars note an overwhelmingly high

proportion of widows and single adults among the ranks of the Mexico City poor house and in
line at government sponsored pawn shops.

309

In Guadalajara in the nineteenth century,

widowhood was often synonymous with poverty, and census takers frequently made mention
that a widow was not only a viuda, but a viuda pobre (poor widow).

310

Like the Mexico City

poor house, the central orphanage in the city known as the Casa de Caridad (later renamed the
Hospicio Cabañas) served as a refuge for many of the cities impoverished and aged population,
widows and single women included.

311

The institution did extend refuge to men, it do so

usually only to those that were ill or disabled.

312

Overall, the historiography on nineteenth-

century widowhood intimates that those without spouses, children, or relatives were more likely
to succumb to pauperization.

313

Greater exposure to poverty separated poor and working class women from elite women
because it often required them to find work outside the home. For single and widowed women
economic stability was essential to daily survival, but variables such as their age, whether or not
they had children, or their age limited their earning potential in the city. Most women labored in
308

Lee Baker, “Survival Strategies of Widows in Dijon During the French Revolution,”
Women’s Studies 31, (2002), 60.
309
Silvia Arrom, Containing the Poor: The Mexico City Poor House, 1774-1871 (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2000), 101-103. See Marie Eileen Francois, A Culture of Everyday
Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking and Governance in Mexico City, 1750-1920. Lincoln,
Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2006.
310
See Censuses of Guadalajara, 1821-1822. There are 35 comments in one cuartel alone
stating a widow appeared poverty-stricken. Cuartel 6, 1821.
311
Archivo Archidiócesis de Guadalajara, “Obras Asistenciales,” Casa de la Caridad y la
Enseña, 1784-1834, C. 1, 12.
312
See Chapter 6.
313

Arrom, Containing the Poor, 101-103.
103

typically female occupations which were un-skilled and poorly compensated. In Guadalajara,
some of the most common occupations for women remained the same between 1821 and 1895.
Most women worked as domestics, followed by seamstresses and those engaged in textile or
food-related industries.

314

Employment available to women was almost always the lowest

paid, with women typically earning one-third to half as much as men in similar industries.

315

By

the nineteenth-century employers of proto-industrial jobs sought out women because they could
be paid them less than men. Factory owners, for example, reserved wage labor positions for
single, younger women.

316

As most wages were paid by the piece, rather than time, days were

often monotonous and long. In La Concha tobacco factory for example, which employed over
300 female employees to work as cigar rollers by 1880, paid women per set of cigars. Each set
contained sixty boxes of forty cigars, and paid women four reales, or about thirty three cents.
Some women could roll as much as two sets during an average ten hour workday.

317

During

the same period while a female cigar roller might earn 8 reales a day, a wetnurse averaged 12
reales, or one peso, as did seamstresses.

318

In the entire factory, there were only 10 men,

usually who worked in skilled trades or as overseers and managers. Of the women working at La

314
315

See Tables 4.7 and 4.8.

Susie Porter notes this disparity in Mexico City. See Susie Porter, Working Women in
Mexico City: Public Discourses and Material Conditions, 1879-1931 (Tucson: University of
Arizona Press, 2003), 30. Also See Kuznesof, “Gender Ideology, Race, and Female-Headed
Households,” 162.
316
Francois, A Culture of Everyday Credit, 88: Juan Javier Pescador, “Vanishing Women:
Female Migration and Ethnic Identity in Late-Colonial Mexico City,” Ethnohistory 42, no. 4
(Fall 1995), 618.
317
nd
Maríano Bárcena, Descripción de Guadalajara en 1880, 2 Ed. (Guadalajara: Ediciones I.
T. G., 1954), 160.
318
BPEJ, Archivo del Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919, Ramo Civil, 1885, C. 2,
150,20; Susie Porter discusses wages for seamstresses during this time, see Working Women, 33.
104

Concha the majority were single and widowed migrants from other parts of Jalisco. A similar
ratio of male to female workers was true of all five tobacco factories that operated that same
year.

319

Concrete data for female occupations is difficult to ascertain and should be read
cautiously. The Guadalajara census of 1821 provided occupational information for about 18% of
all women, compared to 80% percent for men.

320

The commissioner of one neighborhood in

1821 provided justification for this phenomenon by commenting that most “were only spinners
or tortilla makers, which represents the poverty in which they are found.”

321

This comment

provides an indication of not only some of the most common female occupations, but also
cultural perceptions regarding single and widowed working women and the value placed on
women’s labor. By 1895 as well, adult women were 11 times more likely to be listed as having
“no occupation” than their male counterparts.

322

The lack of occupational data for women seems

suspicious given the fact that the number of poor single and widowed women, who had no
choice but to work, did not decrease at the same pace. I contend, as do other scholars of working
women in Mexico, that these numbers likely indicate a desire to exclude women from industry,
rather than a real absence of them. Susie Porter makes a similar argument in her work on women
319
320

Bárcena, Descripción de Guadalajara, 159-161.

The listing of “sin officio,” or “sin destino” was common to indicate no occupation within
the censuses of Guadalajara, and was a pattern found elsewhere. In Dijon, France 70.2% listed
widows with no occupation according to Baker, and Clarkson found a rate of 80% in England.
See Baker, “Survival Strategies of Widows in Dijon,” 58; L.A. Clarkson and Margaret E.
Crawford, “Life after Death: Widows in Carrick-on-Suir, 1799.” Women in Early Modern
Ireland, ed. Margaret MacCurtain and Mary O’Dowd (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1991), 248.
321
Urbano Arrellano, Cuartel 22, 1821, Aug 4. 1821, AHMG, box 1121, leg. 39.
322

Archivo Histórico de Jalisco, Mapoteca, “Computo General del Censo,” Oficio del
Concentración del Censo (Guadalajara, 1895); See Table 4.7.
105

in Mexico City, suggesting that it has more to do with changing perceptions of female work by
the late 1800s.

323

Overall, male officials did not consider domestic labor by wives and

dependents an occupation. While working was a viable option toward economic independence,
barriers existed in finding self-sustaining employment for many unattached women.

Households Strategies
For this very reason unattached women employed numerous strategies, in addition to
working, in order survive in urban Guadalajara. Those with the ability to do so headed their own
households. They used their class status and acquired property in old age to make do. They
relied on family, and those who did not found commonality with other women. Some devised
strategies, such as taking in boarders to make ends meet. Older women benefited from
inheritances and lived as landlords. Some merged their lives with family members or forged
strong female networks to create a larger and more economically prosperous unit. Others without
resources took up residence as servants in the home of wealthier city residents to make ends
meet. Overall, household details from the census relate the fact that unattached women were
present and very visible within the urban landscape.
Heading a household indicated a level of economic autonomy, but it was also a marker of
social status in cities all over the world. For example, comparative studies of widows in
nineteenth-century northern Europe found they were more likely to remain independent, or retain
headship of their household if they resided within urban areas.

324

In cities, women had more

options. In addition to finding work as wage laborers, women could take in boarders, perform

323
324

Susie Porter, Working Women, 19.
Gunnlaugsson and Gardarsdóttir, “Transition into Widowhood,” 437, 438-440.
106

food or domestic service jobs, or live close to nearby kin. Moreover, studies of Mexico indicate
that urban centers were an important source of economic mobility for all women. Economic
incentives were the supreme motivation behind the migration of Indian women of all marital
statuses to Mexico City in the late-colonial period. Once in the city, a majority of these women
headed their own households.

325

Similar patterns were found for nineteenth-century São Paulo,

where female headed households were by far the norm in the city, as women migrated into urban
areas to meet increasing female labor and domestic manufacturing demands, and men stayed
behind to work in mines and as agricultural laborers in the countryside.

326

Many of the patterns uncovered by researchers of singleness in other regions can also be
found in nineteenth-century Guadalajara. Women utilized numerous strategies to make ends
meet in a society bound by gendered divisions of labor and inequality. In Guadalajara, almost
half of all adult female widows and nearly one fifth of single women headed their own
households between 1811 and 1850.

327

A significant portion of these women took in boarders

(16%), and nearly half (40%) opened their homes to close relatives, including siblings, parents,
and children.

328

Although even nineteenth-century women belied convention by working in such unique
trades as mule skinners, tanners, and even the occasional street performer,

325
326

329

the majority of

Pescador, “Vanishing Women,” 618-621.

Elizabeth Kuznesof, “The Role of the Female-Headed Household in Brazilian
Modernization: São Paulo, 1765-1836,” Journal of Social History 13, no. 4 (1980), 598.
327
See Table 4.2.
328
329

Censuses of Guadalajara, Volume 1 & 2.

Ibid., In the 1821 census there are several interesting, albeit rare, female occupations. The
single Augustina Isaguirre for example was listed as a cómica, what was most likely a form of
street performance. Master Index number 827.
107

Guadalajara’s single and widowed working women labored as domestic servants, laundresses,
tortilla makers, food venders or small merchants, and seamstresses.

330

These jobs suggest the

importance of living in the city, as they include service and wage-labor jobs important for its
everyday functions, but it also lent women access to public space and opportunities to forge
female networks.

331

Table 4.7
Common Female Jobs by Marital Status, 1821
Single Married Widowed Total
Servant
337
38
97
472
Seamstress
222
56
123
401
Tortilla maker
78
139
144
361
Weaver, artisan
50
126
83
259
Spinner [yarn]
47
80
56
183
Cook
64
9
25
98
Cigar maker
21
12
20
53
Merchant
16
10
21
47
Small-Medium Farmer
5
21
8
34
Laundress
10
3
17
30
Baker
12
6
6
24
Miller/grain mill worker
3
1
16
20
Shoemaker/seller
2
16
2
20
Wetnurse
12
1
2
15
Shawl maker/seller
1
8
2
11
Seller/dealer
5
3
2
10
Beggar
1
1
7
9
Tamales maker/seller
3
1
5
9
Small Shopkeeper
2
4
3
9
Total Number of Women Listed w/
931
606
681
2218
Occupations
Percent of total
42%
27%
30%

330
331

See Tables 4.7 and 4.8.
Censuses of Guadalajara, Volume 1.
108

332

Table 4.8
Most Common Female Occupations, 1895
Men Women
Teachers
178
292
High School Students
962
253
Merchants
3248
1684
Street Peddlers
199
139
Proprietors
228
784
Industrial Administrators
147
240
Cigar Workers
0
421
Embroiderers
3
39
Dressmakers
0
177
Factory Workers
271
512
Hatmakers
394
214
Weavers
718
2026
Seamstresses
0
1856
Domestics
1354
4183
Empleados particulares
247
105
Laundresses
0
1214
Mesalinas
0
100
Molé Grinders/Sellers
0
951
Tortilla Makers
0
1040
No Occupation, Adults
1519
16605
Clothing Pressers
0
363
Shawl Braiders
0
569
College Students
0
114

The urban heartbeat of Guadalajara, like many European cities was the plaza, or town
square. This organization derived from its colonial past, following the grid pattern, or
333

cuadrícula, common of most cities in Spain.

By 1821, Guadalajara was divided into twenty-

four cuarteles, or districts. At the heart of each cuartel was a central plaza and public fountain.
It was here that many working women converged to do laundry, collect water, and sell handmade goods, prepared foods, spices and produce. In 1880, the city boasted three central markets,
332
333

Ibid.

Eduardo López Moreno, La cuadrícula en el desarollo de la ciudad hispanoamericana:
Guadalajara, Mexico (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 1992), 19.
109

where vendors of fruits and vegetables, grains and other basic goods convened, and maintained
twenty-three public baths around the city.

334

In this way, plazas served to facilitate basic needs

of commerce and water supply, but they were also places of public gathering, socializing and
entertainment, both for urban residents and working women. The presence of laboring women is
undeniable in images of the central square both in 1835 and 1864.

335

As one visitor to

Guadalajara noted in 1826, the washerwomen often gathered near the main plaza in the shallow
parts of the river San Juan that ran through the city, beating their laundry with stones and
gossiping amongst each other.

336

Women grinding and pounding clothes on stones in public

was considered sensual and also called into question laundresses’ propriety. In this way, city
plazas, markets and urban occupations afforded women greater access to public space, and led to
the creation of important female support networks.

334

Maríano Bárcena, Descripción de Guadalajara en 1880, 2
T. G., 1954), 85-110.
335
See Figure 4.1 and 4.2.
336

nd

Ed. (Guadalajara: Ediciones I.

George Lyon, Journey of a Residence and Tour of the Republic of Mexico in the year 1826
(London: John Murry, 1828). The phenomenon was common elsewhere, see Leslie Page Moch
and Rachel Fuchs. “Getting Along: Poor Women’s Networks in Nineteenth-Century Paris.”
French Historical Studies 18, no. 1 (1993): 34-49
110

337

Figure 4.1
“La Plaza Principal de Guadalajara Hacia 1835”

338

Figure 4.2
“La Plaza Principal de Guadalajara en 1864”

337

Photo reprinted in Juan B. Iguiniz, Guadalajara a través de los tiempos: relatos y
descripciones de viajeros y escritores desde del Siglo XVI hasta nuestros días, Volume 1, 15861867 (Guadalajara: Banco Refaccionario de Jalisco, 1950), 160.
338
Ibid., 271.
111

Ethnicity, Class and Age
A closer look at households headed by widows and single women in 1821 not only
confirms that many lived outside the bounds of the ideal patriarchal home, but that the impact of
being an unattached woman varied when such factors as ethnicity, class and age are considered.
In a comparison of widow-headed households, which comprised the majority of female headed
households as a whole, ethnic differences become apparent. While Indian women tended to head
smaller households, averaging between 1 and 4 members, Spanish

339

widows averaged between

2 and 7 members. A larger household, of working age members, had the potential advantage of
providing more sources of income for Spanish women. Although Spanish and Indian widows
shared a similar rate of overall headship Spanish women tended to head more nuclear families,
which were comprised of related members. It is interesting to note that Spanish women headed
sixty-five percent of all nuclear families, compared to only twenty-five percent for Indian
widows.

340

339

Spanish, or español, dealt more with one’s ethnicity than birthplace. The term was widely
used in the censuses.
340
See Table 4.9.
112

341

Calidad
Spanish
Indian
Mestizo
Mulato
Other Castas
Total

Table 4.9
Widow Headed Household Structure by Calidad, 1821
Multiple
No
Solitary
Nuclear Extended
Related
Family
N
%
N
%
N
%
N
%
N
%
145 33.3 45 42.1 574 65 196 55.4 162 53.6
199 45.7 37 34.6 226 25.6 114 32.2 88 29.1
73 16.8 16
15
51 5.8 37 10.5 47 15.6
14 3.2
9
8.4 29 3.3
4
1.1
4
1.3
4
0.9
0
0
3 21.4 3
0.8
1
0.3
435 100 107 100 883 100 354 100 302 100

Multiple,
Unrelated
N
%
351 56.9
182 29.5
54 8.8
27 4.4
3
0.5
617 100

Indian widows by contrast were more likely to live alone, or head a solitary household.
Of all solitary headed-households, Indian women headed almost half.

342

Distinctions between

Indian and Spanish women may deal with their differing migratory patterns. Studies of Mexico
indicate that Indian women often migrated into the city alone and without family, having left
behind kin in the indigenous villages that surrounded the city.

343

As for single women, an

overwhelming majority of all those who headed their own household were Spanish. Single
Spanish women were also much more likely to live with family members, or independently as a

341

See Censuses of Guadalajara, 1821-1822. CD-ROM Database. (Tallahassee, FL: Florida
State University, 2006). A “solitary” household is defined as a having a single resident. A “no
family” designation implies there are multiple residents, but that members are un-related to one
another. A “nuclear family” implies the presence of parents and children co-residing in a
household. An “extended family” is defined as a nuclear family with additional related members
co-residing. A “multiple related” distinction implies more than one nuclear family present in the
household, although families are related, whereas a multiple un-related family implies the
presence of more than one un-related family who co-reside in the same household. For additional
details see, “Codebook: A Brief Explanation,” last modified 2003,
http://www.fsu.edu/~guadalaj/english/codebooks/codebrief.htm.
342
See Table 4.9.
343

Pescador, “Vanishing Women,” 618-621; For migration patterns in Guadalajara see Rivas,
“Defense of Craft,” 93.
113

boarder within a household, while single Indian, mestiza and mulata women were grossly over
represented as domestic servants residing in the household of their male or female employers.

344

As a study of Mexico City suggests, Indian women often left their homes in the surrounding
villages to work in the city, and entered their new surroundings alone.

345

Therefore, it is likely

that Indian women tended to take in more un-related boarders and work as domestic servants,
than their Spanish counter-parts, because they had fewer networks in place within the city. While
Spanish women tended to head larger households that contained more related members as a
possible means for increasing economic stability, Indian women were more likely to take in
boarders and servants. Taking in boarders was an additional way to earn extra income, and was
typically a female and widow dominated line of work. Both in Mexico City and Guadalajara, by
the late nineteenth century two-thirds of all landlords were women.

346

The data confirms the

connections that can be made between ethnicity and class. While Spanish women from
Guadalajara could depend on their families for financial support, Indian women who often
arrived as migrants had to forge different and more independent connections to make ends meet.

344
345
346

See Table 4.10.
See Pescador, “Vanishing Women.”

For Mexico City see Francois, Culture of Everyday Credit, 156; In Guadalajara, in 1895 228
proprietors were listed as men and 784 were women, a different of 77% female. See Table 4.7.
114

347

Table 4.10
Position in Household by Ethnicity, Single Women, 1821
Spanish
Indian
Mestizo Mulata
N
%
N
%
N
%
N %
Head
120 78.4 25 16.3 6 3.9 2 1.3
Boarder
275 55.7 155 31.4 41 8.3 16 3.2
Servant
77 22.6 178 52.4 52 15.2 26 7.6
Kin of Head
173 67.3 63 24.5 16 6.2 4 1.5
Other Relative
37 58.7 22
35
3 4.7 0 0
The home of Josefa Hernández sheds light onto the connections between ethnicity and
class. Josefa, an Indian widow listed as one hundred years old, oversaw a household of over ten
boarders in 1821, all of which were un-related and were listed as Indian, no “Don”
or other “castes.”

349

348

Spaniards,

Her home provides some indication that taking in boarders provided a

measure of means for women in older age, and presents important questions about ethnic and
class divisions in the city. Her age also sheds light on the phenomenon and stereotype of the aged
female landlord. Widows in particular maximized the potential of inherited real estate after the
loss of a spouse. In the city, they rented rooms and small apartments to a burgeoning population

347

See Censuses of Guadalajara, 1821-1822. CD-ROM Database. (Tallahassee, FL: Florida
State University, 2006).
348
The use of “Don” or “Doña” at this time was often assigned as a title of reverence to
individuals of elite status. It too was phased out in many parts of Mexico after Independence,
see Peter Guardino, The Time of Liberty: Popular Political Culture in Oaxaca, 1750-1850
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 174.
349
Rodney Anderson’s extensive work on the 1821 census draws the conclusion that prior to
Independence in 1821, the use of “Don” signified higher socio-economic status. Rodney
Anderson, “Race and Social Stratification: A Comparison of Working-Class Spaniards, Indians
and Castas in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1821,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 68,
no. 2 (May, 1998), 209-243.
115

of urban workers and the poor who arrived as migrants and lived a transient lifestyle.

350

Working as a landlord offered elderly women an occupation that they could likely still perform
into old age, and could do so within their own home. It was not an easy job however, and was
therefore not for the faint of heart. There are numerous examples from the Jalisco civil court
records depicting shrewd widowed landlords who pursued tenants in court for unpaid and back
rent. This was true for the widow Rafaela Palomar who owned and managed several properties in
Guadalajara. In 1890, she went to court at least twice to collect unpaid rents and even went so far
as to try to evict a female tenant who had not paid for several months.

351

The image of the elderly casera, or female landlord, was the subject of one of several
lithographs in a series of illustrated popular Mexican caricatures in 1855. Among the caricatures
were common female occupations from the post-Independence period.

352

According to a

description by the nineteenth-century Mexican historian, writer, and poet, Niceto de Zamacois,
the Mexican landlady was at best “disagreeable,” almost always a “widow,” poor, demanding of
monthly rent, and as “bitter as all the concoctions of chemists ever made.”

353

At the same time

de Zamacois makes mention that the life of a landlady was a precarious one, often they did not
earn enough to get by and therefore made frequent visits to the Monte de Piedad, or the public
350

Claudia P. Rivas Jiménez and Andrea Vicente, “Una ciudad en movimiento: patrones de
persistencia y transitoriedad de los grupos domésticos en Guadalajara, 1821-1822,” Estudios
Sociales, Volume 2 (Sept, 2007).
351
BPEJ, Archivo del Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919, Ramo Civil, “Contra Señor
Badial por rentas,” Caja 7, f. 152,617 and “Contra Doña Jesús Muñoz por rentas,” C. 5 f. 152,
541.
352
María Esther Pérez Salas, “Genealogía de los mexicanos pintados por sí mismos,” HMEX,
XLVM: 2 (1998), 167-207.
353
Niceto de Zamcois, “La Casera,” 1855. Reprinted in Los mexicanos pintados por si mismos:
tipos y costumbres nacionales (Mexico City: Centro de Estudios de Historia de Mexico, 1989),
228.
116

charitable pawn shops.

354

Depicted as haggard and worn, the aged female landlord is shown

with a set of keys and lease in hand. The popular representation of the decrepit female landlord
dealt with another set of stereotypes entirely. It was not uncommon for widows and spinsters of
old age to be labeled as hags, witches, feeble, and incapable of caring for themselves. Such
attitudes were justified by popular perceptions in other parts of the world that older women had
decreased reproductive abilities. According to one nineteenth-century scribe, “‘an old woman is
355

for nature only a degraded being, because she is useless to it.’”

Despite the negative portrayal,

fortunate widowed women took advantage of the benefit of inheriting money or capital rendered
to them by their late husbands. By 1895, female proprietors outnumbered males 784 to 228
respectively.

356

In addition to be overwhelmingly female, evidence from Guadalajara and

elsewhere in Mexico indicate that widowed women dominated the occupation of proprietor.

354

357

Ibid. Historians have noted the frequency with which many single and widowed women,
especially proprietors utilized services of the Monte de Piedad. Francois, A Culture of Everyday
Credit, 84.
355
Quoted by Peter Stearns, “Old Women: Some Historical Observations,” Journal of Family
History 5, no. 1 (Spring 1980), 45.
356
See Table 4.8.
357

For Mexico City see Edith Couturier, “Women and the Family in Eighteenth Century
Mexico: Law and Practice,” Journal of Family History, vol 10, no 3 (1985), 294-304; For
Guadalajara see Table 4.8.
117

FIGURE 4.3

358

“La Casera”

For widows especially, older age might lend itself to increased autonomy and greater
residential stability. Similar with patterns of headship found in other studies, younger widows
(under the age of 39) in Guadalajara tended to initially reside as members of a household. As
they aged, and potentially increased their means, widows from age 40 to 60 appear to have been
more likely to head their own households. This pattern would begin to decline with advanced
age, likely due to mortality. In Guadalajara there were fewer widow-headed households as

358

de Zamcois, “La Casera,” 226-7; For interpretation of the references to color in this and all
other figures, the reader is referred to the electronic version of this dissertation.
118

women approached their 60s and 70s. This was a common pattern found in Europe as well. As
widows aged they began to reside within a household, rather than as heads. It may indicate the
importance of age as a factor in women’s ability to work and maintain a level of independence.
Single women, on the other hand, were much more likely in younger age to either head their own
households, or live as a dependent in a household headed by someone else, the latter being the
most prevalent resident pattern for younger single women. Marriage patterns explain much of
this trend as between the age of 25 to 35 years, the proportion of single women in Guadalajara
dropped significantly, from roughly 3200 single women to only about 390 between 1811 and
1850, indicating it was likely the most common age range that women married between 1811 and
1850.

359

Therefore, age played a major role both in women’s marital status and residency.

360

Table 4.11
Widow & Single Women's Residence Patterns by Age, 1811-1850
Living in another
Heads of Household
Household
Single
Widowed
Single
Widowed
N
%
N
%
N
%
N
%
Age
97
20.12
48
2.6
3235 26.1 196
8.1
Age 15 -24
136
28.2
351 19.2 1034
8.3
541 22.6
Age 25 - 34
104
21.5
588 32.1
399
3.2
658 27.5
Age 35 - 44
78
16.1
473 25.8
206
1.6
530 22.1
Age 45 - 54
53
10.9
368 20.1
143
1.1
457
19
Age 55/over

Much can be said about the women who did not head their own households in nineteenthcentury Guadalajara. The majority of both widowed and single women not heading their own
359
360

See Table 4.11.
Censuses of Guadalajara, Volume 1 & 2.
119

household lived as boarders or servants within the homes of others (36.2% and 23.9%
respectively). These patterns corroborate studies that find that widowed and single migrants who
arrived without family or connections in the city, lived as boarders and typically took jobs in
domestic work. The younger they were however, the more likely it was that they relied on
family networks. Not surprisingly, a large percentage of the younger population of single and
widowed women sought residence with relatives or parents.

361

This was especially true of the

urban poor and working classes who depended on family to survive. This reliance is visible in
the residency patterns of Petronila Gonzáles. In 1811, she was listed as “negra,” 17 years old,
single and living with her eldest brother, their mother, and four siblings Victoria, Eusebia,
Francisca, and Narcisa, ages 14, 11, 8, and 6. The family rented an asesoria,

362

or small

apartment on Calle Jarana, although her brother José Gonzáles was unemployed at the time. By
1824, Petronila married Vicente Huerta and had two children, but continued to reside in the
household of her brother José, who now worked as a lay clergyman. Also in the home was her
sister Eusebia, but the younger Gonzáles girls, now 21 and 19, were no longer in the home. It is
likely they would have been sent out of the home to work or apprentice.

363

Such examples

reveal the continued importance of family networks throughout the stages of women’s lives.

361
362

See Table 4.12.

An asesoria was usually a small apartment or room in a larger dwelling, usually the rooms
that bordered the street and courtyard within a larger home were rented out this way.
363
Ibid., Master Index #’s, 14421 & 25026.
120

364

Table 4.12
Adult Widow & Single Women's Position Within Another
Household, 1811-1850
Single

Position

Widow

N

%

N

%

Child of Head
Sibling of Head
Parent of Head
In-Law of Head
Other Relative of Head
Boarder

340
66
0
44
233
426

19
3.7
0
2.4
13
23.9

110
23
36
42
138
793

5
1.5
1.6
1.9
6.3
36.2

Servant

123

6.9

118

5.3

It is interesting to note however, that while most widowed heads of household were
between the ages of 40 to 59, the majority of the members of their households were more than
half as likely to be younger (almost 60%) between the ages of 10 and 35, implying that widows
often lived with others who were within a working age limit and were capable of adding
economic resources to the household.

365

These statistics imply a possible devaluing of aged

female labor, as well as difficulties in finding suitable jobs for elderly women, corresponding to
the overall ageism ascribed to older women in society.

364
365
366

Censuses of Guadalajara, Volume 1 & 2.
See Table 4.13.
Stearns, “Old Women,” 45.
121

366

367

Table 4.13
Widow Headed Household Composition by Age, 1821
Head
Members
Age
N
%
N
%
1 month to 4 years
0
0
455
8.7
Age 5 - 9
0
0
547
13.3
Age 10 - 14
0
0
530
12.8
Age 15 - 24
27
2.4
1191
28.9
Age 25 - 34
171
15.1
697
16.9
Age 35 - 44
366
32.3
362
8.8
Age 45 - 54
316
27.9
187
4.5
55 and over
254
22.4
157
3.8

In addition to family, women relied on other women through strong female networks. In
1821, within the household of María Antonia Medina, a fifty-year old widowed seamstress,
resided three of Medina’s female relatives who were also seamstresses. Such households were
common in urban Guadalajara, signifying a strong familial, as well as female presence, in
female-headed households. While about 20% of all widow-headed households contained no men,
barely 1% existed with no other females. A majority of widows’ households were comprised of
female members (about 60%), and of the children and boarders that resided within widowheaded households 57% and 63% respectively were female. On average, widow-headed
households in Guadalajara tended to overwhelmingly contain single, un-related female members.
Additionally, they typically contained, on average, only 1 to 2 men but between 1 to 4
females.

368

These numbers lead to the conclusion that a majority of Guadalajara’s widows

tended to co-reside or “cluster” with other widowed or single women. Other studies on family

367
368

See Censuses of Guadalajara, Volume 1.
See Table 4.14.
122

history note female co-residence as a strategy to reduce household expenses by pooling domestic
labor.

369

Take for example the case of Dolores Dábalos. In 1824, she was the eldest of four

siblings, a single female of 18 years, living within the home of her father José María, a porter,
and mother Inés. By 1839, Dolores was still single, but now resided within the home of the
widow Juana Ramírez, a young married resident Juana Robles and Juana’s two small children,
María and Maximiano.

370

It highly plausible that the women worked in a similar profession or

that Dolores and Juana rented a room in the widow Ramírez’ home as boarders. After 1839,
Dolores does not appear in the existing censuses, but being close to the age of thirty-five, it is
likely she may not have ever married.

371

Table 4.14
Widow Household Composition by Sex, 1821
Male
Female
Position
N
%
N
%
Child of head/spouse
669 42.6
900
57.4
Sibling of head
3
14.3
18
85.7
Grandchild of head
94
51.4
89
48.6
Son/daughter-in-law
21
26.9
57
73.1
Same name as head
46
31.7
99
68.3
Other relative of head
31
43.1
41
56.9
Unspecified child
64
40.8
93
59.2
Boarder
281 36.9
481
63.1
Servant
55
34.2
106
65.8
1693 32.1 3587 67.9
Total

369
370
371

Total
1569
21
183
78
145
72
157
762
161
5280

For more on the concept of clusters see Clarkson and. Crawford, “Life after Death,” 248.
Censuses, Phase 2, Master Index #s, 24408 & 43077.
Censuses of Guadalajara, Volume 1.
123

Also noteworthy, was the household of the eighty-year old widow, Gertudis Guzmán. In
1839 she shared a home with an un-related thirty-year old widow named Sixta Juárez and her
middle-aged, single sister Petra Juárez, and a young married couple, María Ruelas and Pitanio
Giménez. By 1842 however, patterns in the home changed and Sixta became the head of the
same residence. One possibility could be that Gertrudis died, leaving the two sisters to manage
the home. Petra continued to live with her sister Sixta, but in only three short years now appeared
in the census as widowed instead of single. Four young children resided in the home with the
surname of Sánchez, aged 13,10, 7 and 3, who had not previously lived with the sisters. It
appears that the children belonged to Sixta, or were under her care as the census taker listed them
underneath her and not Petra. Pitanio’s wife María, continued to reside with the sisters, although
Pitanio was absent.

372

Sixta’s situation reveals an important system of female networking.

Despite the fact that María was married and unrelated to the women, the three most likely shared
a friendly relationship after living together for many years. Although we do not know exactly
where María’s husband went, she continued to live with the Juárez sisters in his absence. It is
also interesting to note the presence of the four young children in the home. It is unclear whose
children they were, but it is apparent that they were under the care of Sixta. Studies of child
circulation, note the common practice in Latin American cities from the colonial and into the
twentieth century of sending children out of the home as young as eight and as old as twenty-five
to work or apprentice.

373

This is corroborated for Guadalajara, where the average age of child

apprentices, boarders or domestic servants was between the ages of ten and fourteen. It is
372
373

Ibid., Master Index #’s, 44965 & 49464.

See Ann Blum, “Public Welfare and Child Circulation, Mexico City, 1877 to 1925,” Journal
of Family History 23, no2 (1998); Bianca Premo, Children of the Father King: Youth, Authority,
and Legal Minority in Colonial Lima (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005),
55.
124

entirely plausible that the Sánchez children belonged to another family and moved in and out of
the home as boarders or apprentices. Overall, these figures and examples disclose intimate
details of the households of unattached women. While taking in boarders, kin, or other single or
widowed women could potentially contribute to household income, it also sheds light onto the
important cultural linkages between women’s daily lives and their relationships to family and
other women.
Overall, a closer examination of single and widowed women at the household level
asserts the importance, frequency, and increasing number of women who lived unattached.
Despite women’s overall position within a patriarchal society and the stigma attached to being
“unattached,” single and widowed women carved out opportunities for themselves in an urban
context. At an economic level, they maximized the jobs available to them, and structured their
households in ways that sustained financial independence. The maintenance of important familial
relationships and female networks, evidenced in the censuses, further exposes important social
and cultural imperatives to the organization and maintenance of their daily lives. Analysis of
women’s role as heads of household, the household and networking strategies they employed,
along with the interpenetration of variables such as age and ethnicity showcases important
parallels and tensions between women’s expected role in Mexican society, and their actual daily
lives within households. Inevitably the discourse on the ideal patriarchal family was geared
toward elites. It isolated the poor and stigmatized them for what they perceived as a lower-class
lifestyle, in which women worked in the public sphere. As the century progressed, these women
increasingly became construed as dangerous, immoral and unnatural.

125

Public Space, Danger and Working Women
The growing presence of working women in Mexican cities, the majority of whom were
single and widowed, signified an important shift in the buenas costumbres, or proper customs of
the age.

374

Elite women did not venture into public un-chaperoned, much less work in public

settings where their virtue could be brought into question. This practice had the effect of
naturalizing social hierarchy because working class women could not be so well protected which
put their honor in check.

375

By the late nineteenth century the issue of working women was a

tense subject in Mexico. Many believed that the growing number of women, who chose to
abandon their duties within the home by working in public, would lead to the social breakdown
of the family. The dialogue frequently hinged on class-based notions of acceptable female work.
According to one Guadalajara newspaper article, only “appropriate jobs” which could be
performed in the confines of home, such as making “tapestries, embroidery, china or fan
painting, or giving piano lessons” were acceptable occupations for honorable women.

376

This

ideal was not attainable for the large majority of Mexican women who were not a part of the elite
classes. Often single and widowed women who supported themselves had no choice but to work
outside the home, with the majority working as servants, weavers, seamstresses, tortilla makers,

374
375

See table 4.4.

Carmen Ramos Escandón, “Mujeres trabajadores en el porfiriato,” Historias 21, (October
1988-May 1989), 114.
376
“El trabajo de las mujeres. Los derechos de la mujer en la sociedad humana,” Juan
Panadero, Guadalajara (Dec 11, 1898), 1-2; This was a theme that would continue to influence
public discourse on working women well into the twentieth century, see Porter, Working Women,
51-72.
126

molé grinders, cigar and other factory workers.

377

The increased presence of poor working

women in public space only heightened concerns over their proper place in modern society.
One of the most common and public of female occupations, lavanderas (washerwomen)
were a prominent fixture in public spaces, particularly city fountains, rivers and streams. It was
there that many did the bulk of their daily labor, but also where they gathered to socialize
publicly. Popular caricatures of the Mexican lavandera, portrayed her as being of lower status,
both socially and racially. In 1855 the Mexican doctor, writer and historian Hilarión Frias y Soto
described the Mexican washerwoman as morena, or darker skinned, and having “wide hips” and
a “large mouth.”

378

The nature of her work as a laundress contrasted greatly with that of

nineteenth-century femininity, exhibited by her “muscular arms” which were made darker by
exposure to the sun and her “tough black skin.” Such traits were necessary to perform the
difficult and laborious task of “scrubbing” and “beating” clothing against stones. While working
laundresses were “happy, singing, laughing and chattering with fellow work-mates.”

379

Washing clothing was a process that began early, as women went around collecting dirty
clothing. After washing they were carefully hung and ironed and by the day’s end delivered to
their respective homes. Although Frias y Soto’s description venerated the Mexican lavandera
for her diligence and hard work, he also lamented her as “ignorant and unpolished,” leading a life
of poverty, misery and endless fatigue to the point of “paralysis.” The portrait suggests not only
the creation of a popular caricature of the female profession by mid-century, but also the

377
378

See Table 4.7.

Hilarión Frias y Soto, “La Lavandera,” 1855. Reprinted in Los mexicanos pintados por si
mismos: tipos y costumbres nacionales (Mexico City: Centro de Estudios de Historia de Mexico,
1989), 294.
379
Ibid.
127

pervasive presence of the lavandera and other working women in urban spaces, which unnerved
many writers and reformers.
Figure 4.4

380

“La Lavandera”

Many viewed the overwhelming number of women working, like lavanderas, as a
potential threat to the very foundations of family and home. The academic writings of the
nineteenth-century Mexican sociologist Antonio Moreno based much of his concern over
working women’s roles in public as a potential threat to men and the household. The fear was
380

Hilarión Frias y Soto, “La Lavandera,” 292; For interpretation of the references to color in
this and all other figures, the reader is referred to the electronic version of this dissertation.
128

that if women worked they would lose their love of home and motherhood, as their lives became
“more public rather than intimate.” Moreno believed that women emancipated from “intimate
life,” publicly shamed “manly prerogatives and the social domain that should be his alone.”
According to Moreno, working women “no longer had the cast of mystery, nor the veiled
gauze … of the domestic angel.”

381

Such ideas cemented the notion that work separated women

from their proper role within the family.
Concern over the increased presence of single working women in public spaces dealt not
only with the effects it had on the family and home, but on working women themselves. The
separation between the intimate space of the home and that of public space was significant in
nineteenth-century women’s lives. Popular and religious beliefs understood the confines of the
home as a place of order, safety, and family, and as cities swelled in the latter nineteenth century
bringing with it new social problems of overcrowding, epidemic disease, and crime public space
became increasingly perceived as dangerous territory for women.

382

For single working women

especially, the urban streets of Guadalajara harbored unwanted dangers. One concerned
journalist wrote in 1900 about the “ugly custom” of men who hung out in plazas, streets and
sidewalks only to jeer and harass women who had to traverse city streets and sidewalks alone.
These “streetdogs” who made a habit of this behavior were considered to be men of low morals
and “improper to a cultured society.”

383

The presence of such men posed a danger to

unprotected women. Sometimes harassment of single women turned into physical assault. On a
381

BPEJ. SFE. Miscellaneous 743, Antonio Moreno, “Estudios sociales,” Artículos sobre
distintos asuntos. Luces y sombras. (Mexico: La Voz de México, 1886), 37; 150.
382
For more on the concept behind private and public space in nineteenth-century Latin America
see Sandra Lauderdale Graham, House and Street: The Domestic World of Servants and Masters
in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992).
383
“Una fea costumbre,” El Sol de Guadalajara, June 1, 1900.
129

Saturday afternoon in November 1886, the young single Benita González was walking to her
home from work alone. Shortly after passing the city cemetery, she was approached by three
unknown men. After asking her for a cigarette, the three men brutally stabbed and robbed her.
She was found hours later by a policeman unconscious in the cemetery.

384

Unattached working women who had no male patriarch to protect them contended with
dangers in the workplace. Many single women who worked in domestic service faced abuse and
harassment from male household members who made unwanted sexual advances. As was
common elsewhere in Latin America, domestic servants in Guadalajara suffered abuses at the
hands of their employers.

385

This reality was all too real for the young widowed domestic María

Gómez. In 1890 Ignacio Moreno, María’s boss, accused her of theft. In his testimony he claimed
María had run away from her duties without warning, taking along with her two watches, a
pistol, a sarape and three handkerchiefs. María denied the charges and explained that she fled the
home after experiencing both physical abuse and sexual harassment by Ignacio. She described
the evening she left saying that Moreno arrived to the home drunk and attempted to have
“relations” with her, when she refused he hit her. According to María, however, this was not the
first time she faced abuse by her employer. In her testimony she explained that on several other
occasions Moreno entered her bedroom without her consent and she consistently refused him. He
also boasted to friends implying he had had sexual relations with her. It was his consistent
attempts to pursue her and harassment that caused María to flee the home. Perhaps if it were not
for the damning testimony of Moreno’s own sister who witnessed the attack that evening,
María’s story would never be validated. Further evidence from a medical exam confirmed signs
384

BPEJ Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919, Ramo Criminal,
“Lesiones á Benita Gonzalez,” Caja 11, Exp 88,223.
385
Graham, House and Street.
130

of stress on María’s body, demonstrating she had struggled against Moreno. In light of the
evidence against him Moreno dropped the initial theft charges.

386

María’s story reveals the harsh reality that many working girls faced, particularly those
that worked behind closed doors and without any protection. These were the dangers that so
many in Guadalajara feared for a growing female working population. Working outside the home
lent itself to greater freedom for sexual encounters, precisely because women worked and
sometimes lived outside the sphere of the home and family. Historian María de los Angeles
Pérez Salcedo demonstrates that rape was most common for working women. Actual rapes were
defined as “violations.” Mexican law distinguished it from rapto (kidnapping) or estupro
(deflowering), which jurists frequently argued implied a level complicity or consent by the
females involved in exchange of a promise of marriage, equating it to a type of seduction.

387

In

Guadalajara, there were 48 rape and 446 seduction cases that went to trial between 1857 and
1910. More than thirty percent of all rape cases involved girls who were working at the time of
the rape. Of these cases, two women were factory workers, seven were domestic workers, and
six were performing daily tasks like getting water, carrying honey, or cutting corn.

388

Although

it is unclear whether or not violence against women was the result of the city’s growth or

386

BPEJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra María Goméz por robo,” 1890, Caja 7: 99,528.
387
In Mexican criminal law jurists often confounded estupro and rapto (kidnapping with the
intent to seduce). Both crimes however could be classified as consensual on the part of the
females involved, often through promises of marriage. It was this distinction which separated
them from violación (rape), which seemed to imply non-consensual sex often through the use of
force or violence. See Kathryn A. Sloan, Runaway Daughters: Seduction, Elopement, and Honor
in Nineteenth-Century Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 9.
388
See Pérez Salcedo, “Las mujeres violadas en Jalisco,” 106; 54-7.
131

women’s greater presence in public spaces, emphasis in both print media and court cases reflects
heightened connotations between women, work and danger.

389

Immorality and Dishonor
By the Porfiriato, popular discourses on the Mexican working woman and the negative
stereotypes which associated her with the dangers of female prostitution, poverty and singleness
were rampant. As more and more women entered the work force in cities across Mexico,
scrutiny over occupations outside of the home linked working girls to growing social ills in
society. It was not only women’s absence from the domestic home that concerned so many in
Guadalajara at the time, but the growth of particularly “immoral” occupations such as
prostitution which were viewed as an affront to the family and society. The issue of single
women and poverty never fell far from the debate. Far too often social reformers blamed the
plight of poverty faced by many single and widowed women as the root cause of women’s
immoral behavior.
Working outside of the home became increasingly linked not only to singleness but the
disreputable profession of prostitution. As early as the 1840s some tapatíos argued that
prostitution was a necessary evil. It was tolerated because men needed to satisfy their natural
sexual impetus. A clear example of this perspective is the 1845 bestiality case against Santiago
Martínez. According to court documents Martínez was arrested on charges that he fornicated
with a neighbor’s donkey in the small town of Santa Anita, just thirty kilometers outside the city
center. As a forty year old widow his defense attorney argued that men like Martínez, deprived
389

Similar arguments have been made for Victorian London with compare to the Mexican
situation, see Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger In lateVictorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
132

of “the natural union of the two sexes” suffered greatly, and were led to commit unspeakable
crimes like bestiality and sodomy. In his estimation, the real crime was that Martínez lived in the
“boonies” where prostitution was not tolerated.

390

This was a popular trope in other parts of

post-Independence Latin America. The work of Peter Beattie on Brazil argues that from the
colonial period to post-Independence, reformers used similar arguments to attack “obligatory
celibacy” among men housed in prisons, poorhouses, asylums and military barracks. Not only
was it “unnatural” but prevented men from “heterosexual release.” For this reason, colonial
officials arranged conjugal visitation for men with disreputable women.

391

Concern over the

involvement of honorable women and girls in sex work led to the legalization of prostitution in
Mexico by 1866 and subsequent regulation in Jalisco by 1870.

392

This is not to say that despite

being illegal in previous years that prostitution in Guadalajara was hidden from the public. In the
1821 census, an entire street noted as Calle de Tentación (Temptation Street) housed mostly
single women living alone with their children.

393

Most studies however, directly link the rise in

interest regarding female prostitution and its growth to the modern city.

394

While earlier

390

BPEJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919, Ramo Criminal,
“Contro Santiago Martínez,” 1845, Santa Anita, Caja 7, exp. 8503.
391
See Peter Beattie, “The Jealous Institution: Male Nubility, Conjugality, Sexuality and
Discipline on the Social Margins of Imperial Brazil,” Comparative Studies in Society and
History, Vol. 53, no. 1 (2011), 181-2.
392
BPEJ, Reglamento de las casas de tolerancia de 1866 (Guadalajara, 1866).
393
394

Anderson and Spike, “Archival Report,” 341.

For Mexico see Katherine Bliss, Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health, and
Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 2001); James Alex Garza, The Imagined Underworld: Sex, Crime and Vice in Porfirian
Mexico City (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007). Similar arguments have also been
made for other parts of Latin America and Europe, see Donna Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos
Aires: Prostitutes, Family and the Nation in Argentina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1991); Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight.
133

attitudes such as those of Martínez’ defense attorney intimated that prostitution had a civilizing
effect on society, by late century, attitudes in Guadalajara about prostitution began to emphasize
its demoralizing impact on the public.

395

Scientific arguments emphasized a eugenic view that

prostitution and prostitutes were a blight on society, and a marker of social and moral
weakness.

396

Growing preoccupation over female sexuality in Guadalajara led to the belief that single
women, many who lived without male protectors, were more likely to engage in “sins of the
flesh” and therefore needed to be more strictly controlled and watched over.

397

There was a

constant fear that especially poor single women were at greater risk of becoming prostitutes. So
much so that the Guadalajara factory owner Mauro A. Tostado proclaimed at the opening of his
shoe factory in the city in 1895, that he would produce inexpensive, well-made shoes by the hand
of female workers in order to help her with subsistence and “prevent her from falling into
398

prostitution.”

It is important to note that although the majority of single working women

were not prostitutes, the majority who registered under new laws as working prostitutes in
Guadalajara were single women. Although this data should be read cautiously, as it does not
capture those women who continued to work illegally, it does highlight the connotations made
by people like Tostado. It also comprises the only available sources on prostitution in the city, as
395
396

BPEJ, El Católico, Vol 2, no 3 (Guadalajara, October 16, 1887), 2.

Cristina Rivera-Garza, “The Criminalization of the Syphilitic Body: Prostitutes, Health
Crimes, and Society in Mexico City, 1867-1930,” in Crime and Punishment in Latin America:
Law and Society Since Late Colonial Times, Ricardo Salvatorre, Carlos Aguirre and Gilbert
Joseph, eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 151.
397
Benítez Barba, “Raptadas tapatías,” 296; Peter Beattie found similar cases made by
Brazilian military officials in the 1850s, “Jealous Institution,” 196.
398
José María Muría, Historia de Jalisco. Desde la consolidación del porfiriato hasta mediados
del siglo XX, Tomo IV (UNED: México, 1982), 136-7.
134

clandestine prostitutes rarely left behind records. By drawing parallels between non-marriage and
working women, Tostado suggested that a woman without a husband and without a good job
could be more easily persuaded into the vice-ridden world of prostitution. While there were a
few married and widowed women among the population of female sex workers in Guadalajara,
over ninety percent were single.

399

400

Table 4.15
Civil Status of Registered Prostitutes Treated at Hospital Civil, 1902
N
%
Single
152
91.6
Married
10
6.02
Widowed
4
2.4

Despite Mauro Tostado’s claim that a factory job could steer single women away from
prostitution, as new skilled jobs opened for middle class women in education, offices and sales,
more commonly held jobs for poorer women such as factory work and domestic service became
associated with women of low morality and prostitution. The famous 1908 study by Dr. Luis
Lara y Pardo on prostitution in Mexico suggested that the majority of prostitutes had worked in
domestic service. In his estimation, the life of a servant was the ultimate form of “parasitism,”
since their work produced little and their job centered on living off of the wealth of others. He

399
400

See Table 4.15.

Data on prostitutes in Guadalajara is extremely limited in the archives. Most of the records
dealing with the registration of prostitutes only exists in the regulatory bodies that oversaw them.
For more see Jorge Alberto Trujillo Breton, “La prostitución en Guadalajara durante la crisis del
Porfiriato, 1894-1911,” Dissertation (Universidad de Guadalajara: Guadalajara, 1994), 251-254.
135

concluded that this form of work could easily lead one to a life of prostitution.

401

Earlier works

such as the 1895 report on prostitution in Guadalajara by Miguel Galindo argued that certain
types of work influenced immorality in women. He noted that in factories women learned vices
at a young age and therefore become “indifferent” to them. In his estimation, the intermingling
of men and women made matters worse. It was where “men learned their way to the cantina . . .
and the gambling houses” and “women lost their modesty.” He argued that factory work
increased a woman’s chance of falling into prostitution, and noted the reputation of “medieras
and cajistas,” or knitters of stockings and typesetters, who were well-known in the brothels.

402

What many feared about prostitution was its very public nature. Indeed, in both legal and
popular documents, writers referred to prostitutes as “mujeres públicas,” or public women.

403

Scholars who study prostitution in Guadalajara argue that the term “públicas” literally associated
prostitutes with public space, a territory reserved for men. The expression reserved this negative
stereotype of being a “pública” purely for women, as men would not suffer any loss of reputation
for entering a brothel.

404

Although there were male prostitutes, there was no equivalent

expression for “public men” (públicos). Just as authorities perceived working women to be a
threat to working men’s masculinity and the family, so too was prostitution. In the estimation of
social reformers and scientists, like other forms of female work which brought women into
401

Dr. Luis Lara y Pardo, Estudios de higiene social: la prostitución en México, (México: Viuda
de Ch. Bouret, 1908), 108-9.
402
BPEJ, Miguel Galindo, Miscellaneous 492. Apuntos sobre la hygiene en Guadalajara: tesís
de recepción (México, 1908), 119.
403
The term is used throughout the legal records of Guadalajara and in newspapers during the
time period. For more on the term and other nicknames, see Trujillo Breton, “La prostitución en
Guadalajara,” 80-1.
404
González Llerenas Fidenlina, “La reglamentación sanitaria de la prostitución en Guadalajara
y sus reformas, segunda mitad del siglo XIX,” in Mujeres Jaliscienses, 366-67.
136

public spaces, prostitution was an abhorrent practice that threatened to destroy the fragile
customs which sought to civilize both public and private space. Numerous newspaper articles in
Guadalajara called attention to the growing problem of prostitution in the city. One editorialist
made note of the growing number of prostitutes present in “populous” spaces throughout the city
and called attention to the “scandal and pernicious example” they posed. The author believed
their presence not only threatened the “buenas costumbres” of the day, but had the potential to
“destroy the integrity and virtue of cities.” What the author found particularly offensive was the
presence of these “daughters of vice” who appeared in the streets with their “faces painted and
bodies scantily clothed.” The piece went on to suggest that these “misfortunate margaritas”
would bring only indecency to the “health and cleanliness” of “happy homes,” implying the
disruption of honorable marriages. The author went on to argue that the "vice" that prostitutes
"present in public," had an enormous consequence on society. Little by little reformers argued
female prostitutes and their male customers would destroy honorable families. In the end, he
argued that more should be done to influence and moralize against the vices of prostitution that
were rampant in the city.

405

In the subsequent chapter, I explore the social and criminal

ramifications of prostitution that were a large part of the concerns of social reformers and city
officials during the Porfiriato.
In large measure, the writers, scientists and businessmen who debated the problem of
female prostitution associated with poverty among Guadalajara’s working single and widowed
women. Adult female singleness, poverty and immorality were seen as inseparable issues. Some
even suggested that the continuous waves of female migrants looking for work in cities across
Mexico had created the problem of female singleness. According to the rhetoric rural migrations
405

“El Vicio Clandestino,” El Sol de Guadalajara, July 4, 1900.
137

of poor women had created an imbalance in the sexes, leaving all women less opportunities to
marry. Poor women were especially at a disadvantage because they were less desirable marriage
partners, and without husbands they would continue to be unable to support themselves.

406

This

produced a vicious cycle of female singleness, poverty, work and prostitution.
It is true that the majority of working women in Guadalajara were in fact single, but the
debate over women’s work must also be tempered by questions relating to their ethnicity and
class. Social status was an underlying element in the relationship between work and adult female
poverty. Ultimately the ideal gender roles of the time did not fit working class women’s lives and
the majority of women, both single and married, had to work out of necessity.

407

Data on

working women and their marital status in Guadalajara is difficult to assess due to the limitations
of most sources, however several conclusions regarding women’s work can be made utilizing
data from censuses. Although the 1821 and 1822 censuses of Guadalajara recorded that only
nineteen percent of all adult women had an occupation, data from 1895 suggests a much higher
proportion of working women, around sixty percent had jobs.

408

This may not suggest that more

women were working by late century, but rather reflected a growing concern about working
women.

406
407
408
409

409

Porter, Working Women in Mexico City, 61.
Tuñon, Mujeres, 293.
See Table 4.16.

The listing of “no occupation” for women was common within the 1821-1822 censuses of
Guadalajara, and was a pattern found elsewhere. In France, 70.2% of widowed women living
alone were listed with no occupation and rates as high as 80% have been noted in England. See
Lee Baker, “Survival Strategies of Widows in Dijon During the French Revolution,” Women’s
Studies 31, (2002), 58; Clarkson and Crawford, “Life after Death,” 248.
138

410

Table 4.16
Working Women, Guadalajara, 1821-1895
1821
1895
Total number of adult women
13732 33770
Adult women recorded with a job
2566 20443
Percent of all Women Working
18.70% 60.5%

Further analysis of the census of 1821 provides more specific information as it included
details such as class and ethnicity, which became illegal to record later that same year. By the
early nineteenth century, the majority of women with an occupation in Guadalajara were
single

411

. Although it was more common for women to work when they were single or

widowed, a closer examination reveals that such generalizations varied according to ethnicity
and social class. Evidence there suggests that women of indigenous backgrounds and those of
lower socio-economic status were over represented among the female working population no
matter their marital status. For example, although the majority of Spanish and Indian working
women were single, Indian women were two times more likely to be married and work than
Spanish wives.

412

As a whole, however, an overwhelming majority of all employed women

were from the working poor classes.

413

Such evidence confirms that despite an ideal image of a

woman’s place within the home, working outside of it was a way of life for most Tapatía
women, especially among the lower classes and those with indigenous heritage.
410

Data for 1821 was compiled using frequencies to determine the adult female population and
those listed with jobs using the Censuses of Guadalajara, 1821-1822. CD-ROM Database.
(Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University, 2006); For 1895 data see Archivo Histórico de
Jalisco, Mapoteca, “Computo General del Censo,” Oficio del Concentración del Censo
(Guadalajara, 1895).
411
See Table 4.16.
412
413

See Table 4.16.
See Table 4.17 and Table 4.18.
139

414

Table 4.17
Ethnicity and Marital Status of Working Women in Guadalajara, 1821
Single
Married
Widowed
Total
N
%
N
%
N
%
N
%
Español
420
60.7 117 16.9 155 22.4
692
36.2
Indio
449
48.6 279 30.2 195 21.1
923
48.3
Mestizo
129
64.2
25
12.4
47
23.4
201
10.5
Mulato
49
62
6
7.6
24
30.4
79
4.1
Otra casta
13
81.3
2
12.5
1
6.25
16
0.8
1060 55.5 429 22.4 422 22.1 1911
Total
415

Table 4.18
Class Status of Working Women, Guadalajara, 1821
Single
Married
Widowed
N
%
N
%
N
%
Doña
242
17.8
31
5.3
89
14.9
No doña
1121
82.2
559
94.7
510
85.1
1363
53.4
590
23.1
599
23.5
Total

As the century progressed so too did the scientific arguments which linked typically
lower-class female occupations with poverty and sexual immorality. Contemporary Mexican
scientists reasoned that because women learned morality, and it was not biologically determined,
it was only natural that members of the lower classes suffered from greater moral inferiority.

416

The scientists did not limit their criticism to domestic service and prostitution alone, but other
commonly held jobs for poor women came under scrutiny as well.

414

Censuses of Guadalajara, 1821-1822. CD-ROM Database. (Tallahassee, FL: Florida State
University, 2006). 1821 data was cross-tabulated according to noted civil status, ethnicity, sex,
and recorded occupations according to listed census categories.
415
Censuses of Guadalajara, 1821-1822. CD-ROM Database. (Tallahassee, FL: Florida State
University, 2006). 1821 data was cross-tabulated according to sex, social titles and recorded
occupations according to listed census categories.
416
Lara y Pardo, Prostitución en México, 108-9.
140

For example, the Spanish-born writer and journalist Faustina Saez de Melgar called
attention to wet-nurses in 1883, chiding not only mothers for failing to comply with their
obligations to nurse their own children, but she also the women who worked in the profession.
She believed that the duty of wet-nursing forced women to "abandon their [own] children" and
the home.

417

Often hygiene campaigns aimed at wet-nurses saw them as a “physically polluting

presence,” a cadre of workers made up of the “immoral” classes.

418

As was the case in other

parts of Latin America the profession of wet-nursing was a marker of social status, often
performed by poor women out of necessity. The very sad case of the wet nurse María Trinidad
Flores reveals the extreme sacrifices women made as wet nurses and the circumstances which
propelled them into this line of work. In December of 1888, Flores accepted work in
Guadalajara’s Casa de Cuña, a wing of the city’s orphanage that housed orphaned babies.
Although she was married and still nursing her one year old son, her husband encouraged her to
take the job as they were in “extreme need.” She migrated from her small town of Santana
Acatlán, a distance of forty five kilometers, to accept the position at the rate of five pesos per
month. Two months later her husband was soliciting orphanage administrators to release his wife
from her duties because their own son had taken a turn in health and “lacking the affections of
his mother was suffering from a grave illness.”

419

Several days later the orphanage denied his

request on the grounds that the young baby in her care was also in poor health and could die if
they substituted his wet-nurse at such a young age. The story reveals interesting aspects about the
life of wet-nurses. Poor women hired as wet-nurses were often unable to care for their own
417
418
419

BPEJ, #758, doc 1, Saez de Melgar, “Educación cristian y social de la mujer,” 118.
Lauderdale Graham, House and Street, 120.

Archivo Histórico de Jalisco, Beneficiencia, B-5 Instituciones de Protección, Caja 159, exp.
889-832.
141

children during the course of their tenure as nurses. A decision to wet-nurse was not taken
lightly, and for María Trinidad her own circumstances were dire enough to warrant her leaving
her young son and migrating to Guadalajara. At the same time, orphanage staff strictly monitored
wet-nurses in order to prevent them from abandoning the infants they suckled. Despite the illness
of her own son, María was unable to leave.
Despite the often desperate reality that placed poor women like María Trinidad in
positions as wet-nurses, Saez de Melgar built on stereotypes of wet-nurses as being individuals
of ill character and low morals. She commented that "with the milk that is transmitted to infants
also come illness and vices of the wet-nurses, and her instincts, good or bad." In her list of
diseases which could be passed from nurse to baby, she notes both syphilis and herpes.

420

Her

reference makes clear that poor women’s work became increasingly tied to the integrity and
sexual honor of working women. Thus, as the nineteenth century moved forward social
perceptions of working women in typically held professions began to be linked to larger social
concerns over the poverty and sexual immorality of unmarried women.

Conclusion
Begin inning in the 1850s, state and national leaders blamed a whole host of urban social
problems on the breakdown of the husband-headed household among Mexico’s poor. Thus,
single women became scapegoats for broader social phenomenon that limited their abilities to
marry and form stable families that resulted from land reform, rural economic instability, warfare
and banditry which contributed to urban migration. As a result single women emerged as a
problem rather than the reality of growing industrialization and urbanization. The equation left
420

BPEJ, #758, doc 1, Saez de Melgar, “Educación cristian y social de la mujer,” 118.
142

little space for them to negotiate traditional gender roles. Despite their need to work and build
independent households in order to support themselves, their presence in the public eye caused
alarm as an affront to women’s proper roles in society. This concern led to a stigma that
associated laboring women with danger, immorality, and as symbols of the deterioration of
family and society. Growing preoccupation over single women and their sexuality would lead to
greater forms of regulation by the middle and latter portions of the century.

143

CHAPTER FIVE
IMMORALITY AND SINGLENESS: SEX, CRIME AND PROSTITUTION

The honor of unattached women who often lived and labored outside of a patriarchal
home became increasingly scrutinized in post-Independence Mexico, not only for their work in
the public eye, but as part of a larger discourse regarding immorality among the poor. Social
reformers, writers and law enforcement officials specifically targeted unattached women for
correction because they suspected that these women more often committed sexual and criminal
improprieties. After 1821 the maintenance of female honor became paramount not only to the
success of the family but the nation. Husbands, fathers, and other male relatives were responsible
and held accountable for protecting the honor and virtue of their female family members.
However, the reality of industrial and urban growth revealed that most common Mexicans could
not fulfill idealized gender and family roles, in part because a significant number of
Guadalajara’s female residents lived outside the confines of a traditional patriarchal family or
marriage. Unattached women in urban Guadalajara heightened concerns and fears over their
morality and place in public life. Often stereotyped as vice-ridden prostitutes, authorities focused
their reformist zeal on adult female singleness precisely amid a demographic crisis which
alarmed local authorities and heightened anxieties toward over-crowding, crime, and disease in
Guadalajara. In the absence of men, the role of the state mimicked a paternal relationship to
sectors of the lower classes. Data from criminal and civil court cases, legal regulations and jail
and hospital records suggests that the mostly male-authorities of the newly formed state
government and police forces of Jalisco acted as both protectors and prosecutors of single and
widowed women. Beginning in the 1850s, state authorities more aggressively displaced the

144

Catholic Church in areas of social welfare, penal correction, judicial matters and family law over
the course of the nineteenth century is a critical period in which to examine this issue as it was a
period of state organization, in which power over judicial, correctional and social welfare
decisions transferred from the church to state governments. Nineteenth-century Guadalajara’s
provincial and conservative religious traditions contrasts with the more cosmopolitan and secular
character of Mexico City and offers a unique case study for comparative regional history.
Despite experiencing similar demographic and urban growth at a rate similar to Mexico City,
Guadalajara had fewer resources to handle the problems associated with a growing urban
population.

421

This chapter highlights the intersections between adult female singleness and

immorality examined through the lens of criminal court cases and the regulation of prostitution.
By exploring new state institutions in charge of controlling and policing the population in
Guadalajara, it argues that the shift from church-run to state-led criminal courts, prisons and
hospitals all served to impose a newly organized governing and policing body onto urban
residents, particularly its poor, single, and female population. In large measure, city officials
marginalized single women for correction and reform in greater numbers than married women
given their greater presence in and before institutions of power.

The Discourse on Poverty and Immorality in Nineteenth-Century Guadalajara
By the 1850s, the intensity of Guadalajara’s demographic growth posed social and urban
problems that city planners had never experienced before.

422

Previously, the city’s governance

did little to regulate development, increase its surveillance of dangerous classes or coordinate
421

Lilia Oliver Sánchez, “Intensidad de la crisis demográficas en las ciudades de México y
Guadalajara, 1800-1850,” Takwá 8, (Fall 2005), 36.
422
Ibid., 20-23.
145

services. Waves of urban migration exposed the deficiencies of weak urban planning and
infrastructure. Local authorities grew leery and anxious of an ever-growing poor and
unemployed migrant population with limited housing and financial resources to access goods.
The problem of population growth was so persistent in colonial Guadalajara that as soon
as the beloved bishop Fray Antonio Alcalde arrived in the city in 1771 he began to take measures
to combat unemployment and to segregate and control Guadalajara’s poor. In one of his first acts
as bishop, he oversaw the construction of a textile factory north of the city to put the hundreds of
poor residents who “swarmed the city” to work. As part of the same measure, he later
constructed worker housing there. This housing project called Las Cuadritas, included 158 small
one-story houses which took up sixteen city blocks. These tenement style homes were typically
rented by the room, and multiple families often lived in one house.

423

Six years later in this same part of town he initiated the construction of the hospital San
Miguel de Belén, (today called Hospital Civil) to treat many of the problems related to the health
of these new indigents.

424

Growing unemployment which exacerbated social problems and

poverty led bishop Alcalde’s successor Juan Cruz Ruiz de Cabañas to open the city’s first
poorhouse in 1805, Casa de Caridad y Misericordia (later referred to as the Hospicio

423

Rodney Anderson’s work suggests that this part of town also had higher rates of households
with multiple families and un-related members. See Rodney Anderson, “Los Barrios,” in
Lecturas históricas de Guadalajara: Demografía y Urbanismo, eds. José María Muriá y Jaime
Olveda (México: Colegio Regiones de México, 1992), 329.Dr. Anderson’s work suggests that
this part of town also had higher rates of households with multiple families and un-related
members
424
Águeda Jiménez Pelayo, Jaime Olveda and Beatriz Núñez Miranda, El Crecimiento Urbano
de Guadalajara, (Zapopan: El Colegio de Jalisco, 1995), 109-10.
146

Cabañas).

425

Clergy and local authorities feared the city was growing more dangerous and

insecure because of the masses of unemployed and urban poor.

426

The Hospicio served as an

orphanage, a school for poor and orphaned children, and home to beggars and other aged or
handicapped homeless in the city.

427

Mexico City experienced a similar pattern of migration

and urban growth where local authorities came up with similar institutions and programs to deal
with an ever-growing number of urban poor residents. As Silvia Arrom shows, similar fear and
anxieties over the threat that poor migrants had on the economic and social development of the
city led to extreme regulations which outlawed begging and enforced the roundup and
internment of city mendicants in the newly established poor house.

428

Several recent works point to late eighteenth century Bourbon reforms as a point of
transition in the treatment and perception of Mexico’s poor. They argue that the growing
presence of poor migrants in urban centers heightened concerns by Church and state officials and
elites who associated the city’s poor with urban social problems. The work of Silvia Arrom
contends that prior to the 1774 decree which attempted to eradicate begging in Mexico City,
almsgiving was a common and Christian practice in the city.

429

Increasingly however, as

populations in urban centers like Mexico City and Guadalajara swelled local authorities and
Mexican elites came to associate the “subversive lifestyle” of the poor, with growing urban

425

Jesús Hernández Padilla, “El Hospicio Cabañas,” in Iglesias y edificios antiguos de
Guadalajara (Guadalajara: Ayuntamiento de Guadalajara, 1979), 261-2.
426
Jiménez Pelayo, Olveda and Núñez, El Crecimiento Urbano, 125.
427

Archivo Histórico del Arzobispado (AHA), Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio
Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de Caridad,” Caja 1, 1789-1849; Also see Chapter 6.
428
The Mexico City poor house was established in 1774. See Silvia Arrom, Containing the
Poor: The Mexico City Poor House, 1774-1871 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 2.
429
Ibid.
147

problems such as crime, disease, immorality, non-marriage and social disorder. In their
estimation, the drunkenness, gambling, consensual unions, and impoverished nature with which
they characterized lower-class life was the root cause of urban problems.

430

By the mid-

nineteenth century these biased attitudes deepened and many local officials labeled certain
individuals as “cero sociales,” or social zeros. Described as prostitutes, hoodlums, beggars, street
children, homeless aged, and invalids, local authorities in Guadalajara believed they were the
product of urban problems such as illness, unemployment, abandonment, and poverty. Elites in
Mexico considered “social zeros” a blemish both on their city and the nation, and they believed
they should not expose their illnesses, helplessness, deformities and misery in public places and
even less to foreign visitors.

431

Numerous traveler accounts about Guadalajara concord with elite Mexican stereotypes of
the urban poor, often describing the lifestyle of the city’s poor as violent, promiscuous, raucous
and rebellious. In 1844, the Frenchman Mathieu de Fossey commented that “not a day goes by
that one does not find a few dead in the streets from a brawl,” with the most fatal occurring
during feast times.

432

Others, such as the French doctor Ernest Vigneaux wrote in 1854,

describing the city’s commoners as “gay and celebratory,” which he argued aroused “turbulent”
feelings and “energy” that led to vice. He went on to write that “all of them get together in a

430

Robert Buffington, Criminal and Citizen in Modern Mexico (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 2000), 25.
431
Armida de la Vara de González, “Los ceros sociales,” in Obras completas de Luis González
y González. Volume 4 of El Indio en la era liberal (Mexico: Clío, 1996), 367; Jorge A. Trujillo,
“Léperos, pelados, ceros socials y gente de trueno en el Jalisco Porfiriano,” in Pobres,
Marginados y Peligros, edited by Jorge A. Trujillo and Juan Quintar (Guadalajara: Universidad
de Guadalajara, 2003), 208.
432
Mathieu de Fossey, Viaje a México (Mexico: Conaculta, 1994), 147-8. First published in
1844.
148

filthy manner without distinction of age or sex, dirty, almost naked, and shameless.”

433

More

poignantly Dr. Vigneaux noted their unwillingness to submit to the authority of both the army
and local police.
As the century evolved so too did the discourse on urban poverty and crime in Mexico.
Especially after 1850, Mexican authorities increasingly equated poverty with crime. The
Mexican writer Adolfo Llanes y Alcarez wrote in 1876 that “poverty is a crime.” He lamented
that “to be born poor is the equivalent of being born delinquent.” He went on to suggest that
“poverty leads to such little happiness that all turn their backs on it. A poor person is like a leper
434

that nobody wants to be around for fear of contagion.”

Further evidence from the work of

Guadalajara historian Jorge Trujllo argues that the fears and anxieties of local officials and elites
expanded during the Porfiriato (1876-1910). He argues that the dominant classes created a
particular typology of the “dangerous classes” based on their own fears, prejudices and ideology
based on racial, class and gender hierarchies. While elites associated their own class, the “gente
decente” (decent people) with virtue, wealth and power, lower-classes remained poor, fragile and
defective.

435

433

Ernest Vigneaux in Guadalajara a través de los tiempos, edited by Juan B. Iguíniz (Mexico:
Ayuntamiento de Guadalajara, 1989-1992), 247.
434
Adolfo Llanes y Alacarez, La mujer en el siglo diez y nueve. (Mexico: Imprenta de la
Colonia Española, 1876), 81.
435
Jorge Alberto Trujillo Breton, “La prostitución en Guadalajara durante la crisis del Porfiriato,
1894-1911,” Dissertation (Universidad de Guadalajara: Guadalajara, 1994), 34-5; For Mexico
City see Pablo Piccato, City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900-1931 (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2001).
149

Evidence of these ideas existed in the physical layout of Guadalajara, suggesting a desire
by elites to segregate classes.

436

In 1790, the Governor ordered the division of the city into a

fourteen cuartel system, in which different blocks of the city were organized into districts.
Reformers hoped that the new organizational system would ease surveillance of the growing
poor and working class population. For this reason, each cuartel had a juez mayor (judge of the
peace) whose function it was to maintain peace, foment work, and prevent idleness among
residents.

437

Also for each neighborhood in the cuartel an alcalde menor de barrio (selectman

of the neighborhood) was named to “ease the administration of justice.” Their functions were to
patrol their portion of the city, intervening in public disturbances such as drunkenness, brawls
and domestic disputes. In terms of the welfare of the community, they were to ensure that each
district had a doctor, midwife and pharmacist in their jurisdiction. They were responsible for the
welfare of orphans, widows, and beggars. Sometimes, male orphans of working age were
assigned to a master to learn an oficio (trade). In the case of beggars, some were sent to jail to
work on public works.

438

By 1809 the commander of the royal army modified the cuartel

system, demanding greater division of the city into twenty-four cuarteles. He argued that the
changes needed to be made for public security purposes “as an appropriate means to secure the
439

public peace and to facilitate the Junta de policía (city police) in carrying out its objectives.”
After 1821 the state consolidated all matters pertaining to public security under the Jefetura
436

Eduardo López Moreno, La cuadrícula en el desarollo de la ciudad hispanoamericana:
Guadalajara, Mexico (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 1992), 19; See Chapter 2.
437
Carmen Castañeda, “Guadalajara hace 200 años: el Reglamento de Cuarteles de 1790 y el
Padrón de 1791,” in Vivir en Guadalajara, La Ciudad y Sus Funciones edited by Carmen
Castañeda, (Guadalajara: Ayuntamiento de Guadalajara, 1992), 43.
438
María Ángeles Gálvez Ruíz, La conciencia regional en Guadalajara y el gobierno de los
intendentes (1786-1800) (Mexico: Unidad Editorial del Gobierno de Jalisco, 1996), 129-30.
439
Páez Brotchie, Guadalajara, 131-33.
150

política, which served as the main intermediary between the Ayuntamiento (municipal
government) and the state Governor.

440

Each canton, or sector, of the city had a Jefe Político, or

police chief (formally the alcalde in colonial period). The responsibilities of the Jefetura
política included the persecution of vagrants, apprehension of criminals and the registration of
crimes. In general, its role was to uphold laws and codes, preserve public order, guarantee the
safety of city residents and prevent robberies and crimes.

441

The Jefetura política together with an expanded cuartel system served to maintain order
in the post-Independence period. In large measure the cuartel system, which by the late
nineteenth century occupied some 976 city blocks, was a system that segregated the city along
class lines. Within this space the western area of the city made up the “gente decente,” which
included merchants, professionals, industrial workers, and bureaucrats. The eastern portion of the
city housed the remaining population of factory workers, technicians, small merchants, artisans,
rural migrants, and those deemed “gente trueno” (raucous classes).

442

Thus, the official

discourse of the ruling class supported the notion that the lifestyle of the poor caused immorality
and crime in the city.

443

440

Francisco Javier Delgado Aguilar, Jefaturas Políticas: Dinámica Política y Control Social en
Aguascalientes 1867-1911 (Aguascalientes: Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes, 2000), 814.
441
González Llerenas Fidenlina, “La reglamentación sanitaria de la prostitución en Guadalajara
y sus reformas, segunda mitad del siglo XIX,” 386.
442
Trujillo Breton, “La prostitución en Guadalajara,” 34-5.
443

Trujillo, “Léperos,” 205-206; 229.
151

Singleness and Immorality
Scholars have noted aspects of the so-called “subversive lifestyle” of Mexico’s poor that
included high rates of non-marriage, consensual unions, and illegitimacy. The same notions that
family morality and national prosperity went hand in hand reverberated in public space and
official discourses. Numerous scholars highlight the ways local authorities believed nonmarriage led to consensual unions, domestic violence, illegitimacy and child abandonment which
they argued encouraged criminality and crime.

444

Robert Buffington argues that Mexican

officials concerned with the private lives of marginal social groups, formerly a church
prerogative, became integrated into the discourse concerning lower-class criminality.

445

In

many ways, authorities suggested that singleness was a part of a lower-class lifestyle that
encouraged immorality and criminality.
Increasing preoccupation with female singleness and immorality were not confined to the
debates of journalists, reformers and scientists, nor to the issues of work and public space as
argued previously. Ideologically, the Mexican nation was undergoing a transformation and its
citizens were an integral part of that change. The dichotomies in society over good and bad
women were clear. While mothers, wives and reputable single women were privileged members
of society, the growing number of poor, single and working women in public spaces became
stigmatized as bad women whose sexual morality was suspect. The nineteenth century marked a
turning point in which women’s social and civil status became markers of her honor. Ultimately
a single woman was an unmarried woman, and little room existed for her honor to co-exist
alongside the Republican wives and mothers. For this reason they became much more visible to
444

Michael Scardaville, “Crime and the Urban Poor: Mexico City in the Late Colonial Period”
(Ph.D. Diss.,University of Florida, 1977), 149-71.
445
Buffington, Criminal and Citizen, 25.
152

religious writers, census takers and judges who were anxious about their proper place in modern
Mexico. Often tensions arose around the issue of single women’s sexual honor. In place of
absentee male patriarchs the Church and state became concerned with the sexual honor of single
women, and the rhetoric behind “good” and “bad” women was not only used popularly, but
individuals applied it to political and legal contexts.
By the nineteenth century the issue of female sexuality and singleness were synonymous.
Often single women became fodder for the hysteria over a perceived moral decay in Mexican
society which some attributed to growing secularization. Church leaders put single women at the
heart of the civil marriage debate. As early as the 1850s, religious writers in Guadalajara
expressed concerns over what an increased emphasis on civil unions might mean for the sake of
unmarried women’s virtue. Without the consequences attached to religious marriage, single
women could fall into more illicit relations with men. According to the Guadalajaran priest,
Agustín de la Rosa, single women would become “toys” for men’s “passions,” “slaves to their
whims,” and “defenseless victims to their crazy games.”

446

The consequences of such liaisons

would lead to illegitimate children, who would end up aborted or abandoned by ill fit mothers.
De la Rosa believed that without the protection of marriage as a “sacred and inviolable” union,
women would be left with the options of “concubinage” or “adulterous relationships” with
men.

447

Not only did de la Rosa fear consensual illicit relationships between men and women,

but he argued that civil marriage would also put single women and girls at greater risk of rapto,
or abduction through violence or coercion. The Jalisco criminal code defined rapto as sexual
relations “against the will of a woman through the use of physical or moral violence, trickery or

446
447

BPJ, Num de Misc: 12, # of doc: 4, Agustín de la De la Rosa , “El Matrimonio Civil,” 43.
Ibid., 41.
153

seduction in order to satisfy a lascivious desire or in order to marry her.”

448

Without the

consequence of marriage built into most Church laws on rapto, he believed that it would “incite
raptores” and “impede abstinence” among young men and women.

449

In de la Rosa’s depiction

of a society without religiously sanctioned and morally monitored marriage, unmarried women
would suffer the most. His argument suggests that religious marriage offered both men and
women a number of protections that prevented immoral behavior and maintained decorum in
society. By and large however, his writing emphasized the connotations between non-marriage
and illegitimacy, a problem he blamed on poor single women who frequently lived in consensual
union rather than legal marriage.
In reality, the stigma that single women faced had less to do with their marital status than it
did with the ideals held both by the state and the Church regarding female sexual honor. Even at
the level of municipal government census takers were preoccupied with female singleness. The
census of Guadalajara is useful in identifying the ways in which census takers analyzed civil
status to pass judgment on single and widowed women’s social status and sexual honor. The
categories used to define women’s civil status as single shed light on social and even personal
commentaries regarding their sexuality. Apart from widowhood an unmarried single adult
woman might be identified as single (soltera), or a maiden (doncella). In nineteenth-century
Guadalajara the title doncella inferred virginity, while the title soltera, or single, implied a
woman was no longer virginal or had been violated. Of all the doncellas listed in the 1821 census
the majority were between the age of fifteen and twenty four, but many more were listed in age
groups beyond these years, implying the status was not only for young girls but could also apply

448
449

Benítez Barba, “Raptadas tapatías,” 292.
BPJ, Num de Misc: 12, # of doc: 4, Agustín de la De la Rosa , “El Matrimonio Civil,” 41-2.
154

to spinsters. Based on data analyzed for class and ethnicity, it appears that census takers applied
the term consistently regardless of social status. Not only were these categories significant to the
census, but they were also a common component of legal documents, which labeled unattached
women in a variety of ways including widowed, single, celibate, alone, free of marriage, and
doncella.

450

The diversity of categories used to describe both the degree of women’s singleness

in addition to her sexual experience is indicative of the level of concern placed on a woman’s
sexual honor at the state level.

451

Status
Soltera
Doncella

Table 5.1
Single Women in the 1821 Guadalajara Census
Age 15 –
Age 25 –
Age 35 Age 45 –
24
34
44
54
N
%
N
%
N
%
N
%

"Sola" w/children
"Sola" w/out children
"Sola" Doncella
"Sola" Viuda

436 38% 240 21% 95
1376 40% 441 13% 211
2

11%

1
5
3

50%
26%
75%

2

40%

7
1

8%
6%
37%
25%

Age 55+
N

%

59
127

5%
4%

34
109

3%
3%

1
2

50%
11%

3

16%

1

20%

2

40%

The very thorough census taker of cuartel nineteen went so far as to note whether a woman
was single and had children separately from those single women who had no children, as well as
450

See Table 5.1; The censuses I explored for Guadalajara did not inventory convents, therefore
the use of the word celibate, although rare, appears to have been used interchangeably with
doncella. In addition, the popular connotation of the term was corroborated through criminal
records. BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal.
451
Censuses of Guadalajara, 1821-1822. CD-ROM Database. (Tallahassee, FL: Florida State
University, 2006). 1821 data was analyzed according to noted civil status, age and sex according
to listed census categories. Similar information was not available for later years.
155

those women who were single but widowed or still virgins. The home of María del Carmen
sheds light on this reality. At the age of fifty, she was recorded as single with children and
headed a household of five people. Three members of the home were her children; José age
twelve; Candelario age eleven; and María Jesus, fifteen. Both she and her children appear
without a surname, likely an indication that she was never married and a sign of her family’s
lower class status. As was customary in Latin America children took their father’s surname, in
cases where paternity was questionable or children were illegitimate they often acquired the
surname of their mother, or none at all. In the census this was noted by listing individuals with
only their first names. Also living in the home was Juan Gutiérrez and Trinidad Valle, both were
employed adult men living as boarders in the home. The same census taker also noted the case of
the thirty year old María Corona, also given the lower class and less honorable “soltera,” or
single designation. She resided as a boarder in the home of a nineteen year old whose
relationship with Corona was not listed. Her status as a boarder living with an unrelated male,
likely indicated that the census taker did not hold her honor in high regard. In contrast to María
del Carmen and María Corona, the same census taker listed María Josefa as “single without
children.” To be a woman without children likely indicated greater sexual honor. However, at
the age of thirty and working as a domestic servant in the home of Pedro Alvarez, it is possible
that the census taker believed her to be a spinster. Perhaps the same census taker knew of the
good reputation among the Estrada sisters, because he made note that the sisters, who all resided
as boarders within the home of Felipe Mata and ranged in age from forty to twenty-seven, were
single but doncellas.

452

The many categories of non-marriage, including solteras, solteras sin

452

Censuses of Guadalajara, 1821-1822. CD-ROM Database. (Tallahassee, FL: Florida State
University, 2006). Index #46560-46565. For the case of María Corona index# 46940. María
Josefa index #46796. Estrada sisters, index# 46851-46854
156

niños, and doncellas, and the connotations they carried regarding sexual honor, non-marriage
and class status reveals the concern that even local bureaucrats placed on single women’s honor.
Given that sociologists and criminologists portrayed single women as being more sexually
promiscuous,

453

evidence from seduction cases highlights the importance that being a doncella,

or virgin, could have for an unmarried women’s honor. In the 1886 seduction trial against
Alancio Mejía, the father of sixteen year old Catarina Estrada argued that his daughter had been
a “doncella” prior to her encounter with Mejía. In his defense Mejía claimed that she entered
relations with him voluntarily and that she was not a doncella because she had lost her virginity
to Prisciliano Sanchez. In fact, he claimed that she lied in court on the advice of her own father.
In the end, Mejía was released and Catarina served eight months in prison for perjury. Whether
or not Catarina’s father knew of her previous relationship and loss of virginity is unclear, but his
advice that she conceal her prior sexual experiences in court is an indication of the connection
between her honor and that of the family.

454

In the case against Atilano García, however, the

father of María Yermeño was unaware that his daughter had already lost her virginity and
accused Garcia of deflowering his daughter and taking away her doncella status. As the
proceedings continued María revealed that she had lost her virginity to a soldier by the name of
Rafael Flores, who had since died. Upon this admission María’s father dropped all charges
against Atilano.

455

In both cases fathers brought suit against the men they believed had taken

away the honor of their family and daughters. However, the court dropped the charges when the

453
454

Benítez Barba, “Raptadas tapatías,” 296.

BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Alcancio Mejía por estupro y seduction,” 1874, Caja 27: 49,881.
455
BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Atilano Garcia por estupro,” 1886, f. 88,179.
157

men involved cast doubts upon whether the girls were “chaste” prior to their encounters. This
was a common way to avoid prosecution, as judges and lawyers viewed a girl who no longer had
her virginity as having little honor to protect.

456

It was the responsibility of the young women to

remain virgins and their failure to do so put them at odds with the ideals of feminine behavior
and morality. The cases reveal the ways in which an unmarried woman’s reputation as well as
her family was easily shattered in the face of sexual impropriety, although it did not pose the
same type of threat to their male suitors.
Thus, women’s virginity and sexual morality held important merit in Mexican society. It was
a marker of a single woman’s honor that she remained chaste before marriage, and her male
protectors who failed to defend their wives, daughters and dependents from the sexual aggression
of other men also had their honor besmirched. As a tradition passed down from the colonial
period, a woman’s honor was linked to her family, the bearer of which was her father or male
head of household.

457

As evidenced by both the census and legal cases, it was a belief still

maintained well into the nineteenth century. For this reason, it is interesting to note the
differences in cases in which there was an absence of a male patriarch or father figure. Unlike
María and Catarina, judicial officials treated the sexual honor of the forty year old widow
Mateana Casillas much differently. In the rape trial against Miguel Delgadillo, she was treated as
456

Other works on deflowering cases address this as a common outcome of many cases, see
Kathryn A. Sloan, Runaway Daughters: Seduction, Elopement, and Honor in NineteenthCentury Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008); Sueann Caulfield, In
th
Defense of Honor: Sexual Morality, Modernity, and Nation in Early 20 Century Brazil
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000).
457
For more on the history of female sexual honor in Latin America see Ann Twinam, Public
Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America
(Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1999); Sarah Chambers and Lara Putnam,eds.Honor,
Status, and Law in Modern Latin America (Durham [N.C.]: Duke University Press, 2005);
Lyman Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, eds. The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence
in colonial Latin America (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1998).
158

though she had no honor worth protecting. According to court testimony while Mateana was
fetching water Miguel began taunting her for a kiss. When she rejected his advances he became
angry, a struggle ensued in which he forced Mateana into a nearby house and shut the door.
Although she tried to fight him off, he beat and raped her. According to court records, Miguel
had a long criminal history and had even served jail time. Despite physical evidence including
several cuts on Mateana’s fingers, the defense for Miguel argued that Mateana’s age and status
as a widow were indications of her complicity. The fact that she was not a virgin made it
impossible for Miguel to be charged with violación, or rape, since the crime could only occur on
a “doncella.” As an older women, defense attorneys argued that she had “passed the age of
danger” which stirs the “sensuality of men.” According to the reasoning of the defense, as a
widow Mateana was no longer a virgin and therefore could not make a case for the violation of
her sexual honor. At forty she was too old to be found desirable by men, therefore they argued
that the incident had to involve some complicity on her part. For this reason, the court opted to
try Delgadillo for “estupro,” or deflowering, which was often used interchangeably with
seduction and frequently implied volition. In the end, without any witnesses to testify to the
crime, the court proposed the two marry as a way to repair Mateana’s honor rather than continue
the case. The court believed this was a reasonable option for an older widow, who likely had few
prospects for remarriage.

458

Upon receiving the court’s decision Mateana refused to marry,

458

Remarriage for female widows was much less common than for male widowers. This was
true in Mexico as well as other parts of the world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. See
Carmen Ramos Escandón, “Reglamentado la soledad: las viudas y sus derechos en la legislación
Mexicana, 1860-1885,” in Las viudas en la historia, edited by Manuel Ramos Medina (Mexico:
Condumex, 2002), 269-285; Alain Bideau, “A Demographic and Social Analysis of Widowhood
and Remarriage: The Example of the Castelany of Thoissey-en-Dombes, 1670-1840,” Journal of
Family History 5 (Spring 1980), 36-8; Gay L. Gullickson, The Spinners and Weavers of Auffay:
Rural Industry and the Sexual Division of Labor in a French Village, 1750-1850. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), 167.
159

upholding her honor she insisted the attack was violent and involuntary. Not only would she not
marry, but the experience brought her “hatred” for the defendant. She admitted it was painful to
even see him while she “suffered patiently.” In his rebuttal, the prosecution reminded the court
that “estupro” was punishable by death and sought retribution against Delgadillo for the crime.
Eventually the judge retracted his decision for the two to marry, but upheld its position that the
incident was not “violación.” Instead it argued for the crime of “estupro,” leaving open the
possibility of consent by Mateana and sentenced Delgadillo to only three years in prison.

459

Ultimately, the court’s decision upheld the notion that an older woman without a husband and no
longer virginal had less honor to defend and to protect. The judge and defense attorney used both
her civil status and age against her in the courtroom to prove that she was no longer desirable to
men for lack of youth and purity, therefore it was impossible to take away the honor of an old
widow such as Mateana. In this way the court room was a place where elite and working class
men alike could reaffirm male prerogatives.
Despite attempts by judges and lawyers to impose an unfair double standard and question her
rights to her own honor she was persistent in her efforts to prosecute the offender. She spurned
their offer to marry the man who had raped her, and insisted that his offense was of a criminal
nature and not one of seduction. It is an important testament to unmarried women’s agency.
Numerous other works address women’s agency in the defense of their own honor within
seduction and deflowering cases across Latin America. Their work suggests that despite attempts
by legal officials to deny them honor on the basis of class, race and gender discrimination, many
women and their families fought in the face of what were incomprehensible odds to secure a

459

BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Miguel Delgadillo por estupro con violencia,” 1845, c. 1, 8408.
160

piece of dignity for themselves.

460

By and large criminal investigations in deflowering and

seduction cases which examined single or widowed women in conjunction to their social status
and sexual honor reveal how closely the two were linked in nineteenth-century society.
Unmarried women created anxiety for many local officials in part because female singleness
in a post-Independence Mexico was a complex issue. Just as both church and state leaders
feared, many single and widowed women never legally married. Despite the common usage of
the term to describe single women in court documents as “free from marriage” (libre de
matrimonio), women listed as “single” were not always completely unattached from a male
companion. Given the greater percentage of single women in Guadalajara and the higher
proportion of women to men, it was more common for women to enter into “informal”
relationships with men who were often married. In such relationships it was often single women
who were at a social disadvantage because of the stigma attached to their mores, and their lack of
legal rights compared to married women. In legal disputes, defendants and jurists alike often
placed blame on the women who entered into such relationships.
The 1882 adultery case of forty-one year old Saturnino López is one example of how men
were able to utilize single women’s marginalized sexual honor to their advantage. In the case
Saturnino’s wife, forty-one year old Nicanor Cruz testified that her husband was having an affair
with the twenty year old, single Yrenea Castro. In the case Yrenea’s neighbor Claudia Rojas
confessed that Yrenea told her of the affair and even witnessed Saturnino entering her house.
Yrenea did not deny the affair and revealed to the court that the two met at an Easter festival
eight months earlier. According to Yrenea’s testimony the relationship was a close one, not only
460

Kathryn A. Sloan, Runaway Daughters: Seduction, Elopement, and Honor in NineteenthCentury Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008); Sandra Lauderdale
Graham, “Honor Among Slaves,” in The Faces of Honor.; Caulfield, In Defense of Honor.
161

did he often stay the night but frequently helped her with household expenses. Despite Yrenea’s
portrayal of their relationship as something akin to that of boyfriend and girlfriend, Saturnino
denied both Yrenea and Claudia’s testimony, saying that the relationship was only a fling and
that Yrenea was nothing more than a “mujer pública,” or prostitute. In the end his public
slandering of Yrenea helped him to win back his wife, who decided to drop the charges, pardon
his offense and continue to live with him if he agreed to meet his obligations as a husband.
Without the protection of marriage a single woman’s sexual honor was more easily called into
question than their male counterparts. More often than not men took advantage of single
women’s weak legal and social position in court cases.

461

The 1865 case of nineteen-year-old Josefa de los Santos was a bit different. As the daughter
of a poor widow, she found herself working as a domestic servant in the home of Don Aniceto
Calderon. The life of a domestic worker put single women at a much greater risk for both
adulterous and involuntary sexual encounters, and such was the case for Josefa. According to
criminal court proceedings Josefa claimed she was frequently pursued by Aniceto’s son
Maximiano, who according to Josefa had promised marriage. She indicated that after dealing
with his persistent pleas she allowed him “to use her carnally;” their sexual relationship became
consensual. Upon becoming pregnant she left the Calderon home to have her baby, Cornelio.
Maximiano came to see her and continued to promise to marry her. She provided details of their
conversations in which Maximiano told her he had arranged for their wedding in a nearby village
since his father forbid the union given her lower class standing. After she had the baby she
returned to her work as a servant, but in another home and she and Maximiano continued their
love affair. Maximiano devised many opportunities for the two to run away together, even
461

BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Saturnino López and Yrenea Castro por amaciato,” 1882, c.1, 75,564
162

staying in the house of friends and relatives to evade his parents. Throughout their two-year
affair Josefa contended that he continued to promise marriage, and after getting pregnant a
second time, she decided to seek justice through the court system. In response, Maximiano
admitted to carrying on a relationship with Josefa under the premise that he would marry her, but
candidly divulged to the judge that he did it only to “satiate his carnal appetite.” He went on to
say that having sex was Josefa’s idea. Not only did she direct him, but begged for sex when he
would pass by the home where she worked. To downplay his relationship and slander Josefa he
refused to acknowledge paternity of her two children, commenting that “as a mujer pública” he
did not know whether or not the two pregnancies had resulted from their “relations” together.

462

Supporting testimony from Josefa’s mother and a widowed neighbor offered evidence that
Josefa and Maximiano shared more than a tryst, as did two love letters written by Maximiano.
Despite mounting evidence against him, Maximiano continued to deny her claims that he
fathered her children. Instead he resorted to tarnishing Josefa’s reputation as a “woman that has
let everyone borrow her.” To add insult to injury he claimed he often paid her for her services as
a prostitute. In a shocking twist defense attorneys called on the testimony of Luis Sánchez, a
single laborer, who testified that he too had carnal relations with Josefa, substantiating the claims
of her promiscuous lifestyle. Josefa ardently protested, telling the court that it was a lie conjured
up by Maximiano’s father and asked that the court punish him for such “blasphemy.” The
defense went further by calling on the cousin of Maximiano who offered up a laundry list of
other men rumored to have had “relationships” with Josefa, although he admitted he never saw

462

BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Maximiano Calderón y Josefa de los Santos por amaciato,” 1865, c.1, 24,373.
163

them with his own eyes.

463

By using testimony that targeted the honor of Josefa, the defense

argued that she had a “reputation for scandal” and “prostitution” and the only thing that
Maximiano was guilty of was his “bad faith in a woman who took advantage of him.” In the end
however, although the court felt there was sufficient evidence to prosecute Maximiano for the
original charge of kidnapping with the intent to seduce, or rapto, commenting that he only used
Josefa to “satisfy his foolish appetite,” they did not charge him because they believe her actions
were voluntary. In its final ruling the court defended Josefa, noting that in reality she was
“tricked” as a “poor woman whose simplicity made her believe in false promises.” Although it
finds his “audacity” alarming, given the “inequality” of blood between Maximiano and Josefa
that proves he never intended to follow through with his marriage promises, they cannot
prosecute him for the crime of rapto. The court absolved him of any crime, but ordered him to
acknowledge his two children, end his “illicit relations” with Josefa and compensate her to
“salvage some of her rights.”

464

The case between Maximiano and Josefa is revealing in a number of ways. Josefa’s position
in the family as a young, single servant likely put her at greater risk for unwanted sexual
advances as numerous other studies of gender and sexuality have found.

463
464
465

465

In her early

Ibid.
Ibid.

For studies on female domestic work in Latin America and Mexico see Ann Blum,
“Abandonment, Adoption and Reproductive Disruption.” Childhood, Vol. 14, No. 3,
(2007); Elizabeth Kuznesof, “Ahistory of domestic service in Spanish America, 1492–1980,” in
Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1989), Lauderdale Graham, Sandra. House and Street: The Domestic
World of Servants and Masters in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1992; Moya, Jose C. “Domestic Service in a Global Perspective: Gender,
Migration, and Ethnic Niches,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33, no. 4 (2007); Susie
S. Porter, Working Women in Mexico City: Public Discourses and Material Conditions, 1879164

testimony she claimed Maximiano continually “bothered” her until she finally agreed to sexual
intercourse, but only with the security of a marriage promise. Although it is difficult to determine
the extent to which Josefa engaged in relations willingly, court testimony and other evidence
suggest that the relationship between the two was more intimate and long lasting than a fling.
Over the course of their more than two year relationship, she birthed two children to Maximiano,
received love letters and the two ran off together on multiple occasions to the home of friends
and relatives. Both Josefa and Maximiano admitted the barrier to their marrying was
Maximiano’s father who disapproved of the union. Court officials reaffirmed that belief and
viewed Josefa as an unequal match for Maximiano. In defense of his own honor Maximiano
resorted to attacking Josefa, an easy target given her class and social status as a single woman
now with children. In the end, however, there was enough supporting evidence to prove to the
court that Josefa and Maximiano shared more than a fling and that Josefa was not the “prostitute”
Maximiano tried to portray. In the absence of a patriarchal figure and as the daughter of a
widowed mother, the court took pity on Josefa’s circumstances by requiring that Maximiano
perform his moral obligations to acknowledge paternity over his children and support them
financially.
The mere fact that the state continued to prosecute adultery cases outside of divorce
proceedings just as the Catholic Church had, is evidence that women desired reparation of their
own honor in the post-Independence period. Although in the colonial period little effort was
made to regulate the behavior of lower classes by the state, in the nineteenth-century honor
became part of a national agenda. Whereas previously the honor of the lower class was the
domain of the church these cases reveal the intrusion of the state in its judgments on the honor of

1931, (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2003).
165

unmarried women.

466

Both Yrenea and Josefa, despite their transgressions and violations of

honor codes not intended for their class, felt they had honor worth defending. At the same time
however, the state continued to use their negative social status as unmarried women engaged in
“illicit” relationships who lacked legal rights, patriarchal protection and honor due to their sexual
improprieties, non-married status, and lower class origins. As a whole seduction and adultery
cases reveal the intersections between female singleness, immorality and criminality.

Singleness and the Regulation of Crime
The fears and anxieties that associated unmarried women with immorality and fueled the
prejudices of jurors, lawyers and defendants in seduction and adultery cases, also influenced the
notion that poor women without men were more likely to commit crimes. In fact, as urban crime
rates rose more women entered prisons and elite anxiety over the phenomenon increased.

467

Especially by the time of the Porfiriato, women in prison de-stabilized the role of supporting

466

The literature on honor in Latin America is expansive, but several works highlight the shift
from the colonial to the modern period as pivotal in a newfound interest by national governments
in promoting and bestowing lower-class women honor. See Eileen Findlay, Imposing Decency:
The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870-1920 (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 1999); Sarah C. Chambers, From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender, and Politics in
Arequipa, Peru, 1780-1854 (University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999);
Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets; Chambers and Putnam, Honor, Status, and Law.
467
Numerous works on Mexico have explored the history of crime. Several emphasize a greater
need to control crime by the nineteenth-century as cities began to swell and the problem of urban
crime grew. This was true of Guadalajara as well as other cities in Mexico. See Jiménez Pelayo,
Olveda and Núñez Miranda, El Crecimiento Urbano de Guadalajara; Laurence J. Rohlfe,
“Police and Penal Correction in Mexico City, 1876-1911: A Study of Order and Progress in
Porfirian Mexico” (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1983); Teresa Lozano Armendares, La
criminalidad en la ciudad de México, 1800-1821 (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México, 1987); Sergio García Avila and Eduardo Miranda Arrieta, Desorden social y
criminalidad en Michoacán, 1825-1850, (Morelia: Supremo Tribunal de Justicia del Estado de
Michoacán de Ocampo, 1994), Paul Vanderwood, Disorder and Progress: Bandits, Police and
Mexican Development (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981).
166

wives and mothers within the family, and in turn had the potential to undercut national
progress.

468

In fact, the issue of non-marriage made up a significant part of early Mexican

criminologist Carlos Roumagnac’s theory on the causes of female crime. In his 1904 report,
Roumagnac noted that the majority of female offenders in Mexico City were single, poor and
between the age of twenty and forty, with little or no education. Half of those he studied were
migrants to Mexico City from nearby towns, and all had worked for wages in the public sphere
as prostitutes, domestics, laundresses, seamstresses, clerks or tortilla makers.

469

In his detailed

analysis of some female criminals he noted a common pattern of betrayal and exploitation.
Trusted men, usually fathers or lovers, betrayed these unprotected women. This betrayal led
women into a life of crime. In one of his more detailed case studies of the inmate designated
“María V,” he remarked on her “betrayal” at the age of thirteen while working as domestic
servant by the twenty-two year old son of her patron. Many others in his study suffered
mistreatment by alcoholic and abusive fathers. According to his evaluation, these betrayals led
women farther from the protection of the patriarchal family and out into the “street.” the ultimate
realm of vice and crime.

470

Roumagnac stereotyped the lower-class lifestyle that many of his

single female subjects were born into, noting their propensity toward sexual promiscuity,
drinking, prostitution, and criminal behavior. He associated their nature with improper moral
training from a young age.

471

Thus, dominant criminological discourse equated crime with

social class and singled out unattached women as having a greater propensity toward crime for
468
469
470

Buffington, Criminal and Citizen, 66.
Carlos Roumagnac, Los Criminales en México (Mexico: El Fénix, 1904), 105-6.

Buffington, Criminal and Citizen, 82. Dangers of the street referenced in Chapter three and
see Anne Staples, “Policía y Buen Gobierno,” and Steve Stern, The Secret History of Gender.
471
Buffington, Criminal and Citizen, 76-77.
167

their lack of patriarchal protection. As other scholars of Mexican crime suggest, this explanation
was a carryover from the colonial period and continued to be relevant in the nineteenth century.
472

Overall, popular notions of crime and criminal behavior reveal much about elite

preoccupations with the lower-classes, especially single women and their criminal and sexual
deviance.

473

This issue becomes apparent when looking at institutions that historically regulated female
crime, such as the Casa de Recogidas. In Guadalajara, the institution served as the central prison
for women from the colonial period to the twentieth century. In many ways the historiography of
penology in Jalisco reflects the transitional period in perceptions of crime and criminality in
Mexico. Other works note the transfer of power from religious-run to state-run institutions in the
post-Independence period as a way to create continuity.

474

In the chaotic decades following

Independence, elites found comfort in criminological theories of reforming refractory social
elements to stabilize and strengthen the role of the state. Historians who examine this period in
Latin America suggest that the transition to state-run prisons as a “loci of social control,” altered
relations between the state, urban poor classes and women.

475

472

Scardaville, “Crime and the Urban Poor,” 6; Moisés Navarro González, “El Porfiriato vida
social,” Historia moderna de México (Mexico: Editorial Hermes, 1957); Patricia Seed, “The
Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753” Hispanic American Historical Review, 62, no 4
(1982), 569-606; Michael Scardaville, “Alcohol Abuse and Tavern Reform in Late Colonial
Mexico City,” Hispanic American Historical Review 60, no 4 (1980), 569-74.
473
Buffington, Criminal and Citizen, 8.
474

Colin MacLachlan, Spain’s Empire in the New World: The Role of Ideas in the Institutional
and Social Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
475
Ricardo D. Salvatore and Carlos Aguirre, “The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America:
Toward an Interpretive Social History of Prisons,” in The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin
America (Austin: University of Texas, 1996), 2.
168

Colonial forms of correction in Mexico focused on isolation and surveillance, strategies
rooted in the traditions held by religious and philanthropic movements of the Enlightenment.
However, the increasing influence of positivism and penal science encouraged a penal system
that emphasized rehabilitation and reform under the Porfiriato. Although consensus on a more
rehabilitative penal system was reached by the 1840s, political and financial instability delayed
the construction of new penal institutions until the 1890s.

476

Given the class, race and gender

stereotypes espoused by many early Mexican criminologists and city planners, a focus of early
reform was transforming the bad habits of criminals that they believed derived from their lowerclass upbringings. In 1879, reformers in Mexico City critiqued the national prison, known as
Belén, because men, women and children were housed together, allowing for socialization and
entertainment rather than correction.

477

The first modern penitentiary to begin to emphasize

reform opened in Mexico City in 1900, with others to follow shortly after in Guadalajara and
Puebla.

478

This newfound emphasis on reform had a major impact on women in prison. Guadalajara
provides some counterpoints to data for Mexico City. In Guadalajara, prisons segregated women
and men as early as 1800. A map of the city shows that both in 1800 and 1842 male and female
criminals were housed in separate facilities.

479

The Casa de Recogidas or Recogimiento de

476

Salvatorre and Aguirre, “The Birth of the Penitentiary,” 6-10; Edwin Pears, ed. Prisons and
Reformatories at Home and Abroad (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1872), 164-5.
477
Belén was the national jail Cosío Villegas, Historia moderna de México, vol 4, El Porfiriato,
vida social (Mexico City: Editorial Hermes, 1957), 439-445.
478
Ibid., 441-444; and Manuel Carrión Tizcareno, La cárcel en México (Mexico City: N.P.,
1975), 26-31. See also Laurence J. Rohlfes, “Police in Porfirian Mexico,” Ph.D. diss., Tulane
University, 1983.
479
Guadalajara a través de los tiempos, compiled by Juan B. Iguíniz (Guadalajara: Banco
Refaccionario de Jalisco, 1989-1992).
169

Mujeres Perdidas (shelter for lost women) was founded by the city’s Bishop in 1748. A holdover
from Spain, in its early form it functioned more like a convent for female prostitutes, beggars,
criminals and other wayward women.

480

In this way it differed from colonial beatarios, as

places where poor women could enter without the required dowry of most convents, or where
men could deposit their fiancés until their wedding days, or when wives or daughters
misbehaved.

481

Life inside the Recogimiento was very rigid and functioned on an hourly

schedule similar to that of a religious order. In Guadalajara, a female rector oversaw daily
operations and provided costs and inventory of prisoners to the director of the all-male
penitentiary.

482

Although documentation on its inter-workings are scarce, early accounts note

that within the casa there was strict discipline at all times. The women dedicated eight hours
each day to spinning and knitting, and an additional eight hours to attending mass, doing the
rosary, cleaning and preparing meals. Within the casa women had jobs cooking, cleaning and
serving, while others were employed as servants, wardens, or as head of the textile workshop.

483

According to criminal cases it was here that women awaited trial or served time or labor after
being sentenced. Beginning in 1868 the Casa de Recogidas fell under the direction of the Jalisco

480

María Dolores Pérez Baltasar, “Orígenes de los recogimientos de mujeres,” Cuadernos de
Historía Moderna y Contemporánea, 6 (1985), 13.
481
Ibid.
482

BPEJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Entradas y Salidas de la Departamento de Mujeres,” 1894, Caja 4, exp. 107,845.
483
There have been very few writings on the Casa de Recogidas in Guadalajara and little
information aside from daily inventories exist within either the Archbishopric Archives or the
State Archives. Data here is derived from the article by Carmen Castañeda, “La casa de
recogidas de la ciudad de Guadalajara,” Boletín del Archivo Histórico de Jalisco (1978).
170

State Penitentiary, as the Departamento de Mujeres, although colloquially it was still referred to
as the Recogimiento, or las recogidas into the twentieth century.

484

Although most representations of the Casa de Recogidas in Mexico and elsewhere suggest it
served the function of a prison and less of a shelter for women by nineteenth century, several
incidents in the criminal cases of Guadalajara suggest that some women and the state still
recognized it as a place of protection for poor and unmarried women. The 1837 divorce trial of
the elite Spanish wife Teresa Colza, illustrates that early in the century the Casa de Recogidas
became associated with a place of protection for women. It was there that her husband
“deposited” her for more than two years while she waited out divorce proceedings. In her
opinion she believed it was “unfair that she should be punished” in a place for “prostitutes, bums,
and criminals.” Teresa believed she should be able to be put in an honorable house for her
security and protection.

485

Her statements indicate that by the 1830s the Casa de Recogidas

began to assume the role of both prison and shelter for women, largely of the poor and lower
class. The poor also envisioned it as a place for their protection well into the nineteenth century.
In the 1890 theft case against María Gomez, a young, widowed, servant, her employer accused
her of stealing and fleeing her job. According to testimony by María she fled the home not
because she stole, but because her employer tried to violently seduce her. At the age of twentyfour she was a migrant to the city from Zapatítlan, a city over 200 kilometers from Guadalajara,
and she likely had no friends or relatives to which she could turn. In despair and “in the name of
484

Feranando Martínez Reding, ed. Prevención y readaptación social en Jalisco
(Guadalajara:Gobierno del Estado de Jalisco, 1982); See also AHJ, Libros de Penenticiaría,
“Album de sentenciados: Departamento de Mujeres 1868-1873,” 1 Bis 1868-1873.
485
Graciela E. Abascal Johnson, “Ente la sevicia y la dignidad: el juicio de divorcio de Teresa
Colz. Guadalajara, 1837,” in Mujeres jaliscienses del siglo XIX. Cultura, religion y vida
privada, edited by Vázquez Parada, Lourdes Celina and Darío Armando Flores Soria
(Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2008), 247.
171

her honor she rushed to the “recogidas.”

486

The case suggests that many poor women still

relied on the casa for its colonial use of protecting women’s virtue and honor in times of need.
The state also recognized its use as a place of protection for women. In 1894, the married
domestic servant Emilia Cervantes turned up at the city hospital to be treated for knife wounds to
her left hand. She confessed to hospital workers that her husband was responsible for her injuries
and complained that she could no longer bear to live with him. In addition to physical abuse she
said he was not a good provider. Shortly thereafter the Supreme Tribunal admitted her to the “las
Recogidas.”

487

In this sense, the role of the women’s penitentiary had come full circle by the

late nineteenth century. Not only was it a place to incarcerate immoral women, but a place where
women were kept safe and out of the public sphere. The conception of a women’s prison as a
convent suggests the connections that criminologists and reformers felt toward the women who
lived behind its walls. Just as convents were shelters for unmarried women who would devote
themselves to a life wedded to God, wayward women could also benefit from this form of
sheltering. In accordance with reformist thinking of the period delinquent women were the result
of a poor upbringing which left them alone and un-protected. By consequence they easily fell
into the vices and dangers of the street. Imprisonment in a type of reformatory convent that
taught women proper forms of work, discipline, and religiosity and provided protection in a
cloistered environment positioned the state in a patriarchal role over these women. At the same
time women, like Teresa an Emilia, viewed and utilized the prison in ways conducive to their
own situations.

486

BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra María Gómez por robo,” 1890, Caja 7, 98528.
487
BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal, 1894,
Caja 4, 107863.
172

It is important to note that the most complete data for the women’s prison in Guadalajara
exists for the period from 1868 to 1903 with sparse information collected between 1868 and
1879 or from 1903 to 1926. The reasons for this are likely twofold. By 1880 both the Mexican
nation and the state of Jalisco experienced greater political stability than in previous periods.
This allowed for greater organization at the judicial level and better maintenance of records. A
drop-off in data by 1903 can more likely be explained by early political disintegration in the
build up to the Mexican Revolution than a decrease in crime rates.

488

Typically, as was the case elsewhere in Latin America, the majority of women serving time
in prison were poor and unmarried. Arrests among elite or married women were rare.

489

Prison

data that exists for the period 1868 to 1903 is the most detailed, providing specific information
for each inmate including their name, dates entered and sentenced, crime committed, length of
sentence, parents name, age, marital status, birthplace, occupation and physical characteristics
including skin color. What is most fascinating about this period is that each inmate was also
photographed.

490

These categories signify the ways in which criminality and notions of class,

race, gender and legitimacy intertwined at the judicial level. The fact that jailors recorded such

488
489

Moisés Navarro González, “El Porfiriato vida social.”

María Soledad Zárate Campos, “Vicious Women, Virtuous Women: The Female Delinquent
and the Santiago de Chile Correctional House, 1860-1900,” in The Birth of the Penitentiary in
Latin America (Austin: University of Texas, 1996); Donna J. Guy, “Girls in Prison: The Role of
the Buenos Aires Casa Correcional de Mujeres as an Institution for Child Rescue, 1890-1940,” in
Crime and Punishment in Latin America: Law and Society Since Late Colonial Times, Ricardo
Salvatorre, Carlos Aguirre and Gilbert Joseph, eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001).
490
In the books of those sentenced, data cuts offs around 1903 and does not pick up again until
1926, likely due to build up of the Revolution of 1910 as well as the construction of a new prison
in the early decades of the twentieth century. See AHJ, Libros de Penenticiaría, “Album de
sentenciados Deptaramento de Mujeres 1868-1873,” and “Procesados Mujeres, 1880-1905.”
173

specific data as early as the 1860s suggests that elite anxieties, expressed later by criminologists
like Carlos Roumagnac, were founded on pre-existing stereotypes and class hierarchies.
Single and widowed women were a prominent fixture in Guadalajara’s prison. They
outnumbered married female delinquents four to one.

491

The data collected in the sentencing of

female inmates also suggests the continued emphasis that class played in the perception by local
authorities of typical female criminals. Information regarding women’s occupations, birthplace,
skin color and the names of their parents indicate a level of concern with their class status. In
Guadalajara, the majority of imprisoned women tended to fit the stereotype attributed to them by
reformers and criminologists. Of those in jail, the majority worked in the lowest paid trades
including domestic service, food preparation, washing and textile work. Jailors recorded a
significant portion of women under the odd label of “sus labores,” or one’s labors. From further
research in trial records I was able to locate one of the women listed with this occupation in a
high profile murder case from 1895. From elaborated biographical information I discovered that
she was in fact a well-known prostitute. I believe the term might be a reference to prostitution,
although it is not clear. It could also be a term that implied women who worked odd jobs.

492

In

addition to occupations, more than sixty per cent of female prisoners were migrants to
Guadalajara, and nearly seventy five per cent were listed as having trigueño or moreno skin
color.

493

Analysis of jailhouse photographs suggests that moreno and trigueño were used

interchangeably to imply mixed-race or mestiza ethnicity, those of both Spanish and indigenous

491
492
493

See Table 5.2.
See 5.3.
See Tables 5.4 and 5.5.
174

ancestry.

494

Other categories indicate gradations of skin color, such as apillonado, (a lighter

version of Moreno), rosado (light or pink-toned), and blanco (white).

495

The collection of data

regarding skin color and migratory status corresponded to criminological theories regarding
crime among the poor. The further notation of the names of parents and legitimacy of birth
cemented connections between crime and social status. Statistics from prison records worked in
conjunction with elite anxiety over the growing presence of poor migrants for which they
attributed emerging urban problems. Unmarried, poor, mestizo, working women stood out in this
group of marginalized criminals. Indeed the issue of urbanization affected not only the
stereotypical criminal, but also the treatment and containment of them as well. Although it is
difficult to ascertain, given the sporadic nature of some of the early criminal records, spikes in
the number of women sentenced to serve jail time rose in the years after 1887.

496

This increase

coincided with both the growth of the city and elite concerns over the growth of female crime.

494
495
496
497

See Figures 5.1 and 5.2.
For examples see Figures 5.1-5.5.
See Table 5.6.
Buffington, Criminal and Citizen, 64.
175

497

498

Table 5.2
Marital Status of Female Inmates at the Jalisco State Penitentiary, 1868-1903
Valid Percent
N
%
Single

283

43.8

50.9

Widowed

76

11.8

13.7

Married

186

28.8

33.5

Doncella

5

0.8

0.9

Celibe

6

0.9

1.1

Total

556

86.1

100

Unknown

90

13.9

Total All Inmates

646

100

498

Data for the tables on female inmates was compiled using the sentencing books found in the
state archives. As noted in the tables not all categories were recorded for each inmate and the
years 1880-1903 were more complete than earlier or later periods. Photographs appeared more
regularly after 1880, but there are photos for the previous years. AHJ, Libros de Penenticiaría,
“Album de sentenciados: Deptaramento de Mujeres 1868-1873,” and “Procesados Mujeres,
1880-1905.”
176

499

Table 5.3
Occupations for Female Inmates of Jalisco State Penitentiary, 1868-1903
Occupation
%
N
Domestic
138
25.6
500
85
Sus Labores
15.8
Mole Grinder/Seller
Shawl Braider
Clothing Ironer
Merchant
Laundress
Seamstress
Tortilla Maker
Tobacco Seller
Hatmaker
Factory Worker
Midwife
No Occupation
Stalking Knitter
Palmera
Weaver
Potter
Chocolatier
Cake-maker
Shoemaker
Clerk
Restaurant Worker
Chair-maker
Lozeca
Total
Unknown

499
500

69
50
43
34
28
22
21
8
6
6
4
4
4
3
3
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
539
107
646

12.8
9.3
8.0
5.3
5.2
4.1
3.9
1.5
1.1
1.1
.7
.7
.7
.6
.6
.4
.4
.4
.2
.2
.2
.2
.2
100.0
16.6
100.0

Ibid.

The use of sus laborers, her labors, may have been used as a euphemism for prostitution. A
reference to a high profile prostitute who was listed in the register under this title appeared in the
work of Guadalajara historian Trujillo,“La prostitución en Guadalajara,” 80-1.
177

501

Table 5.4
Origin of Inmates at Jalisco State Penitentiary, 1868-1903
N
%
From Guadalajara
246
38.1
Migrants born Elsewhere
400
61.9
646
Total

502

Table 5.5
Skin Color at the Jalisco State Penitentiary, 1868-1903
N
%
Trigueno (Olive)
443
68.6
Moreno (Brown)
28
4.3
Rosada (Pink)
33
5.1
Blanco (White)
32
5.0
Apillonado
42
6.5
578
89.5
Total
Missing
68
10.5
646
100.0

501
502

Ibid.
Ibid.
178

503

Table 5.6
Women Sentenced in the Jalisco State Penitentiary by Year,
1868-1903
Year
N
%
1868
2
.3
1869
1
.2
1870
1
.2
1871
9
1.4
1872
9
1.4
1873
32
5.0
1881
4
.6
1882
3
.5
1883
3
.5
1885
1
.2
1886
8
1.2
1887
24
3.7
1888
30
4.6
1889
14
2.2
1890
19
2.9
1891
22
3.4
1892
16
2.5
1893
20
3.1
1894
35
5.4
1895
45
7.0
1896
56
8.7
1897
35
5.4
1898
44
6.8
1899
45
7.0
1900
28
4.3
1901
48
7.4
1902
64
9.9
1903
18
2.8
646
100.0
Total

503

Ibid.
179

Skin Color in Jailhouse Photographs

504

Figure 5.1

Antonia Navarro (1895) and Bernarda Valadez (1895). Both listed as trigueño

Figure 5.2

Agustina Vasquez (1896) and Dorotea Morales (1895). Both listed as moreno.

504

Ibid.
180

Figure 5.3

Cresencia Salazar (1896) and Eufacia López (1900). Listed as apillonado.

Figure 5.4

María Rodríguez (1896). Listed as Rosada.

181

Figure 5.5

The repeat offender, Agripina Bugarin listed in 1895 & 1896 as Blanco.

There are also important correlations to be made between class and the type of crimes
committed by female offenders. As was the case in many other cities in Latin America and
Mexico, domestic servants suffered extreme forms of marginalization. Often women who
worked in domestic service were poor urban migrants who had few other skills or connections in
the city.

505

By 1908 scientific studies equated the occupation with the lowest form of menial

labor, associating it with scrounging a life off the wealth of others like “parasites,” which led to
vices like prostitution.

506

Indeed, domestics made up the majority of all imprisoned women in

505

Blum, “Abandonment,” 321-338 and “Public Welfare and Child Circulation, Mexico City,
1877-1925.” Journal of Family History, 23, no. 2 (1998).
506
Dr. Luis Lara y Pardo, Estudios de higiene social: la prostitución en México, (México: Viuda
de Ch. Bouret, 1908), 108-9.
182

Guadalajara from 1868 to 1903.

507

Additionally, domestics committed more than one third of

all robberies and twenty seven per cent of all homicides.

508

It is important to note that domestic

work was the most common occupation for women, which may account for their
overrepresentation in prison records. However, there were some important limitations placed on
female domestics that made them more susceptible to particular crimes. Servants, for example
also made up the largest group of women to be involved in child abandonment and infanticide
cases, making up thirty one and forty one per cent of all cases respectively.

509

Such crimes were

common among servants and increased in Mexico by the late nineteenth as a result of increased
migration and economic disruption in the country-side. Domestic workers were often unable to
keep or care for their children given the nature of their work. Unlike other occupations where
women could often keep their children with them during the day, a domestic often lived in the
home of her patrons and would not be able to perform her motherly duties and tend to
children.

507
508

510

See Table 5.3.

Between 1868-1903 there were 140 cases of theft and 37 homicides committed. Of those, 50
domestic servants were sentenced for theft and 10 for homicide. AHJ, Libros de Penenticiaría,
“Album de sentenciados: Deptaramento de Mujeres 1868-1873,” and “Procesados Mujeres,
1880-1905.”
509
Between 1868-1903 there were 29 cases of infanticide and 13 cases of child abandonment
committed. Of those 12 domestic servants were sentenced for infanticide and 4 for abandonment.
AHJ, Libros de Penenticiaría, “Album de sentenciados: Deptaramento de Mujeres 1868-1873,”
and “Procesados Mujeres, 1880-1905.”; See Table 5.7.
510
For Mexico see Blum, “Abandonment,” 333 and “Public Welfare and Child Circulation,
Mexico City, 1877-1925,” Journal of Family History, 23, no. 2 (1998); For other parts of Latin
America see Kristin Ruggiero, Modernity in the Flesh: Medicine, Law, and Society in Turn-ofthe-Century Argentina. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 64; Tobias Hecht, , ed.
Minor Omissions: Children in Latin American History and Society (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2002), Elizabeth Kuznesof, “The Puzzling Contradictions of Child Labor,
Unemployment, and Education in Brazil,” Journal of Family History 23, no. 3 (1998): 225; Nara
Milanich, “The Casa De Huerfanos and Child Circulation in Late-Nineteenth-Century Chile,”
183

511

Table 5.7
Crimes Committed by Female Inmates, Jalisco State Penitentiary, 1868-1903
%
N
Bodily Harm (Fighting)
240
37.2
Robbery
140
21.7
Homicide
37
5.7
Infanticide
29
4.5
adultery
24
3.7
Concealment of Robbery
20
3.1
Fighting with Injury
16
2.5
Destruction of property
14
2.2
Child Abandonment
13
2.2
Complicity in a Crime
11
1.7
Abuse of Trust
7
1.1
Accepting Stolen Goods
5
.8
Robbery and abuse of confidence
5
.8
Forgery
5
.8
Robbery within the home residing in
4
.6
Robbery with Violence
3
.5
Injuries leading to death
3
.5
Circulation/Forgery of money
3
.5
Bigamy
3
.5
Suposicion de parto
3
.5
Insults
2
.3
Arson
2
.3
Exposicion de infante
2
.3
Kidnapping
1
.2
Attempted Escape
1
.2
Grave Injury
1
.2
Habitual Drunkenness
1
.2
597
92.3
Total
Not Known
49
7.6
646
100.0

Journal of Social History 38, no. 2 (2004): 311-341.
511
Ibid.
184

In large measure, infanticide and child abandonment were largely a problem for unmarried,
poor, migrant women who had neither the resources nor support system in place to care for a
child of their own. The infanticide case of twenty-one year old Luisa Nuño, a single domestic
servant originally from Zapotlanejo, a mestizo village roughly thirty kilometers east of the city
center, reveals how desperate a woman could become when faced with unwanted pregnancy. On
October 4, 1909 she confessed that she hid both her pregnancy and birth from her employer,
giving birth to the baby in the very same home where she worked. In her testimony she admitted
to the court that after having the baby she took it outside and beat it to death against a stone, “out
of fear of losing her job.”

512

Resorting to infant infanticide demonstrated the lack of options

that Nuño felt she had as an unmarried servant without economic or familial support.
Unwanted pregnancies among servants could also lead to child abandonment or a resort to
informal channels of adoption and child circulation. In the infant abandonment case of two
month old Luís Sandoval earlier the same year, a couple contacted Guadalajara police when they
found him left in the portico their home. His mother Secundina Sandoval was a migrant to
Guadalajara and at the time of the case was forty years old, single, and working as a domestic
servant. According to the testimony of her friend and co-worker, a fifty-two year old, widowed,
domestic servant named Guadalupe Hernández, Secundina pleaded with her to take the baby
because she did not have the resources to support or care for the child. Guadalupe informed her
that she knew of a woman who placed babies with families. Guadalupe said she would go with
her to inquire about it, but could not go at that moment. Secundina, unable to wait any longer
went immediately to the home and left the boy at the front door. Upon sentencing Secundina
pleaded with the court that she did not have the means to provide for her son, nor would she be
512

BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Alcancio Mejía por estupro y seduction,” 1909, Caja 4, 139, 309.
185

able to work because “no house would take a servant accompanied by a baby.”

513

Cases such

as these reveal that child abandonment was a common problem for many poor unmarried
women. Women who resorted to violence and abandonment were cast out as “ungrateful,”
“cruel,” and “ugly” mothers in daily newspaper reports.

514

To many elites and local authorities

abandonment and infanticide were the ultimate rejection of maternity. Often they were crimes of
desperation perpetrated by unmarried and poor women. Overall, however cases of infanticide
and abandonment prosecuted in Guadalajara were a small percentage of the total number of
crimes committed. Part of the reason may be that the majority of unmarried and widowed poor
women in similar situations sought assistance through public hospitals and orphanages, which
were put in place beginning in the late 1700s, before resorting to such extreme measures.

515

The most common crime committed by domestics was robbery, which made up thirty-seven
per cent of all incarcerated servants.

516

As one of the lowest paid forms of work, and with

greater access to household items of value, it too was a crime born out of economic necessity. It
was a difficult crime to prove, and in some cases employers brought forth false or presumptive
accusations. This was not only common in domestic work. Law enforcement officials
commonly profiled sectors of the poor as the culprits of theft, particularly those most vulnerable
such as the homeless. It was not uncommon for police to charge beggars with vagrancy when
513

BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Alcancio Mejía por estupro y seduction,” 1909, Caja 4, 139, 320.
514
See BPJ, “Madre Ingrata,” El Sol, March 8, 1899; BPJ, “Madre Cruel,” El Sol, May 17,
1901.
515
See Chapter 6 for more on the city orphanage and other services provided to unmarried,
pregnant women.
516
Between 1868-1903 there were 140 cases of theft. Of those, 50 domestic servants were
sentenced for the crime. Data was collected from AHJ, Libros de Penenticiaría, “Album de
sentenciados: Deptaramento de Mujeres 1868-1873,” and “Procesados Mujeres, 1880-1905.”
186

charges of theft could not be confirmed. Such was the fate of the homeless man Máximo García,
picked up by police for a presumed theft in Guadalajara in 1871. When sufficient evidence did
not materialize to prove the theft, the court charged him with vagrancy. Police believed his
“idleness” created the impetus for him to steal.
were stolen to pawn in exchange for cash.

518

517

In most cases, accusers claimed that goods

Court cases involving typically poor, unmarried,

servants, often who arrived in Guadalajara as migrants, is revealing of the economic reality of
their lives so often depicted by criminologists and reformers.
Many of the robbery cases in Guadalajara were the direct result of a real problem with cash
flow. In nineteenth-century Mexico, the growing poor urban population faced high
unemployment, low wages, and a growing cost of living. In Guadalajara, as elsewhere, the poor
earned their living through begging and sporadic employment.

519

The work of Marie Francois

highlights the concern over cash flow in her work on the state-run Casas de Empeño, or pawn
shops in Mexico City. Pawning was particularly high among “needy” women and widows, who
were “the most visible pawning customers” throughout the nineteenth century.

520

By the middle

of the nineteenth century the average working male earned three times as much as women, even
in the same profession. For this reason, many turned to pawning as a way to meet the needs of
their households. The most common goods they pawned were those they had the most access to,

517

BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Máximo García por vagrancia,” 1871, Caja 53, 40749.
518
Marie Eileen Francois. A Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and
Governance in Mexico City, 1750-1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006).
519
Herbert Klein “The Demographic Structure of Mexico City in 1811” Journal of Urban
History 23, no. 1 (1996), 66-93; José María Muriá y Jaime Olveda, eds. Lecturas históricas de
Guadalajara: Demografía y Urbanismo, eds. (México: Colegio Regiones de México, 1992).
520
Francois. A Culture of Everyday Credit, 147; 4.
187

typically household clothing and bedding items.

521

Elite concerns and anxieties over the theft

and pawning of their personal belongings by domestic workers became so common a problem
that in 1852 Mexico City officials instituted a servant law, which policed pawning by domestic
servants.

522

It was also a common occurrence in Guadalajara. Numerous servant theft cases led

to pawning or attempted pawning of the stolen goods in exchange for money. There were also
cases where servants even attempted to steal their employer’s own redemption tickets.

523

Closer analysis of specific cases reveals how the crime also reflected the perceived
immorality of the lower classes who made up the city’s prison inmates. Often the crime of
robbery perpetrated by domestics against their employers led to a secondary sentence of robbery
with “abuse of trust.” As workers within the private homes of the city’s elite and well-to-do,
employers expected their servants to be loyal to the family and contribute to, not disrupt, the
harmony of the home. In 1850, police filed a robbery case against Nicolasa Ramírez, a nineteen
year old, single, domestic who had been arrested with her boyfriend on three other occasions for
robbery and the receipt of stolen goods. In this case, her boss accused her of stealing three pawn
shop redemption tickets from the home, in addition to a serape, some petticoats, a shawl, a veil,
and cloth. According to court documents Nicolasa and her boyfriend Juan González admitted
that they then attempted to sell the items for cash. What is most revealing about the case is what
the defense attorney suggested in his closing arguments. He painted a portrait of the defendants
as “poor people” who are “simple and rustic,” suggesting this was evidenced by their honest
521

According to Francois’ data, the average working woman earned 1 peso a day, while men
earned 3 pesos a day. Ibid, 88; Francois notes the most commonly pawned clothing pieces were
rebozos and petticoats. See pg 38.
522
Francois, 108.
523

BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra María Ysabel González por robo,” 1890, Caja 2, 98317
188

confessions. He belabored the point by commenting that their relationship was an “illicit
romance.” Although he believed that the case was a clear example of robbery with a breach of
trust, he did not believe the pair deserved the proposed (and very harsh) sentence of three years
in a military prison.

524

A look at how the judged sentenced Nicolasa is telling of the concerns that male jurists had
regarding female criminality. The harshest sentences recorded between1868 and 1905 in
Guadalajara were for homicide or infanticide cases, and typically carried a sentence of ten years
on average. For most robbery and robbery with abuse of trust convictions, the average sentence
was one year.

525

In Nicolasa and Juan’s case, the defense argued the couple should get what

they deserved “in accordance with the laws that governed society and the family.” He noted that
Nicolasa’s responsibilities in the home were limited to the kitchen, grinding flour and making
tortillas, and therefore she did not occupy an intimate space within the family’s home. On the
contrary, he argued that a “tortillera” deserved little trust within the home because she
“dispensed little trust to others” through her work and it would be inaccurate to call her a
“domestic.” His comments imply that the role of a domestic, as a member of one’s family and a
part of its intimate space, was taken very seriously in nineteenth-century Mexico. The state penal
codes saw it as a grave crime, and established laws against it designed to “guarantee the security
of the domestic home.”

526

The crux of his argument lay in the fact that Nicolasa and Juan were

of lower moral and class character. Considering their “simple nature,” they made the right
524

BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Nicolasa Ramírez por robo y abuso de confianza,” 1850, Caja 1, 10,811
525
AHJ, Libros de Penenticiaría, “Album de sentenciados: Deptaramento de Mujeres 18681873,” and “Procesados Mujeres, 1880-1905.”
526
BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Alcancio Mejía por estupro y seduction,” 1894, Caja 1, 107735.
189

judgment in confessing to the crime. He also suggested that less should have been expected of
Nicolasa given her status in the family home as lowly kitchen help. In the end the court
condemned Nicolasa and Juan to four months of public works.

527

The loyalty which employers expected of their in-house servants is evidenced by the 1871
theft and abuse of trust case against Hilaria Ramirez. Hilaria was a servant in the home of María
Micaela Viscarra. In the case, witnesses testified that she left the home with stolen goods. She
then gave the items to Pablo Lopez, whose relationship with Hilaria was not made clear. The two
were caught red-handed with the stolen goods in their possession. Despite the fact that police
retrieved the items, the court emphasized the disloyalty of the crime committed by Hilaria, who
was “adopted” into the Viscarra home and shown “hospitality.” The court sentenced her to six
528

months in prison.

In reality, abuse of trust cases dealt less with the actual crime of robbery

and more with the moral character of the female domestics involved.
Servants even preyed on other poor women and stole from each other. In 1878, a dispute
erupted between two servants over a pawned item of clothing. María Cesária, a thirty year old
who recently separated from her husband, accused her friend and former co-worker Feliciana
Galves of stealing money from her. According to María Cesária the incident occurred two years
earlier when the two were working as domestics. María Cesária, then married, came to Feliciana
asking if she could pawn a shawl for her because she was in need of money. Although it is
unclear from court documents Feliciana was probably single and of adult age and therefore had
the freedom to conduct business at the pawn shop without approval from a male relative unlike

527

BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Nicolasa Ramírez por robo y abuso de confianza,” 1850, Caja 1, 10,811
528
BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Hilaria Ramirez y Pablo Lopez por robo y abuso de confianza,” 1871, Caja 3, 40744.
190

María Cesária.

529

Given the state of María Cesária’s relationship with her husband it is also

likely that she did not want him to know about the transaction. The women both resided in one of
the poorest neighborhoods in Guadalajara at the time in the San Juan de Diós barrio.

530

Described in the short novel María Luisa as “tumultuous” and full of “atrocious molenderas,
women who live badly, unruly thieves, clandestine affairs, with everyone drunk, living day to
531

day, unclean and immoral,” it fit many early descriptions of poor urban life in Mexico.

Therefore, the issue of pawning goods was likely a way of life for poor urban residents, whether
criminal or not. In the end Feliciana agreed, but before she could return to the house María
Cesária’s husband came and took her away, leaving her unable to deliver the money. In the end
María Cesária “pardons the offense” and the court does not proceed with charges against
Feliciana.

532

In many ways, although often the women detained and accused of theft were

demonized as immoral robbers and thieves, the harsh realities of poor women’s lives led to thefts
and pawning by those in need of money. In some cases, women helped each other navigate the
difficulties of singleness and life in urban Guadalajara.
For this reason, domestic servants became easy targets in theft cases. The ways in which they
defended themselves and fought against the harsh realities of their job and social class is a
testament to their own agency. In the 1865 trial against the eighteen year old, single María Pilar
529
530

Francois, Culture of Everyday Credit, 21.

According to the court records they lived in the barrio of San Juan de Dios, known for its
poverty and high rates of prostitution. See, Águeda Jiménez Pelayo, Jaime Olveda and Beatriz
Núñez Miranda, El Crecimiento Urbano de Guadalajara, (Zapopan: El Colegio de Jalisco,
1995), 147; Trujillo Breton, “La prostitución en Guadalajara,” 35.
531
Jorge Alberto Trujillo Bretón, “Ars Amandis. Prostitución y bajos fondos en la Guadalajara
porfiriana,” in Mujeres Jalisciensces, 335.
532
BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Feliciana Galves por robo,” 1878, Caja 10, 61509.
191

Venegas, her employer Manuel San Leon Ochoa accused her of stealing money from him. In her
defense, María Pilar told the court that not only were the accusations false, but Ochoa had
brought charges against her for malicious reasons. She told the court he often made unwanted
advances which she continually resisted and used all the methods possible to avoid him. In fact,
to prevent Ochoa from entering her bedroom at night while she was sleeping, which he often did,
she propped something against the door in order to make it impossible for him to open. Out of
frustration he created the false charges. Court documents reveal that María Pilar migrated to the
city from Tepíc, a city nearly 230 kilometers west of Guadalajara. As a young, single, migrant to
Guadalajara María Pilar likely had very few options for employment and had to do everything
possible to keep her job. Despite her lecherous employer, she devised methods to deal with the
harassment. She emphasized to the court that because he felt rejected he restored to trumping up
criminal charges. Her persistence and strength in the face of these challenges not only frustrated
her employer, but testified to her own abilities to defend herself despite not having family or
friends to support her in the courtroom. In the end, her lawyer did not attempt to address the
seduction charges she raised, instead he focused on the more logical argument that she did not
have the money in her possession, and that there were other workers inside the house including a
cook who could testify to her innocence. In the end the judge absolved her of all charges.

533

Comprising nearly forty per cent of all arrests, the most common crime reported in the
Guadalajara women’s prison was bodily harm, usually the end result of fighting between
women.

534

Not only was fighting one of the utmost examples of women behaving badly in

public, it also epitomized the links made between criminality and lower-class lifestyle. Evidence
533

BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra María Pilar Venegas por robo,” 1865, Caja 5, 24427.
534
See Table 5.7.
192

from charges brought against women for fighting provides clear examples of the perceptions
held by police, judges and lawyers toward unmarried women’s immoral character and lifestyle.
Often judges and lawyers drew attention to such factors as their presence and work in public
space, drunkenness, and involvement in illicit relationships as the root cause of many street
fights.
Many fights took place in the city plaza where individuals and working women often
congregated during the day alone and without the male supervision that elite women might have.
Throughout the colonial period, Guadalajara’s main plaza served as the civil, ecclesiastical and
mercantile center of the city. It was in this neighborhood that the most elite residences were first
established and continued to expand throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

535

Although the urban poor lived on the periphery of this center, foreign travelers noted their
overwhelming presence in the plaza hocking their wares and begging. Travelers both in the early
and latter part of the century noted that the principal plaza was the area frequented by
commoners, usually Indians and lower classes.

536

Classes described by the Austrian

archeologist and foreign traveler to the city in 1838, Isidore Lowenstern, as “uncultured,
illiterate, half-naked, starved, alcoholic, fanatical and violent.”

537

It was these stereotypes of

Guadalajara’s urban poor that set the tone for numerous criminal cases involving poor single and
widowed women.
The plaza, as a central meeting point, place of commerce and socialization, was a common
spot for arguments to occur. In 1890, it was where Porfira González, age sixteen, claimed that
535
536

Pelayo, Olveda and Núñez Miranda, El Crecimiento Urbano, 122.

Lowenstern in Guadalajara a través de los tiempos, (1838) 165-8; Manuel H. Pastor in
Guadalajara a través de los tiempos, (1899) 161.
537
Lowenstern, Guadalajara a través de los tiempos, (1838) 165-8.
193

the daughters of the forty-year old widow Micaela Rivas taunted and eventually beat her up as
she was merely passing by. Interestingly enough the court felt that it was Micaela, as the mother
and person responsible for the teenage girls, who should be held accountable for their bad
behavior.

538

It was not common for the court to prosecute parents in cases of fighting, no matter

how old the children were. Perhaps the court ascribed to the beliefs espoused by one Guadalajara
doctor, who wrote at the turn of the century that the “children of misery come into the world with
baggage, accompanied and persecuted by misfortune; they come with the psychological flaws of
their parents, with the degeneracy of those from the brothel or tavern.”

539

In the end, there was

not sufficient evidence to charge Micaela with any crime, but the case highlights the fact that the
court felt that she was the cause of her children’s criminal activity. Without a strong male
patriarch to maintain order in the home her weak parenting skills allowed her children to fall into
mischief.
There were also other aspects of lower class life that allowed judges and lawyers to pass
judgment on victims within the courtroom. The lifestyle choices of some urban and working
poor women came under scrutiny in the case of Adelaida Hernández. On March 10, 1890 she
awoke in a Guadalajara hospital strapped to her bed with a head contusion. On the same day that
police admitted Adelaida to the hospital, they placed Valentín Ortega in jail for the crime.
According to court documents, Ortega was Adelaida’s lover and police had a suspicion that he
had been involved in the incident. When she woke up in the hospital the thirty year old domestic
from Guadalajara was immediately questioned regarding her injuries, to which she told hospital

538

BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Micaela Rivas por golpes,” 1890, Caja 2, 98394.
539
BPEJ, Miscellaneous, 492, Miguel Gallindo, “Apuntos sobre la hygiene en Guadalajara,”
Tesis de recepción, Facultad de Medicina de Guadalajara, (Guadalajara, April 8, 1908), 174.
194

doctors she had been drinking on the night in question and had no idea who caused her injuries.
She also denied any relationship with Ortega. Ortega told a different story to police investigators,
explaining that he and Adelaida had “illicit relations” over the course of the last fifteen days. On
the night in question he told police that she was “completely inebriated” and fell into a fountain
injuring herself. After nearly three months, court documentation on the case resumed stating that
th

on the 7 of May after “some debate” Adelaida confessed to the court that she did in fact know
Ortega, but she still did not remember who hit her that night. At the same time Ortega
maintained his innocence. On May 10, the court released Ortega from prison on the basis that
there was no evidence to keep him in jail.

540

In the case both the state and the city hospital

conspired against the testimony of Adelaida and Valentín, detaining them for nearly three
months without having sufficient evidence to continue the case. Despite the fact that Adelaida
attempted to defend her dignity by denying a sexual relationship with Ortega, lawyers likely
interrogated her to the point that she confessed to having an affair with Valentín. Their
motivations for doing so are unclear, but we do know that it was not until this point that they
agreed to finally close the case and free the two involved. The case stands out for the fact that
judges and lawyers, despite lack of evidence, desired to expose her to the court as both a drunk
and an immoral woman. Their goal was to find her at fault, rather than find the real suspect.
The issue of adulterous or illicit relations proved to be a formidable motivation in many
assault cases involving unmarried women. It is also within such cases that the biases of the court
against the morality of unmarried women came to the fore. The late nineteenth and early
twentieth century Mexican writer Guillermo Prieto wrote extensively on Mexico’s underclass

540

BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. “Contra Valentín
Ortega por lesiones á Adelaida Hernandez,”Ramo Criminal, 1890, c. 2, 98376.
195

men and “su mujer,” or the women with which they were romantically involved. The concept of
“su mujer” could imply an informal union or an extramarital affair. In defining this group of
marginalized poor Prieto often described them as typically “mestizo, of illegitimate birth,
adulterous, [and] mischievous… with an inclination toward crime.” He added that typically they
“enjoy idleness, robbery, drunkenness and love.” This propensity for crime was linked to “petty
crime, heavy drinking and fighting.” According to Prieto, these villains first needed their “legal
woman and sweetheart,” implying both a married wife and a mistress.

541

He went on to explore

the characteristics of “their women” as “clean, hardworking, heroic in love, ferocious in
jealousy, suffering in misery, sublime in abnegation, fanatic in danger, tender mothers and
incredibly fickle, prone to fits of rage, passion and happiness.”

542

Describing sexual relations

among Mexico’s poor in the nineteenth-century psychologist Julio Guererro wrote the sex of the
poor was “animal-like, without modesty” and that they “romped like dogs.”

543

In this way, both

writers and early social scientists viewed the love life of the poor as adulterous, promiscuous and
raunchy. Criminal court proceedings against unmarried, poor, women often presented similar
stereotypes, and judges and jurors frequently drew similar conclusions in many Guadalajara
courtrooms.
Adulterous affairs could lead unmarried women to commit violent crimes. In an 1865 case,
prosecutors claimed that Nicolasa Silva injured the soldier Francisco Vargas with a machete.
According to court records, the forty year old Nicolasa had been in a relationship with the

541

Guillermo Prieto, Memoria de mis tiempos (México: Editorial Porrúa, 1985), 127-128. First
published in 1906.
542
Prieto, Memoria, 128.
543

Julio Guerrero, La genesis del crimen en México. Estudio de psiguiatría social. 2
(México: Editorial Porrúa, 1977), 321.
196

nd

edition

eighteen year old Vargas. Five months earlier Vargas broke up with Nicolasa, who had a difficult
time accepting the breakup. Shortly after, she found out that he was seeing another woman and
for that reason attacked him with the machete. Vargas pardoned the crime, not wanting to press
charges. Despite that fact, the lawyers and judge involved in the case agreed that Nicolasa acted
out of jealousy. Despite the fact that she admitted both her guilt and shame over the incident, the
court felt little mercy toward her. In her sentencing, the court noted the fact that she possessed a
weapon and had the audacity to harm a soldier put them on edge. To punish her they sentenced
her to “six months of hard labor according to her sex” for the crime.

544

This was likely an

indication that she was given some sort of gendered work inside the prison. Possession of a
weapon concerned elite officials in general in the nineteenth century given a greater desire of
surveillance over the urban poor classes, but for a woman to commit such a crime and against a
soldier was especially heinous.

545

The case illustrates a heightened concern over female

criminality, and the judge’s desire to make an example out of Nicolasa, despite Vargas’ plea to
acquit her.
An illicit affair seemed to also be at the heart of a brutal beating against Rosa Hernández. On
a Friday afternoon in 1874, twenty-one year old Rosa was selling tortillas in the plaza when she
encountered the mother of her lover, Modesta Silva. At the time Rosa was eight months
pregnant, a child conceived out of wedlock with Modesta’s son Apolonio. According to Rosa,
Modesta began to argue with her. Nearby, Modesta’s niece Cresencia Montelongo overheard the
two women fighting and came to see what was going on. According to Cresencia she then heard
Rosa insult her aunt. The two women began fighting and Cresencia struck Rosa several times as
544

BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Nicolasa Silva por heridas á un soldado,” 1865, Caja 1, 22325.
545
Buffington, Criminal and Citizen.
197

they both fell to the ground. The fight roused the attention of local police and all three women
were arrested for fighting. Given Rosa’s state of pregnancy and her injuries she was sent to the
hospital, while Cresencia and Modesta awaited trial in the Casa de Recogidas. Based on court
documents what provoked the fight is unknown and witness testimony varied. While Cresencia
and Modesta maintained the same story that they argued with Rosa and became upset when she
insulted Modesta, Rosa told a different story. Upon her admittance to the hospital she told
doctors that Modesta approached her with insults and that both women began to beat her up and
even threw a rock at her until she fell to the ground. It was then that the police came and arrested
all three women. As a migrant from Atotonilco, Rosa worked selling tortillas to make her living.
Both poor and pregnant she found herself being ridiculed by her lover’s own family. We do not
know the insults that Modesta and Cresencia called her, but likely the altercation had to do with
her affair with Apolonio. Although the officially court ruled in her favor, it sentenced Cresencia
and Modesta to rather lenient sentences, one month and fifteen days jail time respectively. Each
woman walked away from the case paying fines in exchange for jail time. Although there are
many unknowns about the case, what is known tells us a lot about the ways in which the court
perceived of Rosa and her station in the city. Initially, all three were arrested for fighting,
although Rosa was the only one to exhibit any injuries. Rosa, although seemingly the victim, was
found equally guilty. The location of the incident is also significant, as it was the public plaza
where Rosa was working and where she was confronted by the two women. Rosa’s presence in
public, an unprotected and dangerous space for unmarried women, may have invited the violence
brought against her. It also raised the issue of morality among single women. Both Rosa’s affair
and subsequent pregnancy seemed to be the root cause of the argument as she admitted to
hospital doctors upon her admission. Finally, the role of the city hospital in policing urban

198

crime and crimes of women is also significant. Immediately following her arrest, Rosa was sent
to the hospital for examination and it was there that she was asked to provide her first
testimony.

546

In this way, both institutions worked in tandem to police the morality of unmarried

women.

Prostitution
The women’s prison, local police, and courtrooms were not the only places where the issue
of female criminality and immorality interacted. The city hospital was often a point of contact in
most criminal court cases, especially when injury or pregnancy was involved. The hospital
maintained separate wings for male and female prisoners and employed numerous techniques,
including beds with restraints and ward guards, to prevent escape.

547

It was here that police

often questioned and held criminals arrested in connection with crimes. The hospital also served
an important role in regulating particular aspects of female crime. Most notably it worked in
conjunction with the newly organized Comisión de salubridad (public health commission), the
Ayuntamiento (municipal government) and the Jefetura Política to begin to monitor prostitutes
by 1866. Prostitution was largely the domain of unmarried women, although some married
women appear to have worked in the profession. Precise numbers of prostitutes in Guadalajara
are extremely hard to document, given that even after regulation in 1866, numerous women

546

BPJ, Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919. Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Modesta Silva y Cresencia Montelongo por lesiones á De la Rosa Hernández,” 1874,
Caja 21, 49678.
547
AHJ, Beneficiencia, “Hospitales y Salubridad,” 1888, c. 76, 888-647.
199

worked in the trade without registration. However studies suggest that by 1905 Guadalajara had
roughly two hundred legally registered prostitutes.

548

In accordance with new city ordinances written by the municipal government, state regulated
prostitution was legalized in Guadalajara in 1866 and put into practice by 1870. The new
ordinances allowed prostitution in highly monitored Casas de tolerancia, or brothels. Reasons
for regulation in Guadalajara were similar to those of the capital, influenced by ideas coming out
of continental Europe, urban officials and elite residents expressed concern over public hygiene
and sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis.

549

The policing of female prostitutes by the

mid-nineteenth century coincided with a general concern over public health among the poor
urban classes which began in the late eighteenth century. Ruling elites viewed the poor and their
“bad hygiene” as the source of widespread epidemics of cholera and influenza outbreaks which
plagued Guadalajara beginning in 1784 and throughout much of the nineteenth century.

550

While elites mostly congregated in the center of the city in spacious homes, the poor tended to
live in close quarters. Disease spread easily in the poor barrios from contaminants present in the
streets, air, and water due to overcrowding. In these neighborhoods the practice of defecating or
throwing feces onto city streets and sidewalks was commonplace, as was the killing of animals
for food. The accumulation of waste and decay in city streets caused contamination in the air as

548
549

Trujillo Bretón, “Ars Amandis,” 344-5.

González Llerenas, “La reglamentación sanitaria,” 362; Katherine Bliss, Compromised
Positions: Prostitution, Public Health and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City (Penn
State University, 2002).
550
Jiménez Pelayo, Olveda and Núñez Miranda, El Crecimiento Urbano, 122; Sánchez,
“Intensidad,” 23-26. The cholera outbreaks in Guadalajara were severe and the city suffered high
rates of mortality particularly between 1813 and 1815. It would suffer smaller outbreaks between
1823 and 1825, 1830, 1833, and 1850. Sánchez notes higher rates of mortality in Guadalajara
than Mexico City due to a smaller number of public hospitals.
200

well as the water, as much of it washed into the river San Juan de Diós and public fountains
where the poor often bathed. In addition, the conditions under which many destitute families
lived likely contributed to the rapid spread of infection. Tenements in the working class barrios
were often rented by the room and offered little space or amenities. Often times an entire family
shared a mattress or slept on the floor and had only the door for air circulation. Poor families
were also more likely to go longer periods without washing their clothing. Thus, mortality rates
during periods of epidemic disease were highest in the poorer areas of the city.

551

The Church

responded in 1786 by constructing the city’s first public hospital, the Hospital de Belén, in the
working class barrios north of the city. In its first year almost 7,000 patients were treated.

552

In

addition, in 1852 the governor of Jalisco published a mandate to curtail disease and strictly
enforce the washing of sidewalks. The code applied to all plazuelas, markets and carriage sites,
and imposed a hefty fine for anyone caught throwing trash or water into public streets, washed or
dried clothes on sidewalks, or sold food on the streets.

553

Public health arguments regarding the

spread of disease among the poor would also persuade city officials to begin mandatory medical
exams for city prostitutes.
Prior to 1866 prostitutes practiced somewhat un-policed, but new regulations changed these
circumstances. The new codes required prostitutes to adhere to a series of requisites including
inscription, fees, obligations, prohibitions and constant vigilance by city health officials and
police. The measures had a grave impact on the freedom and mobility that prostitutes once

551
552
553

Ibid., 24-29.
Jiménez Pelayo, Olveda and Núñez Miranda, El Crecimiento,, 109-110; 116; 122.

BPEJ, Miscelánea, 157, Jesús Lopez Portillo (governor at the time), Bando de buen gobierno
del gobernador constitucional del estado de Jalisco (Guadalajara, 1852).
201

had.

554

The 1866 regulations required prostitutes register with the Jefetura Política, or city

police. Upon registering they received a libreta, a small book which served as both proof of
their license and maintenance of their mandatory medical exams. This was done voluntarily or
by force if a woman was suspected of being a prostitute. A woman might be suspected of
prostitution if she was always around other prostitutes, hung out in brothels, arrested in public
for conduct contrary to buenas costumbres, reported a venereal disease, provoked fights or
became a threat to public health. Upon registration city police gathered information such as
name, birthplace, address, civil status, physical characteristics, the circumstances which had led
them to register or become a prostitute, as well as where they would live and where they would
practice. In addition to registration, the Comisión de salubridad required that all prostitutes
submit to a medical examination conducted at the Hospital de Belen to check for venereal
disease. Ordinances required that prostitutes pay for their exams and any treatment they
received.

555

As a policed profession, female sex work came under heightened police surveillance. Once
registered, regulations required that a prostitute carry her license with her at all times to be
shown to clients and police officials. She was also expected to notify police if she changed
brothels or residence and continue to undergo medical exams twice a week. In addition,
ordinances dictated the boundaries of moral behavior for registered prostitutes, who were
prohibited from loitering or advertising publicly in doors or windows of the brothels or calling
out to men on the street. Regulations also stipulated they not appear in public if wearing
inappropriate clothing or pregnant, and prohibited them from going to the main plaza at night or

554
555

Ibid, 364.
Ibid, 366-68; 377.
202

saying obscene things in city neighborhoods or near the military barracks. A prostitute caught
violating the regulations faced harsh punishments including arrest or monetary fines. The law
considered women who practiced clandestine prostitution vagabonds and police treated them
accordingly. A woman could be de-registered only if she provided evidence that she had turned
her life around or was able to support herself without working as a prostitute through legitimate
marriage, inheritance, or gainful employment in a new profession.

556

In this way the

legalization of prostitution after 1866 attempted to both monitor and mitigate the presence of the
immoral prostitute in the public sphere.
Modifications to the original ordinances were made in 1879, and mandated that men under
the age of twenty one were not allowed in brothels, despite the fact that the minimum age for
registered prostitutes was twelve. The law suggests a belief that female prostitutes had the
potential to corrupt young men. By 1890, city police created more organized and structured
codes to deal with women of ill repute and prevent them from further corrupting society. New
prohibitions prevented prostitutes from visiting honorable families, living near schools,
beneficence establishments or markets. In order to preserve the sanctity of the family, they were
not to address men with ladies or children. To make the public sphere safe for honorable women,
they were not to invite scandal into public places and expected to dress and behave properly
when outside the brothel. In this period, police also began to classify prostitutes according to
where they practiced, distinguishing between those who practiced solo in their homes and those
who lived and worked in brothels. City police also introduced a new system for de-classifying
prostitutes which assigned them a sponsor, an “honorable” person who could assure their good
conduct for a period of at least six months. A prostitute could also be removed from the register
556

Ibid.
203

if they provided evidence of marriage for a period of two years or more.

557

New regulations that

made particular mention of the actions and behavior of prostitutes in public coincide with the
growing desire to protect the honor of the family. In addition, new rules which de-classified
prostitutes who married suggest a connection between honor and marriage that was not attainable
to the unmarried prostitute.
By 1900, the limitations placed on prostitutes and their movements increased and became
even more specific. Police prevented prostitutes from entering the main plaza, its portales
(porticos of the city plaza), bakeries, cantinas, and all central gardens or streets of the city. It
also began to more strictly classify prostitutes in order to better track the whereabouts of
registered prostitutes. New codes created three classifications of brothels to determine whether
or not a prostitute lived and worked under the dependence and vigilance of the dueña, or a
madam, whether she only worked at the brothel, or if she worked from her own home and took in
clients.

558

City codes classified a dueña as a woman that oversaw a minimum of two working

girls, and was thirty five years or older.

559

Often these madams were retired prostitutes who

could no longer work, as the working years of most female prostitutes began around age fourteen
and ended by their thirties.

560

It is interesting to note that regulations required the dueñas to

register the entrance and exit of girls, as well as assist in their weekly medical exams and advise
them on how to treat diseases. In addition, it was her responsibility to “prevent disorder and
scandal” both inside the brothel and outside its doors. For these reasons, city ordinances
557

BPEJ, Misc, 726, Doc #: 27, “Reglamento de la Prostitución expendido por el Ayuntamiento
de Guadalajara,” (Guadalajara: 1890).
558
González Llerenas, “La reglamentación sanitaria,” 373.
559

BPEJ, Misc, 726, Doc #: 27, “Reglamento de la Prostitución expendido por el Ayuntamiento
de Guadalajara,” (Guadalajara: 1890).
560
Trujillo Breton, “La prostitución,” 230.
204

required that she close the doors at 11pm, recover lost objects and give them to the police and
cover the brothel windows. It was prohibited to serve alcoholic beverages, host parties or dances
without the authorization of the Jefetura política. Regulations also specified that dueñas were not
to permit gambling or the reception of drunks, armed persons, or men under the age of twentyone. It was also her duty to uphold female honor and virtue where possible by not allowing girls
to work without licenses, or permit married women, widows or single women with children to
enter or work inside the brothels. Interestingly enough, by 1900 municipal codes no longer
required maids under the age of forty working as prostitutes to register. Therefore, while it
continued to hold the honor of married women and single mothers in high regard, it upheld that
the honor of older women was not worth monitoring. Ultimately municipal officials believed it
was the responsibility of the dueñas to maintain order within their “houses” as a way to assist in
the regulation of female prostitutes. Those who did not faced fines or arrest by city police, who
were allowed to search or enter the brothels unannounced.

561

Portrayed as older women, these

matriarchs of the bordello were expected to also moderate the negative honor that prostitution
bestowed upon single women.
After Independence prostitution became increasingly treated as a matter of public safety and
health that led to the registration and examination of prostitutes by city police and public health
officials. Changes over time in the treatment and handling of female prostitutes however,
demonstrates heightened concern over the sexual honor and morality of unprotected and
unattached women. Regulations which closely observed their residence, presence in public
places and interaction with “honorable” families, indicate a desire to mitigate the potential for
their trade to harm the honor of the family. Laws which required that girls working in brothels be
561

González Llerenas, “La reglamentación sanitaria,” 373-4; 386.
205

closely monitored by dueñas, and restricted those who could become registered prostitutes based
on their age, marital status or whether or not they were mothers, indicates a desire by city
officials to protect the morality of unattached women.

Conclusion
In the post-Independence period dominant discourses regarding the public good targeted
the poor for the rapid rise of urban social problems such as the spread of crime, prostitution and
disease. Unattached women who resided outside of patriarchal control faced greater state
intervention into their private lives by newly organized institutions given the charge of
maintaining public order, such as city courts, police and public health departments. Under the
auspices of protection, these institutions imposed a desire to both correct and police the morality
of unattached women who lived outside the boundaries of patriarchal control. In criminal court
cases, judges and lawyers frequently drew attention to the sexual honor of unattached women.
Despite often being the victim of crime, unmarried women’s honor often played a role in
determining guilt, the cause of a particular incident or in the severity of sentencing. In addition,
changing ordinances which legalized prostitution sheds light on a growing desire to regulate and
police the sexuality of unmarried women. Overall, sufficient data exists to suggest that the honor
of unattached women was called into question more so than married women given their presence
in and before institutions of punishment and reform.

206

CHAPTER SIX
POVERTY, SINGLENESS AND PUBLIC WELFARE

The need to reform Guadalajara’s growing unmarried population extended beyond newly
state-run criminal courts, prisons and hospitals and into its earliest welfare institutions. Opened
in 1805, the city’s first central charity house, the Casa de Caridad y Misericoridia (House of
562

Charity and Mercy, eventually renamed the Hospicio Cabañas in 1859)

served the growing

needs of a widening population of single and widowed women and their children. Similar to
policies, practices and institutions of penology, the establishment of the Casa de Caridad
coincided with a desire to “clean up” city streets and reform the poor in the colonial period, but
evolved alongside a similar trajectory with Mexico’s political twists and turns after 1821.
Although initially founded by the Catholic Church it shut down temporarily to serve as a military
barrack during the wars for Independence. In the chaotic rebuilding period that followed it went
through phases of closure and reconstruction, but continued to be run by the Church in
conjunction with some support from state and city officials as well as local benefactors. The
institution eventually came under state management in1874 as part of the rising tide of
modernization during the Porfiriato and a desire to centralize the authority of the state.

563

From its beginnings the Casa de Caridad was intimately linked to debates that surfaced
among city officials and reformers over how to address the growing presence of the poor within
562

Even though the name of the institution changed, research I conducted indicated that even
after 1859 residents of Guadalajara continued to refer to the charity house as the Casa de
Caridad. Although state and city officials, and even today, the institution is more popularly
referred to as the Hospicio Cabañas, to maintain consistency, I will refer to it as the Casa de
Caridad.
563
Luis M. Rivera, Hospicio Cabañas. Monografía histórica (Guadalajara: Publicaciones del
Comité Central “Pro Cabañas,” 1924), 18-35.
207

the urban landscape. Discussion often hinged on an evolving discourse on poverty and reform
that filtered through the administration of the charity house; utilized by both church and state
mangers. While once perceived as an important part of the Catholic faith, formerly pious notions
of caridad (charity) took on new meaning after the 1780s. In large part this dealt with a changing
perception of the poor by city and church officials and the need to distinguish between the
deserving, those who were in true need of assistance, and the undeserving, the idle, lazy and
vice-ridden. In effect, this process not only marginalized sectors of the poor, but weeded out
those who could benefit from welfare reform from those that should be reformed through
punitive coercion. From its beginnings in 1805 until 1910, despite transitions in administration,
the Casa de Caridad functioned as an institution of reform by educating the children of the poor,
many of them unmarried and widowed women. Inherent within such arguments was a
paternalistic attitude toward the poor, particularly when it came to unattached adult women.

564

Given the circumstances of life in nineteenth-century Guadalajara it is not surprising that a
much greater proportion of poor, unmarried, abandoned, pregnant, unemployed, migrant,
widowed, or elderly women took advantage and were offered aid through the Casa de Caridad.
It was one of the factors that drew rural migrants into the city from the countryside.
Documentation from the charity home, police records and administrative reports demonstrate
that the public authorities felt a greater need to “protect” and intercede on behalf of single,
abandoned and widowed women. Not only did the mission of the institution seek to “reform”
these women and their children, but its methods served to reinforce the patriarchal family and
race, class and gender hierarchies. However, while evidence from the Casa de Caridad affirms
564

Jorge A. Trujillo, “Léperos, pelados, ceros socials y gente de trueno en el Jalisco Porfiriano,”
in Pobres, Marginados y Peligros edited by Jorge A. Trujillo and Juan Quintar (Guadalajara:
Universidad de Guadalajara, 2003), 205.
208

that unattached women depended on state assistance in greater numbers than married women, it
also suggests that women played a role in shaping state services. In many cases, single women
used the very same rhetoric that justified greater state intervention into their lives to further their
own objectives.

Figure 6.1

565

“El Hospicio”

565

Photo reprinted in Juan B. Iguiniz, Guadalajara a través de los tiempos: relatos y
descripciones de viajeros y escritores desde del Siglo XVI hasta nuestros días, Volume 1, 15861867 (Guadalajara: Banco Refaccionario de Jalisco, 1950), 58.
209

The Casa de Caridad y Misericordia
Institutions of charity, like the Casa de Caridad, date back to fifteenth and sixteenth century
Europe when the first public hospitals, orphanages and schools opened to the poor. They carried
over to the New World from Spain often by religious orders.

566

Colonial Guadalajara had

several institutions that served the poor. In the early part of the eighteenth century the Colegio
de San Diego functioned as an asylum for orphaned children, but the school mostly served young
Spanish girls who it presumed required greater protection to preserve their virginity. It catered to
the orphaned, poor doncellas of the city, who could be proven to be virtuous and legitimate
children of honorable Spanish parents. The institution acknowledged the particular “risks” that
young poor women faced and wished to prevent Spanish girls from falling into “danger.”

567

It

was not until the Bourbon reforms that the Spanish crown introduced reforms in respect to social
welfare. Between 1767 and 1775, the earliest changes took place in Mexico City with the
introduction of the first central foundling home, poorhouse, public hospital, and the colonial
government-run pawn shop, or Monte de Piedad.

568

Shortly after in 1786 Guadalajara boasted

its first hospital for the poor, the Hospital de Bélen, and by the turn of the century opened the
Casa de Caridad y Misericordia (House of Charity and Compassion). Unlike Mexico City, the
Casa de Caridad provided a variety of services to the poor under one roof. It became the largest
and most important institution of public charity in the state of Jalisco. At its zenith the Casa
566

Moisés González Navarro, La pobreza en México (México: El Colegio de México, 1985), 8;
Brian Pullan. Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State,
to 1620 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 7.
567
AHA, Gobierno, Obras Asistenciales, Colegio de San Diego, Caja 1, exp 37; Ibid., Exp 1.
568

Silvia Arrom, Containing the Poor: The Mexico City Poor House, 1774-1871 (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2000), 14. In Guadalajara, the first Monte de Piedad was opened in 1849.
See BPEJ, Miscellaneous 751, doc 7, Augustín Rivera, “Los Montes de Piedad ante el Derecho
Canónico,” Tipografia de José Martín (San Juan de Lagos, 1880), 2.
210

boasted over 118 rooms comprised of dormitories, offices, nurseries, classrooms and dining
halls, in addition to 48 covered corridors, 21 passageways, 22 gardens, 22 fountains, 5 kitchens,
a chapel, library, and garden.

569

Within the labyrinth of rooms and patios that made up the

impressive structure there was a foundling home, orphanage, primary school for boys and girls,
asylum and nursing home for indigent migrants, unemployed artisans and journeyman, as well as
those who were physically incapable of work due to a disability or old age.

570

The history of

the Casa de Caridad y Misericordia sheds light onto the important transition from church
controlled public charity to state-run beneficence, and is important in ascertaining the policies,
institutions and practices utilized by state and city officials to handle the poor, particularly
unattached women.
The origins of the institution are deeply connected to economic and social changes which
motivated local and ecclesiastic officials to address the problem of urban poverty through
vigilance and reform in the late 1700s. After a ten month trip exploring the socio-economic
conditions of the region, the city’s newly appointed bishop Juan Ruiz de Cabañas, noted the
hardships of daily life for Guadalajara’s poor. Inspired by similar institutions he encountered on
a visit to Mexico City, he began planning the Casa de Caridad y Misericorida (House of Charity
and Compassion). By 1801 he gathered funds from the Diocese of Guadalajara, local city
government and private donations from the religious community. In 1803 he wrote to King

569

BPEJ, Miscellaneous #164, doc 48, “Estado General del Hospicio de Huerfános de GDL,”
(Guadalajara, 1892), 3-4.
570
Águeda Jiménez Pelayo, Jaime Olveda and Beatriz Núñez Miranda, El Crecimiento Urbano
de Guadalajara, (Zapopan: El Colegio de Jalisco, 1995), 122; Luis M. Rivera, Hospicio
Cabañas. Monografía histórica (Guadalajara: Publicaciones del Comité Central “Pro Cabañas,”
1924), 18-35; Archivo Histórico del Arzobispado (AHA), Justicia, Obras Assistenciales,
Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de Caridad,” Caja 1, 1789-1849.
211

Carlos IV for final approval and by December received consent for both the project and its
ordinances.

571

The proposed institution would serve the growing class of Guadalajara’s poor.

The founding of the establishment reveals the often contentious transition from religious to
secular control. In February of 1810, on the eve of Mexico’s War for Independence the Casa de
Caridad opened its doors to sixty-six boys and girls. Although it was funded by both state and
church sources, the governing of the Casa was almost entirely in the hands of the Church. It was
headed by the Ecclesiastical Cabildo and the Bishop, who designated a vicar to manage and
direct the house. A committee known as the Junta de Caridad, made up of clergy and secular
men, made all other decisions. Charity work at the house came to a screeching halt only eight
months after it opened at the onset of Independence. Throughout the course of the war the
structure served as military barracks. It would not be until 1829, after relocating the military and
making needed repairs that the establishment reopened, but debate began to mount over the
future of the church-run institution. In 1833, the Liberal vice president of Mexico, Valentín
Gómez Farías, supported by the legislature of the state of Jalisco and its governor Pedro Tamez,
a member of the Partido Liberal, ordered that the Casa remain a military fort. Liberal reformers
believed in the separation of Church and state and sought to diminish the role of the Church in
public welfare. Church clergy argued that the Casa was an institution of welfare primarily
funded by the Church and private donations from the faithful. The argument salvaged the Casa
for the time being. With the help of the diocese, the building underwent reconstruction from

571

BPEJ, Miscellaneous, “Hospicio de Guadalajara,” Tipografia del Hospicio (Guadalajara,
1889), 3.
492, Miguel Gallindo, “Apuntos sobre la hygiene en Guadalajara,” Tesis de recepción, Facultad
de Medicina de Guadalajara, (Guadalajara, April 8, 1908), 174.
212

1836-1845, adding a cupola to the chapel and new courses which emphasized the skilled trades
of making rebozos, shoes, clothing and furniture.

572

By 1859, as part of larger structural changes taking place in the Catholic Church and the city
the Sisters of Charity, a female religious order, took over the management of the newly renamed
Hospicio Cabañas and the Hospital de Belén. The more secular name change and new
administration were indicative of a growing demand for the Catholic Church to restructure itself
in the face of growing criticism and rising liberalism in Mexico during La Reforma. The nuns
came to Mexico in 1843 from France and were well regarded for their charitable and moral
th

educational work. By the middle of the 19 century there were over 400 sisters in Mexico
573

working in various welfare institutions.

The Sisters of Charity managed to evade expulsion in

the 1860 Law of Reform with the help of the state governor who argued they were a charitable
organization and not religious, and therefore their work within the institution fell under the
category of beneficence.

574

The following year this was put into law by the State of Jalisco

through a decree which stated all Establishments of Beneficence in the city could remain open
and retain control of their property and capital so long as members of the clergy were not a part
of their administration.

575

This allowed the Sisters of Charity to remain at the Casa. In 1874

however, just three years after the Sisters were recognized for their good work by the Governor
of the State of Jalisco in a ceremony held outside the Casa, state leaders officially ended their

572
573

Ibid., 65.

González Navarro, La pobreza, 58; See also AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio
Cabañas, 1789-1849: Box 1, “Establecido de las Hermanas de Caridad en el Hospicio y Hospital
de Belen.”
574
AHJ, B-6-891, inv 923, c. 240.
575

Rivera, Hospicio Cabañas, 80.
213

tenure at the institution. Their expulsion was directly connected to Mexico’s new Liberal party
president Lerdo de Tejada, who opposed the participation of the Catholic Church in social
organizations.
The expulsion of the Sisters of Charity in 1874 stirred debate about secularization in Jalisco
which centered on charity, and whose obligation it would be to manage and provide aid to the
poor. Some suggested that charity was outside the state’s jurisdiction because it promoted
idleness and was counter-productive to tackling the problem of urban poverty. Others believed
the modern State was obligated to provide citizens with the most basic needs of food, clothing
and shelter to enable the poor to get jobs. They contended that without any assistance, the lower
classes would become an even greater burden on the state.

576

Under state control the Casa came

under the direction of the Office of Public Education, but in large measure its bylaws and
curriculum, with the exception of religion, seem to coincide with earlier policies and practices.
For the first time, however, the state government was responsible for hiring staff and managing
its day to day operations. As the nation underwent a period of reorganization during the
Porfiriato so too did the Casa de Caridad. With the rise in urban poverty and population in these
years the size and need of the city’s poor grew. Plagued by mismanagement, overcrowding and
budgetary constraints however, the charity house nearly fell into ruin by 1883. In that year the
state restructured the institution and created stricter policies to control admissions. State
managers required mothers to prove their insolvency and the legitimacy of their children with
legal documentation. That same year the Governor announced new regulations intent on reestablishing order and improving conditions in the institution’s various departments. There
would also be restructuring that took place at the state level. To replace the more religious notion
576

González Navarro, La pobreza.
214

of charity, state leaders placed emphasis instead on providing for the wellbeing of its citizens and
the direction of the charity house fell under the newly formed Department of Beneficence by
1896.

577

Overall however, continuities remained in the everyday organization, practices and policies
of reforming the children of the many poor single and widowed mothers it aided. The story of the
Guadalajara institution contrasts greatly with the poorhouse in Mexico City. There Silvia Arrom
argues that after 1871 the institution began to focus less on reform and transitioned into an
orphanage and boarding school.

578

This was not the case in Guadalajara, and the charity house

continued to cater to adult female beggars and the elderly in conjunction with its educational
departments for orphaned children well into the twentieth century. In addition, while city
officials demolished the Mexico City poorhouse in 1905, the original Hospicio Cabañas
continued to function into the 1960s. In this way it provides an interesting counterpoint to the
Mexico City narrative that frequently dominates histories of Mexico.
Given its divisive history documentation on the Casa de Caridad is scattered between both
state and church archives, and records were more accessible for the years following state
takeover. Overall, the Casa’s history is indicative of broader changes that took place both on the
national and local political stage. Its shift from church to state control revealed changing
conceptions of charity in Guadalajara. Whereas the Catholic Church had deemed charity part of
the “pious works” of religious orders, under the state it became characterized as

577

AHJ, Beneficiencia B-6, Reglamentos y Leyes, “Reglamento del Hospicio de Guadalajara,”
1883, f. 883-5937; Rivera, Hospicio Cabañas.
578
Arrom, Containing the Poor, 4.
215

“beneficence.”

579

The shift is significant in that it implied an increasing role of the state as

beneficent toward the poor, a transition that would take on paternalistic undertones. While a
change in terminology reflected new ideas about welfare versus charity, both the Catholic
Church and the state frequently relied on stereotypes and condescending attitudes toward the
poor to legitimize their role as reformers. Thus, from its inception in 1805 until 1910, the Casa
de Caridad was part of a broader debate over urban social problems and measures required to
address poverty.

The Discourse on Poverty and the Marginalization of the Poor
The origins of public welfare institutions like the Casa de Caridad in Guadalajara are linked
to changes in both the rural and urban economy analyzed in chapter two which created a large
urban underclass. A dramatic rise in urban industrial manufacturing combined with a loss of land
in the countryside, brought an influx of rural peasants to cities across Mexico and widened the
gap between the rich and poor.

580

The consequence of rapid population growth was an ever

expanding class of poor city dwellers, among them a majority of single and widowed women,
who came to Guadalajara in search of employment. The city itself was ill-equipped to deal with
these newcomers, lacking sufficient space, goods, services and most importantly jobs. Beggars
and the unemployed alike swarmed the city’s central plaza, attracted to its public fountains and
opportunities as the city’s commercial and mercantile center. There they could bathe, wash

579

Charity institutions were categorized as “Obras Assistenciales” or “Obras Pias” according to
the records of the Catholic Church in Guadalajara. State charity institutions fell under the
authority of the Department of Education as Public Beneficence after 1874.
580
Jiménez Pelayo, Olveda and Núñez Miranda, El Crecimiento Urbano, 124; Lilia Oliver
Sánchez, “Intensidad de la crisis demográficas en las ciudades de México y Guadalajara, 18001850,” Takwá 8, (Fall 2005), 23.
216

clothing, beg for money, sell their goods, sleep under the shade of the portales or look for work.
Their growing presence in the most important part of the city unnerved municipal and
ecclesiastic officials. As the civil, ecclesiastical and mercantile center of the city, the main plaza
was the seat of local power. It housed the Cathedral, Governor’s Palace, military barracks and
many of the city’s wealthy residents. It was also where all religious and civil celebrations were
held. It was not only the presence of the poor which alarmed officials, but the increase in urban
problems which began to become associated with them such as crime, and disease. Not to
mention rising rates of illegitimacy, single or abandoned mothers, and declining rates of legal
marriage

581

Previously the city existed without needing to regulate its growth or eradicate

poverty, but the commercial growth, urban expansion and demographic increases that
Guadalajara experienced by the late eighteenth century posed social and urban problems it had
never dealt with before, forcing local and ecclesiastical officials to respond.

582

In colonial Mexico the poor had an important role to play in the Catholic faith and in the
salvation of the wealthy. Not only was charity an accepted practice, but it was promoted as a
requirement of the rich to give and a right of the poor to solicit.

583

For this reason, colonial

Catholic charity had fewer concerns to eliminate poverty because it gave opportunities for the
wealthy to be charitable and attain salvation.

584

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth

centuries marked a transition in the attitude and treatment of the poor. Bourbon-era public
welfare reforms aimed to maintain order and clean up city streets. It was a policy put into even
581
582
583

Trujillo, “Léperos.”
Ibid., 110; Jiménez Pelayo, Olveda and Núñez Miranda, El Crecimiento, 109; 125.

González Navarro, La pobreza, 56. Silvia Arrom points out that while begging was
acceptable, vagrancy had always been persecuted. See Arrom, Containing the Poor, 1-2.
584
Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic
State, to 1620 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 12.
217

greater practice after Independence. From an elite perspective the raucous and unsanitary
lifestyle of the poor caused new urban problems that outweighed salvation, such as epidemic
outbreaks of disease, increasing rates of crime, public begging and vagrancy, and other problems
linked to the break-down of the family such as illegitimacy and spousal and child
abandonment.

585

City and ecclesiastic officials blamed the wayward lifestyle of the city’s urban

poor which they believed caused these problems.

586

By the 1870s and 1880s, this rhetoric

became infused with nationalistic concerns as Porfirian reformers sought to eliminate poverty as
“a stain that shamed society and the country.”

587

To combat such problems local authorities in

Guadalajara sought to reform the poor by monitoring and marginalizing their presence in the
588

public sphere through well-organized police and welfare institutions.

While the reforms were

intended for all of the city’s poor, the impact on single women is important in understanding how
the church and state would target them and their children through reform measures.
Embedded within the language of reform, written into law and used by social reformers,
police, foreign travelers and city and ecclesiastic officials, were clear racial and class stereotypes
which justified new legal codes and institutions that targeted the poor. In stark contrast to the
“gente bien” of Guadalajara, described in 1838 by a foreign visitor as well-dressed, articulate,
educated and of a solid moral background, the city’s poor were written off as “lepéros” who

585

Trujillo, “Léperos,” 207. Similar attitudes existed in eighteenth and nineteenth-century
Mexico City see Arrom, Containing the Poor.
586
Ibid., 122. Also see Chapter 4.
587

Armida de la Vara de González, “Los ceros sociales,” in Obras completas de Luis González
y González. Volume 4 of El Indio en la era liberal (Mexico: Clío, 1996), 367.
588
See Chapters 4 and 5.
218

589

were unrefined, un-educated, “half-naked, starved, alcoholic, fanatical and violent.”

Guadalajara’s civil and religious leaders similarly argued that the poor’s proclivity toward
fighting, foul language, and public scandal created disorder and crime in the city. In Mexico
City, officials passed laws to curb scandalous behavior. They banned public nudity, restricted
boisterous religious celebrations, public drinking and gambling and passed ordinances intended
to reduce concubinage.

590

In Guadalajara, as early as 1784 city officials passed similar

measures that limited the use of firearms, the sale of alcohol and instituted curfews.

591

In 1790,

Guadalajara’s royal Governor organized cuartel, or neighborhood police to enforce city codes. In
fact the term policía refers to the “good governance” of the poor, which by the nineteenth
century included imposing new moral codes and manners on the poor.

592

Military officials

added new cuartels in 1809 to better police the burgeoning urban poor population.

593

Measures

geared toward monitoring the actions of the poor coincided with efforts to sanitize and beautify
the city by cleaning the filth that was everywhere and remove the poor from the streets where
they congregated to socialize, work, eat, very often sleep, and beg.

594

Late eighteenth century

589

Lowenstern in Guadalajara a través de los tiempos, edited by Juan B. Iguíniz (Mexico:
Ayuntamiento de Guadalajara, 1989-1992), 165-8.
590
Arrom, Containing the Poor, 15.
591

For attitudes regarding the poor see Trujillo, “Léperos,” 205-229. On city ordinances see
Jaime Olveda, La oligarquía de Guadalajara. De las reformas borbónicas a la reforma liberal.
(Mexico: Colegioe Regiones, 1990), 86.
592
Nacif Mina, 9-11.
593
594

Jiménez Pelayo et.al, El Crecimiento,134; Also see Chapter 5.

Arrom, Containing the Poor, 15. Literature on these efforts in Mexico City is extensive, see
J. P. Viqueira Albán, ¿Relajados o reprimidos? Diversiones públicas y vida social en la ciudad
de México durante el Siglo de las luces (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987),
chapter 3; Michael Scardaville, “Alcohol Abuse and Tavern Reform in Late Colonial Mexico
City,” Hispanic American Historical Review 60, no. 4 (November 1980); Pamela Voekel,
219

Mexico City ordinances outlawed panhandling and involuntarily interned individuals into
poorhouse, or the Casa de Caridad in Guadalajara.

595

Other measures emphasized removal of the poor altogether from city streets. This frequently
involved relocating the poor from the city center, where the city’s elite took up residence, to the
periphery. Some of the first measures of physically relocate the poor began in 1771 by the
Catholic Church. Church officials moved the city’s poor to the northernmost boundary of the
city, in an area known as Las Cuadritas where it offered affordable rented housing to
workers.

596

In effect the Church created one of the city’s poorest barrios where the poor could

work and live out of the way of the city center.

597

This was a pattern that would repeat itself

throughout the nineteenth century as the urban poor settled on the margins of the city, often
attracted by factories located there. In addition, the outskirts of town served as the first stop for
large migrant populations who arrived to the city from rural towns in Jalisco. For this reason
poor barrios emerged on the periphery, far from the center and elite neighborhoods. In addition
to Las Cuadritas in the north, poor people and factory workers crowded the cuartels of San Juan
“Peeling off the Palace: Bodily Resistance to Bourbon Reforms in Mexico City,” Journal of
Historical Sociology 5, no 2 (1992); (1992), Jorge Nacif Mina, “Policía y seguridad pública en la
ciudad de México, 1770-1848,” in La Ciudad de Mexico en la primera mitad del siglo XIX, ed.
Hernández Franyuti (Mexico: Instituto Mora, 1994); María Cristina Sacristán, “El Pensamiento
ilustrado ante los grupos marginados de la ciudad de México, 1767-1824,” in La Ciudad de
Mexico en la primera mitad del siglo XIX, ed. Hernández Franyuti (Mexico: Instituto Mora,
1994).
595
The first ordinance passed in Mexico City was in 1774, See Arrom, Containing the Poor, 2;
Individuals could be interned involuntarily to the Casa de Caridad by the Junta de Caridad or by
local police. See Rivera, Hospicio Cabañas, 18-35.
596
Jiménez Pelayo, Olveda and Núñez Miranda, El Crecimiento,, 109-110; 116; 122.
597

Rodney Anderson, “Los Barrios,” in Lecturas históricas de Guadalajara: Demografía y
Urbanismo, eds. José María Muriá y Jaime Olveda (México: Colegio Regiones de México,
1992), 329. Rodney Anderson’s work suggests that this part of town had the highest rates of
households with multiple families and un-related members, which are key indicators of fracture
and poverty.
220

de Diós, Analco and Mexicaltzingo.”

598

Analco and Mexicaltzingo, located at the southernmost

boundary of the city, were formerly indigenous villages that became subsumed by Guadalajara in
1821.

599

San Juan de Diós to the east, divided the center of town from the San Juan de Diós

river. Throughout the nineteenth century, and even today, it was comprised mainly of the poor
working classes and had a reputation for crime and a seedy nightlife. Like Las Cuadritas to the
north which housed the first public hospital, this neighborhood would become home to the Casa
de Caridad. It was in these barrios where the greatest need for social services existed, as the
poor were often hit hardest during epidemic and economic crises.

600

In this way the relief

provided by the Church, and eventually continued by the state, served to maintain long-standing
class hierarchies within the city by relocating the poor to outlying areas.

598
599

Archivo Municipal de Guadalajara, Ramo Obras Públicas. Paquete 62, legajo 91, 1840.

Eduardo López Moreno, La cuadrícula en el desarollo de la ciudad hispanoamericana:
Guadalajara, Mexico. (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 1992), 22.
600
The work of Lilia Oliver demonstrates that during numerous cholera outbreaks in
Guadalajara, the majority killed were the poor and those who lived on the periphery, see Lilia
Oliver, Un verano mortal (Guadalajara: Unidad Editorial del Gobierno de Jalisco, 1986), 42; See
Figure 6.2.
221

Figure 6.2

601

Cuartel Divisions and Notable Buildings in Guadalajara, 1896

While the ruling elite saw themselves as powerful and virtuous, it was the poor who were
“fragile and defective” and in need of reform and protection.

602

The very same paternalistic,

classist and racist rhetoric which permeated the patrolling and spatial organization of the city
permeated the halls of the Casa de Caridad. As a reform institution it served a similar function
by removing the “bad” elements and unsightly beggars from the streets, not to impugn the poor
601

The original map, which specified cuartel numbers, locations and notable buildings comes
from the AHJ, Mapoteca, “Plano general de la ciudad de Guadalajara, 1896;” Information for
additional notations was taken from Rivas Jiménez, “Defense of Craft,” and Olveda and Núñez
Miranda, El Crecimiento Urbano. For interpretation of the references to color in this and all
other figures, the reader is referred to the electronic version of this dissertation.
602
Trujillo, “Léperos,” 205.
222

but to reform the deserving poor. Those offered shelter at the institution were forbidden from
begging for alms “publicly or privately.”

603

The charity house emphasized the need to “civilize”

the lower classes in order to promote economic development and civil obedience “for the sake of
the country, the public, the Church and state.”

604

For these reasons, a major goal of the Casa was to instill order, work ethic, morality and
civility in its residents. Once in the poorhouse the goal was to produce industrious workers who
could provide for themselves, making them an asset to society.

605

At the Casa de Caridad

residents were instructed in Christian values and taught job skills so that they could be
reincorporated into society.

606

According to Bishop Cabañas, education was indispensible to

removing the “ignorance” of the masses. This belief would be championed even during periods
of greater state intervention at the Casa de Caridad, especially after Independence as the new
607

government of Mexico favored education as the “basis of all social progress.”

The Casa offered assistance to those deemed “the truly needy.” The majority of its residents
were abandoned babies and poor and orphaned children, but it also made room for adults who
were unable to work due to physical disabilities, age or lack of proper education.

608

Part of the

paternalistic rhetoric of reform defined in the ordinances that guided the Casa de Caridad and
603

Archivo Histórico del Arzobispado (AHA), Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio
Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de Caridad,” Caja 1, 1789-1849, Article 3, “Clases de Pobres,”
10-11.
604
González Navarro, La pobreza, 56.
605
606

Arrom, Containing the Poor, 15.

Archivo Histórico del Arzobispado (AHA), Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio
Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de Caridad,” Caja 1, 1789-1849.
607
Carmen Castañeda, La educación en Guadalajara durante la Colonia, 1552-1821
(Guadalajara: El Colegio de Jalisco, 1984), 224-225; 229.
608
Ibid and Silvia Arrom Containing the Poor.
223

upheld by social theorists, police and city officials was a distinction between the deserving and
undeserving classes of poor. Among the deserving were those in dire need of assistance, not
because they were lazy but because they were unable to work and therefore most vulnerable,
such as infants, young children, the sick, disabled or aged.

609

In stark contrast to the truly needy

were hoodlums, prostitutes, vagabonds or the picaresque lépero, who lacked resources due to
laziness and vice. The lépero, a term popularized by the mid-nineteenth century, was typically
stereotyped as a petty criminal. Often such class based arguments had racial undertones, as the
lépero was frequently portrayed as mestizo or Indian and associated with drinking pulque in
addition to having an affinity for fighting, pick-pocketing, and promiscuous relations with
women.

610

Institutions of beneficence like the Casa de Caridad originated to protect the

helpless, while police, correctional institutions and military impressment targeted the refractory
and marginalized sectors of the poor.

611

What would define a new discourse on poverty by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
century in Guadalajara was greater emphasis on reforming and protecting the “truly needy,” or
honorable poor.

612

Through instruction at the Casa de Caridad residents received the “proper”

609

AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Box 1, 1789-1849, Article 1, p 3-4.
610
Armida de la Vara de González, “Los ceros sociales,” in Obras completas de Luis González
y González. Volume 4 of El Indio en la era liberal (Mexico: Clío, 1996), 367; Trujillo,
“Léperos,” 211.
611
AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Box 1, (1789-1849), 2-6; Trujillo,“Léperos,” 211.
612
AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Box 1, 1789-1849.
224

education and rearing they lacked, which had or could lead to further uncivilized behavior.

613

Inherent within the arguments that made up new city ordinances, established cuartel police,
inspired removal programs and formed institutional regulations which distinguished between the
deserving and undeserving classes of poor were class and race-based constructions of the period.
The Casa de Caridad shaped its interactions with single and widowed female patrons and their
children around new ideals of perfecting the poor. In reality, the Casa existed to discipline the
deserving members of the lower classes from an elite perspective.

614

It embodied a paternalistic

rhetoric of reform which emphasized the need to transform the poor into more refined, educated,
moral and productive citizens. Not only did elites see the poor as those in need of reform, but
believed they were the most capable of providing it.

Singleness and the Casa de Caridad
The Casa de Caridad’s paternalism toward the poor shaped its primary goal of educating and
rearing needy children often translated into a patriarchal approach toward their mothers.
Although it would go through various transitions, the Casa predominantly served the needs of a
growing unmarried, widowed, and abandoned population of women with children. Through a
rhetoric which emphasized the need to “protect” and reform the poor, especially children, Casa
administrators and staff, along with city police and state welfare officials attempted to define the
proper mother, family, and home. In the absence of a male patriarch, the Casa stood in to protect
613

AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, May 18, 1875, “Letter from Jefetura
Simón Delgadillo to Department of Public Beneficiencia” Box 158, f. 875.
614
AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Box 1, 1789-1849, Article 1, p 1-2; Anayanci Fregoso Centeno, “Hospicio Cabañas: la
instrucción y la caridad como productoras de representaciones de maternidad y niñez,
Guadalajara, Siglo XIX” (paper presented at the Congress of Latin American Studies
Association, Montreal, Canada, September 5-8, 2007), 6-7.
225

the honor of young women and girls and provide proper rearing and education to the vulnerable
children of single mothers. This was a task unfit for the large population of poor unmarried and
widowed women that it served due to the stigma associated with their class and sheer lack of
resources. At the same time, single and widowed women played a role in shaping the services
provided at the Casa and in many cases re-appropriated the language of reform and the rhetoric
of protection to their benefit. Institutional documentation such as admission requests, police
referrals, regulations, correspondence, resident and employee data, budgets, school records,
retrievals, and adoptions all support the notion that the Casa assumed a patriarchal role in the
lives of many children and their families which had a distinct impact on widowed and single
women.
Widowed and single women with children had a much greater need for the services offered at
the Hospicio. They felt the economic and demographic changes that were occurring around them
more than a married woman with spousal support. Throughout the nineteenth century as prices
for basic foodstuffs continued to rise at higher rates than real wages, it increased pressure on the
household. A working woman on her own typically earned less than a man and toiled in lower
paying occupations.

615

Therefore, while a single woman in Guadalajara working at a cigar

factory or as a live-in maid could survive on her own earnings, a woman with even one child
would have a much harder time making ends meet.

615

616

This was all the more real for single

See Chapter 4; For a discussion in Mexico on the gendered divisions of labor see Marie
Eileen Francois, A Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and Governance in
Mexico City, 1750-1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 88: Juan Javier
Pescador, “Vanishing Women: Female Migration and Ethnic Identity in Late-Colonial Mexico
City,” Ethnohistory 42, no. 4 (Fall 1995), 618. See Kuznesof, “Gender Ideology, Race, and
Female-Headed Households,” 162.
616
Francois, A Culture of Everyday Credit, 24; Estadísticas Económicas del Porfiriato. Fuerza
de Trabajo y actividad por sectores (Mexico: El Colegio de Mexico, 1965), 17.
226

mother Rafaela Maldonado, who admitted in her petition to the Casa de Caridad that her work
making tortillas “was not even enough to eat poorly, let alone [pay] for anything else” for her
two young daughters. For this reason, she sought “a place of mercy” (lugar de gracia) for her
children at the school for girls within the Casa.

617

The economic circumstances of everyday life for widowed women in particular could
change dramatically from one minute to the next making the Casa de Caridad a valuable
resource. Shortly after Christmas in 1907, Jesús Morales pleaded with the Casa to help her with
the raising of her three young children. Her husband, a tinplate maker had died a year earlier of
from a rare heart condition that forced her to take on work as a domestic servant, which she
explained did not provide enough money for her to support the family. During the period the
salary of a craftsman would support a family of five comfortably, but the salary paid to a woman
as a domestic could not adequately support Jesús’ family.

618

A similar fate met Antonia Díaz

after the death of her middle-class husband, who was a doctor, surgeon and obstetrician in the
city. As a result Antonia went from a middle class housewife to a domestic servant who found it
difficult to support her three children on her small salary. As a middle class woman, however,
she understood the importance of her children’s education and sought assistance from the Casa
to help secure her children’s future.

619

It was not only the financial strain that domestic work placed on the widow-headed
household, but the inability to provide childcare to their own children while working. For Jesus
617
618

AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, Box 181, f. 901-5706.

AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, December 27, 1907, Box 168, f. 8965628; For more on craftsmen’s wages see Claudia Rivas Jiménez, “Defense of Craft:
Guadalajara’s Artisans in the Era of Economic Liberalism, 1842-1907” (PhD Dissertation,
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 2008), 53.
619
AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, 1894, Box 164, f. 894-5581
227

Valdez widowhood had left her in a state of “extreme poverty.” In a solicitation to the office of
beneficence she explained that the death of her husband left her with few other options but to
find work as a servant. She commented that her salary could not support her daughters Tomasa
and Yrene. Working as a domestic she spent her whole day serving in someone else’s house,
leaving her precious little time to care for her kids or see to their education.

620

Being the sole

caretaker of a child added a great deal of financial and social responsibility to widowed women.
For Eucebia Ybarra, a sudden illness left her unable to continue working. Being “alone (mujer
sola) and useless” she admitted she was barely able to provide herself with basic necessities
“much less those of her young daughters Ysabel and Refugio,” for whom she petitioned for a
place in the Casa.

621

Just as in widowhood, the absence of spousal support greatly affected women’s ability to
continue to feed and raise their children. Abandonment for unmarried and married women could
produce similar consequences forcing women to seek aid at the Casa. In 1894, Teresa Ybarra
found herself abandoned by the father of her four children, José Moreno. According to birth
records José and Teresa maintained an informal union for more than seven years in which she
bore four children. Although he recognized all of them as his children at birth, Teresa claimed he
had stopped helping her support the children and she continued to struggle on her own.

622

There

were also married women who because of abandonment fell into a form of involuntary
singleness. In 1903, Rosario Guerrero desperately sought a spot for her teenage daughter in the
school at the Casa because her husband abandoned her and their children. In addition to thirteen
620
621
622

AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, 1903, Box 185, f. 903-3099.
AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, 1888, Box 159, f. 888-827.

AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, “Solicitas,” 1888, Box 163 bis, f. 8941814.
228

year old María del Carmen, Rosario was nursing two small babies. She explained that
breastfeeding her children “whose care was absolutely critical” at that moment, prevented her
from being able to work and provide for María del Carmen’s education.

623

Often the problem faced by single mothers was their inability to work and meet their
childcare responsibilities. Such circumstances were the main cause of abandonment and in some
cases infanticide.

624

In fact, almost half of all infanticide and abandonment cases between 1868

and 1903 were committed by domestic workers.

625

While it is difficult to make judgments about

the frequency of such crimes and occupation, the causal connection between domestic work and
abandonment is strong both in the criminal court documentation and Casa de Caridad
records.

626

Working as a live in maid made it difficult for single mothers to attend to their work

and their children, especially young children. Most employers would fire a pregnant domestic
and would not tolerate a live in mother with an infant. Whereas a washerwoman or seamstress
might be able to keep her child with her and even feed and watch children between work
intervals, a servant had overseers and bosses who expected her to work consistently. In many
instances, they feared being fired should their mistress or master find out. It is also interesting to

623

AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, “Solicitas,” 1903, Box 185, f. 9033099
624
See Chapter 5.
625
626

See Table 6.1.

The work of Ann Blum suggests similarities in the rate and causes of abandonment by
domestic workers in Mexico City see “Abandonment, Adoption and Reproductive Disruption.”
Childhood, Vol. 14, No. 3, 321-338 (2007) and “Public Welfare and Child Circulation, Mexico
City, 1877-1925.” Journal of Family History, 23, no. 2 (1998); Also see Chapter 4.
229

note that an overwhelming majority of criminal abandonment cases involved migrant women.

627

Women not originally from Guadalajara were less likely to have relatives or a system of familial
support that would have allowed them to keep their children.

628

Table 6.1
Occupations and Crimes Committed by Female Inmates at
the Jalisco State Penitentiary, 1868-1903
Occupation
Crime
Child
Infanticide
Abandonment
Mole Grinder
Domestic
Merchant
Clothing Ironer

2
4
2
3

1
12
0
1

Shawl Braider
Seamstress
Sus Labores
Hat Maker
Shoe Maker
Chocolate Maker
Unknown
Basket Weaver
Total

1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
13

1
2
6
1
1
1
1
1
28

627

Out of the 13 cases of women tried for child abandonment between 1868 and 1905, 12 were
originally from another part of the state. AHJ, Libros de Penenticiaría, “Album de sentenciados:
Departamento de Mujeres 1868-1873,” and “Procesados Mujeres, 1880-1905.”
628
Data for the tables on female inmates was compiled using the sentencing books found in the
state archives. As noted in the tables not all categories were recorded for each inmate and the
years 1880-1903 were more complete than earlier periods. AHJ, Libros de Penenticiaría,
“Album de sentenciados: Departamento de Mujeres 1868-1873,” and “Procesados Mujeres,
1880-1905.”
230

Other occupations, such as prostitution lent itself to higher rates of unwanted pregnancy,
which much like domestic service affected their ability to continue to work. For these reasons,
infanticide was more common among women of that occupation according to data from
Guadalajara’s prison records.

629

To avoid such extreme measures, a mother was able to bring a

newborn to the Casa’s foundling home, or Casa de Cuna anonymously. While solicitations for
entrance into the Casa’s other departments were lengthy and frequently rejected, babies could
not be turned away. The department of orphaned infants took in babies from one day to two
years old, providing each child a wet-nurse. Although the institution did not have a foundling
wheel as was common in other parts of Latin America, children were frequently left outside its
doors. In the early morning hours of April 22, 1896 a baby girl was found in the portico of the
Casa. The baby was in a basket with a heartfelt note offering prayer to whoever should find her
and indicated the child was four days old and not yet baptized. Administrators at the Casa
acknowledged their role in saving the small child and named her María Amparo (María
Protection).

630

The Rhetoric of Protection
In this way the Casa acted as a protecting and paternal figure toward children, many born
into families headed by single and widowed women. Children were the link between unattached
women and the charity house. It was their sons and daughters which the institution deemed as the
most vulnerable of the poor due to the lack of a strong male patriarch in their lives. From its
colonial beginnings the Casa viewed itself as a manifestation of the King of Spain, who was

629
630

See Table 6.1.
AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, “Entradas,” 1896, Box 166, 896-2030.
231

supreme “patron and protector” of those under his dominion and especially of those who resided
in the “public establishments” of the New World. According to an 1819 draft of its ordinances,
the Casa embodied the “paternal, charitable and sovereign disposition” of the King.

631

Even in

later years when the charity house came under state management it was classified as an
“institution of protection,” along with the state funded pawn shop, the home for “repentant
women,” the women’s prison, and state run daycares.

632

In the absence of the patriarch of the

nineteenth-century family, the institution stepped in to provide protection. The idea was one
promoted by the institution itself, as well as city and state officials, residents and mothers alike.
Bishop Cabañas, the institution’s founder, viewed the children received at the Casa as the
innocent victims of their parents’ wayward lifestyles. He believed the majority of the poor to be
“ignorant [and] employed in propagating vices, scandals, sins, [and] idleness.” According to
Cabañas it was idleness above all which led them to occupy themselves instead with “arrogance,
drunkenness, robbery, [and] murder.” For the bishop it was the children born of the poor who
suffered “living on the streets, plazas, paseos, and other public passageways.” It was the young
who were frightened, unseen, unheard and “most lamentable.” He feared that if children were
not reformed from a young age their parents had the potential to “corrupt customs… pervert

631

AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Box 1, 1789-1849, Article 1, p 1-2.
632
Based on the organization of the collection at the AHJ which listed the organizations as part
of the Institutions of Protection under the jurisdiction of the Jalisco Department of Beneficience.
Other categories included Administration, Cemeteries, Hospitals and Public Health,
Philanthropy, and Laws and Ordinances. The Casa de Amiga Obrera was founded in 1887 in
Mexico City and offered free childcare to female workers during work hours. Its use in
Guadalajara would not expand until the early part of the twentieth century. See González
Navarro, La pobreza, 96-97.
232

peace, obstruct good order, temper piety,” and in effect “condemn their souls” to hell.

633

In this

way he viewed the Casa de Caridad as a sanctuary for children, a refuge to “protect” and salvage
their souls.
The Casa’s goal of supporting, rearing and protecting the children of broken homes
continued under state management. Police shared this vision and remitted hundreds of children to
the charity each year. In an 1875 letter, city police chief Simón Delgadillo described the charity
house as a place of refuge for the city’s orphans, particularly those of “a tender age,” who are
alone in the world, “lacking family or anyone who might take interest in them.” He went on to
suggest that this “class of unprotected children needed to be pulled out of mendacity, crime,
abandonment and danger,” suggesting it was their “right to demand that the government provide
them support and an education in order to become useful citizens” later in life. Similar to
political debate over state funded charity, Delgadillo argued that it would be “abominable” if
police arrested and tried abandoned and orphaned children as vagrants and placed them in city
jails, without extending to them the “education they needed” and locked them away “where they
would acquire criminal habits or be hurled into an irremediable prostitution at an inexperienced
age.”

634

The police chief’s comments indicate that local officials believed in the rhetoric of

protection as a means of reforming the poor.
It was not uncommon for police officials to track the activities of children found on the
streets and jail those caught begging or violating vagrancy laws. Such was the fate of a 10 year
old unnamed “vagabond boy” picked up on the streets of Guadalajara in 1888. In this case

633

AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Box 1, (1789-1849) 2-6.
634
AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, May 18, 1875, “Letter from Jefetura
Simón Delgadillo to Department of Public Beneficiencia” Box 158, f. 875.
233

however, despite being over the approved age limit for boys accepted at the Casa de Caridad
police felt the child needed aid from the charity house rather than punishment. Correspondence
between the police department and the Director of Beneficence reveals that police took pity on
the boy who believed that because the boy had “no parents or persons he is subject to” was being
bullied by some of the other street boys. For his safety, police officials temporarily placed him
in one of the jail cells until they could find him room at the Casa.

635

The notion that the Casa provided children a level of “protection” that their parents were
unable to provide from the dangers often associated with poverty and the streets was well
understood throughout the state. In a request from the Governor’s Office to the Director of
Beneficence to admit Marcos Marin into its School of Arts for boys, the author imparted the
language of protection to draw attention to Marcos’ case. Describing him as “extremely poor,
but of good conduct and in much need of protection.” The letter emphasized his economic need
as well as his ability to be reformed given his moral character.

636

The School of Arts was for

boys between the ages of 6 and 13. In 1888, there were over three hundred male and female
orphaned children under the age of twelve living at the charity house.

637

Children who had come

to the Casa as orphans were automatically enrolled in the school, but it also accepted
applications from parents or took in children remitted by the police or government. During the
day boys took classes in reading, writing, math, grammar, geography and religion. After these

635
636

AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, 1888-1889, Box 159, f. 888-829

AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, “Recibo de asilados,” Caja 159, 18881889, 888-827
637
Ibid, Caja 159, 1888-1889, 888.
234

classes, the children focused on learning trades taught at the Casa.

638

From the perspective of

the state, the school afforded a refuge for Marcos to acquire a basic education and learn a trade in
order to have a career and become an upstanding citizen, without succumbing to the dangers of
the streets or tainting his good nature.
Of course, the rhetoric of protection was something that mothers could also employ to
assuage Casa administrators in their solicitation letters. When in 1894 Yrenea González sought a
place for her son in the charity house she confessed that her work as a domestic forced her to
neglect her son, leaving him “constantly abandoned in the street.” She acknowledged that her
behavior was reckless, but admitted that she had few other options given the nature of her job.
Similar to the argument made by police chief Simón Delgadillo years earlier, she acknowledged
that if her son continued to play all day in the streets he would soon “acquire vices” which would
“convert him” into an “undesirable member of society.” To make her case she added that if he
was not admitted to the Casa he would have no chance at becoming “honorable.”

639

The protection of honor, particularly female honor, was the supreme duty of a family’s
patriarch. Although it was less common for fathers to place children in the Casa, several cases
exist within the documentation fathers also recognized the institution as a safe haven for their
children when they were unable to perform their patriarchal duties. This was the case of the
factory worker Rafael Morfín, who in 1875 requested help providing a “secondary education” for
his two daughters Refugio and Julia. He explained that on his meager salary he was “scarcely
able to keep up with feeding his family,” and without the “protection” of the Casa his daughters

638

AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Box 1, 1789-1849, Article 5, p 20-21.
639
AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, “Altas y Bajas, June 1894,” Box 162,
f. 893-5546.
235

would be unable to continue their education and development. To assure officials of his
responsibility as a father, he added that when his circumstances improved, or he could pawn
some goods, he would return for his daughters and pay the necessary tuition.

640

In this way

Guadalajara’s poor used the charity house as a temporary space of patriarchal control for young
girls.
Children and relatives also used the language of patriarchy in their solicitations to the charity
house. In 1900, Dolores Torres reasoned with the Director of Beneficence that her own
circumstances were the product of an absent father. To make her case for assistance she claimed
that he abandoned her and her two brothers, leaving them with few resources to survive. Not
only did her father not perform his duties in providing for the family financially, his absence had
left her without protection. As a result she lost her virginity before marriage when she entered
into an illicit relationship with a man who she claimed “seduced and abandoned” her. Lacking
the support of her father, Dolores sought the aid of the Casa to step in and help care for her
young brothers.

641

Similarly, a request for admission by Juana Peréz de Uribe, the widowed

grandmother of six year old Angel Uribe, recognized the Casa as a place where Angel might
benefit from male role models. She acknowledged that Angel’s mother was a prostitute, and
until now it was Juana who had provided him with clothing, food and education.

642

Given the

nature of his mother’s work and the fact that Angel took the surname of his mother, it is likely
that he was an illegitimate child. The fact that Angel was six years old, the age at which children
were first admitted to elementary school, indicated his grandmother’s desire for him to receive a
640
641

AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, Box 158, 1870-1887, f. 875.

AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, “Solicitas,” 1900, Box 177, f. 9002919.
642
“Solicitas,” 1892-1893, Box 160bis.
236

proper education and training for a future job. In the absence of a father, Angel would have
strong male role models in the form of Casa teachers and priests and be reared and educated in a
manner that was expected of the nineteenth-century family and patriarch.
Single mothers who lacked the support of a male patriarch also viewed the Casa as an
asylum to protect the honor of their daughters. In 1889, the mother of 16 year old Cecilia
Villavicencio believed her daughter would be best living under the “strict care and vigilance” of
the Casa. The solicitation explained that Cecilia, who was “completely poor” but from a good
family “wished to live honestly.” She needed to flee her home due to the threat of seduction.
Fearing it would lead to “terrible and irremediable consequences,” the request to the Director of
Beneficence sought charity in order to “free her of disgrace.” In exchange, it asked that she
attend school or serve as an assistant to the female director, Señora Luz Herrera, for three or four
months. The request went on to say that it understood the director to be someone who was
“favorable toward those who suffered and yearned for the protection of virtue.” One day later
the director obliged, placing Cecilia in the Casa temporarily.

643

This was true for Francisca

Martínez, although married her husband was absent. Fearing she was unable to “control” her
“dangerous” daughter, she requested that she stay in the Casa.

644

Children who lived temporarily and permanently at the charity house truly lived in a
“vigilant” and cloistered manner. Highly regimented daily routines which varied according to
sex reflected the ways in which the institution served as an asylum to preserve female honor and
maintain important gender, class and age distinctions. On most days boys and girls woke up at
6:00 a.m., washed, made their bed and attended Mass at 7:30 a.m. By 8:00 a.m. children began

643
644

AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, “Solicitas,” Box 159, f. 889-833.
Ibid, 901-5706.
237

classes, followed by Catechism with the priest. Although segregated, boys and girls studied some
subjects in common such as reading, writing, math, grammar, and geography, which the
institution believed were “absolutely necessary in order to be able to progress” in their future
jobs. School was interrupted from 12:00-2:00 p.m. for lunch and the customary siesta, or nap.
Afterwards children worked in the shop or learned gender appropriate trades until 5:30 in the
evening. These courses focused on certain trades taught at the Casa. Girls mastered sewing and
labors of the hand “appropriate to their sex” such as washing, ironing, cooking, embroidery,
sewing and knitting, while boys might be trained in crafts such as shoemaking or carpentry. As a
way to foster the moral and religious training at the heart of the institution, children ended their
day with recitation of the rosary and prayer from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m., followed by supper and
bedtime. The monotony of their cloistered lives varied only on Sundays and feast days when
classes ended early and boys in good standing were allowed to leave the Casa chaperoned by
their male teachers. Administrators believed it was good for the young boys to take in fresh air
and get exercise. The girls who lived at the institution were denied this right and were only
allowed to go out into the patios of the charity house. Even then girls were under the strict
vigilance of their female teachers.

645

As a result, from as early as the age of six when boys and

girls began attending formal classes the Casa’s employees represented parent figures; teaching
children their appropriate gender roles and responsibilities within Mexican society. Boys were to
grow up to be men with a trade or profession and to be productive members of society, while
girls were raised to understand their role in the home as household managers, mothers and wives.
645

It is important to note that by 1883 the regulations do not specify whether or not this also
applied to girls, although it appears that under the Sisters of Charity it was still a rule.
AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de Caridad,”
Article 5, Box 1, 1789-1849, 20-21; AHJ, Beneficiencia B-6, Reglamentos y Leyes, “Reglamento
del Hospicio de Guadalajara,” 1883, f. 883-5937.
238

Undoubtedly the distinctions made between boys and girls stemmed from a desire to protect the
honor of its female pupils. While boys had access to the public sphere and all its potential
dangers, girls remained secluded and “protected” from public dangers behind the stone walls of
the Casa de Caridad.

646

The idea that girls needed to be kept off of city streets and therefore out of harm’s way to
protect their honor is evident in the codes that regulated when orphaned children were allowed to
leave; what was called a “definitive exit.” Regulations suggest that both boys and girls were free
to leave when they were of a “competent age” and able to work outside the Casa, usually by age
fourteen. In practice however, it appears that girls stayed at the institution for a much longer
period than did boys. In many cases they stayed until regulations forced them out at the age of
twenty four, or evidence emerged that they had family or relations living in the city capable of
“protecting” them.

647

Although regulations prior to 1849 did not specify an exact age for boys,

later regulations mandated that boys exit by the age of twelve and in some cases be forcibly
removed. According to documentation, officials expressed concern that sexually mature boys
and girls might lead to the romantic mingling within the home. Casa administrators took such
matters extremely seriously, going so far as to request the removal of the blind boy Daniel
Robles in 1895. At thirteen, passed the age at which boys were to leave, Robles had apparently
caused some “inconveniences.” Although correspondence did not provide specific details, it
suggested they related to his “advanced puberty.” As a result Casa workers punished him by

646

For a discussion of the gendered distinctions between the private and public sphere see
Chapter four.
647
Evidence from Casa documents shows that girls who exhibited a desire to leave had to have
proof that they could work and support themselves or have relatives that could serve as their
guardians. See cases AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, “Salidas
Definiativas,” 1894, Box 163, f. 894-1666, Exp 374 and f. 894-5564, Exp 213.
239

isolating him from the rest of the children. The director then petitioned the Department of
Beneficence to remove Robles from the school, citing both his transgressions and the fact that he
had passed the age designated in the ordinances as reasons for which he “should no longer enjoy
the grace of beneficence.”

648

Although the response from the Department of Beneficence was

lukewarm, recommending the boy stay on until they resolved the “incident,” the rule exemplified
the gender distinctions inherent in protecting sexual honor. While it is unclear what Daniel did
to justify his swift exit, his case reveals the greater need to preserve the honor of girls. Barely
allowed outside the confines of the charity house, Casa administrators were better able to
monitor and prevent female interactions with the opposite sex, but there were few controls that
could be placed upon them with boys inside the home. For this reason, the only way to prevent
the comingling of the sexes would be to relinquish boys at a younger age, as they were
considered to be the less vulnerable of the sexes and in less need of protection than girls.

649

Just

as the patriarch of the home was chief guardian of female sexual honor, the Casa de Caridad
took measures to carry out this obligation by preventing girls the opportunity to have sexual
encounters or be influenced by the sexual desires of young men.

Defining Proper Mothers
In later years, as the needs of the poor became greater and space more limited at the Casa,
the institution redirected its concern for female honor toward mothers. By 1883, new regulations
which sought to admit only the most deserving and respectable poor required mothers to provide
648

AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, Box 165 bis, 895-1930; See also AHJ,
Beneficiencia B-6, Reglamentos y Leyes, “Reglamentos del Hospicio de Guadalajara,” 1883, f.
883-5937, Chapter 3, Article 28.
649
AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Box 1, 1789-1849.
240

documentation to substantiate their claims of insolvency and confirm the legitimacy of their
children. Changes to the solicitation process to admit only the legitimately-born was a shift in
practice from previous years.

650

While it undoubtedly served to cut admissions, it also

demonstrated that the charity house took part in a wider nineteenth-century debate focused on
defining the limits of proper nineteenth-century motherhood.
Accepted documentation included birth certificates indicating names of the father and
mother, death certificates (in the case of widowhood), and insolvency reports from creditable
sources. Instituted after 1883, the new state mandated regulation created a much more
bureaucratic admission policy making it easier to isolate and turn away certain sectors of the
poor. Acquiring documents in the nineteenth century was not an easy task for the poor, as
certified legal documents cost money. In 1894 Margarita Lomelí, a widow with two daughters,
told the Department of Beneficence she was only able to provide partial documentation to meet
its requirements. She explained that she was unable to secure the death certificate for her
husband because she could not afford it, as each document cost fifty centavos.

651

A similar fate

met the teenage Carmen Ramírez that same year when she requested a place for her four year old
sister, María Quintero. Cármen, who was single and worked as a domestic, explained that the
sisters had been orphaned by their parents forcing her to take work in someone’s home. Her low
paying job and the nature of her work prevented her from caring for her little sister. Therefore,
she hoped that through the “true charity” of the Casa de Caridad her sister might finally receive
the “education and care” that Cármen felt unable to provide “due to her “complete poverty.” In

650

AHJ, Maríano Coronado, “Bases Reglamentos del Hospicio de Guadalajara,” 1883, Chapter
2, Article 3, Beneficiencia, B-6, Reglamentos y Leyes, c. 240, f. 883-5937.
651
AHJ, Caja 164 bis, f. 894-5607, exp 165.
241

the end, the charity house denied María Quintero admission because Cármen failed to provide
accompanying justification to substantiate her story.
Ultimately, the new regulations aimed to prove that those requesting charity were both honest
and honorable individuals, and therefore deserving of public charity. Honor was central to an
1888 solicitation from the unmarried Luisa García. Having two children born out of wedlock she
felt a greater need to attest to her own good reputation and asked others to do the same in
supporting documents. In the request, Luisa explained that she was the mother of two little boys,
Salavador age 6 and Miguel age 3, who “without a father, nor fortune, suffered” in her care. The
letter described Luisa as “celibate,” a possible indication that she had remained chaste since
having her children. Although unmarried, it is unclear whether Luisa had a lover who died or
whether she was abandoned when she wrote that for the last four years she “had found herself
entirely isolated without resources or protection from anyone.” Given her circumstances she
sought “official charity” to “save her innocent children. . . [who are] victims of misery.”
Attached to her request was a letter of support attesting to her “honesty and good conduct” and
“the urgent necessity” which forced her to solicit aid from the government. A letter signed by
ten different men indicated that they knew Luisa for many years and could attest that she was
“completely honorable and poor.”

652

The case reflects a shift in the importance attached to a

mother’s honor in the Casa de Caridad by the late nineteenth century.
At the same time mothers utilized the language of honor to secure aid to their children. Such
was the case for the widowed Eucebia Ybarra. In 1888 she solicited the Department of
Beneficence on behalf of her two daughters twelve year old Ysabel and seven year old Refugio
Martínez. Described as honorable, she concluded however that her current “necessity . . .
652

AHJ, Box 159, 1888-1889, f. 888-827
242

exposed her honor to danger.” Although brief, the remark suggests the distinction that both
Eucebia and state beneficence workers likely made between the honorable and dishonorable
poor. In providing assistance to honorable women state welfare organizations hoped to prevent
the respectable women from turning to crime and vices like prostitution to earn money.
Understanding this, Eusebia was able to appeal to official concerns regarding the honor of
mothers. Days later a letter from a male relative confirmed Eusebia’s integrity and her two
daughters were admitted.

653

Thus, honor formed an integral part in defining a proper mother in

the nineteenth century, particularly those deserving of charity at the Casa de Caridad.
When compared with the ideal Republican mother, the many poor unmarried mothers who
Casa workers and state beneficence agents encountered often stood in stark contrast. In addition
to the mothers who actively solicited a “place of mercy” for their children and were free to visit
and eventually return for them, the Casa sheltered abandoned children. Guadalajara newspapers
demonized mothers who abandoned their children as “ungrateful,” “cruel” and “evil.” One article
directed its outrage toward the mother, calling out her lack of natural maternal instinct and
juxtaposing her with the “good” and caring woman who found the child and brought it to the
Casa de Caridad.

654

In 1900, religious reformers extolled the virtues of motherhood and maternal instinct. In her
manual on women’s education, the Spanish born Faustina Saez de Melgar, recited a parable in
which the moral was that all women had maternal instinct. In her story a woman confessed to her
priest that she killed her first three children immediately after their birth by hurling them into the
ocean. As her penance, the priest told that woman that she must raise her fourth child for a
653
654

AHJ, “Receta de asilados,” C. 159, 1888-1889, f. 888-827 and 889-830.

See articles, “Madre Ingrata,” March 8, 1899, El Sol de Guadalajara, Diario de la Tarde
; “Mujer Cruel,” El Sol de Guadalajara, Diario de la Tarde, May 17, 1900.
243

minimum of two months to absolve her of her sins. Two months after her fourth child was born,
she admitted to feeling a strange sensation she had never felt before, “a pure pleasure that
equaled no other pleasures she had ever felt.” Her natural instincts of maternity kicked in. Saez
de Melgar goes on to say that the “innocent creatures” which she had "kissed and thrown into the
ocean like a crazy woman" had been her "angel of salvation." The woman in the story became a
“good mother” and an “honorable woman through the blessed influence of lactation and of
maternity.”

655

The story highlights women’s natural inclinations toward motherhood to evoke a

sense of normalcy in women’s roles as mothers. Those who did not fit into the stereotype of a
selfless mother, or felt unable to care for their children, were “crazy” and dishonorable. Other
researchers suggest popular beliefs that women’s desire to be a mother was both “natural” and
“instinctual.” Being a mother was something that all women “desired in order to meet their
social and biological function as reproducers and good mothers.”

656

Emphasis placed on

motherhood and women’s natural inclinations of maternity limited women’s ability to have other
social functions. In Mexico, women who rejected or rebelled against maternity set a bad example
for society. As one article written in Mexico City in 1886 suggested, shunning motherhood was
criminal.

657

children.”

658

Other journalists believed that a good mother was to act as a “slave to her
“Buenas maneras,” or good customs, posited that honorable motherhood required

legal and lawful marriage. Bourgeois ideas excluded a large population of poor women who
655
656

BPEJ, #758, doc 1, Saez de Melgar, “Educación cristian y social de la mujer,” 30-31.

Verena Radkau, “Imágenes de la mujer en la sociedad porfirista. Viejos mitos en ropaje
nuevo,” Encuentro, Vol 4, num.3, (1987), 27.
657
Antonio de P. Moreno, “La Madre,” en Artículos sobre diversos asuntos (México, 1886), 5860.
658
“¿Por qué la mujer debe ser más pura que el hombre?” in El Imperio, núm 24 (Guadalajara,
March 24, 1866), 3.
244

faced greater barriers to marriage due to frequent urban mobility which separated families and
created an imbalance in the sex ratio.

659

Therefore the honor of poor mothers was more often

suspect, given that consensual unions and illegitimacy were customary among the poorer and
rural classes in Mexico.

660

Elite concerns over abandonment therefore focused attention on the

women involved, as it was widely understood that motherhood was a natural inclination. Women
who lacked such tendencies were suspect, regardless of the material or social circumstances
surrounding a child’s birth.
Although poor mothers frequently abandoned children anonymously, as shown by the many
children left at the Casa or remitted there by police, mothers arrested and tried for abandoning
infants faced criminal prosecution. Between 1868 and 1905 the Guadalajara criminal court
system convicted and punished thirteen mothers with abandonment of an infant, with the average
sentence of between one and two years jail time. Only crimes like robbery, adultery and assault
averaged similar sentences.

661

While their mother’s served their sentences, judges sent the

children to live at the Casa de Caridad. This was the fate of Lorto Ramírez whose mother
Urbana Macías abandoned him at only eight days old. Macías worked as a shawl braider and
migrated to Guadalajara from the nearby state of Guanajuato. The judge in her case ordered that
she serve a one year prison sentence, and remitted her baby to the Casa.

659

662

While some scholars

Manuel Antonio Carreño, Manuel de urbanidad y buenas maneras para uso de la juventud
de ambos sexos (México, 1874), 443. Reprinted, 1970; See Chapter four.
660
Francisco Bulnes, La verdad acerca de la revolución Mexicana (New York, 1916), 302;
Moises González Navarro, “El Porfiriato, vida social,” Historia Moderna de México (Mexico:
Editorial Hermes, 1957), 320.
661
AHJ , Libros de Penenticiaría, “Album de sentenciados: Deptaramento de Mujeres 18681873,” and “Procesados Mujeres, 1880-1905.”
662
AHJ Libros de Penitenciaria Procesados Mujeres, 1880-1905 (10 bis B) and AHJ,
Beneficiencia Caja 165 bis, 895-2026.
245

argue that abandonment was the product of a changing urban landscape filled with war, illness,
unemployment and poverty, reformers and elites of the time blamed child abandonment on the
“malas costumbres,” or so-called bad customs or influences of the poor.

663

In Jalisco,

newspapers derided the physical and moral defects associated with Guadalajara’s underclass as
“alcoholic,” disease-ridden, uneducated, prone to “amasiato (unwed lovers), abandonment, [and]
excessive filth.” In general, journalists and reformers attacked the poor who they perceived
lacked “principles of morality.”

664

In this way singleness and non-marriage as characteristics of

a poor lifestyle became intrinsically linked to the problem of child abandonment, a problem left
to the Casa de Caridad. In these cases, mothers who abandoned their children were undeserving
mothers in the eyes of the Casa.
From the perspective of Casa workers, police, and criminal court judges, certain women
were unfit for the responsibilities of motherhood. It would become the duty of the charity house
to take in and care for the children of “bad” mothers. A mother who had difficulty caring for her
children, however, did not always abandon nor wish to separate from her child. In these
instances police and court judges passed judgment on women to determine whether or not a child
should be forcibly separated and placed at the Casa, in effect defining the role of a proper
mother. This was true for Julia Amador, the mother of six year old Horacio Martínez. In the
spring of 1894, police found Horacio wandering the streets of the city without an adult guardian.
Through some detective work officers discovered Julia later that day in a “complete state of
drunkenness.” Public drunkenness was both a crime, and from an elite perspective a so-called
characteristic of the immoral lives of the lower classes. Interestingly after locating Julia police
663

Armida de la Vara de González, “Los ceros sociales,” in Obras completas de Luis González
y González. Volume 4 of El Indio en la era liberal (Mexico: Clío, 1996), 367.
664
BPEJ, El Globo. Guadalajara, November 1, 1910.
246

did not reunite mother and son, but instead took Horacio to the city jail and eventually
“deposited” him in the Casa. The reason for this is unclear. Space at the Casa in 1894 was
extremely hard to come by, and it does not appear that Julia spent time in jail because she does
not show up in any criminal records. Therefore, it seems the decision to remove Horacio from
her custody was one made by police officials, possibly linked to abusive authority by police who
took revenge on poor women. What is clear is that Julia did not appreciate police efforts and
quickly went to work to try to reclaim her son. It would take several months before Casa workers
permitted little Horacio to leave with his mother.

665

At other times, city police defined the limits of motherhood. In the autumn of 1888 cuartel
police wrote to the governor’s office regarding the state in which they had encountered the
mother of María Cardenas. In the letter they stated that the mother, Marta Rota was “completely
poor and unable to move.” They described Rota as an “invalid” who did not leave her bed.
Marta had come to Guadalajara with her husband from the hardscrabble farming village of
Zapotlán el Grande, but shortly after he passed away leaving seven year old María in the care of
her mother. Police commented that because the girl had no “protection in the city” she was
susceptible to “danger” as a young woman without anyone watching her. For this reason, before
even receiving a response from the Beneficience office, cuartel police removed the girl from the
home, presumably placing her in police custody.

666

After 1833, the administration of the Casa would be predominantly female and at its zenith
(1859-1874) run by the Sisters of Charity. In this way the institution stands out from others, such
as state and local governments, courts and police forces. Perhaps in dealing mostly with young

665
666

AHJ, Beneficiencia, C. 164, f. 894-5582 and 894-5577.
AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, C 159, 1888, f. 888.
247

children both the Catholic Church and the city and state officials who supported the institution
believed its leadership should be those most suited to tend to the young. In doing so they looked
to celibate nuns to be pious and honorable representatives of motherhood. In this way the charity
house not only took up the role of patriarch through its efforts at protecting the city’s poor, but
also as mother, further highlighting the ways in which it defined appropriate roles for mothers.
This is clearly exhibited through the care that the institution provided, its emphasis on education,
and the active role of its frequently female staff, which would epitomize the proper nineteenthcentury mother.
It was the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter that poor unmarried and widowed
mothers so often were unable to provide for their children that sent them to the charity house.
When children arrived they were divided according to their needs in several different
departments. In the Casa de Cuna wet-nurses partnered with infants until the age of two.

667

Therefore, in the earliest stages of life with the help of other mothers who worked as wet-nurses,
the Casa de Caridad was able to meet the most basic and vital need given to a child by their
mother. After infancy, children were divided into one of two departments for poor and orphaned
children. By the age of six (seven in later years), boys and girls were segregated and spent much
of their day attending primary schooling.

668

In between classes, the charity house provided

children’s daily meals. Breakfast consisted of some form of warm beverage, such as chocolate or
atole, accompanied by milk and bread. The midday meal was much larger and typically

667

There were live-in wetnurses and in some instances children were sent out to live with their
nurse. AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Caja 1, 1789-1849, Article 8, 37; AHJ, Beneficiencia, 1860, C. 157, f. 860.
668
AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Caja 1, 1789-1849, Article 5; AHJ, “Bases Reglamentos del Hospicio de Guadalajara,”
1883, Chapter 3, Article 23.
248

included soup, meat, beans and tortillas. In addition children had a small supper of leftover meat,
rice, potatoes or beans. Besides food, the Casa had a strict dress code which required each child
be provided with his or her own uniform. Boys were furnished a jacket, vest, pants, shirt, socks,
shoes, underwear and a hat, while girls received a shawl, blouse, skirt, jacket, petticoats, and
shoes.

669

By the latter part of the nineteenth century however, it was not only the basic needs of
clothing, food and shelter which mothers felt obligated to provide their children. Increasingly
petition letters sought assistance from the Casa de Caridad for education. Widower Juan Curel,
implied that the education of his eleven year old daughter Guadalupe was the responsibility of a
mother. For this reason, he expressed his wish for Guadalupe to attend school at the charity
house because she “lacked a mother to attend to her education.”

670

Although it is unknown

whether or not the Casa admitted Guadalupe, the case demonstrates the weight of a mother’s
responsibility to educate her children, a charge that was especially difficult for mothers without
means. This was the sentiment of a 1903 solicitation request from the widow Trinidad Carillo.
She explained that because she was blind she was unable to provide her children an education,
without which she believed her children would “suffer.”

671

Education at the Casa was a fundamental part of its mission to reform the poor by giving
their children “Christian and civil instruction” in order that they become “self-sufficient, with
solid spiritual and moral convictions to have an impact beneficially on the whole

669

AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, “Tipo de Alimentación,” March 20,
1895, C. 165 bis, f. 895-5619; Ibid., Article 8.
670
AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, “Solicitas,” C. 181, 901-5706.
671

AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, “Solicitas,” C. 183 bis, 1902, f. 9023066.
249

community.”

672

Such goals paralleled demands on mothers in Latin America and Mexico,

whose supreme goal was to educate and raise “orderly and productive citizens” for the good of
the emerging nation. New emphasis on the patriotic role of mothers required they be both
educated and honorable in order to lead by example.

673

There could be no greater “mother” to

serve as a role model and educator to the children of the poor than the pious order of French nuns
who would come to run the establishment by 1859. The wars for Independence disrupted reform
work at the Casa, forcing the home to close its doors for long periods from 1810 to 1829 and
again from 1836 to 1845. It was not until the Sisters of Charity took over, well-respected for
their educational and social work, that the establishment entered its “golden age.”

674

So

noteworthy were their educational achievements that shortly after in 1860 they opened an
exclusive all girl academy in the Casa. Classes at the school were taught by the best male and
675

female professors in the city and catered to the most prominent Tapatía families.

The school

served the needs of Jalisco’s elite by offering an exclusive European education to their
daughters, at the same time the academy boosted revenue for the charity house. Whereas poor
girls acquired a basic education with training in traditionally female trades and domestic work,
elite girls gained a much broader education. In addition to basic courses in reading, writing,

672
673

Ibid.

See Chapter 2; Ruggiero, Modernity in the Flesh, 27. Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 15;
BPEJ, Misc, #73, 1“Instruccion PriMaría, informe que el Inspector general de Instruccion
PriMaría del Estado de Jalisco” by Lopez Cotilla. (GDL, 1851); BPEJ, Miscellaneous, #291, doc
2, Lorento del Pozzo, “La Famila,” 107-110.
674
Under the administration of the Sisters of Charity, and incidently its first female director, the
institution emerged from a terrible period into the “edad de oro.” See José López Portillo y
Weber, Guadalajara, el Hospicio Cabañas y su fundador (Guadalajara: Gobierno del Estado,
1982), 63-64
675
Ibid., 69.
250

math and grammar, the daughters of the elite learned drawing, French, English, geometry,
geography, botany and music.

676

Incidentally during the tenure of the Sisters of Charity the institution became predominantly
female-run, employing the first female director and hiring a large percentage of women to work
as nurses, teachers and staff. In many ways the women of the Casa de Caridad embodied the
ideal of the “Republican mother.” Both the nuns and the live-in female workers who were in
charge of childcare, cleaning, cooking, nursing and teaching at the establishment possessed the
expected moral virtues of selfless and pious women who were educated and performed domestic
work. Not only this, but they remained within the confines of the home. In this way the lessons
girls learned at the Casa emphasized discipline in the confinement of the home, teaching young
girls how to become selfless wives and learn the domestic arts associated with marriage and the
home. By extension this also prepared them to work as nannies and domestic servants. For the
girls without mothers or separated from them, the women of the Casa served as strong examples
of the proper comportment, refinement and manners expected of women.

677

Even elite families

felt safe entrusting the Sisters of Charity with the moral and practical development of their
daughters. Thus, the sisters of the Casa de Caridad played an important role in both defining and
performing the duties of a suitable nineteenth-century mother. Often the elite ideals they passed
down to young girls contrasted greatly from the lives of their own mothers, many of whom were
poor, unmarried or widowed, and had little choice but to work outside the home.

676
677

BPEJ, Miscellaneous 73, doc 10, “Colegio de niñas en el hospicio,” (Guadalajara, 1863).

Valentina Torres Septién, “Un ideal femenino: Los manuales de urbanidad, 1850-1900,” in
Gabriela Cano y Georgette José Valenzuela, Cuatro estudios de género en el México urbano del
siglo XIX (Mexico: PUEG-UNAM, 2001), 97-127.
251

Preserving the Patriarchal Family and Home
In addition to offering poor children good examples of motherhood, the Casa de Caridad did
its best to model a proper nineteenth-century home within a large bureaucratic institution. From
the perspective of reformers, those it served were the product of broken homes, through
abandonment, non-marriage, crime, illness or death. Therefore, it sought to mold children within
the context of the ideal patriarchal setting of home and family. From its inception in 1805,
Bishop Cabañas intended the Casa de Caridad to serve as a home for the poor. At the head of the
home was the King of Spain, “the great father of families” who directed the institution and its
workers to “cultivate the children of the inhabitants” of Mexico.

678

Eventually this authority

transitioned first into the hands of the Sisters of Charity and eventually the state. It appears that
the organization operated under its preliminary regulations from 1805 until 1874. At that point
the state modified and streamlined the original bylaws, although some consistencies remained in
its overall direction.

679

Well into the nineteenth century however, it continued to emphasize the

important role of patriarchy. From its efforts to preserve the patriarchal family when it existed,
and create one when it did not, the Casa served to rectify the wrongs of the nineteenth-century
family and home and deal with the problems created by singleness and widowhood.
Ultimately the goal of the Casa de Caridad was to preserve the patriarchal family when
possible. For this reason it accepted boys and girls when they had no parents or when their
parents demonstrated an inability to provide them “rearing or education” due to their “great
poverty.” However, in the case of adults its admission policies were much more limited. The
678

AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Caja 1, 1789-1849, 3.
679
AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Caja 1, (1789-1849), Article 3, 10-11; AHJ, Beneficiencia B-6, Reglamentos y Leyes,
“Reglamentos del Hospicio de Guadalajara,” 1883, f. 883-5937.
252

only instances in which adults were accepted at the charity house were in cases where they could
not work due to a lack of education or physical disability. In these cases, the regulations of the
institution allowed wives or children to accompany adults, and even specified that they must be
housed together. Evidence from the institution suggests that such cases were extremely rare, as
the majority of adults that resided within the Casa were often elderly and without family. The
marital family unit was extremely important symbolically and palpably and the Casa’s
ordinances preserved family cohesion as best it could.

680

In the absence of a patriarch the Casa assumed the role of father, as a majority of the children
who arrived each day had no fathers providing them protection, education and sustenance, and in
some cases no parents at all. While it was common for children of illegitimate birth to take the
surname of their mother, orphans who arrived at the establishment frequently had no last or first
name. Hence, the Sisters of Charity are credited with beginning the practice of giving orphaned
children of unknown parentage the surname Cabañas, after the institution’s founder. Similarly
the nuns instituted the practice at the Hospital de Belén, where they gave babies the name
Alcalde, after the city’s first bishop and founder of the hospital. In this way the charity house
acknowledged itself as a patriarchal figure in the life of orphaned children. The gesture of
naming a child after the institution’s founder, Juan Ruíz Cabañas, implies the “parent-child”
relationship that Casa workers assumed between the institution and the young children it raised.
Just as the King of Spain had been the “father” of the poor, the former bishop, revered for his
work with the less fortunate, became the symbolic figure of paternity to the city’s unwanted
children. In this way a makeshift family was forged. Even in cases where a child’s parents were
680

AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Caja 1, (1789-1849), Article 3, 10-11; AHJ, Beneficiencia B-6, Reglamentos y Leyes,
“Reglamentos del Hospicio de Guadalajara,” 1883, f. 883-5937.
253

known it appears that Casa workers used the surname to differentiate which children it had
raised from infancy.
Although the Casa acknowledged that taking in orphans was not its principal function, the
institution prided itself on caring for “the innocent classes of abandoned children.” According
to its original ordinances orphans “formed the pious heart of the institution” and their care was
most “precious” because they had no other family.

681

The case of Beatriz Cabañas sheds light on

the significance of the Cabañas surname and the bond of family that it sometimes created.
Beatriz was born in 1874 in Atotonilco del Alto, a small pueblo in the mountains north of
Guadalajara. Found abandoned at three months city officials in Atotonilco sent the baby to
Guadalajara to live at the Casa de Caridad. All that officials from Atotonilco knew about the
baby was that her father’s name was Felipe Sánchez and that she was not yet baptized. Given
her age when she arrived, clergy within the charity house quickly administered the sacrament of
baptism. Interestingly enough, despite the fact that the baby’s father was known Casa workers
christened the child Beatriz Cabañas. Beatriz would spend much of her childhood and young
adult life at the institution, presumably making her way through its various departments
beginning with the foundling home where she was nursed to the school for orphaned girls where
she would receive a basic education and training. At the age of twenty Beatriz still lived at the
home, and was by that time employed as an assistant to the director of a new correctional
department. It was very common for female residents to remain at the home until the age of
twenty four, after which regulations required they set out on their own. It is doubtful however
that they did not assist them in any way, or help them to find work. Frequently, because of this
681

AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Caja 1, (1789-1849), Article 3, “Clases de pobres que se admitan,” 8; Title 3, Section
21, 14.
254

regulation and in accordance with others that allowed exemplary orphans of “good
comportment” to be hired as employees, girls stayed on to work as department assistants,
nannies, nurses, maids, and short order cooks.

682

By 1897 upon turning legal age, it appears

Beatriz departed the Casa to make a life for herself in Guadalajara. Her freedom was short lived
however, because by the fall of the following year Beatriz wrote Casa administrators asking to
be re-admitted. In her request she explained the “motives” for which she left had “ceased” and
now she wished to return because she was completely “alone” and without family. Sadly, the
charity house did not accept Beatriz back, due to age limits.

683

As a child raised in the institution

and branded with the Cabañas name, the only “home” that Beatriz knew was the charity house.
In this way, particularly for the children of Cabañas, the establishment served as her only sense
of protection and family.
Despite the outcome for Beatriz, the sense of family at the Casa was fundamental to its
objectives and taken quite seriously by administrators who strictly adhered to their patriarchal
duties. They understood that children learned their proper place in society within the home from
parents who taught sons and daughters civil and moral virtues. Just as the role of father and
mother was to instruct and guide children, this too would be the role of the Casa de Caridad in
the lives of the children it served. By giving them a civil and religious education they would be
“rehabilitated . . . for their own happiness and for the public good.” Imitating the duties expected
of male heads of household in nineteenth-century Mexico, regulations advised that children were
to be instructed with “love and gentleness” in “Christian doctrine, buenas costumbres,
682
683

AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección, C.164 bis, exp 203, f. 894-5617.

The details of Beatriz’ life were pieced together using two separate documents found in the
Beneficence records at the AHJ. The first was an employee roster for the year 1894, and later her
solicitation request to re-enter the home in 1898. AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de
Protección, C. 166, f. 896-2083; C.170, f. 897-5652
255

moderation, fear of God, respect for sacred things, and obedience to their superiors.”

684

Such

objectives encompassed what was divided into two categories of education: civil and religious.
In the same way that fathers and mothers taught their children how to perform their
appropriate class and gender roles in society, a civil education in trades and domestic skills was
intended to mold orphaned children into upstanding spouses and parents. While such skills were
often passed down from parents this became part of the training at the Casa to help the children
of the poor support themselves and become hardworking members of society after leaving the
institution. This also helps to explain the much earlier exit of boys, typically at age twelve, from
girls who frequently stayed on until their mid-twenties. In addition to a basic education, boys
studied under male teachers to learn trades. These same teachers served as guardians to the boys
when allowed free time on Sundays and feast days. Once boys had reached what was a
considered a “competent age” and exhibited maturity, the Casa placed them in apprenticeships
with reputable artisans such as silversmiths, carpenters, painters, masons and stonecutters. From
both their male teachers and those they apprenticed with the charity house provided boys with
mentors and a modest career in order to become working members of society and sustain a
family.
Casa workers expected girls, however, to “proceed with the precautions required of their
sex.” Their most important role models were their female nuns and teachers who prepared poor
girls for their roles as wives and mothers through classes in sewing, knitting, ironing, and
cooking. Additionally, staying on to work at the Casa as maids, nurses, nannies and cooks taught
them skills useful for traditional female occupations. The ultimate goal however was to marry

684

AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Caja 1, (1789-1849), Title 3, Section 23, 16.
256

685

girls off to “working artisans of buenas costumbres.”

The Casa was also much more

protective of female orphans. While boys needed to find work, the honor of girls was of primary
importance. In the event that girls could not be placed under the supervision and “protection” of
kin or a husband, the Casa made it a priority to find them work in the homes of respected city
residents as domestic servants. Girls were frequently hired out once they had reached adulthood
if they “lacked family to protect” them. This became a reality for María Agustina who at twenty
four was no longer able to remain at the Casa, and because she “lacked family to protect” her
was sent to live in the home of Luisa Azpeitia Palomar de Morett.

686

In other cases, when a girl

reached legal age she might also petition to leave on the basis that she was able to find honest
work. Rafael Cabañas made such a request in 1894, on the grounds that she had knowledge of
“embroidery, textiles and other manual labors.”

687

While the much later exit of girls at twenty-

four might be connected to the legal “age of majority” for women, the difference in the age of
exit for boys and girls was connected to preserving the honor of its young female residents.

688

By sending girls out to work in reputable homes or occupations, the Casa both protected their
honor and reinforced class expectations for the children of the poor.
Class was also reinforced through education. By 1859 the direction of the charity house
became increasingly influenced by its private donors who insisted the Sisters of Charity take

685
686
687
688

Ibid., Article 5, 24-26.
AHJ, Beneficence, “Salidas Definitivas,” C. 163, 894-1666, Exp 374.
AHJ, “Salidas Definitivas,” Leg 213, 894-5564

For a discussion see, Seed, Patricia. To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico:Conflicts
Over Marriage Choice, 1574-1821. (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1988); Socolow,
Susan Migden. The Women of Colonial Latin America. (Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University
Press, 2000).
257

689

over the management of the institution.

Wealthy patrons many of whom were of the political

and economic elite within the state of Jalisco, hoped to see the Sisters of Charity open a private
school for their daughters.

690

In 1861 the Casa opened the prestigious Colegio de Niñas for

girls from the most prominent Tapatía families with classes taught by the best professors in the
city.

691

At the Casa education of poor girls emphasized a basic primary school education

combined with the practice of domestic skills so that they would be able to work both inside and
outside the home. In the Colegio de Niñas however, elite girls received a competitive education
from the French order of nuns. To prepare them for a well to do marriage, the school offered
advanced courses in math and science and challenging classes in Castilian grammar and French.
In addition, they had the opportunity to learn fine arts by taking lessons in piano, singing and
drawing. Such classes varied drastically from the sewing, cooking and ironing lessons given to
poor girls. The education of elite girls was not intended to prepare them for a life of work,
assuming they would have servants and maids, but instead trained them to be knowledgeable

689

José López Portillo y Weber, Guadalajara, El Hospicio Cabañas y Su fundador (Guadalajara:
Gobierno del Estado, 1982), 112-113; Rivera, Hospicio, 67.
690
Men like Juan Palomar who amassed his fortune through good dealings in trade. He assisted
economically in the construction of the Hospital de Belén and the Hospicio Cabañas. He was
alderman, deputy of the Congress of the Union from 1850-1851 and in 1853, temporary governor
of the state of Jalisco, as well as responsible for the management of Private Welfare of
Guadalajara. Others like Dionisio Rodríguez was director and principal benefactor of the School
of Arts and Trades (Escuela de Artes y Oficios) in Guadalajara, founded in 1841. In 1877 he was
recognized by the state for his philanthropic work in the city. See Anayanci Fregoso Centeno,
“Dolores Palomar Arias: 1898-1972. La familia y la religión en la construcción del sujeto” in
Siete historia de vida. Mujeres jaliscienses del siglo XX (Guadalajara: Universidad de
Guadalajara, 2006), 45-46; Colección de los decretos, circulares y órdenes de los Poderes
Legislativo y Ejecutivo del estado de Jalisco, Tomo 6 (Guadalajara: Tipografía de Banda,
Exconvento de Santa María de Gracia, 1878), 459-60.
691
Rivera, Hospicio Cabañas, 76-77.
258

companions and educators to their husband and children.

692

Although both poor and elite girls

were educated at the same institution and even shared materials and teachers, what separated
those who paid to attend the Colegio de Niñas from those who were extended charity for a basic
primary school education was a distinction between their future work and marriage
opportunities. In this way, the Casa prepared girls of different class backgrounds for their
proscribed roles in Guadalajara.
Although civil education was a cornerstone of the institution, its efforts to inculcate strong
morals and virtues were rooted in a long tradition of Christian education. Moral instruction also
presented children with strong role models and patriarchal figures in the form of priests. At least
two members of the clergy resided at the Casa to celebrate mass, administer sacraments and lead
catechism. Above all they were responsible for “promoting the exercise of piety and religion.”
In order to foster these goals the institution’s directives required that priests proctor exams on
Christian doctrine four times annually. Exams were open to the public and supervised by the
institution’s governing body the Junta de Caridad, which encouraged the attendance of the city’s
“fathers of families.”

693

By calling on male heads of the households the Casa hoped to continue

to educate those responsible for the Christian instruction of their families and allow them
opportunities to present themselves as good patriarchs, a role taken up by priests who guided the
flocks of poor and orphaned children of the charity house. At the same time priests as the
patriarchs of the institution, were responsible for doling out punishment and corrections.

692
693

694

BPEJ, Miscellaneous 73, doc 10, “Colegio de niñas en el hospicio,” (Guadalajara, 1863).

AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Caja 1, 1789-1849, Article 4, “Spiritual and Christian Instruction,” 17-18.
694
Ibid., Article 6, “Policing,” 29.
259

As a “home” for the poor, the Casa embodied the patriarchal idea of home and family that
was critical in the nineteenth century. This was especially true for children who lacked a father,
either from abandonment or as the sons and daughters of single and widowed mothers. The
patriarchal duties of a father were something that poor single or widowed mothers frequently
could not provide as they had a much greater financial strain on their one-parent households.
Limited in their work opportunities and financial resources they often sought the “protection” of
the Casa de Caridad. In these instances the charity house stepped in to meet patriarchal
obligations to rear and educate the children of the poor in order to guide them in their appropriate
roles in society. In this way, the Casa shaped the perimeters of the proper nineteenth-century
home as one with a strong sense of patriarchy to guide children in their spiritual, educational and
vocational work and offer protection or punishment when needed.

‘Sola’: Women without Family in the Casa de Caridad
The idea of the Casa as a patriarchal home of “protection” extended not only to the
children of single and widowed women, but to women themselves. In advanced age poor widows
or unmarried women who lacked the support of family could seek shelter at the charity house.
Casa administrators sympathized with women in extreme situations, such as the case of Juvencia
Alvarez. In 1894 she was elderly, unmarried, “alone” and in need of assistance as she explained
due to “her illnesses, advanced age, and the sad circumstances of not having a single family
member to take her in.”

695

The Casa extended assistance for women like Juvencia through its

department of ancianas, or elderly women. Although the institution did offer support to both
male and female beggars through separate departments for mendigos and mendigas (beggars),
695

894-1705 Exp 350
260

this aid was specifically geared toward those who were homeless and unable to work due to
permanent disabilities. Similar to the children educated at the charity house, Casa regulations
mandated the movement, behavior, dress, and actions of its adult residents according to sex,
suggesting a level of patriarchal control over those it deemed in need of reform.
The Casa provided both female beggars and elderly women with the basic necessities of
food, clothing and accommodations; in exchange it imposed rigid gender roles and restrictions
on their daily lives. Just like boys and girls, they housed adult men and women separately,
although all residents participated in the daily routine of the Casa, which in early years included
attending Mass and reciting prayer. Outside of these times, to prevent idleness they were to serve
the Casa in whatever capacity they were able according to their “abilities and condition.” Tasks
assigned to adults varied and were typically gendered. Adult males performed outdoor chores,
while women worked in the kitchen, nursery or washed clothing. Clothing was to be modest and
typically a peasant style, with blouses and skirts of thick course cotton. Women were expected to
dress simply without much adornment and keep their clothing clean to portray their “composure”
and “ honesty.” Casa rules did not permit men or women to leave without permission from the
administrator. The rule was “especially urgent” in regard to women who needed written
permission from the director. Bylaws allowed residents to share rooms with their “legitimate”
spouses, but it strictly forbade the admission of amacios, or unmarried lovers. There was great
concern in the Casa over “illicit correspondence” between men and women, so much so that it
made provisions for such circumstances. In the event that residents already admitted were found

261

to be residing together or having sexual relations, ordinances stipulated that they be encouraged
to marry. For these reasons, rules kept adult men and women separated.

696

Dictates at the Casa which governed women’s daily activities, wardrobes, the ability to
come and go as they pleased and even their love lives convey the sense of patriarchal control
imposed on single and widowed women who took refuge at the institution. They also speak to
the ways in which administrators perceived poor women, particularly in the rules which
stipulated appropriate behavior and dress. References to being clean, honest and legitimate
suggest heightened concern by Casa officials over the honor of its unmarried female residents
and a desire to monitor and reform them. Casa workers supervised and expected women to be
compliant and follow regulations. Adult women caught disobeying the rules faced repercussions.
In some instances charity house officials attempted to modify behaviors or use corporal
punishments.

697

More often punishments and corrections given to adult women demonstrated

the link between the charity house and other state institutions that policed the actions of
unattached women. For example, it was common for the charity house to remit individuals who
displayed delinquent behavior to city police. In 1897 when two beggar women from the home
were caught fighting they were promptly sent to police for “correction and protection.”

698

Similar measures were taken when Casa workers discovered adult residents stealing or
attempting to run away.

696

AHA, Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de
Caridad,” Caja 1, 1789-1849, Title 2, “De los Pobres Mendigos,” 7-14; AHJ, “Bases
Reglamentos del Hospicio de Guadalajara,” 1883, Chapter 5, “Asilo de Mendigos.”
697
Ibid, 23.
698

AHJ, C. 164bis, f. 894.
262

Adult women, especially those who were more vulnerable, were sometimes mistreated at the
Casa de Caridad. Although the indigenous population of Jalisco was small, some of the regions
previously more isolated indigenous groups began to migrate into the city during the Porfiriato
alongside other rural peasants. Under the Sisters of Charity complaints surfaced about the French
nuns treatment of Indian women both in their care at the charity house and in the city hospital.
Newspapers called attention to mistreatment at the hands of the sisters on the cadavers of Indian
and mestiza women. The story published in 1874 said that the nuns were shaving and selling the
long thick hair of those who had died. Although the newspaper’s investigation concluded that
the rumors were untrue, it did confirm that the sisters had cut the hair of women without the
permission of a doctor. The story forced the hospital to enforce new regulations requiring
employees to get doctor permission to cut the hair of deceased patients.

699

The story however

hints at potential discrimination toward indigenous groups in Guadalajara. Frequently Huichol
Indian children were distinctly noted in Casa documents.

700

In addition, evidence from Casa

records shows that as late as 1901, Beneficience officials gave permission for residents to hire
out Indian women housed as mendigas for use as domestic servants.

701

This was clearly a

departure from protocol of previous years as no evidence or regulations existed for hiring out
adult women for such purposes.
At the same time, evidence from Casa records shows that unmarried and widowed women of
old age played a role in shaping services and at times rejecting institutional control. This was
699
700

Gerónimo Gómez Romero, “Quien lo creyera,” Juan Panadero, April 21, 1874.

The Huichol were relatively scarce in number and are one of Jalisco’s few indigenous groups
to maintain much of its pre-conquest identity into the twentieth century. See Stacey Schaefer and
Peter Furst, People of the Peyote: Huichol Indian History, Religion and Survival, (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1996).
701
AHJ, C. 159, f. 888 and C. 181, f. 901-5703.
263

true of Andrea Esparza who wrote to request asylum at the Casa in the winter of 1897 after she
recently lost the only place “where she had truly been considered family.” At the age of sixty she
explained she had no family, “not a soul,” to help support her and little money. Andrea would
live at the charity house throughout the winter and into the summer months, but by June of that
year she requested permission to leave citing “family reasons.”

702

Although it is unclear if new

family members emerged in Andrea’s life or if she falsified her admission request, her case is
indicative of numerous other adult women whose time at the Casa was brief. The case may also
be indicative of her own desire to leave the institution and gain some freedom outside its walls.
This was true for many adult residents, who frequently attempted to run away and “escape”
the charity house. Numerous documents suggest the “fleeing” of beggars, both male and female
and even of elderly woman from the department of ancianas. In some instances they fled with
stolen goods such as clothing, food or kitchen materials. Their desire to leave, especially those
who merely “escaped,” suggests possible displeasure with the very cloistered and regimented life
forced upon them at the institution. Escape was much easier for adult men who had the freedom
to move about outside the institution and frequently their attempts to run away took place while
performing outdoor chores such as painting, cleaning and taking out trash.

703

Women were not

allowed outside of the interior patios or passageways without permission, this forced Ursula
Evangelista an elderly woman housed in the department of ancianas to wait until attendants had
left for the night to make her “escape.” In 1893, Casa workers documented the “flight” of a
mendigo with a stolen basket prompting the director to write to Department of Beneficence
officials that not only did she feel the beggars did not “appreciate the charity” they were given
702
703

AHJ, C. 170, f. 897-5638.

Cases are too numerous to list but several reported by Casa officials include AHJ, c. 175, f.
899-2729 and c. 164, f. 894-1828. For the escape of Ursula Evangelista see c. 167, f. 896-2217.
264

704

but in fact “did not want it.”

While the director’s comments were likely made out of

frustration and anger, given that the stolen basket had belonged to her, they also indicate that
adult residents were uncooperative. Whatever their motivations, frequent “escape” and “flight”
by adult residents indicate a sense that they felt imprisoned in the institution. By leaving they
made their desires for freedom and detachment from the home abundantly clear.

Women’s Agency
Authorities sent some women and their children to the Casa against their will, but others
played a greater role in shaping and utilizing its services. Documents from the institution suggest
that the single, unmarried and widowed women who sought charity at the home frequently
utilized the rhetoric of reform to their benefit. In addition, unique cases highlight the ways in
which women carved out spaces for themselves at the institution. Overall, their interactions with
the charity house suggest the agency of unattached women in their dealings with the state.
The language written into solicitations for charity at the Casa de Caridad is rich in the
rhetoric of nineteenth-century reform. Women frequently called upon state institutions and the
government as purveyors of “protection” for themselves and their children. These same ideas
were central tenets of the paternal and patriarchal origins of state welfare. Single and widowed
mothers also called attention to the dire nature of their own material and personal circumstances
which made them unable to care for their children. Their petitions emphasized that their
husbands or lovers abandoned them which left them destitute and unable to provide for their
families. Others exposed the realities of widowhood, low wages of female work and the
difficulties of working and tending to children. Here too mothers made use of popular notions of
704

AHJ, C. 161, f. 893-5520.
265

the proper family, home and mother of the nineteenth century. Although children received
clothing, food and shelter at the charity house, mothers frequently made mention of their desire,
above all, to give their children an education to become “useful” to their family and society.
Their word choice implies how connected poor women were with the language of reform which
called on mothers to rear good citizens.
The ability of mothers to repurpose reform language is evident in the request from María
Rodgriguez, an unmarried woman with three children. Working as a domestic she struggled to
support them in the aftermath of their father’s death in 1889. María wrote an impassioned request
on the behalf of her children for a “place of mercy” at the charity house in 1894. Calling
attention to her “sad state” she wrote of her “wish to take refuge in the protection of the
government.”

705

Her words affirmed the connection mothers made with the charity house as

representative of a protective and patriarchal government, and it was a sentiment shared by other
single and widowed women without spousal support. Magdalena Ruiz, for example, wrote of
her “misery” in being unable to provide her eleven year old son “instruction and education.” The
wording of her solicitation highlights both her responsibility to provide education as well as her
son’s role in becoming a benefit to the community. She wrote that “only with the help of the
establishments of the supreme government would her son be able to obtain a primary education
706

and a trade that would later make him a working man and useful to society.”

The many

instances in which women addressed their obligations to provide children with more than just
sustenance and support their education is evidence that the discourse on patriotic motherhood
was widespread.

705
706

C. 163bis, f. 894-1814.
AHJ, “Solicitas a la Escuela de Artes y Oficios,” 1903, C. 187, f. 903-5725.
266

Not only would the single and widowed women take advantage of the services offered at the
charity house, but over time they played a role in shaping the types of services it provided, often
presenting Casa workers with unique and unusual circumstances to confront. The story of María
Concepción Plasencia sheds light on the ways in which migrant women both perceived of and
utilized the Casa. As a young, single, migrant María Concepción arrived in Guadalajara in 1899
hoping to improve her circumstances. From Tepíc, a village over two hundred kilometers from
Guadalajara, she became an orphan after her father died in 1897. Displaced and without family
to help her, at the age of twenty two she wrote state government officials to request a pensioned
place in the institution. A pensioned resident was someone who paid a monthly stipend, implying
that María Concepción had some means to support herself after her father’s death.
Understanding the limitations of her situation as an orphan from a rural village who “lacked
family to help her get by,” she expressed her desire to “learn something in order to allow her to
become useful.” The request suggests her desire to receive an education at the charity house. At
the time there would have been few educational opportunities for a young girl of her age in
Tepíc. Given the reputation of the Casa de Caridad in the state it is possible that María
Concepción saw it as a means to greater opportunities. Despite her desire to receive an
education, it appears that although Casa officials admitted her they were unable to provide her a
place in one of its schools. Partly for limited space and her age they offered her admission in the
department of ancianas which she accepted, arriving March 22 of 1899. Only two days later
however, María Concepción requested permission to leave.

707

Her rapid departure leaves many

questions unanswered and leaves open the possibility that as an outsider to Guadalajara the Casa
de Caridad served as her first site of introduction to the city. After staying for a few days
707

C. 175, f. 899-2729
267

perhaps she learned from other residents or staff of opportunities to live, work or study outside
the institution. In any case her first point of contact with Guadalajara was the institution.
Although she decided not to stay for a longer period, as a young single woman her first few days
in the city were in a safe and “protected” environment.
Other scenarios in which girls attempted to enroll themselves in school at the Casa
demonstrate the initiative of young single women to direct their own education and future
careers. Elite girls attending the Colegio de Niñas had access to courses that would likely have
been closed to most other young women in Jalisco. The Colegio functioned as a secondary
school for girls, although evidence from Casa records suggests that some young women came to
the institution to study specific majors, treating it more like a university. In 1894, Juana Barajas
came to the institution specifically to study photography, a career closed to most women.

708

Even girls of the lower classes made requests to study specific subjects. In 1889, Ygnacia
Hernández came to the Casa to study art.

709

In addition, orphaned and poor girls took

advantage of career opportunities to stay on as employees of the institution. In 1894, Casa
workers recognized several students for their “good comportment,” Josefa Aquiar, Victoria
Cabañas, María Ortiz and Lucia Cabañas and hired them to work as nurses, nurse assistants, and
710

kitchen staff. Several would stay on until regulations required their final exit.

Women in Guadalajara also took advantage of employment opportunities at the Casa. As a
predominantly female-run institution it employed Mexican women in positions as administrators,
teachers and staff. Work at the charity house was very different than other jobs because some of

708
709
710

AHJ, “Salidas Definitivas,” 1894, C. 164, f. 894-1828
AHJ, 1889, C. 159, f. 889-833.
894-5617exp 203
268

the staff resided on premises and most took meals there. An example of the volume and type of
work available at the institution comes from an 1875 personnel census which indicates a payroll
of eighty employees. Among them were female teachers in the Colegio de Niñas and the school
for poor girls who taught embroidery as well as two female assistants and a supervisor. Although
all of professors in the school for boys were male there was a female supervisor. The attendants
and nurses for all other departments, such as the wing for male and female beggars and ancianas,
were female. The foundling home also employed four female nursery workers as well as sixteen
live-in and fourteen hired out wet-nurses. Wet-nursing was an important occupation for poor
women with young children and having the freedom to work inside their own home was
invaluable. Other traditionally female occupations at the Casa were in the kitchen, where most
cooks, tortilla makers, atole grinders, and chocolatiers were women. By that time women also
dominated in administrative positions with an all-female staff including the directora at the time
Rafaela Suarez.

711

Female employees, as insiders at the institution, were also instrumental in the

solicitation process required of unmarried and widowed mothers. Dolores Zamorano Alemán, a
professor at the charity house school, wrote in 1903 to help her widowed friend Herculana
Balvaneda find care for her two sons Mateo and Rosario Vasquez. A letter of reference from
Dolores was able to both attest to Herculana’s honor and verify that she suffered from a chronic
illness which made working difficult. The reference from Dolores exhibits the ways in which
women helped other women and also how someone like Herculana used the connections she had
to the institution to gain access for her children.

711
712

712

AHJ, “Lista del Personal Empleados/Asilados,” January 20, 1875, c. 158, f. 875.
AHJ, “Solicitas para La escuela de artes y oficios,” 1903, C. 187, F. 903-5725.
269

Other cases show the relationships forged between Casa employees and residents. Estéfana
Torres, a single woman and professor in the Casa school cemented a close bond with one of her
students Teresa Milanés ó Montero. According to Estéfana the two had formed a strong
relationship since Teresa began as a student in her classroom. So close were the pair that on
holiday vacations Teresa stayed with Estéfana at her home, and in more recent years Estéfana
had become Teresa’s godmother. Little Teresa had arrived at the institution in 1894 at two years
old. She was the child of Rodolfo Montero and Concepción Godínes. Concepción was an
illegitimate child and it was her mother Jesús Godínes, Teresa’s grandmother, who brought the
girl to the Casa. The bond shared between the teacher and her student culminated in a request to
adopt the girl shortly after Christmas in 1902. Estéfana wrote that she voluntarily wished to
“adopt the girl as a daughter.” The tone of the letter intimates that the two shared a special bond,
and it is unlikely that Estéfana planned to adopt her for use as a house servant. This practice
became more common in Mexico City at the time.

713

Instead Estéfana, a working single woman

planned to act as a mother to Teresa, providing for her “education and subsistence.” By January
of 1903 the Casa granted the adoption.

714

Although it is unclear what became of Teresa’s

biological mother and grandmother.
Numerous other examples point out the ways in which single and widowed mothers shaped
the services provided to them at the Casa. Mothers had to be savvy about when and how they
approached the institution. Throughout the nineteenth century space at the charity house,
especially for children, was limited. State governments frequently demanded that Casa officials

713

Ann Blum, “Public Welfare and Child Circulation, Mexico City, 1877-1925.” Journal of
Family History, 23, no. 2 (1998), 15.
714
AHJ, 1903, c. 185, 903-3095
270

reduce residents and make budget cuts.

715

Strict quotas forced charity officials to turn mothers

away, even those in extremely dire circumstances who qualified for assistance and presented all
the appropriate documentation. The limited space at the Casa was obviously on the mind of
Gumesinda Servin who in 1894 removed her fifteen year old daughter Agústina Gutierrez.
Having received and education and training Gumesinda hoped for Agústina to begin working to
help support the family. With the newly open vacancy left by her daughter, Gumesinda requested
that her eight year old son Benjamin be placed in the school for boys.

716

It was an effective

strategy for Gumesinda, a single mother who depended on her children to help support the
household. With her daughter now able to work, her son could receive an education and learn a
trade. In a few short years he too would be ready to work and contribute his earnings.
Residents themselves, especially those living involuntarily at the Casa, often flaunted the
rules. In the Spring of 1894 Directora Juana Ursúa sent a hastily written letter notifying the
Director of Instruction and Public Beneficence that two young sisters, both wearing all of the
clothing they owned, had “escaped” from the institution. Apparently it was not the first time the
girls had caused trouble at the house. Signifying her disdain for the Camarena sisters the director
noted they were “the most un-educatable girls in the Hospicio.”

717

Wherever the sisters were

going or wherever they ended up it is clear that they did not wish to stay at the charity home. Just

715

Correspondence between the Secretary of State and officials at the Department of
Beneficence in 1888 suggests a desire to reduce costs by restricting the number of individuals to
a set number, which frequently varied. Typically cuts were made in the departments that aided
adults first and then children and were instituted gradually rather than all at once. See AHJ,
C.159, f. 888-822 and 888-817.
716
AHJ, “Altas y Bajas,” 1894, C. 162, f. 893-5546.
717

894-1703 Legajo 392
271

as foot-dragging and other obstinate behaviors can be perceived as a “weapons of the weak,”

718

the actions of the Camarena sisters hint at their unwillingness to be part of the reform effort at
the Casa. Instead, the sisters opted to band together and plan their escape.
While escape was a means to gain freedom for those involuntarily placed at the home,
instances in which women voluntarily remained hint at their preference for life inside the Casa.
The elderly Ignacia Flores decided she would rather live at the home than go back to work as a
domestic. In the winter of 1901 a Guadalajara businessman, Marcelino Salvado, wrote the
Director of Beneficence looking for a domestic servant to work in his home. His request
specifically asked for permission to remove Ignacia Flores for the job, a Yaqui Indian woman
housed in the department of mendigas. He promised to return her to the establishment if he had
to leave the city or if he found her incapable of the job. The Director of Beneficence responded
that Ignacia was “free” to take work as a domestic and gave the institution “permission” for her
to leave with Marcelino. On January 16, however, the female director of the Casa Jesús Ruíz,
wrote to inform the office of Beneficience that Ignacia had not left with Marcelino explaining
that she declined the job of her own “volition” and therefore was still living at the institution.

719

The circumstances of the situation are interesting on multiple levels. Although it was not
uncommon for city residents to hire charity house residents to work as maids, it was usually a
scenario reserved for younger girls. In addition, Marcelino specifically requested Ignacia, an
Indian woman frequently referred to as “the Yaqui Ignacia.” What the case demonstrates above
all is Ignacia’s decision made of her own free will to live on and work in the Casa rather than
leave with Marcelino.
718

James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale University
Press, 1987).
719
C. 181, f. 901-5703.
272

Conclusion
The Casa de Caridad was an institution born out of an evolving discourse on poverty
and reform; first as a charity organization of the Catholic Church and eventually a state-based
institution of beneficence. Despite its progression, its mission to reform the poor through
education and work remained consistent. In particular, the services it provided exclusively to
single, unmarried and widowed women and their children emphasized a desire to strengthen the
patriarchal family as one of the most important features of nineteenth-century Mexican society.
The charity “home” would be a place to instruct them morally and socially. By taking in and
rearing children without fathers and mothers without husbands or guardians, the institution
sought to reform the poor into men and women capable of reproducing their appropriate class
and gender roles. In doing so it came to define the state as a more appropriate father and mother
and the charity house as a better home for the children of the poor, a place where they would be
less “corruptible.” Despite elite perceptions that defined single, unmarried and widowed women
as less capable mothers and the poor as immoral, women seized these ideas and re-appropriated
them to their advantage. They forced Casa workers to confront their varying needs and at times
exercised their own will despite its rigid regulations.

273

CONCLUSION:
SINGLENESS AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY POLITICS IN MEXICO

In 2004 I was preparing a conference paper on transient populations in Guadalajara
between 1821 and 1822 with a fellow researcher from the Guadalajara Census Project. The
piece was an outgrowth of research the institute conducted to measure urban mobility, both rural
to urban migration and movement within the city itself. I had the task of collecting data on the
city’s single and widowed female population. Although I had spent many years transcribing,
coding and entering the data, it was not until that moment that I realized, after running and
selecting for variables such as marital status, the overwhelming presence that single and
widowed women had in the city. I was astonished to see an overrepresentation of single and
widowed women in Guadalajara compared with men of their same age range. In addition, this
group of women seemed to be highly mobile; migrating in and out of the city and frequently
moving in an out of new homes within the city.

720

As a whole our findings suggested a great

deal of mobility in the span of one year. We published our findings in Mexico in 2007, and
concluded that military battles and mortality during the War for Independence could not solely
account for such movement, as most of the fighting in the region had ended by 1816.

721

Instead,

our data led us to conclude that it was in fact economic factors that spurred the consistent flux of

720

Claudia Rivas Jiménez and Andrea Vicente, “Ciudad en movimiento. Una Comparación
socio-económica entre unidades domésticas que persistieron y unidades domésticas transitorias
en Guadalajara, 1821-1822,” presented at The Forum on the Population Censuses of
Guadalajara, Mexico, 1791-1930, Universidad de Guadalajara, CIESAS (Guadalajara, Mexico,
April 28-29, 2004).
721
For insurgency in Guadalajara see Van Young, The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence,
Ideology and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810-1821, (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2001), 9; Also see Chapter two.
274

the urban poor.

722

Although we seemingly answered what we had set out to, I still had lingering

questions about the imbalance of women to men in the city, and why I saw so much variation
between married and unmarried populations. These are the questions that led to this dissertation.
From this springboard of my work on the city in 1821 and 1822, I have demonstrated that
the years that followed marked a watershed moment for unattached women. In the aftermath of
Independence in 1821, a changing political landscape drove major economic and social changes
that changed the lives of single and widowed women. Continued economic reforms that
promoted private property ownership, trade, and commerce forced migrants from rural villages
into cities in search of paid employment. Laws like the Ley Lerdo monopolized both rural and
urban lands in the hands of Guadalajara’s elite. By the 1870s, these policies introduced new
technologies and foreign investment that physically changed the look and feel of city life and
opened up a new age of industrialization. Such policies had the effect of bringing in cheaper,
mass-produced goods that destroyed regional artisan trades and forced even greater migrations of
rural people into the city to work in factories. Women were among the many new rural migrants
attracted and recruited into traditionally female occupations, like domestic work and jobs in city
textile factories. As a result, Guadalajara continued to grow in size and population between 1821
and 1910. Therefore, entrepreneurs began a process of industrialization that both attracted
migrants and expanded the numbers of working class and poor residents. It was this group who
then became the victims of a classist discourse used by city and state officials on immorality,
punishment and reform. It was a story of rural immiseration that many middle-class and elite
Mexicans benefitted from and then blamed the victims for circumstances that were largely of
their creation.
722

Rivas and Vicente, “Ciudad en movimiento.”
275

Poor, unmarried and widowed women comprised the largest percentage of women to
make up this new group who found it absolutely essential to work for wages. Unattached women
like the migrant sisters Dominga and Prejedis discussed in the introduction, both migrated to
Guadalajara from the smaller nearby mestizo village of Tlajomulco. Presumably, as a young
widow of only thirty Dominga had little choice but to work to support herself and help out her
family. In fact, her younger unmarried sister followed to live with Dominga to help support their
parents back home.

723

Stories like theirs abound in court cases, police reports, and admission

requests to the city poorhouse. In these documents, unattached women often evoked their
personal hardships as unmarried, abandoned or widowed women, which led many to seek
employment. At the same time a disparate ratio of women to men, of more than ten percent, led
to a diminished pool of possible marriage partners. Inevitably these factors heightened an
existing pattern of singleness and non-marriage.
What is most interesting about this rise in female singleness is that it occurred after the
Wars for Independence in 1821. This phenomena spawned a new dialogue emerged amongst
jurists, members of the Catholic Church, religious reformers, journalists and lay people who
argued that the stability of the young nation of Mexico rested on the shoulders of a traditional
patriarchal family. Years of war and foreign intervention left Jalisco and the city of Guadalajara
politically disorganized in its infancy as an independent nation.

724

For many the ideal

republican family, defined by a mother and children overseen by a strong male patriarch, was the
only way to maintain a sense of order through the uncertainty and chaos of the times. New legal
codes introduced civil marriage and divorce in Mexico in 1859. As part of La Reforma (1855723

BPEJ Archivo del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919, Ramo Criminal,
“Contra Lucio Cabrera por rapto,” Caja 11, Exp 88,208.
724
José María Muriá, Historia de Jalisco, Volume 3 (Guadalajara: UNED, 1981), 183.
276

1876), state and national leaders became increasingly motivated by liberal desires to secularize
society in order to consolidate both social and economic power in the state. While some
historians argue that these measures had positive consequences for women, others maintain that
it only gave men greater authority and leverage. Such factors as the decline in the use of dowries,
the limitations of female work, and property and inheritance laws that favored men left few
women the financial capital required to support themselves after a divorce.

725

Divorce cases in

Guadalajara confirm that well into the century most women utilized the new law for extreme
cases of abuse or infidelity, and rarely did divorce cases go to trial.

726

Debates that ensued over

the enactment of civil marriage legislation made clear the growing importance attached to
legally-binding marriage. Over all, new civil codes introduced in Mexico by 1870 served to
strengthen the role of male patriarchs within the family. Reformers and jurists who called on the
stability of the ideal family clearly took a disparaging view at those members of society who
engaged in forms of non-marriage, such as consensual unions and concubinage, as many of the
poor had always done in Latin America.

727

As reformers laid out the proper and expected roles

for husbands, wives and mothers, they grew concerned over the impact that unmarried and
unattached women, who frequently lived outside the authority of a male patriarch, might have on
society. Scholars such as Steve Stern demonstrate a long history in Mexico of violence toward

725
726

Deere and León, “Liberalism,” 642.

Claudia Lizette Castellanos Sánchez, “La sumisión como condición femenina: el divorcio de
Refugio Rodríguez,” en Mujeres jaliscienses del siglo XIX. Cultura, religion y vida privada,
edited by Vázquez Parada, Lourdes Celina and Darío Armando Flores Soria (Guadalajara:
Universidad de Guadalajara, 2008), 263-4; AHA, Justicia, “Matrimonio/Nulidad,” Caja 9, Exp 78.
727
Milanich,“Whither Family History,” 451-2.
277

lone women who, because of their independence from a male guardian, could become more
susceptible to “pursue a deviant sexual morality.”

728

Simultaneously, liberal economic reforms brought scores of women into Guadalajara to
work. Although both married and unmarried women frequently labored for wages, the latter
group increasingly came under the scrutiny of reformers and city officials who viewed their
presence in the public eye as a potential threat to the ideals of family and society. They called
attention to specific occupations to admonish the integrity and honor of unmarried and
unattached women, such as domestic work which early social reformers associated with a type of
parasitism akin to prostitution. Even municipal bureaucrats took pleasure in distinguishing
between honorable and dishonorable single women, using categories to denote their sexual
improprieties and the legitimacy of their children. In other instances popular depictions of female
work, such as the widowed proprietor, drew attention to women’s age and personality to exclude
them from the ideals of femininity. Among the working women of Guadalajara, numerous
examples demonstrate how women continued to work and live their lives despite a climate that
was hostile to their public presence. Shrewd widows, like Rafaela Palomar, managed her many
rentals and utilized the civil court system to collect monies owed her.

729

Typical female jobs as

servants, laundresses and factory work paid miserably, as women frequently admitted their
wages were barely enough to support themselves, let alone any children. Significant data
collected from women’s households suggests that at times women banded together, cohabitating
with other women or family members to save money. Others took in boarders as a strategy to

728
729

Stern, Secret History, 47-48.

BPJ, Archivo del Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, 1822-1919, Ramo Civil, “Contra Señor
Badial por rentas,” Caja 7, f. 152,617 and “Contra Doña Jesús Muñoz por rentas,” C. 5 f. 152,
541.
278

earn extra income.

730

However resourceful, city officials and reformers believed that working

women called attention to themselves by working in public, a space associated with danger and
prostitution. Judges and prosecutors alike frequently called attention to this aspect of life for
many poor and unattached women who they believed welcomed danger onto themselves and
their person. At the same time, their absence from the home and their inability to fulfill
bourgeois Republican ideals of wife and mother increased public scrutiny of their personal
honor.
As the number of poor working women in Guadalajara grew, their presence caught the
attention of social reformers, judges, lawyers, city police and welfare institutions who linked this
group of often unmarried and “unprotected” women with an increase in urban social problems.
It was a discourse steeped in class, race and gender biases, as very often the conversation
emphasized a supposed “wayward lifestyle” of the poor as the root cause of new social ills.
Reformers and sociologists argued that the proclivity among the poor toward non-marriage led to
promiscuity, adultery, illegitimacy and concubinage. Furthermore, they argued that such values
led to criminal mischief including robbery, using weapons, brawling, drinking, abandoning their
children or committing infanticide. As unattached women they had no authority figure to punish
them, therefore lawyers, judges, and city police believed that it was their duty to step in as
arbiters of correction and reform. In this way newly organized state institutions of policing and
control, such as criminal courts and the penitentiary, acted as patriarchal figures to potentially
dangerous women who lived outside of traditional families.
The idea that the poor could and should be reformed to become more productive
members of society was not a new concept. It was an idea that began to play out in Guadalajara
730

See Chapter 4
279

in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as evidenced by the construction of the Casa
de Caridad in 1805, along with a host of other services such as public housing, hospitals and
cemeteries to serve the poor. The function of the institution was to take in and reform poor
children by extending them basic necessities such as food, clothing and shelter and provide them
with a rigorous education and a moral upbringing. While the institution catered mostly to
orphaned and abandoned children, it did provide some assistance to elderly, homeless and
disabled city residents who were incapable of physical work. The institution, which would
eventually be renamed the Hospicio Cabañas after its founder, still stands today and is one of the
cities often visited landmarks for its José Clemente Orozco murals. In the nineteenth century the
Casa underwent major changes along with the nation, transitioning from the control of the
Catholic Church to the Sisters of Charity, and eventually to the state in 1874 and came under its
newly organized Department of Beneficence by 1896.

731

Despite this transition the charter of

the institution remained fraught with a paternalistic rhetoric of reform and protection toward
Guadalajara’s poor, often referencing the unfortunate environment in which many of the city’s
children were raised. It was critical of the “ignorant” behavior of parents and the “parasitic”
children they raised who failed to contribute to society.

732

In essence, Cabañas envisioned an

institution that rehabilitated children in order to prevent them from becoming like their parents.
Poor single women with children and widowed women in particular came to depend on the
services offered at the institution. In kind the Casa took on a paternalistic role in the life of the
children it served and attempted to mimic a traditional patriarchal family and home by
protecting, disciplining, educating and providing for them. As a patriarch, it offered children
731
732

See Chapter 6; AHJ, Beneficiencia, B-5, Instituciones de Protección,

Archivo Histórico del Arzobispado (AHA), Justicia, Obras Assistenciales, Hospicio
Cabañas, “Ordenanzas de la Casa de Caridad,” Caja 1, 1789-1849.
280

discipline and supervision through strong male role models such as priests and male teachers. At
the same time, its mostly female staff of nannies, nurses, teachers, cooks, and administrators
offered them examples of what a good mother should be and how to behave. Both boys and girls
learned skills necessary to perform their roles in society as future husbands and wives through a
gendered division of education. At school boys received an education that included math and
science in addition to skilled trades like shoemaking, while its female curriculum emphasized
humanities and trades such as embroidery and sewing.

733

Despite the institution’s attempt to

undermine and admonish the parenting of the poor, single and widowed women re-appropriated
the language used by the institution and its workers to gain access to services and shelter for
themselves and their children.
Overall I have argued that political changes taking place in Mexico and Guadalajara
between 1821 and 1910 are significant to the study of singleness. Economic and social reforms
that began in the colonial period expanded during La Reforma (1855-1876) and led to the rise
and growth of Guadalajara, but especially between 1876 and 1910. It was in the city that many
unattached women ended up to work. Once there, they became embroiled in a debate between
church and state leaders over the centrality and importance of legally binding marriage, the result
of changing legal codes inspired by liberal principles of secularism. In the chaos that ensued,
many felt that stability could only be found within the home in the leadership and oversight of a
male patriarch. His maintenance of order at the household level would set a precedent for
society. The importance that many attempted to associate with civil or religious marriage made it
a central issue in places like Guadalajara by the 1850s, attaching increased value and honor to
married women. Those who lived outside traditional boundaries and did not uphold their
733

Ibid.
281

expected roles in society became cause for concern. As part of a continued desire to maintain
order in society and monitor the poor, state governments and city officials created institutions
and ordinances to police, control and at times protect the urban poor. In all, unattached women
became a focal point for these new institutions and for the discourses that legitimized them.
My work demonstrates that the goals Republican governments set out to accomplish after
Independence revolved around highly gendered projects, in addition to their many racial and
class undertones. Although women were rarely involved in lawmaking or as officials within
institutions of power, correction and reform, they played an important role in shaping the
political landscape. Even within the Casa de Caridad female administrators answered to the
regulations of male clergy and then of state lawmakers. An examination of women according to
marital status offers a unique perspective to the political framework of the post-Independence
period and attempts to make visible a group that was highly marginalized. Between 1821 and
1910, officials and reformers treated single and widowed women as an isolated group because of
a supposed threat they posed to the honor of families and the values of legal marriage. Despite
this fact, most histories of single and widowed women lump them together with a larger gender
narrative, or as a part of histories of the family. My work seeks to reconsider their position both
within histories of the family and within Mexican society. Many Mexican women never became
wives or mothers. Others took up with lovers, lived in consensual unions and bore children, but
never legally married. Such distinctions are important and they retell a different story of
political, social and cultural change for many women.
I also believe that this approach forces historians to reconsider the parameters of what is
traditionally defined as “politics.” Politics as it is referenced for the nineteenth century is often
presented in its most literal form—relations of the state, national government, and political

282

personalities. An emphasis on cultural transformations for all of society, and for women must
play a greater part in our understanding of nineteenth-century Mexican politics. In fact, in many
cases, women are absent all together, ignoring the seminal argument of Joan Scott’s call for a
broader definition of the “political,” that recognizes the importance of the politics of gender
relations.

734

The work of Ann Stoler strengthens this argument, in articulating that historical

interactions were often located in the “microsites of governance,” or the “intimate domains [of]
sex, sentiment, domestic arrangement and child rearing.” In her assessment, these private spaces
have both social and cultural significance.

735

In nineteenth-century Guadalajara, in the places

where unattached women rented rooms, washed laundry, toiled as spinners, argued with the
wives of their lovers or within the courtyards of the Hospicio, the personal became political.
Their lives became part of larger narratives regarding marriage and women’s roles, work, public
space, criminality and poverty. By using single and widowed women as a prism, I am able to
shed light on the ways that changing conceptions of the family and marital status, impacted legal,
political, social, and cultural aspects of Mexican state-building throughout the nineteenth
century—adding a new dimension to current studies of political history.

734

Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, (New York: Columbia University, Press,
1990), 26.
735
Ann Stoler, “Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History
and (Post) Colonial Studies,” The Journal of American History 88, no. 3 (2001), 1-5.
283

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