Divorce and Marital Equality in Orizaba,Mexico,1915—1940

The names of the litigants have been changed to protect the identity of the families in Orizaba.

Divorce affidavit filed by David Cárdenas, Archivo General del Estado de Veracruz (AGEV), Tribunal Superior de Justicia, Orizaba, Juzgado Segundo, Exp. 530, September 6, 1919. 3. Ibid.

Ibid., July 9, 1921.

For an analysis of modernization and education, see Mary Kay Vaughan , Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930-1940 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997). For an examination of the national postrevolutionary modernization project and how it intersected with rural communities, see Gómez Carpinteiro and Francisco Javier , "La Modernidad Contendida: Estado, Comunidades Rurales y Capitalismo en la Posrevolucíon," Mexican Studies 21, no. 1 (2005): 97-139. For an investigation of health care, prostitution, and modernization, see Andrew Wood , "New Approaches to Crime, Health, and Poverty in Mexico City," Journal of Urban History 33, no. 3 (2007): 527-31.

Katherine Elaine Bliss , Compromised Positions, Prostitution, Public Health, and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001).

Patience Schell , "Social Catholicism, Modern Consumption and the Culture Wars in Postrevolutionary Mexico City" History Compass 5, no. 5 (2007): 1585-1603. Schell explores how consumerism and modernity challenged social customs in postrevolutionary Mexico.

Jocelyn Olcott , Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico ( Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).

Author unknown, "Para el Hogar y Para las Damas," La Humanidad, October 16, 1916.

See Sueann Caulfield , In Defense of Honor: Sexual Morality, Modernity, and Nation in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil ( Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2000), 21. Caulfield argues that "many young legal and medical authorities attacked the earlier beliefs that social preoccupation with virginity or sexual honor was a mark of advanced civilization and moral superiority, arguing to the contrary that it manifested the backwardness of Brazil's traditional political and social institutions. Like their more conservative colleagues, however, reformist jurists were concerned about the effects of `modern life' on women's moral and maternal functions, and thus on the nation's future generations."

Legal officials sought to institutionalize the Mexican family and nationalize motherhood, thereby subjecting Mexico's families to judicial surveillance. While this process began during the nineteenth century, the push to "modernize" Mexico following the revolution set in motion a series of laws that would restructure patriarchy. Judges, legislators, and elected officials provided a network of judicial involvement that superseded men's authority in the home. See Maja Mikula , ed., Women, Activism and Social Change (New York: Routledge, Routledge Research in Gender and Society, 2005). For more on how revolution challenges systems of patriarchy, see Temma Kaplan , "Final Reflections, Gender, Chaos, and Authority in Revolutionary Times ," in Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico, ed. Jocelyn Olcott , Mary Kay Vaughan , and Gabriela Cano (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 261-76. Patriarchy implies men's systemic domination over resources and women. This relationship is not static, but rather, changes according to customs, laws, and economic relationships.

AGEV, Candido Aguilar's Civil Decree, Gobernación y Justicia, Legislación/ Leyes y Decretos, Caja 13, Exp. 450, June 18, 1915.

Legislators often cited France and the United States as models of liberalism, culture, and economic prosperity.

Olcott, Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico. Also see Mary Kay Vaughan , "Modernizing Patriarchy: State Policies, Rural Households, and Women in Mexico, 1930-1940," in Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America, ed. Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux ( Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 194-214. Vaughan argues that the national project under President Cárdenas during the 1930s attempted to "modernize patriarchy," thereby undermining anterior forms of male familial power.

Adalberto Tejeda , El Nuevo Código Civil del Estado de Veracruz-Llave, Article 16, Motivos de Inspiración Fundamental que Expone; ante la H. Legislatura (Xalapa-Enriquez: Talleres Gráficos del Estado, 1932).

For analyses of Orizaba's textile industries and their role in the Mexican Revolution, see Bernardo García Díaz , "La Clase Obrera Textil Orizabeña durante los Años Veinte," Investigación Económica [Mexico] 41, no. 162 (1982): 179-96. Also, see "La Clase Obrera Textíl de Valle de Orizaba," Migraciones y Origen [Mexico] 3, no. 6 (1988): 77-108. For labor and wage structures in Orizaba's factory communities, see Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato Freer , "The Impact of Revolution: BusInéss and Labor in the Mexican Textile Industry, Orizaba, Veracruz, 1900-1930 " (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2000 ). For an analysis of the cotton textile industry, labor conditions, strikes, and revolutionary participation, see Jeffrey Bortz , "Authority Re-seated: Control Struggles in the Textile Industry during the Mexican Revolution ," Labor History [Great Britain] 44, no. 2 (2003): 171-88. Also see Bortz , "Without Any More Law Than Their Own Caprice: Cotton Textile Workers and the Challenge to Factory Authority during the Mexican Revolution," International Review of Social History [Great Britain] 42, no. 2 (1997): 253-88.

These are undoubtedly salient tasks that need to be undertaken in a larger project. Indeed, the history of divorce legalization has received only scant attention, most recently in the work of Stephanie Smith. See Stephanie Smith , "`If Love Enslaves . . . Love Be Damned!' Divorce and Revolutionary State Formation in Yucatán," in Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico, ed. Jocelyn Olcott , Mary Kay Vaughan , and Gabriela Cano (Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2006), 99-112.

Steve Stern , The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men and Power in Late Colonial Mexico (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). Steve Stern has noted that various factors such as class, religion, and ethnicity informed regional peculiarities in late colonial Mexico. This is also the case in regions such as Orizaba.

For more on how women used maternalism as a tool to expand their roles outside of the family into issues of equality, poverty, and citizenship, see Nikki Craske and Maxine Molyneux , eds., Gender and the Politics of Rights and Democracy in Latin America (New York: Palgrave , 2002). For current movements in Mexico, see Janet Gabriel Townsend , Emma Zapata , Joanna Rowlands , Pilar Alberti , and Marta Mercado , Women and Power: Fighting Patriarchies and Poverty ( London : Zed, 1999).

Scholars have defined masculinity, as it applies to Mexico, in many ways, depending on region and time period. In this article, masculinity refers to men's ability to control the actions of their wives and children and to be able to thwart their wives' challenges to their familial control in a legal setting. However, it should be noted that masculinity is a term that is fluid and changing depending on region, time period, and social setting. Masculinity, for example, in a factory setting where men worked largely with men, implied a differing set of social relations. For more on masculinity, see Stern, Secret History of Gender. Stern argues that men's attempts to dominate women both sexually and publicly led to displays of violence and inebriation. Also, see Matthew Gutmann , The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City ( Berkeley : University of California Press, 1996); and James Taggart , The Bear and His Sons ( Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997). Heidi Tinsman and Pablo Picatto argue that wife beating was an integral part of demonstrating masculinity among men who could not materially support their families. See Heidi Tinsman , "Household Patrones: Wife-Beating and Sexual Control in Rural Chile, 1964-1988," in The Gendered Worlds of Latin American Women Workers ( Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 264-96. Also, see Pablo Piccato , City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900-1931 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press , 2001).

For more on how culture informed women's accommodation or resistance of paternal structures in Medellin, Colombia, see Ann Farnsworth-Alvear , Dulcinea in the Factory: Myths, Morals, Men, and Women in Columbia's Industrial Experiment, 1905-1960 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000).

The Civil Code of 1928, adopted in Veracruz in 1932, while a step forward for women, codified a double standard for adultery, emphasized the importance of women's domestic duties, and did not overturn the provision in the Law of Family Relations that mandated that women had to wait nearly a year before remarrying. This provision was to ensure that a woman was not pregnant or that if she was, paternal responsibility would be clear.

For more on working-class masculinity and violence, see William French , A Peaceful and Working People: Manners, Morals, and Class Formation in Northern Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996).

AGEV: Fondo, Tribunal Superior de Justicia Sección: Ciudad, Orizaba: Serie, Juzgado Segundo, Exp. 194, March 27, 1939.

My use of sexual difference follows Joan Scott's argument that "gender is the social organization of sexual difference. But this does not mean that gender reflects or implements fixed and natural physical differences between women and men; rather gender is the knowledge that establishes meanings for bodily difference. These meanings vary across cultures, social groups, and time since nothing about the body, including women's reproductive organs, determines univocally how social divisions will be shaped . . . Sexual difference is not, then, the originary cause from which social organization ultimately can be derived. It is instead a variable social organization that itself must be explained." See Joan Wallach Scott , Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 2.

Olcott , Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico, 17.

Alan Knight , "The Ideology of the Mexican Revolution, 1910-40 ," Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe VIII, no. 1 (1997), available at http://www.tau.ac.il/eial/VIII_1/knight.htm .

Nikki Craske , "Ambiguities and Ambivalences in Making the Nation: Women and Politics in 20th-Century Mexico," Feminist Review 79 (2005): 116-33, 122.

Veracruz's civil code, adopted in 1932, was based on the Federal Civil Code of 1928. Although the code declared women equal to men in family relationships and allowed them to work without their husbands' permission, it also stated that their right to do so was based on their ability to maintain their domestic duties. C. Ing Adalberto Tejeda, Gobernador Constitucional del Estado, El Neuvo Código Civil de Estado de Veracruz, Motivos de Inspiración Fundamental que Expone; ante la H. Legislatura (Xalapa-Enriquez: Talleres Gráficos del Estado, 1932).

Adalberto Tejeda, El Nuevo Código Civil del Estado de Veracruz-Llave.

Ibid.

For a comparison of how the Civil Code of 1928 compared with other family codes, see Gorani Therborn , Between Sex and Power: Family in the World 1900-2000 (New York: Routledge , 2004).

Eduardo R. Coronel , "El Femenismo" Labor 6 (August, 1931).

Alexandra Minna Stern , "Responsible Mothers and Normal Children: Eugenics, Nationalism, and Welfare in Post-revolutionary Mexico, 1920-1940 ," Journal of Historical Sociology 12, no. 4 (1999): 369-97.

Jocelyn Olcott , "Worthy Wives and Mothers: State Sponsored Women's Organizing in Postrevolutionary Mexico," Journal of Women's History 13, no. 4 (2002): 106-31, 115.

Pan American Bulletin 57 (December 1923): 624. Quoted in Lillian Estelle Fisher , "The Influence of the Present Mexican Revolution upon the Status of Mexican Women," Hispanic American Historical Review 22, no. 1 (1942): 217, 211-28.

Author unknown, "Tópicos Femeninos," Del Mañana, Revista Mensual: Órgano de Difusión y Estudiantil de la Escuela Secundaria y Preparatoria de Orizaba , July 10, 1941, 7.

Mexico is not the only example of this. Eileen Findlay Suarez argues in Puerto Rico that providing divorce rights gave all classes the right to exit a destructive relationship and forge a new family that would augment social stability. See Eileen Findlay Suarez , Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870-1920 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 1999), 120.

Olcott , Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico, 22.

Agev , Tribunal Superior de Justicia, Orizaba, Juzgado Segundo, Exp. 83, 1934.

Alexandra Minna Stern , "Responsible Mothers and Normal Children: Eugenics, Nationalism, and Welfare in Post-revolutionary Mexico, 1920-1940 ," Journal of Historical Sociology 12, no. 4 (December 1999), 369-95. Also, see Nichole Marie Sanders , "Gender, Welfare and the `Mexican Miracle': The Politics of Modernization in Postrevolutionary Mexico, 1937-1958" (PhD diss., University of California, Irving), DAI 64, no. 3 (2003): 1034-A. DA3085992.

Agev , Tribunal Superior de Justicia, Orizaba, Juzgado Segundo, Exp. 134, April 14, 1925.

Ibid.

Agev , Tribunal Superior de Justicia, Orizaba, Juzgado Segundo, Exp. 134, June 3, 1925.

Women who invoked weakness to attain the protection of the court created a paradox that many feminist scholars have noted (i.e., protection reifies difference). See Joan Scott , Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).

The state's civil codes expressly codified the need to protect children. Protecting mothers was integral to protecting children; however, if a judge surmised that both parents were undermining the child's welfare, he reserved the right to award custody to either the maternal or paternal grandparents. Unlike men, who often asked the court to reestablish their familial authority for the good of the community and nation, women relied on the state's self-proclaimed role to protect women and children to benefit la patria. The tie to la patria is crucial in this case. The parents' arguments did not take precedent over the needs of the child. The judge held both parties culpable and maintained that removing the child from the home better served the interests of Suzanna.

Agev , Tribunal Superior de Justicia, Orizaba, Juzgado Segundo, Exp. 75, May 24, 1927.

Agev , Tribunal Superior de Justicia, Orizaba, Juzgado Segundo, Exp. 83, 1934.

Many U.S. historians have explored the relationship between divorce, women's rights, individualism, liberalism, and human happiness. For example, Norma Basch argues that pro-divorce feminists and conservative women complicated the conservative-liberal dichotomy that came to define the debate over divorce and women's rights in nineteenth-century Indiana and New York. See Norma Basch , Framing American Divorce: From the Evolutionary Generation to the Victorians (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). Also see E. Mavis Hetherington and John Kelly , For Better or for Worse: Divorce Reconsidered ( New York : W. W. Norton, 2002). For a history of divorce in the United States and its cultural and economic impacts, see Nancy F. Cott , Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

Agev , Tribunal Superior de Justicia, Orizaba, Juzgado Segundo, Exp. 83, 1934.

Ibid.

Agev , Tribunal Superior de Justicia, Orizaba, Juzgado Segundo, Exp. 184, May 4, 1935.

Agev , Tribunal Superior de Justicia, Orizaba, Juzgado Segundo, Exp. 419, December 30, 1930.

Agev , Tribunal Superior de Justicia, Orizaba, Juzgado Segundo, Exp. 419, April 31, 1931.

Agev , Tribunal Superior de Justicia, Orizaba, Juzgado Segundo, Exp. 367, October 10, 1941.

Ibid.

Agev , Tribunal Superior de Justicia, Orizaba, Juzgado Segundo, Exp. 367, October 10, 1941.