LATIN
AMERICA: Women in History - More than Just
Heroines
By Humberto
Márquez
CARACAS (IPS) - Juana Azurduy or
Manuela Sáenz, Bartolina Sisa or Gertrudis
Bocanegra, Luisa Cáceres or Policarpa
Salavarrieta - these heroines attest to the
participation of women in the struggle for
Latin America’s independence from Spain, a
revolutionary movement that began two
centuries ago this year.
But at the same time, their celebration
embodies the shroud that political and
historical accounts have thrown over the
countless unnamed women who fought or
suffered in the quarter-century long process
spanning from 1809 to 1824, like in so many
other periods of history.
On Jul. 14, Argentine president Cristina
Fernández granted Lieutenant Colonel Juana
Azurduy (1780-1862) a posthumous promotion
to the rank of general. Azurduy lost five of
her six children while she fought for the
independence of Upper Peru, present-day
Bolivia, which at the end of the colonial
period was part of the Viceroyalty of the
Río de la Plata and under the direction of
Buenos Aires.
Two years earlier, Ecuadorian president
Rafael Correa had also granted a posthumous
promotion to general to another
revolutionary woman, Manuela Sáenz
(1797-1856), who is known in history as the
"immortal love" of Simón Bolívar (1783-1830)
and who held the rank of colonel in the
liberation army.
Correa’s promotion was granted as part of
the commemoration of the anniversary of the
1822 Battle of Pichincha, in which the
Quito-born heroine fought.
"That’s not history, it’s politics," Inés
Quintero, assistant director of the
Venezuelan Academy of History, told IPS.
"The role of women in the movement for
independence is not vindicated by granting a
title to an individual woman. That makes no
sense, because history is not about settling
scores," she argued.
Instead, the researcher said, "as women’s
issues pay off in terms of the visibility
that women are demanding, there are certain
icons - these heroines - that are
incorporated as part of the rhetoric, to
give the impression that something is being
done about the situation of women."
For Sara Beatriz Guardia, of the Peruvian
Centre for Studies on Women in the History
of Latin America, "a change in rhetoric can
be observed, which is prompted by the
importance that the study of the role of
women in history has gained in recent
decades." The trend fits right in with the
series of "bicentennial cycle" celebrations
that began this year evoking the first
revolutionary uprisings, which occurred in
1809 in Quito and La Paz. The celebrations
will continue over the coming years with the
commemoration of the declarations and
battles of Spanish America’s campaigns for
independence.
This process, and the bloody confrontations
that marked it, was ushered in by early
movements in the late 18th century, some of
which had an undeniable female involvement
and their fair share of heroines, which
official historiography in some cases
highlights and in others obscures.
One example of these early female
independence fighters is Micaela Bastidas
(1745-1781), wife of Túpac Amaru II (José
Gabriel Condorcanqui, 1738-1781), who fought
beside him in the great rebellion he led in
Peru in 1780. When the uprising was stifled,
they were both executed on the same day,
along with the lesser-known Tomasa
Condemayta, captain of the women’s
battalion, which had defeated the Spanish
troops in several battles.
Another is Bartolina Sisa (1753-1782),
Aymara heroine and wife of Túpac Katarí (Julián
Apaza, 1750-1781), a rebel leader who
mobilised 40,000 Indians against the Spanish
crown in Upper Peru in the early 1780s.
Sisa led troops into battle and exhibited
skills as a strategist when the Aymara foces
laid siege to the cities of Sorata and La
Paz. When the movement was defeated, Sisa
was savagely tortured and finally hung.
"Later, the Creoles (white European
descendants) gained the independence that
was vital for them to further their
interests, and the uprisings that had been
led by Indians were played down and
forgotten, even though they had shaken the
foundations of the colonial system," Guardia
notes in her essay "Las mujeres y la
recuperación de la historia" (Women and the
Recovery of History).
Moreover, "the participation of these women
was erased, as if their gender – even though
they gave their lives for their people -
somehow made their actions less meaningful
and less important than those of the heroes
of our history, who were all male," the
Peruvian researcher added.
The participation of many women also stood
out once the Creole wars for independence
broke out. Women like Manuela Cañizares
(1769-1815), who hosted the meeting in which
the Quito revolutionaries issued the first
"cry for freedom" in 1809, or María Ignacia
Rodríguez (1765-1817), who supported the
patriots in Mexico.
Gertrudis Bocanegra (1765-1817) organised a
network of Mexican insurgents. When she was
captured by the Spanish, she refused to
betray the patriots even under torture. In
the end, she was executed by the Royalists,
as the forces loyal to the Spanish crown
were known.
Women of this period pushed their fathers,
sons, brothers, husbands or boyfriends to
embrace the cause of independence. Like the
Chilean Javiera Carrera (1781-1862), who
although an adversary of national hero
Bernardo O’Higgins, was part of the patriot
movement.
Or the Nueva Granada (Colombia) native
Policarpa Salavarrieta, a great underground
independence fighter, who was shot to death
by a firing squad in Bogotá in 1817, along
with her boyfriend, Alejo Sabaraín.
Venezuela's most famous heroine is Luisa
Cáceres (1799-1866), wife of General Juan
Bautista Arismendi, who the Spanish tried to
break by imprisoning the young Cáceres under
atrocious conditions, while she was
pregnant. She miscarried and was held
prisoner for two years, from 1814 to 1816,
before she was finally banished.
Many women were outstanding soldiers, like
Azurduy, who fought in guerrilla warfare and
participated in major battles, including the
battles of Ayohuma (1813), Potosí and La
Laguna (both in 1816), where she was injured
and saw her husband, Manuel Padilla, die as
he tried to rescue her.
Sáenz fought in the battle of Pichincha,
which paved the way for Bolívar’s troops to
march into Peru. She accompanied Bolívar in
his campaigns and political efforts, and
after preventing an attempt on his life by
opponents in Bogotá in 1828, she began to be
known as "the liberator’s liberator."
But many more women participated throughout
the entire war, providing support in the
rear, in logistics, and as soldiers. As the
late Venezuelan historian Vinicio Romero
told this reporter in an earlier interview,
in the 1821 battle of Carabobo, dozens of
women were thought to have died on both
sides of the battlefield.
Women had a significant participation in the
troops in Mexico, and in the Colombian army
(which covered the territory of present-day
Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela). In
the Andean sub-region, indigenous
communities, including women, were
incorporated into the war efforts.
Thousands of indigenous women followed the
trail of Argentine General Juan Álvarez de
Arenales (1770-1831), José de San Martín’s
(1778-1850) deputy, during the 1819-1820
campaign in the Peruvian Andes.
History that ignores women
Even popular literature reflects the pivotal
role that women have played in wars
throughout history. "There’s hardly been a
war in which women did not participate,"
Swedish journalist and novelist Stieg
Larsson (1954-2004) wrote as a foreword for
the last novel in his "Millennium" trilogy,
"The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest",
published posthumously this year.
As an example, the best-selling author
mentioned that in the U.S. Civil War
(1861-1865), there were an estimated 600
women soldiers, who dressed up as men to
fight.
In a remark that could very well apply to
the revolutionary wars of Spanish America,
Larsson noted that history books have always
had a hard time talking about women who
don’t respect the boundary that separates
the sexes, and at no other time is this
boundary so sharply delineated as when a war
breaks out or weapons are involved.
Which is why, for Quintero, "understanding
the process is not about identifying
exceptions and highlighting the heroines,
but about understanding that throughout
history the way the various actors are
involved is conditioned by their situation
at the time of each historical event."
"Going beyond heroines or exceptions will
enable an understanding of the true role
women played. For example, the fact that
armies admitted the need to incorporate
women into their ranks, while the political
constitutions that followed their
independence efforts, in contrast, denied
women any participation in decision-making,"
Quintero said.
To give women their rightful place in
history, it is necessary to grasp that
"women fought, but they also fled, hid,
suffered, planted, cared for their homes,
families and farms, loved, raised their
children, lost their husbands, and fought on
the opposite side - like the forgotten
royalists did," she said.
Quintero is the author of a historical
biography of Simón Bolivar’s sister, María
Antonia Bolívar, a supporter of the Spanish
crown.
According to Guardia, "the prevailing trend
in historical studies disregards the space
of everyday life as an object of study, and
in doing so it also disregards women, whose
predominant sphere of action has been that
space. Nonetheless, everyday life is at the
heart of historical events."
For Quintero, "When a distance is
established between ordinary people and
exceptional beings, as in the case of Sáenz,
the real role of women is not vindicated by
history, only the role of heroines is, from
the perspective of the patriotic code of
those who create the discourse.
"But that doesn’t change the view of women’s
role in history, it makes no difference in
women’s lives or in the problems that affect
today’s women," she concluded. |
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