Catholic women and Mexican politics, 1750-1940

"Under no circumstances shall a woman be elected" : gender roles in colonial urban cofradías -- "Our fears that the cofradías will disappear are not unfounded" : gender, lay associations, and priests in the aftermath of the wars for independence, 1810-1860 -- "We ladies who sign below wish to establish a congregation" : priests, women, and new lay associations, 1840-1856 -- "Throwing themselves upon the political barricades" : Catholic women enter national politics in the midcentury petition campaigns -- "The intervention of the faithful was an unavoidable necessity" : lay organizing and women, 1856-1875 -- "We'll see who wins : them with their laws, or us with our protests" : the Ley Orgánica and the 1874-1875 petition campaign -- "Excellent assistants of the priest" : women and lay associations, 1876-1911 -- "The men are somewhat preoccupied. Fortunately, the Mexican woman carries the standard of our beliefs" : women and Catholic politics in the Porfiriato -- Epilogue : Catholic women and politics, 1910-1940

"Historians have long looked to networks of elite liberal and anti-clerical men as the driving forces in Mexican history over the course of the long nineteenth century. This traditional view, writes Margaret Chowning, cannot account for the continued power of the Catholic Church in Mexico, which has withstood extensive and sustained political opposition for over a century. How, then, must the scholarly consensus change to better reflect Mexico's history? In this book, Chowning shows that the church repeatedly emerged as a political player, even when liberals won elections, primarily because of the overlooked importance of women in politics. Catholic women kept the church alive through the wars of independence and made it into the political force it continues to be in present-day Mexico. Using archival sources from ten Mexican states, the book shows how women, who were denied the vote and expected to stay out of the political sphere, nevertheless forged their own form of citizenship through the church. After Mexico gained its independence in 1821, women self-consciously developed new lay associations and assumed leadership roles within them. These new associations not only kept Catholicism vibrant, they also pushed women into public sphere. Methodologically, this book shows the value of exploring gender in political and religious history and reveals the equal importance of informal political power to more formal activities like voting"

"How women preserved the power of the Catholic Church in Mexican political life. What accounts for the enduring power of the Catholic Church, which withstood widespread and sustained anticlerical opposition in Mexico? Margaret Chowning locates an answer in the untold story of how the Mexican Catholic church in the nineteenth century excluded, then accepted, and then came to depend on women as leaders in church organizations.But much more than a study of women and the church or the feminization of piety, the book links new female lay associations beginning in the 1840s to the surprisingly early politicization of Catholic women in Mexico. Drawing on a wealth of archival materials spanning more than a century of Mexican political life, Chowning boldly argues that Catholic women played a vital role in the church's resurrection as a political force in Mexico after liberal policies left it for dead.Shedding light on the importance of informal political power, this book places Catholic women at the forefront of Mexican conservatism and shows how they kept loyalty to the church strong when the church itself was weak"