Women, War, and the Body Politic in Nineteenth-Century Southern Mexico

In 1860, during the War of the Reform, the Conservatives controlled the southern city of Oaxaca, a Liberal stronghold and birthplace of president Benito Juárez. As the Liberal army closed in on the city, the Conservative military rounded up local women believed to be Liberal sympathizers and proceeded to publicly cut off their hair, strip off their clothing, and march them naked through the streets. Some were even handed over to soldiers to “slake their lust.” Having dared to take a political stand, these women were deprived of their honor and reduced the level to “public” women. Their bodies literally became a battleground of partisan politics. Although the role of women in the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and, to a lesser extent, in the Independence struggle, has been studied, little is known about their participation in the wars of the mid nineteenth century. Mexican men were highly ambivalent about this wartime mobilization. While women were commonly represented as the major victims of war, each army needed their support on the basic level of food and uniform preparation, nursing, spying, fundraising etc., activities that challenged reigning gender and class ideologies. Examining archives, newspapers, travel accounts, and literary sources, this paper will interrogate women's participation in the nineteenth century wars between Liberals and Conservatives in southern Mexico on three levels: partisan politics, gender ideologies defining women's proper roles, and the gendered representations of the nation and the body politic during those turbulent times.