Adultery and Divorce in Dictatorial Guatemala, 1898–1944

In a postcolonial nation convinced that familial peace was a cornerstone to an orderly nation, women who committed adultery effectively cuckholded national leaders as well as their husbands. To be sure, men’s infidelity threatened their families’ daily survival. But female philandering was more than merely a “symbolic” threat as some scholars have argued. The men who put their reputations and honor at risk by admitting to their wives’ extramarital affairs in court suggest much was at stake in these female dalliances. Since divorce laws favored men, they far outnumbered women as plaintiffs in divorce proceedings. Women who initiated divorce litigation generally did so in response to their husbands’ excessive violence or financial neglect. As such, in the process of testifying in front of male judges, they tended to highlight perversions of patriarchal power. Understanding the extent to which adulterous women and female plaintiffs in divorce litigation shaped gender relations, moral economies, and nation building during the reign of two of Latin America’s fiercest dictators—Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1898-1920) and General Jorge Ubico (1931-1944)—will shed light not only on women’s plight and contributions in early twentieth-century Guatemala but also on how notions of gender, citizenship, and rights influenced and informed each other.