Gender and Power in Nineteenth-Century Southern Mexico: The Challenge of Feminist Biography

In her youth, Juana Cata Romero (1837-1915), a mestiza of Spanish and Zapotec origin, sold cigarettes to soldiers and spied for the liberal cause in the War of the Reform (1858). She rose to become the major merchant, sugar refiner, and cacica (informal political boss) of the commercial city of Tehuantepec in southeastern Mexico.  My study of Romero’s life demonstrates the possibilities for female agency during a period when women’s activities were thought to be limited and examines the relationship between gender and power in representation, discourse, and experience. For example, as a major importer of European textiles, she modernized the dress of Zapotec Indian women (erroneously thought to have been made popular by Frida Kahlo). The dress of the Tehuana soon became a national symbol of Mexican identity. She also modernized the city of Tehuantepec and promoted education. However, historical interpretation is complicated by the absence of Romero’s own voice. A woman of action, her life can be traced through her commercial transactions, her political alliances, material artifacts, and her representation by others.  These representations were polarized: she is portrayed as a generous benefactress, a power-hungry shrew, or a woman who owed her success to the patronage of her alleged lover, Porfirio Diaz, president of Mexico. Exploring myriad sources (notarial, state, and judicial archives, newspapers, interviews, and visual representations) and taking up the challenge posed by Alice Kessler Harris (AHR June 2009) of “looking through” a woman’s life in order to understand larger social, political, economic, and cultural processes, I elucidate her role in Mexico’s transformation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in economic modernization; social engineering; the rise of social Catholicism; and nation building and the creation of a national identity.