Gender in the Bedroom, Streets, and Courts of El Salvador, 1910–60

This paper analyzes the struggle between the efforts by the Salvadoran state to defend the patriarchal family and female sexual honor defined by paternal power, pre-marital virginity and formal marriage, and the attempts by young women to assert their sexual independence and re-define honor. Between the 1910s and 1960s in El Salvador the generational struggles over parental authority over marriage choice of working- and middle-class Salvadorans played out in hundreds of surviving court cases across the many Departments of the nation. In this half century of demographic, economic and social change, parents increasingly looked to the judicial system to control the actions and behavior of an increasing mobile and independent youth. In many ways a colonial remnant, rapto and estupro cases (kidnapping/elopement and deflowering) were designed to control the behavior, sexuality and autonomy of girls/young women. Fundamentally and legally, their sexuality was not theirs, but belonged to their families, and was policed by the state in an effort to strengthen the patriarchal family. An analysis and comparison of select records from the Departments of Santa Ana and Chalatenango housed in the AGN reveals the increased pace of inter-generation struggles and
shifting ideas of female sexuality and parental authority in the 20th century. Young women had limited power and ability to control their sexuality, but used the judicial system to establish some autonomy and independence from their parents and their communities, and defied the ultimate will of the state. Despite legal challenges, and practical defeats, many young women publicly defended their decisions regarding who to live with and with who have sexual relations, and along with many other “unruly women,” helped redefine honor in the courts and public imagination.