Three Decades of Engendering History: Selected Works of Antonia I. Castaneda (Mexican American Studies, 9, Band 9) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1574415697 ISBN 13: 9781574415698

Verlag: University of North Texas Press,U.S., 2014

Inhaltsangabe

Three Decades of Engendering History collects ten of Antonia I. Castañeda’s best articles, including the widely circulated article “Engendering the History of Alta California, 1769–1848,” in which Castañeda took a direct and honest look at sex and gender relations in colonial California, exposing stories of violence against women as well as stories of survival and resistance. Other articles included are the prize-winning “Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History,” and two recent articles, “Lullabies y Canciones de Cuna” and “La Despedida.” The latter two represent Castañeda’s most recent work excavating, mapping, and bringing forth the long and strong post-WWII history of Tejanas. Finally, the volume includes three interviews with Antonia Castañeda that contribute the important narrative of her lived experience—the “theory in the flesh” and politics of necessity that fueled her commitment to transformative scholarship that highlights gender and Chicanas as a legitimate line of inquiry.

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LINDA HEIDENREICH is associate professor of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman, and the author of “This Land Was Mexican Once”: Histories of Resistance from Northern California.

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Three Decades of Engendering History

Selected Works of Antonia I. Castañeda

By Linda Heidenreich, Antonia I. Castañeda

University of North Texas Press

Copyright © 2014 Linda Heidenreich, Luz María Gordillo, and Antonia I. Castañeda
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57441-569-8

CHAPTER 1

The Political Economy of Nineteenth-Century Stereotypes of Californianas

Recent scholarship in Chicano and women's history has challenged the limited, stereotypic images of Mexicanos and women prevalent in the contemporary and historical literature of nineteenth-century California and the American west. In studying North American imperial expansion, Chicano and other scholars have concluded that pejorative, racist stereotypes of Mexicanos, in particular, were an integral part of an ideology that helped justify the Mexican-American War as well as subsequent repression in the conquered territory. One scholar persuasively argues that the notion of Manifest Destiny, which a priori assumed the inferiority of Mexicanos, was "the product of a campaign of ideological manipulation."

In addition, studies in women's history, which tend to focus on the changing material reality and developing ideology of the United States, conclude that the constrictive, stereotypic molds into which women have been cast in the literature are sex- and class-based. The literature of the period was generally written by middle class, Anglo males who interpreted women's experiences from their own gender and class perspective of women's proper roles. In this way, these authors created sexist and unidimensional portrayals of women. Recent work has shown that even in the literature of the American West—where greater sexual equality allegedly existed—women are stereotyped into four sexually defined roles: gentle tamers, sun-bonneted helpmates, hell-raisers and bad women.

According to these studies, sexually defined stereotypes of women are rooted in the material changes which occurred in the nineteenth century when the United States was moving from an agricultural economy to mercantile capitalism. This transition from a pre-industrial economy physically removed the workplace from the household. In the process, many of women's traditional economic functions disappeared and the social relations of production were transformed. Women began to be defined primarily by their sexual function as reproducers of the species, and by the social roles ascribed to wife and mother. During the nineteenth century, the view that women's proper place was in the home formed a central part of the ideology of an industrializing America—an ideology which came to enshrine women in the cult of true womanhood.

However, these studies have not yet examined the portrayal of Mexican women and the relationship between stereotypes and ideology. Furthermore, these discussions have altogether ignored the intersection of sex, race and class in the development of America's ideology in the nineteenth century. Although Mexican women in California—Californianas—have never been the subject of any major historical work, they do appear in three kinds of North American literature which presents them in a contradictory, but nevertheless, stereotypic light. This literature—which spans both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—includes contemporary travel, journalistic, and biographical works; nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels; and general histories, both academic and popular, of California.

This paper examines contemporary North American literature on early California and the stereotypes it presents of Mexican women. The effort here is to examine the literature within the framework of mid-nineteenth century America's system of beliefs and ideas, and to suggest how the images of Mexicanas fit into that system. The discussion focuses on Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast (1840), Thomas Jefferson Farnham's Travels in California and Scenes in the Pacific Ocean (1844) and Alfred Robinson's Life in California (1846). As an integral part of nineteenth-century American, but particularly Californian, literary culture, these works have served as primary sources for historical, novelistic, and popular accounts of provincial California. Dana and Robinson's works in particular have long influenced perceptions and interpretations of Mexicanos in California.

While the contemporary and historical literature purports to present accurate descriptions of Mexican women's experience and condition, it actually constructs stereotypic images which serve ideological purposes. The stereotypes manifest the polarities of "good" and "bad" women applied to women generally. This simplistic dichotomous portrayal is further complicated by stereotypical notions of gender, race, and class. While these prejudices are evident in most accounts of Mexicanas, and while all the descriptions purport to present transhistorical or timeless images, the descriptions do, in fact, vary considerably across time in terms of the particular aspects of these stereotypes which are emphasized. These variations correlate with the changing needs of the capitalist and imperialist system, its shifting relations to Mexicano culture and economy in California and the evolving ideology of the nature of women.

The earliest images of Mexican women in North American literature appeared in contemporary travel, journalistic, and biographical accounts written in the 1830s and 1840s. The authors were Anglo men—merchants, sailors and adventurers—engaged in the hide and tallow trade and/or America's westward expansion. Some arrived in the early 1820s when the newly-independent Mexico opened its borders to foreign trade. They brought their wares from Boston to Valpariso to California. In this remote province, recently freed from the grasp of Spain's stringent regulations and mercantilist economic policies, Yankee and English traders found a ready market for the Chinese, European, and American goods crammed into the holds of their ships. They soon established a brisk, lucrative trade, exchanging their cargo for hides and tallow, often at a 200 percent profit.

The next two decades—the 1830s and 1840s were years of escalating conflict between the young Mexican Republic and an expanding United States. The conflict, which culminated in the Mexican-American War, raged hot and cold in California prior to the actual outbreak of war in 1846.10 The three narratives discussed in this paper appeared during the height of this rising conflict.

Richard Henry Dana in Two Years Before the Mast(published anonymously in 1840), presented the first major image of Mexican women in California. Dana, the scion of a cultivated patrician family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sailed to California on the Pilgrim, a ship belonging to Bryant, Sturgis, and Company, the major American firm engaged in the hide and tallow trade. In this work, Dana recorded his experiences as a sailor as well as his impressions of the country, the land, and the people he saw on his journey during his two years aboard ship.

Dana has little to say of a positive nature about Mexican people in general. His views of Mexican women, which center on virtue, are moralistic and judgmental. According to Dana, "The fondness for dress among the women is excessive, and is sometimes their ruin. A present of a fine mantel, or a necklace, or pair of earrings gains the favor of a greater part. Nothing is more common than to see a woman living in a house of only two rooms, with the ground for a floor, dressed in spangled satin shoes,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of North Texas Press,U.S.
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1574415697
• ISBN 13: 9781574415698
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 452
• Herausgeber: Heidenreich Linda
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar