In Catholic Women and Mexican Politics, 1750–1940, Margaret Chowning has written a meticulously researched, comprehensive, and groundbreaking examination of Mexican Catholic women’s roles in politics, religion, and society from the late colonial period to the 1940s. Chowning’s analysis reveals how—through the interconnected mechanisms of Catholic lay associations and petition campaigns—Catholic women entered the sphere of national politics as early as the 1840s, more than a century before their enfranchisement in 1953. As a result, these women managed to exert sufficient power to drive cultural and political transformations in Mexico.
The role of women within the cofradía is the central subject of the first two chapters. Chowning uses a wealth of archival material to provide gender and status information on sixty-two cofradías in six bishoprics during the last hundred years of the colonial period. In cities and towns throughout Mexico, cofradías sponsored monthly masses and annual events, and also provided...
University of California Press