As the new temporary editor of the June 1911 Mexican anarchist magazine Regeneracion, Rosa Mendez’s first order of business was to quickly state that “I am willing to help as far as my limited intelligence and duties as a woman with a family will allow me…” As she adopted this new role, Mendez felt the need to legitimize her new position by reassuring her readers that she identified herself primarily as a woman with a family. Mendez’s experience is similar to that of many anarchist women who quickly learned that despite the calls for a social revolution, anarchist circles remained unable or unwilling to abandon the patriarchal ideology that was at the very foundation of Mexican culture. Even under an atheist and anti-authoritative party, the
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Before the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, the Mexican Liberal Party posed the greatest challenge to President Porfirio Diaz’s dictatorial regime. In order to construct a multi-social-class base of support and retain this base during the political infighting of the Revolution, the leaders of the PLM had to legitimize their movement. Examinations of Regeneracion during the first three years of the Revolution will demonstrate that this was accomplished by reproducing the patriarchal social order that was at the foundation of Mexican culture. Mexican anarchists, colloquially termed Magonistas after their leader Ricardo Flores Magon, utilized their paper Regeneracion to portray feminine support as passive and purely symbolic. They emphasized the perceived fragility of femininity by highlighting the key characteristics in women’s narratives which best personified the tenets of Marianismo. For example, in June 1911 Regeneracion published an obituary for a young woman named Carmen Sanchez who had succumbed to a hunger related illness after being overworked. The editors of the magazine included a quote from her father where he lamented that “the doctor said that my daughter’s cause of death is the same cause that will kill all of us poor people until we become aware of our enslavement.” In other instances, anarchist men operating in Mexico during the summer months of 1911 often wrote about “las pobres mujeres” (the poor women) who approached the men with their children looking for some form of relief or attempted to sell them mole and tortillas in the street. The narratives of these women were carefully constructed to reflect Marianismo principles, their passivity, loyalty, vulnerability and function as family members was highlighted while their agency was downplayed. These women were portrayed as victims in order to appeal to the machista culture which was at the
Before the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, the Mexican Liberal Party posed the greatest challenge to President Porfirio Diaz’s dictatorial regime. In order to construct a multi-social-class base of support and retain this base during the political infighting of the Revolution, the leaders of the PLM had to legitimize their movement. Examinations of Regeneracion during the first three years of the Revolution will demonstrate that this was accomplished by reproducing the patriarchal social order that was at the foundation of Mexican culture. Mexican anarchists, colloquially termed Magonistas after their leader Ricardo Flores Magon, utilized their paper Regeneracion to portray feminine support as passive and purely symbolic. They emphasized the perceived fragility of femininity by highlighting the key characteristics in women’s narratives which best personified the tenets of Marianismo. For example, in June 1911 Regeneracion published an obituary for a young woman named Carmen Sanchez who had succumbed to a hunger related illness after being overworked. The editors of the magazine included a quote from her father where he lamented that “the doctor said that my daughter’s cause of death is the same cause that will kill all of us poor people until we become aware of our enslavement.” In other instances, anarchist men operating in Mexico during the summer months of 1911 often wrote about “las pobres mujeres” (the poor women) who approached the men with their children looking for some form of relief or attempted to sell them mole and tortillas in the street. The narratives of these women were carefully constructed to reflect Marianismo principles, their passivity, loyalty, vulnerability and function as family members was highlighted while their agency was downplayed. These women were portrayed as victims in order to appeal to the machista culture which was at the