A History of Latin America

LATIN AMERICA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 189

wife,” she wrote. “Woman is the proletariat of the proletariat.” She also presaged

theoretical formulations of twentieth-century feminists by arguing that “the lib-

eration of women is the necessary condition for the liberation of men.”

The democratic, liberal movements of the fi rst half-century after indepen-

dence stimulated some developments in favor of women. In Argentina, Sarmiento

wrote that “the level of civilization of a people can be judged by the social posi-

tion of its women”; his educational program envisaged a major role for women as

primary-school teachers. In Mexico, the triumph of the Reforma was followed by

promulgation of a new school law that called for the establishment of secondary

schools for girls and normal schools for the training of women primary-school

teachers. In both countries after 1870, there arose small feminist movements,

largely composed of schoolteachers, that formed societies, edited journals, and

worked for the cultural, economic, and social improvement of women.

Even in a backward slave society like Brazil, a women’s rights press was cre-

ated, pioneered by Joana Paula Manso de Noronha, who stated in the introduc-

tory editorial to O Jornal das Senhoras (1852) her intention to work for “social

betterment and the moral emancipation of women.” In the last decades of the cen-

tury, with the development of industry, women in increasing numbers entered

factories and sweatshops, where they often were paid half of what male workers

earned, becoming a source of superprofi ts for capitalist employers. By 1887, ac-

cording to the census of Buenos Aires, 39 percent of the paid work force of that

city was composed of women.

The church, which in some countries had suffered discredit because of the

royalist posture of many clergy during the wars of independence, experienced

a further decline in infl uence as a result of increasing contacts with the outside

world and a new and relatively tolerant climate of opinion. In country after coun-

try, liberals pressed with varying success for restrictions on the church’s monop-

oly over education, marriage, burials, and the like. Because the church invariably

aligned itself with the conservative opposition, liberal victories brought reprisals

in the form of heavy attacks on its accumulated wealth and privileges.

The colonial principle of monolithic religious unity was early shattered by

the need to allow freedom of worship to the prestigious and powerful British mer-

chants. It was, in fact, the reactionary Rosas, who disliked foreigners and brought

the Jesuits back to Argentina, who donated the land on which the fi rst Anglican

church in Buenos Aires was built. Despite the efforts of some fanatical clergy to in-

cite the populace against foreign heretics, a system of peaceful coexistence between

Catholics and dissenters gradually evolved, based on reciprocal goodwill and tact.

The Inquisition, whose excesses had made it odious even to the faithful, dis-

appeared during the wars of independence. In many countries, however, the civil

authorities assumed its right to censor or ban subversive or heretical writings.