Books at Duke University Press

Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico
Jocelyn Olcott, Mary Kay Vaughan, and Gabriela Cano
Foreword by Carlos Monsivais

336 pages (November 2006)
4 b&w photos

Cloth - $84.95	0-8223-3884-X
[ISBN13 978-0-8223-3884-0]

Paperback - $23.95	0-8223-3899-8
[ISBN13 978-0-8223-3899-4]

Sex in Revolution challenges the prevailing narratives of the Mexican Revolution and postrevolutionary state formation by placing women at center stage. Bringing to bear decades of feminist scholarship and cultural approaches to Mexican history, the essays in this book demonstrate how women seized opportunities created by modernization efforts and revolutionary upheaval to challenge conventions of sexuality, work, family life, religious practices, and civil rights.

Concentrating on episodes and phenomena that occurred between 1915 and 1950, the contributors deftly render experiences ranging from those of a transgendered Zapatista soldier to upright damas católicas and Mexico City’s chicas modernas pilloried by the press and male students. Women refashioned their lives by seeking relief from bad marriages through divorce courts and preparing for new employment opportunities through vocational education. Activists ranging from Catholics to Communists mobilized for political and social rights. Although forced to compromise in the face of fierce opposition, these women made an indelible imprint on postrevolutionary society.

These essays illuminate emerging practices of femininity and masculinity, stressing the formation of subjectivity through civil-society mobilizations, spectatorship and entertainment, and locales such as workplaces, schools, churches, and homes. The volume’s epilogue examines how second-wave feminism catalyzed this revolutionary legacy, sparking widespread, more radically egalitarian rural women’s organizing in the wake of late-twentieth-century democratization campaigns. The conclusion considers the Mexican experience alongside those of other postrevolutionary societies, offering a critical comparative perspective.

Contributors. Ann S. Blum, Kristina A. Boylan, Gabriela Cano, María Teresa Fernández Aceves, Heather Fowler-Salamini, Susan Gauss, Temma Kaplan, Carlos Monsiváis, Jocelyn Olcott, Anne Rubenstein, Patience Schell, Stephanie Smith, Lynn Stephen, Julia Tuñón, Mary Kay Vaughan

“This anthology touches on a wide range of themes: female colonels in the revolution, machismo applied with scissor snips in Mexico City, the cinematographic treatment of indigenous women, divorce in conservative circles, women’s education, the construction of new families, labor-union life, rationalized sex, activism among women in Catholic and rural organizations, and sexism in the Popular Front. Despite the variety, the book offers a complex, coherent panorama, energetically distancing itself from generalizations. It is well known that God, the devil, and attentive readers are in the details.”—Carlos Monsiváis, from the foreword

“This path-breaking book fundamentally changes our view of the Mexican Revolution as a man-made affair. The women who struggled against patriarchal authority as workers, teachers, feminist activists, soldiers, peasants, students, and mothers come alive in these pages—as do their adversaries. The chapters brilliantly mesh theoretical analysis with fine-grained historical accounts of gendered challenges to Mexico’s social order. This book’s importance reaches far beyond the Mexican case as it grapples with universal questions of authority, gender, and revolution.”—Elizabeth Dore, author of Myths of Modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaragua

Jocelyn Olcott is the Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of History at Duke University. She is the author of Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico, also published by Duke University Press. Mary Kay Vaughan is Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her books include Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1920–1940 and (with Stephen E. Lewis) The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920–1940, also published by Duke University Press. Gabriela Cano is Professor of History at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City. She is a coeditor of the multivolume Historia de las mujeres en España y América Latina.

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Acknowledgments ix

Forward
When Gender Can’t eBe Seen amid the Symbols: Women and the Mexican Revolution
CARLOS MONSIVAOIS 1

Introduction
Pancho Villa, the Daughters of Mary, and the Modern Woman: Gender in the Long Mexican Revolution
MARY KAY VAUGHAN 21

Part One: Embodying Revolutionary Culture
Unconcealable Realities of Desire: Amelio Robles’s (Transgender) Masculinity in the Mexican Revolution
GABRIELA CANO 35

The War on Las Pelonas: Modern Women and Their Enemies, Mexico City, 1924
ANNE RUBENSTEIN 57

Femininity, Indigneismo, and Nation: Film Representation by Emilio “El Indio: Fernandez
JULIA TUNON 81

Part Two: Reshaping the Domestic Sphere
“In Love Enslaves...Love Ber Damned!”: Divorce and Revolutionary State Formation in Yucatan
STEPHANIE SMITH 99

Gender, Class, and Anxiety at the Gabriela Mistral Vocational School, Revolutionary Mexico City
PATIENCE A. SCHELL 112

Breaking and Making Families: Adoption and Public Welfare, Mexico City, 1938-1942
ANN S. BLUM 127

Part Three: The Gendered Realm of Labor Organizing
The Struggle between the Metate and the Molinos de Nixtamal in Guadalajara, 1920-1940
MARIA TERESA FERNANDEZ-AVECES

Gender, Work, Trade Unionism, and Working-Class Women’s Culture in Post-Revolution Veracruz
HEATHER FOWLER-SALAMINI 162

Working-Class Masculinity and the Rationalized Sex: Gender and Industrial Modernization in the Textile Industry In Postrevolutionary Puebla
SUSAN M. GAUSS 181

Part Four: Women and Revolutionary Politics

Gendering the Faith and Altering the Nation: Mexican Catholic Women’s Activism, 1917-1940
KRISTINA A. BOYLAN 199

The Center Cannot Hold: Women on Mexico’s Popular Front
JOCELYN OLCOTT 225

Epilogue
Rural Women’s Grassroots Activism, 1980-2000: Reframing the Nation from Below
LYNN STEPHEN 241

Final Reflections: Genfer, Chaos, and Authority in Revolutionary Times
TEMMA KAPLAN 261

Bibliography 277

Contributors 303

Index 307