Catholic Women and Mexican Politics, 1750–1940 / / Margaret Chowning.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2023 English
• VerfasserIn: Chowning, Margaret,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (376 p.) :; 7 b/w illus. 5 tables. 2 maps.

How women preserved the power of the Catholic Church in Mexican political lifeWhat accounts for the enduring power of the Catholic Church, which withstood widespread and sustained anticlerical opposition in Mexico? Margaret Chowning locates an answer in the untold story of how the Mexican Catholic church in the nineteenth century excluded, then accepted, and then came to depend on women as leaders in church organizations.But much more than a study of women and the church or the feminization of piety, the book links new female lay associations beginning in the 1840s to the surprisingly early politicization of Catholic women in Mexico. Drawing on a wealth of archival materials spanning more than a century of Mexican political life, Chowning boldly argues that Catholic women played a vital role in the church’s resurrection as a political force in Mexico after liberal policies left it for dead.Shedding light on the importance of informal political power, this book places Catholic women at the forefront of Mexican conservatism and shows how they kept loyalty to the church strong when the church itself was weak.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Archives Consulted -- Introduction -- Part I. The Late Colony and the Aftermath of the Wars for Independence -- 1. “Under No Circumstances Shall a Woman Be Elected”: Gender Roles in Colonial Urban Cofradías -- 2. “Our Fears That the Cofradías Will Disappear Are Not Unfounded”: Gender, Lay Associations, and Priests in the Aftermath of the Wars for Independence, 1810–1860 -- Part II. The Era of the Reform -- 3. “We Ladies Who Sign Below Wish to Establish a Congregation”: Priests, Women, and New Lay Associations, 1840–1856 -- 4. “Throwing Themselves upon the Political Barricades”: Catholic Women Enter National Politics in the Midcentury Petition Campaigns -- 5. “The Intervention of the Faithful Was an Unavoidable Necessity”: Lay Organizing and Women, 1856–1875 -- 6. “We’ll See Who Wins: Them with Their Laws, or Us with Our Protests”: The Ley Orgánica and the 1874–1875 Petition Campaign -- Part III. The Porfiriato -- 7. “Excellent Assistants of the Priest”: Women and Lay Associations, 1876–1911 -- 8. “The Men Are Somewhat Preoccupied. Fortunately, the Mexican Woman Carries the Standard of Our Beliefs”: Women and Catholic Politics in the Porfiriato -- Epilogue. Catholic Women and Politics, 1910–1940 -- Appendix. Foundations of the Vela Perpetua 1840–1860 -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index