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University of Texas at El Paso DigitalCommons@UTEP Open Access Theses & Dissertations 2009-01-01 Claiming the Discursive Self: Mestiza Rhetoric of Mexican Women Jouranlists, 1876-1924 Cristina Devereaux Ramirez University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd Part of the Latin American History Commons, and the Latin American Literature Commons Recommended Citation Ramirez, Cristina Devereaux, "Claiming the Discursive Self: Mestiza Rhetoric of Mexican Women Jouranlists, 1876-1924" (2009). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 340. https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd/340 This is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Claiming the Discursive Self: Mestiza Rhetorics of Mexican Women Journalists, 1876-1924 CRISTINA VICTORIA DEVEREAUX RAMÍREZ Department of English, Rhetoric and Writing Studies Approved: ______________________________ Beth Brunk-Chavez, Ph.D., Chair ______________________________ Carol Clark, Ph.D. ______________________________ Samuel Brunk, Ph.D. _____________________________ Patricia D. Witherspoon, Ph.D. Dean of the Graduate School Copyright© By Cristina Victoria Devereaux Ramírez Claiming the Discursive Self: Mestiza Rhetorics of Mexican Women Journalists, 1876-1924 by CRISTINA VICTORIA DEVEREAUX RAMÍREZ DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at El Paso in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English, Rhetoric and Writing Studies THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO August 2009 Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank Dr. Beth Brunk-Chavez for all of her efforts throughout my doctoral career. She has been a source of inspiration not only as a professor, but as a mentor and a friend. Unlike any professor or mentor, she demonstrated the keen ability to critique and ask questions, which not only challenged my thinking, but respected my own acumen. Her comments on my first chapter, and its many drafts thereafter, launched my writing and insight to a new level, which ultimately contributed to its publication in College English. Like the writing process, earning a Ph.D. is not an individual, isolated course. Many people contribute to one’s growth and understanding. I am indebted to all the professors and fellow students who accompanied me on this journey. A profound thank you goes to Dr. Helen Foster, Dr. Kate Mangelsdorf, Dr. Carol Clark, and Dr. John Scenters-Zapico. A special thank you goes to Dr. Sam Brunk, my third reader, who contributed his historical and scholarly expertise, which has made my dissertation a strong academic contribution to various fields. My fellow graduate students also challenged my perceptions and deepened my understanding of the subject area. Thank you to Anita August, Hector Carbajal, Brian McNely, Marohang Limbu, Myshie Pagel, and Lucia Dura. This dissertation would not have been possible without the Spanish language expertise of my father, Dr. Neil J. Devereaux. My father, a thirty-five year scholar and linguist, translated all of the writer’s works with precision. He truly captured the essence of these Mexican female journalist’s words and what they were trying to communicate to the world. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Alex Ramirez. I thank you, sweetie, for all of your patience, love, and support. And most importantly, I thank you for the faith that you had in me to accomplish my dream. iv Abstract In the last two decades, scholars in rhetoric and writing studies have been calling for a greater representation of voices of those from other cultures who participated in rhetorical practices. As Jacqueline Jones Royster contends, rhetoric has been framed as a mostly white, male, and elite, and that these positions distort the democratic perspective of our discipline. Claiming the Discursive Self: Mestiza Rhetoric of Mexican Women Journalists, 1876-1940 presents women rhetors who were participating in not only creating a national identity, but constructing a public identity to insure women’s input and participation for future generations. It closely examines the rhetorical strategies they employed to claim a discursive identity, and it provides a rhetorical analysis positing a strong historical, cultural, colonial, political, and feminist impact of their writings at that time. Each chapter foregrounds women’s writings through a feminist theoretical lens against those of the dominant discourse of the time. The women this study considers are Laureana Wright de Kleinhans (1846-1896), Hermila Galindo (1885-1954), la mujeres de Zitácuaro (1900), and Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza (1875-1942). Through their writings, I argue for a mestiza rhetoric, a hybrid rhetoric of Mexican and indigenous cultures representative of our growing national populations. More specifically, these Mexican women journalists wrote in order to contribute to a national identity situated in indigenous, Mexican, and European sensibilities which resisted any one dominate discourse; and secondly, they wrote to counter the repression of women’s voices and representation in the public sphere. The multiple directions in their discourse created a mestiza rhetoric. v Table of Contents Page Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………..…...iv Abstract …..…………………………………………………………………………………….…v Table of Contents ……...……………………………………………………………………...….vi List of Figures ….....……………………………………………………………………………..vii Chapter 1. Forging a Mestiza Rhetoric: Mexican Women Journalists’ Role in the Construction of a National Identity……………………………………………….1 2. La Hija del Anáhuac: The Rhetoric of Laureana Wright de Kleinhans………...…..35 3. Recovering Lost Rhetorics: The Feminist Manifesto of las Mujeres de Zitácuaro …77 4. Venimos a ocupar nuestro puesto: Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza’s Sophistic Rhetoric in the Mexican Revolution Precursor Movement ………....113 5. ¡Por la tierra y por la raza! Gutiérrez de Mendoza’s Anti-Modernist Rhetoric ….157 6. Epilogue ……………………………………………………………………………216 Works Cited ……………….. ………………………………………………………………….227 Curriculum vita ………………………………………………………………………………...236 vi List of Figures Page Figure 3.1 - Digital image of “Actitud del partido liberal por la revelaciones del Obispo de San Luis. ʊMovimiento de indignación en toda la República. ʊ Las mujeres de Zitácuaro.” …………………………………………………….110 Figure 3.2 - Digital image of “La mujer se emancipa de las opresoras cadenas del clericalismo” and “Propaganda liberal. Manifiesto.” …………………...…………………... 111 Figure 3.3 - Digital image of the full text of “Propaganda liberal. Manifiesto.” ……….……..112 vii Forging a Mestiza Rhetoric: Mexican Women Journalists’ Role in the Construction of a National Identity In Mexico, the people as a collective had an integral awakening at the dawning of this present century, and the women brought to the national stage their own actions and orientations. – Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza 1 Damían Baca’s theoretical projections in Mestiz@ Scripts, Digital Migrations, and the Territories of Writing offer rhetoric and composition the prospect of what Jacqueline Jones Royster calls “standing in other places” (150). Rhetoric has been situated in a Euroamerican perspective of theory and history for centuries (Abbott, 1996; Villanueva, 1999; Baca, 2008; Royster, 2003; Wu, 2002; Mignolo, 2000). Baca’s theory on mestiza rhetoric shifts our gaze from the dominant theoretical and narrative perspective to a “mestiza consciousness that offers the possibility of ‘thinking and writing from the intersection of Mesoamerican and Western perspective, where their collective expressions merge” (5). In this article, I will investigate Mexican women journalists’ writing during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. These journalists were at the center of the Latin American transnational experience as female pioneers in the creation of a new mestiza rhetoric that reflected writing from the stand point of inclusion that was resistant to oppressive ideologies. These Mexican women’s discourse is situated in a pseudo-Greco Roman historical tradition of Mexico. The writings they produced had dual rhetorical purposes. One, these Mexican women journalists wrote in order to contribute to a national identity situated in 1 indigenous, Mexican, and European sensibilities which resisted any one dominant discourse; and two, they wrote to counter the repression of women’s voices in public. The two directions in their discourse created a mestiza rhetoric. A mestiza rhetoric is a discourse that emerges from a cultural background that recognizes its multiple subjectivities, adapts ideas and logics from various cultures, and “creates a symbolic space beyond the mere coming together of two halves” (Baca 5). Mestiza discourse can represent this symbolic space by calling on indigenous cultural symbols, but my perception of mestiza rhetoric does not necessarily depend upon the explicit discursive recognition of indigenous roots. It represents an intertextuality of cultures and ideas while resisting assimilation to a linear articulation of logic, thereby resulting in divergent, subversive texts. Mestiza rhetoric emerges from a place of suspension between cultural worlds, a mestiza consciousness, which does not necessarily mean that the writer considers herself to be from an indigenous

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