SINGLENESS AND THE STATE: UNMARRIED AND WIDOWED WOMEN IN GUADALAJARA, MEXICO, 1821-1910 By Andrea Vicente A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY History 2012 ABSTRACT SINGLENESS AND THE STATE: UNMARRIED AND WIDOWED WOMEN IN GUADALAJARA, MEXICO, 1821-1910 By Andrea Vicente This is a study of women who lived without men between 1821 and 1910 in Guadalajara Mexico. In these years single and widowed women consistently outnumbered men in the city. I argue that disproportionate sex ratios created obstacles to legal marriage at a time when Mexican political leaders and reformers promoted marriage and motherhood as an important, idealized part of a solution to political instability in the aftermath of Independence in 1821. The same liberal political philosophies that motivated the fight for national Independence, promoted new economic and social reforms that displaced rural peasants forcing many to seek employment in cities. It was a trend that added to the demographic growth and industrialization of Guadalajara and created a growing class of poor urban workers. Among these new migrants were women who arrived to the city widowed and single. Some women never married, or remarried. Others lived in consensual unions and mothered illegitimate children. City officials grew anxious over the presence of unmarried working women who lived outside the boundaries of traditional marriage and patriarchal control. Increasingly, politicians, clergymen, women’s magazines, police and judges of various political stripes debated the role of unmarried women in their efforts to reform what they believed to be the wayward lifestyle that typified the urban poor. For these powerful actors unmarried women became a symbol, symptom, and a cause of rising urban problems including immorality, crime and poverty. Overall, my research demonstrates that authorities in nineteenth-century Guadalajara organized institutions of power such as city police, criminal courts and Guadalajara’s poorhouse to target unmarried women as a group in need of greater protection, punishment and reform. This dissertation combines extensive demographic data with fine-grained qualitative and statistical analysis of the lives of mostly poor unmarried women in Guadalajara. It draws on a wide variety of sources to attempt to capture a sense of the lives of women, many of whom found it impossible to conform to the standards of elite gender expectations. Sources utilized here include unique household-level censuses from Guadalajara, religious writings, political essays, proscriptive literature from Latin America and Europe, legal codes, criminal and civil court proceedings, maps, newspapers and state institutional records. Overall, the project is one of the first to focus exclusively on unmarried adult women in Latin America. Acknowledgments I have never been able to study anything that was not a personal experience as much as it was an intellectual one. My journey toward the study of Latin America has been a long one, influenced by many individuals along the way. I thank them for the experiences of getting to know them and for their many stories which left me with a greater desire to know and understand Latin American history and culture. To Miyuki Hasegawa and her family I would like to thank first and foremost, for all those wonderful Cuba stories that got this whole thing started so many years ago in Tampa. Also, I wish to express my gratitude to my good friends Claudia Rivas and Juan Manuel Franco along with their sons Fernando and Santiago. Thank you for sharing a bit of Guadalajara with Doug and me, and helping me on my way to what you see here. Their companionship provided us with a sense of family during our stay in Guadalajara and made the research process an enjoyable one. Of course, where I am today would not be possible without the many mentors who inspired and encouraged me on my path. My high school history teacher, William Hartley, at Lecanto High School was the first to make me realize that studying history could lead to a viable, albeit meager, career. The four years I spent taking his history courses truly shaped and piqued my own interests and left me wanting to know more. His thought provoking and very personal relationship to history, not only more than prepared me for college, it motivated my own studies. He is truly a model for what great teachers and teaching is all about. Dr. Rodney Anderson at Florida State University is probably most responsible for this project. If not for the assignment he handed me of researching widows and single women as part of a paper written for the Guadalajara Census Project this dissertation might not have happened. iv His enthusiasm and zeal, as well as his wit, helped make my time at Florida State University an incredibly rewarding and enjoyable place to study. Who can thank Dr. Anderson without his partner in crime, Matt Childs (or is it the other way around?). I had the privilege and joy of working with Matt on my Master’s Degree while at FSU. Even though his job as my advisor at ended years ago, Matt continued to mentor me throughout grad school, reading drafts, offering commentary, sharing advice and academic know-how, and listening to occasional freak-outs when I thought I had made an error. Thank you both for giving me some of the most important lessons in being the kind of professor I hope to someday be. Here at Michigan State University, I’ve been privileged to work with some amazing professors. I would like to thank all of the members of my committee, Peter Beattie, Walter Hawthorne, Miguel Cabañas and Erica Windler. Peter Beattie and Erica Windler really helped me find my niche and interests in Latin American history. Their critiques were always sharp, yet at the same time very constructive. In Guadalajara, Professors Claudia Rivas Jimenez, Juan Manuel Franco, Robert Curley and María Teresa Fernandez Aceves at the Universidad de Guadalajara provided thought provoking insight that helped shape this project. I would also like to sincerely thank all of the kind archivists in Guadalajara who facilitated my research. They truly made it a wonderful place to carry out my work. At the Bíblioteca Pública, I would like to thank Juana Irma Flores for permitting me access to the wonderful collection. Most importantly I wish to extend my gratitude to Heriberto Saucedo and Rosa María Tavera for retrieving my many cajas on a daily basis, and always with a smile. At the Archivo Histórico thanks is an order to Susana Pacheco for truly making me feel welcome. In addition, I’d like to thank Gaby Sálazar Hernández and Alejandro Télles Vasquez for some wonderful conversation and recommendations while researching. Juan Pablo Torres provided v me access to an amazing set of historic maps. I also enjoyed razzing Miguel Santillan Castro who begrudgingly made me numerous copies and jokingly asked on a daily basis when on earth I would be leaving. Last but not least my favorite place to work was the Archivo Arzobispado due to the kindness of Sister María Teresa Morales. I most enjoyed when she came around at noon each day to give us all a piece of candy. I have also been blessed with great friends who have helped me along the way, and were as much a part of this process as they did encourage it. My dearest friends and now “colleagues” who are now scattered about the country and world were my original support network. I will always have our great GCP memories, dance breaks, lunch dates, and gatherings to look back on. Claudia, Monica, Sarah, and Tam have been there through thick and thin and have advised me as both friends and mentors. I do not know what I would have done without them, and although I will always be “little Andrea” in their eyes, I owe much of my success to their constant wisdom. Finally, I wish to thank my Michigan cohort of graduate students. My years there, especially during those long, cold, gray winters were made easier and much more fun through the companionship and collegiality of friends like Ben, Brandon, Jaime, Jill, Lindsey Gray, Lindsey Gish, and Micalee. Not to mention my great group of supportive fellow Latin Americanists Aaron, Alberto, Carlos, Cristían, Jennifer, Nora, Nikki and Sonia. I must also thank the U.S. Department of Education for supporting my research through a 2008-2009 Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant, which allowed me to consult the archives of Guadalajara and Mexico City. The support system in place at Michigan State University, including Fulbright advisors Frank D’Itri and Joanne Martin, made my success possible. Once in Mexico, la Comisión México-Estados Unidos para el Intercambio Educativo y vi Cultural (COMEXUS) and its wonderful student advisor Jessica Mendiola, eased the logistical aspects of my time in Mexico. In addition, I would like to thank the History Department at Michigan State University for being so wonderful and supportive of its graduate students. A special thanks especially to Professor Keely Stauter-Halsted who helped me not only as the graduate student advisor throughout my time at MSU, but also during her tenure as Chair of the department. She aided the writing process with much needed financial and academic support. Further assistance in the writing process, came from the Graduate School at MSU and the Center for Gender in Global Context. I wish to extend my gratitude to them for finding my work worthy of a 2009-2010 Dissertation Completion Grant. In the course of writing these past years I have found great strength in the love and support of family members.