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Essay on The Women of Colonial Latin America by Susan Migden Socolow
The Women of Colonial Latin America by Susan Migden Socolow
The Women of Colonial Latin America by Susan Migden Socolow is one of the marvelous books ever written on the gloomiest saga of women who had to suffer a number of agonies and pain particularly during the colonial era.
Colonial Latin America witnessed a remarkable convergence of three different peoples: Africans, Europeans, and indigenous Americans. From the early days of contact and conquest the interactions of Spanish and Portuguese colonists, native Americans, and enslaved Africans created hybrid societies of great dynamism and complexity. In The Women of Colonial Latin America Susan Migden Socolow has produced an accessible and insightful introduction to the female experience in this patriarchal world where evolving hierarchies of gender, race, and class combined to regulate women's behavior. (Hartch, Todd, 2002)
As per the numerous excerpts of the books, when these three worlds collided in the Americas, the outcome were quite complex particularly for the gentle sex. The scarcity of women among the early Europeans meant that the conquistadors took indigenous women not only as (a common practice throughout the colonial era) and lovers, but as wives. For instance, of the Spanish men who arrived in the Mexican city of Puebla before 1600, one in four married an indigenous woman. By 1660, though, the accelerating pace of female immigration from Europe meant that Spanish men increasingly spurned indigenous and mestiza women to marry Spanish men, indicating that racial hierarchies became more, not less, entrenched as colonial society matured. On the whole, the tribute system imposed on indigenous communities by the Spaniards caused great suffering for indigenous women, lowering their reproductive rates. (Smith, Stephanie J. 2005) In the later colonial society elite women and the women of indigenous communities, although separated by a huge socioeconomic gap, did have a common propensity to marry.......
