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Chapter 2

The Pan American Conference of Women

In April 1922, more than two thousand women and men from twenty-one American nations descended on Baltimore, Maryland. Convened by the U.S. League of Women Voters, the Pan American Conference of Women (PACW) centered on “subjects of special concern to women,” including education, child welfare, and women’s political status. But the league also acknowledged another, overriding concern. “Peace among nations is essential to the work that women have most at heart,” declared the call to the conference. Seeking to capitalize on the spirit of internationalism flourishing in the early 1920s, the league hoped to further the cause of global peace by fostering “international friendliness”: “The League believes that friendliness with our neighbor countries will be stimulated and strengthened when women from all parts of the western hemisphere come together for sympathetic study of their common problems.”¹ To that end, league members invited delegates from each of the twenty-one American nations to come to Baltimore—where the league had already planned to hold its third national convention in April 1922—for an inter-American conference.

With this conference, the League of Women Voters became the first U.S. organization to put inter-American women’s internationalism into practice on such a large, coordinated scale. Formed in 1920 out of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the nonpartisan league’s early goals included equal status for women under the law and prevention of war through international cooperation. It did not belong to the same pacifist tradition as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, but its members shared a belief in women’s power to effect political change both nationally and internationally.² The Pan American conference seemed the perfect chance to implement the ideals of Jane Addams’s human internationalism: women gathered together to share information and experiences, engage in personal interactions, build solidarity around common causes, and foster global peace. Unlike the conveners of the Women’s Auxiliary Conference in 1916, league members took great pains to learn about the leading women activists in each country, and to extend invitations to them, rather than inviting women simply because they happened to be married to or fathered by a man attending a separate conference. The league guaranteed the participation of women already committed to various causes, women who would be able not only to share information but potentially to implement whatever strategies or suggestions arose in Baltimore. Every Latin American delegate had several opportunities to speak publicly throughout the conference, ensuring that attendees would hear more than just U.S. women’s voices. The original list of topics for discussion included not only education and child welfare, but also women’s suffrage and the limitation of armaments. These were later modified, though, by the U.S. State Department, which sanctioned but did not sponsor the conference.³

Figure 2. Maud Wood Park, center, opens the Pan American Conference of Women. Maryland governor Albert Ritchie is second from the left.

Chicago Tribune, April 23, 1922.

The Pan American Conference of Women is thus significant for several reasons. First, it demonstrated how women’s internationalism served as a form of gendered diplomacy. By emphasizing “international friendliness” as the goal of the conference, league members made it clear they understood their actions as part of a broader effort to promote peace and understanding among American nations. The diplomatic potential of the conference extended beyond anything the participants themselves hoped would come of it. Both U.S. and Mexican government officials saw the conference as an opportunity to further reconciliation between the two nations, which still did not have a formal diplomatic relationship.

In its sheer size, the conference also illustrated the extent to which women activists across the Americas were committed to the promise of Addams’s human internationalism. The reasons for their commitment varied, however. U.S. women, newly enfranchised, wanted to stake a claim, a political voice for themselves in international relations. They wanted to extend and coordinate activism for suffrage and women’s rights beyond the United States, and they wanted to further hemispheric peace by bringing together women from across the Americas. Though many Latin American women may well have shared the latter two goals, they were looking for more. For instance, Mexican women, represented in Baltimore by Elena Torres and members of the Consejo Feminista Mexicano, continued to demand that U.S. women use their newfound political power to oppose interventionist U.S. policies and exploitative U.S. business practices in Mexico.

Although U.S. and Mexican women’s dedication to internationalism may have been equal, their roles in Baltimore were not. U.S. women had disproportionate power to shape the agenda and the outcome of the conference, more than any Latin American women. The League of Women Voters took it on themselves to direct the proceedings with minimal input from the non-U.S. participants. While professing a mutual desire to learn from each other, conference organizers circumscribed Latin American women’s contributions. Even when Mexican women expressly asked to have U.S. policies toward their country included on the agenda, league officials balked. To be fair, the LWV had to operate within a set of constraints—like reliance on the approval of the U.S. State Department—that limited their ability to allow discussion of controversial topics. But the fact remains that the organizers set the agenda and chose topics for discussion based on what they assumed were common concerns of all women in the Americas, while admitting they knew little of women’s concerns outside their own country. This imbalance called into question the cooperative nature of human internationalism.

Gendered Diplomacy

The idea for the Pan American Conference of Women came from Lavinia Engle, an active member of the Maryland League of Women Voters. Engle thought that in addition to providing the fledgling league with widespread publicity, such a conference would be an ideal way to promote inter-American cooperation. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover was interested in furthering trade with South America, Engle pointed out to LWV president Maud Wood Park, and would likely help secure support from the Harding administration, while Carrie Chapman Catt could help identify potential delegates using her contacts from the International Woman Suffrage Alliance.⁴ No Latin American woman had the right to vote in 1922, and the alliance had branches only in Argentina and Uruguay, but Catt had developed an extensive network of contacts through a survey the group conducted in 1902 on the political status of women around the world.⁵ By corresponding with U.S. commercial attachés in Latin America, Secretary Hoover also helped identify politically and socially active delegates, rather than simply extending invitations to the wives of Latin American diplomats.⁶ In June 1921, Park established a committee to determine the feasibility of such a conference, decide how many Latin American delegates might realistically be expected to attend, and draw up a tentative agenda outlining the purpose and goals of the conference that could be used to generate publicity.⁷

Reflecting the newfound power of women voters, Park also organized a delegation to the White House. On June 29 she led a group of conference backers, including Maryland and National LWV officials, a representative of the City of Baltimore, and the governor of Maryland, to a meeting with secretary of state Charles Evans Hughes. After securing his approval, the conference committee, chaired by Dorothy Hubert and LWV executive secretary Minnie Fisher Cunningham, began to make definite arrangements.⁸ They wrote to members of the Latin American diplomatic corps, asking for the names of prominent women in their countries. In October the U.S. State Department issued invitations on behalf of the league to every Latin American country, asking governments to appoint delegates.⁹ The Pan American Union also lent its enthusiastic support. Director Leo Rowe promised Engle and Cunningham he would “keep after” the State Department to issue the invitations promptly and even speak to as many Latin American ambassadors as he could personally, to convey his own belief in the significance of the conference.¹⁰ By October 1921, the conference was beginning to take shape.

Conference planners recognized the significance of their work as women diplomats. The league argued that by convening a group of women to discuss common concerns, they were furthering international cooperation. In other words, this was not just women getting together to discuss “women’s issues” separate from international politics. As Engle had originally pointed out, a conference promoting inter-American peace and cooperation was an ideal way for the league to generate publicity and establish a voice for women in international relations. A popular argument for women’s suffrage throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was that women’s influence would improve U.S. politics and society by making them more humane and by reducing corruption. After winning the vote in 1920, U.S. women used similar rhetoric to establish their authority over international issues ranging from disarmament to national defense.¹¹ The Baltimore conference attempted to do the same for diplomacy. Advance press coverage reflected the league’s success in this regard. The San Antonio Express asserted, “Diplomatic service of this sort heretofore has been entrusted to men; but in view of the new civic position woman has assumed in the United States … the time has come when she should enter this larger sphere of action.”¹² The Baltimore Sun agreed: “Nothing could more strikingly demonstrate how far the world has moved in the last few years from old precedents and customs than this great international gathering of women. For weal or woe, for good or ill, the heretofore politically submerged sex is asserting an equal right with man to guide and govern the earth.”¹³

A few months before the conference opened, League of Women Voters vice president Marie Stewart Edwards articulated the organization’s own understanding of this gendered diplomacy: “By emphasizing the preservation of the race as a necessary function of government we can perhaps supplement the masculine idea which overemphasizes the preservation of property to the exclusion of other things, and by combining the two we may eventually do away with this queer theory that to protect property and to protect the human race we must create engines for the destruction of both.”¹⁴ Edwards saw in the Baltimore conference an opportunity to counteract the prevailing trends in inter-American relations, to put an end to the cycles of violence and aggression like that between the United States and Mexico. Her characterization of masculine politics as focused on property rights resonated particularly with the Mexican situation, given the centrality of land and subsoil resources to the U.S.-Mexican dispute. “Preservation of the race,” meanwhile, was a common way in which women peace activists framed their mission, linking their work to their familial and social roles as mothers.¹⁵ This juxtaposition was at the heart of the role the LWV envisioned for itself in U.S. foreign policy. The ballot was not only a chance to improve U.S. politics and society; it was a tool for improving the world, a way for women to exert authority over international relations. “The mothering heart and conscience of women have always been at the service of those close at hand,” the league declared. “For the first time in history these qualities are being consciously directed to meet world-wide needs.”¹⁶ In the weeks leading up to the conference that vision seemed poised to become reality.

U.S. league members were not the only ones who saw promise in these new forms of gendered diplomacy. Their government saw an opportunity in the Pan American Conference to conduct diplomacy through women. With regard to Mexico in particular, the appeal of “international friendliness” among governments took on special significance, of which the organizers were well aware. The two countries had had no official relationship since December 1920, and by early 1922 both sides were looking for potential ways to restore ties. Almost from the beginning of the league’s contact with the State Department and the Pan American Union, the question of Mexico was a key topic of discussion. Hughes and Rowe recognized the conference as an opportunity to take steps toward reconciliation. Marie Stewart Edwards reported that the secretary of state was “tremendously pleased with this opportunity for establishing lines with Mexico which they had not been able to do as yet in a more direct manner.”¹⁷ When financial difficulties left the organizing committee wondering if they should postpone the entire conference, Maud Wood Park observed that Sumner Welles, assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, and Rowe were anxious to have the conference proceed as scheduled because “it might mean real help in the Mexican situation.”¹⁸ The Department of Commerce was also interested in the trade benefits that might result from a restored diplomatic relationship. Philip Smith, chief of the Latin American Division of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, instructed the U.S. trade commissioner in Mexico to publicize the conference in Mexican newspapers and gather information on women’s activism in Mexico City.¹⁹

Mexican officials also welcomed the opportunity presented by the Pan American Conference. President Álvaro Obregón knew that for his government to be considered legitimate in the eyes of the world, and to begin to solve the problem of Mexico’s massive foreign debt, he would have to reconcile with the United States. On March 22, 1922, less than a month before the conference opened, Obregón told the New York Times, “We wish to assume our place in the world of nations. By our efforts to pay our just obligations the Mexican Government is demonstrating that it realizes its obligations and is determined to fulfill them. Naturally recognition is needed…. Our desire and our word to resume the payment of interest on our debts should help toward bringing both recognition and closer relations.”²⁰ At the same time, Obregón had to save face in front of widespread opposition to the United States in his own country.²¹ The PACW provided him an opportunity to reach out to the U.S. government while deflecting any potential resistance. Sending a delegation of women to meet with other women was a move much more likely to be accepted and forgotten in Mexico than sending a group of oil producers, for example, to meet with U.S. investors. Obregón’s support of the conference was so strong that he authorized federal funds from the Secretariat of Public Education to finance the delegation.²²

Identifying the Mexican women who would represent their country was a long process for Dorothy Hubert and the organizing committee. They relied primarily on the personal contacts of U.S. officials and others in Mexico City. After considering input from the U.S. trade commissioner, the U.S. chargé d’affaires in Mexico City, and the Pan American Round Table (PART), a women’s group based in San Antonio, Hubert focused her attention on the Consejo Feminista Mexicano. The trade commissioner called it the “leading national women’s organization of Mexico,” while the Woman Citizen—the organ of the League of Women Voters—extolled Elena Torres as “one of the most brilliant women of the Republic.”²³ Torres had dramatically expanded several CFM programs; for instance, by 1922 they were distributing free breakfasts to 6,000 school children a day. The Mexican secretary of education personally appointed Torres head of the Mexican delegation to Baltimore. Hubert wrote to Torres in January, formally asking her to attend the PACW as a Mexican delegate and to raise interest in the conference among her colleagues. Torres agreed, and recruited seven of her colleagues to travel to Baltimore with her.²⁴ They included a math teacher, a newspaper editor, and two women who had spent several years teaching indigenous Mexicans to read and write Spanish. With the exception of Torres, who came from a working-class family, the Mexican delegates were middle-class, and all but two were unmarried. Several of them had spent time in the United States, including Torres, and spoke English well.²⁵

The Mexican delegation’s journey to the conference was a veritable public relations campaign, designed to promote Pan Americanism, Mexico, and the League of Women Voters all at the same time. Composed of eight women, the group was one of the largest contingents from a Latin American country. From Mexico City they traveled by train to Laredo, Texas, where the U.S. Treasury Department had instructed customs officials to “extend every courtesy to facilitate the passage of the Mexican women through that port.” They were met at the border by Florence Terry Griswold, president of the Pan American Round Table, who, along with several members of her organization, escorted them to San Antonio. After a few days of events and sight-seeing in San Antonio, several Round Table members accompanied the Mexican women by train to St. Louis, where they received “special hospitality” from the local branch of the League of Women Voters. From St. Louis, Torres, Griswold, and the others continued on to Baltimore. The Mexican delegation carried with them a Mexican flag made from silk and hand-embroidered by hundreds of Mexican women. President Obregón had asked them, on behalf of the entire country, to present the flag at the Baltimore conference, and afterward to carry it to Independence Hall in Philadelphia.²⁶ On April 28, Torres exchanged flags with members of the New Century Club, a prominent Philadelphia women’s organization. They in turn presented Torres with a U.S. flag to be delivered as a gift to President Obregón’s wife.²⁷ This was gendered public diplomacy at its finest—the journey and exchange of flags were designed to spread a peaceful and pleasant image of Mexico across the United States, establishing these representatives as friends rather than adversaries. At a time when the two countries did not enjoy a formal diplomatic relationship, these kinds of interactions held great symbolic significance.

In addition to establishing the Pan American Conference of Women as a venue for gendered diplomacy, the pre-conference activities and exchanges also revealed that while all the delegates were dedicated to furthering inter-American women’s internationalism, some had more power than others to shape its direction. The process of setting the conference agenda most clearly illustrates this imbalance. Lavinia Engle, who had the original idea for the conference, initially chose the topics for the roundtable discussions. U.S. members of the organizing committee then refined her selections. The task had to be started early; in order to solicit support for the conference from the U.S. State Department, league representatives had to be able to present a tentative agenda. Once they had secured support, they could not stray very far from their initial proposal. With this in mind, Engle chose issues she assumed would be of interest to women throughout the hemisphere. Her first list, submitted to the State Department in July 1921, included six topics: “education, child welfare, women in industry, prevention of traffic in women, suffrage for women, and international friendliness and reduction of armaments.”²⁸ Engle admitted to Maud Wood Park, however, that in setting the agenda she was hampered by her lack of knowledge of Latin America. “I have tried to topic [sic] the points for the P.A.C.,” she wrote in October 1921. “After all the whole matter boils down to the simple fact that we know practically nothing about any of our American neighbors except Canada and not a great deal about her.”²⁹ Less than a week later Engle, Cunningham, and the other members of the organizing committee supplied Rowe with a copy of the conference agenda—weeks before they had even begun contacting Latin American women about attending. The final list included Engle’s first four original topics verbatim. “Suffrage for women” was changed to “women’s political status,” and “international friendliness and reduction of armaments” was removed entirely, in favor of “women’s civil status.”³⁰

Figure 3. Members of the Mexican delegation to the Pan American Conference shortly after their arrival in San Antonio. Left to right: Eulalia Guzman, Aurora Herrera de Nobregas, Luz Vera, Julia Nava de Ruisanchez, and Elena Torres. Torres told the San Antonio Express, “We are going to work out things which have been overlooked or given up as an impossibility by men.”

San Antonio Express, April 16, 1922.

In setting the agenda for the conference, league officials operated under several constraints. One was time—in order for invitations to be sent and acknowledged, and for Latin American delegates to make travel arrangements, they had to secure the cooperation of the U.S. State Department at least six months in advance. Other restraints were not so concrete. Most league members, especially those interested in international relations, were aware of the popular resentment of the United States throughout Latin America. U.S. financial imperialism in Central America and the Caribbean reached its height in the early 1920s, and many league members had already joined a coalition of anti-imperialists opposed to U.S. policies like Dollar Diplomacy.³¹ In her original proposal for the conference agenda, Engle argued that one important benefit of the meeting was that it would give Latin American women a chance to get to know U.S. women and to “learn that we are not as bad as we are painted.”³² Her inclusion of “reduction of armaments,” along with “international friendliness,” would have won approval not only from opponents of U.S. interventions in Latin America within the United States but also from many Latin Americans. Yet neither phrase appeared on the final version of the conference agenda. No record exists of why the change was made, but it is important to keep in mind that the entire project hinged on the endorsement of the U.S. State Department. Despite the groundswell of support for disarmament during the early 1920s, State Department officials were likely reluctant to sanction discussion of the topic at an inter-American conference during a time when the United States was involved in myriad ongoing military interventions in Latin America. Reliance on State Department support also may well have made Engle, Park, and the organizing committee feel they could not encourage any discussions at the conference that might have sounded like criticisms of U.S. foreign policies.

But the fact remains that Engle and the committee chose the topics for the conference without consulting any Latin American women, or even any U.S. women with greater knowledge of Latin America, and that they assumed the topics they chose were of common concern to all American women. They were not wrong; their issues were important to activist women throughout the hemisphere, as the delegates’ lengthy contributions to the roundtable discussions proved. But neither Engle nor the committee took into account the myriad problems unique to Latin America as a whole and to various countries in particular. Not least among these, despite the LWV’s reluctance to discuss it, was the problem of U.S. imperialism.

The Mexican delegation did not share the league’s reluctance. Two months before the conference opened, the members of the Consejo Feminista Mexicano sent a telegram to the league, begging all U.S. women to exert pressure on their government to change its Mexican policy. The concerns they iterated echoed closely the arguments Elena Torres and Elena Landázuri had been making to the Women’s Peace Society and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom for over a year. “The Mexican ground has been bloodied by more than ten years of revolution,” they wrote, and “all the implements of destruction have been furnished by the United States.” They charged that American mining companies continued to exploit Mexican workers, paying them infrequently and with devalued currency. The CFM implored U.S. women to demand action from their government to stop facilitating the devastation in Mexico.³³