Читать книгу The History of Texas - Robert A. Calvert - Страница 47

Women’s place in Spanish Texas probably resembled that of other women in similar colonial societies. Living far from the interior, Tejanas escaped some of the sexual limitations more strictly outlined in New Spain proper. The rigors of frontier life tended to soften gender discrimination, as they did that of race, and women engaged in such duties as fighting Indians, helping with ranch and farm chores (including herding), and conducting mercantile activity. Still, women’s chief role was that of providing the best possible domestic setting in an isolated place. The drudgery of dragging in water and wood, preparing food, making, repairing, and washing clothes, cultivating local plants, making household necessities such as soap, and passing on to the children the morals and values of Spanish‐Mexican culture all crammed their way into a woman’s busy life.

Although frontier life may have had certain democratizing tendencies, it posed severe problems for women. Isolation limited social mobility–improvement for women could occur only through fortuitous changes, such as marriage to a rising businessman or rancher. The region offered little opportunity for women to establish their own vocations, though some women practiced midwifery as a profession. Indeed, most of the responsibility for taking care of the ill (such as treating snakebites, setting bones, or tending to rheumatism) fell on the shoulders of women. It was women who primarily practiced curanderismo (folk healing). In addition, on the frontier, women were often treated as objects. Fathers might arrange marriages for their young daughters, unscrupulous military officers sexually exploited their subordinates’ wives, and shameless husbands abused their spouses with impunity.

The law denied colonial women certain rights. Women could not vote or hold elective office. Moreover, a man could legally prevent his wife from leaving him. On the other hand, Tejanas could use the judicial system and be parties to suits under Spanish law, either as plaintiffs or defendants. Tejanas could prepare wills for themselves; this right gave them the freedom to override patriarchal restraints on gender. Women, therefore, left material possessions to family and friends, such as clothes, personal articles, or household goods, although in the case of women who had amassed meaningful assets or had become widowed, beneficiaries could inherit savings, home, or ranch property. In short, women in Spanish Texas enjoyed more legal rights than did their contemporary counterparts in French or British North American colonies.

The historical record shows that women played constructive roles in colonial society. Doña María Hinojosa de Ballí, sometimes hailed as Texas’s first cattle queen, enlarged the South Texas ranch she received upon her husband’s death; the estate eventually covered much of the lower Rio Grande Valley as well as Padre Island. Other women similarly experienced success as ranch managers, among them Ana María del Carmen Calvillo, a single woman from San Antonio who during this era (and continuing until the 1850s) also made a going concern of inherited ranchland. Doña María achieved success despite a series of setbacks in life: a failed marriage, the death of her children, and the untimely murder of her father.