A patron of progress: Juana Catarina Romero, the nineteenth-century cacica of Tehuantepec

HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review

Volumn 88, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 393-426

  Chassen López, Francie R ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 66349098774     PISSN: 00182168     EISSN: 15271900     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00182168-2008-330     Document Type: Review

References (134)

1. César Rojas Pétriz, "Una tehuana de historia y leyenda," editorial in Dáani Béedxe (Cerro del Tigre) (cultural magazine of Tehuantepec), no. 7 (Sept.-Oct. 1993): 7;
2. Enrique Krauze, Porfirio Díaz: Místico de la autoridad (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987), 20;
3. Miguel Covarrubias, Mexico South: The Isthmus of Tehuantepec (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1946), 149. Everyone in Tehuantepec, especially the taxi drivers, has a tale to tell about Juana Cata.
4. See for example Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux, eds. Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2000);
5. Sueann Caulfield, In Defense of Honor: Sexual Morality, Modernity, and Nation in Early-Twentieth-Century Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2000);
6. Eileen J. Suárez Findlay, Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870-1920 (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1999);
7. Katherine Elaine Bliss, Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health, and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City (University Park, PA: Penn State Univ. Press, 2001);
8. Susie S. Porter, Working Women in Mexico City: Public Discourses and Material Conditions, 1879-1931 (Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 2003).
9. See Sarah C. Chambers, From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender, and Politics in Arequipa, Peru, 1780-1854 (University Park, PA: Penn State Univ. Press, 1999);
10. Christine Hunefeldt, Liberalism in the Bedroom: Quarreling Spouses in Nineteenth-Century Lima (University Park, PA: Penn State Univ. Press, 2000);
11. Silvia Marina Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 1790-1857 (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1985);
12. Doris Sommer, Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1991);
13. Francine Masiello, Between Civilization and Barbarism: Women, Nation, and Literary Culture in Modern Argentina (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1992);
14. Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, "Add Gender and Stir: Cooking Up Gendered Histories of Modern Latin America," Latin American Research Review 38, no. 1 (2003): 266-87.
15. Anne McClintock, "'No Longer in a Future Heaven': Gender, Race, and Nationalism," in Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives, ed. Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1997), 105.
16. New nations established their gender regimes by legislating behavior including sexual activities, prostitution, vagrancy, contraception, abortion, marriage, and the family. See Barbara L. Marshall, Engendering Modernity: Feminism, Social Theory, and Social Change (Boston: Northeastern Univ. Press, 1994);
17. Arrom, The Women of Mexico City;
18. Elizabeth Dore, "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Gender and the State in the Long Nineteenth Century," in Dore and Molyneux, Hidden Histories, 7-8;
19. Donna J. Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1991).
20. Apropos of Benedict Anderson's theory of the nation as "imagined community," Mary Louise Pratt remarked that "woman inhabitants of nations were neither imagined as nor invited to imagine themselves as part of the horizontal brotherhood." "Women, Literature, and National Brotherhood," in Women, Culture, and Politics in Latin America/Seminar on Feminism and Culture in Latin America (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1990), 50-51.
21. The present article corrects a number of errors in my preliminary studies: Francie R. Chassen, "Juana Catarina Romero, Cacica Porfiriana: La mujer y el mito," Acervos, no. 7 (1998): 10-16;
22. "Juana Cata: Empresaria y benefactora," Acervos, no. 16 (2000): 16-23;
23. and "Juana Catarina Romero: Cacica de Tehuantepec," Acervos, no. 19 (2000): 35-44. Unfortunately, Tehuantepec's municipal archive dates from 1931 since it was burned during the Revolution. For an example of misinformation, see note 11 below.
24. Neighbor and rival town Juchitán had 4,507 souls. Juan B. Carriedo, Estudios históricos y estadísticos del Estado Oaxaqueño (1848; Mexico City: Talleres Gráficos de Adrián Morales S., 1949), 109;
25. José de Garay, Reconocimiento del Istmo de Tehuantepec practicado en los años 1842 y 1845 con el objeto de una comunicación oceánica por la Comisión Científica que nombró al efecto el empresario José de Garay (London: Ackermann and Co., 1844), 147.
26. In the late seventeenth century, Francisco de Burgoa characterized the Zapotecs of Tehuantepec as "a highly capable, Hispanicized, politically organized, liberal, hard-working people." Cited by Judith Francis Zeitlin, Cultural Politics in Colonial Tehuantepec: Community and State among the Isthmus Zapotecs, 1500-1750 (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2005), 144.
27. See Francie R. Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca: The View from the South, Mexico 1867-1911 (University Park, PA: Penn State Univ. Press, 2004), 314-17;
28. and M. G. Hermesdorf, "On the Isthmus of Tehuantepec," Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 32 (1862): 544.
29. Moro in de Garay, Reconocimiento, 91-92;
30. John McLeod Murphy, "The Isthmus of Tehuantepec: Its Inhabitants and Resources," Journal of the American Geographical Society (June 1859): 177;
31. Désiré Charnay, Ciudades y ruinas americanas: México, 1858-1861, Recuerdos e impresiones de viaje (1863; Mexico City: Banco de Mexico, 1994), 253.
32. Authors dispute whether she was actually beautiful (there are no photos of the young Juana Cata) although they agree that she was vivacious and had an imposing presence. See Rojas Pétriz, "Juana C. Romero, humildad y esplendor," and "La joven Juana Cata y la Guerra de Reforma," Dáani Béedxe, no. 7 (Sept-Oct. 1993): 10, 12-13;
33. Covarrubias, Mexico South, 226;
34. Miguel Ríos V., Tehuantepec (Historia, tradición y leyenda) (Mexico City: n.p., 1948), 99.
35. Benito Juárez: Documentos, discursos y correspondencia, selección y notas de Jorge L. Tamayo, 15 vols. (Mexico City: Editorial Libros de México, 1972), 1:531, 551, 580, 748;
36. Jorge Fernando Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca, 1821-1854: De la consumación de la Independencia a la iniciación de la Reforma (1935; Oaxaca: Comité Organizador del CDL Aniversario de la Ciudad de Oaxaca, 1982), 341-42;
37. Francie Chassen-López, "¿Una derrota juarista? Benito Juárez vs. los juchitecos," in Los pueblos indios en los tiempos de Benito Juárez, coord. Antonio Escobar Ohmstede (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana and Universidad Benito Juárez de Oaxaca, 2007), 37-68;
38. Leticia Reina, "De las reformas borbónicas a las leyes de Reforma," in Historia de la cuestión agraria mexicana: Estado de Oaxaca, coord. Leticia Reina, 2 vols. (Mexico City: Juan Pablos Editor, 1988), 1:183-267.
39. The barrio of San Blas later broke away from Tehuantepec. See Ricardo López Gurrión, Efemérides istmeñas, 2nd ed. (San Luis Potosí: n.p., 1982), 84-91;
40. Jorge Fernando Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca, vol. 2, 1855-1861 (1939; Oaxaca: Gobierno del Estado, 1982), 160-69.
41. López Gurrión, Efemérides istmeñas, 84-91;
42. José C. Valadés, El porfirismo: Historia de un régimen, vol. 1, El Nacimiento (1876-84), 2nd ed. (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1987), 5-6;
43. Iturribarría, Historia de Oaxaca, 2:65;
44. Porfirio Díaz, Memorias, 2 vols. (Mexico City: Editorial Offset, 1983), 1:77-85;
45. Rojas Pétriz, "La joven Juana Cata," 12-13.
46. Ríos, Tehuantepec, 97-99;
47. See "Búsqueda y declaración de Juana Romero," in "Criminal contra Remigio Toledo y socios por conspiración," Archivo General del Poder Ejecutivo de Oaxaca (hereafter cited as AGEPEO), Juzgado del Distrito, 1868, leg. 30, exp. 19, reproduced in Francisco José Ruiz Cervantes, "Tras las huellas de Remigio Toledo 'El traidor,'" Guchachi' Reza, no. 52 (May-June 1996): 30.
48. and Cajigas Rosaldo, La Didjazá (La Zapoteca) (Mexico City: Fotolitográfica Hernández, 1994), 109-34.
49. Angel Bustillo Bernal affirmed that Porfirio Díaz had loaned Juana Cata money between 1858 and 1860 and that this was the source of her wealth. Bustillo Bernal, La Revolución Mexicana en el Itsmo [sic] de Tehuantepec (Mexico: n.p., 1968), 11-12.
50. Rojas Pétriz cites a document that he consulted in the Romero Family Archives in "Juana Catarina Romero, impulsora del comercio y de la industria," Dáani Béedxe, no. 7 (Sept.-Oct. 1993): 14-15;
51. Samuel Villalobos, "Doña Juana C. Romero, 'Apuntes Biográficos,'" Istmo, 1 June 1941, p. 3.
52. On marital licenses, see Francie Chassen-López, "'Cheaper than Machines': Women and Agriculture in Porfirian Oaxaca, 1880-1912," in Women of the Mexican Countryside, 1850-1990, ed. Heather Fowler Salamini and Mary Kay Vaughan (Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 1994), 37.
53. In 1889, Romero purchased a piece of land from Laureana Fuente Villa. While the bill of sale specifically identified the latter as a widow (not requiring a marital license) "dedicated to occupations analogous to her sex," it characterized Juana Cata as "free and a merchant, with the legal right to make contracts." See Archivo de Notarías, Oaxaca, Oaxaca (hereafter cited as AN), Jueces Receptores, Tehuantepec, vol. 1, 1875-1890. She may have made earlier purchases; the notarial books for Tehuantepec begin only in 1875.
54. Samuel Villalobos, "Doña Juana C. Romero, Benefactora de Tehuantepec: Discurso," Ex-alumnos, 30 April 1945, pp. 2-3;
55. and Villalobos, "Doña Juana C. Romero," Istmo, 1 June 1941, p. 3.
56. Bustillo Bernal, La Revolución, 9-10.
57. Rojas Pétriz, "Juana C. Romero, humildad y esplendor," 9.
58. Periódico oficial del estado de Oaxaca 9, no. 88, 2 Nov. 1891. I am grateful to Nimcy Arellanes for finding this information. On the economy of the isthmus during the late Porfiriato, see Francisco José Ruiz Cervantes, "Promesas y Saldos de un proyecto hecho realidad (1907-1940)," in Economía contra sociedad: El Istmo de Tehuantepec, 1907-1986, coord. Leticia Reina Aoyama (Mexico City: Editorial Nueva Imagen, 1994), 27-95;
59. and Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca.
60. See Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, chap. 1;
61. and Regiones y ferrocarriles en la Oaxaca porfirista (Oaxaca: Carteles Editores, 1990), 23-30;
62. Paul Garner, "The Politics of National Development in Late Porfirian Mexico: The Reconstruction of the Tehuantepec National Railway, 1896-1907," Bulletin of Latin American Research 14, no. 3 (1995): 339-56.
63. See land purchase contracts in ibid. Villalobos, "Doña Juana C. Romero," Istmo, 1 June 1941, p. 3. In 1996 the finca belonged to Doña Juana Moreno Romero, who now cultivated sorghum instead of sugar cane, evidence of the green revolution on the isthmus. Doña Juana Moreno Romero, interview. Today the finca belongs to Rómulo Moreno Morán.
64. Rojas Pétriz, "Juana Catarina Romero, impulsora del comercio," 15. Doña Juana Moreno Romero showed me these medals.
65. Chassen-López, "'Cheaper than Machines,'" 29;
66. Alan Knight, "Historical Continuities in Social Movements," in Popular Movements and Political Change in Mexico, ed. Joe Foweraker and Ann L. Craig (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1990), 96-97.
67. CPD, Letters, leg. 12, caja 26, and leg. 16, caja 17. Unfortunately I have only checked a few boxes of letters after 1891 (there are no longer printed guides after 1891). By 1891, Juana Cata's stationery was printed and professional: "Juana C. Romero, Merchant [Comisionista], Cablegram Address: Istmeña."
68. Miguel Ríos, "Istmeños notables Don Apolinar Márquez," Istmo, 25 Sept. 1941, p. 4.
69. See Chassen, "Juana Catarina Romero, Cacica de Tehuantepec," on Romero's confrontations with Márquez; see also the newspaper El Eco del Istmo in the Burgoa Library, Universidad Autónoma "Benito Juárez" de Oaxaca.
70. Cited by Manuel Esparza, Gillow durante el porfiriato y la revolución en Oaxaca (1887-1922) (Oaxaca: n.p., 1985), 48-49. Esparza pointedly notes that "this compliment probably had not occurred to the supporters of the illustrious Tehuana," implying they would not compare her to an Indian. I am grateful to Manuel Esparza for sharing with me his research from the Archivo Histórico de la Arquidiócesis de Oaxaca. In 1913, at the age of 76, Romero realized her dream of reaching the Holy Land in Palestine.
71. Esparza, Gillow, 76-77.
72. El Impartial, 25 Jan. 1907.
73. Hans Gadow, Through Southern Mexico: Being an Account of the Travels of a Naturalist (London: Witherby & Co., 1908), 156-57.
74. Luis Santibañez Gómez, "La Revolución Maderista en Tehuantepec," in Testimonios de la revolución maderista en el estado de Oaxaca, ed. Héctor Martínez and Francie R. Chassen (Oaxaca: Casa de la Cultura Oaxaqueña / Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades de la UABJO, 1987), 32-38.
75. The Liberals had worn red in their struggle against the Conservatives in the War of the Reform and it remained their color, although they had become more conservative. Green is the other color of the Mexican flag. On the precursor movement in Oaxaca, see Francie R. Chassen, "Los orígenes de la Revolución en Oaxaca: Juarismo y porfirismo contra precursores y revolucionarios," Eslabones, Revista Semestral de Estudios Regionales (Mexico City), no. 5 (1993): 118-37.
76. Santibañez Gómez, "La Revolución Maderista," 34-35.
77. On Juan Baigts, see Francie R. Chassen, "El boom minero porfirista," in Lecturas históricas del estado de Oaxaca, coord. Ma. de los Angeles Romero Frizzi (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1990), 73.
78. The report also lists "Camilo Romero, blindly obedient and passive relative of Juana Cata Romero, also a merchant of Tehuantepec; the son-in-law of Juana Cata Romero, a lawyer with the surname of Moreno." "Una carta contra los porfiristas sobrevivientes," Guchachi' Reza, no. 42 (1993): 23.
79. On the Revolution in Oaxaca, see Anselmo Arellanes, Francie R. Chassen et al., La Revolución en Oaxaca 1900-1930, 3rd ed. (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana, 2000).
80. César Rojas Pétriz, "Juana C. Romero, el Imperio, el Porfiriato y la Revolución," in Dáani Béedxe, no. 13 (Sept.-Oct. 1994): 15;
81. and Rojas Pétriz, interview; Villalobos, "Doña Juana C. Romero," Istmo, 15 July 1941, p. 5.
82. Claudio Linati, Trajes civiles, militares y religiosos de México (1828) (Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, UNAM, 1956);
83. Beverly Newbold de Chiñas, Mujeres de San Juan: La mujer zapoteca del Istmo en la economía (Mexico City: Sep Setentas, 1975);
84. Anya Peterson Royce, Prestigio y afiliación en una comunidad urbana: Juchitán, Oax. (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1975);
85. Graciela Iturbide and Elena Poniatowska, Juchitán de las mujeres (Mexico City: Ediciones Toledo, 1989).
86. For a deconstruction of these myths, see Obdulia Ruiz Campbell, "Representations of Isthmus Women: A Zapotec Woman's Point of View," in Zapotec Struggles: Histories, Politics, and Representations from Juchitán, Oaxaca, ed. Howard Campbell, Leigh Binford, Miguel Bartolomé, and Alicia Barabbas (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 137-41;
87. Edaena Saynes-Vázquez, "Galán Pa dxandí. 'That Would Be Great If It Were True': Zapotec Women's Comment on Their Role in Society," Identities 3, no. 1-2 (1996): 183-204;
88. and Howard Campbell and Susanne Green, "A History of Representations of Isthmus Zapotec Women," Identities 3, no. 1-2 (1996): 159.
89. Today, the matriarchal myth is accompanied by a fascination with the muxe, transvestite male homosexuals who receive considerable acceptance in Istmeña culture. See excellent documentaries Blossoms of Fire, videocassette, directed by Ellen Osborne and Maureen Gosling (Oakland, CA: Intrépidas Productions, 2000), and Muxes, DVD, directed by Alejandra Islas (Mexico City: Rabacanda Films, 2005).
90. Charles Brasseur, Viaje por el istmo de Tehuantepec (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1984), 7, 147.
91. This is the premise of the biographical novel of Juana Cata by María de los Angeles Cajigas Rosaldo, La Didjazá (La Zapoteca). In his study of Porfirio Díaz in exile, Carlos Tello Díaz also refers to Juana Catalina (sic) Romero as a "sorceress"; see El exilio: Un relato de una familia, 12th ed. (Mexico City: Cal y Arena, 1994), 401.
92. Brasseur, Viaje por el istmo, 159.
93. See Campbell and Green for an analysis of Brasseur's gaze of the "strange and exotic" Tehuana in "A History of Representations of Isthmus Zapotec Women," 159.
94. César Rojas Pétriz interviewed Sr. Mendoza when he was 104 years old. "Juana Cata y la leyenda," and "Un chalet, un oratorio," Dáani Béedxe, no. 7 (Sept.-Oct. 1993): 18, 22. Juana Cata could hardly have afforded a necklace of gold coins by 1858, given the poverty of her family. Brasseur was embellishing or even creating a composite Tehuana.
95. Murphy, "The Isthmus of Tehuantepec," 177.
96. Covarrubias noted the Istmeñas' "passion" for new materials and how "fanatical" about fashion they were. Mexico South, 246-47.
97. On department stores and consumption see Steven B. Bunker, "'Consumers of Good Taste': Marketing Mentality in Northern Mexico, 1890-1910," Mexican Studies 13, no. 1 (1997): 249-56;
98. and María de la Luz Parcero, Condiciones de la mujer en México durante el siglo XIX (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1992), 30-31.
99. See also Ruiz Cervantes, "Promesas y saldos," 27.
100. According to Doña Juana Moreno Romero, before the influence of her ancestor began to impact Tehuana dress, the Tehuanas did not wear velvet or gold fringe and would wear one color on top and another on bottom (interview, 20 July 1996). Toledo Morales cited in Rojas Pétriz, "Juana Catarina Romero, impulsora del comercio," 14;
101. Nicolás Vichido Rito also lists lace, fine Chinese silks, ribbons, and musical instruments imported by Romero and notes her impact on dress, Imágenes istmeñas: Investigaciones, análisis y aconteceres del Istmo de Tehuantepec (Mexico City: Conaculta, 2003), 51.
102. Jean Franco, Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1990), 97-98.
103. Regina A. Root, "Searching for the Oasis in Life: Fashion and the Question of Female Emancipation in Late Nineteenth-Century Argentina," The Americas 60, no. 3 (2004): 364;
104. and Regina A. Root, ed., The Latin American Fashion Reader (Oxford: Berg, 2005).
105. According to Deborah Poole, the traje tehuana became symbolic of "colorful ethnic types" in the late nineteenth century; "An Image of 'Our Indian': Type Photographs and Racial Sentiments in Oaxaca, 1920-1940," Hispanic American Historical Review 84, no. 1 (2004): 37-82. Ironically, this is precisely the moment when the dress was undergoing this modernization process influenced by Romero.
106. See Poole, "An Image of 'Our Indian'";
107. Enrique Krauze envisioned the history of nineteenth-century Mexico as the transition from criollo to mestizo domination; he entitled his chapter on Díaz "The Ascent of the Mestizo," in Siglo de caudillos: Biografía política de México, 1810-1910 (Barcelona: Tusquets Editores, 1994), 191-92.
108. See Francie R. Chassen-López, "Distorting the Picture: Gender, Ethnicity, and Desire in a Mexican Telenovela (El vuelo del águila)," Journal of Women's History 20, no. 2 (June 2008): 106-29.
109. Catherine V. Scott, Gender and Development: Rethinking Modernization and Dependency Theory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 5, 24, 124;
110. Rita Felski, The Gender of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995), 4.
111. See also Marshall, Engendering Modernity.
112. See Charles Hale, The Transformation of Liberalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexico (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1989), 230-34.
113. According to Doña Juana Moreno Romero, when Juana Cata did learn to read, she studied the works of the great mystics Santa Teresa of Avila and San Juan de la Cruz (interview, 22 July 1996). On education in Oaxaca during the Porfiriato, see Victor Raúl Martínez Vásquez, Historia de la educación en Oaxaca, 1825-1940 (Oaxaca: Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca, 1994).
114. Between 1895 and 1910, Oaxaca had only raised its literacy rate from 7 percent to 9 percent, the latter percentage ranking it in last place (along with its neighbor Chiapas) in Mexico, Moisés González Navarro, Historia moderna de México, vol. 4, El Porfiriato, La vida social, 3rd ed. (Mexico City: Editorial Hermes, 1973), 532.
115. Josefa Garfias de Romero funded these schools until the depression in 1934. The boy's school came under government control, while the girls' school remained privately controlled. Rojas Pétriz, "Doña Juana y su obra social," 16.
116. Villalobos met Romero in 1906, "dressed in black with a fine lace mantilla, invariably attending eight o'clock mass on Sunday mornings in Tehuantepec's cathedral." "Doña Juana C. Romero 'Apuntes Biográficos,'" Istmo, 15 July 1941, p. 5.
117. See Francie Chassen-López, "Disciplining Tehuantepec: Juana Catarina Romero, the Case of a Modernizing Cacica," paper presented at the American Historical Association meeting, 6 Jan. 2007, Atlanta, Georgia.
118. Doña Juana Moreno Romero, interview; Villalobos, "Doña Juana C. Romero 'Apuntes Biográficos,'" Istmo, 15 July 1941, pp. 3, 5;
119. Amable Márquez recounted her memoirs to Mario Mecott, "Sobre Doña Juana y las madres 'josefinas': Recuerdos de una ex-alumna," Dáani Béedxe, no. 7 (Sept.-Oct. 1993): 23;
120. Memoria administrativa presentada por el gobernador interino, Lic. Miguel Bolaños Cacho al H. Congreso del Estado (Oaxaca: Impronta del Comercio, 1902), 14;
121. and "Juana C. Romero y su labor humanitaria: La viruela 'negra' y las 'Siervas de María,'" Dáani Béedxe, no. 14 (Nov.-Dec. 1994): 15-17.
122. Mauricio Tenorio Trillo, "1910 Mexico City: Space and Nation in the City of the Centenario," Journal of Latin American Studies 28, no. 1 (1996): 75-104.
123. In honor of Romero, the city of Tehuantepec has left the municipal building just as it was at her death. Romero's visits to the state capital must have influenced her ideas on urban reform. See Mark Overmyer-Velázquez on the city of Oaxaca, Visions of the Emerald City: Modernity, Tradition, and the Formation of Porfirian Oaxaca, Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2006).
124. Her business contacts in Orizaba responded immediately when she died; a wake was held in an Orizaba church until the body could be transported back to Tehuantepec. Doña Juana Moreno Romero, interview; Rojas Pétriz, "Juana C. Romero, humildad y esplendor," 10.
125. Laura Mulvey had previously commented, with respect to film, that a woman is seen as a "bearer, not maker of meaning." "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," in Feminism and Film, ed. E. Ann Kaplan (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000), 35;
126. McClintock, "'No Longer in a Future Heaven,'" 90.
127. See Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis, "Introduction," in Woman-Nation-State, ed. Anthias and Yuval-Davis (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989);
128. and Caren Kaplan, Norma Alarcón, and Minoo Moallem, eds., Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and the State (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1999).
129. Villalobos, "Doña Juana C. Romero, Benefactora de Tehuantepec," Ex-alumnos, 30 April 1945, p. 3;
130. Doña Juana Moreno Romero, interview. See Rojas Pétriz, "Juana C. Romero y sus descendientes." A statue of Juana Cata sits in the zócalo of Tehuantepec. She is seated, a mature and motherly image.
131. See Chassen-Lopez, "'Cheaper than Machines,'" 27-50.
132. Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 259-68. I am grateful for Silvia Arrom's suggestions on women's activities in nineteenth-century Mexico, e-mail message to author, 27 September 2005.
133. According to John Monaghan, Arthur Joyce, and Ronald Spores, there were a few traditional cacicas in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca in the nineteenth century. However, these cacicazgos were land-based and derived their legitimacy from colonial and even precolonial lineages. Monaghan, Joyce, and Spores, "Transformations of the Indigenous Cacicazgo in the Nineteenth Century," Ethnohistory 50, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 131-50.
134. See also Ronald Spores, "Mixteca Cacicas: Status, Wealth, and the Political Accommodation of Native Elite Women in Early Colonial Oaxaca," in Indian Women of Early Mexico, ed. Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 85-97.