New avenues for domestic dispute and divorce lawsuits along the U.S.-Mexico border, 1832-1893

Journal of Women's History

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 10-33

  Valerio Jiménez, Omar S ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 70349934495     PISSN: 10427961     EISSN: 15272036     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jowh.0.0060     Document Type: Review

References (97)

1. Patricia Osante, Orígenes del Nuevo Santander, 1748-1772 (Mexico City: Uni-versidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1997)
2. Examples of women who resisted official pressure to reunite with their husbands and established informal unions are found in Steve J. Stern, The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 234,275-77
3. and Eileen J. Findlay, "Marriage, Divorce, and the Construction of Benevolent Colonialism in Puerto Rico, 1898-1910," in Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatorre (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 155-57
4. see Rodney D. Anderson, "Race and Social Stratification: A Comparison of Working-Class Spaniards, Indians, and Castas in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1821," Hispanic American Historical Review 68, no. 2 (1988): 209-43
5. and Donald Ramos, "Marriage and Family in Colonial Vila Rica," Hispanic American Historical Review55, no. 2 (1975): 200-25
6. The U.S. takeover of Puerto Rico also made divorce widely available, and changed divorce practices among Puerto Ricans; Eileen J. Suárez Findlay, Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870-1920 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 110-34
7. Pedro Grenón, "Nuestros divorcios históricos," Historia3, no. 11 (1958): 5-19
8. Silvia Marina Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 1790-1857 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987)
9. Maria Beatriz Nizza Da Silva, "Divorce in Colonial Brazil: The Case of S̃o Paulo," in Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, ed. Asuncion Lavrin (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989)
10. Glenda Riley, Divorce: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)
11. Glenda Riley, Building and Breaking Families in the American West (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996)
12. Robert L. Griswold, Family and Divorce in California, 1850-1890: Victorian Illusions and Everyday Realities (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982)
13. and Hendrik Hartog, Man and Wife in America: A History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 12-14
14. For recent trends in Mexican American historiography, see Deena J. González, "Gender on the Borderlands: Re-textualizing the Classics," Frontiers 24, nos. 2 & 3 (2003): 15-29
15. Ramón Gutierrez, "Community, Patriarchy and Individualism: The Politics of Chicano History and the Dream of Equality," American Quarterly 45, no. 1 (1993): 44-72
16. Antonia I. Castañeda, "Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History: The Discourse, Politics, and Decolonization of History," Pacific Historical Review 61, no. 4 (1992): 501-33
17. and David G. Gutiérrez, "The Third Generation: Reflections on Recent Chicano Historiography," Mexican Studies / Estudios Mexicanos 5, no. 2 (1989): 281-96
18. Albert Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848-1930 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979)
19. Arnoldo De León, The Tejano Community, 1836-1900 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982)
20. Sarah Deutsch, No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class, and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest, 1880-1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987)
21. David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987)
22. Douglas Monroy, Thrown among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)
23. Lisbeth Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769-1936 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)
24. Timothy M. Matovina, Tejano Religion and Ethnicity: San Antonio, 1821-1860 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995)
25. Armando C. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy: Rancheros and Settlers in South Texas, 1734-1900 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998)
26. and Deena J. González, Refusing the Favor: The Spanish-Mexican Women of Santa Fe, 1820-1880 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)
27. Miroslava Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest: Gender and Power in California, 1770 to 1880s (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004), 89-122
28. Other divorce studies in Texas have focused on counties far removed from the U.S.-Mexico border with few Mexican American residents. Mark M. Carroll, Homesteads Ungovernable: Families, Sex, Race and the Law in Frontier Texas, 1823-1860 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 140
29. and Francelle LeNaee Pruitt, "'But a Mournful Remedy': Divorce in Two Texas Counties, 1841-1880" (MA thesis, University of North Texas, 1999), 31-78
30. Stern, Secret History of Gender, 99-107
31. AHM-JUS 2:11, 10 enero 1833, Pedro Torres v. Maria Gertrudis (surname missing in original)
32. For a detailed discussion of juicios de conciliación, see Miroslava Chávez, '"Pongo mi Demanda': Challenging Patriarchy in Mexican Los Angeles, 1830-1850," in Over the Edge: Remapping the American West, ed. Valerie J. Matsumoto and Blake Allmendinger (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). AHM-JUS 5:7,4 mayo 1841, Doña Agripa Losa v. Nieves de la Rosa
33. Juicios de conciliación from AHM and IMC
34. Third Mexican Provindal Council in Galván Rivera, Concilio, 350, quoted in Arrom, Women of Mexico City, 208
35. AHM-JUS 2:11, 10 enero 1833, Miguel Balleto v. Guadalupe Robles. Light Townsend Cummins, "Church Courts, Marriage Breakdown, and Separation in Spanish Louisiana, West Florida, and Texas, 1763-1836," Journal of Texas Catholic History and Culture 4 (1993): 97-114
36. Silvia M. Arrom, "Changes in the Mexican Family Law in the Nineteenth Century: The Civil Codes of 1870 and 1884," Journal of Family History 10, no. 3 (1985): 305, 310-12
37. Nizza Da Silva, "Divorce in Colonial Brazil," 313
38. and Arrom, Women of Mexico City, 208-12
39. AHM-JUS 5:19, 3 mayo 1842, Doña Cecilia Figueroa v. Don Francisco Leal
40. Asunción Lavrin, "Sexuality in Colonial Mexico," in Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, ed. Asunción Lavrin (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 58-67
41. Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574-1821 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 62-64
42. Ramón A. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away; Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 207-40
43. and Christine Hunefeldt, Liberalism in the Bedroom: Quarrelling Spouses in Nineteenth-Century Lima (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 219, 352-53
44. AHM-JUD 22:5,12 marzo 1841, María Concepción Solis v. Sabas Olivares
45. AHM-JUS 5:4,27 marzo 1841
46. AHM-JUD 23:9, 23 julio 1841
47. AHM-JUD 16:6, 15 agosto 1838
48. AHM-JUD 32:11, 13 febrero 1846
49. AHM-JUS 2:24, 9 mayo 1834, María Concepción Flores v. Francisco Quin-tanilla
50. Arrom, Women of Mexico City, 210, 228
51. and Nizza Da Silva, "Divorce in Colonial Brazil," 319
52. Costa Rican civil courts enforced an "upper-class marriage ideal" where husbands were "companionate, affective, and self-sufficient breadwinner[s]," while wives were "submissive and domestic" partners. Eugenia Rodríguez S., "Civilizing Domestic Life in the Central Valley of Costa Rica, 1750-1850," in Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America, ed. Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 85-107
53. Gilberto M. Hinojosa, Borderlands Town in Transition: Laredo, 1755-1870 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1983)
54. and Alonzo, Tejano Legacy
55. "Kenneth L. Stewart and Arnoldo De León, Not Room Enough: Mexicans, Anglos, and Socioeconomic Change in Texas, 1850-1900 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), 35-38, 68-70
56. and Arnoldo De León, They Called Them Greasers: Anglo Attitudes toward Mexicans in Texas, 1821-1900 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), 36-48
57. Recent studies that describe Mexicans' changing racial status after American annexation include Pablo Mitchell, Coyote Nation: Sexuality, Race, and Conquest in Modernizing New Mexico, 1880-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)
58. and Linda Heidenreich, "This Land was Mexican Once": Histories of Resistance from Northern California (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007)
59. Weekly Ranchero, 13 June 1867
60. H. P. N. Gammel, Laws of Texas 1822-1897 (Austin: The Gammel Company, 1898), 3:221
61. Texas initially allowed only a legislative divorce, which involved petitioning the state legislature for a divorce decree, and favored wealthy men with political connections. Norma Basch, Framing American Divorce: From the Revolutionary Generation to the Victorians (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 50-53
62. and Wendy Larson, "A History of Divorce in Texas" (MA thesis, Texas A&M University, 1986), 33
63. Gammel, Laws of Texas, 2:483-86
64. and Riley, Divorce, 51
65. George W. Paschal, A Digest of the Laws of Texas, Containing Laws in Force and the Repealed Laws on which Rights Rest (Galves-ton, TX: S.S. Nichols, 1866), 566-68
66. and Larson, "A History of Divorce in Texas," 33-35
67. and Paschal, A Digest of the Laws of Texas, 566
68. For large desertion rates in the American West, see Bonnie Ford, "Women, Marriage, and Divorce, 1849-1872" (PhD diss., University of California, Davis, 1985), 120-22
69. Riley, Building and Breaking Families in the American West, 118-19
70. and Pruitt, "But a Mournful Remedy." 58-59
71. Lynne Carol Halem, Divorce Reform: Changing Legal and Social Perspectives (New York: Free Press, 1980), 21-28, 61
72. Nelson Manfred Blake, Road to Reno: A History of Divorce in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 122, 128-29
73. and Larson, "A History of Divorce in Texas," 11, 13, 41-44
74. see Riley, Building and Breaking Families in the American West, 113-14
75. Elaine Tyler May, Great Expectations: Marriage and Divorce in Post-Victorian America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 6-7
76. Basch, Framing American Divorce, 128-29
77. Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 49-55
78. and Griswold, Family and Divorce in California, 2
79. and Edward Frederick Hall and Carolina Mendiola, 20 April 1868, entry 228, in Angel Sepulveda Brown and Gloria Villa Cadena, San Agustín Parish of Laredo: Abstracts of Marriage, book II, 1858-1881 (Laredo, TX: Graficas Canepa, 1993)
80. The number of couples that married in Mexico and later divorced in the United States is difficult to determine because divorce records usually do not indicate where the marriage took place. For a fascinating discussion of the "geography of remarriage" after divorce, and occasionally without a divorce, see Hartog, Man and Wife, 22-23, 242-86
81. Once a divorce was final, husbands were not required to continue paying temporary alimony; Gammel, Laws of Texas, 3:485
82. and James W. Paulsen, "Remember the Alamo[ny]!: The Unique Texas Ban on Permanent Alimony and the Development of Community Property Law," Law and Contemporary Problems 56, no. 2 (1993): 8-15
83. Richard H, Chused, Private Acts in Public Places: A Social History of Divorce in the Formative Era of American Family Law (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 147-48
84. Ford, "Women, Marriage, and Divorce," 112
85. Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 99-100
86. and Riley, Divorce, 53, 82-83, 90
87. and Gammel, Laws of Texas, 3:486. The courts usually granted custody of the youngest children to wives-this trend followed the "tender years" principle where mothers gained custody of infant children
88. Carroll, Homesteads Ungovernable, 138. My research did not confirm Carroll's argument regarding property divisions
89. Larson, "A History of Divorce in Texas," 43
90. On the importance of marriage and remarriage for survival in the nineteenth century, see Hartog, Man and Wife, 284
91. Divorced spouses could remarry through the civil courts and through some Protestant churches; Halem, Divorce Reform, 31-33
92. and Blake, Road to Reno, 137-39
93. Merril D. Smith, Breaking the Bonds: Marital Discord in Pennsylvania, 1730- 1830 (New York: New York University Press, 1991), 44-75
94. and Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York: Free Press, 1988)
95. Richard Roberts, "Representation, Structure and Agency: Divorce in the French Soudan during the Early Twentieth Century," Journal of African History 40, no. 3 (1999): 389-410
96. Nancy F. Cott, "Divorce and the Changing Status of Women in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts," William and Mary Quarterly 33, no. 4 (1976): 584-614
97. Findlay, Imposing Decency, 131-32