Retratos de Independencia

Bicentennial Portraits of Latin American Women in England

 

by Dr John Perivolaris

13 September - 2 October 2010

Gendering Latin American Independence

Research Project at the University of Nottingham, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

 

The Year 2010 marks the Bicentenary of Latin American Independence from Spain and Portugal. The Independence process began in 1810. It was long and complex, lasting over 20 years. It resulted in the creation of 21 new republics and the breakup of the vast Spanish empire that stretched from San Francisco and Los Angeles in the north to Patagonia in the south.

 

Women played a major part in the conflict, especially on the side of the insurgent patriots. Their contribution is only now being fully recognised though a few have been celebrated as national heroines and martyrs. There is a statue in Bogota, Colombia, to Policarpa Salavarrieta who at the age of 22 was publicly executed by the Spanish authorities for her work as a spy. General Juana Azurduy led a battalion of women warriors named the Amazons, and the airport in today’s Sucre, Bolivia, is named after her. Francisca de Zubiaga, known as The Marshall, was another woman who rode out in military uniform to fight by the side of her husband in Peru.

 

But after the wars women were expected to settle back into the old ways. It took more than another 100 years for women to gain some independence. Women’s suffrage was granted in Ecuador in 1929, but not until 1946 in Argentina.

 

So, what does Independence mean for Latin American women today? To find out John Perivolaris, Nottingham based artist has interviewed a number of Latin American women who are actively pursuing professional careers in the UK. They include an opera singer, an astronomer, a professional dancer, a university lecturer. What do they think about Latin American women’s independence today?

 

The exhibition is an extension of the AHRC project whichinvestigates the ideas and activities of women who, as a social group, contributed to the making of public culture in early nineteenth-century Latin America but were largely excluded from it. This necessitates an examination of how gender shaped the political discourses of Latin American independence. Some of the research questions are: What were the links between politics and sexual difference? How were women constructed as subjects and objects in contemporary political discourse? What was women's political culture and associational life, where was it, how was it manifested? How did women respond to Republican discourses of individual rights? What were the contradictions in Latin American political discourse arising from its formulations of gender categories?

 

The methodology is interdisciplinary and text-based involving archival retrieval and discourse analysis. The research scope is continental. Research has been undertaken in Latin America; Buenos Aires, Lima, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, and Quito. Women's political culture is investigated through enquiry into women's family-based or community networks. The database accessible through the website registers women's lives, writings, activities, publications and organisations. The image bank provides a collection of images relating to these women.

 

The project was led by Professor Catherine Davies (School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Nottingham). The database was managed and populated by Dr Claire Brewster (formerly Research Associate, University of Nottingham), who is now at the University of Newcastle.

 

Resulting from the project is the web site, database and image bank at www.http://genderlatam.org.uk, a series of articles published in Feminist Review (2006) and Hispanic Research Journal (2005), and the co-authored book Spanish American Independence: Gender, Politics Text, Liverpool University Press, 2006. An English edition of Josefa Acevedode Gómez’s A Treatise on Domestic Economy, for the Use of Mothers and Housewives (1848), translated by Sarah Sanchez, was published in 2007. This little book gives us an amazing insight into the everyday lives of women in Colombia in the 1840's.

 

For further information on the project, please go to: www.retratosdeindependencia.weebly.com

 

This project has been supported by New Art Exchange, the University of Nottingham, Arts & Humanities Research Council, Santander, The University of Northampton, ArtReach as part of Night of Festivals 2010.