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Female Apostolates and Modernization in Mid-Nineteenth Century Chile*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Gertude M. Yeager
Gertude M. Yeager*
Affiliation:
Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
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Extract

How religion became a tool for integrating women into the modernization process in mid-nineteenth century Chile is the subject of this essay. The intense liberal assault on tradition in nineteenth century Latin America resulted in cultural warfare that benefited women as the abandonment of the Church in record numbers by men created opportunities for both religious and lay women to assume leadership roles. Perhaps for the only time in its history, the Roman Catholic Church identified religious women as a specie of clergy and actively encouraged their female apostolates to preserve the faith of women and children. In Chile this tension between traditional Hispanic and competing bourgeois values had a female dimension because included among the indicators of modernity was the social role of woman. Traditional Hispanic culture cloistered woman in the convent or home; she was a private person who left the public sphere to her male relatives. Independence, however, introduced the idea of republican motherhood and the notion became more pronounced when travelers to the United States and Europe noted the freedom and social contributions of women thereby giving credence to the new concept. Female apostolates provided women with the bridge to the modern age and provided a “feminine ideal of self-sacrificing women [to balance] Adam Smith's masculine gospel of enlightened self-interest.”

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , January 1999 , pp. 425 - 458
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1999

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Footnotes

*

This research was funded by the Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies, Tulane University.

References

1 Jo Ann Kay McNamara develops the relationship between feminine apostolates, culture wars and modernization in chapters nineteen “Culture Wars” and twenty “Feminine Apostolates” of her work, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). That nineteenth-century Latin America’s liberal intelligentsia viewed the region’s Hispanic Catholic past as an obstacle to progress and expended a good deal of energy to root it out and replace it with a set of secular values designed to replicate the successful modern and market-oriented nationalism of western Europe and the United States forms the matrix of national period historiography and need not be reviewed here. For the religious dimensions of independence and state formation see Dussel, Enrique, “The Church and Emergent Nation States,” The Church in Latin America: 1492–1992 (New York: Maryknoll, 1992), pp. 105–117 Google Scholar and 107.

2 McNamara, , Sisters in Arms, p. 602.Google Scholar

3 Villalobos, Sergio, Origen y ascenso de la burguesía chilena (Santiago de Chile: Editoral Universitaria, 1987).Google Scholar

4 Stevens, Evelyn, “Marianismo: the Other Face of Machismo in Latin America,” Pescatello, Ann ed., Female and Male in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), pp. 89–102 Google Scholar; Utter, Jeffrey H., “Marian Piety as a Socio-Cultural Factor in Argentina,” Ph.D. Diss. Columbia University, 1981 Google Scholar; and Warner, Marina, Alone of All Her Sex (London: Pan Books, 1976).Google Scholar

5 The Chilean press was replete about life in the United States, and Alexander De Tocqueville’s, Democracy in America had been serialized; but the most influential voice was that of Domingo Sarmiento, who traveled extensively through the United States between 1845 and 1847 and chronicled his impressions in his two volume, Viajes (Santiago: 1849 and 1851) and his Educacion popular (Santiago:, 1852). The appearance of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, first published in 1852 and serialized in the local press, suggested the North American women wielded considerable political influence.

6 McNamara, , Sisters in Arms, p. 601.Google Scholar

7 Ibid.

8 Recent studies in the history of the Chilean family argue that gender roles became increasingly bourgeois in the nineteenth century and permitted women to participate in activities outside the home. María Elena, Hernandez N., “Parentesco y afectividad familiar en el siglo xix,” Tesis, Universidad de Chile, 1989 Google Scholar; Gajardo Jenves, Carmen Gloria, “Magdalena Vicuña: una mujer del siglo xix,” Tesis, Universidad de Chile, 1989 Google Scholar; Muñoz, María Angelica, “La novela Casa Grande de Luis Orrego Luco en la Historia Social de Chile,” Tesis, Universidad Católica, 1980 Google Scholar and her “La mujer de hogar en Casa Grande de Orrego Luco y en documentos historia de su epoca,” Historia, 18, 1983, 103–133. Goich, Lorena Loyala, “Mujer, matrimonio y familia en el siglo xix atraves del epistolario,” Tesis, Universidad de Chile, 1989 Google Scholar; Ibaceta, Soledad Gonzalez, “La participación feminina en la Guerra del Pacifíco, 1879–1884,” Tesis, Universidad de Chile, 1988 Google Scholar. An opposite view in presented about French middle class society in Smith, Bonnie G., Ladies of the Leisure Class, The Bourgeoises of Northern France in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981)Google Scholar. Smith studies the process by which middle class women who worked in the family business became upper middle class ladies, stopped working, lost economic power, and invented a unique culture. The Chilean women studied had elite status and used middle class ideology to liberate themselves from traditional, Hispanic patriarchy. For a more general study see Bloom, Ida, “Changing Gender Identities in an Industrializing Society: the Case of Norway c. 1870–1914,” Gender and History 2:2 (Summer, 1990), 131–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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11 The threat of a cholera morbus epidemic in 1832 provided the catalyst for articulating a national approach to charity and health care as juntas were established in major cities to supervise and coordinate relief. (MI 105, April 26,1832 MI 114, February 2, 1832 ; August 6, 1832, January 10, 1833, and January 23, 1833, May 18, 1833, and November 11, 1833). They had broad supervisory powers over medical, educational, correctional, religious, and burial facilities and policing authority over public sanitation from street cleaning to industrial pollution. (MI 114, June 9, 1832). The internal reglamentos gave juntas the authority to visit and inspect all facilities, to hire and fire staff, the maintain buildings to buy and sell property, to contract debts and select administrators and managers. (MI 186, November 18, 1845 for Valparaíso and July 20, 1846 for Talca, for Coelmu see MI 598, June 21, 1870, for Curicó see ICU 21, June 6, 1873, for Copiapó see MI 698 and for Andacollo see MI 698, November 12, 1874 and throughout.

12 MI 35, July 16, 1832 and MI 35, August 3, 1842 conditions were described as “espontona” with a third of patients dying. Also see MI 73, July 19, 1837 and CJE 19, April 4, 1848.

13 MI 407. Also see González, Marcial, “Reforma de los Establecimientos de Beneficencia,” Revista de Santiago, 1848, 99–116.Google Scholar

14 Two sessions at the June 21–24, 1998 Conference on the History of Women Religious: Through Multiple Lenses, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the History of Women Religious, Loyola University, Chicago, addressed women religious as administrators: “Work, Vocation and Utility: The Daughters of Charity from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries” and “‘The Charity of Christ Urges Us’: The 19th Century Sisters of Charity in the U.S. as a Case study in Interpretations of Mission and Ministry.” A good review of the differences between the British and French approaches to public charity was presented by Jessica Sheetz in her paper, “If It Is Considered a Work of Charity, Then Women May Undertake It: The Sisters of Charity SVP and Charity Work in Victorian London,” at the June meeting.

15 Salinas, Cecilia, Las chilenas de la colonia, virtud sumisa, amor rebelde (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones LOM, 1994)Google Scholar and Roldán, Imelda Cano, La mujer en el reyno de Chile (Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de la Muncipalidad de Santiago, 1988).Google Scholar

16 MI 191, August 13, 1844.

17 MI 245 and MI 191, December 9, 1848 and July 13, 1850.

18 Information compiled from Lei de Presupuestos de los Gastos Jenerales de la Administración Pública (Santiago: 1845–1882).

19 By 1850 there was a call for reintroducing the public health system devised by Diego Portales “to improve public service and end abuses.” MI 139, July 13, 1850.

20 MI throughout in the management of orphanages, female correctional facilities and hospices.

21 Villalobos, Origen y ascenso de la burguesía chilena.

22 “The cult of true womanhood” has not been extensively studied in the Latin American context because of the continued attractiveness of the marianismo or honor and shame paradigm. Marianismo however does suggest a private role whereas the “cult of true womanhood” provided women with a social or public role. Anderson, Bonnie S. and Zinser, Judith P., A History of Their Own, Women in Europe From Prehistory to the Present, 2 Vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), Vol. 2, p. 353.Google Scholar

23 El Museo de Ambos Américas, 2:23 (1842) 442–448 and 2:24 (1842) 44–47; Revista Católica 1:38 (August 27, 1844) and 1:40 (September 12, 1844) and 1:46 (November 15, 1844).

24 Edwards, Alberto, La organización politica de Chile (Santiago: Ediciones del Pacifico, 1955)Google Scholar and La fronda aristocrática en Chile (Santiago: Ediciones Ercilla, 1928) and El gobierno de Manuel Monti, 1851–1861. (Santiago: Editorial Nascimiento, 1932).

25 MI 258 January 4,1862. “Lowest classes” did not refer to the poor but to former prostitutes and other petty criminals who found their way into nursing before it was professionalized by Florence Nightingale. See Duffy, John, A History of Public Health in New York City (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1968[74])Google ScholarPubMed; Baly, Monica E., Florence Nightingale and the Nursing Legacy (London: Croom Helm, 1986)Google Scholar; Mottus, Jane E., New York Nightingales: The Emergence of the Nursing Profession at Bellevue and the New York Hospital, 1850–1920 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Davies, Cecila ed., Rewriting Nursing History (London: Croom Helm, 1980)Google ScholarPubMed; and Dock, Lavinia L., A Short History of Nursing (New York: G.P. Putman’s Sons, 1931).Google Scholar

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27 Chile, , Documentos Parlamentarios. Discurso del Presidente. Apertura en las sesiones del Congreso i memorias Ministeriales en el año de 1855 (Santiago: 1856) p. 454.Google Scholar

28 El Ferrocarril 1:14, 8 January 1856.

29 Ibid.

30 MI 817, 18 December 1876, and MI 732, 12 April 1878 “Decreto sobre boticas i farmacéuticos.”

31 MI 817, 21 April, 1878 and MI 817, 4 September, 1877. Comisión encargada de la reorganización de establecimientos de Beneficencia. “Reorganización de la Beneficencia Pública en Santiago,” (Santiago: 1877). Data concerning the formation of the commission can be found in Archivo Vicuña Mackenna 357, 11 December 1876, and “Trabajos de la comisión especial de Beneficencia publicados de orden del Ministero de Interior,” Diario Oficial 6 February 1878. The correspondence and transcripts of meetings of Junta de Beneficencia Pública de Santiago as well as the correspondence of provincial juntas to the Minister of Interior demonstrate the universal support of employing religious sisters in hospitals.

32 Chile, , Boletín de Leyes, Ordenanzas, y Decretos del Gobierno de Chile, Santiago, 1842 present. (hereafter BLODG) (1886) 31 March 1886 p. 181.Google Scholar

33 La Unión, 1927; Laval, Enrique, “El problema de las religiosas en los hospitales,” Medicina Social (Valparaíso: 1937), p. 5.Google Scholar

34 Dussel, Enrique, “The Church and Emergent Nation States,” The Church in Latin America, 1492–1992 (New York: Maryknoll, 1992), pp. 105–117 Google Scholar. Vallier, Ivan, “Toward a Theory of Religious Change,” Landsberger, H., The Church and Social Change in Latin America (South Bend, Indiana: University of Norte Dame Press, 1972), pp. 9–38.Google Scholar

35 Klaiber, Jeffrey, Catholic Church in Peru, 1821–1985 (Washington, D.C.: 1992), p. 16.Google Scholar

36 For a discussion of the Church-State issue as it pertains to Chile see Mecham, J. Lloyd, Church and State in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966)Google Scholar, Chapter Nine.

37 Mecham, Church and State in Latin America, Chapter Nine.

38 Dussel, Enrique, The Church in Latin America, pp. 105–117 Google Scholar. Maximiliano, Salinas C., “Cristianismo popular en Chile 1880–1920,” Nueva Historia 3:12, (1984) 275–302 Google Scholar. Also see Caviedes, César, “Running Christ against the Bandits in Chilean Countryside: Horseman Carry on an Easter Tradition of Piety and Belligerence,” Natural History 96 (May 1987), 44–53 Google Scholar. Gumicio, Cristian Parker in Anticlericalismo y religión popular en la génesis del movimiento obrero chileno en Chile 1900–1920 (Santiago: CEHIA, Ediciones Rehue, 1987).Google Scholar

39 Eduardo, Cavieres F. and Salinas, René, Amor, sexo y matrimonio en Chile tradicional (Valparaíso: Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, 1991).Google Scholar

40 Campos, Maximiliano Salinas, Historia del pueblo de Dios en Chile (Santiago de Chile, 1987)Google Scholar traces the evolution of Christianity from the perspective of the poor, not from the perspective of gender. Scott, Joan, “On Language, Gender, and Working-Class History,” and “Women in The Making of the English Working Class,” in Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 53–92 Google Scholar, is particularly useful here for analyzing Salinas Campos’ conclusions. He writes the church became increasingly patriarchal as the nineteenth century progressed and more out of tune with society. In defiance of these obvious symbols of paternalism the religion of people fixed on Virgin who became the mother of the marginalized. Popular Catholicism in Chile worshipped divine maternity. It should also be noted that the Church itself emphasized Mary with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and the mercy of Christ in the form of Sacred Heart devotions. Although Salinas Campos wrote from a liberation theology perspective, and there are few women actors in the text, the attributes and behavior he assigns to the poor are female because they are based in nature, emotion and religious sentiment.

41 Klaiber, Jeffrey, “The Catholic Lay Movement in Peru: 1862–1959,” The Americas, 149–170 Google Scholar and JoAnn Kay McNamara, Sisters in Arms, section V “Modern Times.” Two excellent studies are Callahan, William J. and Higgs, David eds. Church and Society in Catholic Europe of the Eighteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Callahan, William J., Church, Politics and Society in Spain 1750–1874 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University 1984).Google Scholar

42 Salinas Campos equates religiously-based charity with paternalism in Historia del pueblo de Dios.

43 The feminization of Protestantism is a well-developed idea; McNamara extends the concept to include Roman Catholicism. The Church also expanded its own institutions. “Constitución de la CofradEia de Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Angacollo: Serena, 1853” in ICOQ, 269. Also see Boletín Eclesiástico throughout and Salinas Campos, Maximiliano A., El Laicado Católico de la Sociedad Chilena de Agricultura y Beneficencia 1838–1849 (Santiago: Universidad Católica de Chile, 1980).Google Scholar

44 Salinas Campos, Historia del Pueblo de Dios.

45 Archivo Jaime Eyzaguirre (hereafter AJE) 20, July 31, 1852.

46 AJE 12, Letter no. 171 March 3, 1852, from Archbishop Rafael Valdivieso to José Ignacio Victor Eyzaguirre, and AJE 12, Letter no. 172 June 1852, from Valdivieso to JIV Ezyaguirre, and AJE 12, Letter no. 177 August 25,1852 concerns hiring Sisters of the Good Shepherd for a prison mission, and AJE Letter April 30, 1853 on the same matter.

47 AJE 12, no. 233 April 14,1854 and AJE 19, July 17,1848. For a discussion of the health issues see Bruner, Juan, “Fragmentos de una hijiene pública de Santiago,” Anales de la Universidad de Chile (hereafter AUCh) 1857, 291–311 Google Scholar and “Sobre la cuestión de sífilis constitucional en la Academia de Medicina en Francia,” Ibid., 366–371. Ricardo Davila Boza, “Apuntes sobre el movimiento de la población de Chile, Revista Medica, 1876. Also see Padín, Ramón Allende, De la reglamentación de la prostitución como profilaxis de la sífilis (Valparaíso: 1875).Google Scholar

48 AJE 12, no. 329 October 30, 1855.

49 McNamara, Sisters in Arms, chapters 18, 19, and 20.

50 AJE Volume XII, Letter 11 July 1854, Letter 28 November 1854, and Letter 30 October 1855; and Volume 20 Letter 31 July 1852.

51 MI 299, May 24, 1854 contract with the Sisters of Charity and MI 368, January 24, 1857. For a discussion of the financial problems see MI 191, July 13, 1850.

52 Revista Católica, 309, May 21, 1854.

53 Revista Católica, 310, May 31, 1854.

54 McNamara, Sisters in Arms, Section Nine “Modern Times” and Ewens, Mary, The Role of the Nun in Nineteenth Century America (Salem, NH: Ayer Company, 1984). Anderson and Zinser, Vol. 2, pp. 179–181.Google Scholar

55 Benjamin Vicuña Mackenna, Médicos de Antaño; Roldan, Cano, La Mujer en el Reyno de Chile, pp. 353–74.Google Scholar

56 McNamara, , Sisters in Arms, p. 600.Google Scholar

57 Ibid.

58 MI 490, January 28, 1865.

59 Michael Mulhall, The English in South America: Buenos Aires, 1878; Juan Wehril Romo, “El reverendo, doctor don David Trumbull: su influencia en el desarrollo de las libertades religiosas y públicas en Chile, 1846–1889.” Tesis, Universidad de Chile, 1989. Mayo, John, “The British Community in Chile Before the Nitrate Age,” Historia, 22(1987), 135–150.Google Scholar

60 Historia de la Congregación de las Religiosas de los Sagradros Corazones de Jesús y María (Santiago: 1909) and Perez Walker, Sor María del Carmen, SSCC, Congregación de las Sagrados Corazones de Jesús y María, Las religiosas, 1838–1963 (Santiago: 1963)Google Scholar; Historia de la Congregación de las Hermanas de la Providencia de Chile, 2 vols. (Santiago: 1899). Correa, María Rosa, Cronica del Asilo de la Providencia de San José de Valparaíso (Santiago: 1897)Google Scholar; Fuenzalida, María del Socorro, Historia de la Casa de Providencia de Concepción (Santiago: 1903)Google Scholar; Mory, María Felomena, Historia de la Casa de la Providencia de la Serena (Santiago: 1903)Google Scholar; Vicuña, María Victoria, Historia de la Casa de Ejercicios de San Juan Bautista (Santiago: 1903)Google Scholar; Bascunán, María Clara , Historia de la Casa de Ejercicios de San José (Santiago: 1904)Google Scholar; Fuente, María de la Providencia, Historia de la Casa de Santa Rosa, 1884–1900 (Santiago: 1902)Google Scholar; Larraín, María Armando, Historia del Hospital de Santo Tomas de Limache (Santiago: 1904)Google Scholar; Fernández, Tristan, Historia de la Casa de Ejercicios del Transito de la Serena (Santiago: 1904)Google Scholar; Trinidad Lizana, María de la Santísima, Historia de la Casa de La Providencia del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús (Santiago: 1904)Google Scholar; Historia de la Casa de la Providencia de Linares (Santiago: 1904).

61 Historia de la Congregación de las Hermanas de la Providencia de Chile, 2 vols. (Santiago: 1899).

62 Information complied from Boletín Eclesiástico, 1848–1862.

63 MI 368, June 27, 1853.

64 MI 297, May 5, 1854.

65 MI 299, August 12, 1854.

66 Information gathered Anuario Estadístico, 1859–1880; also see MI 379, 1856.

67 MI 379, 24 February, 1858.

68 Information gathered from Anuario Estadístico, 1859–1880.

69 Ml 379, 1856.

70 MI 730, 15 November 1874.

71 MI 730, 11 August 1874.

72 Sisters of Charity managed the following hospitals in Santiago San Juan de Dios and San Francisco Borja (1854), San Vicente (1872), San José (1884), Salvador (1888), Copiapó (1860), Concepción (1861), La Serena (1863), Talca (1863), Chillan (1873), Los Angeles (1874), Rancagua (1876), Curicó (1882), and Talcahuano (1885).

73 MI 368, 24 January 1857.

74 MI 457,19 October 1863 and MI 445,6 April 1867. Ministerio de Justicia (Hereafter MJ) 304, 3 January 1862 and 21 April 1864. For a discussion of women’s correctional facilities see Brenzel, Barbara, “Domestication as Reform: A Study of the Socialization of Wayward Girls, 1856–1905,” Harvard Educational Review, 50 (1980), 196–231 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “Lancaster Industrial School for Girls: A Social Portrait of a Nineteenth Century Reform School for Girls,” Feminist Studies 3:1/2 (1975–76), 40–53.

75 MI 457, 20 May 1864 and 7 September 1864.

76 MJ 304, 20 March 1868.

77 MJ 407, 1 May 1876.

78 MI 299, 5 September 1853.

79 MI 410, 28 February 1860.

80 MI 732, March 12,1877 “Decreto sobre boticas y farmacéuticas,”x and MI 817, December 18, 1876.

81 Diario Oficial 2:278 and 282, February 7 and 12, 1878.

82 Mary Ewen offers a good discussion of the problems religious Sisters had with local bishops; although her focus is the United States, the same issues appeared in Chile. For a discussion of issue of episcopal closure and the Sisters of the Good Shepherd see Boletín Eclesiástico 6 (1878), 632.

83 MI 35 and 368, May 1, 1857 and June 28, 1858. Also see AJE 12 no. 329, October 30, 1855.

84 Boletín Eclesiástico 7 (March, 1880), 601–605. Also see Historia de las Hermanas de la Providencia, p. 169.

85 AJE, July 11, 1854.

86 See for example, MI 408. “Proyecto de Estatutos para la Sociedad de Beneficencia de Señoras de Valparaíso.” The Sociedad de Beneficencia de Señoras of Santiago appears in the Almanaque de Chile (Valparaíso: 1853–1860) as an official institution.

87 Raquel Prieto, “La Pedagogía de la Congregación de la Sagrado Corazón,” Tesis, Universidad Católica, s/f. and Ana María Aguirre Valdivieso, “La formación social de la mujer adquerido a través del colegio particular Católico,” Tesis, Universidad Católica, 1956. Recuerdos de media centuria, 1849–1899. Colegio de los Sagrados Corazones de Jesús y María (Santiago: 1899).

88 The literature on female participation in benevolence and women and religion is extensive for the United States and Europe. Some examples include McDannell, Collen, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840–1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986)Google Scholar and Ginzberg, Lori D., Women and the Work of Benevolence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990)Google Scholar. Bonnie G. Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class, Prochaska, F.K., Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980)Google Scholar and McCarthy, Kathleen, Noblesse Oblige: Charity and Cultural Philanthropy in Chicago 1849–1929 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982)Google Scholar and Cumbler, John T., “The Politics of Charity: Gender and Class in Late 19th Century Charity Policy,” Journal of Social History, 99–109.Google Scholar Prelinger, Catherine M., Charity, Challenge and Change, Religious Dimensions of the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Women’s Movement in Germany (Westport, NY: Greenwood Press, 1987)Google Scholar. For a discussion of “Protestant nunneries” see Hunter’s, Jane, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the Century China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984)Google Scholar and Vicinus, Martha, Independent Women Work and Community for Single Women, 1850–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985)Google Scholar. Also see Sered, Susan Starr, “Women, Religion and Modernization: Tradition and Transformation Among Elderly Jews in Israel,” American Anthropologist, 92 (1990), 306–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For Latin America see Lavrin, Asuncion, The Ideology of Feminism in the Southern Cone (Washington, D.C.: Wilson Institute, 1986)Google Scholar and “Women, Labor and the Left: Argentina and Chile, 1890–1925,” Journal of Women’s History, 1:2 (Fall, 1989), 88–116; Little, Cynthia Jeffress, “Education, Philanthropy and Feminism: Components of Argentine Womanhood, 1860–1926,” in Lavrin, Asuncion ed., Latin American Women Historical Perspectives (Westport, NY: Greenwood Press, 1978), pp. 235–253 Google Scholar; Little, Cynthia Jeffress, “Moral Reform and Feminism,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 17:4 (November 1975), 386–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “The Society of Beneficence in Buenos Aires, 1823–1900,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Temple University, 1980; McGee, Sandra F., “The Visible and Invisible Liga Patriótica Argentina, 1919–28: Gender Roles and the Right Wing,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 64:2, 1984, 233–258 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and her Counterrevolution in Argentina, 1900–1932: The Argentine Patriotic League (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986) and Martinez-Vergne, Teresita, “The Liberal Concept of Charity: Beneficencia Applied to Puerto Rico, 1821–1868,” in Szuchmann, Mark, The Middle Period in Latin American History: Values and Attitudes in the Seventeenth—Nineteenth Centuries (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1989), pp. 167–183 Google Scholar. Tomán, René de la Pedraja, “Women in Colombian Organizations, 1900–1940: A Study of Changing Gender Roles,” Journal of Women’s History, 2:1 (Spring, 1990), 98–119 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Guy, Donna, “Public Health, Gender and Private Morality: Paid Labor and the Formation of the Body Politic in Buenos Aires,” Gender and History, 2:3 (Autumn, 1990), 297–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

89 Suárez, José Bernardo, El tesoro de las niñas, colección de artículos … Obra compuesta espresamente para las señoritas. Aprobada por el Consejo de la Universidad y por el Ordinario como texto de lectura y adoptado por el Supremo Gobierno y las Municipalidades de Santiago, Valparaíso, Talca, Concepción, La Serena, etc., (Santiago: 1859).Google Scholar

90 Ibid. For examples of the actual letters see Quiroz, Sergio Vergara ed., Cartas de mujeres en Chile 1630–1885, (Santiago: Editorial Andres Bello, 1987).Google Scholar

91 For Valparaíso see MI 379, December 7,1859; also see Revista Católica, 355, March 31,1854. For Curicó see MI, 409 December 17, 1868. For Copiapó see MI 380, August 19, 1859. For the Casa de Maternidad see MI 490, March 29, 1866. Also see AJE 13, November 2, 1871; For Quirihue see Diario Oficial, 2:270, January 29, 1878. For Copiapó see MI 659, August 28, 1873 and MI 698, April 23, 1874 and MI 594, May 18 and September 7, 1870. For Cauqueñes see MI 661, October 4, 1873. For Ovalle see MI 594, January 3, 1870. For San Felipe see MI 594, December 4, 1871. For Talca see MI 597, January 14, 1871. For la Palma see Intendencia de Colchagua (hereafter ICOL) September 26, 1868. For Molina see MI 818, September 28, and October 9, 1877. For La Serena see CMLA 46, August 24, 1852 and September 1, 1864 and September 11, 1870. For Curicó see MI, August 12, 1853. Females did participate in charitable works before 1850 and in the public sector but principally as benefactors see MI 73, July 19,1837 and MI 142, January 22, 1835.

92 Salinas Campos, El laicado católico.

93 MI 35, July 8, 1852 “Acta de Instalación de la Sociedad de Beneficencia” and MI 299, “Reglamento de la Sociedad de Beneficencia Pública de Damas.”

94 MI 818, September 28, 1877.

95 MI 773, July 14, 1876.

96 MI 818, October 5, 1877.

97 MI 871, June 12, 1877.

98 MI 35, 8 July 1852 “Acta de la Instalación de la Sociedad de Beneficencia.”

99 Boletín Eclesiástico (1867), 80.

100 Ibid., p. 82 and (1868) p. 143.

101 Ibid., (1871) p. 355 and (1872) p. 555.

102 Memoria que la Presidenta Accidental de la Hermandad de la Caridad Dirije a sus Consocios al terminarse el año de su administración (Valparaíso: 1859).

103 Memoria que la Presidenta Accidental de la Hermandad de la Caridad Dirije a sus Consocios al terminarse el años de su administración (Valparaíso: 1860).

104 Memoria de la Presidenta de la Sociedad del Asilo de Salvador (Valparaíso, 1859).

105 Memoria que la Presidenta de la Sociedad de Beneficencia de Señoras de Valparaíso presenta a sus consocios del año 1859 (Valparaíso: 1860).

106 Ibid., 1863 and MI 408, August 1863.

107 MI 408, May 30,1864.

108 MI 490, and Chile, Lei de Presupuesto, 1865, Sección de Beneficencia part 24.

109 MI 408, September 3, 1865.

110 Memoria que la Presidenta de la Sociedad de Beneficencia de Señoras de Valparaíso: 1869.

111 Ibid., 1873 and MI 595, March 6, 1872.

112 MI 595, August 1, 1872.

113 Memoria que la Presidenta de la Sociedad de … Señoras de Valparaíso … año 1876 (Valparaíso: 1877).

114 Historia de las Hermanas de Providencia and Boletín Eclesiástico, (1880), 601.

115 Concha Fernandez families generously endowed Good Shepherd projects and the Mother Superior of the Society in 1880s came from the family.

116 La Congregación del Buen Pastor (Santiago: 1884) and Historia de las Hermanas de Providencia and MI 379, July 27, 1858 and October 15, 1858.

117 Memoria de la Sociedad de Beneficencia de Señoras de Valparaíso para el año de … 1860 (Valparaíso: 1861).

118 Francisco A. Encina said this about Montt, Manuel, Montt, Luís Montt ed., Discursos, papeles de gobierno i correspondencia de Don Manuel Montt, 2 volumes (Santiago de Chile: Cervantes, 1982)Google Scholar, Volume 1, introduction.

119 Refers to highly popular exposés or life experience of nuns who left convent life. “…imaginative Protestants perceived convent chastity as an escape from the Christian responsibilities of marriage and as an excuse for sexual promiscuity between monks and nuns.” from Porterfield, Anne, Feminine Spirituality in America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980)Google Scholar, quoted in Sr.Maher, Mary Denis, To Bind Up the Wounds, Catholic Sister Nurses in the U.S. Civil War (Westport, NY: Greenwood Press, 1989), p. 17.Google Scholar

120 Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class.