Refusing the Favor: The Spanish-Mexican Women of Santa Fe, 1820-1880

by Deena J. Gonzalez

Refusing the Favor tells the little-known story of the Spanish-Mexican women who saw their homeland become part of New Mexico. A corrective to traditional narratives of the period, it carefully and lucidly documents the effects of colonization, looking closely at how the women lived both before and after the United States took control of the region.

Focusing on Santa Fe, which was long one of the largest cities west of the Mississippi, Deena González demonstrates that women's responses to the conquest were remarkably diverse and that their efforts to preserve their culture were complex and long-lasting. Drawing on a range of sources, from newspapers to wills, deeds, and court records, González shows that the change to U.S. territorial status did little to enrich or empower the Spanish-Mexican inhabitants. The vast majority, in fact, found themselves quickly impoverished, and this trend toward low-paid labor, particularly for women, continues even today. González both examines the long-term consequences of colonization and draws illuminating parallels with the experiences of other minorities.

Refusing the Favor also describes how and why Spanish-Mexican women have remained invisible in the histories of the region for so long. It avoids casting the story as simply "bad" Euro-American migrants and "good" local people by emphasizing the concrete details of how women lived. It covers every aspect of their experience, from their roles as businesswomen to the effects of intermarriage, and it provides an essential key to the history of New Mexico. Anyone with an interest in Western history, gender studies, Chicano/a studies, or the history of borderlands and colonization will find the book an invaluable resource and guide.

Genres: History

308 pages, Paperback

First published November 4, 1999

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The subjects of this book are Mexican women who, after the U.S.-Mexican war, found themselves in a country, with a new Army (and the inflation that came with it), new settlers, and a new legal language. Some flourished, like Maria Gertrudis Barceló, who ran a gambling salon so profitable it may it into what then counted as journalism and travel writing, where she was inevitably exoticized and eroticized. Others were less astute, like the widow Chaves, who had the misfortune to find an American lawyer who conspired with a priest to defraud her. Since court documents are among the most accessible of documents, domestic violence is prominent, and among all the abused women one is almost relieved to meet Juana Lopes, who, accused of marital infidelity, told the court "'it was her ass, she controlled it, and she would give it to whoever she wanted.'"

The larger picture is of a community being marginalized. Examining property records, Deena J. Gonzalez finds that, over the course of the forty years under examination, Mexican families became poorer and, due to economic forces, ninety percent lost their land. No doubt the proud victors of this economic struggle wrote the history of it, not failing to disparage the people falling into a poverty that the winners devised.

[John Kissell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good insights into the development of the West from a too-frequently ignored point of view.

[Veva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even as an assigned trading for a Woman’s Studies course I thoroughly enjoyed learning about this part of history that it felt like I was reading for pleasure.