Alone at the Altar: Single Women and Devotion in Guatemala, 1670-1870. By Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara

Abstract

In her remarkable study of Guatemala’s late colonial period, Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara lays out the case that significant numbers of non-elite women in Guatemala’s two capitals are better understood not as socially marginalized, but as centrally active in Catholic institutions, exercising agency and shaping society. The author presents meticulous archival research to show how non-elite, laboring, single and, often, mixed-race women created mutually-beneficial alliances with male clergy, gained moral status, exercised spiritual authority, obtained protection, and acted at the center of social debates, influencing public religiosity, education, and politics. Her focus on non-elite women makes this book ground-breaking. Especially interesting is Leavitt-Alcántara’s argument that the alliances between these women and the church forged alternative ideals of the feminine, allowing flexibility on married status and sexuality and endorsing apostolic labor by women in the world, rather than removed from it. The author demonstrates the difference for these women’s lives of very local circumstances, shaped by Santiago de Guatemala and Guatemala City’s distance from imperial power centers as well as their particular economics, demographics, and religious institutions.