For Tranquility and Order: Family and Community on Mexico’s Northern Frontier, 1800–1850

Abstract

Laura Shelton’s monograph is a welcome addition to the rapidly growing literature on gender and nineteenth-century liberalism in Latin America. Her study focuses on early nineteenth-century Sonora, a frontier state in northwestern Mexico, in the midst of violence created by indigenous uprisings. Shelton seeks to trace how the transition from colony to nation-state affected family and gender relations. She bases her study on roughly seven hundred civil and criminal records, as well as census data, military reports, and travelers’ accounts.Shelton finds that gender was key to understanding how Sonorans conceived of themselves and their citizenship during this period. As she asserts, “In early republican Sonora, family relationships, gender roles and sexual mores denoted ‘civilization’ in the face of ‘savage’ social, moral and political disorder” (p. 3). That is, as armed resistance and ethnic violence increased, Sonorans believed that political order could be established by order through gender roles. Men were to be patriarchs and women sexually chaste, morally upstanding, and submissive to their fathers and husbands. The performance of these gender roles was what allowed Sonorans to call themselves civilized, and the lack of patriarchal gender relations among the Apache and Yaqui Indians coded them as barbaric. Cases brought before the courts demonstrate the importance placed on these gender ideals during this period. For Sonorans, the maintenance of gender hierarchies was part of the process of transitioning from colony to republic.Shelton’s work challenges some of the previous understandings of frontier Mexico. This area has often been associated with a weak state, but Shelton finds this assertion to be overstated. She argues that the court system in particular was a trusted venue, where men and women from all socioeconomic groups came to seek justice. If the legal system were not well established due to a weak state, then many of these cases simply would not have been brought to the courts. Shelton states that the judicial system did have the ability to “enforce the law, shape actual conduct, and create a civic culture in Sonora under difficult circumstances” (p. 19).Many continuities existed between colonial practice and liberal economic expansion, especially in terms of labor practices. While colonial elites could exploit labor based on caste status, in theory the republic abolished such distinctions. In contrast, Shelton shows that Sonorans moved to enforce class distinctions and coded members of certain classes as dependent on their patrons. Their dependence allowed for their labor to be exploited, particularly the labor of domestic servants, who became doubly dependent based on class and gender.This study also contributes to our understanding of honor under nineteenth-century liberalism. In Sonora, honor was not defined by bloodlines, but rather by “buenas costumbres,” or acting in an honorable way. Thus, upholding gendered standards allowed men and women to be honorable, and this honor in turn allowed them to define themselves as civilized. Shelton’s book dovetails nicely with other recent works that focus on gender, honor, and citizenship under liberal rule in Mexico.The strength of Shelton’s research is that it allows her to show how ordinary Sonorans understood republicanism, the legal system, and their rights as citizens. Her records show not just how elite men constructed honor, but how peasants, members of the working classes, artisans, and women of all classes used the courts to protect their rights and their own conceptions of honor.Shelton’s engagingly written book is a solid contribution to our understandings of life on the Mexican frontier. Shelton could have strengthened her work with more context of the wars and indigenous uprisings that set the backdrop of her argument. She asserts that the violence of the area is what drove these particular gendered norms, and the argument is believable. It would have been helpful for students, for example, to have that information woven into the analysis. Nevertheless, this important study provides a necessary explanation of the way gender functions in times of violence and upheaval to cement social and economic structures.