Pan American Women: U.S. Internationalists and Revolutionary Mexico by Megan Threlkeld (review)

Abstract

PAN AMERICAN WOMEN: U.S. Internationalists and Revolutionary Mexico. By Megan Threlkeld. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2014.In her text Women: U.S. Internationalists and Revolutionary Mexico, Megan Threlkeld illuminates the conflicted and sometimes contentious relationship between feminists of the early-twentieth century, and Mexican women of the same era who sought to establish their own sense of cultural empowerment alongside growing nationalism resulting from the Mexican Revolution. Threlkeld reveals that attempts to establish mutually beneficial relationships between feminists and Mexican nationalists/feminists were complicated by political factors, including U.S. imperialist attitudes in regards to the natural resources available in Mexico, as well as better known global conflicts such as the Mexican Revolution, The Great Depression, and World War II.At the same time such Pan American feminist relationships, as they were pursued by a collection of woman-led groups and institutions and manifested through a variety of means, were plagued by interpersonal conflict, racist attitudes on behalf of women, and the real-life concerns of Mexican women navigating the shifting political landscape of Mexico.Threlkeld's research is impeccable and dense with historical documentation that seems to have received far too little attention in the arenas of history, politics, or feminism. The text is sharply factual, so much so that at times it only touches upon cultural biases that likely have deeper roots in America's own conflicted racial history. For example, Carrie Chapman Catt's reported contention that Mexican women were back on the evolutionary scale could easily be attached to the popularity of eugenics in the United States during this era, anxieties regarding immigration and race relations after the Civil War, and even the forced relocation of Native Americans in the century before (63).Likewise, Threlkeld's text could also be used to further our understanding of gender specific legislation and its success in the U.S. before this time. Florence Kelley's relentless pursuit of such legislation would not be replicated in Mexico, and Threlkeld clearly enunciates how this is rooted in the distinct needs of Mexican women who distrusted feminists. feminists, who sometimes approached Mexican women with attitudes of superiority, also failed to understand how Mexican women could choose to identify with their nationality before they could identify with their gender, and were thus only interested in seeing Mexican women as women, and not as Mexican revolutionaries. …