September 21, 1832 – Boston Speech by Activist Maria Stewart in Which She Demands Equal Rights for African-Americans

Maria W. Stewart was the first known American woman to speak to a mixed audience of men and women, whites and black. She was also the first African-American woman to make public lectures, as well as to lecture about women’s rights and make a public anti-slavery speech.

Maria was born to free African-American parents in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1803. At the age of five she lost both parents and was sent to live with a white clergyman and his family. She worked as a servant in that home until she was 15. Although she received no formal education, she educated herself with books from the family library.

She moved to Boston and in 1826 married James W. Stewart, a veteran of the War of 1812 and a member of Boston’s black middle class.  In December 1829, James Stewart died; the marriage had produced no children. Maggie MacLean wrote in her history of Stewart on the History of American Women blog reprinted here that although Maria Stewart was left with a substantial inheritance, she was defrauded of it by the white executors of her husband’s will after a drawn-out court battle. She returned to domestic service to support herself. 
 
In 1830, Stewart underwent a religious conversion and decided to dedicate herself to God’s service. For Stewart, MacLean pointed out, “her newfound religious fervor went hand-in-hand with political activism: she resolved to become a ‘strong advocate for the cause of God and for the cause of freedom.’” 

It happened that in 1831, William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of the abolitionist newspaper the Liberator, was calling for women of African descent to contribute to the paper. Stewart brought Garrison several essays which he agreed to publish. Her essays expanded on the themes of organizing against slavery in the South, and resisting racist restrictions in the North. She also advocated for more education for blacks and greater rights for women.
 

[Liberator masthead, 1831] [graphic]. | Library Company of Philadelphia Digital Collections

 
Soon afterward, Stewart began to deliver public lectures. Her first speaking engagement was on April 28, 1832, before the African American Female Intelligence Society of Boston.
 
On September 21, 1832, this day in history, Stewart lectured to an audience of both men and women at Franklin Hall. In that speech, called “Why Sit Ye Here and Die?” she asserted that free African Americans were hardly better off than those in slavery:

Look at many of the most worthy and most interesting of us doomed to spend our lives in gentlemen’s kitchens. . . . “

She demanded equal rights for African-American women:

I have asked several individuals of my sex, who transact business for themselves, if providing our girls were to give them the most satisfactory references, they would not be willing to grant them an equal opportunity with others? Their reply has been—for their own part, they had no objection; but as it was not the custom, were they to take them into their employ, they would be in danger of losing the public patronage.

And such is the powerful force of prejudice. Let our girls possess what amiable qualities of soul they may; let their characters be fair and spotless as innocence itself; let their natural taste and ingenuity be what they may; it is impossible for scarce an individual of them to rise above the condition of servants. Ah! why is this cruel and unfeeling distinction? Is it merely because God has made our complexion to vary? If it be, O shame to soft, relenting humanity!”

In the same speech Stewart emphasized that African-American women were not so different from African-American men:

Look at our young men, smart, active and energetic, with souls filled with ambitious fire; if they look forward, alas! what are their prospects? They can be nothing but the humblest laborers, on account of their dark complexions…”

Notably, Stewart was criticizing Northern treatment of African Americans at a meeting in which Northerners gathered to criticize and plan action against Southern treatment of African Americans. She argued that the relegation of African Americans to service jobs was also a great injustice and waste of human potential.

You can read all of her stirring speech here.

In a later speech on February 27, 1833 to a racially integrated audience, Stewart advanced one of her most potent arguments against white supremacy by employing a biblical analogy:

Like King Solomon, who put neither nail nor hammer to the temple, yet received the praise; so also have the white Americans gained themselves a name, like the names of the great men that are in the earth, while in reality we have been their principal foundation and support. We have pursued the shadow, they have obtained the substance; we have performed the labor, they have received the profits; we have planted the vines, they have eaten the fruits of them.”

In strident words challenging her audience, she charged:

We have been imposed upon, insulted and derided on every side; and now, if we complain, it is considered as the height of impertinenance.  We have suffered ourselves to be considered as dastards, cowards, mean, faint-hearted wretches; and on this account, (not because of our complexion), many despise us and would gladly spurn us from their presence.

. . . I would ask, is it blindness of mind, or stupidity of soul, or the want of education, that has caused our men who are 60 or 70 years of age, never to let their voices be heard nor their hands be raised in behalf of their color? Or has it been for the fear of offending the whites?”

Garrison printed transcripts of her speeches in the Liberator, although they were relegated to the paper’s “Ladies’ Department.” Yet, as Jeff Biggers, the award-winning historian, journalist, and playwright, who wrote a profile of Stewart in his book Resistance: Reclaiming an American Tradition, pointed out, thanks to Stewart, the “Ladies Department” became the most radical page of the newspaper.

MacLean observed that “[t]he response to Stewart’s speeches – even from those who supported her cause – was overwhelmingly negative; she was condemned for having the audacity to speak onstage.”

Stewart gave in to public pressure and stopped lecturing in 1833, then turning her attention to education. In 1833, Stewart moved from Boston to New York City, where she taught in public schools in Manhattan and Long Island. She also continued her political activities, joining women’s organizations, including a black women’s literary society, and attending the Women’s Anti-slavery Convention of 1837. She also lectured occasionally, and in 1835 Garrison published her collected works, Productions of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart. (You can read this book online courtesy of the New York Public Library, here.)

William Lloyd Garrison, circa 1870

 
Within a year of its appearance, other women, both black and white, began to follow the path Stewart had opened, lecturing in churches and meeting halls across the country.
 
In 1852, Stewart moved to Baltimore, earning a small living as a teacher of paying pupils, and in 1861 she moved to Washington, D.C., starting a school for children whose families had escaped from slavery.
 
By the early 1870s, Stewart had been appointed as head matron at the Freedman’s Hospital and Asylum in Washington. Stewart continued to teach, even as she lived and worked at the hospital. 
 
In 1878, a law was passed granting pensions to widows of War of 1812 veterans. Stewart used the unexpected money to publish a second edition of Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart. The book, which appeared on December 17, 1879, was introduced by supporting letters from Garrison and others. 
 
Shortly after the book’s publication, Maria Stewart died at the Freedmen’s Hospital at age 76. Her obituary in “The People’s Advocate,” a Washington-area black newspaper, acknowledged that Stewart had struggled for years with little recognition: “Few, very few know of the remarkable career of this woman whose life has just drawn to a close.” She was buried in Graceland Cemetery in Washington, DC. 

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September 19, 1814 – Senate Moves into Emergency Quarters Following the Invasion of the British

On August 24, 1814, invading British troops during the War of 1812 marched into Washington, D.C. and set fire to the U.S. Capitol building, inter alia. (Fortunately Congress was in recess.) The fire was particularly destructive to the Capitol’s Senate wing. President James Madison arranged for Congress to meet temporarily at Blodgett’s Hotel on E Street, Northwest, between 7th and 8th Streets.

Blodgett’s Hotel, via Library of Congress

The Klimpton Monaco now occupies the site. Their website explains:

In 1810 the US government purchased the hotel [built in 1793] to house the Post Office Department and the City Post Office on the first floor, and the Patent Office on the upper floors. In 1814, by pure luck, it was the only government building in Washington to survive when Sir George Cockburn ordered British troops to burn all public property in the capital. On September 19 of that year, the 13th session of Congress was convened here, and the building became the Hall of Congress for a short period thereafter.

Ultimately Blodgett’s did burn to the ground in an accidental fire in 1836. . . . .”

Meanwhile, the following year, in December, 1815 the Senate moved to the so-called “Brick Capitol,” a large red-brick structure on the site of today’s Supreme Court, built to accommodate Congress temporarily. The Senate remained there until March 1819, when the reconstruction of the Senate Chamber was finally completed.

Original Brick Capitol building, circa 1815, (c) DC Historic Designs, LLC, 2013. Dynamic Views theme.

A U.S. Senate history site notes:

By 1850, with the admission of five new states within five years, the chamber barely had room for the sixty-two members then serving. The space situation turned critical and a solution was desperately needed.

In September 1850, Congress appropriated $100,000 to plan a major addition, with Senate and House wings placed near the building’s northern and southern walls attached by narrow corridors. Construction began in June 1851.

This massive project doubled the Capitol’s original space. Lasting seventeen years and employing seven hundred men, this would become one of the largest and most expensive construction projects in nineteenth-century America. No other building could compare in cost, scale, complexity, and richness. On January 4, 1859, sixty-four senators lined up, two by two, in the cramped old chamber and moved in solemn procession to the spacious new chamber. They knew that the fate of the Union would be decided in that place.”

Review of “Directorate S: The CIA and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan” by Steve Coll

Steve Coll’s latest book, Directorate S: The CIA and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is a sequel to Coll‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars, an excellent chronicling of the CIA’s involvement in Afghanistan from the Soviet invasion through September 10, 2001.

As Coll painstakingly explains, U.S. relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan are, and have been, extremely complex due in no small part to the number of groups with conflicting interests.  Pakistan perceives itself in a life and death struggle with India, its neighbor to the east, with whom it has had three unsuccessful wars since its founding in 1947.  Its rivalry with India is largely based on religious differences;  Pakistan originally split from British India to carve out an Islamic State. 

Pakistan’s neighbor to the west is Afghanistan, a country that is nearly 100% Muslim.  But Afghanistan is riven with tribal differences (Pashtuns vs. Tajik vs. Uzbek, etc.) as well as different versions of Islam.  The capital, Kabul, is relatively modern and sophisticated;  much of the hinterland is dominated by an almost medieval, primitive version of Islam practiced by the Taliban. Indeed, Afghanistan is embroiled in a long-lived civil war between the Taliban and a more moderate, enlightened government in Kabul.  

Pakistan considers a friendly, or at least neutral, Afghanistan to be essential to its well being in its struggle with India.  Pakistan has exerted its influence in Afghanistan through the ISI, its Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which has found common ground with the Taliban largely through religious affinity.

The United States became involved in Afghanistan in the 1980s in a proxy war against the USSR by supplying arms to insurgents fighting the Soviet-sponsored communist government.  Those insurgents often were religious fundamentalists.  The Soviets purposefully decimated the country’s educated elites, leaving the country to radical preachers and armed opportunists.  Some of these morphed into Al Qaeda members after the defeat of the Russians.

The US supplanted the Soviets as invaders shortly after September 11, 2001, after it became known that Osama bin Laden had been operating as a guest of the Taliban, which at the time controlled the capital, Kabul, and most of the rest of the country.  Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda operated training camps for terrorists in Taliban controlled areas.  

Undated ABC photo of al Qaeda militant training in Afghanistan

By supporting the Northern Alliance, a rival of the Taliban, the US was able to drive the Taliban out of the capital, Kabul, and secure control of much of the country. Osama bin Laden was forced to go underground and eventually escaped to Pakistan, as it was learned much later. Then thing got “interesting” as the US and its allies failed to completely irradicate the Taliban, which underwent a “rebirth” of sorts and began to take back portions of the country. The US is still mired in that horrible quagmire seventeen years later.

The actual “Directorate S” is the section of Pakistan’s ISI that deals with the Taliban.  It is thought to be responsible for helping create the Taliban’s safe harbors within the borders of Pakistan.  Those safe harbors have immensely complicated the task of the American military in defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In a section of the book entitled “Losing the Peace,” Coll blames the Bush administration for failing to bolster the nascent Afghan government that replaced the Taliban in 2002.  It refused to pay even 10% of the war’s cost to secure the peace with new Afghan forces.  One American observer noted, “You get what you pay for, and we paid for war.”

Some of America’s lack of success in Afghanistan can be attributed to the Bush administration’s emphasis on Iraq even though it had been the Afghan Taliban that had sheltered Osama bin Laden.  For example, the CIA increasingly deployed lightly experienced officers in Afghanistan while sending the heavy hitters to Iraq.  The US was never able to obtain the complete cooperation of Pakistan, which (in Coll’s words) played a double game—assisting both the US and the Taliban.  

By the time Obama replaced Bush, Hamid Karzai, the man the Americans had put in place to head the new Afghan government, had soured on America’s participation in the war.  His primary rationale was that American’s tended to kill too many innocent Afghans in their pursuit of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.  Karzai also blamed Pakistan for its support of the Taliban.  

2016 – The resurgent Taliban hold more Afghan territory than before. Allauddin Khan / AP Photo

Another complication in trying to make sense of Afghanistan is that that country’s most profitable industry is opium production.  The Americans tried to destroy the poppy fields to deprive the Taliban of a source of income, but in doing so they also greatly depressed the economy of their Afghan allies.

One of the most moving sections of the book deals with “green on blue” murders—the phenomenon of Afghan army trainees turning their weapons on their American or European trainers.  The cultural differences between the two groups were extreme, with the exaggerated respect shown to the Q’uran by the Afghans being one of the most intractable aspects of the relationship.  Many religious Afghans simply could not tolerate the presence of large numbers of infidels (Americans) in their midst. For their part, many Americans showed an insulting lack of respect for Islam and the Q’uran.

The book also recounts an event in 2014 that should send shivers down the spines of all Americans.  Apparently, two fervently religious Pakistani naval officers hatched a plan to commandeer a Pakistani warship that may have had a small nuclear weapon aboard.  They planned to use the vessel, which also had a large naval gun and several missiles aboard, to attack American ships conducting joint maneuvers with the Pakistani navy.  Fortunately they were thwarted by alert Pakistani commandos assigned to guard the ship, but their efforts represent the first armed terrorist attack against a facility holding nuclear weapons.  Coll warns ominously, “Judging by Pakistan’s trajectory, it was unlikely to be the last.”

NS Zulfiqar, which Al Qaeda militants tried to seize on Sept. 6, stands in the background of this June 2011 photo. REUTERS

Coll asserts that the war became a “humbling case study in the limits of American power.”  He argued that “the failure to solve the riddle of ISI and to stop its covert interference in Afghanistan became, ultimately, the greatest strategic failure of the American war.”   He concludes that about the best the U.S. can hope for in Afghanistan is a sort of stalemate with the Taliban as long as it is supported by the ISI.  The situation may come to resemble Mexico’s struggle with narco-traffickers or Colombia’s long war with the F.A.R.C.  In each case the state, although fragmented and corrupt, remained more or less intact and continued to cooperate with the US and Europe.  

Evaluation: Coll’s masterful study is carefully researched.  It provides much more detail than can be duplicated in a (relatively) short review.  In Ghost Wars, we learned that events in the region could be characterized as missed opportunities, owing, as Coll suggested, to “indifference, lassitude, blindness, paralysis, and commercial greed” that shaped America’s foreign policy in Afghanistan and South Asia. Similarly in this book, we read about an endless number of strategic reviews and studies commissioned by the White House, Pentagon, CIA, and State Department, with no immediate effect.

The bleak assessment of this book is hard to gainsay in light of Coll’s thorough presentation.  This is an important book for Americans who hope to understand the complications involved in intervening in foreign, particularly Islamic, lands. 

Rating: 4.5/5

Published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House, 2018

September 15, 1949 – Konrad Adenauer Begins Serving as Chancellor of West Germany

Konrad Adenauer, the son of a minor Prussian official, was born on January 5, 1876 in Cologne, Germany. He served as the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) from 1949 to 1963.

Konrad Adenauer

Adenauer began his political career in his early forties by becoming mayor of Cologne in 1917, towards the end of the First World War, but was removed in 1933 by the Nazis who were displeased by Adenauer’s independence. (For example, as an article in “The New European” recalls, Adenauer had refused to meet Hitler when the latter had visited Cologne as part of the 1933 election campaign, and he also had refused the Nazis permission to hang their banners from one of Cologne’s iconic Rhine bridges.) He was arrested several times in the Nazi era and exiled to Rhöndorf. In the spring of 1945, the American army asked him to return to Cologne and take charge of rebuilding the city.

Adenauer formed a new party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, which promoted a “social market economy,” whereby the state would balance the interests of capital and labor.

Election poster, 1949: “With Adenauer for peace, freedom and unity of Germany, therefore CDU”

On this day in history Adenauer became, by a majority of one vote, the first democratically elected chancellor of post-war West Germany. He fought fiercely against plans to strip Germany of its industrial capacity; a BBC history describes Adenauer’s principle aim as ensuring West Germany’s transition to a sovereign, democratic state. To that end he authorized payment of millions in Holocaust compensation to Israel, and banned anti-Semitism.

Adenauer shepherded Germany through the end of Western military occupation and recognition as an independent nation. He worked to restore the West German economy from the destruction of World War II to a central position in Europe, presiding over the German Economic Miracle, or “”Wirtschaftswunder.”

Man of the Year: Adenauer on the cover of Time (January 4, 1954)

The country joined NATO in 1955 and the European Economic Community in 1957. While Adenauer opened diplomatic relations with the USSR and eastern European communist nations, he refused to recognize the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

Adenauer, who was Chancellor until age 87, was dubbed “Der Alte” (“the elder”). His biographer Anthony Nicholls wrote: “of all the statesmen who shaped the destinies of Europe . . . Adenauer was one of the least colourful.” Ben Coates, in his history of the politics and culture of the Rhineland, observed of Adenauer:

“Sombre and black-hatted, gaunt and reptilian, he was a devout Catholic who lived modestly and had none of the panache of Churchill or grandeur of de Gaulle. Yet there was little doubt he was one of the most significant figures in Germany history: chancellor of West Germany for fourteen years, his iron discipline helped him rebuild shattered cities, kickstart the <Wirtschaftwunder and restore his country’s reputation abroad. He was also another quintessential Rhinelander, who did more than anyone else to make the region around Bonn an unlikely lynchpin of what was then called ‘the free world.’” (The Rhine by Ben Coates, p 145)

Adenauer died at home in April 1967.

Today, Coates writes of Adenauer, “his reputation [has] endured; his name adorning streets and aeroplanes, T-shirts and charitable foundations, bottles of Riesling and packets of Darjeeling tea.” (Coates, p. 147)

1958 Mercedes-Benz 300D Konrad Adenauer Diecast Model

Review of “A Needle in the Right Hand of God : The Norman Conquest of 1066 and the Making and Meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry by R. Howard Bloch

The Bayeux Tapestry is a remarkable historical artifact.  It is the source of much of what is known about 11th century England and the Norman Conquest of 1066.  The cloth itself is 210 feet long and 24 inches high. 

Small segment of the tapestry

Technically, it is not a tapestry at all but rather an embroidery, which is a cloth featuring decorative needlework done usually on loosely woven cloth or canvas, often being a picture or pattern.  This particular work of art provides a series of 50 panels depicting scenes of the events leading up to the Norman invasion of England and the famous Battle of Hastings in 1066, “one of the determining days in the making of the West.”

No one knows for certain who commissioned it, and there are arguments to be made for a number of different sources in different countries; above all, the tapestry does not seem to favor the victors or vanquished consistently. 

The book by R. Howard Bloch is very learned, but not always interesting.  The author spends a lot of time describing the process by which the embroidery was created, intermixed with a narrative of the historical events portrayed. The organization of the book was difficult to understand from the audio version.  It skipped from a history of the events commemorated in the tapestry to technicalities of producing the object.  Even the history jumps about without a coherent sequential narrative. 

Detail of stitching

I strongly recommend reading as opposed to listening to the book because it deals with a work of visual art.  The author frequently refers to aspects of the scenes portrayed and to the techniques of representation used by the artists who created the work, often referring to particular panels by number, which of course a listener cannot see.  That kind of writing would be much more interesting if reinforced by a picture of the subject, apparently available in the published version of the book.  

Rating: The audio book is worth only 2.5 stars, but a printed version might be worth 3 or 3.5 stars.

Published in hardback by Random House, 2006

A Few Notes on the Audio Production:

The narrator, Stephen Hoye, did a fine job.  He is the winner of a number of AudioFile Earphones Awards.  But I did not think the book was necessarily a good choice for audio.

Published unabridged on 6 CDs (7 listening hours) by Tantor Media, 2007

September 11, 1941 – Groundbreaking of the Pentagon

On this day in history, construction commenced on the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia to house the expanding U.S. War Department. It was completed in 1943. According to Mental Floss:

The first site chosen for the building was Arlington Farms, which was pentagon-shaped. But planners figured out that the building would block the view of Washington from nearby Arlington National Cemetery. So another site was chosen (where Hoover Field used to be). By this time, planning was so far advanced that the shape couldn’t be changed. Also, President Roosevelt liked the design—an important factor in keeping the original layout. ‘I like it because nothing like it has ever been done that way before,’ Roosevelt said of the design.”

The War Department Office building, better known as the Pentagon, Arlington, Va., shown under construction, Jan.17, 1942.

Today, the Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. As a symbol of the U.S. military, “The Pentagon” is often used metonymically to refer to the U.S. Department of Defense. (Metonymy is a figure of speech in which a thing or concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept.)

The Pentagon is one of the world’s largest office buildings, with about 6,500,000 sq ft, of which 3,700,000 sq ft are used as offices. Approximately 23,000 military and civilian employees and about 3,000 non-defense support personnel work in the Pentagon. It has five sides, five floors above ground, two basement levels, and five ring corridors per floor with a total of 17.5 mi of corridors. Each of its five sides is 921 feet long, which means a lap around the outside of the building is almost a mile. It also includes a five-acre central plaza, shaped like a pentagon and informally known as “ground zero,” a nickname originating during the Cold War.

Picture of the Pentagon showing the central plaza

Sixty years later to the day from the groundbreaking for the Pentagon, 184 airplane passengers, civilians and military personnel perished when terrorists crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the building’s west side. Today, there are exactly 184 benches outside the Pentagon’s southwest side to commemorate those who died in the attack.

History and Sociology Through Language: Review of “Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun” by Liza Bakewell

You wouldn’t think there could be a whole book about just one word, but Liza Bakewell, a linguistic anthropologist from Brown University, has managed to write a fascinating one.

Madre is a word that, both alone and in phrase, has many uses and meanings in Mexico. This author set out to catalogue these, as well as the reasons the word madre came to be so freighted. According to Ms. Bakewell, the book is “part memoir, part travelogue and part investigation into a culture and its language.”

The idea of “mother” is sacred to Mexicans, primarily for two reasons. One is because of the Catholic Church and the prominent position of the Virgin in Mexican society. The Church has a history of excluding women and imagining them as lesser to men, except for the Virgin Mary, who is valued for her role as the quintessential mother. Furthermore, the Dominicans, who were Mary worshippers, were very powerful in Mexico.

Additionally, according to tradition, the Virgin appeared to a poor peasant in 1531 near Mexico City. She is known as the Santa Maria de Guadalupe. [You can read more about her here.] Mexican society thus has a history of close ties to Mary that led naturally to the veneration of motherhood.

Virgin of Guadalupe

The second reason motherhood is sacred to Mexicans is a result of political maneuvering in the mid-nineteenth century when the government wanted to keep women out of the work place lest they compete with men for jobs. What better way than to exalt the role of motherhood and turn it into a cult? Subsequent regimes – including so-called revolutionaries – continued the practice, even erecting a shrine to mothers in 1949, the Monumento a la Madre, that bears the words, “To the woman who loved us before even meeting us.” Themes promulgated in popular culture and the Church reinforced the practice. Even today, Mother’s Day is bigger than Independence Day in Mexico.

Monumento a la Madre, Mexico City, in front of phallic symbol indicating actual status of mother

But madre has also become part of many expressions having nothing to do with its sacred associations, and quite a few of them are obscenities. [Ms. Bakewell points out that obscenities are often inversions of a culture’s sacred symbols. In Spain, for example, the word (la) hostia, or The Host (i.e., Roman Catholic Communion bread) serves much the same function as does madre in Mexico.]

The author divided her list of madres into four categories: “There were the Ugly and Useless ones; the Fierce, Fiery, Scary, and Violent ones; the Whores; and the Sensational and Totally Awesome ones.” There is, for example, me vale madre, de poca madre, bendita sea la madre, madrero, madrecitas, rayarse la madre, que madre, desmadrado, puras madres, hecho madres, and on and on seemingly ad infinitum! [She explains all of these and more in the book.]

“Puta madre” translates to mean something similar to “mother fucker”

The author also delves into the grammatical rules for Spanish, which reinforce male hegemony in countless ways. In a room of 100 persons, for example, if there is even only one male present and all of the remaining ninety-nine are women, the crowd is still addressed in the masculine (e.g., “Bienvenidos, amigos”). Words indicating “male descent lines” are also masculine; thus, el preñado (pregnancy) and el parto (childbirth). As the author explains:

“…love, sex, pregnancy, childbirth, birth, marriage are in the masculine because of their relationship to patrilineality and the rise of property ownership. I proposed this in reaction to the received wisdom that grammatical genders are arbitrarily assigned. It makes perfect sense, as well, that uncontrolled sexuality, producing children out of wedlock, children whose fathers might be unknown, where the patriline would be undetermined, would be feminized. Chaos is almost always feminized, around the world, in patriarchal societies.”

Moreover, not only young boys but also young girls are socialized to accept the “Virgin-Whore model of good-bad female behavior.” Both the Church and the State in Mexico propagate this model. Women depicted as sex objects, juxtaposed with images of the Virgin, is a common aspect of Mexican visual culture.

And finally, what about the uses of the word padre? I asked the author if “padre” was also used to signify other meanings besides father, and she told me there are two:

“…qué padre and padríssimo. They both mean fabulous, awesome, wow. That’s it. There is not one expression with padre in it that is negative. Given the fact that language is reflective of society, there’s some obvious information here.”

Evaluation: There are so many wonderful things to learn in this short but rich foray into the way language and culture intersect in Mexico. More generally, one can observe how imbalances in languages reflect and reinforce imbalances in culture. Above all, this little gem of a book got me interested in further investigations, such as into the idea of La Malinche (also known as La Chingada), another concept popular in Mexico that will get your gender sensitivity in an uproar. I always love a book that stimulates my desire to learn!

Rating: 4/5

Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2010

La Malinche, by Rosario Marquadt