La Güera Rodríguez

Insects, rodents, human indifference, extreme weather, and inadequate housing have taken a toll on Mexican archives, to the point where many projects must be abandoned or left half done. The biography written by Silvia Arrom, an experienced historian in dealing with Mexico's mutilated documents, surmounts these obstacles. The author has accomplished her feat with incomplete public records, contemporary accounts, church registries, and family histories and has separated the wheat from the chaff originated by decades of misinformation and invention. Her book is divided into two parts, the first relating what we really know about La Güera Rodríguez and the second what has been written about her, which has created a legend that has little to do with reality.Oddly enough, the title of the book in English (though not in Spanish) falls into the category of misleading information. The author examines what La Güera did or did not do during the war of independence and finds no evidence that she was a heroine. She did not run the risks or suffer the physical consequences of participation in the movement. Other women were brought before terrifying royal justices or the Inquisition, held for years in jail or executed. La Güera, save for an incident before the war, suffered none of these indignities. So it is strange to see her labeled as a heroine in the book's title, when one of the purposes of the text is to set the record straight.The story of La Güera has been told piecemeal many times, but Arrom's biography is the first attempt at revisiting all the documentation and covering the lady's entire life. Anything questionable or not properly documented is thus labeled. Most of La Güera's correspondence, accounts, and personal belongings are missing. We do have official documents that shed light on her life, but there are few descriptions of her home and family. We know that she lived an elite existence that yet was troubled by legal, financial, marital, and health issues that shed light on the daily struggle for survival. There was nothing extraordinary about the times and the way she lived, with the notable exception of her being a woman of beauty, wit, courage, and spunk who was recognized as such by her contemporaries. Her three marriages were not uncommon; her fortunes, going from comfortable to indebted and back, were witnessed frequently; the deaths of husbands and children were daily occurrences. Her claim to fame was not in public accomplishments but in the fond memories she evoked of good times and lively conversations, of extensive knowledge of who was who, of an animated social life and possible political influence exercised at dinner parties, country picnics, dances, and religious events. She was at the center of Mexico City society for decades.The second story (after recounting what we do know about La Güera) is a chronological stepping-stone through the increasingly romantic descriptions of her activities in the overblown imagination of different writers. With the celebration of Mexico's 200 years of independence and an increasing awareness of the role of women in national history, her figure came to the fore. Little did it matter that her role was a minor one and that she probably joined the independence movement when practically all public opinion was finally on the side of liberation from Spain.The ability of Arrom to recognize literary influences and references to obscure sayings or historical facts enriches her examination of La Güera's legend. Arrom has charted the evolution of different versions of her subject's life, each one more embellished than the last. The historian's investigation becomes a detective story; she tracks down the beginning of the myths and shows how, through time, little exaggerations became established truths, repeated by the writers who followed one another beginning at the end of the nineteenth century. For this supposed “heroine of Mexican independence” was practically forgotten for half a century and was revived, or invented, in the fertile imagination of the novelist Artemio de Valle-Arizpe in a 1949 publication. His enthusiastic version of her life, overflowing with flowery adjectives, made for delicious reading and was instantly popular. It sounded so true that it obtained the status of a real-life documentary, although it was much closer to fiction than to fact. He used hints about La Güera's love affairs, three husbands, political influence, and support of the war and conjured up a strong-willed woman ahead of her time, determined to do as she wished, carefree in the face of the strict morals of the time, owner of her own destiny. Nothing could be further from the truth. Her life was anything but easy: she was a devoted Catholic, ruled by the social conventions of her family, subjected to the ups and downs of the economy, and helpless during the fatal illnesses of the children that preceded her own.This book will fascinate readers in and out of the classroom acquainted with La Güera's historical period and those interested in how stories develop and are transmitted, how myths are created, how memories are distorted and personages exalted, turning a life into a literary tale

Art · Art history · Biography · Genealogy · Independence (probability theory) · Legend · Literature · Misinformation · Political science · Spanish Civil War · Classics · History · Latin American history and culture · Law