“Modest wise women”: Science in Porfirian women’s periodicals

Introduction

“Don’t forget that to be perfect mothers you need to know some notions of medicine.” ¹ Thus advised Spanish journalist Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer (1850–1919) to her readers in 1885. Based in Mexico City, Gimeno de Flaquer owned and edited the weekly women’s journal El Álbum de la Mujer (1883–90). Gimeno de Flaquer’s enterprise is just one of the ladies’ journals published during the Porfiriato (1876–1911), an era of oligarchic dictatorial rule guided by the doctrine of order and progress. ² Through these publications, women like Gimeno de Flaquer invited others to actively participate as writers and editors of the press.

Periodicals were a vehicle for national ideology, scientific knowledge, individual desire, and money, through which middle- and upper-class women would encounter and engage with ideas of modernity. ³ The Porfirian modernization project required scientific ideas to be more broadly available for both men and women, as the latter were the perceived negotiators of cultural values within the Mexican family. ⁴ In this article I use Porfirian women’s periodicals to explore the emergence of networks of urban educated women who strived to establish a new paragon of their professional participation in the sciences.

Porfirian women’s periodicals have been studied in frameworks of women’s, press, and literary history, but until the last decade, they have been overlooked as valuable sources for the history of science. ⁵ This underrepresentation is exacerbated by poor cataloguing and difficulties accessing the material. Rodrigo Vega’s analysis of scientific content in women’s periodicals between 1840 and 1855 has shown that at least since the mid-nineteenth century, middle- and upper-class women read science. ⁶ Members of political or scientific communities sought to make instruction agreeable by exposing the female reading audience to basic scientific concepts: they wrote about astronomy, medicine, and natural history following enlightened principles of national development. Presenting scientific knowledge and practices in Porfirian women’s periodicals made Díaz’s modernization project visible and acceptable to ordinary readers. Lorena Ortiz-Merino’s analysis of the scientific content in Violetas del Anáhuac (1887–9) is, to my knowledge, the only work that focuses on science in a Porfirian periodical written by and for women. Laureana Wright de Kleinhans (1846–96) and Mateana Murguía de Aveleyra (1856–1907), the directors of this weekly publication, included scientific content that contributed to expanding the imaginations of female readers while establishing clear boundaries for their participation. Through this project, Wright de Kleinhans and Murguía de Aveleyra provided, for the first time, a space for women to broadcast their ideas and opinions. ⁷

This article builds on Vega’s and Ortiz-Merino’s work, analyzing how writers and readers of five women’s periodicals published in Mexico City during the Porfiriato presented and received scientific knowledge. These five periodicals, held at the National Newspaper Archive (Mexico City), are: La Mujer: semanario de la Escuela de Artes y Oficios para Mujeres (1880–3); El Álbum de la Mujer (1883–90); Violetas del Anáhuac: periódico literario redactado por señoras (1887–8); El Periódico de las Señoras: semanario escrito por señoras y señoritas expresamente para el sexo femenino (1896); and La Mujer Mexicana: revista mensual científico literaria consagrada al progreso y perfeccionamiento de la mujer mexicana (1904–8). ⁸ These periodicals evidence how the communities that produced and consumed their contents were incorporating scientific knowledge and practices into their everyday lives. They were sites of intervention for professionals, who wrote both popular science and specialized discourse. By understanding periodicals as documents of practice I provide an exciting look at the legacy of Porfirian professional women. ⁹

The right to write and the constitution of women as political actors were closely interrelated. ¹⁰ The publishers and writers of these periodicals were a new generation of urban women whose public presence had been hard won. They were self-appointed arbitresses of a new femininity, for which scientific and medical knowledge was integral. My central argument is that they sought to consolidate a tradition of intellectual women in Mexican history. The first section of this article offers an overview of the political, scientific, and educational environment during the Porfiriato. In the second section I will retrace the chronology of the periodicals used. In the third section, I will consider how women justified their ambition to access higher education and scientific training, arguing the importance of knowledge for motherhood and the preservation of beauty, both widely regarded as feminine endeavors. The fourth section will examine how women legitimized this ambition through the construction of female symbols in the history of science in Mexico. The fifth section will focus on the use of the poetic and dramatic genres as persuasive and entertaining formats to build new imaginaries, exemplified in the play Work and Science by Dolores Sotomayor. In the final section I will delve into the uses professional women gave to these periodicals and the networks that were constructed through them. ¹¹

Porfirian politics and education

The Porfiriato is the period in Mexican history encompassing Porfirio Díaz’s (1876–80, 1884–1911), and Manuel González’s (1880–4) presidencies. Díaz’s regime was characterized by internal stability, achieved through repression and co-option of the opposition. The Porfirian elite consumed imperial, chiefly French discourses to associate Mexico with an international modernization project. ¹² These aspirations led to the development of an institutional system of technoscientific innovation sponsored by the government. Díaz’s economic policy and intellectual goals were perfectly aligned. ¹³ Intermediaries for European and American companies in Mexico were members of ‘los científicos’ (‘the scientists’), a politically powerful and intellectually influential Positivist group. ¹⁴ Mexican physician, educator, and member of ‘los científicos,’ Gabino Barreda (1818–81) had imported a positivism from France, which henceforward became the philosophical and sociological ideology that guided political life in Mexico. ¹⁵ José Yves Limantour (1854–1935) assembled the group in 1892, in response to the set back in the country’s incipient economic growth that threatened popular support for Díaz. ‘Los científicos’ was a humorous name to mock their intensive and almost pedantic use of scientific terms in their discourse, although most of them did not practice any science. ¹⁶ They argued that the country’s administration should be guided by the maxim “freedom as the means, order as the foundation and progress as the end.” ¹⁷

The achievement of the liberal scientific modernizing project depended heavily on education. In 1867, the Organic Law for Public Instruction had established that primary education was mandatory, free, and secular for children (boys and girls) between six and twelve years old. Literacy rates, however, evidenced the gap between policy and the actual state of the country. By 1900, only 17.13% of Mexican women could read (Spanish). The literacy rate was higher in Mexico City, where 33.69% of Mexican women could read. ¹⁸ Furthermore, this same law established the foundation of two higher education institutions, the National Preparatory School (ENP, acronym in Spanish), and the Women’s Secondary School. Curricular differences between these two institutions were huge. The ENP, founded by Gabino Barreda, taught practical and scientific subjects with a methodological rigor that the Women’s Secondary School lacked. The latter focused on moral instruction and craft. ¹⁹ Although women were not officially banned from the ENP, social conventions prevented them from matriculating. Matilde Montoya was the first woman to get into the ENP in 1882. In 1869, the Organic Law for Public Instruction was expanded, establishing the foundation of Teacher Training Schools for both men and women. With the country’s incipient industrialization came a growing need to incorporate women into the workforce. Professional paths that were seen as extensions of domestic roles, such as primary school teaching, sewing, and cooking, were taught at the Arts and Crafts School for Women. ²⁰ The Porfirian government opened the Arts and Crafts School for Women in 1871, aiming to offer free technical instruction for women of the lower classes that would allow them to get into the labor market. Nonetheless, soon enough middle-class women took over the school and the mission of the institution shifted, to provide more theoretical courses on subjects like hygiene, geography, mathematics, and so forth. ²¹

“Written by ladies expressly for the female sex”: women in the Porfirian press

The Porfirian press was a class-specific propagandistic device. ²² During his first presidency, Díaz subsidized those periodicals that aligned with the regime, patronizing jobs and gradually bureaucratizing the press. Control measures became stricter in his second presidency. Díaz modified printing laws so that subversive writers could be prosecuted and judged. ²³ By the late nineteenth century, there were over 2,500 periodicals in circulation, of which 20% were printed in Mexico City. In a country with alarmingly low literacy and high poverty rates, periodicals were a luxury. Average readers belonged to the middle- and upper-classes, and were often journalists themselves, politicians, entrepreneurs, teachers, or intellectuals. ²⁴

Women had been consumers of the press, but it was not until the Porfiriato that they became producers. Directors, editors, and writers of Porfirian ladies’ journals had taken an important leap from intimate writing to public writing. ²⁵ Due to their limited access to higher education and professional careers, women accommodated their intellectual interests within conventional lives through their participation in the press. ²⁶ The format for women’s periodicals in Mexico resembled that of European ones: a mix of biography, fiction, poetry, advice literature, recipes, fashion, and intercalated advertisements was supplied with a moral tone. ²⁷ While the topics addressed in the journals selected were similar and their audiences are likely to have overlapped, the institutional connections of the directors and collaborators were distinct.

Concepción García y Ontiveros was a primary school teacher who founded the first periodical publication written by women, Hijas del Anáhuac, in 1873. It was the means of communication for the newly founded Arts and Crafts School for Women. Although this journal was only published for a year, Hijas del Anáhuac set a precedent, which allowed for all the other periodicals to be printed. ²⁸

A few years later, in 1880, Ramón Manterola (1848–1901) and Luis C. Rubin set up another periodical for the Arts and Crafts School for Women: the four-page weekly publication La Mujer. Unlike all the other publications analyzed, this was not a women-directed journal. Manterola was an influential educator with important government positions, and an honorary member of the “Antonio Alzate” Scientific Society. ²⁹ Rubin and he aimed to educate women in a varied and extensive set of subjects. ³⁰ They selected material written solely in prose that they thought would be useful and entertaining for the readers. The directors expressed openly, yet conservatively, their support for women’s emancipation through education in La Mujer.

Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer created in her twelve-page-long weekly journal, El Álbum de la Mujer, a space in which discourses of femininity were intertwined with patriotism and Spanish models of modernity. ³¹ Gimeno de Flaquer was a prolific Spanish writer and journalist who traveled to Latin America, hauling the advancement of women’s education and suffrage. ³² She sought women’s advancement through the dissemination of Spanish women’s writing.

Writer and feminist pioneer Laureana Wright de Kleinhans founded Violetas del Anáhuac (published under the title Hijas del Anáhuac: ensayo literario in its first issues) in 1887. Twelve-page weekly issues were distributed across the country’s urban centers. In 1889, due to illness, Wright de Kleinhans passed on the direction of the journal to writer and teacher Mateana Murguía de Aveleyra (1856–1907). ³³

Guadalupe Fuentes Vda de Gómez Vergara and Isabel M. Vda de Gamboa, directors of El Periódico de las Señoras, devised this fifteen-page-long weekly magazine as an entrepreneurial project that relied on their male connections. Guadalupe Fuentes was the widow (denoted by “Vda”) of the novelist, journalist, and former diplomat Joaquín Gómez Vergara. ³⁴ This connection allowed Fuentes Vda de Gómez Vergara to count on the collaboration of renowned authors, which attracted subscribers and therefore made the journal financially profitable. ³⁵

Teacher Dolores Correa Zapata (1853–1924) and medical doctor Columba Rivera (1853–1943) were both founding members of the nascent women’s rights organization Women’s Protective Society. Together they established La Mujer Mexicana in 1904, a self-proclaimed feminist monthly publication that served as the means of communication for said society. ³⁶ The direction of the journal passed through many hands. In 1904 it was directed by Maria Sandoval de Zarco (1868–1943), the first female Mexican lawyer; then for six months by writer Laura Méndez de Cuenca (1853–1928); and from July 1905 by physician Antonia Ursúa. La Mujer Mexicana was the first periodical written and read by women that remarked the presence of scientific content in the title: “scientific-literary magazine.”

In a global history of science, these periodicals are little known, as the scholarship has focused on institutional scientific practice and formal education, rather than informal education. ³⁷ Articles and literary pieces related to science and medicine throughout the five periodicals include original contributions, reprints of Spanish materials, and translations from French sources. The authorship of scientific content in these magazines varied greatly, but the authors’ intention did not. Most of them, male and female, focused on showing how scientific and medical principles were useful in everyday life.

Unfortunately, this type of source tells us very little about the actual reader: no records of subscribers or print runs exist for any of these journals. ³⁸ For this reason, when referring to the readership, I will be talking about the intended audience. The Mexican Woman, for example, published an invitation for women to submit their work for publication. I can therefore assume that new collaborators were also readers. Building on the context I have outlined, I have reconstructed a readership that was limited to women who had a cultural understanding that allowed them to follow the language and references used, as well as the prerequisite literacy, time, and money. ³⁹ Given the reappearance of this type of publication, there was clearly a group of women interested in these periodicals. However, it was probably not large enough to maintain them, which would explain their recurrent failure. ⁴⁰ The economic means to sustain the periodicals varied. Violetas del Anáhuac, for example, received financial support from the government, while La Mujer Mexicana depended heavily on advertisers. Propaganda was printed even when it was against the values of the magazine. For instance, advertisements for breweries were published alongside articles that denounced the problems of alcoholism. Despite the methodological limitations, these sources provide interesting information about Porfirian women’s efforts to institute their own networks to exchange ideas, make their work visible, and establish a framework of reference for other women. ⁴¹

Justifying their ambition

The feminist movement in Mexico during the Porfiriato was mainly driven by the demand for women’s access to education. ⁴² Self-appointed feminists in Mexico allowed themselves to be influenced by American and European ideas of women’s emancipation. This resolution was not necessarily because their interests were consistent with those of foreign feminist movements, but because cohering around common goals would earn them transnational support for local struggles. ⁴³

The debate on women’s access to education and professional careers was closely related to conceptions of femininity, which often had embedded the inherited core values from the Catholic colonial period: obedience, submissiveness, and selflessness. ⁴⁴ Directors, editors, and writers justified the presence of scientific content in women’s periodicals by illustrating the use of scientific knowledge for either motherhood (as seen in the opening quote of this article) or the preservation of beauty. ⁴⁵ For example, Francisco Alles y Álvarez defended women’s right to education in the note “Science and Women” published in La Mujer (1880), claiming that women “could and should have the most solid education in order to make [their] children useful citizens.” ⁴⁶ Spanish scientific author Adela Riquelme de Trechuelo professed similar ideas in her contributions to El Álbum de la Mujer (1887). In an endnote to her translation of “Women Astronomers” by M. Lagrange, she argued that “if women [were] to [. . .] provide services to the sciences [. . .], it [was] necessary that more attention [was] paid to their education so that they [were] not frivolous and capricious companions of men, but rather enlightened wives and intelligent mothers.” ⁴⁷ Alles y Álvarez and Riquelme de Trechuelo invited women to cultivate a scientific gaze that did not alienate them from domesticity but rather attached them to the home. Ergo, their arguments opened the possibility of education for women while restraining them to the domestic space.

Writers addressed contradictions between women’s domestic roles and access to education in these periodicals in different ways. Many authors claimed that the association of women–beauty–morality was supported by science. ⁴⁸ Gimeno de Flaquer proclaimed that “scientific knowledge [made] respectable the women who [possessed] it.” ⁴⁹ She suggested that this knowledge enhanced feminine attributes such as beauty: “an enlightened and pretty woman [was] twice as beautiful.” ⁵⁰ In Porfirian thought, cleanliness was fundamental to maintain an aesthetic of progress, from the monumental space to the individual bodies. ⁵¹ Hence, promoting hygienic practices was a priority in the publishing agenda. Intersections between discourses on aesthetics of modernity and feminine beauty are best seen in Ernesto S. Aguirre’s text “Dental Hygiene,” published in El Álbum de la Mujer in 1888. He persuaded readers to clean their teeth, for “teeth [gave] the mouth and face in general a pleasant character: they gracefully [beautified] the fair sex, one of whose greatest pleasures [lay] in keeping them intact and clean.” ⁵² Despite the circumscription biology allegedly had on women’s independence, education was seen as a way of perfecting the female brain and body. ⁵³

Notwithstanding the support women had from government and academic authorities (they received financial aid and recommendation letters), public opinion was the hardest challenge to tackle. ⁵⁴ Perhaps this difficulty fostered the efforts to reconcile science and femininity. Spanish geographer Manuel Escudé Bartoli (1856–1930) proclaimed that “modern science [. . .] [had] immeasurably broadened the horizons of poetry.” ⁵⁵ In his essay “Science’s Poetry,” published in El Álbum de la Mujer in 1885, he argued that those who believed science to be harsh were mistaken: “cultivating science [was] giving life to poetry.” Gimeno de Flaquer advised her readers to “be studious and modest, [. . .] [to] make the woman doctor likeable, [. . .] [for that was] a great way to introduce modesty into medicine.” ⁵⁶ Similarly, Dolores Correa Zapata hoped “young ladies [would] lose the fear that a serious profession [inspired] in them, [and would be] convinced that science [enhanced] the charms that the Supreme Being [had] given to his most beautiful work: THE WOMAN.” ⁵⁷ While the aforementioned Catholic core values remained embedded in the scientific discourse, these texts gave voice to women’s aspirations for the first time.

Constructing symbols

The Porfirian elite forged a national identity through the erection of secular national symbols. ⁵⁸ Díaz’s regime sought to consolidate Mexico as a unitary nation by establishing a historical memory that recognized moments and actors in the past that aligned with the ideology of order and progress. ⁵⁹ The press proved effective in constructing an unprecedented collective imagery and a sense of cohesion in the country. ⁶⁰ Women sought to carve their place in the collective memory as well, constructing heroines to vindicate their participation in the public sphere. ⁶¹ They used the printed word as a key element to construct these symbols. As we will see, women alluded to female practitioners in scientific disciplines, both mythological and historical, to legitimize their ambition to access higher education and scientific training.

“Do not think that entrusting the practice of medicine to women is a modern invention,” wrote Gimeno de Flaquer in “The Woman Doctor,” before listing a series of female healers and physicians. ⁶² By enlivening the feminine image of science, women writing for the Porfirian press were both setting a precedent for women’s incursion into science and establishing new role models. The historical antecedent strengthened women’s case against discourses of the natural place at home commonly used by positivists like Horacio Barreda (1863–1914). ⁶³ Furthermore, it exerted pressure on governing bodies to allow women into institutions of higher education. Gimeno de Flaquer, for example, argued that “the scientific movement among women [had] begun to increase in advanced countries such as the United States, Germany, France and England, [. . .] even in India there [were] women dedicated to the science of Hippocrates.” ⁶⁴ A couple years later J. Bellido de Luna similarly stated that “there [were women doctors] in the most cultured nations of Europe, and in no small number in the Great American Republic, where women, like men, [had] the doors to the temple of wisdom wide open.” ⁶⁵

The establishment of new role models was useful in setting up desires, aspirations, and fantasies for the new Mexican woman. Writers publicized women as inspirational to younger generations. “I hope that [Dolores Aleu Riera’s] example stimulates other young women to honor their sex like she does in the study of science,” concluded Spanish journalist Luciano García del Real (1835–1902) in a biographical article about Spanish doctor Dolores Aleu Riera (1857–1913) published in El Álbum de la Mujer (1887). ⁶⁶ Role models for the middle- and upper-classes in Porfirian Mexico were often European. La Mujer, El Álbum de la Mujer, Violetas del Anáhuac, and La Mujer Mexicana all had a section devoted to biographies of notable women. Female scientific symbols in the Porfiriato not only recalled abstract and distant women but also real doctors that were actively participating in Mexico’s political life. ⁶⁷ Although most of the biographies published in La Mujer were of European or American women, Mexican women took center stage in El Álbum de la Mujer, Violetas del Anáhuac, and La Mujer Mexicana. ⁶⁸ Thus, Mexican intellectual women were turned into symbols.

Matilde Montoya is possibly the most iconic representation of the new modern Mexican woman. She was the first woman in Mexico to graduate as a medical doctor. ⁶⁹ The great upheaval caused by her graduation provoked various responses from both men and women, ranging from veneration to rejection. ⁷⁰ In the imagination of upper-class women, Montoya quickly became “the heroine who, following the pursuit of a dream that was ridiculous for some, impossible for others, and reprobate for the rest, [had] opened the path of science for Mexican women.” ⁷¹ Montoya’s achievement was foundational in establishing a tradition of professional Mexican women in the sciences.

The significance of Montoya’s achievement can be gauged by the fact that a whole issue of La Mujer Mexicana was dedicated to her in August 1907, the twentieth anniversary of her graduation. The issue contained seven texts dedicated to Montoya: a reprint of Gimeno de Flaquer’s “The First Mexican Woman Doctor”; a note by Antonia Ursúa “August 25”; an anonymous biography of Soledad Lafragua, Montoya’s mother; and four poems: “For the illustrious Mexican doctor Miss Matilde Montoya” by Clemencia Isaura, “Psalm” by Edith, “Sonnet” by Ursúa, and “Homage to the distinguished Miss Matilde P. Montoya, Mexican doctor” by María Moreno.

During the Porfiriato, the oligarchy initiated new national celebrations and ways of socializing that revolved around icons of civic worship. ⁷² Women sought to embed their own icons in these festivities. In “August 25,” Ursúa urged the country to “proudly mark the date [of Montoya’s graduation], written by the hand of progress with the vitality of a female brain.” ⁷³ Unfortunately, these efforts were unsuccessful, and women were largely omitted in Mexican intellectual histories until relatively recently. ⁷⁴

Montoya acknowledged her responsibility as the public figure she had become by setting standards for other women. Her self-perception is evident in her journalistic contributions to El Imparcial, a political, doctrinaire, and factional journal aimed at a general audience. ⁷⁵ In 1908 she wrote an article, “Feminism and the Home,” in which she clearly asserted what she thought were the limits of what feminism ought to be. She was in favor of endowing women with the means to fight misery and vice to be better daughters and wives, yet she declared against debauchery and masculinization. ⁷⁶ I concur with Shelley Garrigan in that Montoya’s case challenged women’s societal role as being limited to the domestic space, nonetheless, her own declarations exhibited her alignment with Porfirian ideals. ⁷⁷ On this basis it is reasonable to assert that a major achievement for Montoya was to earn the position of a respectable professional woman who could therefore reach a broader audience.

Professional women, although the exception in the Porfiriato, caused great social anxiety because of the changes they symbolized in women’s social position. ⁷⁸ When Matilde Montoya became the first Mexican woman physician, she also became a symbol of the progress of the nation for urban middle- and upper-class women. Her achievement resulted in the genesis of a female community of medical practitioners.

Science on stage

Scientific and literary practices often overlapped in the nineteenth century. ⁷⁹ The flexibility in format of women’s periodicals allowed authors to present scientific knowledge in a variety of literary forms. Different genres provided persuasive and entertaining formats with which to build imaginaries. Porfirian women writers innovated by interweaving political and scientific elements into poetic and dramatic writing, while women’s periodicals in the mid-nineteenth century had presented science exclusively in prose. Poetry was commonly used as a genre of praise, as seen in Matilde Montoya’s special issue of La Mujer Mexicana. Writing plays and poems made scientific content available for wider and more diverse audiences. ⁸⁰ Additionally, it allowed women to be published rather than ostracized. I will exemplify the use of the dramatic genre to advertise the Porfirian modernization project through the analysis of the play Work and Science published in La Mujer Mexicana in 1904.

Dolores Sotomayor wrote Work and Science in two acts. She used this literary medium to broadcast her opinion on current debates on race inferiority, privilege, and social standing. ⁸¹ This scientific fiction presumably allowed her to convey her political standing while complying with social conventions. Sotomayor epitomized the rhetoric of scientific modernity that the Porfirian elite upheld.

The opening scene of the first act, “Chemistry, Botany and Zoology,” portrayed the Alchemist trying to find the philosopher’s stone, unsuccessfully. The scene ended in frustration and when the curtain opened again a “divine light, a fairy coming from the heavens” appeared with a torch to enlighten the Alchemist, literally and figuratively. ⁸² This woman introduced herself, “I am the truth, [. . .] the flame that shines radiant and pure, and between my rays shines the good for the ones who love, seek and obey me.” ⁸³ She was Science. In this single quote, Sotomayor reinforced the superiority of modern scientific values and emphasized the gendered nature of the modernizing project. In the third scene of the first act, Science withdrew “the veil that had been covering [the Alchemist’s] conscience,” to reveal Sugar Cane, Henequen, Wheat, Bee, Ant, and Butterfly. These characters, which were to be played by girls, could and were to be exploited by men, embodied in the Alchemist. As in the geography texts described by Vega and Ortiz-Merino, the author included the origin and distribution of these species, as well as the products that could be obtained from them. ⁸⁴ Furthermore, Sotomayor attributed desirable modern values to these anthropomorphized characters: Bee was hardworking, Ant was perfectly organized in a society with military headquarters, trained armies, and even housewives taking care of the larvae to achieve industrial order. This ideal of a nation presented as part of the natural world reinforced and legitimized the political agenda of the regime. In the ending scene of the first act, the Alchemist promised to be Science’s loyal ally and renamed himself Work.

The second act, “Geography and History,” narrated Work and Science’s journey around the world. In Work and Science, when Sotomayor described America’s natural wealth in terms of economic profit and beauty, she characterized Mexico as the best region in the American continent, which shows the efforts to position local research in the international scientific agenda. ⁸⁵ This insertion of Mexico into a context of international knowledge production was tied up with nationalism. ⁸⁶ The presence of heroic historical figures (Cuauhtémoc, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Benito Juárez) in the play helped make sense of the Mexican national identity. The finale of the play represented Mexico ascending to Glory, joined by Work and guided by Science, to the sound of the national anthem.

This global itinerary was not purely fictional – the government sponsored tours abroad for intellectuals to familiarize them with practices of progress and modernity to then apply them in Mexico. ⁸⁷ Columba Rivera, for example, was sent to the United States in 1904 to visit departments of anthropometry; and in 1907 Laura Méndez de Cuenca published a chronicle in La Mujer Mexicana of her visit to the Hygiene Exhibition in Berlin. The appropriation of theories, standards, norms, and goals of European science sought to avoid exclusion from international communities, as had happened before Díaz’s regime. ⁸⁸

I can only speculate about Sotomayor’s expectations of the play’s afterlife. Considering that the readership of La Mujer Mexicana was partly composed of schoolteachers, she might have envisioned a staging at a girl’s school. In more ways than one, Sotomayor’s play harks back to religious genres, such as the auto sacramental. The personification of ideals, countries, and natural elements had been long used in Hispanic literature. The allegorical focus reminds us of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s (1648–95) work. ⁸⁹ Giving a voice to complex concepts was a didactic device that, like Sor Juana, Sotomayor used in her writing. The dramatic genre implicated the literal embodiment of the values it heralded, which in an educational setting were both useful and entertaining.

Specialized discourse

The medical profession was the first scientific discipline to open to women. For the Porfirians, feminine attributes of tenderness and care meant that medicine was well-suited to women. ⁹⁰ Pioneers like Montoya and Ursúa were supported by the government as students, but the opposite occurred as professionals. ⁹¹ The increased prestige of medicine was guarded by medical institutions delineating very clearly who had access, thus formalizing the marginalization of some practitioners. ⁹² Doors to professional spaces of scientific sociability were closed for women and establishing themselves as practitioners within the institutional framework was more than challenging. For these reasons, women’s periodicals became spaces in which to promote their practice and contribute to the scholarship.

Medical student and director of La Mujer Mexicana at the time, Antonia Ursúa, published in said journal a series of texts that were aimed at the scientific community, not at the lay public. These texts included translations of scientific texts written by male practitioners and originally published by scientific journals in Europe (e.g., Henri-Étienne Beaunis’ “Psychologic Physiology”), and original contributions (e.g., the essay, “Life, Health and Disease,” read at the Class of General Morbid Processes at the National School of Medicine; and her medical degree dissertation, “Signs of Real Death”). The intended audience of these texts did not fit with the expected readership of La Mujer Mexicana, especially considering that only five women had graduated as physicians in Mexico by 1908. Ursúa’s intentions in publishing this type of text is unclear. In all other scientific texts published in the journals analyzed, the authors’ purpose had been to instruct, educate, or entertain the readers. The use of jargon raises questions about Ursúa’s expectations of the readers’ understanding and appreciation of these materials. I can only conjecture that it was a case of self-promotion or an alternative media to scientific journals in which to publish her scientific writing. Further research is needed to explore female participation in scientific journals in Mexico in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century.

Ursúa wrote “Life, Health and Disease” as a student at the National School of Medicine. ⁹³ The essay was published in two parts between 1904 and 1905 in La Mujer Mexicana. Many of Ursúa’s scientific views were close to those presented in a much more didactic manner in “Scientific Talks on Hygiene” by Porfirio Parra, published in El Periódico de las Señoras. Parra was a well-respected scientist, involved in the development of the new education system. ⁹⁴ Ursúa’s text shows that she was well read and engaged with Mexican and international authors in the latest scientific debates. Additionally, it provides interesting insights into medical education, but most importantly it reveals that La Mujer Mexicana was a site of intervention for women physicians. It is hard to assess how readers felt about the specialized discourse of professional science, yet we know that they were exposed to it.

The medical community felt it was their duty to communicate with wider audiences to bridge the gap between health legislation and the habits of the Mexican population, as a means to prevent and cure disease. ⁹⁵ Women physicians accepted the responsibilities acquired by their professional status while operating within the constraints of social convention. “Even I myself have judged it a profanation given my incompetence,” remarked Ursúa in the opening section of her essay “Life, Health and Disease.” ⁹⁶ She reiterated this sentiment by concluding that she “[harbored] the intimate conviction of the humility of [her] work and [blamed], [. . .] the undefeated competition of the female brain.” ⁹⁷ This downplay of their abilities was recurrent in female-written texts. Columba Rivera, the second Mexican woman to become a surgeon (1900), wrote an advisory piece for mothers on purulent ophthalmia, “Considerations about Purulent Ophthalmia in New-borns,” which was published in La Mujer Mexicana. ⁹⁸ Rivera started the essay stating that “the matter [she was] going to deal with [was] superior to [her] strength,” and set forth that the “article [was] not for oculists or doctors in general, [but] for parents.” ⁹⁹ These disclaimers were never used by male authors, which suggests that Ursúa and Rivera’s professional status was insufficient for them to hold an authoritative voice. Laris-Pardo has argued that playing down their abilities was a discursive tool used to be heard, rather than reflecting their beliefs. ¹⁰⁰ Because of the restrictions they faced, women established their own communication channels. ¹⁰¹ Women’s periodicals therefore acquire an additional layer of significance in the history of science, as they were not just vehicles for popular scientific writing, but documents of practice. ¹⁰²

Conclusion

Scientific, political, and aesthetic discourses intersected in Porfirian women’s periodicals. In this article I have studied five of these periodicals to demonstrate that urban middle- and upper-class women sought to consolidate a tradition of intellectual women in Mexican history that would facilitate their participation in professional scientific circles.

These women justified their ambition by highlighting the relevance of a scientific education for motherhood and the preservation of beauty. Both male and female authors sought to reconcile science with Porfirian conceptions of femininity, which had stemmed from colonial Catholic core values. Although in so doing they constrained women to domestic roles, articulating their demands was an important step toward women’s emancipation.

Writers attributed symbolic significance to the achievements of women like Matilde Montoya, the first Mexican doctor. They recorded her accomplishments in the long history of foreign women physicians and hoped that she would become a national icon of civic worship. Montoya accepted the responsibilities that this heroic status gave her, offering a model for others to follow. Like Montoya, other professional women (namely Rivera and Ursúa), assumed their roles as professionals, writing informative pieces to promote hygienic practices. In these texts they downplayed their abilities, probably as a strategy to ensure the publication of their work.

Directors, editors, and writers cultivated the nascent tradition of intellectual women using a variety of literary genres that provided persuasive and entertaining formats with which to build imaginaries. Through the analysis of Sotomayor’s play, Work and Science, I have shown that women abided by the Porfirian modernization project and heralded its values, which, in this case, were embodied by the characters of the play. Its narrative fitted into the wider intellectual project of establishing a Mexican identity that aligned with the values of modernity that scientific internationalism dictated. We can see in Work and Science the tension between being part of a global network of intellectual and economic exchange and nationalistic pride.

The necessity of establishing a tradition of intellectual women was derived from society’s resistance to women’s participation in professional spaces. On the one hand, social conventions prevented them from enrolling in educational institutions such as the ENP, although they were not officially banned from them. On the other, despite the support women received from governing bodies for their education, they lacked opportunities to join both scientific institutions and communities. This exclusion led them to institute their own networks.

Women’s periodicals proved a useful platform of intervention for professional women, notably physicians. Specialized discourse was published alongside popular scientific writings. Thinking about these women’s periodicals as documents of practice, rather than just vehicles for popular scientific writing, is important to fully understand the intention of their production. Furthermore, they can be seen as archives for the kinds of knowledge available for the group of urban educated women that produced and read them. Ursúa’s decision to print specialized texts, for example, shows her conviction to make scientific knowledge available to wider female audiences. It cannot be overlooked that women’s reimagining of the public space and newly constructed national identity was defined by their privilege in terms of race and class. The aspirations entertained in these periodicals were geared toward certain strata of society: those who had access to them.

Unfortunately, Porfirian professional women’s goal to carve a niche for themselves in Mexican history was largely forgotten until the twenty-first century, when the resurgence of feminist movements in Mexico renewed the interest in stories of Mexican women scholars. Reflecting on these efforts is particularly relevant because they allow us to historicize and problematize attitudes toward women in science in Mexico. We can therefore think of the legacy of these Porfirian women in terms of the changes in how women pursuing scientific careers are perceived by others and by themselves.