Funding for To The Contrary provided by: This week on To The Contrary: In every nation where or region, whenever there's a war, women go and occupy spaces that traditionally couldnt do.

And women like that use their femininity.

They use the like status as mothers to push against repression.

Hello.

I'm Bonnie Erbé, welcome to To The Contrary a discussion of news and social trend from a variety of perspectives.

In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, we are profiling a historical figure who is sometimes forgotten by textbooks.

Juana Azurduy was a revolutionary who left a conven and took up a military uniform in 19th century South America.

She led thousands of indigenous and mestizo fighters and even led her own all female troop against Spanish rule.

Her tales of heroism include riding pregnant into battle, going away to give birth, and returning soon after to capture an enemy flag.

With us to discuss her story are two experts: Professor Vanesa Miseres from the University of Notr Dame and Doctor Cheryl Jimenez Frei from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

Welcome.

All right, so let's start with an answer that I think I already know, the question or the question to which I think I already know the answer, because I've asked it about many women in many cultures, which is, why is she not better known?

Yeah.

I think as you said, you probably already know the answer to it.

Like a lot of women, her contributions were written out of history, that they were forgotten.

And she's doubly marginalized because not only was she a woman, but she was also indigenous.

And so the contribution that she had, which were great to the independence of not just Argentina but Bolivia, this region, right, that was part of the Spanis Empire, was largely forgotten, even though she took a huge role in, in those battles.

And so it's unfortunate, you know, she died largely in poverty and forgotten.

And it's not until in the 1960s through the 80s that there begins to be a movement to remember her legacy.

And we see that a lot more recently, in the last couple of decades, we see a lot more resurgences of remembrance of her.

And let me ask you this about riding into battle pregnant.

When I read that, of course, at first I'm a little, surprised, you know that that doesn't.

Although we have pregnant women who are doing combat or combat related positions, it doesn't super surprise me because in her day and age, whether you were pregnant or not, was your own problem.

And if you were going to be battling the Spaniards or whoeve you were going to be battling, you better be doing it even when you were pregnant.

Yes or no?

Absolutely.

Well, I would add to this that Azurdu participated in over 16 battles.

But this act of heroism that you are mentioning connected to her motherhood and carrying her baby and, about to give birth.

It's certainly something that, that was kept in history.

One of the things that you mentioned in the introduction wa the Capturing the Flag episode.

And, that one refers to, it was in March 1816 when there was this battle, the Battle of Villar and she led a cavalry unit, and she killed a Spanish officer and personally snatched the Royalist banner from his hands.

And this act of bravery led her to being promoted by General Manuel Belgrano, who was one of the leaders of the independence movement.

He promoted Juana because of that to Lieutenant Colonial.

So, it's interesting, like, Cheryl was mentioning that even though we didn't know about these issues for a lot of time, at the time those acts were being recognized and I have a little piece that I want to read from their records that Belgrano, Belgrano, is super surprised about her bravery.

And he sent a document, he says I hand over to Your Excellency the design of the flag that the Amazon, Doña Juana Azurduy, hes using the Amazon title for her, captured on the Cerro de la Plata, about 11 leagues west of Chuquisaca, in what today is Bolivia.

I am assured that she herself tore this sign of tyranny from the standard bearers hands through the efforts of her courage and her knowledge of warfare.

So it's interestin then, to see that she continue to lea and fight in battle during 1816 and which is also the year of Argentina's declaration of independence, even, like you say, while pregnan and her husband being beheaded.

She later gave birth to this child, Luisa, who is going to be the only one surviving during the war.

And her other children died of malaria and malnutrition.

She continued fighting.

So it's very interesting to see these maternal aspects being part of the official narrative that later in military history textbooks, like you were saying, where erased.

But it wasn't the case at that time.

And that's what I'm always surprised about whenever I study women from that period.

That point is so important, especially thinking about the status that Manuel Belgrano had at the time.

He's very well—he's recognized, right, and as you know, one of the founding fathers, the leaders of this independence movement, and most people do know Simon Bolivar.

They know that name.

And Simon Bolivar famously also reportedly said something similar about Juana after— after the battles were done, after Bolivia gained its independence in 1825, that he goes and he visits her in her humble home in Sucre, which was used to be her hometown of Chiquisaca, and is renamed Sucr and she goes back with her one— the one child that's remaining, Luisa, and he visits her and he reportedly leaves and says, that, Bolivia should have been named for Juana Azurduy or for her husband, because they contributed to its independence.

And so it is really curious and really fascinating, right, that especially for men at this time, to acknowledge that, for these prominent men to acknowledge it and then afterwards, you know, she maybe, perhaps part of, you know, the reasons that she is forgotten are varied, in par because she was a woman and her, you know, her— she was marginalized and he contributions were diminished.

But she also doesn't look fo a political position afterwards.

Which a lot of these figures did, right, independence leaders did later become part of government.

She is not interested in that, in fame or a political position.

She really just wants her pension, which she is later denied.

She's given a pension by Simon Bolivar.

But she's denied it and she ends up dying in poverty and being forgotten.

I want to ask you too both of you, Central and South America have since sort of been at the forefront, certainly on pace with, I think, Europe.

Or if not far behind i terms of women country leaders.

And I've been to Central and South America, probably a dozen, half a dozen times over many, many years of travel.

Is she or can her fans claim that because she was so out there and out front and not only going to war, but battling men, you know, sword to sword to sword?

Is she the reason why women have become country leaders— so many of them in Central and South America?

I certainly see, I see a connection.

It was women wh recovered the figure of Juana.

Azurduy first.

In every nation, or region, whenever there's a war, women go and occupy spaces that, traditionally couldnt do, but when there's a time of peace and recovery of the nation's stability, women should go back to their domestic space.

And, thus, that is what happened at the end of the 19th century, when nations were becoming more established or modern from the Western perspective.

And it's at that time where women writers wrote stories about Juana Azurdu at the end of the 19th century.

And I think they were trying to use her figure as a counter example of what modern nations were expecting from women, of being domestic, being the child bearers, being the educators for future citizens of the nation without having rights for their own.

So at that time, the figure of Juana Azurduy became very relevant.

And in—for these wome to tell their stories and to set examples or counter examples of what womanhood meant.

And these were the responsibles also for bringing back to the military profile of Juana Azurduy, the maternal issue.

They will portray Juana as a good mother, as a caring mother for her own children, but also for the soldiers.

And that was an aspect that revised the hyper masculinized ways in which Juana Azurduy had been portrayed over history, if you see her portraits o illustrations on their website, if you Google them, they will all look like very— portra Juana in a very masculine way.

Every woman writer, every intellectual, is always trying to build.

I don't know if her genealogy, but it's a series of women who would represent their goals and their goals in society.

And I think that Juana Azurduy for instance, for contemporary feminisms, allowed contemporary feminists to find a mode in the very birth of the nation.

And, and I don't know if it's exactly connected to the fac that we have in South America, many leaders, political leaders.

But it's definitely a gesture that I see as continuin in, in Latin American history.

Now, do you think—I travele to Egypt one time to do a piece on a female pharaoh who hid her gender for the most part when she ruled Egypt back about 1455 BC.

So a lot longer ago than Azurduy was doing, you know, running things, you know, similarly in South America.

But I asked one of the experts on the history of why was she written out of the history books?

And he said because who was writing history?

There weren't any women writing history.

And the men were essentially pretty chauvinistic back in those days and even 200 years ago and even today.

So do you think things are improving for women?

Vanesa, let's start with you.

Do you think things are improving for women in terms of them getting credit for political and military actions that they've taken that they deserve the credit for but weren't getting before the last century or so?

Well, I think that's a battle that never ends.

It's, it's certainly something that has improved.

Through Azurduy, I would say that we now recognized figures like another figure that has become that we just are learning from or about, in recent years, like Remedios del Valle.

She was an Afro descendant woman who also fought for independence and completely erased from Argentine history.

And this is a very long and maybe other conversation about how Argentina was built around the idea of a white nation, and of course, that left behind lots of other profiles and people who actually fought for the independence and other causes.

So I think, yes, through Azurduy and through all this movement of revisionist history and revisionist history, also, from a gender based perspective had allowed to have more visibility and more recognition and today, I think, or at least a sector of the society and the scholars and students and teachers know, acknowledge that we cannot tell the story of Latin American independence without acknowledgin or without recognizing the role that women and Indigenous and Afro descendant populations played.

There is somewhat of a through line that you can see in terms of strong women throughout Latin American history that have gone against conventions, especially in a very strongly patriarchal, Catholic, conservative tradition.

Women like So Juana Inés de la Cruz in Mexico.

She was also just an absolute rebel in the colonial period in Mexico when, you know, in the—women had one of two choices.

They could be— they could get married and have children, or they could be a nun.

And you—Juana Azurduy in fact, you know, she was supposed to be a nun for a while.

And she was, you know, when she was young, her parents both died.

And her aunts, her aunt, who, raised her for a time.

She was very rebellious, and she didn't know how to control her.

She sent her to a convent to be a nun.

And the nuns— she was expelled by the age of 17.

She was too—she just wasn't fitting the mold.

And so you see, lots of women actually, in Latin American history that emerge out of this, and maybe, perhaps part of it is because the rules that dictated such a strongly patriarcha Catholic society were so strict that there you do see these women that emerge, that just didn't fit the mold, that weren't willing to fit into one of these two boxes tha that women were allowed to do.

So I think it's very interesting, the question you pose and there's also lots of women, like the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina that were women that stood up against the dictatorship in the late 1970s into the 80s.

And they used women like that, used their femininity.

They use the like, you know, their status as mothers to push against repression and in part, mayb because people didn't expect it, because they didn't expect women to do such bold things.

I would like to add here, the political value.

And I think and I thin that could be a difference if, if you, if you go and analyz it, how women in Latin America have always given political value to motherhood and, like you mentioned, the case of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, while reviewing Juana Azurduys history, I also thought about that if we venture to link this, this story of women in South America, there's certainly there, a line in which women, maybe precisely because of the constrictions of a Catholic male and also military, because citizenship was tied as a concept to military.

Those who were— who could get into the military were the ones who could become a citizen.

So I think that those constrictions led women to utilize, to use motherhood as a powerful political tool.

From the space that they were confined, they were able to make strong transformations in society.

Give me a little background, and the audience too please, if you could, about what was the scen in South America when this war— what led up to the war?

What was the mood of the country?

Those sort of things that influenced what she was able to do with her life.

The wars of independenc in Latin America break out amid the backdrop of the U.S American Revolution and the French Revolution in the late 18th century.

All these enlightenment ideals, people really beginning to think maybe we don't need a king, that we, you know there should be a different way.

And so it's really amid this whole, these ideas and the Haitian Revolutio in 1804 is really inspirational.

It's the successful slave revolt.

And so in Latin America, you see all of these independence movement that explode amid this fervor, right.

And so, it's also very interestin with Latin American independence movements, is it is very different than North America, the North American colonies.

There's a lot more diversity.

There are indigenous peoples who have mixed with Spaniard and Africans who are enslaved, and lots of—a large population of mestizos.

And you have indigenous revolts, but also, there are high commander who are from the creole class, like Simon Boliva and who are more elite, who are— So you have lots of people taking place, taking, you know having a role in these fights.

And Juana was really, she was known as this really great recruiter for the Independence Force because she herself was indigenous.

She spoke Quechua, she spoke Aymara, two indigenous languages of the region and of course also spoke Spanish.

So she was able to recruit indigenous peoples and mixed race peoples in these battalions that she led.

So, yeah, it's really this chaotic moment.

And she puts herself forward and becomes this really, you know, you know, courageous leader in that moment.

I would add that in the, in the region, from where Juana Azurduy is, there was a tradition of rebellions, since the 18th century.

So it wasnt unnatural, it wasn't a new thing.

Of course, it ignited the independence caus and everything ignited in 1809.

But previously there were several creole or indigenous rebellion in that very particular region.

So she was also, she grew up in this fervent context in which wome also had play important roles.

Right.

The Túpac Amaru Rebellio and his wife, Micaela Bastidas.

So there were other reference like I would say, like there's always like a previous example to follow, to be inspired of.

And these set the the basis for Juanas struggle as well.

How did the men react to her leadership?

I mean, this wasnt a ver liberated time in South America.

And yet here she was, pregnant and duking it out with guys.

What did the men think of all that?

Reactions can be categorized as mixed in the sense tha for the military, for instance, the military was always—women always participated of the military in many ways, but they were not officialized.

Most of them were not.

Juana was an exceptional case perhaps because of her husband.

But then also she gained herself a place.

But that wasn't the case for many women.

So for the official history of, of the military, women were rejected.

Women were not— I mean, they were needed, but they were rejected in the official records.

And— but they also were accepted within the common people that needed women working, taking care of them, supporting the cause and in fulfilling multiple tasks.

So the acceptance, rejection has to do with your initial question of official history an how these women were forgotten.

It does seem to be, at least from most accounts, that her husband saw her as an equal, that he was very progressive for the time, that he didn' say, no, you need to stay home.

Is that he wanted— he was okay with her coming into battle with him and that they would fight side by side, and that there were often women who would follow the troops, right?

That they would be cooks or nurses, but it wasn't as typical for women to fight on the frontlines.

And so but, but there were you know, this battalion of the, the Amazona that fought with Juana Azurduy.

So there were exceptions.

And I think if we can go back to this question of the ways in which history is written and understood, and who has a say is something that is what we're grappling with now.

Right.

Is that one of your questions earlier was do you think it's changing?

And yes, it is changing and it's good.

There is still some pushback to that, to asking these different questions about the past.

And I think part of it is a misunderstanding about what historians do and how we understand the past is that history isn't just something that we know, and it's done.

And we put it on a shelf and we're done with this.

Just like any other academic, historians ask new questions, they find new evidence, and they come to new conclusions.

And so now asking things from a gender perspective is that, yes, we learn a lot more.

And so our understandings of the past have shifted.

It's not that we're creating new stories.

It's just we're uncovering them, unearthing them.

And so it really gets to the fact that, you know, we have to think about power in the ways that history is constructed, right, and silences.

Who has been silenced and what role power has in creatin our understandings of the past.

So Juana is—her story is really representative of, you know, unveiling that, right, is looking at the silences and understanding the past from this much more diverse perspective.

Well, I want to thank both of you.

You've been fascinating guests.

Thank you, Cheryl.

Thank you, Vanesa.

That's it for this edition of To The Contrary.

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