Presentation
Lina
Adriana Parra Báez
Universidad
Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia
This issue, in its special section, is dedicated to the History of Women. With this topic, it is
intended to open up a space in order to debate the role of women, which allows
for the analysis of the social reality in which they are involved. This topic
emerges from the need to academically reflect upon the role that women have had
in society, as agents who pursue equality, sexual difference, inclusion, the
denouncement of social inequality, and the acknowledgement of the difference,
which allow for the appreciation of women, in their diverse expressions and
conditions, linked to processes of social development. This introduction leads
us to see how, despite the dominion exerted by different agents, women started
to make a noticeable effort to achieve recognition, independence and more
participation in social, political, economic and cultural life.
At a historiographical level, interest in the topic
arises from the concern of the feminist liberation movement developed in the
60s, and its interest in tracing the vindication and emancipation processes of
women, which had taken place worldwide. Thus, from social history a current
dedicated to the study of women or Women's Studies[1] was consolidated. They put women in the center of the debate, as the object of study and as part of
social and historical knowledge. The advancements in this field of knowledge have
increased considerably, which can be seen through the great number of books,
articles, specialized journals, events and organizations. The history of women
has gone through several phases in accordance with its objectives of study.
“It started from a history of the body and of private
roles to reach a history of women in the public space in the city, the
workplace, war, politics and creation. It started from a history of women being
victims to reaching a history of women who are active, in the multiple
interactions that bring about change. It started from a history of women to become
a history of gender, which delves into the relations between sexes and
integrates masculinity[2].”
As Professor Pilar Ballarín
indicates in her work La Educación de las mujeres en la España contemporánea
(siglos XIX - XX) [3] [The education of women in contemporary Spain (19th
and 20th century)]. This study on
women takes place thanks to the influx of feminist thought of the 1960s and the
social, political and cultural movement of which women around the world have
been protagonists, in order to achieve the recognition of their human dignity.
For this reason, the historian Jorge Orlando Melo considers that said studies
have led to the affirmation of a history
that seeks to understand the whole of the historical development, without
limiting itself to only looking at those groups that have exerted direct
control on the state and its armies and churches.
Women become the subjects and objects of knowledge,
giving rise to the category of gender, understood as the social and historical
construction that allows for the understanding of the qualities of men and
women, as a result of cultural processes and social realities related to sexual
difference, and not to inherent or physiologic characteristics. It was first
used towards 1970-1980 to analyze the difference
between the sexes, with the aim, as Professor María
Rosario Valpuesta Fernández
would put it, of eradicating all the existing discrimination towards women, but
also in an attempt to construct a model of relations, private as well public,
that was established in the co-responsibility of both
sexes to elaborate a common project from which nobody was excluded.
In this way, the works that are presented in this section respond to the
task of making women visible, as protagonists of their own history, from every
day activities, the family, their work, the place they
occupy and have occupied in society. In the article “Paying
for Crimes and Attaining Heaven. The Daily Life of Imprisoned Women at
“El Buen Pastor” Penitentiary 1890-1929”, by
July Andrea García Amézquita, there is an analysis of how the continuous
wars in our country, the negligence in the educational field, unemployment, the
migration from the countryside to the city and the disintegration of the
family, among other factors, brought terrible consequences for society, among
them crime, of which women were not exempt. As a preventive measure to this
social situation the prison of El Buen Pastor (the Good Shepherd) opened, in an attempt
to control and transform the behaviors that
controverted the role that women were supposed to have. Thus, modernity brought
about institutions and practices that were intended to give a response to a
model of a homogeneous society. At the beginning, El Buen Pastor prison had as its main
objective to stop female criminality, through an educational and pedagogical
program that started when the women entered the prison, which continued in
their daily lives, and until they accepted their mistake, and with this it was
intended to have an influence on their conscience and on the practices of the
inmates, in order to guarantee their return to a normal life.
For his part, Renzo Ramírez Bacca, in his article “Women in Traditional Colombian
Coffee Growing, 1910 – 1970,” intends to answer the question: What was the role
of women during the period of the traditional production of coffee under shade?
To this end, he takes into consideration the work dynamics of women in one of
the most representative economic activities in Colombia in the 20th
century, as coffee growing was. He highlights the role of women as the axis of
the family and the domestic labor force. However,
despite this visibilization, the lack of autonomy in
the private sphere kept women in the shadows of the social and family
environments in which they lived.
At the same
time, the text written by Dr. María Elena Lucero, called “Narratives
of Brazilian Modernism. Tarsila do Amaral and the Anthropophagic Movement as Aesthetic
Decolonization” leads us to determine how, from the work of the Brazilian
artist Tarsila do Amaral, an
artistic, cultural and intellectual modernistic movement is recreated in
Brazil, which contrasts the primitive culture with what was inherited from
Europe, and that was vital for the construction of the Brazilian identity.
Finally, On Teachers, Misses, and other
Pedagogical Vicissitudes. Women in the History of Education in
Antioquia 1903 – 1930 by Carlos
Arturo Ospina Cruz, which, thanks to the issuance and
implementation of Law 39 of 1903, sheds light on the constant struggles of female
teachers from Antioquia to be heard in spaces where they were the majority, but
to which they could not have access, as was the case of the Liceos Pedagógicos (pedagogical forums), where instructors had a space to
rethink their pedagogical and teaching practice. On the other hand, they tried
to defend themselves and their dignity as women with rights and duties.
The Free Zone has four articles. The first one by Antonio Elías de Pedro
Robles is called “Two Proclamations by Francisco Xavier Mina: on Heroes and
Villains”,
in which there is a reflection on the reasons why the so-called General del Ejército
Auxiliador de la República
Mexicana (General of the Auxiliary Army of the Mexican Republic), through
his statements, managed to exalt the figure of the hero as a vital element for
the consolidation of the motherland.
The text Between anti-communist hysteria and anti-yankee
resentment. Salvador
Abascal and the Cold
War scenarios in Mexico by Francisco Alejandro García Naranjo, highlights the
role of a referent of the Mexican right-wing of the first half of the 20th
century, as was Salvador Abascal. He fought against
Communism through different means in its attempt against the Catholic integrity
of the country, particularly against President Lázaro
Cárdenas, to whom he attributed the degradation of the customs of the Mexicans,
and the Jewish and Protestant influence of the United States in the territory.
The article “Colombia
and its participation in the Korean War: A reflection, 64 years after the
beginning of the conflict” by Juan
David Meléndez Camargo studies the reasons for which
Colombia took part in the Korean War and the socio-political implications that
said participation caused, not only because it was the only Latin American
country which collaborated with the American cause in order to defeat the
expansion of communism in a period of great political agitation worldwide in
the mid-20th century, but also in a time, for Colombia, which was
marked by partisan violence, the appearance of outlaw groups and social
inequality.
The last document called “Elections
and electoral practices in Tucumán-Argentina 1870-1880” by María Celia Bravo, from the Universidad
Nacional de Tucumán-Argentina, studies the electoral practices of the province
of Tucumán in the 1870s and how they facilitated the incorporation of a
national political order which legitimized the system, achieving future effects
for the political life of the country.
In the Reviews and Debates section, Francisco A. García Naranjo makes a
reflection on the book “Three Hispanoamerican Right
Wing Intellectuals: Alberto María Carreño,
Nemesio García Naranjo, Jesús Guisa y Azevedo”,
written by Doctor Felicitas López Portillo Tostado. The article is an invitation, through this
historiographic work, to recognize the role of the right wing in the
construction of a nation in Mexico, based on three scholars whom, with their
life, labor, works, and doings, were the ones who
rescued the culture of the Mexican people and spoke of the inequalities and the
impunity that haunted the country in the first thirty years of the 20th
century.
Thus,
Issue 10 of the Historia y Memoria Journal, invites the reader to reflect upon
the role women have had in diverse fields and their inclusion as protagonists of
history, and, on the other hand, to understand the theme presented and which
leads us to recognize other contexts and realities, bringing about
comprehensive research projects about human beings and society.
[1] Michel Perrot, Mi Historia de las mujeres (Buenos
Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2009), 6.
[2] Michel Perrot, Mi
Historia…8.
[3]
Pilar Ballarín, La
Educación de las mujeres en la España contemporánea (siglos XIX - XX)
Madrid: Instituto de la Mujer. Teoría e Historia de la Educación No. 7),
recuperado 4 de diciembre de 2014, en:
http://www.google.com.co/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCEQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdialnet.unirioja.es%2Fdescarga%2Farticulo%2F2480650.pdf&ei=4YmDVKXcN4eqNqu_hOAE&usg=AFQjCNHprsvHKWLTxkNHu0xvQCLxLMLrQg&bvm=bv.80642063,d.eXY