for cooperation among Mexican women meant that their internationalist efforts had at least a fighting chance to take root and grow. And as they discovered, Mexican women intended to be more than just passive partners in these endeavors.
Mexican Women’s Internationalism
Many of the Mexicans with whom U.S. women were in contact advocated for internationalism. The platform of the Consejo Feminista Mexicano demonstrated that its members believed their nationalist and internationalist ambitions could coexist. Elena Torres echoed Jane Addams in her letter to the Women’s Peace Society when she declared that the CFM sought an “entente-cordiale” among the world’s women.71 Elena Landázuri, in a speech before WILPF’s third international convention in Vienna in 1921, argued for the power of women’s organizing to effect change, both within Mexico and internationally.72 Adelia Palacios continuously reiterated to Emma Bain Swiggett that she was committed to realizing the ideals of the Pan American International Women’s Committee.73 All these women welcomed and cooperated with U.S. visitors in Mexico, such as Zonia Baber, Caroline Smith, and Harriet Taylor. The fact that the Mexicans with whom U.S. women were in the closest touch shared their basic assumptions about the power of women’s internationalism was promising common ground on which to build.
But women such as Torres, Landázuri, and Palacios also made clear that they could and would use the methods of human internationalism to express their own views, and to articulate exactly what they wanted out of these exchanges with U.S. women. These women were prepared to embrace internationalism because they saw it as a means to help them achieve their own goals—some of which overlapped with U.S. women’s interests, and some of which did not. The principles of mutuality, cooperation, and equity that underlay human internationalism promised much for Mexican women in this regard. In these efforts, Mexican women focused on two goals. First, they sought solidarity with and guidance from U.S. women on advancing Mexican women’s civil, political, and economic status. Second, they wanted U.S. women to take a strong stance against U.S. intervention in Mexico, and to voice their opposition to policy makers in Washington, D.C. Like U.S. women, Mexican women advocated internationalism as a path to peace and a way to secure women’s rights, but they saw it as a means to further their nationalist goals, such as an end to U.S. economic exploitation, as well.
Mexican women made clear that while they sought guidance from U.S. women, they did not want to be led, and they would resist any U.S. efforts at imperialist internationalism. Elena Torres distributed copies of the detailed, extensive Consejo Feminista platform as widely as possible among women’s organizations outside Mexico. She sent copies to Elinor Byrns of the Women’s Peace Society and to the U.S. section of WILPF in late 1919. In addition to wanting to share information about Mexico, the CFM solicited advice and support: “We beg of you to communicate with us directly and to send us all your literature, suggestions, programs of action and any information that may aid us in our new organization, and in return, we shall keep you informed of our progress and development.”74 Torres and her colleagues had put considerable thought and effort into crafting their platform, and they resisted several attempts on the part of U.S. women over the years to alter or narrow their focus. A few representatives from peace organizations wanted the CFM to focus solely on disarmament. Other U.S. women contended that the only way for the CFM to achieve its goal was by focusing on suffrage.
Elena Landázuri attempted to counter these incursions in 1921 in an address to the third international WILPF congress in Vienna, in which she emphasized the unique nature of Mexican problems and the need for Mexican solutions to fix them. Knowing she was the first Mexican woman to address a WILPF congress, Landázuri spent a considerable portion of her time outlining the history of Mexico, especially since the start of the Revolution. She explained that the reign of Porfirio Díaz had been an era of progress and development for some Mexicans, but it had cost the majority of Mexicans their land and freedoms. Some revolutionary leaders had tried to implement socialist policies in order to rectify this situation, with some benefits, but as far as Landázuri could judge, reforms that were “imported” from abroad proved largely inadaptable “to our conditions.” On behalf of her compatriots she argued that “We must seek the possibility of social betterment from our own institutions, in forms that arise from the needs of our organizations.” She was not speaking only of socialism; Landázuri implicitly rejected the wholesale imposition of any foreign ideology or system of government. The solutions to Mexican problems would originate in Mexico. “We are responsible for the current disarray of our country,” she asserted, “but I think we recognize that with shame, which is already the first step toward a better future.”
While Landázuri defended Mexican agency, she did not reject the possibility that international groups could offer assistance. She closed with a message to women and men of all nations. If foreigners wanted to “protect” Mexico, they should “take it seriously” among themselves:
Begin by knowing who we are—read our works, enjoy our art, admire our history, and when you know our soul, you can begin to teach us what we want to know. In a family, you don’t leave the children forgotten in a room and only come to realize their existence when they enter the classroom as half-savages and break all the rules. You educate them, you protect them, you guide them. So it is with nations—the young people have the right to question the thinkers, the idealists. Irrigate our virgin and fertile soil with something of the treasure of your love and your wisdom, and with your already skillful hands help us climb to the top.75
Landázuri thus walked a careful line between asserting Mexican autonomy and accepting guidance from groups such as WILPF. Outsiders could not hope to “fix” Mexico simply by rigidly imposing their plans and ideals. If they truly wanted to be useful, they had to learn how best to be useful in Mexico, to Mexicans. At the same time, however, Landázuri’s family metaphor left intact prevalent assumptions about the inherent superiority of some groups over others—Mexicans were still the “children” in need of education. This tension between asserting autonomy and working alongside organizational leaders was common among women trying to challenge imperialist feminism during the interwar period.76
What both Landázuri and Torres demanded from U.S. women, particularly the peace activists, more than anything else was vocal, active opposition to U.S. military interventions in and U.S. economic exploitation of Mexico. In her initial letter to the Women’s Peace Society, Elena Torres stated that the Consejo Feminista had originally been founded in August 1919 “as a spontaneous unit of protest against the constant incursions of American troops across the Mexican border,” and that they were reaching out to U.S. women’s organizations in large part because they hoped U.S. women would speak out against such incursions: “We are especially anxious to come in contact with the various international women’s organizations, that they may know more of Mexico and her conditions and perhaps throw the weight of their opinion against the possible recurrence of any international misunderstandings.”77 Torres was careful not to paint all U.S. Americans with an imperialist brush. The CFM was eager to work with U.S. women, as long as they understood Torres’s belief that “the ongoing threat for Mexico and for all Latin American countries is the boundless greed of a few U.S. imperialists,” who would not hesitate to provoke a war “in order to control Mexican oil.”78 Elena Landázuri made a similar distinction in her address to the WILPF convention: “I must say that if a group of U.S. capitalists is our greatest enemy, we find among the people of the United States our greatest friends.”79
Torres saved her strongest rhetoric for lashing out against economic exploitation by U.S. businesses. In a statement she sent Elinor Byrns to read on her behalf at a conference in Toronto, Torres contended that discrimination and exploitation were common within U.S. companies based in Mexico. U.S. and Mexican workers in the same jobs were compensated differently, treated differently, and given different benefits. Torres cited the mining and petroleum industries as particularly egregious offenders. Mining companies brought technological advancements to regions such as Guanajuato that should have improved not only production but the quality of life for its workers. Instead they
