The two countries had had no official relationship since December 1920, and by early 1922 both sides were looking for potential ways to restore ties. Almost from the beginning of the league’s contact with the State Department and the Pan American Union, the question of Mexico was a key topic of discussion. Hughes and Rowe recognized the conference as an opportunity to take steps toward reconciliation. Marie Stewart Edwards reported that the secretary of state was “tremendously pleased with this opportunity for establishing lines with Mexico which they had not been able to do as yet in a more direct manner.”17 When financial difficulties left the organizing committee wondering if they should postpone the entire conference, Maud Wood Park observed that Sumner Welles, assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, and Rowe were anxious to have the conference proceed as scheduled because “it might mean real help in the Mexican situation.”18 The Department of Commerce was also interested in the trade benefits that might result from a restored diplomatic relationship. Philip Smith, chief of the Latin American Division of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, instructed the U.S. trade commissioner in Mexico to publicize the conference in Mexican newspapers and gather information on women’s activism in Mexico City.19
Mexican officials also welcomed the opportunity presented by the Pan American Conference. President Álvaro Obregón knew that for his government to be considered legitimate in the eyes of the world, and to begin to solve the problem of Mexico’s massive foreign debt, he would have to reconcile with the United States. On March 22, 1922, less than a month before the conference opened, Obregón told the New York Times, “We wish to assume our place in the world of nations. By our efforts to pay our just obligations the Mexican Government is demonstrating that it realizes its obligations and is determined to fulfill them. Naturally recognition is needed…. Our desire and our word to resume the payment of interest on our debts should help toward bringing both recognition and closer relations.”20 At the same time, Obregón had to save face in front of widespread opposition to the United States in his own country.21 The PACW provided him an opportunity to reach out to the U.S. government while deflecting any potential resistance. Sending a delegation of women to meet with other women was a move much more likely to be accepted and forgotten in Mexico than sending a group of oil producers, for example, to meet with U.S. investors. Obregón’s support of the conference was so strong that he authorized federal funds from the Secretariat of Public Education to finance the delegation.22
Identifying the Mexican women who would represent their country was a long process for Dorothy Hubert and the organizing committee. They relied primarily on the personal contacts of U.S. officials and others in Mexico City. After considering input from the U.S. trade commissioner, the U.S. chargé d’affaires in Mexico City, and the Pan American Round Table (PART), a women’s group based in San Antonio, Hubert focused her attention on the Consejo Feminista Mexicano. The trade commissioner called it the “leading national women’s organization of Mexico,” while the Woman Citizen—the organ of the League of Women Voters—extolled Elena Torres as “one of the most brilliant women of the Republic.”23 Torres had dramatically expanded several CFM programs; for instance, by 1922 they were distributing free breakfasts to 6,000 school children a day. The Mexican secretary of education personally appointed Torres head of the Mexican delegation to Baltimore. Hubert wrote to Torres in January, formally asking her to attend the PACW as a Mexican delegate and to raise interest in the conference among her colleagues. Torres agreed, and recruited seven of her colleagues to travel to Baltimore with her.24 They included a math teacher, a newspaper editor, and two women who had spent several years teaching indigenous Mexicans to read and write Spanish. With the exception of Torres, who came from a working-class family, the Mexican delegates were middle-class, and all but two were unmarried. Several of them had spent time in the United States, including Torres, and spoke English well.25
The Mexican delegation’s journey to the conference was a veritable public relations campaign, designed to promote Pan Americanism, Mexico, and the League of Women Voters all at the same time. Composed of eight women, the group was one of the largest contingents from a Latin American country. From Mexico City they traveled by train to Laredo, Texas, where the U.S. Treasury Department had instructed customs officials to “extend every courtesy to facilitate the passage of the Mexican women through that port.” They were met at the border by Florence Terry Griswold, president of the Pan American Round Table, who, along with several members of her organization, escorted them to San Antonio. After a few days of events and sight-seeing in San Antonio, several Round Table members accompanied the Mexican women by train to St. Louis, where they received “special hospitality” from the local branch of the League of Women Voters. From St. Louis, Torres, Griswold, and the others continued on to Baltimore. The Mexican delegation carried with them a Mexican flag made from silk and hand-embroidered by hundreds of Mexican women. President Obregón had asked them, on behalf of the entire country, to present the flag at the Baltimore conference, and afterward to carry it to Independence Hall in Philadelphia.26 On April 28, Torres exchanged flags with members of the New Century Club, a prominent Philadelphia women’s organization. They in turn presented Torres with a U.S. flag to be delivered as a gift to President Obregón’s wife.27 This was gendered public diplomacy at its finest—the journey and exchange of flags were designed to spread a peaceful and pleasant image of Mexico across the United States, establishing these representatives as friends rather than adversaries. At a time when the two countries did not enjoy a formal diplomatic relationship, these kinds of interactions held great symbolic significance.
In addition to establishing the Pan American Conference of Women as a venue for gendered diplomacy, the pre-conference activities and exchanges also revealed that while all the delegates were dedicated to furthering inter-American women’s internationalism, some had more power than others to shape its direction. The process of setting the conference agenda most clearly illustrates this imbalance. Lavinia Engle, who had the original idea for the conference, initially chose the topics for the roundtable discussions. U.S. members of the organizing committee then refined her selections. The task had to be started early; in order to solicit support for the conference from the U.S. State Department, league representatives had to be able to present a tentative agenda. Once they had secured support, they could not stray very far from their initial proposal. With this in mind, Engle chose issues she assumed would be of interest to women throughout the hemisphere. Her first list, submitted to the State Department in July 1921, included six topics: “education, child welfare, women in industry, prevention of traffic in women, suffrage for women, and international friendliness and reduction of armaments.”28 Engle admitted to Maud Wood Park, however, that in setting the agenda she was hampered by her lack of knowledge of Latin America. “I have tried to topic [sic] the points for the P.A.C.,” she wrote in October 1921. “After all the whole matter boils down to the simple fact that we know practically nothing about any of our American neighbors except Canada and not a great deal about her.”29 Less than a week later Engle, Cunningham, and the other members of the organizing committee supplied Rowe with a copy of the conference agenda—weeks before they had even begun contacting Latin American women about attending. The final list included Engle’s first four original topics verbatim. “Suffrage for women” was changed to “women’s political status,” and “international friendliness and reduction of armaments” was removed entirely, in favor of “women’s civil status.”30
Figure 3. Members of the Mexican delegation to the Pan American Conference shortly after their arrival in San Antonio. Left to right: Eulalia Guzman, Aurora Herrera de Nobregas, Luz Vera, Julia Nava de Ruisanchez, and Elena Torres. Torres told the San Antonio Express, “We are going to work out things which have been overlooked or given up as an impossibility by men.”
San Antonio Express, April 16, 1922.
In setting the agenda for the conference, league officials operated under several constraints. One was time—in order for invitations to be sent and acknowledged, and for Latin American delegates to make travel arrangements,
