Peasants, slaves, warriors and spies: who were the women of the May Revolution?

There is no doubt that revolutions make the history of peoples when they burst forth and fundamentally change the present. They not only change social, political, and economic ties but also alter individual and family lives. In Las mujeres de la Revolución (Women of the Revolution ) (Edhasa), coordinated by Beatriz Bragoni , PhD in history , historians and anthropologists such as Marcela Ternavasio , Noemí Goldman , and Magdalena Candioti write about peasants and chieftains, morenas, pardas, patricians, Pehuenches, and porteñas who, through their daily actions, forged the paths of revolutions in Latin America.

A new anniversary of the May Revolution is approaching 🇦🇷 and if you are interested in knowing what women did in the revolution, how they did it and what it meant for their lives... be sure to look for this beautiful book edited by @BeatrizBragoni @EdhasaArgentina 💜💜💜 pic.twitter.com/WlP3FqFrib

— Maga Candioti (@franmackandal) May 23, 2025

In an interview with Clarín , Bragoni tells how the book was born and the challenges those women faced to make history . Marcela Aguirrezabala, Bárbara Aramendi, María Victoria Baratta, Roxana Boixadós, Elsa Caula, Inés Cuadro Cawen, Marisa Davio, Judith Farberman, María Alejandra Fernández, Sara Mata, Mariana Pérez and Florencia Roulet are also featured in this book.

–What were the objectives behind The Women of the Revolution ?

The book's purpose was to write histories of women in an exceptional moment: that of the revolution and the wars of independence in the geography of the former River Plate viceroyalty. This is a topic that has received attention in specialized literature as a result of various methodological shifts that have informed the historical and social research agenda in the main international and Argentine academic centers. But while these histories, or the way in which the revolution and the wars had permeated and modified the lives of women from all sectors of River Plate society, have occupied a powerful position in academic historiography, a comprehensive work was needed that would be able to combine new discoveries with a stylized narrative format intended for the general public, reflecting the social, geographical, political, emotional, and even mythological diversity of female leadership in the face of the revolutionary storm.

–Why are their careers so little known?

–There are several reasons that explain the invisibility of a good portion of the women who populate the pages of the book. One of them lies in the underreporting of women's agencies or interventions during the time of the revolution (or counterrevolution) because, in general, documents tend to be produced by men, that is, by officials, publicists, judges, military personnel, fathers, husbands, or brothers. Another reason is the high illiteracy rates among the female population (as well as the male one). Few women, even those born into patrician households, knew how to read or write or were familiar with writing or reading, so they generally had to resort to intermediaries to assert their voices and their rights before the authorities, the family patriarchs, or the masters of the enslaved women. However, as several women examined in the book demonstrate, the disconnection from home due to migration, exile, or emigration, and the massive enlistment of men in the revolutionary armies or those of their adversaries, led them to experiment with writing processes in the epistolary record to maintain the emotional and even political bond with their absent relatives. The third reason lies in the fact that classical historiography, that is, the history of the state or of the public or state, extolled the role of "great men" or the heroes of the revolution in shaping South American nationalities, and only later did women, especially patricians or heroines of the wars of independence, obtain a place in the annals of national histories. This is a common phenomenon in the formation of nineteenth-century historiographies in Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Chile, and one that in recent decades has been reinforced by the same state or official liturgies as a result of the growing feminization of family, economic, political, and cultural life.

–Who are the women who make up this book?

–The book echoes the women who left traces of the growing social mobilization and politicization that the revolutionary event introduced in the immense viceregal space. These are women recorded in the documentation preserved in archives, libraries, and documentary collections, which reflect the way in which the revolutionary phenomenon and the wars precipitated a change in their public and private behaviors to process the uncertainty that arose in their daily lives. It is a universe of female silhouettes settled in cities, towns, and villages in the interior, structured by a common yet distinct process, while simultaneously staging, like the tributaries of a lush river, the multiplicity of strategies devised by rural or urban women, enslaved or free, illiterate or with sufficient cultural resources to litigate before the courts for grievances, violated rights, or in defense of their offspring. Also included are those who served as spies for or against the revolution, and those who, alongside their companions or sons, launched themselves into war against the staunch custodians of the colonial order. Among these, the actions of women of Pehuenche lineages and the Bourbon dynasty stand out, exemplifying their influence in interethnic relations and royal diplomacy.

–And who are the women who write?

The multifaceted nature of women's experiences explored in the book comes from a group of historians and anthropologists with extensive experience studying the society, economy, and politics of the early 19th century in the River Plate region. This detailed understanding of the continuities and innovations in different spheres of social and public life provided them with valuable tools to make women the primary subject of the narrative offered based on available background, the control of anachronisms, and the interpretation of fragmentary documentation that attests to the disruption of the perceptions and practices of women of all social ranks. It is worth noting that this experience caught the attention of the custodians of social and public order from the very moment everything began to change. This is illustrated by the opinion expressed in the Buenos Aires press in 1813, and by a political catechism circulating in present-day Bolivia in 1824, which recommended confining women to the domestic sphere and abstaining from political involvement. A recommendation that, as is known, would be crucial in the constitutional and codifying order of the Spanish-American republics in the second half of the 19th century.

–How is the book being received?

–Those of us who are part of this publishing plan are very pleased with the book's reception, based on the auspicious reviews published in various media outlets as well as the attention it has garnered on bookstore shelves.

–How do you make sure that new generations are exposed to these stories?

–It is difficult to assess how this type of historical literature can impact the problematization of the study of independence revolutions and complement the political-institutional axis that generally permeates the curricula of educational institutions, beyond the erosion of traditional patriotic pedagogies. But undoubtedly, expanding the forms of communication of historical knowledge can contribute to its dissemination and multiply the avenues for appropriation of this content by teachers, students, and the general public.

–You say in the introduction that “given the absence of female narratives written in the first person, the women's testimonies examined here come from files housed in public archives, libraries, and documentary collections.” How did you access these materials?

–Access to documentary materials comes from scholarly knowledge of the main archives, libraries, and published collections that fortunately continue to be preserved in the main public repositories in our country and abroad. Each chapter highlights robust professional careers in historiography and in the sensitivity to ground plural histories of women in revolution, supported by academic rigor and historical imagination.

Women of the Revolution , coordinated by Beatriz Bragoni (Edhasa).