Using the following documents, evaluate the extent to which politics affected gender roles for women in twentieth-century Latin America.
Document 1
Source: Ricardo Dolz, Cuban senator, speech to the Cuban Senate on a bill to give married women economic rights, Havana, Cuba, 1917.
Women should have their rights because the movement is recognized worldwide, it is just and moderate, and the women are not asking to dominate men. Resisting the woman’s movement will encourage women activists to become socialists and fulfill everyone’s greatest fear.
Document 2
Source: María Luisa Marín, anarchist and union organizer, speech in support of jailed communist politician Herón Proal in the rent-strike movement in Veracruz, Mexico, December 1924.
We will do what we can so that our children will not denounce us as traitors and cowards. We will prove that with Proal or without him, the Veracruz renters will defend their rights. In view of the danger that now threatens us, we issue an urgent call to the people. Don’t wait for the powerful to help you. They will never appreciate the dignity and value of our solidarity which some day will triumph. The supreme hour of the people has arrived. People of Veracruz, wake up and join the struggle.
Document 3
Source: Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua,* party platform, 1969.
The Sandinista Popular Revolution will abolish the discrimination that women have suffered with respect to men: it will establish economic, political, and cultural equality between women and men. It will elevate the political, cultural, and vocational level of women via their participation in the revolutionary process.