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Title
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Weaving, Embroidery, and Femininity
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Description
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Patriarchies, in granting men the ownership of power and institutional dominance, often limit or deny independence to women. In the face of patriarchy, as well as conquest, women can nonetheless find some measure of independence and agency via different avenues. Weaving and embroidery, more specifically, provided native women with an outlet for creativity, sovereignty, and independence before and after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, suggesting that they distinguished themselves by the clothes that they produced and wore. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, and afterward, Mesoamerican women played an integral role in the production of textiles, spinning, weaving, and embroidering cotton and other materials. Men and women alike perpetuated the idea that textile-making was a task to be performed by women regardless of social status or ethnicity. Even three centuries later, in 1821, an account of a woman providing advice to her daughter reveals this strongly ingrained belief as the mother asks her daughter to live with diligence, goodness, cleanliness, modesty, and, of course, attention to textile-making [Refer to image from Recuerdos]. Thus, the values that women both held and to which they were held accountable preserved some sense of continuity for centuries after the Spanish arrival. It was common, in fact, for the community to present such items as brooms, baskets, reels, spinning whorls, and other items to newborn girls to remind women of their housekeeping and cotton-processing roles in society. Interestingly, commoners and elite women produced textiles that were difficult to distinguish; the quality of the materials and patterns do little to make either distinct. Textile-production thus performed a social function by blurring class distinctions in women. With such a heavy emphasis on textile production for women, though, clothes inundated the marketplace, so much so that certain tasks (spinning the maguey fibers, embroidery, refining and finalizing the product) came to be specialized in certain cities, regions, and households. As a result, class distinctions did begin to arise in the creation of clothing, elite women often finishing and decorating the product. Therefore, while men occupied the positions of authority during both Aztec and Spanish rule in Mexico, women were indeed able to design their own patterns, craft their own work, and express themselves in a beautiful and refined manner.
||| Benavente y Socios, José María. Recuerdos Interesantes a Los Indios. México: Imprenta de D. J. Benavente y Socios, 1821. Special Collections, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX. | Brumfiel, Elizabeth M. "Cloth, Gender, Continuity, and Change: Fabricating Unity in Anthropology." American Anthropologist 108, no. 4 (2006): 862-877. | Powers, Karen Vieira. Women in the Crucible of Conquest: The Gendered Genesis of Spanish American Society, 1500-1600. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. | Rodriguez, Jeanette. Our Lady of Guadalupe: Faith and Empowerment among Mexican-American Women. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. | Ross, Kurt and Bodleian Library. Codex Mendoza: Aztec Manuscript. S.L.: Miller Graphics, 1978. | Schroeder, Susan, Stephanie Gail Wood, and Robert Stephen Haskett. Indian Women of Early Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997
Recuerdos interesantes a los indios