| abstract |
This dissertation constructs mujerista aliviar ethics in tracing the development of US Protestant home missions to the first Mexican and Puerto Rican—and specifically Latina—communities from the time of the Mexican-American War (1848), the Spanish-American War (1898), and on through the early twentieth century by exploring denominational archival records of the Woman's Home Missionary Society (WHMS) (1898–1940) of the Methodist Episcopal Church. It makes two primary claims: first, that during that era, Protestant missions solidified the US hegemonic culture and society's construction of Mexican and Puerto Rican racialized caricatures, particularly that of women and girls; and second, that Mexican and Puerto Rican women resisted the constructed identities ascribed to them in a way that was not clearly evident to the missionaries through a complex dynamic. This analysis leads to my construction of mujerista aliviar ethics in the concluding chapter.
The first part of this dissertation examines church and state contexts during the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It focuses particularly on the women who founded the WHMS, who proudly adhered to the social standards and practices of womanhood that men prescribed; in so doing, white Christian society proclaimed them as bearers of true womanhood. The WHMS passed on its combined values of patriarchy and patriotism to Mexican and Puerto Rican girls, whom it deemed lost, ignorant, and in need of saving. The focus on girls and women during its missions was to ensure both a proper domestic and national "home" life.
The second part of this dissertation applies a decolonial Latina feminist lens, drawing on mujerista ethics and Chicana theories to nuance particular examples in these missions and in society to analyze how Mexicans and Puerto Ricans resisted hegemonic constructions of identity. The complex dynamic of being both oppressed and participating in their own oppression shaped Latinas' construction of their own identity. To understand and appreciate this complex dynamic, this dissertation constructs mujerista aliviar ethics—a spiraling and springing praxis of unbinding, healing, and liberating subjugated Latinas' lived experience and knowledge that is individualistic and communal.
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