In Latin American history, in addition to the models of wife and mother, traditionally the role of women has been made invisible or reduced to a sentimental, patriotic or religious position.
Many women, prominent figures in the region’s history of independence, have been forgotten for years, ostracized or devalued because of their gender: one of the most emblematic examples is that of Manuela Sáenz.
She is considered one of the protagonists of a kind of women’s revolution that took place in the midst of the independence revolutions that took place in Latin American territories that were under the colonial rule of European countries, in the early 19th century.
Trajectories like hers show that the processes of colonial emancipation and national formation harbored countless dreams that went far beyond the limits drawn by the “criollo” elite. –that social class that tried, and to a large extent succeeded, to keep the course of transformations under its control.
Manuela was born in 1797 in Quito. During her childhood, she experienced the rebellious atmosphere of the movement that, in 1809, removed the president of the Royal Audience and formed the first Sovereign Board of Government, which was quickly repressed.
In 1817, he got married, fulfilling an almost unavoidable destiny for women of the same wealthy social origin. She moved to Lima, where her work with the pro-independence forces earned her the decoration with the order of “Caballereza del Sol”, given by San Martín.
Back in Quito, in 1822, he participated in the preparations for the Battle of Pichincha, when he met Simón Bolívar.
Not only loving, the bond that was established between them from then on was deeply political: they shared the dream of integrating the liberated territories into a confederation of states, Gran Colombia, that would face the challenges that the young Latin American nations face in the context of world geopolitics to maintain their independence and sovereignty.
Upon returning to Peru, she was incorporated into the Bolivarian General Staff, being responsible for the archives of the liberation campaign.
During this period, he began his military career: he joined the Army as a hussar and, in 1824, due to the Battle of Junín, he became “Captain”. Then, at the Battle of Ayacucho, he was elevated to “Colonel”.
She encouraged the creation of the Republic of Bolivia, which took place in 1825, and it is also possible that she was in that region directly collaborating with the project.
In 1827, she suffered the shocks of the destitution of the Bolivarian powers in Peru, being arrested and forced to leave the country. In 1828, she moved to Bogotá, being at Bolívar’s side during the period when he was directly president of Colombia.
In this scenario, his political influence was felt in several aspects and the episodes in which he discovered and helped to thwart some plotted attempts on the life of the acclaimed Liberator, who faced opposition groups to the regime, became famous.
In 1830, even with his resignation and exile, he remained in the Colombian capital, helping to articulate a new onslaught under power that would restore him to the government.
This, however, did not happen. Bolívar’s death at the end of that year was another chapter in the dismantling of the audacious plans to build a “big homeland”.
Against Manuela, then, smear campaigns and political persecution intensified.
Finally, in 1834, she was exiled and, after spending a period in Jamaica, her attempt to return to Ecuador was also blocked, leaving her to stay in a city far from the Peruvian coast, where she died in 1856, surrounded by poverty and anguish of political isolation.
a collective utopia
Her rebellious trajectory – although it did not prevent her from falling, from time to time, under the reins of moral repression, sexual objectification and loving submission – exemplifies a courage and rebellion that were collective.
Recovering it helps us to make more visible the situation of women from different ethnic and social groups who, by getting involved in the liberation campaign, challenged the hierarchy of gender relations that limited the female experience in both the private and public spheres.
These women creatively used elements that made up the system of their own oppression to act in the struggle and thus created escape routes.
They were the organizers of gatherings in which conspiracies were articulated; they housed fugitives; they helped to propagate new ideas in their family networks; they acted as spies and messengers, gathering and transmitting information.
Outside the space of their homes, they participated in protests and collaborated with the press, also making intellectual contributions to the movement.
They made material resources available, especially in the form of their workforce, to support the liberating armies, in addition to accompanying or directly joining the troops when it was possible for them to do so.
They ran the risk of violent reprisals, such as public humiliation and sexual assault, in addition to the hostility they might face from some of their own comrades in the struggle.
It is as if the revolution, by shaking up some structures of the old colonial regime, had released forces that were not unprecedented, but that were dammed up.
The subversion of order, although it was intended to be limited to the political sphere, established an exceptional period of life in society and gave rise to a suspension of norms in other spheres to be admitted and, to a certain extent, encouraged.
When the revolutionary chaos opened the possibility of the imaginary projection of other worlds, women were not simple pieces handled by the ruling classes.
They dreamed not only of the liberation of the homeland, but also of their own liberation, constituting to a large extent –along with an overexploited black and indigenous population– the depository force of the radicalization that sought to transform the political revolution into a social revolution.
With the end of the revolutionary cycle, the new order established under the aegis of “criollo” repressed and expelled not only from the political struggle, but also from historical memory, the revolutions of women and black and indigenous peoples.
Women were pressured to readjust to traditional gender roles, being reconverted into the supporting and pacifying figure of “mothers of the homeland”, tailor-made to express love and sacrifice, but not to thematize gender inequalities and discrimination.
Impossible to be retranslated in these terms, Manuela Sáenz entered history initially as one of Bolívar’s most illustrious lovers and for a long time occupied the space of a simple anecdote in the romantic adventures of the Liberator.
In her emancipatory utopia, she expresses the subtle convergence between projects of national liberation and women’s liberation, signaling one of the tasks not completed by the independence processes in Latin America.
Therefore, it puts us in front of insurgent movements that constituted each other.
More than 150 years later, the female insurgency that flourished at that time can be seen as a pioneer of feminist and Latin American women’s movements, representing a precious legacy that must be rescued.
