At the presentation of the publication at Casa de América in Madrid, Zavaleta stressed that “our past allows us to understand our present and build a better future” and, without women, “the cultural mechanism of Latin America” cannot be understood.
For this reason, she decided to immerse herself in the past and rescued for this book slaves, princesses, maids, mestizas, warriors and saints, from all social classes and all origins, who awakened in Zavaleta “the imperative need to give them visibility.”
India Catalina, the Colombian Maliche
The first great woman to recover the book is the one called India Catalina, a woman who was kidnapped as a child by the Spanish conquistadors in 1533 near Cartagena, in present-day Colombia, and who, after learning Spanish and receiving a Christian education, was used by Pedro de Heredia as interpreter and mediator between the colonizers and the native peoples.
For years, Catalina helped Pedro de Heredia evangelize and control the region, but, years later, she denounced Heredia before the Royal Court for abuse of authority over the indigenous people and treason against the Crown of Spain.
Among the women who experienced firsthand the clash of cultures and whose history is unavoidable to understand Latin America, Zavaleta chooses, among others, Juana Ortiz de Zárate Yupanqui, daughter of the Spanish hidalgo Juan Ortiz de Zárate and the Inca princess Leonor Yupanqui, whose An abundant inheritance was invested in the founding of the city of Buenos Aires.
In the same city, but more than two centuries later, Manuela Pedraza fought against the English in 1806 and her war exploits earned her the rank of second lieutenant of infantry.
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The Marquise of Santos, much more than the lover of Pedro I
The history of Argentina is very present in Zavaleta’s book, which presented “Mulanas” in the Conexión Buenos Aires-Madrid series, but it also covers other countries, such as Chile, with the revolutionary Javiera Carrera, or Brazil, with Dominitila de Castro and Melo, who “was much more than the lover of Pedro I.”
Mariquita Sánchez is another example of a woman “simplified in the image of a perfect lady sitting in her living room”, whose letters to her daughter Florencia Thomson de Lezia “attest to her transgressive role and the revolutionary nature of her behavior.”
The book closes with Felipa Larrea, a slave who was born in 1810 in Buenos Aires and died in 1910 after a long life dedicated to working “at the service of those who bought her.”
“The 20th century has continued to be difficult for women, and those of today, those of the 21st century, have a lot to do with the women of yesterday and are moving towards a better future,” concluded Zavaleta.
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