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For a Just and Better World

For a Just and Better World

Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900-1938

by Sonia Hernandez

Published by: University of Illinois Press

Imprint: University of Illinois Press

14 black & white photographs, 5 tables

Digital download
9780252052989
Published: November 2021

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Caritina Piña Montalvo personified the vital role played by Mexican women in the anarcho-syndicalist movement. Sonia Hernández tells the story of how Piña and other Mexicanas in the Gulf of Mexico region fought for labor rights both locally and abroad in service to the anarchist ideal of a worldwide community of workers. An international labor broker, Piña never left her native Tamaulipas. Yet she excelled in connecting groups in the United States and Mexico. Her story explains the conditions that led to anarcho-syndicalism's rise as a tool to achieve labor and gender equity. It also reveals how women's ideas and expressions of feminist beliefs informed their experiences as leaders in and members of the labor movement.

A vivid look at a radical activist and her times, For a Just and Better World illuminates the lives and work of Mexican women battling for labor rights and gender equality in the early twentieth century.

Cover

TItle

Contents

List of Ilustrations

Acknowledgments

A Note on Terminology

Abbreviations Used in the Text

Timeline

Introduction: Reenvisioning Mexican(a) Labor History across Borders

1. The Circulation of Radical Ideologies, Early Transnational Collaboration, and Crafting a Women's Agenda

2. Gendering Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalist Organizations: “Compañeras en la Lucha” and “Women of

3. Feminismos Transfronterizos in Caritina Piña’s Labor Network

4. The Language of Motherhood in Radical Labor Activism

5. “Leave the Unions to the Men”: Anarchist Expressions and (En)Gendering Political Repression in the Midst of State-Sanctioned Socialism

6. A Last Stand for Anarcho-Feminists in the Post-1920 Period

7. Finding Closure: Legacies of Anarcho-Feminism in the Mexican Borderlands

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Back cover

Sonia Hernández is an associate professor of history at Texas A&M University and the author of Working Women into the Borderlands.

"Sonia Hernández paints a vivid and heroic mural of Mexican labor activists in and around industrial Tampico during the early twentieth century in her latest book, For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900-1938. . . . A richly woven and important labor study." --Journal of American Ethnic History

"For a Just and Better World is a well-written and detail-rich narrative with a robust theoretical framework and creative analysis of a complex world. . . Sonia Hernández provides a much-needed map for readers to find both the women and the engendered anarchism integral in this story of a collective quest for a just and better world." --Southwestern Historical Quarterly

"Sonia Hernández's new book is an engaging story that unites a traditional focus on anarchist labor initiatives with a study of the roles that women anarchists played in the gendered and transnational politics stretching from the Gulf of Mexico and northward toward the Mexican-US border from before the Mexican Revolution to the end of the Lázaro Cárdenas era." --Hispanic American Historical Review