Pamela Voekel

Building on earlier work arguing for specifically Catholic origins of Mexican modernity, this project revisits the crucial fault line of nineteenth-century Latin American politics: the bitter struggle between Liberals and Conservatives, a struggle that often played out as a battle of the sexes. It argues that only when this conflict is viewed as a religious war do the gender divisions make sense, with women providing a critical mass of support for the Church headed by the Holy Father.