Breathe
By Ruth Gabriela Cano
The intellectual and political concern that articulates and gives meaning to the work of Rosario Castellanos is the social condition of women. It is the guiding thread of her poetry, narrative, essay and dramatic works. Fifty years after her death, we are just beginning to understand in its proper dimension that reflection on feminism is at the heart of the writer's literary and philosophical quests.
In Sobre cultura femenina, a philosophical essay of her youth, Castellanos wondered about the possibilities of women in intellectual and artistic creation. What was the literary horizon for a young, formal, twenty-five-year-old woman who wanted to become a writer? She knew about the prejudices of a society that saw women writers as weirdos, so she wanted above all to understand and emulate those women who "separated themselves from the rest of the herd and invaded a forbidden terrain". She wanted to unravel how it was that a few of them "managed to smuggle their contraband into borders so jealously guarded" by professors and writers, who considered themselves the true representatives of culture? What was it that "drove them in such an irresistible way to risk being smugglers"? How did they find the strength to take the risk of moving away from the known world of family and home and become thinkers, writers or artists?
The philosopher Castellanos found in existentialism the theoretical tools to question the "false mirrors and false images" that distorted women's own perceptions of their creative potential. An early reader of Simone de Beauvoir in Mexico, Castellanos understood that "the smugglers of culture" were moved by the will to be free and become people. They rejected false values and took the risk of seeking "another way to be human and free".
A keen observer of the international political environment, Rosario Castellanos brought to the Mexican press news about the "women's liberation movement" that broke out in the United States among young countercultural women, committed to civil rights and opposed to the Vietnam War. With good judgment and her characteristic irony, the writer calls on Mexican society to keep an eye on the events of the new feminism on the other side of the northern border. She explained that sexism -- a then novel term -- was a parallel phenomenon to racism and encompassed a wide range of acts that "perpetuate iniquity in treatment between men and women, iniquity in pay, kinds of work and, more subtly in self-expression." Added to the economic disadvantages faced by women was the disciplining imposed on their bodies, with "diets, beautifying treatments," the "merciless mold of girdles" and those "instruments of daily torture" that are high heels."
The Women's Strike for Equality in the summer of 1970 was a landmark of liberationist feminism in the United States: protest demonstrations flooded the major cities of that country and most importantly a domestic work strike was unleashed: "those "jobs so sui generis, so peculiar that they are only noticed when they are not done, those jobs outside all economic laws, which are not remunerated with a determined rate or which are remunerated with the simple lodging, feeding and clothing of those who perform them; those jobs which, like certain refined tortures that are applied in infamous prisons, are destroyed as soon as they have finished being carried out".
The distribution of household chores was less conflictive in Mexican families because of the availability of maids dedicated to cleaning, food preparation and care of children and the sick. But things were beginning to change. With the modernization of the country and the incorporation of the female labor force into industry and services, "the fire will come to our rigs. When the last maid appears, the little mattress on which our conformity now rests, the first furious rebel will appear".
Rosario Castellanos died on August 7, 1974. She did not reach her fiftieth birthday and could not be present at the International Women's Year Conference and the NGO Tribune held in Mexico City in the summer of 1975. She would have been the great figure of the meetings organized by the United Nations and the government of Luis Echeverría, which had great consequences.
Birth and death anniversaries and anniversaries of anniversaries and anniversaries of anniversaries are a good time to reread and reprint already known works and to make known works that are not very accessible. The Fondo de Cultura first published Sobre cultura femenina in 2005 in a beautiful edition and this year, the UNAM delivers two magnificent reeditions: Cartas a Ricardo, with foreword by Sara Uribe, and Mujer de palabras, journalistic compilation by Andrea Reyes. I am sure that the writer would have felt a bit self-conscious about publishing works considered minor until some time ago. Although with a certain blush on her cheeks she would have been delighted to know that the splendid Fondo de Cultura Económica bookstore in Colonia Condesa bears her name and that, on the initiative of Consuelo Saízar, it was the first bookstore in the Mexican State to honor a woman writer. In 2025 the centennial of her birth will be commemorated: the occasion is propitious to recognize Rosario Castellanos in all her greatness .
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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