Taking Violence to Court: Women’s Strategies in the Río de la Plata

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The women likely knew that their chances of success were slim. What exactly were they hoping to achieve?

In the cases I analyze for this project, women petitioned for divorce. However, divorce did not have the same meaning as it does today. Marriage was a sacred institution, consecrated and regulated by the Catholic Church in the Río de la Plata region – and, more broadly, throughout Ibero-America – and was therefore understood as an indissoluble bond. What these women were actually requesting was authorization from the bishop to live separately from their husbands. Although it was highly unlikely that the Catholic Church would grant them permission to establish separate households, these cases nevertheless existed, and they show women employing very specific strategies to achieve their goals before ecclesiastical judges.

What strategies did they develop to make their voices heard in court?

I consider these strategies to have been both collective and political. First, I describe them as collective strategies because an analysis of the cases reveals that women fostered and mobilized connections with relatives, neighbours, and acquaintances who testified on their behalf in court. In this way, they often involved their communities in conflicts that extended beyond the confines of the household. On the other hand, they were also political strategies. I believe that even actions that might initially appear to be individual—such as a woman petitioning for separation—can and should be understood as political acts. These actions pushed the boundaries of what was known, accepted, or expected of women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, not only in the Bishopric of Tucumán, of course, but also within a broader Atlantic context.

In these types of documents, it is also common to encounter formulaic or repeated language. This is not only the case with juridical and canonical terminology, which is repetitive in itself and may be less meaningful for the purposes of the research. There are also certain “common strategies”: recurring patterns in the words and expressions used by women that may ultimately tell us something about shared experiences and strategies. They may point to conversations within the community about what to say, but also to the existence of specialized legal agents – such as prosecutors, legal defenders, and ecclesiastical judges – who knew the judicial process and probably advised women about what would be most effective to say in court. Phrases such as “my life is at risk” or “I ran away from home because I knew he was going to kill me” appear repeatedly, sometimes almost word for word, throughout these cases.

Can you give as a particularly striking example of how such a conflict could become a community affair?

There is one case that is particularly representative of what I am describing, although it is certainly not the only one. I remember it because it illustrates so clearly the collective nature of these conflicts. The case dates from 1803, when the parish priest of Río Cuarto, a small town in Córdoba, wrote to the bishop asking for advice about a conflict that had erupted within a marriage. The priest explained to the bishop that “the town was in turmoil because of the scandal”. The parish priest therefore asked the bishop to issue the necessary permissions and credentials so that he could conduct spiritual exercises for the entire community, with the aim of putting an end to the “scandals, disturbances, quarrels, and resentments”. The solution to the social tension caused by this conflict– which today we might think of as a private or domestic matter – was conceived as a community-wide solution: the entire town was to go to the church and participate in spiritual exercises!

Domestic violence and access to justice remain relevant issues to this day. What insights from your historical research can help us better understand current debates?

I do believe that examining and understanding not only the forms that violence against women took in a colonial American context, or during the transition to an independent or republican period, but also the strategies that these women developed within that particular context, can provide us with conceptual tools for thinking about strategies of resistance and ways of preventing or addressing such violence in the present. 

For example, I think it is important to bear in mind that restrictions and constraints grounded in religious beliefs can place limits on women’s freedom to make decisions and on their rights as full legal subjects. 

Another issue that emerges from studying violence against women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is that, even though some people may regard this field of research as merely a trend or a passing academic fashion, studying these historical processes can provide evidence and contribute to our understanding of how violence against women is deeply embedded in patriarchal social structures.