15 Barbara Aguirre’s Petition for a “Divorce”
The following archival document was a woman’s request for a “divorce” in the town of Paso del Norte, now Ciudad Juárez and El Paso. In this context, a divorce is a recognized separation, as Catholic doctrine does not permit the dissolution of marriages. This letter reveals several attitudes about women’s rights and marriage in the larger northern Mexican frontier after independence.
I, María Bárbara Aguirre, wife of the citizen Francisco Velarde, before you, with all due respect and under the useful and necessary pretenses, states the following. For more or less six months, I have lived apart from my husband for he has afflicted me with serious injuries, beaten me, and has confined me in the mill of his father, Don José María Velarde, twenty-four hours a day. For these undeserved treatments, already made insufferable for their frequency, I left my home and lodged at the home of an uncle of mine. I am in urgent need of a separation by means of a divorce, for it is the only way I can be guaranteed of an appreciable degree of protection from my husband’s unwarranted anger towards me.
The gentleman, my husband, says that for eight years he lived in peace and quiet, honorably complying with the duties of being my spouse and that at the end of that time; I was seduced, which he attributes to my lover – entirely false charges. From the moment that I made my wedding vows my suffering began, not only through insults and vile language, but through having to work as a slave, not only because my husband said this was to be, but also because he received counsel from his parents to do this: this is the principal origin of our enmity.
He (Francisco Velarde) added the abominable vice of drunkenness to his perversity. This changed him for the worse, as he became carried away with anger, I became a touchstone for him to insult, and lacking the shelter of my beloved mother – seeing myself as being absolutely humiliated and unprotected – I made this plea for judicial protection in order to provide remedy for my scandalous life; as I have stated earlier, I and others will provide the necessary evidence for this to take place.
On the last occasion that my husband subjected me to his torture, he infamously brought me to the mountain where my father-in-law has a property known as the mill (el Molino). He confined me and hung me from the rafters, and gave me lashes, leaving me in that state until later that day, when he returned to do the same to me. The following day he untied me as I was almost dead, and he left me there penned up; and later that day he returned, he pulled me by my hair and dragged me outside, telling me I can go in any direction I want to go. I stayed on the mountain, and when night fell, I came to the home of my Aunt Anita; the good lady brought me to my home, that of my husband, which was closed with a lock. I spent eight days in the homes of neighbors to wait for him to open the door to me, and when I realized that it wouldn’t happen, I went to the home of my uncle Don Luis Ortega, who passed on a warning to my husband and also informed the ecclesiastic judge and priest about the treatment that my indolent husband terms the family punishment that he claims to be able to impose upon me.
It is no less than proof of his love for me that in the more than six months that he has been separated from me, he has not made an effort to know how I am doing or even given me a greeting. He has taken away even my clothing, something that not even a servant girl would endure. He has handed my legitimate property to another woman, with no shame, and is planning to travel to New Mexico this month, in order to settle. It is certainly praiseworthy that after all the suffering I have endured from my husband that the gentleman accuses me of being an adulterer, even though the most ignorant person would be able to sense that I am acting in good faith, for I am subjecting myself to the judgment of the authorities, and in filing this suit on my behalf, I realize my honor will be tested.
“Bárbara Aguirre’s Testimony” Jamie M. Starling “’From the Moment I Made My Wedding Vows My Suffering Began:’ Calidad in the Nineteenth-century Mexican Borderlands,” The Latin Americanist (University of North Carolina, September, 2018).