Volunteering for a Cause by Silvia Marina Arrom

Author:Silvia Marina Arrom [Arrom, Silvia Marina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Latin America, Mexico, Social History
ISBN: 9780826356291
Google: mnlRCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: UNM Press
Published: 2016-02-15T00:41:46+00:00

TABLE 5.2 Women’s Conferences in the Archdiocese of Guadalajara, 1892, 1901, 1911

Note: Foundation dates in parenthesis, from Arquidiócesis de Guadalajara, “Caridad cristiana.” I question the early dates for Tepatitlán and Tototlán because they do not appear in the national Memorias of 1865 or 1866, or in the 1901 history that mentions scattered conference foundations preceding the creation of the national association in 1863.

*In order to make the statistics comparable over time, I removed four conferences from the 1892 statistics because by 1901 they reported to the Central Council in Tepic, part of the new Diocese of Tepic: one each in the cities of Tepic, with 49/114 members, Compostela, 40/208; San Pedro Lagunillas, n.n.; and Santiago Ixcuintla, 51/116.

†Also known as Santa Margarita, Nuestra Señora de la Luz, Dulce Nombre de Jesús Niñas, Purísimo Corazón de María. The members of the Santa Inocencia/Dulce Nombre conference were girls under fifteen preparing for their first communion.

‡Column does not add up, but I left the numbers as in the original because I do not know whether the mistake is in one of the conference sizes or in the total.

§The national report specified that nine active conferences failed to report that year (Sayula, Tequila, Tototlán, Tecolotlán, Atoyac, Tala, Zapotlán, plus two “from the parish”), so there may in fact have been thirty-three conferencias foráneas and sixteen in the capital. In addition, some conferences had sucursales (branches) that did not report separately. San Gabriel had three, which helps explain its large membership in 1911.

Sources: Arquidiócesis de Guadalajara, Memoria (1892, 1901, 1911); Arquidiócesis de Guadalajara, “Caridad cristiana” (including foundation dates in parenthesis); Asociación, Memoria (1911), “Estado” no. 2., n.p.

The expansion of the organization’s religious ministry follows a similar pattern. The annual Memorias reveal a huge jump between 1892 and 1895. For example, the volunteers arranged 248 baptisms and 950 first communions in 1895, compared with only 64 and 134 barely three years earlier. Another leap had occurred by 1902, when the women arranged 3,514 first communions. In that single year they reported achieving 7,023 conversions and abjurations of heresy, though that figure seems implausible because no other year came close. The sacramentos por devoción also skyrocketed, from 582 in 1892 to 5,011 in 1895, where they then leveled off for a few years. A new category that appeared in 1909, visitas al Santísimo Sacramento y a la Santísima Virgen—where the volunteers took turns visiting these shrines daily—reached 5,685 by 1911. By then the sacramentos por devoción, which may have included devotions practiced by the members as well as by their clients, numbered 40,890 (see fig. 5.3).58 The Ladies of Charity were thus key agents in disseminating orthodox religious practices among the populace.

The female volunteers also stood out because of their contribution to building the infrastructure for Jalisco’s public health system. Individual conferences repeatedly reported beginning with home visitations of the sick, then opening a small clinic with a handful of beds, and—in the more prosperous towns—eventually establishing a hospital with separate wings for different types of patients, operating

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