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Property, Households and Public Regulation of Domestic Life: Diriomo, Nicaragua 1840–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 1997

ELIZABETH DORE
ELIZABETH DORE
Affiliation:
University of Portsmouth, U.K.
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Abstract

This article examines changes in gender relations in an Indian pueblo in south-western Nicaragua between Independence and the coffee revolution, when the nation-state was weak and municipal governments exercised considerable power. It analyses landed property, household headship and public control over so-called private morality, and considers how these were influenced by the coffee economy. First, it argues that public regulation of domestic life was important in the consolidation of municipal authority. It legitimated the power of the ladino peasant elite, a key aspect of state formation at the local level. Second, the article examines how the rise of private property altered gendered arrangements. It analyses the relationship between expansion in female land rights and the incidence of female headed households and argues that peasant women's acquisition of land accentuated a pre-existing tendency towards non-marrying behaviour. The study is based on archival sources.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , October 1997 , pp. 591 - 611
Copyright
1997 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I thank Maxine Molyneux, Lowell Gudmundson, Muriel Nazzari, Steven Topik, Jeffrey Gould, Donna Guy, Silvia Arrom, Florencia Mallon and John Weeks for comments on earlier drafts of this article. Research for this study was supported by grants from the Fulbright Commission, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Learned Societies, the National Endowment of the Humanities, the British Academy and the University of Portsmouth.