MIT Historian Speaks On Hispanic Women

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) historian yesterday told an Agassiz House audience of 30 people that Hispanic women must not be seen as separate from their society, but should be seen in relation to Hispanic men, Blacks and other ethnic groups.

Sarah Deutsch, an assistant professor at MIT, delivered her speech about the role of Hispanic women--Chicanas--as part of a series coordinated with Women's History Week.

"The key is not that we see [Chicanas], but how we see them," Deutsch said.

Deutsch's speech, "Visibility and Power: Chicanas in the Southwest," was based upon her recent book, No Seperate Refuge: Culture, Class and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest 1880-1940. In her book, she examines the communal life of the Hispanic woman, the way Anglo society changed that life and the effects this had on what she called the "visibility" of Chicanas.

For the first half of the lecture Deutsch focused on the characteristics of the Chicana village before significant Anglo influence. Deutsch described a society in which Hispanic women were a highly visible and vital part of the village. They owned property, worked in agriculture and strongly influenced education and religion.

Deutsch then spoke of the way Hispanic communities changed when they could not compete economically with Anglo communities and were forced into becoming mining villages.

Women could not work with men, fewer than half of Hispanics owned land and the work was seasonal. As a result, women could not find jobs and lost their economic status and equal role in their society. "The women were no longer bosses. They were dependents," Deutsch said.

Deutsch said she became interested in the history of the Chicanas while teaching English to Hispanics in New Haven, Connecticut. "I had expected the group to be largely male," Deutsch said, "but it was about 90 percent female." That piqued her interest in the subject, she said.

Deutsch, a former Rhodes Scholar, is on a one-year fellowship at the National Humanities Center. Next year she will become an associate professor at MIT. She is currently working on a book about women in Boston.