Leona Vicario

Leona Vicario

Leona Vicario , actually María de la Soledad Leona Camila Vicario Fernández de San Salvador , (  April 10, 1789 in Mexico City – August 21, 1842 in Mexico City ) is a Mexican woman who fought for Mexico's independence from Spain in the early 19th century fought and is revered as a national heroine. She is considered the country's first female journalist.

biography

childhood and adolescence

Leona Vicario was the only daughter of Camila Fernández de San Salvador y Montiel and the merchant Gaspar Martín Vicario, who was also a member of the Inquisition . The father was born near Palencia in Castile , Spain , and emigrated penniless to Mexico, where he became a successful and prosperous merchant. In 1787 he married his second wife, Camila Fernández de San Salvador y Montiel, who came from a respected Toluca family. His wife, whose father died when she was a child, brought no dowry to the marriage, but her family - including her three brothers - held influential positions in the judiciary, academia and finance.

Vicario received an extensive education and was interested in science, history, politics, painting and singing, unusual at the time for a woman of her social class. She read the works of the Spanish polymath Benito Jerónimo Feijoo , who had campaigned for women's education and the rights of Creoles in America as early as the 18th century. Her "cleverness and wisdom" were praised, but her "rebellious and free spirit" was also attested. Her life motto was: "My name is Leona and I want to live free like an animal", whereby Leona is a double meaning of a proper name and means "lioness". Supposedly, this motto was coined by her uncle, who was also her godfather, and who decided on the name Leona .

In 1807, when Leona Vicario was 18, her parents died. Shortly before, she had been engaged to the young lawyer Octavio Obregón. He traveled to Spain to apply for royal office in Mexico, but never returned. Vicario inherited a sizeable fortune of over 100,000 pesos . The mother had appointed her eldest brother and godfather to Leona Vicario, Agustín Pomposo Fernández , as her guardian and trustee. He was one of Mexico's most distinguished jurists and a former rector of the Real y Pontificia Universidad de México ( Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico ). He rented a mansion for Leona, in which he and his family lived in a separate wing.

With a total population of seven million people, only around 70,000 Spaniards ( Peninsulares ) lived in the country at the time, who formed the upper class. From 1808, educated Creoles tried to promote modern development and Mexico's independence from Spain, "while the invaders from Spain enjoyed the luxury of viceroyal courts and episcopal palaces," according to historian Hubert Herring. The trigger for this political development was Napoleon Bonaparte's dismissal of the previous Spanish king from the House of Bourbon - Anjou , who instead put his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne. The Spanish viceroy in Mexico, José de Iturrigaray , gave in to Creole demands for a national congress to be dominated by native Mexicans. To prevent Congress from meeting in Mexico City, some 300 well-armed Spaniards deposed the viceroy on the night of September 16, 1808, and the most prominent pro-independence supporters were imprisoned. The ensuing Mexican War of Independence , which lasted until 1821, claimed the lives of more than 500,000 Mexicans.

Role in the Mexican War of Independence

As the daughter of a Mexican and a Spaniard, Leona Vicario belonged to both social groups; her uncle, in turn, was a loyal royalist and opposed the rebellion of his countrymen. She joined the Creole secret society of the Guadalupanos , who, like herself, supported pro-independence advocates with espionage and money. This secret society was led by Juan Bautista Raz y Guzmán, a cousin of Leona's uncle Fernández de San Salvador. He and his comrades-in-arms were arrested in 1815 for aiding and abetting the uprising.

From early 1812, Vicario acted as a messenger between the rebellious Creoles in the capital and those in the countryside. The leader, meanwhile, was Ignacio López Rayón , the spiritual successor to the priest Miguel Hidalgo , who had been executed in 1811 for rebelling against Spanish rule. In her letters under the alias "Enriqueta" she used ciphers and literary pseudonyms to protect the content, in which she reported, for example, on military activities of the royalists. She organized the move of master-at-arms to the patriots' camp in Tlalpujahua , according to historian Rafael Anzures, "a bold move [...] essential to the continuation of the war".

In order to counter the Spanish propaganda, the secret society acquired a printing press in 1811. Three of Leona's female relatives, including Raz y Guzmán's wife, hid the press in their carriage to take them out of Mexico City. The women were chosen for this dangerous mission because it would have been unthinkable to search upper-class women or their carriages. When Vicario fled the capital on March 1 to join the insurgents, she also took printing press supplies with her. As she fell ill, she was persuaded by her uncle Agustín to return to the city and accept an 'indulto' - a royal pardon - after the authorities assured him that the niece would be unmolested. Contrary to this promise, she was taken to the Colegio de Belén de las Mochas monastery on March 11, 1813 , where she was held captive and interrogated for weeks. She remained silent until, after 42 days, she was cunningly liberated by three insurgents led by Andrés Quintana Roo and taken to the west of the country. It is estimated that by this point she had donated around 80,000 pesos of her inheritance to the independence movement.

Roo, a writer and law student from Yucatán , had worked in Mexico City from 1810 in the chancery of Leona's uncle Agustín. A love affair had begun between Leona Vicario and Roo, which her uncle had tried to end because he didn't like Roo's political views. In early 1812, Roo decided to join the insurgents and left Mexico City for Tlalpujahua in western Mexico with Agustín's eldest son, Manuel. Once there, he published the newspaper Despertador Americano ( American Wake-up Call ), with Vicario later assisting him. For the cause of Mexico's independence, Leona Vicario wrote articles for other newspapers, including US ones, which is why she is considered the country's first female journalist, and she wrote heroic poetry .

In 1813 Leona Vicario and Andrés Roo married. After the execution of another rebel leader, José María Morelos , in 1815, the uprising against Spanish rule seemed to have collapsed. Andrés Roo, his wife and their daughter, who was born in the meantime, were pardoned, but the family was forced to live in Toluca under constant surveillance by the authorities and in poverty. Only in 1820, after the Spanish party had been expelled from Mexico City, were Roo and Vicario allowed to return to the capital with their child, where their second daughter was born.

Final Years and Death

Vicario's home in Mexico City in the last years of her life

In 1821 Mexico became independent from Spain, and in 1824 Leona Vicario received compensation for her possessions confiscated during the war. Roo earned his law degree and his wife had another daughter and retired. From then on, she only spoke publicly when her husband, who was making a political career in independent Mexico, was attacked in the press. Roo's tenure has included undersecretary of state, member of Congress, and Supreme Court justice. Leona Vicario died in 1842 at the age of 53.

The then President of the Republic, General Antonio López de Santa Anna , led the grand funeral procession to the Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles Cemetery in Mexico City; it was the only state funeral in Mexico for a woman until 2021. Vicario was honored as a "strong woman of Mexican independence" and a "mother of the nation". Nine years later her husband was buried at her side.

honor and remembrance

Statue of Leona Vicario in Mexico City

Postage stamp from 1910 with Vicario's likeness

In 1910, the couple's ashes were interred in the Independence Column on the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City, along with the remains of other "heroes" of Mexican independence.

In 1827, the Mexican town of Saltillo Vicarios was renamed Leona Vicario in honor of Leona Vicario , but was renamed Saltillo in April 1831. In 1936 a district of the Municipio Puerto Morelos received its name. The city is in the province of Quintana Roo , which bears her husband's name. The Mexican Post Office has issued stamps with her likeness several times, most recently in 2020.

There are two statues to Leona Vicario in Mexico City: a monument is in a square at the corner of República de Brasil and República de Nicaragua . The second monument is located on the Heroine Promenade on the Paseo de la Reforma , inaugurated in 2020 , alongside the monuments of eleven other important Mexican women. The house where she died, at 37 República de Brasil, has been listed as a Historic Monument .

The year 2020 was named after her in Mexico, Año de Leona Vicario . On this occasion, the journalist Cecilia Kühne wrote about her: “Little is known for sure about her, but much is suspected and said: that she was the first Mexican journalist; the originator of a spy network fighting against the Spanish crown; a rich girl who pawned her jewels to buy guns for the insurgents – or the most foolish and romantic heroine of all for risking her life to follow her lover.”

literature

• Jerome R Adams: Notable Latin American Women. Twenty-Nine Leaders, Rebel, Poets, Battlers and Spies, 1500–1900 . McFarland, 1995, ISBN 0-7864-0022-6 , pp 115-122 (English).

web links

Commons : Leona Vicario  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Se llamaba Leona y quería ser libre. In: eleconomista.com.mx. 12 April 2020, retrieved 18 December 2021 . 

itemizations

1. ↑ Adams, Notable Latin American Women , p. 115.
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k} Vicario, Leona (1789–1842). In: encyclopedia.com. Retrieved November 30, 2021 (English). 
3. ↑ ^{a b} Biografia de Leona Vicario. In: biografiasyvidas.com. Retrieved December 2, 2021 (Spanish). 
4. ↑ ^{a b} Se llamaba Leona y quería ser libre. In: eleconomista.com.mx. 12 April 2020, retrieved 18 December 2021 . 
5. ↑ Adams, Notable Latin American Women , p. 116.
6. ↑ Adams, Notable Latin American Women , p. 117.
7. ↑ Adams, Notable Latin American Women , p. 118.
8. ↑ Adams, Notable Latin American Women , p. 120.
9. ↑ Adams, Notable Latin American Women , p. 121.
10. ↑ Mark Joseph Jochim: New Issues 2020: Mexico (Leona Vicario). In: philatelicpursuits.com. 6 November 2020, accessed 3 December 2021 (English). 
11. ↑ Mexico City Inaugurates 'Heroine Promenade' To Honor Prominent Women. In: kjzz.org. 21 August 2020, accessed 18 December 2021 (English). 
12. ↑ Servicio Postal Mexicano: Año de Leona Vicario – Servicio Postal Mexicano – Gobierno. In: gob.mx. 28 July 2020, retrieved 18 December 2021 (Spanish).