Essay --

In the book, Refusing the Favor, Deena J. Gonzalez investigates how the lives of Spanish-Mexican women in Santa Fe were affected when the United States colonized northern Mexico between the early and late 19th century. Her work focuses on the cultural contrast among the Euro-Americans and the Spanish-Mexicans in the area. Gonzalez analyzes the histories of women of the period through the lens of those who would bestow upon them "the favor" of colonialism. Hence, she indicates her position through the title of her book. She illustrates how female inhabitants of the defeated territory resisted and scorned the newly arrived powerful Anglo immigrants. She shows how women's responses to the conquest were extremely diverse and illustrates their efforts to preserve their culture. Much of her work focuses on the economic effects and cultural responses to the process of Americanization that took place in New Mexico after the United States took control of the territory. The author challenges the generally accepted history of the United States that has largely put forth that the U.S. conquest was "painless" and beneficial to Spanish-Mexicans in Santa Fe. New Mexico, long before the United States took over, always had a degree of "Spanish character". Her work focuses on Santa Fe which was one of the largest cities west of the Mississippi and oldest of all the territories of the Provincias Internas that opted to stay with Mexico in 1821. In 1846 the land was invaded and conquered by the United States. Much of her interpretation is on the lives of women in the capital city utilizing a range of sources, from travel literature, newspapers, wills, deeds, court records, Catholic Church Archives, Property Census records, and Spanish written sourc... ...zalez 72). Although about half of the Euro-American men in Santa Fe lived with Spanish-Mexican women by 1850, these unions included only several hundred of some four thousand Spanish-Mexican women and were therefore less significant from the perspective of Spanish-Mexican residents (Gonzalez 74). Gonzalez is an author with a mission: she wants to reverse traditional historiographical interpretations about the West, and specifically New Mexico. She wants to give life to the lifeless voices of women who lived in the era. It appears that Gonzalez's primary motive in writing Spanish-Mexican women into the history of U.S. conquest appears to show how the women of Santa Fe were affected and how they overcame a challenging systems which reshaped their lives. In the end, the author successfully achieves her goal of rescuing the voices of New Mexican Spanish Mexican women.