Before my great-aunt passed away, she recorded everything she could remember about her parents, her childhood, and our family history in Mexico. She shared stories of tragedy, resilience, and survival that seemed almost impossible to imagine belonging to one family and one lifetime.
One day I got curious and set out to see if I could corroborate some of her memories with outside sources. The clues surfaced quickly, and I was hooked. As my research deepened, I found that the more I learned, the more I wanted to know. Out of that curiosity came Las Matriarcas de México.
This project is both historical and genealogical. It begins with the women in my own family but extends outward to examine how women across Mexico lived through upheaval and change. Many official records center on men because they left a paper trail as landowners, soldiers, or officeholders. Women’s lives are harder to trace, often appearing only in fragments or footnotes. Las Matriarcas de México seeks to bring those lives forward, showing how women labored, organized households, and made decisions that helped families endure war, poverty, migration, and loss.
The study begins with Clementina Esperón Carpinteyro, born in Mexico City in 1891, daughter of a war veteran and public servant. Throughout her life she endured violence, loss, and the upheavals of the Revolution. Her daughter Blanca is my great aunt who later recorded what she knew of her mother’s life, and that record serves as the cornerstone of this research.
The goal of Las Matriarcas de México is to recover lost details about women’s daily lives and choices: how they sustained households during war, how they raised children after losing a spouse, and how they adapted to poverty, exile, or migration. These stories connect with the larger history of Mexico: colonial rule, independence, the Liberal Reform, the French Intervention, the Revolution, and beyond.
As this project develops, I’ll share documents, translations, and stories that reveal broader patterns of women’s resilience across Mexico. My hope is that you’ll follow along as new findings emerge, reflect on your own family stories, and join in the work of recovering the histories of the women who shaped Mexico.
