In seventy-two printed pages, authors Flusche and Korth attempt to “draw Afro-Chilean, Indian and mestiza women [in colonial Chile] out from obscurity (p. iii). They have divided their work into two parts. Part I deals with Afro-Chilean women before the law and religion, and with their contribution to the economy as “capital assets in private fortunes,” as workers, and as property-owners. Part II, on Indians and mestizas, also supplies legal information drawn from the civil and ecclesiastical legislation of the period. It further surveys several cases of land ownership, and records a number of instances of the varieties of female indigenous work. A four-page chapter on Beatriz Clara Coya, married to Governor Martín García Oñez de Loyola, and her daughter Ana María, is attached to Part II, even though it is acknowledged that only the thinnest thread joins these two women to Chilean history.
Although the authors have diligently gathered material scattered in a number of printed sources, and used with largesse the more abundant legal material, this work fails to convey the feeling of discovery and redress that they sought to offer. This is mostly because of the obvious lack of research into the very sources that could have given it greater substance. The use of notarial records is minimal. Audiencia, Inquisition, and archival ecclesiastical materials, other pillars of colonial social history readily available in Santiago, have not been explored. Hence, the authors confine themselves to illustrating situations with several individual examples. This makes the work anecdotal, and lacking in sustained informative and analytical strength. Although the title suggests coverage from 1535 through 1800, there is little information on the eighteenth century. Altogether, Flusche and Korth have stretched material apt for a long article into a “book,” and the result is disappointing.
For those who know little about colonial women, Forgotten Females may have its uses, but scholars will not find much new in this brief monograph. The conclusion indicates how much more research needs to be carried out to learn much of what we still do not know about women of African and Indian descent in colonial Chile. This implicit acknowledgment of superficiality is devastatingly honest.
