So far, this book has considered the physical political intervention of women and the political significance of their family networks, everyday lives and private correspondence. This chapter will study selected works of two of the earliest published women writers in post-independence Spanish America, Josefa Acevedo (b. 1803) and Mercedes Marín (b. 1804). The focus shifts to the literary cultural sphere of the letrados. Both writers are neglected and are thus poorly recognised. As women, they were hindered by negative symbolic capital, a direct consequence of the gendering of the socially female (Moi 1999: 291) (see Chapter 1). However, both were able to compensate by amassing social capital, which they used as leverage to enable them to position themselves as spokespersons for the political options supported by their clan. That they were able to achieve this and win recognition for it (although they were subsequently largely forgotten) could only have been made possible by toeing the line, that is, by tacitly obeying the rules and keeping to form with respect to gender. Otherwise, as women, they risked outright dismissal as ignorant or naïve. Their apparent complicity with the implicit gender assumptions of their times – their symbolic investment in the family – allowed them to be taken seriously and to publish work that was publicly acknowledged. At this time of social and political crisis, no one set of assumptions and values predominated; rather, several options vied for control. As we shall see, both women used their extensive family contacts as social capital, while advocating specific political programmes, one conservative, the other liberal. That they were respected, despite their forays into literature and public life, was due to their gender conservatism and to the fact that the political option they supported became identified (to some extent as a result of their work) with national progress. Nineteenth-century Chilean nationalism was concomitant with post-Portales conservatism, and Colombian liberalism with post-Bolivarian nationalism.

The fortunes of Marín and Acevedo (and, as we shall see in Chapter 9, of Cunha and Barandas) might be contrasted with those of Juana Manso (see Chapter 10).