María Leoncia Pérez Rojo's poetry of resistance appropriately introduces the second part of this book, which focuses on women's literary culture. How did women inscribe gender, and how did they conceptualise sexual difference in their writings? What kind of dialogue did they initiate with the canonical texts and gender doxa studied so far? These questions can only be answered with reference to historical context. Before analysing in detail a selection of women's published and unpublished writings, therefore, this chapter will provide an overview of the impact of the Spanish American Wars of Independence on women and on gender.

Women have long been associated with warfare in South America. In his History of Tlaxcala, Diego Muñoz Camargo described María de Estrada's part in the conquest of Mexico, even though he had not personally witnessed her action and would have been repeating prevalent tales and accounts. It is interesting, although not surprising, that Hernán Cortés did not mention María de Estrada's efforts in his letters to Carlos V of Spain. Indeed, Cortés barely acknowledged the part played by his translator and guide, Doña Marina (‘La Malinche’), without whom the conquest would have been much more difficult (Cortés 1963: 269). Although he specifically praised the role of several women in his eyewitness account of the conquest, Bernal Díaz del Castillo did not refer to María de Estrada's fighting prowess either. He merely stated that she was the only Spanish woman in Mexico and that she escaped from the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, with the help of their Tlaxcalan allies (Díaz del Castillo 1963: 302; 1955: 399). Muñoz Camargo was, perhaps, applying poetic licence in portraying María de Estrada as strong, warlike and rebellious. The tendency can be traced at least as far back as Christopher Columbus. An avid reader of Travels of Sir John Mandeville, Columbus was fascinated by his revival of the myth of the Amazons. Columbus became obsessed with finding the tribe of women, and ‘twice during his explorations in the New World he thought he had encountered, or narrowly missed such beings’ (Fernández-Armesto 1992: 34).