Institutional Memory and Historiographical Limits: Female Healers and Saints in Northern Mexico

Under the influence of Dana Robert and others, World Christianity has found creative research methods for unearthing voices of women in Christianity. For Catholic women, the focus has often led to renewed attention to canonized saints and women’s institutions. Yet especially in Latin America, many women lead at the fringes rather than through the mainstream portions of the tradition. These include uncanonized folk saints and other leaders who, though deeply influential in their day, did not meet canonization standards and did not enter or found institutions. To this end, this presentation examines newsprint and oral histories to highlight female Catholic healers and prophetic figures in northern Mexico and the US-Mexican Borderlands in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Ultimately, the presentation argues that in order to recognize many Catholic women (both in and outside Latin America), historiography boundaries must expand beyond institutional resources.