Runaway Mothers and Daughters

Abstract

As evidenced by laws addressing abandonment of the home and children, family preservation was paramount for early twentieth-century Latin American nation builders. The judicial record of abandonment cases from Guatemala demonstrates how men attempted to enforce their authority in the home and then enlisted state officials to uphold it when their wives or daughters defied them. Yet, abandonment litigation often liberated women. By condoning female flight as a response to domestic abuse, judges emancipated women with the very laws intended to corral them. The same gendered institutions that buttressed patriarchies also provided women with the tools to challenge men's perceived right to intimidate and beat women.