Latinx Studies Experiential Learning Fellowship awarded by the Center for Latino and Latin American Studies at the University of Oregon

Advisor: Dr. Yvette Saavedra

December 2023 - June 2024

In 19th century Mexican Los Angeles, local authorities branded women who transgressed gendered and sexual norms with the acronym "MV" meaning mala vida, or bad life, in local census records. This categorization effectively rewrote their life stories to one of deviance and disgrace, burying the complexity of their lives beneath the weight of institutional and cultural judgment. This project excavates Los Angeles criminal and civil court records using Spanish colonial paleography to recover these women's voices, combining archival research with genealogical investigation to piece together their lives and create space for their stories. By centering the lives of Mexicana women rendered inconsequential by masculinist narratives of California's Mexican history, this work disrupts dominant frameworks of nation-building and examines how socio-cultural ideals of gender, sexuality, race, and class shaped the bounds of respectability and honor in the early Mexican Republic.