María Ignacia Azlor y Echeverz She is better known in Mexico, while in Spain it is unknown that she was a Creole of Navarrese descent (on her mother's side) and Aragonese, born in 1715, who belonged to one of the richest families of the viceroyalty of New Spain. The outstanding thing about her life was that she renounced opulence and comforts to take up the habit in order to dedicate herself to the education of girls, including indigenous people, with the founding of the first public women's school, of a religious nature, in Mexico.
To achieve this, Azlor had to cross the Atlantic Ocean twice, the first to put his affairs in order with his family in Spain and then he made the second voyage with 11 women who joined his cause.
Navarrese Margari Alonso, a law graduate, makes her debut as a writer with this entertaining historical novel, Maria Azlor. A life between the two Spains (Red circle), full of data, characters (all of whom it refers to existed) and facts, endorsed by the numerous notes in the edition. The idea for the book arose from a manuscript from the late 18th century that she found in the National Library of Spain about a dozen women who had traveled from Tudela (Navarra) to America to found a school in Mexico. Pulling the thread he found more documents, such as the boarding tickets of those women.
The information she has gathered for her book comes from years of research in the National Library of Mexico, the Archive of the Indies, in churches… From her biography she highlights that “she wanted to replace charity with education, so that poor girls had access to “The training was ahead of the times of the Enlightenment.”
The adventurous life of Azlor takes the book's narrative through Mexico City, Havana, Cádiz, Seville, Madrid, Tudela… along the dusty roads that crossed Spain and on the ships of the Carrera de Indias. The text highlights the obstacles that some characters put to her wishes, including some relatives, who saw a crazy undertaking and wanted María well married. Seeing that it was impossible to dissuade her, they at least tried to convince her that her work should be built in Spain and not in Mexico. In some way, the author claims, Azlor wanted to return to America the riches that the New World had given to her family.
Azlor's determination is strengthened after losing his parents and his sister getting married. At only 21 years old he embarked in Veracruz, in May 1737, heading to Spain, with the risks, among others, of pirate attacks. This is the main story of the book, that exhausting trip, with deaths along the way, for a young woman who had barely left the family farm. The ship arrives in Cádiz at the end of August of that year, from where she travels by carriage, leagues and leagues, to Tudela.
In the Navarrese town she enters a convent where she spends 10 years! in a humble cell. Azlor writes to King Ferdinand VI to guarantee the viability of the future school-convent, which he will finance with his mines, heads of cattle, jewels, precious stones and money (which was joined by that contributed by the queen, Barbara of Braganza). Bureaucratic slowness meant that the royal decree authorizing his work did not arrive until April 1752. The monarch ordered that he be given “all the favor, help and assistance that may be needed for this purpose.”
Now what was left was nothing less than to return to America, accompanied by 11 nuns with whom she achieved harmony for her project. In June 1753 they left from Cádiz; In the case of the protagonist, she went to sea again 16 years later. In Mexican lands they did not find a bed of roses either, with the misgivings of the bishopric.
Finally, in June 1754, work began on the school-convent, with cells for the nuns, an infirmary, bathrooms, classrooms and housing for the students. In November, the educational center for girls of different social classes and colors became a reality. María Azlor enjoyed her achievement until 1767, when she died at age 52. An initiative that she continued and spread to other places in America. She also had her attempt, as Margari Alonso says, to “change the role of women in the society of the viceroyalty.”
Margari Alonso
Red Circle, 2023
340 pages. 17.95 euros.
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