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Nineteenth-century Mexicanists have been among the most competent and meticulous social historians, often spurning studies of the famous and powerful in favor of ground-level experience. Consequently, to write a biography of so prominent and privileged a figure as María Ignacia Rodríguez ("la Güera") can seem a transgressive act; but in this case, it is a transgression for which readers will be grateful. In La Güera Rodríguez, Silvia Arrom (herself a highly accomplished social historian) gives us a critical biography of a celebrated and mythologized figure. The book is really two closely related projects: the first reconstructs the narrative of María Ignacia Rodríguez's life; the second examines the evolving legends that have surrounded her. The author devotes four-chapters to the former and three to the latter, though in truth, questions of fact, myth, and memory are considered throughout the entire work.
María Ignacia Rodríguez (1778-1850) was a wealthy and well-connected woman who lived in and around Mexico City during a period of major conflicts and transformations in Mexican society. The most outsized versions of the Güera Rodríguez myth remember her as a republican revolutionary, a powerful conspirator, and one of the architects of Mexican independence. This mythic Güera Rodríguez was an irresistible seductress who drew into her power the great men of her day (Alexander von Humboldt, Simón Bolívar, and Agustín de Iturbide among others). Arrom finds that few of these stories can be substantiated. María Ignacia Rodríguez was likely acquainted with von Humboldt, but may not have even met Bolívar. The notion that she slept...