Embajadoras: Latina Servicewomen and Hemispheric Politics during World War II
FAIN: HB-282804-22
Valerie A. Martinez
Our Lady of the Lake University of San Antonio (San Antonio, TX 78207-4689)
Research and writing leading to a book on the Benito Juárez Squadron, a U.S. Army unit of Mexican American servicewomen recruited during World War II.
Embajadoras, Ambassadors, reconceptualizes traditional notions of diplomacy and international actors by investigating how the recruitment and service of Latina women in the Benito Juárez Squadron during World War II embodied the Pan-American ideal of an imagined hemispheric system of unity and reciprocity in the Americas. Embajadoras examines this pivotal moment in the history of U.S.-Latin American relations and Mexican American Civil Rights and argues that while male officers and civilian leaders utilized the women's bodies and military participation to further their diplomatic and social justice goals, Latina servicewomen in turn defined a gendered civil rights project that included the legal rights afforded to all U.S. citizens as well as full ownership of their highly policed lives, bodies, and sexuality.