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Role of Women
Women did not simply just spectate throughout the Independence Wars of Latin America. Many women took sides on political issues and joined independence movements in order to participate on many different levels. Women could not help but act as caring relatives either as mother, sister, wives or daughters of the men who were fighting. Women created political organizations and organized meetings and groups to donate food and supplies to the soldiers. Some women supported the wars as spies, informants and combatants. Manuela Sáenz was a long term lover of Simón Bolívar and acted as his spy and confident and was secretary of his archive. She saved his life on two occasions, nursed wounded soldiers and has even been believed some historians to have fought in a few battles. Saenz followed Bolivar and his army through the independence wars and became to be known in Latin America as the “mother of feminism and women’s emancipation and equal rights.” Bolivar himself was a supporter of women’s rights and suffrage in Latin America. It was Bolivar who allowed for Sauenz to become the great pioneer of women’s freedom. He wanted to set the women of Latin America free from the oppression and inferiority of what the Spanish regime had established. Bolivar even made Saenz a Colonel of the Colombian Army due to her heroics which caused controversy because there were no women in the army at the time Women were not meant to be soldiers; men were supposed to indulge in the fighting and conflict. There were still plenty of women presence on the battlefields to help rescue and nurse soldiers. Some women fought alongside their husbands and sons on the battlefield. The majority of women assumed supportive and noncompetitive roles such as fund raising and caring for the sick. Revolution for women meant something differently than to men. Women saw revolution as a way to earn equal rights as men, such as voting, and to overcome the suppression of the superiority of men over women. Women were usually identified as victims during the independence wars for the women of Latin America were forced to sacrifice for the cause. The ideals of womanhood meant that women must sacrifice what the situation required such as a mother sacrificing her son or a virgin knowing she might be sacrificing motherhood or being wife due to the loss of many young men. This view meant that women were meant to contribute to independence in a supportive role while leaving the combat and politics in the hands of the men.