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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

continued neglect, Albuquerque women's literacy, Manifest Destiny

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

History

Abstract

The rhetoric of the Mexican-American War, and indeed, the entire expansionist era, claimed that the United States had a God-given responsibility to spread their white, Protestant, capitalistic, and democratic civilization to the heathen of the world. Though sometimes implied, and sometimes explicit, the notion included the idea of educating the barbarians who held a tenuous grasp on the land. Education in this sense meant indoctrination into American culture, including the English language, high literacy rates, gender roles, and a multitude of other facets.1 During the middle part of the nineteenth century, Northern states moved rapidly toward a truly literate society, while other areas of the country, the education of the masses remained far less hopeful. In the newly acquired territories from Mexico, the populace struggled with a transition to American ways of life, government, and language. Statistics on women’s literacy rates under the Mexican rule are extremely nebulous, but had the United States fulfilled the culturally imperialist promises made in the theory of Manifest Destiny, the women of an up and coming city like Albuquerque, New Mexico, could have expected a significant, if not rapid, improvement in their educational level. Like many of the other promises implicit in American ideals, however, the level of women’s education floundered in the face of economic upheaval and Anglo-Saxon disregard.

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