Constructing Mexico: Marriage, Law and Women's Dependent Citizenship in the Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Centuries

Laws that made a marriedwoman's citizenship dependent on that of her husband characterisedMexican law, and that of most other nations as well, from the nineteenth into the early-twentieth century. Using an 1881 Supreme Court decision that upheld the expatriation of twoMexican sisters who married Spanish citizens, this article posits that dependent citizenship rules in Mexico affected women with financial resources more directly than they affected less privileged women. At the same time, class and status mitigated the potentially negative effects of dependent citizenship. Exploring women's dependent citizenship in Mexico in the late-nineteenth century reveals that both nationality and law were fluid concepts. With respect to nationality and the legal disabilities imposed on foreigners, law only unevenly penetrated elite levels of Mexican society. Law and jurisprudence articulated a particular vision of the Mexican nation that was not always realised.