An exploration of women's involvement in the Latin American Wars of Independence

Author: Micaela Ravelo

Type of publication: Testimony

Title: Defence statement

Year of publication: 1836

Place created: Venezuela

Language: English

Location of text: In Arlene Díaz, Female Citizens, Patriarchs, and the Law in Venezuela, 1786-1904, University of Nebraska Press, 2004, pp.152-153. in Hallworth Library, University of Nottingham

Abstract: Speech made in court to defend her right to manage property she had inherited. Translated by Arlene Díaz.

Content:
If my husband considers himself innocent, if his conscience is clear, if he preserves intact his vows of love and faithfulness, if his life is mirror of continence and virtuosities upon which his disgraced wife should look, take the first stone and throw it at me, like Jesus Christ advised. Go ahead withoyour divorce, accuse me of adultery, vindicate myself the rights of the bridal bed, if you consider they have been violated. I know how to defend myself, and then I will be obliged to make public the sad realities, sour truths, and embarrasing deeds that alone will take from me his confession, the haughty deeds of his defense. I will know then how to give proof of the tragic history that underlay my marriage, so that the church can declare and judge for the world if it can consent [to what happened] according to canon law. Espinosa may exhaust all of his resources to fill me with shame, but take your hands off my property, which you have taken, let me defend myself at court and by law, do not disregard your duties of supporting me appropriately from what is mine, since he does not want to provide me from what is his as imposed by law... Don´t insult me believing I am defenceless, do not despoil me capriciously from my fortune, in order to succeed [in court] by the impotence and gagging incapacity of defense. If you have any trace of nobility when I am being persuaded in order to regain my affection and when indeed you want to take possession of my heart, when my property has been assaulted, when my fortune has been taken from me, with disrespect for my love and faith, then far from percieving a decent motive, it is ambition and grossness which, masked with the name of husband, claims his rights to satisfy his ignoble wishes.

Texts written by Micaela Ravelo:
1836 - Defence statement