A Leader without Authority: Mary Consuelo de la Cruz Batiz and Missionary Women at New Norcia
Katharine Massam
Abstract
In 1904 Mary Consuelo de la Cruz Batiz, orginally from Mexico, arrived in Western Australia with six other women who were to form a community of missionaries alongside the Spanish Benedictine monks at New Norcia. Consuelo, the sole English speaker in the group, became the director of the new college for Aboriginal girls and exercised significant responsibility within the mission town. Within the fragmentary sources, the glimpses of Consuelo Batiz in the Spanish-language records depict a woman widely appreciated by missionaries and Aborigines for her energy, dedication and capacity to lead. This material sits uncomfortably alongside evidence recorded in English that show Consuelo captive to prevailing racist assumptions, and with her authority constrained by a highly charged field of religious, cultural and gendered assumptions. This chapter considers the handful of sources documenting Consuelo’s time at New Norcia, and argues that the disparity between accounts may reflect tensions between the roles Consuelo exercised and the identities she navigated as a Spanish-speaking missionary woman in a British colonial context.
Keywords
Consuelo Batiz, New Norcia, Benedictine, Teresian, missionary women
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