This article explores the popularization of the concept of sentimental
boyhood during the anticolonial insurrections in the Ten Years’ War (1868–
1878) and the Caste War (1847–1901) in Cuba and the Yucatán Peninsula in
the early 1870s. The concept was popularized as childhood advocates articulated
a uniquely Mexican emotional standard in the process of child-rearing, promoting
the individual cultivation of honor, the management of anger, and the use
of fear as discipline. Beginning in the 1870s, Mexican educators popularized
theories of boyhood drawing on European notions of boyhood, including work
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. While educators promoted
Rousseau’s and Pestalozzi’s “sentimental notions of boyhood” in rural
Yucatán, pedagogues in Mexico City advocated the use of fear to instill obedience
among boys.
