La Aljaba was a four-page periodical published on Tuesdays and Fridays at the Buenos Aires Imprenta del Estado from 16 November 1830 to 14 January 1831, amounting to eighteen numbers in total. Each number cost three reales, or three pesos for a monthly subscription. The single-sheet prospectus is undated. The periodical was patriotic, ‘dedicada al bello sexo Argentino’ as its subtitle ran, and contained serialised essays on women's conduct and education, national organisation, and poetry. Signed anonymously by ‘la editora’, it has been attributed to the Montevidean writer and poet Petrona Rosende de Sierra and is therefore believed to have been the first Latin American periodical to be edited by a woman. As described in Chapter 5, La Aljaba was ridiculed by the concurrent periodical La Argentina for its professed strong moral principles. La Aljaba defined and championed a clear role and identity for revolutionary elite Buenos Aires women.

Unlike the majority of texts included in this study, the influence of feminist historiography has ensured La Aljaba a place in Argentine print history. In the endeavour to take a less patriarchal view of the past, historians such as Auza (1988, 2004), Myers (1995) and Sosa de Newton (1980) have concluded that La Aljaba was a ‘feminist’ publication and celebrated it as such. However, these scholars have not analysed the text in detail nor explored the periodical in its specific context of post-independence transition – ‘las tormentas y tempestades que cargan nuestra atmósfera política’ in the dramatic words of La Aljaba. Similarly to scholarly treatment of Castañeda's pamphlets and La Argentina, this generalising tendency constitutes a formulaic and simplistic approach to women's history and sidelines other themes and issues which arise. This chapter will argue that the author of La Aljaba attempted to reconcile traditional upper-class gender ideology with republican constructions of active citizenship, productivity and progress, and so interrogate the reductive feminist label the journal has acquired. Weaving together traditional and modern models of gender for women who identified themselves as respectable, educated and patriotic, La Aljaba is a more complex text than has so far been acknowledged.

Petrona Rosende de Sierra

According to Antonio Zinny, the editor of La Aljaba was Petrona Rosende de Sierra (1787–1863). Carlos Correa Luna provides the further evidence that a Petrona Rosende formally presented the first eight numbers of La Aljaba to the Buenos Aires Sociedad de Beneficencia.