1915–1934: (Women Navigating on Their Own Terms — The Limited Presence of Women in the Archive Suggesting That Beyond the Protection Cacos UP or Other Moveme…

1915–1934: (Women Navigating on Their Own Terms — The Limited Presence of Women in the Archive Suggesting That Beyond the Protection Cacos UP or Other Movements Presumed They Could Provide, Most Women Were Navigating the Conditions of Their Livelihood on Their Own Terms, Part of This Navigation Being How They Engaged the Documentation of Their Stories — Many Conscripted into Witness Testimonies Appearing in Occupation Archives While Others Took the Opportunity to Share Their Accumulated Experiences of Violence with Other Women): The limited presence of women in the archive suggests that beyond the protection the cacos, the Union Patriotique, or other antioccupation movements presumed they could provide, most women were navigating the conditions of their livelihood on their own terms. Neither the armed resistance nor the intellectual opposition could claim women as their constituency alone — women moved between and outside these formations, making decisions about their safety, their commerce, and their allegiances according to calculations no political organization fully comprehended. Part of this navigation was how they engaged the documentation of their stories. Many women were conscripted into a relationship with the state that resulted in their witness testimonies appearing in occupation archival records — testimony given not out of political commitment but out of the bureaucratic necessity of injury reports, court proceedings, and military investigations. In other cases, women took the opportunity to share their accumulated experiences of violence with other women, creating an informal archive of suffering and resistance that circulated outside the official record. The distinction mattered: between testimony compelled by the state and testimony offered to one’s community lay the entire distance between subjection and agency.