She wrote prolifically all her life. By the time she was twenty (married to an Englishman and living in a small town near Cuzco), Matto was writing articles about the emancipation and education of women, as well as many other subjects. During the early 1870's, many of these pieces were published under various pseudonyms in periodicals such as the Heraldo, El Mercurio, El Ferrocarril, and El Eco de los Andes. In 1876, as director of the weekly El Recreo de Cuzco, she included many of her own editorials and essays in the newspaper.

When Matto became the editor of La Bolsa of Arequipa in 1881, the first woman in the Americas to head a prominent daily newspaper, she had a national forum for her articles, many of which relate to women's education, women's role in society, and women's often suppressed capabilities. As director and editor-in-chief in 1889 and 1890 of El Perú Ilustrado, the most important literary magazine of its time in Lima, she had an even larger audience for her views on feminism and education. A volume of collected essays was published in 1889, and in 1893, her own controversial feminist press published another collection of her nonfictional prose. She was famed for her essays in her biweekly paper, Los Andes, before her 1895 departure from Peru, and in exile in Buenos Aires, she wrote articles for various publications, including La Nación and La Prensa. She founded, edited and contributed essays to the bimonthly El Búcaro Americano, a social and literary magazine particularly interested in publishing the work of women writers.

Before her death in 1909, Matto completed a book of travel essays about her 1908 European trip. Another 1909 publication was Cuatro conferencias, which collected four of her public addresses. Three are lectures she gave in Spain on Argentina and Peru. She extolls the possibilities for women in Argentine education, and feels altogether that Argentina is the "gran Nación de Sur América" (21) which, once the new railroads are built, is sure to take over Bolivia and Peru and build them into one superpower. The excelentísimo señor Ministro Plenipotenciario del Perú was pressed into service to introduce Matto at the Madrid Unión Ibero-Americano del Nuevo Continente, and his introductory remarks are hilarious: he talks about everything other than this formidable woman he is technically introducing, elaborately distancing himself from any attack she might make on the Peruvian official hierarchy. But she was very discrete. She spoke at length about the socialism and agricultural abilities of the Incas and how Peru has never been so prosperous since. The fourth collected speech is entitled "La obrera y la mujer," and was given at the Consejo Nacional de Mujeres at the end of 1904.

She advocates a mixed belief in Spencer's social Darwinism and in resignation to God-given social stratifications and sexual differences:

She is speaking to working women, and she stresses the importance of meaningful work. The working woman is happier and better off than the idle middle-class or wealthy man-supported woman, and Matto extolls "la fortaleza que da la virtud del trabajo libre, porque sólo es libre quien a si mismo se basta." (56) Not only are working women free and empowered by their sense of self-determination, but they are crucial to the well-being of the nation. Men are easily caught up in strikes, political protests and civil wars, whereas women value families, stability and peace. They constitute an important influence in the workplace:

The steadiness and social commitedness of women are crucial in the enterprise of nation building. It is essential to "entregar la suerte de la naciones de la joven América al esfuerzo bien encaminado de la mujer." (57)

Clorinda Matto's last book was the lengthy Viaje de recreo which was in press in Valencia at the time she died in 1909. It is an account of her trip to Europe in 1908, when she visited Spain, France, England, Italy and Germany. Like so many of the 19th century Latin American accounts of journeys, and it is perhaps most interesting to compare it to Sarmiento's Viajes, it is an episodic account of self-discovery and self-definition as much as it is a detailed scrutiny of the monuments and self-presentations of European cultural heritage. It is in many ways Matto's most personal book, certainly the least polemical, though every page has its soapbox touches where she exults the "porvenir glorioso de la causa femenina" (47) after conversations with women writers in Madrid, where she carries on about the importance of literacy in the new American republics after she has visited the Times of London which she admires deeply for its "poder moral" (114). But these accounts are the core of her purpose in visiting Europe, and certainly the basis for her desire to write about her experience. Her passions are feminism, journalism and education, often in combination, as she seeks out "las mujeres que están al frente del movimiento feminista redentor" (289) who are the same women who often run schools, organize teachers' associations, and write editorials in support of their causes. Matto is always aware of how what she sees could or could not be transferred to Argentina and Peru. On the whole, she is intensely glad to feel herself American, especially when she is in France, which she dislikes. Paris seems frivolous to her. She analyzes this reaction at some length. She is in Paris on the 14th of July when the whole city:

Matto is curious about working women wherever she goes: about women who work in factories or department stores, about farm women and the quality of their lives, about women scientists --she spends some time with ten women who work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris-- and, always, about educators and the difficulties they confront and surmount. She is ecstatic about lower and middle class women in England, where a greater proportion of people recognize "como templo de felicidad el Trabajo." (135) In fact, in Britain,

In contrast to French women, with very few individual exceptions,

By "madres," Matto usually means women who put community concerns ahead of their own whims. She is also really prudish. She is shocked by the sight of couples kissing in public in France, and she mistrusts all the motives of French women:

She carries on for pages about the women coach drivers of Paris, about how instead of being honest working women, they choose this occupation in order to see and be seen. Of one, she sneers that "si en vez de ir al pescante hubiese preferido la silenciosa tarea de ama de llaves o de secretaria, ella se sentiría vejada, humillada la cerviz; ahora va con la frente levantada, manejando el látigo, con el cual, en momentos, creerá tal vez fustigar frentes humanas." (147) You would think that she would applaud advances in birth control measures, but again she thinks that the French are pursuing this research for the wrong reasons and that it is yet another example of the jettisoning of family and community values in favor of personal egoistic pleasure. Most distressing to Matto in Paris is the sight of Latin American visitors who come in family groups only to have the man park his wife and children in a luxury hotel and go out with other men to have a good time, "a hacer la vida parisien" (149) And women put up with this, and allow themselves to be bought off with new wardrobes without even seeing that this is wrong. "'Con llevar bastante ropa me conformo,' dice ella con voz beatífica, adorable, que denuncia su conformidad femenina, usada por mi América..." (149-150)

Throughout her life, Matto was a formidable, outspoken feminist and advocate of reforms. She was part of some of the bitterest controversies in late 19th century Peru and her essays chronicle her involvement in these issues. The five books of collected prose pieces I have just discussed, assembled by Matto during her lifetime, reflect her continuous life-long passion for women's rights and women's education, and her self-awareness as a spokesperson for these often unpopular causes.

(1991)