Patriarchy in Flux and The Invisible Women of the Mexican Revolution

Teresa Anselmo
Professor Waldo Martin
Fall 2015

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Bachelor of Arts Requirements in History, The
University of California, Berkeley

Patriarchy in Flux and The Invisible Women of the Mexican Revolution

Professor Waldo Martin
Fall 2015

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Bachelor of Arts Requirements in History, The
University of California, Berkeley

HERMINDA GALINDO, A FORGOTTEN HEROINE

In 1909, bright-eyed and defiant Hermila Galindo departed the comfort of her Villa Lerdo
home to join a rebel organization in Torren, Coahuila a bold move that defied both middleclass and gender expectations. Her first dabbles with radicalism and nationalism influenced her
unique brand of feminism, too controversial even for Mexicos first feminist convention some

seven years later.1 Indeed, Galindos transformation from an anonymous Venustiano Carranza
supporter to his personal secretary portrays the extent to which she shared and exceeded his
revolutionary convictions.2 From 1914 to 1919, she championed gender equality in her new
position of relative authority. Carranza further encouraged her ambitious plans for advancing
womens rights, facilitating the distribution of feminist propaganda in the southern Mexican
states. He even flaunted the limits of female respectability by granting Galindo a highly visible
role as his representative in Cuba and Colombia, where she publicized his policies in reciprocity.3
Indeed, she dutifully assumed her role in the public sphere, thus confronting marianismo, the
overarching expectations of female modesty and domesticity.
In 1915, Galindo published the magazine La Mujer Moderna [The Modern Woman], which
featured both writings of other prominent Latin American feminists and the liberal ideals that
made her so intellectually appealing to Carranza.4 Her articulate prose strategically intertwined
the issue of suffrage to womens inherent virtues: for example, she argued the vote would act as
a tool to combat moral ills.5 Here, she actively engaged in the Revolution not with her supportive
or combative skills, but her wits. Though other women were hesitant to label themselves as
feminists, Galindo consciously embraced the term and adopted a shockingly liberal stance on
divorce, sexual agency, prostitution, and anticlericalism.
1 Marta Eva Rocha, The Faces of Rebellion, in Stephanie Mitchell and Patience A. Schell, ed., The Womens
Revolution in Mexico, 1910-1953 (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006), 19.
2 Venustiano Carranza, along with Emiliano Zapata and Francisco Pancho Villa, led a revolutionary faction
vying for control subsequent to Porfirio Dazs overthrow. He became the first president of the new republic in 1917
and restored constitutional law. Compared to his counterparts, Carranza was relatively socially conservative,
especially regarding land reform. He was assassinated in 1920 after a failed endorsement of relative unknown citizen
for president against the more popular General lvaro Obregn.
3 Rocha, 25.
4 Historians of gender and sexuality oftentimes identify the inception of La Mujer Moderna as fundamental to the
first phase of the Mexican feminist movement.
5 Katherine Elaine Bliss, Theater of Operations, in Stephanie Mitchell and Patience A. Schell, ed., The Womens
Revolution in Mexico, 1910-1953 (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006), 133.

The Primer Congreso Feminista [First Feminist Congress] in January 1916 represented an
unprecedented culmination of womens achievements that occurred during the Revolution. Men
and women alike convened in Mrida, Yucatn to debate the liberation of women from the yoke
of tradition, the role of education, womens future in a society of intense modernization, and
how to prime women to be a leading element in society. 6 Though Galindo herself could not
attend, as she was busy attending to Carranzas international business, a memorandum entitled
Women in the Future was read in her absence. The unapologetic speech offended several
delegates because of its egregious claim that women and men possessed equally promiscuous sex
drives. Galindo, now labeled an extremist, welcomed the controversy that boiled afterwards.
Consistent with her defiant nature, she refused to concede her assertion and rejected allegations
of immorality.7
Unfortunately, Carranza failed to create the change he promised during his time as president, and
when he died in 1920, Galindos symbolic death in the public sphere transpired as well. In 1923,
she married Miguel Enriquez Topete, finally accepting her feminine duty as a wife, and entered
in voluntary exile in the United States until 1939. Thus ended a short, but productive, career of
lobbying for womens sociopolitical equality.8
***
Revolutions are imagined as moments that engender all sorts of sociopolitical possibilities and
novel ideas. Indeed, rhetoric of equality and the eradication of the existing order, preached
during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917), gave women, ranging from the radical Galindo to
6 Francesca Miller, Latin American Women and the Search for Social Justice (University Press of New England,
1991), 76.
7 Ibid., 120.
8 Rocha, 26.

more conservative Catholic feminists, aspirations for increased gender equality. But why did
women not gain suffrage until 1953? Why was the feminist movement, which emerged during
the Porfirian period and solidified during the Revolution, not successful in this respect? How was
patriarchy so readily re-established and even modernized after the war years? If not suffrage, did
women achieve anything in terms of gender equality during this period? Or is it more useful to
understand the concept of Revolution via its natural-historical etymology: the instance of
revolving and an eventual futile return to an original point?

INTRODUCTION
For this project, I examine broadly how patriarchy operated in the years before (Porfirian
Era: 1876-1910), during (1910-1917), and after the Mexican Revolution (1917-1953), and how
women and men negotiated their identities within this system. After a brief introduction to the
preceding era and long withstanding ideologies, I analyze the rhetoric of various newspapers and
corridos (popular ballads) that considered the role of women in Revolution.

Thesis
Though many women attempted to blur the presumptions of machismo and marianismo
during the violent years of the Revolution (1910-1917), the patriarchal order undermined their
attempts after the glory of war had passed, despite imagination of revolution as a total
destruction of the old order.9 During the initial years of revolt, men tolerated and even discussed
womens progress to some degree, but remained comparatively conservative in their expectations
for female advancement.10 Thus, women were the active agents in this period, acting as
soldaderas, writers, or feminists following the likes of Hermila Galindo, all flaunting the
confines of marianismo. However, such accomplishments were eroded after the Revolution, as
men deconstructed the important role of these women in an attempt to modernize and reinstate
the patriarchal order that reigned in the Porfirian era. Thus, I challenge the romanticized image of
the Mexican Revolution and argue that it was not as revolutionary for women as is popularly
and historically imagined.

9 See Chapter 1, The Gendered Ideologies of Latin America of this paper for a contextual understanding of
marianismo and machismo.
10 By men, I refer to middle and upper class, usually White or Mestizo, men. These were generally the ideological
movers and shakers of the Revolution.

Patriarchy
My work heavily relies on the concept of patriarchy to explain how women were historically
subjugated both ideologically and in practice. By patriarchy, I denote the inherently
asymmetrical power relationships between dominant men and subordinate women. I adopt a
Marxist interpretation in which patriarchy operates as a sexual hierarchy, inextricably linked to
class, in which women are expected to act as mothers, consumers, and domestic laborers but not
participants in the public sphere. 11 Patriarchal control manifests as the denial of necessary access
to economic resources. Patriarchy is further reinforced by self-serving ideologies about gender
inequality and vice versa. I also implicitly utilize Michel Foucaults theories of patriarchy and
bodies in relation to discipline and control. For example, patriarchy produces docile bodies, in
which a woman lives her body as seen by another, by an anonymous patriarchal Other, and
attempts to constrain female sexuality. Accordingly, women live in a state of conscious and
permanent visibility in which the mind is disciplined as well. 12 Thus, patriarchy does not simply
manifest in ideological terms, but imbues consequences in material reality.

Chapter Outlines
This narrative is multi-faceted and henceforth moves chronologically. In Chapter One, I provide
an overarching understanding of the gendered ideologies of marianismo and machismo. I
demonstrate how these ideologies operated during the Porfirian Era, which directly preceded the
Revolution, to contextualize how men and women envisioned their identity. I also touch upon the

11 Veronica Beechy, "On Patriarchy." Feminist Review 3.1 (1979): 66.

12 See Sandra Lee Bartky, Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power, Writing on the
Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory. Eds. Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury (New
York: Columbia UP, 1997), 140 for a more intensive discussion of Foucaults theory on patriarchy and her
criticisms.

roots of Mexican feminism and the emergence of resistance to the naturalized patriarchal order.13
In Chapter Two, I narrow my focus to the violent years of the Revolution. Here, I describe
womens social and ideological achievements, primarily as soldaderas. However, I also locate
burgeoning male anxieties owing to womens increased role in the public sphere, as expressed in
even the most radical newspapers of the era. I contend that these served as a harbinger of the reestablishment and modernization of patriarchy. Lastly, I conclude with a brief analysis of how
womens achievements became institutionalized, but dismantled ideologically in the years to
come. Chapter Three examines how the role of the soldadera and extending to womens
rights as a whole was deconstructed in popular memory. This marks the beginning of what I
call the modernization of patriarchy. While legal codes that existed pre-Revolution may have
been more stringent, the patriarchal order continued to subjugate women ideologically.

Sources Utilized
While I rely on a plethora of secondary literature for contextual information, the bulk of my
paper is based on primary source research. I predominately utilize three types of primary
sources: newspapers, corridos, and the El Taller de Grfica Popular collection.
Newspapers, though the published articles often reflect the opinions of the editors, are
sufficient to gauge public thought; besides promoting certain ideals, they engaged in feedback
loops in which they published articles that their audience desired. I focus primarily on
Regeneracin, an anarchist, anti-Madera, and anti-Carranza periodical that circulated from 1905
to 1918.14 In 1905, due to persecution from the Daz administration, production moved to the

13 My use of the term feminism, does not generally equate with women seeking gender equality and it is important
to recognize that not all women, particularly Catholic devotees, desired such radical reform. However, Hermila
Galindo was a self-proclaimed feminist.
14 Courtesy of the Archivo Digital de Ricardo Flores Magn, Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia.

United States. However, the paper survived in the underground Mexico City press, where the
majority of its readership lived. Circulation reached thirty thousand copies in February 1906,
unfortunately the last recorded statistic for the paper.

15

Brothers Ricardo (1874-1922) and

Enrique Flores Magn (1877-1954) edited the paper while in exile. The former had a prominent
following, self-proclaimed magonistas who heeded his anarcho-communist school of thought
and sought violent economic and political revolution. I chose to survey Regeneracin precisely
because of its leftist leanings; at least in an international context, anarchists, instruments of a
larger early twentieth-century movement, were generally the most outspoken and favorable
towards gender equality.
I also examine articles of La Opinin (not to be confused with the contemporary Los Angeles
based paper), a short-lived newspaper published in Jalapa, Veracruz from June 1904 to December
1913.16 Unfortunately, little information is recorded about the history of this paper, despite the
Hemeroteca Nacional de Mxico archive harboring over eleven thousand digitized pages. After
1910, La Opinin was, however, associated with the La Prensa Asociada de Los Estados
[Associated Press of the United States], suggesting its popularity as an authoritative source of
information. One Ing Francisco S. Arias, whose history has seemingly been lost to us, directed
the paper.17 I selected this periodical because it is a paper that has not been analyzed in scholarly
literature and I was curious about its origins and opinions. Furthermore, La Opinin is more or
less an average paper and provides insight into the anxieties of men from a particular location
in Mexico; thus, my conclusions can be extrapolated to the local and perhaps the nation as a
whole. My analysis reveals that the periodical, boldly anti-Daz and pro-Madero, also fell within
15 Ricardo Flores Magn, Dreams of Freedom: A Ricardo Flores Magn Reader, ed. Chaz Bufe and Mitchell
Cowen Verter (Oakland: AK Press, 2005), 340.
16 Courtesy of Hemeroteca Nacional de Mxico Newspaper Archives.
17 Evidently, Arias did occupy a national political office during his lifetime, as his name appears in Peter Smiths
study on Political Elites in Mexico, 1900-1971.

the liberal spectrum, though it was clearly not as radical as Regeneracin. It primarily reported
domestic and international events, but frequently published cheeky or satirical articles on its
second and third pages.
I also draw information about women in the Revolution from corridos: a musical ballad that
embraces the epic, lyric, and narrative genres and embellishes the history of male heroic
figures.18 Corridos constitute an important source because they circulate among the general
public, especially the non-literate indigenous, and thus do not reflect the particular dominant
subset of society middle and upper class men. The corridos I chose to analyze are Corrido
del Combate del 15 de Mayo en Torren and La Adelita, the latter quite well known in the
field of Mexican revolutionary history.19
Lastly, I investigate the Las Estampas de la Revolucin Mexicana (1947) portfolio as part of the
Bancroft Librarys El Taller de Grfica Popular collection.

20

El Taller de Grfica Popular

(TGP) [The Peoples Print Workshop] was a graphic art studio founded in Mexico City in 1937.
The entirety of the Prints of the Mexican Revolution portfolio consists of eight-five items, and
illustrates Mexican history between the Daz dictatorship and the year 1947. The TGP intended
to distribute their work to the masses. They published prints in magazines, distributed pamphlets
to the public, affixed posters on walls in Mexico City, and publicized themselves by producing
illustrations for films, advertisements, and books. However,theentireportfolioitselfwasabit
costlyandlikelyonlyavailabletothemoreprivilegedclasses. 21 Nonetheless, Taller de Grfica
18 Mara Herrera-Sobek. The Mexican Corrido: A Feminist Analysis (Indiana University Press, 1993), xiii.
19 Various Artists. The Mexican Revolution Corridos. Dueto America, 1997. CD.In order to gage what
corridos survived the Mexican Revolution, I listened to the songs and lyrics listed on the track list of each disc.

20 Las Estampas de la Revolucin Mexicana, Taller de Grfica Popular, 1947. Bancroft Library. University of
California, Berkeley.
21 See Mark McDonald, Revolution on Paper: Mexican Prints 1910-1940 (British Press, 2009), 33 for further
discussion of the history of the TGP.

Popular was designed to entertain and inform Mexicans of all origins about the peculiarity of
their culture.

CHAPTER 1.
BEFORE PICTURE: PLIGHT OF WOMEN DURING THE PORFIRIATO

The ideological and social advancements of Revolutionary women cannot be understood without
an acute awareness of the omnipresent social pressures and gender ideologies that reigned during
the era. Here, gender ideology refers to widespread doctrines that normalize inequality, in which
the societally assigned roles for each sex cannot be separated from the issue of political
representation. For much of Mexicos history, two attitudes, machismo and its female corollary,
marianismo, structured women and mens standing in both the public and private spheres. While
these concepts warrant an entire research paper dedicated solely to their origins and
dissemination in Latin America, I shall only provide cursory definitions in order to contextualize
my research.

The Gendered Ideologies of Latin America: Machismo and Marianismo

Unique to the New World, but with deeply embedded roots in Europe, the ideal of
machismo originated during the Spanish conquest. Virile and young conquistadors first
championed the ideal of donjuanismo, the sexual triumph over indigenous women as symbols of
military supremacy. 22 From this, machismo evolved to instill values such as familismo, respeto
(respect), dignidad (dignity), simpatia (niceness), confianza (trust) and active citizenship in the
public sphere.23 Machismo also incorporates donjuanismos vision of heteronormative

22 According to Ann Livermore in The Origins of Don Juan, the origins of donjuanismo were elicited in El
Burlador de Sevilla y Convidad de Piedra [The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest], published around 1630.
However, the legend of Don Juan itself is centuries older, and was very well known and revered among Spaniards.

23 Fernando A. Ortiz and Kenneth G. Davis, Machismo, in M.A. Dela Torre, ed., Hispanic
American Religious Cultures (2009), 340.

hypersexuality the sexual conquest of multiple women and preoccupation with honor and
shame.24
On the other hand, marianismo emerged as the female corollary to machismo, where the ideal
woman is to model herself after the Virgin Mary. This ideology idolizes femininity, sexual purity,
and childbearing. Womens personality qualities, that of obedience, submission, modesty, and
fidelity, are expected to perfectly oppose that of men, creating a naturalized order and balance.
Marianismo presumes spiritual and moral superiority. Furthermore, women are to stand by their
patriarchal authorities at all costs, and nobly endure whatever physical and emotional suffering is
inflicted. Thus, marianismo extols a true woman as one of la casa [the house], while less
virtuous women are of la calle [the street].25 As per Foucaults understanding of patriarchy, the
female body is objectified and revered solely for its virginity and beauty. In the Latin American
psyche, marianismo directly opposes malinchismo, the portrayal of women as the foundation of
treachery and promiscuous sexual behavior. This idea has been repeatedly invoked as the
dichotomy of the virgin and the whore. Hermila Galindo expressed neither submission nor
humility nor meekness, and, as such, much of the conservative Mexican society likely
stereotyped her as a woman of la calle.
My work understands machismo and marianismo as ideologies that governed the daily lives of
Mexican men and women well into the twentieth century. These ideologies are exceptional in
that they never remained intellectual ideas propagated by a selective group of middle and upper
class reformers. Here, I utilize Antonio Gramscis theory of ideology to understand machismo
24 Ibid. It is important to remember that machismo differs in the Western psyche. Western contemporaries
envisioned machismo as aggressive hypermasculinity, an obsession with status, power, and control at any cost,
rigid self-sufficiency, misogynistic and domineering attitudes typically ascribed to authoritative husbands,
patriarchal fathers, paternalistic landlords, and abusive womanizers.
25 Evelyn Stevens, Marianismo: The Other Face of Machismo in Latin America in Gertrude M. Yeager, ed.,
Confronting Change, Challenging Tradition: Woman in Latin American History (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
1997), 5.

and marianismos power. Ideology is normalized primarily via consent and is not an imposed
top-down force. Also, ideology is not a static set of ideas, but includes the arrays of common
sense. While the attitudes of machismo and marianismo may have originally derived from
artificial concepts that justified the actions of conquistadors and the ruling classes, they have
since been appropriated and naturalized.26 Indeed, ideology penetrated the cultural atmosphere in
its entirety.

Patriarchy and the Porfirian Period (1876-1910)

In many ways, the hierarchal Porfirian society starkly contrasted the egalitarian idealistic vision
proliferated by Revolutionaries. However, I maintain that machismo and marianismo survived
the upheaval of the Revolution and persisted well into the mid-century, though in a modernized
and re-established manner. Thus, it is important to understand how these ideologies operated
during the Porfiriato, and how male and female actors negotiated their identities in this period of
relative stability.
Succinctly, the Porfiriato (1876-1910), strictly defined by the presidential regime of
Porfirio Daz, directly preceded the turmoil of the Revolution, and its rampant social inequality
and corruption has been attributed as an aggravating cause of revolution. 27 Daz was devoted to
modernization, industrialization, and scientific progress mirrored after European, and especially
French, fashion. The eras motto Orden y El Progreso [Order and Progress] significantly
inspired by Auguste Comtes motto for positivism demonstrates the presidents admiration for
European philosophy.28 Indeed, the Porfiriato is retrospectively characterized by copious foreign
26 Joseph A. Woolcock, Politics, Ideology and Hegemony in Gramsci's Theory, Social and Economic
Studies 34.3 (1985): 199210.
27 Again, an entire historical monograph could be devoted to assessing the reasons for Revolution, but for the sake
of brevity, I will only cover what I deem most important to my thesis.
28 Moiss Gonzlez Navarro, "Sociedad y Cultura en el Porfiriato." Mxico, Conaculta (1994), 86.

investment and the rejection of indigenous traditions. By 1910, only two percent of the
population owned land due to this foreign investment and oligarchic corruption, a direct cause of
the Revolution that same year.29
Ideologies Reinforced and the Roots of Mexican Feminism
Despite Porifirio Dazs emphasis on progress, evidently he did not envision progress as
encompassing womens participation in the public sphere. Instead, Daz associated development
and patriotism with masculinity, and conflated a modern nation with women following their
marianismo commitments.30 For example, the Mexican Civil Code of 1884 curtailed the rights of
women both at home and in the workplace. The law, modernization policies reminiscent of
Western style coverture, endowed husbands with institutionalized authority over their wives
property and earnings, and prioritized their supremacy over children. Furthermore, the law
illegalized separation, except when initiated by the husband.

31

This law was arguably the

Porfiriatos foremost symbol of female inequality.

Of course, it is too simplistic to assume that Porfirian policies, reinforcing machismo and
marianismo ideals, existed as all-powerful entities. It is also problematic to surmise that
patriarchal society ensured women had no leverage in fashioning their own experiences. While a
formalized feminist movement did not yet exist in the Porfiriato to challenge the norms of
machismo and marianismo, the burgeoning roots of resistance can be traced to this era.
According to historian Gabriella Cano, feminism was perceived as a double threat to the
Mexican woman. A masculinizing effect was feared, and at the same time feminism was

29 Ibid., 69.
30 Gabriela Cano, "The Porfiriato and the Mexican Revolution: Constructions of Feminism and Nationalism" in
Ruth Roach Pierson and Nupur Chaudhuri, eds., Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and
Race (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998): 108.
31 Miller, 78.

attacked on the grounds that it was a foreign influence Saxon and Protestant alien to the ways
of the Mexican woman.32 These early anti-feminists envisioned it as cataclysmic force that
imperiled not only womens unique feminine identity, but also Mexicos national identity, the
two closely intertwined in their imagination. Likewise, while Dazs unprecedented urbanization
and modernization policies forced many women out of their homes to earn a second wage, these
middle-class women almost exclusively worked as schoolteachers or for the government,
interpreted as extensions of their feminine duties.33 Theoretically, women could also obtain legal
or medical degrees, granted they faced the tide of discrimination and ridicule from their male
peers. Nonetheless, working women enjoyed freedom outside patriarchal control in the home,
and a separate wage that they could ideally spend as they pleased. This shift inevitably disrupted
traditional rural family patterns, and accelerated clamors for gender equality.
As also demonstrated by Hermila Galindos later experience at the 1916 Feminist Congress,
many women still remained moderate in their desire for equality, even as impending Revolution
accelerated calls for equality. For example, a brief examination of Violetas de Anhuac (18871889), the premier feminist newspaper of the era, reveals that women attempted to assert some
semblance of presence in the public sphere, as women penned all the featured articles. However,
headline columns still mainly concerned their wifely and motherly duties. For example, they
sought greater expansion in female education not for their own personal fulfillment, but so they
could act as enlightened and intelligent mothers. Indeed, these ideas allied with Dazs idea of
progress, as his administration subsidized their weekly publication, and he supported, but highly
regulated, feminist organizations. 34
32 Cano, 107.
33 Anna Macas, Against All Odds: the Feminist Movement in Mexico to 1940 (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1982), 12.
34 Gabriela Cano, "Ms de un Siglo de Feminismo en Mxico." Debate Feminista (1996): 346-7.

CHAPTER 2.
PROGRESS DURING THE REVOLUTION (1910-1917)
This section investigates whether women alone resisted and/or negotiated the ideologies of
machismo and marianismo, or whether cultural pundits (almost exclusively men), equipped with
the necessary tools for revealing the normalizing qualities of ideological discourse, did so
instead. I contend that women actively carved a new role for themselves during a time of great
social turbulence. Men tolerated these new roles to some degree and acknowledged equality and
intellectual capability, but expressed anxiety and remained comparatively conservative in their
pleas for gender equality. Nonetheless,theRevolutionengenderedunprecedentedpossibilities
forfemalestoengageinthepublicsphere.

Por la liberacin de la soldadera

Just as a revolution cannot be polarized into categories of good and bad, the
participation within cannot be so easily generalized. Despite the imperatives of marianismo,
decrying that women were to stay in the home as a moral force while men entered the battlefield,
men did not fight the Revolution alone. For example, the August 3, 1912 edition of
Regeneracin rather straightforwardly reported a lackluster description of a sanguine battle:
DicequeenelcombatequeseregistrenElOro,Dgo.,conlacolumnadelrevolucionario
Argumedo,ibanvariasmujeres,cuatrodeellascomocabecillas,yotrascomodocecatorce,
que seguan los rebeldes.35 This short quip, situated snugly among accounts of other
35 Viva Tierra y Libertad!: Adelante Guerilleros!, Regeneracin [Los Angeles, California], August 3,
1912. In the battle that took place in El Oro, Durango, with the column of revolutionary Argumendo [supporter of
Victoriano Huerta] were several women, four of them as leaders, and others, like twelve or fourteen, who followed
the rebels.
Another representative example can be found in the English section of the paper in March 12, 1910, an anecdote of
how 5 Women, 3 Men defeated an army.

skirmishes,speakstotheubiquityofwomenwithintherealmofperilanddeath.Likewise,the
CinematgrafoPolicial[PoliceBlotter]sectionofLa Opinin atteststotheirpresence:Tomasa
Roga,soldadera,porpretenderintroducirSEIStripitasdealcoholalcuartel. Quinseresa
Tomasa?YocreoquehadeserunaZapatistafungidodesoldadera.36 As an aside, it is
curious how the author of this brief report associated crime with the
Zapatistas. This invokes the question of whether this was a subtle criticism of
Zapatas policy, which allowed women to be officers and in his intellectual
circle. Nevertheless,womenwereasurepresenceduringtheviolentyearsoftheRevolution,
significantenoughtodemandareportontheiractivities.
The precise meaning of soldadera, however, is difficult to extract. Contrary to a direct
translation that states otherwise, its denotation does not necessarily equate to a female soldier. 37
Some soldaderas traveled with the Revolutionary armies of Villa, Carranza, Madero, and Zapata.
Agustn Casasola, whose experiences are immortalized in the Casasola Archive, captured the
imponderabilia of everyday life with his camera lens. For example, one of his lesser-known
photographs depicts three couples dancing, while musicians strum jollily in the background,
again attesting to the ubiquity of females at war camps. 38 Soldaderas also prepared meals and
provided much needed medical attention. They, however, did not operate solely as camp
followers or as soldiers women. While Villa mostly relegated women to support roles, Zapata

36 Cinematgrafo Policial, La Opinin [Jalapa, Veracruz], October 3, 1913.Tomasa Roga, soldadera,

tried to bring alcohol to the barracks. Who is this Tomasa? I think she must be a soldadera to the Zapatistas.
37 Elizabeth Salas, Soldaderas in the Mexican Military: Myth and History (University of Texas Press, 1990),
122.Other contemporary diminutives for soldaderas included auianime (pleasure women), juanas, capitanas
(captains), cucarachas (cockroaches), viejas (old women), galletas (cookies) and adelitas.

38 Agustn Vctor Casasola, "Title Unknown" (ca. 1910-1913), UC Santa Barbara Special Collections, photograph.
See Appendix A for reproduction.

allowed them to participate in his intellectual circle and as officers. 39 Thus, many women
prioritized their country over the comfort of their home and fought on the front lines. Casasola
also captured this vision of the soldadera in one 1912 photograph. Here, two mujeres pose
confidently alongside their male comrades, strapped not with crossed shawls (as is typical in
contemporary and later artistic depictions of soldaderas; see Chapter Three), but with bandoliers.
Their hair is neatly tucked back and they are not constrained by heavy dresses or skirts. 40 These
women challenged marianismo ideals by presenting themselves as bold and combative, not meek
and submissive, and also blurred the performative aspects of gender by donning masculine dress.
Thus, as historian Elizabeth Salas states: The soldaderas cannot be categorized into a single
mold or type. They were as diverse as their experiences. They had differing family backgrounds,
regional and class affiliation, and personality.41 Hierarchies also existed among the soldaderas:
accordingly, men respected the women who were wives and daughters of soldiers and considered
them superior to those involved in loose sexual unions or prostitution. 42 Thus, the dichotomy of
the virgin and the whore did not vanish with the coming of revolution.
Yet, despite the soldaderas varying roles, the implications of liberation resonated among all.
When a woman trailed her soldier on his journey, she departed the domestic sphere, the central
location of femininity. Other soldaderas shed their attachments to patriarchal figures, now able to
engage in plentiful open relationships outside of the watchful eye of the family and the church.
Indeed, women secured control of their own sexuality by engaging in pre-marital and adulterous
relationships.43 These soldaderas sexual deviance and visibility in the public sphere directly
39 Salas, 40.
40 Agustn Vctor Casasola, "Tierra y Libertad! Images of the Mexican Revolution Exhibition" (April 13, 1912),
Centro Cultural de la Raza Archives CEMA 12, photograph. See Appendix B for reproduction.
41 Salas, 69.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid., 110.

challenged marianismo ideals of purity and privacy. As mujer de la calle [women of the street], it
was implied that they were loose and devoid of patriarchal supervision similar to Hermila
Galindos actions when she departed home and faithfully served Carranza. Interestingly, La
Opinin occasionallyreportedthesexualactivitiesofthesoldaderas.Onesuchreportannounced:
Carmen Gallegos, soldadera, que fue del 20Batalln al llegar aqui a Veracruz sehizo de
relaciones amorosas con un sargento de 21, sin saber que ese soldado tenia otrallamada
AngelaTorres.44Thisquoteprovidesanexampleoftherelativesexualfreedomsoldaderas(or
atleastCarmenGallegos)harboredandpreciselyhowvisiblethesepremaritalaffairswereto
thepubliceye.However,thenewspaperalsoactedas amoralarbitrator,implicitlypolicing
womenssexualbehavior.
Evidently, women had ample opportunity to enjoy a life free of the confines of the domestic.
However, it is difficult to discern what the average man thought of the soldadera, a figure that
undoubtedly contributed to anxiety about masculinity in an already rapidly changing society.
Some degree of male reaction can be gleaned through the popularity of Corrido del Combate
del 15 de Mayo en Torren [Corrido of the Battle of May 15 th in Torren] and the story it
narrated. Under the pseudonym Pedro, the celebrated Petra Herrera disguised her sex in order
to fight alongside her male counterparts. A distinguished soldier, Petra embraced whatever duties
were assigned to her, and even commanded a force of two hundred men. Once she established a
worthy reputation, she revealed her true identity, usually a risky confession that led to sexist
discrimination and, at worst, dishonorable discharge. 45 However, she already established her

44 Cinematgrafo Policial, La Opinin [Jalapa, Veracruz], July 18, 1911.Carmen Gallegos, soldadera,
of the 20th Battalion, arriving here to Veracruz, was in an affair with a sergeant of 21st [battalion], not knowing that
the soldier had another [can not discern] called Angela Torres.
45 Herrera-Sobek, 92.

credibility as a fierce fighter. As the corridos lyrics illustrate: La valiente Petra Herrera / al
combata se lanz / siendo siempre la primera / ella el fuego comenz. 46 In the recorded corridos
of the Mexican Revolution, soldaderas often remain nameless, referred to in passing if at all.
However, Petra Herreras name survives the passage of time, and significantly, this corrido also
adopts a prominent pattern of heroic naming that commanded authority and veracity.

47

The

popularity and immortalization of Herreras bravery in this ballad indicates some sort of
toleration, and perhaps even reverence, for women who sacrificed their femininity for their
country. Nonetheless, it is important to note that a corridos focus on a particular woman is
exceedingly rare, especially considering the sheer number of other soldaderas that engaged in
battle.48 Transgression of sexual norms and gender ambiguity was very rarely celebrated only
in a time when the nation desperately needed passionate fighters. It was expected that after the
Revolution, women take up their old roles of whore and virgin in the spaces assigned to them
(the brothel, the church, or, most important, the home). 49 Indeed, while the Petra Herrera corrido
was well-known during the Revolution, it fell out of favor in later years, as evidenced by the fact
that it only survives in Herrera-Sobeks work. Petra Herreras aggressive and heroic personality
simply did not conform to the post-Revolutionary metanarrative about the participants in
Revolution. This corrido, with its lyrics usually reserved for male heroes, did not fit comfortably
into the nations collective imagination (to be further discussed in Chapter Three).
46 Ibid., 94. To the valiant Petra Herrera / to battle she entered / always being the first / to start the exchange of
fire.

47 Ibid., 93.
48 There are no recorded statistics of exactly how many soldaderas served in Revolutionary armies. However,
Elizabeth Salas quotes the April 13, 1913 edition of the Mexican Herald, which gives some idea of how many
women were involved in the Revolution: More than forty women, including all of the female population of a small
village within two kilometers of Jojutla were carried away by Zapatistas. This attests to how the Revolution
penetrated all regions of Mexico and how frequently women offered their services to the military.
49 Joanne Hershfield, Mexican Cinema / Mexican Woman, 1940-1950 (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press,
1996), 29.

Soldaderas, no matter what duties they actually performed, carved an active role for themselves
during the Revolution and the new egalitarian society it propagated. Hermila Galindo, too,
shared the desire to have a life dedicated to more than just a husband and children, and to better
improve her country.

Equality to What Extent?: An Examination of Regeneracin and La Opinin

While corridos narrated historical tales and spread news to the illiterate masses,
revolutionary newspapers disseminated cultural attitudes to the literate. In retrospect, both of
these primary sources reveal increasing male anxieties about the established influence of women
in the public sphere, whether soldaderas or feminists, and how they challenged engrained
understandings of machismo and marianismo. For example, Regeneracin frequently employed
rhetoric preaching class equality. However, the paper largely skirted the issue of gender equality.
Paradoxically, when writers did acknowledge female equality, as a socialist reaction to Dazs
segmented social regime, they vacillated in their commitment to ensuring equal rights. Thus,
anxieties about feminism and gender equality, first expressed during the Porfiriato, did not
disappear during the Revolution, even among the most progressive participants.
La Opinin, on the other hand, existed as a more moderate paper, reporting on local and
international events and featuring copious advertisements. Two brief, but telling, quips in La
Opinin in the early days of war, juxtaposed with the lack of attention to issues of gender
equality and feminism, seemingly suggest that the editors expressed some sort of anxiety towards
the soldadera. The first, entitled En La Inspeccion de Policia [In The Police Department],
though arguably a report of an actual interrogation, reads more as a satire of the soldadera:

Cmo se llama usted? / Esperanza Lima. / Profesin y alias. / Los.meretriz; y por lo

dems me dicen la Artillera. / Ser usted muy brava verdad? / No, seor; soy del Pan
Americano / Ah!....Bueno, pen que la pasen a la cuadra, por borracha y artillera. 50
Likely, this was a satirical article instead of an actual interrogation. The surrounding articles
report on very localized and trivial events; to the modern eye, the subject matter seems a bit silly,
if not true. Nonetheless, this article reads as a derogatory critique of both the soldadera and the
feminist movement, which had gained international traction by 1913. That year, the Pan
American womens movement launched a series of child welfare conferences an extension of
maternal feminism, or the belief that women as mothers had an essential but different role in
the public sphere.51 In this piece, as a Pan Americano, Esperanza Lima suggests she is docile
and maternal (as Pan American feminists claimed) and the epitome of marianismo, though the
unnamed male respondent does not necessarily believe her. Furthermore, just as in the Porfirian
era, male anti-feminists conflated the feminist with the soldadera, though this was oftentimes
incorrect. The author of this piece also suggests an intimate connection between the prostitute
and soldadera, as suggested by the name la artillera, which is not simply a symbol for her
seemingly volatile nature (notably another stereotype of sexual aggressive women). Furthermore,
in the last sentence, the police inspector employs an idiom to criticize the prostitute as barren. It
seems barren was intended an insult, to imply she was straying from her matronly duties and
could likely never be a proper mother because of her sinful past and transgressive nature.

50 En la Inspeccion de Policia, La Opinin [Jalapa, Veracruz], October 5, 1913.What is your name? /

Esperanza Lima / Profession and alias? / The prostitute; but they call me the gun. / You will be angry then, is that
right? / No, sir. I am of the Pan American / Ah! Let them know you as one who loses a baby horse/cow [idiom for
barren].
51 Donna J. Guy, The Politics of Pan American Cooperation: Maternalist Feminism and the Child Rights
Movement, 1913-1960, Gender and History 10 (November 1998): 449-469.

Another quip from the same article exemplifies the presumed sexual availability of the
soldadera: Yo soy Tomasa Aldasaha / Buena, pieza / No seor, soy la esposa de un juan. Soy
soldadera / Solamente tome sieto vastos / Pues al octavo. Que la entierren! Al fogn con ella.52
In this narrative, an unnamed voice, though presumably a soldier, shamelessly and drunkenly
flirts with a soldadera. Though Tomasa rejects his advances quite vigorously, the fact that he
attempts to solicit her for sex indicates that he subscribed to the dichotomized vision of the virgin
and the whore. This falls into a greater narrative of soldaderas as prostitutes, who gallivanted
from one Juan to another, devoid of patriarchal attachment. This dialogue not only criticizes
female sexuality, but also belittles the importance of the soldadera. Instead of being portrayed as
a valuable member of the army, whether fighting or even tending to the camp, she is objectified
as solely as a mans lover. Thus, men, at least in the context expressed in La Opinin, began
deconstructing the agency and image of the soldadera even before the Revolution had ended.
Even one of the most radical newspapers of the era, the anarchist Regeneracin, remained
largely silent on the issue of gender equality. The newspaper reflected the editors, Ricardo
Flores Magn, personal convictions. For example, it emphasized international working class
solidarity against capitalism, and crusaded for anarchy, unbridled revolt, and the eradication of
the existing order.53 While allowing feminists, such as Blanca de Moncaleano, to publish their
work, male writers, and especially the editor, still harbored a moralistic and conservative opinion
of the expected role of women.54 They supported equality between the sexes, and a conservative
form of feminism to some extent, but were not fully liberated from the dominant gender
52 En la Inspeccion de Policia, La Opinin [Jalapa, Veracruz], October 5, 1913. I am Tomasa Aldasaha
/ A good catch / No sir, I am a soldiers wife. I am a soldadera / I only drank seven cups [of alcohol] / On the eighth,
have them bury you! To the stove with you!
53 Flores Magn, Dreams of Freedom, 64.
54 My research is this section is compromised of editions of Regeneracin, from January 1910 to January 1916, on
the eve of the feminist congress.

ideologies. These proscriptions can be categorized into three general trends: the marianismo ideal
that urged fidelity to a man, the fear of the single, feminist, and masculine Revolutionary woman,
and the reinforcement of machismo concepts of honor and protection. All three trends, however,
are inextricably linked with one another, and extended to La Opinin as well.
Despite an audience composed mainly of male revolutionaries, some Regeneracin passages
aimed to appeal to the fairer sex. The September 24, 1910 editions feature article, entitled A La
Mujer [To the Woman], provided advice for women during the beginnings of revolutionary
fighting. Ricardo Flores Magn preached:
Yourdutyistohelpman;tobetheretoencouragehimwhenhevacillates;standbyhis
sidewhenhesuffers;tolightenhissorrow;tolaughandtosingwithhimwhenvictory
smiles.Youdon'tunderstandpolitics?Thisisnotaquestionofpolitics;thisisamatterof
lifeordeath. 55
Here, Flores Magn attempts to relieve anxiety about the impending violence and urges women
to follow the marianismo ideal of remaining loyal to their compaero. However, his patronizing
tone counters later statements of womens inherent equality to men. This perspective reveals that
Flores Magn believed women were not qualified to participate in the armed struggle against
oppression; they better fulfilled their Revolutionary duties as devoted wives. He also operates
under the assumption that women had little knowledge about the public sphere. Thus, he
rhetorically restores hierarchies that he so actively preached against.
Indeed, Regeneracin and La Opinin often shared similar attitudes. The latter frequently echoed
the superiority of womens marianismo qualities. The mere title of La fuerza moral de la
mujer [The Moral Force of the Woman] attests to this familiar sentiment. Though the article
acknowledges women as audaz y es valiente [bold and brave], it also generalizes that women
55 Ricardo Flores Magn, A La Mujer, Regeneracin [Los Angeles, California], September 24, 1910.

express qualities of altruismo, heroicidad, rectitud de espritu, abengacin, sacrificio, en una

palabra, todo lo que se ha considerado siempre como exclusive de seres excepcionales. 56 These
tenets closely mirror marianismo duties and reiterate the exceptionality of womens moral
superiority. Altruismo, in particular, references a long withstanding intimate connection to the
church, situated strictly within the domain of femininity.
Other anxieties expressed in Regeneracin include the fear of the single, feminist and/or the
masculine woman, induced by revolutionary change and liberating philosophy. The papers
writers still romanticized a particular vision of the perfect woman and they attempted to
propagate this ideal. For example, Magn, in A La Mujer continues:
Alcoholism,gamblingandotherillsofsocietyfurtherreducethenumberofavailable
men.Consequently,thenumberofsinglewomengrowsalarmingly.Sincetheirsituation
issoprecarious,theyswelltheranksofprostitution,acceleratingthedegenerationofthe
humanracebythisdebasementofbodyandspirit.57
Admittedly, this is a critique of Porfirian society and not of the Revolutionary single woman.
However, Magns writing still reflects a fear of the degeneracy of single woman; he reinforces
the marianismo ideology that women were moral arbitrators that did not succumb to societal ills
as men did. He also denies belief in the sexual agency of women, condemning prostitution as a
universal and gendered sin. Thus, it is interesting how a man who so much aggravated for a
complete restructuring of society did not seem to desire a change in gender dynamics.
In a chronicle published the following month succinctly titled Mujer [Woman], Praxedis
Guerrero acknowleged the historical roots of the oppression of women, and deplores the tyranny
56 La fuerza moral de la mujer , La Opinin [Jalapa, Veracruz], May 23, 1909."Altruism, heroism,
honesty of spirit, selflessness, sacrifice, succintly, everything that has always been considered as exclusive to
exceptional beings."
57 A La Mujer, Regeneracin [Los Angeles, California], September 24, 1910.

of Chinese, ancient Egyptian, and Jewish customs. Contradictory, he vehemently attacks the
feminist movement:
No pudiendo ser mujer, la mujer quiere ser hombre; se lanza con un entusiasmo digno
de un feminismo ms racional en pos de todas las cosas feas que un hombre puede ser y
hacer.en una mujer huyendo de su graciosa individualidad femenina para vestir la
hibridez del hombrunamiento.58
This article portrays Guerreros belief in the natural order between men and woman, and that
they created an oppositional balance, a sentiment reminiscent of marianismo. Here, he
recapitulates Porfirian anti-feminist critiques that feared the effeminizing consequences of
feminism. However, just preceding the Revolution, Guerrero was seemingly anxious about the
growing fragility of masculinity and impending social turbulence that threatened distinct gender
ideologies and boundaries. He,like Magn, reimposed hierarchies that anarchism theoretically
intended to eliminate. Yet, it should be noted that Guerreros piece was also cautious in
distinguishing feminism and female equality.
Lastly,Regeneracin grappled with conceptsofmachismohonorandprotection.In the January
1, 1913 edition, the column Paso a Las Huestes Libertarias decried: No sigas viviendo. En
tanto oprobio el honor proletario de tus hijas es mancillado por el artero y criminal burgus...y
mientras tanto en infecto-ta buco tu mujer y tus hijos mueren de hambre. 59 The author imbues
the politics of socialist revolution with gendered rhetoric. Evidently, this column appealed to a

58 Praxedis Guerrero, Mujer, Regeneracin [Los Angeles, California], November 6, 1910. Because
she cannot be a woman, she wants to be a man; and in the name of rational feminism she wants to embark upon the
ugly duties that are only for men.there is nothing desirable about a woman who prefers to be manly.
59 Paso a Las Huestes Libertarias, Regeneracin [Los Angeles, California], January 1, 1913.Do not
continue living. I reproach that the devious and criminal bourgeois taints the proletarian honor of your
daughters.and meanwhile your wife and children starve.

male audience, reaffirming their masculinity and offered a very patronizing tone on the need to
protect helpless women and children.
In Que Luchen [Let Them Fight], published a year earlier, Paula Carmona de Flores Magn,
mimics the expected roles of men and women in war: Los que tienen familia deben luchar por
la libertad y el bienestar de su mujer y de sus hijos siquiera para que stos no los maldigan por
haberles dejado una herencia de esclavitud y de vergenza.60 Flores Magn, directing her words
towards female readership, urges women to encourage their husbands to join the revolutionary
battle. Thus, she operates within the greater framework of machismo, which assumed only men
fought for their nation and family. She also implicitly infantilizes women and children, also
imagining them as helpless beings that relied upon masculine protection. Thus, not all female
writers aimed to dismantle the ideologies of marianismo and machismo.
In fact, Ricardo Flores Magn himself was acutely concerned with the future prospects of
machismo in the Mexican nation. As scholar Claudio Lomnitz argues, concerns with
emasculation and virility thus were widespread among the Liberals.

61

Flores Magn, in his

antebellum articles, frequently deplored the slavery, the most egregious form of emasculation, of
the Daz administration. He stressed that regeneration implied a new generation of more manly
men. Flores Magn also frequently utilized notably homophobic rhetoric when criticizing his
opponents, thus appropriating emasculate behavior as a pejorative.62
However, despite the overarching patriarchal proscriptive tones demonstrated thus far, it is
importanttorememberthattheanarchistpaperdidrecognizegenderequalityandoccasionally
60 Paula Carmona Flores Magon, Que Luchen, Regeneracin [Los Angeles, California], August 3,
1912.Those who have family must fight for the freedom and welfare of his wife and children, so they do not damn
him for abandoning them in a legacy of slavery and of shame.
61 Claudio Lomnitz, The Return of Comrade Ricardo Flores Magn (MIT Press, 2014), 311.
62 Ibid., 316-17.

publishedarticlesthatreflectedthisopinion.LocatedintheEnglishsectionofthepaper,Brace
UpSister!,writtenbyEnriqueFloresMagn,remindedfemaleleadersoftheirequalityinthe
revolutionarystruggle:Donotobeyhisorders;whenhewantssomething,hewilllowerhimself
enough to ask for. Brace up, sister, do not be slaves to men, be their companions. 63 This
contradictoryunwindingoftheconstraintsofmachismoandmarianismoserveasareminderthat
thepaperwasnotuniforminitsopinions.
On the other hand, female voices in this same paper prescribed much more active roles for
women, thus reinforcing the idea that women carved new spaces for themselves during the
Revolution. For example, Blanca de Monceleano heavily criticized womens subjugation:
No olvidis que la mujer tiene sus derechos al igual, que los hombres, que no habis
llegado al mundo tan slo para multiplicar la humanidad, soplar el fogn, lavar ropa,
fregar pa. N!, vosotras habis nacido para algo ms grande.64
Though reinforcing marianismo ideals of womens moral superiority, Monceleano assigns
divergent and radical gender roles. She demands that women seek a life more fulfilling than one
of feminine obligation. Thus, she contradicts the social order that her comrades accepted as
natural.
While Hermila Galindo successfully carved her own arena for political expression, the
space in Regeneracin for female revolutionary writers was relatively limited, as male
revolutionaries heavily sanctioned its entrance. Nonetheless, to some extent, women were able to
express their desires for equality and enter the public sphere, despite reservations by men.
63 Enrique Flores Magn, Brace Up Sister!, Regeneracin [Los Angeles, California], January 1, 1913.
64 Blanca de Monceleano, Mujeres, Eduquemos Nuestros Hijos en la Escuela Racionalista,
Regeneracin [Los Angeles, California], February 22, 1913.Do not forget that a woman has rights equal to those of
a man. She is not on this early solely to procreate, to wash dishes, and to wash clothesNo! You were born for
something greater.

Legally Enshrined Accomplishments

In order to gain a more complete understanding of how patriarchy was so readily reestablished
after the violent years of the war, it is useful to situate the singular ramblings of the
aforementioned newspapers within female accomplishments in the nation as a whole. Historians,
such as Anna Macas, argue that the accomplishments of this period culminated with the First
Feminist Congress.65 Indeed, some men readily embraced feminism. However, this was not
always because they were particularly interested in supporting womens rights as the vague
and patronizing tones of La Opinin and Regeneracin demonstrate but because feminism
was a useful weapon to fight the Catholic Church, which dictated significant influence within the
family and society at large, hence a harrowing enemy of the revolutionary government. 66
Interestingly, Flores Magn praised the progress of women during the Revolution and celebrated
the outcome of the Feminist Congress. He celebrated its assertion of equal rights and womens
intellectual capabilities. However, his vague stance on this was undermined with a contradictory
condemnation of womens desire to work in the public sphere; he asserted they should fight for
anarchy instead, thus reflecting earlier anxieties about women leaving the home.67
The warring years of the Revolution culminated with the Constitution of 1917, which granted
some legal protections for females. For example, Title VI of the 1917 Constitution endowed
equal wages for equal work, regardless of gender. Accordingly, a decent work ethic secularized
and rationalized women; consistent employment and production also stimulated the countrys
economic growth.68 Furthermore, the Constitution did not explicitly grant or deny suffrage to
65 Macas, 135.
66 Cano, 107.
67 Ricardo Flores Magn, Progreso Revolcionario, Regeneracin [Los Angeles, California], February 12, 1916.
68 1917 Constitution of Mexico, Title VI, Article 123, Item VII.

women; the section was instead shrouded with vague wordings of ellos [they]. Thus, our
familiar heroine, Hermila Galindo, capitalized on this discrepancy and ran as a candidate for the
fifth district of Mexico City, though knowing full well she would not be elected. 69 However, the
documents patriarchal voice resonates the same moralistic tone that has been explored above.
Again, Title VI is the most prominent example of this attitude: La jornada mxima de trabajo
nocturno ser de siete horas. Quedan prohibidas las labores insalubres o peligrosas para las
mujeres en general y para los jvenes menores de diez y seis aos. 70 This language is
reminiscent of civil codes of the Porfirian era that placed restrictions on female street vendors
past certain hours, and machismo ideals of the need to protect infantilized women. Significantly,
most other female-oriented issues, such as suffrage, remained conspicuously unaddressed.71
Still,tomany,1917representedthepinnacleofasuccessfulrevolution.Conclusively,thevoice
propagatedbyevenbythemostrevolutionarymalefigureswasquiteconservative.Incontrast,
women,suchasthesoldaderas, femalewriters,andHermilaGalindo,forgedanewrolefor
themselvesinrhetoricandinpractice.Mostmen(andsomewomen)wereunabletofullyletgo
ofmachismoandmarianismosconscriptions,whichreaffirmedconfidenceintheirmasculinity
duringatimeofsocialturmoil.Despitethis,womenhadmadesomesemblanceofprogress
duringtheviolentyears.Byanalyzingnewspapersoftheera,Idepictedthemegaandmicro
aggressionswomenencountered,evenduringatimeofchange,buthowmanystillmanagedto
carveadistinctspaceforthemselves.Patriarchy,however,onlystrengthenedandmodernized

69 Rocha, 26.
70 1917 Constitution of Mexico, Title VI, Article 123, Item II. The maximum duration of nightwork shall
be seven hours. The following are prohibited: work by women in commercial establishments after ten o'clock at
night.

71 The 1918 National Election Law limited voting rights to males 18 or over if married, 21 if not, thus revoking all
state and local laws that permitted female suffrage.

afterthistimeperiod.Perhaps this explains why a disillusioned Hermila Galindo finally departed

Mexico for a country that at least granted female suffrage.

CHAPTER 3.
DECONSTRUCTING THE IMAGE OF THE SOLDADERA (1917-1953)
After the violent years of the Revolution, women who transgressed bounds of social
respectability were expected to return to their normal lives. Indeed, despite copious significant
state laws that engendered equality in Revolutionary and liberal fashion, they failed to challenge
entrenched notions of patriarchal privilege and instead left women without equal rights or
status", especially as most were overturned with the newly established Mexican state. 72 As the
above section iterated, most men, even the writers of the anarchist Regeneracin, had been
unable to fully discard the ideologies of machismo and marianismo. Thus, patriarchy was
restored not through law, but through cultural and collective memory.73 The predominant
narrative of the revolution henceforth served as a political and social tool, and identity was
constructed and deconstructed through such. After the tumultuous Revolution, the government
sought a way to bind the countrys various and fragmented minorities, and to construct some sort
of universal new Mexican identity. This master historical narrative was presented as authentic
and became embedded in the nations collective memory. According to collective memory
theory, memory is encompassed in tangible objects, particularly photographs and art, and
oftentimes trumps actual memory. Entrenched narratives are continuously reproduced through
new images and forms, and are rarely questioned. 74

From La Soldadera to La Adelita

72 Stephanie J. Smith, Gender and the Mexican Revolution: Yucatn Women and the Realities of Patriarchy (Univ
of North Carolina Press, 2009), 178.
73 In the context of this paper, I use collective and cultural memory interchangeably, though there are arguably
more than solely semiotic differences between the two in socio-anthropological theory.
74 Jan Assmann and John Czaplicka, Collective Memory and Cultural Identity, New German Critique 65 (1995):
125133.

After the war, the most prominent reimagination of the soldadera was that as an object of desire.
This sentiment was embodied in la adelita: a sweetheart of the troops, a woman who is valiant,
pretty, and a wonderful helpmate to the solder. 75 La Adelita represented the ideal archetype of a
soldadera in cultural memory, extolled for her beauty and virtues of marianismo. Unfortunately,
the history surrounding the origin of the trope is obfuscated; likely, Adelita was actually a
soldadera on the front lines.76 Nonetheless, the re-envisioned passive version of La Adelita was
immortalized in a corrido of the same title. As the first verse sings: Adelita se llama la joven / a
quien quiero y no puedo olvidar / a quien amo e idolatro / y con quien me voy a casar. 77 The rest
of the corrido, printed on a broadside at the beginning of the Revolution circa 1910, narrates a
Revolutionary soldiers passion for this Adelita, as he implores her to marry him, wait for him to
return home, and to cry if perishes. Indeed, this reflects the marianismo of unconditional fidelity
to men. As Maria Herrera-Sobek contends, this corrido removes womens agency and objectifies
her instead, hence reducing potential threats against masculinity. The soldadera thus emerges as
mythic and romanticized, not a tangible historical figure. 78 During the Revolution, the corrido
offered many, especially of the lower classes, a voice to express grievances about and oppose
forces of oppression. However, this corrido paradoxically manifests as a representation of
patriarchy, and hence intrisically represses the gendered other.
In popular culture, La Adelita has since become interchangeable with soldadera, despite
the fact that the former does not inform the history of the various other functions female solders

75 Salas, 121.
76 Herrera-Sobek, 104.
77 Jos Guadalupe Posada Adelita cancin tapatia. ca. 1910. Broadside. Caroline and Erwin Swann
collection of caricature and cartoon (Library of Congress). See Appendix C for reproduction.Adelitas the name of
the maiden / whom I love and cannot forget / that I truly love and idolize / and whom I will marry.

78 Herrera-Sobek, 104.

performed. 79 Nonetheless, La Adelita emerged as the most popular corrido of the Revolution. 80
The corrido removed sexual agency from women, as soldaderas were sometimes envisioned as
loose women, and placed it in the hands of the man by illustrating a sexually titillating figure.
While numerous variants of the corrido exist, all follow this similar pattern. This representational
form of cultural memory inevitably stripped the voice of women who served in the Revolution.

Case Study: Las Estampas de la Revolucin Mexicana (1947)

The accomplishments of the soldaderas were deconstructed even further into the mid-century.
The following examines how the Revolution was reimagined in Las Estampas de la Revolucin
Mexicana [Prints of the Mexican Revolution] of the Taller de Grfica, and how this reflects
earlier criticisms and stereotypes of the soldadera. This portfolio accepts the ideologies of
machismo and marianismo, evidently not discarded during the Revolution, but ironically
celebrates the achievements of equality. I argue that by 1947 the popularity of this collection
positioned it as the master narrative of the Mexican Revolution. Unfortunately, this narrative also
erases the deeds of female revolutionaries and completely ignores even the most prominent
female intellectuals, such as Hermila Galindo. Indeed, for thirty years prior, the Mexican State
and the dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was consumed with promoting a
metanarrative. The state operated public offices, such as the Official Committee of Patriotic
Commemorations in 1925, dedicated to ideological uniformity. 81 Thus, in this context, the Taller
79 Indeed, the trope of La Adelita did not exist solely as a corrido. Its proscriptions, of a loyal and honorable
woman who faithfully served her Juan, penetrated the cultural atmosphere as a whole. For example, this became a
popular archetype in post-Revolutionary and even modern cinema and literature, reinforced in various mediums.
Prominent examples include the Revolutionary reenactment dances of ballet folklrico performances, Josephine
Nigglis 1936 play Soldadera, and even the 2010 Estampas, Independencia y Revolucion a 50 paises del mundo
portfolio.
80 Salas, 83.
81 Ilene V. OMalley, The Myth of the Revolution: Hero Cults and the Institutionalization of the Mexican State,
1920-1940 (New York: Greenwood, 1986), 15.

de Grficas work became engrained in this version of the nations history and greatly informed
collective memory. Notably, most of the authors of the Estampas portfolio were too young to
remember the events of the Revolution, so they relied heavily on secondary sources, like
Casasolas photographs and Jose Orozcos famous fresco works. This portfolio demonstrates
how both history and narrative can be constructed and invented, and how symbols of the
Mexican Revolution can be re-imagined and transformed through collective memory.
While prints twenty-two and forty-three are the only images of the twelve that illustrate women
as direct combatants during the Revolution, I have chosen to focus on prints thirty-seven, fortynine, and fifty, all attached in the appendix of this paper. I introduce the print with a textual
description, then move to an analysis of how the print erased the role of women in the War and
reinforced ideologies of marianismo and machismo, essential to a greater metanarrative of a
patriarchy that fluctuated with the Revolution.
Print thirtyseven, captioned El Gran Guerrillero Francisco Villa (18781923) [The
GreatGuerillaPanchoVilla],featurestherevolutionaryleaderboldlycommandingavolatile
horse. 82 Villaisthecenterpieceoftheprintandbrazenlydonsartilleryacrosshischestanda
sombrero.Asthecenteroftheimage,thegeneralisunderstoodtobeacentralfigureofthe
Revolution,andamasculineprotagonistinthecentralizednarrative.AsIleneOMalleyargues,
themasternarrative,implementedinthenationsculturalmemory,promotedpatriarchalvalues
andthemasculinizationofthenationsimage. 83 She surmises that PRI propaganda did so by
sanctifying revolutionary heroes Carranza, Madero, Zapata, and Villa. Various mediums of
82 Estampas de La Revolucion Print 37, Taller de Grafica Popular collection, BANC PIC 1999.039:
The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. See Appendix D for reproduction.Villa is rarely depicted
in this portfolio, which is much more celebratory of Zapata and Madero. However, when depicted, he is neither
celebrated nor criticized.
83 OMalley, 113-114.

propaganda depicted these four men as the epitome of masculinity the virile fathers of the
new and improved nation and subtly connected patriarchy to patriotism, as Porfirio Daz had
done generations earlier. 84 Thus, contemporary Mexicans perceived controversial modernization
attempts, extending into 1947, as less threatening because, accordingly, the nations patriarchs
knew what was best for the family.Itisalsonotablethat,inthisillustration,Villaisridinga
horse, suggesting a return to the values of machismo. Machismo is highly intertwined with
caballerismo[horseman],whichsharethequalitiesofchivalryandhonor.85
Interestingly, a young woman named Mariana Yampolsky illustrated print forty-nine of the
collection, thus suggesting that this unified and distorted collective memory had penetrated
female psyches as well.86 Print forty-nine portrays soldaderas as what Anna Macas terms camp
follower archetypes.87 Nonetheless, Yampolsky depicts three different interpretations of the
soldaderas. A description of the image is as follows: In the foreground, a man (men are
distinguished by their sombreros) and a woman kneel together, seemingly immersed in
conversation. However, the view of the woman is distorted, only her profile and long braids
visible. It appears she is kneeling between the males legs. I understand this as the stereotype that
soldaderas are flirtatious and sexually available. Further left in the image, another woman,
notably a soldadera with a bandolier strapped across her chest, stands between two men. Her
hands are placed confidently on her hips and she stares confidently, suggesting some semblance
of defiance. The man on her right, also a soldado as evidenced by his ammunition, stares
84 Ibid., 6-7. A select example of post-revolutionary propaganda that masculinized the state and
mysticized revolutionary leaders: Of tranquil and majestic features[Cardenas] has the rectitude of the caudillo
All his ideas, concise, luminous, and exact, exude loftiness and greatness. Article by Fernando Cuen in El
Universal on May 21, 1934.
85 Ortiz and Davis, 341.
86 Estampas de La Revolucion Print 49, Taller de Grafica Popular Collection, BANC PIC 1999.039, The
Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. See Appendix E for reproduction.
87 Macas, 86.

passionately at the woman and even has a hand on her shoulder. His touch indicates a potential
sexual relationship between the two, thus constraining this soldadera as a Juans lover. The man
on her left wears rural campesino clothing and stands singing with a guitar. The third woman
featured in this image resides in the background, seemingly providing food to male soldiers,
playing upon the nursing stereotype. Unfortunately, these narratives plays on the stereotypes of
soldaderas we have seen earlier, reminiscent of the En La Inspeccion de Policia section of La
Opinin for example. These images idealize and neglect the reality of war, and limit
understandingofthediverserolessoldaderasplayed.
Lastly, print fifty, suitably titled La Soldadera, depicts another vision of the memory of women
during the violent years of the Revolution.88 Here, Alfredo Zalce portrays a woman, barefoot and
dressed in a headscarf, nursing a soldiers injured head. This interpretation of the soldadera,
while it does write women into the history of the Revolution, paints women as nurses, who
assisted men as an extension of their feminine obligations and thus not breaking the confines of
marianismo at all. The womans headscarf reflects how soldaderas often came from the lower,
indigenous classes, but also suggests that the ideal soldadera expressed modesty both in what she
wore and how she acted. Indeed, it is interesting how all women in this portfolio don dresses or
skirts, even though this was not the historical truth. This reflects the earlier anxiety about
women, like Petra Herrera, transgressing the gender boundaries, and blurring the strict
boundaries between the masculine and feminine. Zalces print attempts to alleviate the fear that
gender could be performative.

88 Estampas de La Revolucion Print 50, Taller de Grafica Popular collection, BANC PIC 1999.039, The
Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. See Appendix F for reproduction.

EPILOGUE
In 1953, thirty-six years after revolutionary fighting ceased, Mexican women finally gained
suffrage. Luckily, Hermila Galindo lived to see this monumental change, and was even awarded
a Medal of Revolutionary Merit for her services. Unfortunately, the role of women as active
agents in the Revolution was not solely erased in cultural memory. This sentiment persists even
today, indicated by the popularity of the La Adelita corrido and the lack of scholarly literature on
female accomplishments; indeed, women are troped as the historical nobodies of Mexico.
While the Revolution seemingly provided unprecedented opportunities for women to engage in
the public sphere, the experience of Hermila Galindo warns us that the situation was not so
black-and-white. Men still sought to maintain order in a transformative society that upset
orthodox patriarchy. In this thesis, I hope I have given a voice to the invisible women in history,
and even the more prominent female historical figures, who evidently battled a deeply engrained
patriarchal order and naturalized gender ideologies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
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"Cinematgrafo Policial, La Opinin 18 July, 1911.
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Estampas de La Revolucin Print 37 Taller de Grfica Popular collection, BANC PIC

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Estampas de La Revolucin Print 49 Taller de Grfica Popular collection, BANC PIC
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APPENDIX

Appendix A.
(Title Unknown), ca. 1910-1913. Photo is of three couples dancing. Musicians in rear.
Notice: This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code). This copy
may not be further reproduced or distributed without the specific authorization of the UC Santa
Barbara Special Collections.

Appendix B.
Notice: This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code). This copy
may not be further reproduced or distributed without the specific authorization of the UC Santa
Barbara Special Collections.

Appendix C.
Notice: This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code).

Appendix D.
Notice: This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code). This copy
may not be further reproduced or distributed without the specific authorization of the Bancroft
Library.

Appendix E.
Notice: This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code). This copy
may not be further reproduced or distributed without the specific authorization of the Bancroft
Library.

Appendix F.
Notice: This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code). This copy
may not be further reproduced or distributed without the specific authorization of the Bancroft
Library.