Ongoing debates in the United States over the role of women, homosexuals, and transgender people in the military overlook – among other things – an important historical fact: women and LGBTQ people have historically always played a role in the world’s militaries, whether invited or not. The posts over the next several weeks will highlight the roles of women and LGBTQ people in conflicts that ended one hundred years ago.
A century ago, the world was in chaos. World War I raged on around the globe and the U.S. had thrown its hat into the ring. Russia had left the war due to revolution and civil war. In Mexico, a bloody, decade-long revolution was violently meandering towards its conclusion. In all of these conflicts, women were on the frontlines, whether they wanted to be or not.
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| "La Adelita," a character from a folk song about the revolution, is a sexualized, fantasy version of women in the Mexican Revolution. |
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| A more realistic depiction of a "Soldadera." Soldaderas could be either camp followers or active soldiers. |
As revolutions and civil wars go, the Mexican Revolution (approximately 1910-1920) is complicated and difficult to summarize. But here’s the skinny.
The first Mexican Revolution was a ten-year war for independence from Spain that began in 1810, catalyzed by Napoleon’s invasion of Spain. After successfully snipping the umbilical cord with the Mother Country in 1821, there continued to be conflicts over governing the newly independent country. In 1836, a group of American immigrants to the Mexican province of Texas declared themselves an independent republic and were swiftly annexed by the United States. From 1846-1848, the United States and Mexico fought a war (against the protestations of Henry David Thoreau) and the U.S. came away with California, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and some 75,000 Mexican citizens who were given 12 months to move and retain Mexican citizenship or stay and become American citizens. (As it turns out, staying was not a good choice for Mexican citizens of indigenous heritage.) After that, Mexico had another civil war called “The War of Reform,” and the resulting progressive government led by Benito Juarez was out of money. Then, while the U.S. was distracted by its own civil war, Napoleon III of France decided to make a grab for Mexico by declaring the Austrian Maximillian Hapsburg and his Belgian wife, Carlotta, as Emperor and Empress of Mexico. (Don’t worry: no matter how much you study that arrangement, it still makes no sense.) Contrary to popular belief in the U.S., Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day. Rather, it celebrates Mexican victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla shortly before the French successfully occupied the country.
After the Mexicans kicked the French out in 1867, Benito Juarez was re-instated as president. However, in 1871, General Porfirio Díaz led an uprising against Juarez and eventually Porfirio Díaz became president of Mexico in 1877 and remained president until 1910, ushering in a period of authoritarian rule, but also, stability. This period is also known as the Porfiriato.
Phew. And we haven’t even gotten to the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution yet. Buckle up.
During the Porfiriato, the Mexican export economy boomed. The totally value of Mexican trade, with exports including silver, sugar, coffee and fibers (cotton and henequen), grew by 900 percent. This period brought economic prosperity to the growing middle class who numbered approximately a million by 1900, while 8 million poor rural workers (who were mostly indigenous or mestizo) did most of the work and in increasingly bad conditions. As was common around the world in the industrial era, farmland was bought up by wealthy landowners to create large cash crop plantations and build railroads. As a result, subsistence farming was no longer an available activity for most of the rural poor, who now had to engage in often exploitative wage labor on the plantations. When the revolution began in 1910, the economy of Mexico was still mostly rural, however, only 3% of the population owned land and a quarter of Mexican land (usually parts including oil and mineral wealth) were foreign owned.
Porfirio Díaz maintained a façade of democracy: there were regular elections, but thanks to patronage, poll taxes, literacy requirements, and intimidation, only Díaz-approved candidates ever won. Díaz used trade revenues coming into Mexico to create a large bureaucracy, with plenty of white-collar jobs to keep the expanding middle class happy. He subsidized the press as well, but imprisoned the journalists who spoke out against him. Mounted police called Rurales patrolled the countryside to keep it “safe” for foreign investors, mostly from the United States.
As with many revolutions, the Mexican Revolution was a confluence of the needs of the rural poor and the desires of the middle class for greater political power. As the Porfriato entered its third decade, Francisco Madero, the son of a plantation owner, challenged the power of the octogenarian dictator. Initially, Madero’s demands were not particularly radical: he only wanted Díaz to share his power among the Mexican elite. After Díaz refused and had Madero jailed, Madero radicalized, calling for land to be returned to the peasants, thus broadening his appeal, but also making him an enemy of the rich and powerful – and the United States. Madero’s imprisonment and calls for change inspired local revolutionary leaders – such as the iconic Emiliano Zapata – to rebel.
Díaz fled the country in 1911 to live out the rest of his days in Paris.
Díaz’s power vacuum left behind no clear ruler, and the “revolution” – like most revolutions – was fought by rebel groups with different goals who could momentarily agree on not liking the current regime. With Díaz gone, the differences among the rebel groups came home to roost. Francisco Madero ruled from 1911 until his assassination in 1913 (with tacit approval from the United States’ very flip-floppy Mexico policy) and 100 years after its initial war of independence, Mexico was once more embroiled in a chaotic and violent civil war.
But, what about the women?
Based on my assumption that the average reader is not overly familiar with the Mexican Revolution, I thought it was important to lay out some context before I could talk about women’s experiences of the revolution in any meaningful way. However, even the “skinny” version of the revolution is messy and bloated. So, take some time to digest and stay tuned for the next installment when there will for real-sies be some babes.
Sources:
Born in Blood and Fire by John Charles Chasteen
History
Channel
The Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo (Yale, the Avalon Project)
The
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: National Archives - Lesson Plans!
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