Traditional Depiction of Mexican Women

¶ … traditional depiction of Mexican women was very restrictive. The pre-revolutionary view of Mexican women was of a "woman who had lived her life constantly in the male shadow" (Soto, 31-32). Mexican bravado and chauvinism forced the Mexican women into the background of the patriarchal society that has its roots in Spanish government and culture. These women were consumed by their family life, their marriages and the Catholic Church. They lived silently behind the scenes of the dominant male counterparts as if they were only an extension of their individual presence. Legal, social, and cultural constraints were placed upon women to prevent them from gaining full acceptance and rights in society. The concept of gender equality was more foreign in this culture than the rest of central America. However, this trend did not continue indefinitely, as women in today's Mexican society have much more freedoms and rights than in previous generations. An understanding of how the evolution towards greater gender equality occurred requires the examination of cataclysmic events within Mexican history.

It has been more than a decade since the Revolutionaries uprising of 1994 and historical references now make the connection between that event and the Mexican Revolution. However, few historians note the roles of women in both of these conflicts. Women within Mexican society are repeated cast aside, and their contributions are ignored. However, they have an extensive and vital role to play in both of these conflicts. It can be said that neither of these monumental movements would have occurred without the support of Mexican women. Yet, even by the standards of the Revolutionaries movement, women have gained substantially more rights and recognition in this modern populist movement than in previous eras. Their impact on Mexican society and the reinforcement of their presence occurred in the early part of the 20th century. Mexican women began to assert their presence within Mexican mainstream authority and hierarchy as the result of their contributions during the Mexican Revolution. This monumental event became the catalyst that propelled the feminism cause. When the Mexican Revolution of 1910 to 1920 occurred as a response to the discrimination of the Diaz government, women began to find a place for themselves. The need for their presence as supporting figures in the revolutionary effort allowed them to gain momentum for their feminist agenda. The conflict gave them the chance to control their own fate and live more public lives successfully (Soto 31-32). The following analysis will focus on the major roles of Soldaderas during the Mexican Revolution and how their contributions factored in an expansion of their influence and identity creation in Mexican society. The bravery and contributions of the Soldaderas, as they provided essential assistance even in the worst of conditions, created an opportunity to assert their presence and gain greater social freedoms within Mexican society.

Prior to the Mexican revolution, a myriad of barriers existed to restrict the social freedom and rights of women in Mexican society, effectively limiting their independence as well as assert their personal identities. They lived their lives in pre-defined roles and always in the shadows of their husbands and other male figures. There is an ongoing culture of patriarchy and "machismo" in Mexico, and this cultural tradition has dominated the Mexican people for well over three hundred years. Any attempts made by women previous to the Mexican Revolution that was outside the traditional subversive roles of wife and mother were considered both unusual and rebellious. They were met with social stigma and many times ostracism by the mainstream society. The barriers against them were not only social and cultural in nature, explicit legal restrictions existed as well. In 1884, the government passed the Mexican Civil Code, this legal doctrine provided a roadmap of civil rights for the Mexican people. Although a landmark legal document from the perspective of Mexican legal theory, it dramatically restricted women's rights at home and at work (Bush, 351). These codes provided dramatic inequality in the relationship of men and women. Soto explains that the Mexican Civil Code "sustains an almost incredible inequality between the conditions of husband and wife, restricts in an exaggerated and arbitrary manner those rights due the woman, and erases and nullifies her personality" (Bush, 351). The Mexican Civil code was initiated under the regime of Porfirio Diaz, and it represented only a fraction of the many inequalities that women as well as other ethnic, economic and political dissidents and minorities had to endure. Diaz was a fundamental part of the women suppression effort that became an ongoing government policy in the late 1800s. He was a strong chauvinist and believed that women should have an established, and submissive position within Mexican society (Bush, 353-354). His regime enforced mechanisms through legal doctrines and social intimidation to keep "women in their cultural chains." Therefore it could be said that the role of women within the Mexican Revolution was not a passive one, engendered through their natural disposition towards helping the populist cause, but rather a very personal vendetta against Diaz himself. Diaz was the symbol of the old regime, and the traditions of female suppression, therefore the Mexican women, in combating the forces of Diaz were asserting their own individual responses to gender inequality.

Female participation during the Mexican Revolution is mostly noted for the soldaderas, the class of female soldiers who fought along side men. However, the whole panorama of female participation went far above and beyond these soldiers. In the years leading up to the Mexican Revolution, feminist organizations were springing up throughout the urban centers of Mexico. Vocational and educational training of women played an important role in shaping their contributions during the revolution. The role of the women during this particular war was unique in its influence upon their future status, because they took more than a "supportive role" during the conflict. Not only did women take on the roles of nurses and aids to the male soldiers during the conflict, they were active combatants as soldiers. However, their most enduring contribution and the greatest affect on the feminist movement may have been the distinct intellectual perspective they offered on the Revolution. The intellectual activism of many women laid the groundwork for the recognition of greater gender equality following the war, and provided a vocal and political supplement to the actual war efforts made by women in the field. This level of activism influenced the growth of feminism in the 20s and 30s, by instilling value and the ideation of personal presence in young Mexican women. Many women who participated in the Mexican Revolution played a multitude of roles. Although intellectualism played a significant role in the expansion of gender equality and freedom in the war's aftermath, the bulk of women's place within Mexican society were earned by the soldaderas.

The soldaderas was the most typical role that women in the Revolutionary effort played. These soldaderas are separate from the concept of "women soldiers" who actually took a combatative position within the war. The typical role of the soldaderas was still traditional in a Mexican sense, they played the accepted gender-based roles of caregivers. These women played a vital part in the sustenance of the Mexican Revolutionary armies. They generally traveled with the revolutionary armies to forage for food, cook meals, nurse the wounded, wash clothes, and other services that were not provided by the military itself (Soto, 44). Although some of these women occasionally fought in battle, they generally are not considered part of the "women soldier" class. Andres Fuentes makes a clear distinction between these two categories of women. He argues that those women who served as a vital support system for combatants were distinct from those who actually participated from the fighting (Resendez, 527). The women who served as the vital providers and caretakers of the Mexican Revolutionary armies joined the cause for a myriad of different reasons. Many of them joined the fighting because of their husband's involvement. They took on the role of caregiver and provider for their husbands. When a Soldadera's husband died in battle they often continued in their roles for another soldier (Macias, 72). Other younger women joined the cause as idealists and cared for everyone. There were less noble reasons for many soldaderas who ultimately joined the army movements. Some of the women had no choice but to become soldaderas when soldiers raped and kidnapped them from their homes and villages. In one 1913 edition of the Mexican Herald, a report states that entire villages were left without women because soldiers had carried them off (Salas, 59). Other women joined the cause because they wanted the possibility of altering their social status. Many women hoped that they would be paid for their domestic and military services, and many women who volunteered were given a salary if they were not the wives or related to the accompanied soldiers. In general however, the soldaderas remained anonymous, they lacked any real decision making power within the movement of the army, and were never recognized by the commanders or on a formal basis from the men for their contributions to the revolution itself.

These women endured extreme hardships in order to fulfill their roles. They often had to live in almost starvation level circumstances, since most of the food had to be given to the battle ready individuals. Often they would toil for hours to find food, dig roots, and other methods to see the fruits of their labor be provided the fighting men. They endured the malnutrition as well as miserable living conditions in order to provide sustenance for the group. Many times they even endured childbearing under inhospitable surroundings (Soto, 44). As nurses, they healed the wounded and endured the contamination of dangerous diseases as well as nursed back to health many of the fallen men during the Revolution. Many of them suffered severe infections and diseases as a result of contact with the sick, many primary records reveal that anywhere from ten to twenty percent of the soldaderas contracted serious illnesses and death from providing care for the wounded and ill (Macias, 121). Ultimately "no army of the revolution fought without women but each organized female participation in a distinct manner" (Resendez, 527). The end result was that the soldaderas endured harsh living conditions in order to carry out their roles for the betterment of the Mexican populist movement.

Soldaderas were not the exclusive domain of the Mexican Revolutionary forces, they were also employed by the Federal army. Women who joined the federal army did so as a response to the great need for their services, and also to accompany their husbands who were often held in bondage for several years under the "volunteer system" of the federal military program (Resendez, 531). Thee camp followers of the Federal army lived a much easier life than those who engaged on the populist side. They were also tasked to supply food and other services to the lower ranks of soldiers, and while they shared the hardships and misfortunes endured on the field, they also had access to more resources as a result of the funding provided by the Federal government. The wives of the federal soldiers chose this life rather than to be left alone for long periods during the dangerous times when kidnappings and rapes commonly occurred. The distinctive lifestyle of the camp followers led to many cultural forces and constant friction as well. There was no sense of real "motivation and unity" among the Federal army soldaderas. Since many of them came because of the opportunity to earn wages as a result of their service, they became very competitive to service higher ranking officers in order to curry favor and gain certain advantages. A certain competition developed among women to "provide a complete food basket with a tablecloth, decorative plates and a vase of flowers for officers and those in the line of command" (Resendes, 530). Other tasks that these camp followers had to engage in were to the care of children as well as the maintenance of the army supplies. The camp followers, like their revolutionary counterparts, also carried out military related activity such as spying on the enemy and smuggling arms from the United States. The Federal army created an entire culture around social group around their military units, many times entire families moved together and the army had as many followers as soldiers. From a military perspective this meant both severe advantages and disadvantages, they were forced to feed more people as well as decrease their mobility, but they also gained more workers and hands to help maintain the upkeep of the army allowing all of the fighting men to focus on the battle.

Women who became part of the soldaderas of the Northern Revolutionary armies led a substantially different life. They also came to be part of the Mexican Revolutionary movement through diverting channels. The Villistas and the Carrancistas both had very strong contingents of Soldaderas. One American journalist described how "three hundred soldaderas were left behind by the Federales after the disastrous battle of Paredon in May 1913" (Whitaker, npg). These women were quickly assimilated into the Villistas army and set up new households with Villa's bachelors. Within three years of the beginning of the Revolution, the northern rebels were especially effective in gathering and utilizing the soldaderas. They were able to rely on them completely for all foraging, cooking, and camping services as well as finding invaluable members of the battle plan through espionage and smuggling. The bravery and courage of the Soldaderas, many of whom cared for both the Federales and Revolutionary wounded, was remembered by Pancho Villa, who recorded in his diary of the respect he held for the women camp followers (Macias, 72).

The contributions of the Soldaderas were not an illusionary need, nor were it something that the Revolutionary cause could have done without. The early Maderistas and Orozquistas of the Mexican Revolutionary movement did not bring camp followers into the battlefield because of their decreased mobility as a result of their protection and general inability to keep pace with troop momentum (NOTATION). However, this lack of Soldaderas caused severe logistical problems when wounded soldiers were left uncared for and the obtaining of food and ammunitions had to be undertaken by battle wary soldiers. For these armies, provisional support units were only made up of a few women and some men, to provide nursing food and other necessary services. These armies soon realized that having Soldaderas were essential to the success of the entire military movement. The vitality of Soldaderas to the revolutionary movement can be surmised through the military strategies of the Federal army. The "whole strategy to stamp out rebels were often directed against the women" (NOTATION). The Federal army realized that soldaderas served as the essential supply chain for the Revolutionary movement, and as the slowest and most vulnerable part of the rebels, they were easy to target.

The role of the camp follower Soldaderas were vital to the cause of the Revolutionary movement, however an equally effective sector were the "female soldiers" (Soto). The much smaller group of female soldiers had a very different role than the larger group of Soldaderas. Female soldiers were vital to the establishment of a strong feminist perspective because they in effect fought alongside men on the battlefield. In many cases, they virtually gave up their identities as women to become combatants. Their bravery in the field contributed to their general acceptance in society as more equitable members of Mexican society.

Gustavo Casasola noted that women were able to join the Revolutionary movements as Soldados rasos, or privates. In some rare cases, those who proved themselves in battle were made officers and leaders of men. The difficulty for the "women soldiers" was that they were denied the identity of womanhood. They "needed to masculinize themselves completely; both inwardly and outwardly: dress like man and act like a man; go on horseback, like the rest, be able to endure long marches and, at the hour of combat, prove with weapon in hand that she was no a soldadara, but a soldier" (Macias, 73). These women took on a distinctive role within the military forces of the Revolution, they abandoned traditional gender roles. The need for soldiers during the war allowed these women the freedom to discard former restrictions against them and the later intellectual feminist movement used these women soldiers as the models upon which to build their feminist doctrine.

The role of female soldiers varied greatly from army to army. In some rebel forces they played a prominent role, as much as thirty percent of the army was made up of women. However, other revolutionary forces such as the Maderistas and Orozquistas did not generally depend upon Soldaderas during battle. They had a limited number of female soldiers who joined their ranks during their campaign, however they did not actively encourage or recruit women. The reasons for why these women decided to become soldiers instead of joining the ranks of the camp followers were political and social in nature. Many times, women who had suffered rape or had their husbands, sons or relatives killed by the Federal army joined the cause as soldiers for their political convictions. These women soldiers were often the fiercest, in one account, a squad of Federal soldiers showed up at a family house looking for rebels. While searching the house an officer tried to rape Angela Oso's sister, and the result as that both the officer and the sister were killed. Both Angela and her father fled to the mountains and joined the revolutionary army. Fifteen-year-old Angela "decided to put on men's clothes and follow her father to the sierra" (Resendez, 529). Within these northern armies that did not have a strong female soldier contingent, no clear division of labor existed between men and women, this level of equality was extremely attractive on an idealism level for women who wanted to join the revolutionary campaign. In contrast, the Federales strictly prohibited women from fighting in battle, they depended on their female camp followers for all types of support services but did not have any known female fighters. This not only hurt them because they soon found themselves out gunned and outnumbered in various mountain regions, but they also provided a strong rallying point for the feminist movement by directing the ire of those who desired greater rights and freedoms upon the Federal government.

Other Revolutionary armies became very aware of the real contribution that the Soldaderas were making in battle. Villistas were the first to begin actively recruiting both Soldaderas and female soldiers by the third year of the war. Villa's decision to recruit women soldiers was a strong visionary approach that would significantly influence both the outcome of the war as well as the social positioning of women following the conflict. He added substantial numbers of soldiers to him army which allowed for the continued survival of his troops, and his recruitment wooed the feminist movement to support his cause. This brought many Soldaderas to his camp, which allowed him not to only find fighting forces but the individuals who could sustain the supply chain of his army. At the same time, when he rose to power, he was more sympathetic to the feminist movement because of the contributions that they made during the war effort. However, even Villas did not allow full acceptance of feminism within his military regiments. Women were forced to masculinize in order to fit into contrived roles. Mariano Azuela's popular novel "The Underdogs" depicts the rise of masculinization within female fighters. The heroine of the story, La Pintada was treated like a man, dressing like a man, and her actions fit within the paradigm of traditional "masculine" roles. She took on the habits of smoking, drinking, fighting and killing without remorse (Azuela, 45-51). Macias describes the effect on women, as already hardened by a life of misery and degradation before the Revolution, turned vengeful and sadistic during the fighting" (Macias, 73). In general however, the recruitment and maintenance of a special class of female fighters was critical to the success of Villa's army and his key victories during the Rebel movement.

While the concept of recruiting female soldiers took time to become adopted by the major leaders of the Revolutionary armies, the Revolutionaries in the south made use of female soldiers from the beginning of the conflict. Upon a review of the army by President Madera, he observed among the troops were women soldiers, some of them officers (King, npg). These women were often forced to take on pseudonyms in order to avoid detection, this was especially true of officers, who had to act strongly masculine in order to keep control of their pejorative male troops. Many of the strongest female soldiers were bandits and outlaws previous to the Revolution, thus they were especially ruthless and aggressive in their battles. The specific characteristic of this class of soldiers was that they were typically from higher social classes than the soldaderas who were camp followers.

In order to become a soldier and especially an officer, women had to have their own horses, since it was "unlikely that an officer would deprive a male soldier of his animal to give it to a woman" (NOTATION). These women were often more capable as officers and rose quickly because they were more educated and intelligent than the common rebel soldier. Even more importantly they took on delicate missions for the Revolutionary army, such as spying, courier services and acting as go-betweens during negotiations with the Federales. Some of the most famous intellectual feminist during this era were Revolutionaries officers. The famous Juana Mendoza was both the editor of the Vesper, the leading feminist pamphlet of the Mexican Revolution, as well as a colonel in the Revolutionaries army.

Despite the strong support that the Mexican Revolution in the Mexican populace, not all women served in some capacity in the war effort. Nor did all women support the soldier movement. There were groups of women who were actively against the Revolution and generally protested against the participation of women in military activity. Most of these women belonged to Catholic organizations. The Catholic Church plays an extremely prominent role within Mexican society, religion is seen as one of the traditional occupations and defined roles that women are allowed to participate in. The Church held a position strongly in contrast to the Revolution, they saw the political instability and general chaos created by the Revolution as contradictory to its intended purpose. Also as an institution that was supported by the state, they tended to favor Diaz's reign, especially since he provided generously for the support of Catholic activity throughout Mexico. Those women who had strong connections to the Church tended to support its political tendencies, and took active steps to attempt to prevent the Revolutionary movement from taking place. Catholic Churches which were traditional sanctuaries frequently denied pleas from Revolutionaries to serve as places of hiding and Convents even prevented their nuns from helping the sick and wounded revolutionaries. The anti-Revolution stance of the Catholic Church was a minority movement, however many women were engaged. Therefore it would be wrong to conclude from the above narratives that all women were actively supportive and engaged in the activities of the Mexican Revolution.

Understanding the specific roles that the Soldaderas played both as supporters and fighters during the war leads to the implicit and explicit impacts their contributions made upon both the success of the feminist movement as well as the success of the Mexican Revolution. The impact of the active participation of a supporting caste of women during the Revolutionary movement was that it built a strong connection between the community and the rebels. While at the outset of the Revolution, only a relative minority of the Mexican populace joined the revolution, the strong ties of the Soldaderas created a grassroots level support from communities. Women who were not active as soldiers became extremely friendly and dependent upon indigenous communities, the ultimate result was that they gained the trust of the local communities in which they passed by (Rojas, 31). At the same time, the abuses of the Federales upon local communities led to more and more men and women leaving their native communities to join forces with the Revolutionary forces. Towards the end of the war, the separating line between the combatant forces of the Revolutionary movement and the civilian forces became blurred and oftentimes merged.

At the same time, the Soldaderas also had a strong impact upon the feminist movement at a grassroots level by influencing the dreams of children during this era. Before the war, girls could only anticipate and dream of a life as an adult, married and grown up. They were limited in their choices and domestic duties were their provisional dreams. Yet as a result of the Soldaderas they now changed their dreams and the scope of the vision to "going to the mountain to make their lives, to learn Spanish. This is almost impossible for an indigenous woman, to learn Spanish and how to use a weapon" (Ross, 132). Thus, in the wake of the Revolution a new emerging class of women who did not grow up with the expectation of marriage and domestic bliss, turned towards finding new avenues to make a livelihood. The Revolution and the use of Soldaderas taught women that they were capable of much more than just the provision of domestic duties and that they did not necessarily deserve to reside a place that was lower than men. These were important psychological impetus that would drive the feminist movement of the 1920s and 30s. Another major impetus that helped the psychology of the feminist movement was that the military provided a mechanism to escape domestic abuse. Many young women left their communities to become combatants in order to escape abuse at home, one such individual explained that she joined the Revolutionaries at the age of thirteen. "I spoke with the commander that if they didn't accept me, I would not rest until I was in the army, or else I'd die of the beatings from my uncle" (Katzenberger, 37).