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Article Excerpt
Elvia Montes de Oca Navas examines revolutionary female characters in her 1996 book, Protagonistas de las novelas de la revolucion mexicana, and observes that "la mujer aparece como un set sin nombre ni rostro, anonimo y secundario, aunque siempre presente, ... un 'artefacto masculino' que se toma y se abandona cuando ya no es util ni necesario" (136). Even the soldadera (the camp follower) that takes part in combat appears "deslucid[a], atras del hombre, perdid[a] en su sombra" (136). Furthermore, according to Montes de Oca Navas, "Se ha idealizado a la soldadera de la Revolucion Mexicana. Un acercamiento mayor a la Novela muestra personajes oscuros y opacos, fieles companeras de los hombres, sumisas la mayoria de las veces, obedientes y calladas" (141).
Demetrio's wife (who is nameless) and the young girl Camila, the primary women in Mariano Azuela's Los de abajo (1915), exemplify Montes de Oca Navas's observations. They are secondary and one-dimensional, and relevant only by virtue of their association with the male protagonists. In Como aguapara chocolate (1989), on the other hand, one character stands in stark contrast to the women in earlier novels. Gertrudis De la Garza forsakes the comforts of home and transforms herself from an idle, upper-class senorita into a commanding, pistol-packing generala. While this unexpected leap from the private to the public sphere is undeniably amusing, suspending disbelief before a character that so completely subverts the norm is a challenge. Is General Gertrudis the demystification of a romanticized ideal, or is author Laura Esquivel merely indulging a personal feminist fantasy? In search of other fighting female characters who might help answer this question, I turned to two ostensibly non-fiction texts, both set during the revolution and both written by women-although more than thirty-five years apart: Nellie Campobello's Cartucho (1931) and Elena Poniatowska's Hasta no verte Jesus mio (1969).
Before considering how the women in these works interface with their particular revolutionary contexts, I would like to examine briefly what historical records reveal regarding the role of women in the Mexican Revolution. Ana Lau and Carmen Ramos tell us in their book, Mujeres y revolucion 1900-1917, that as Mexico entered the twentieth century there was a great deal of public discussion taking place about women's role in society. The prevailing male consensus of the day was that while their primary mission resided in reproduction, the education of women (preferably in fine arts and literature) was acceptable, provided that it did not result in their entrance into traditionally masculine professions like politics. Educated middle- and upper-class women had different ideas, however, and were already beginning to make political demands. It was not long before articles branding feminism a "movimiento socialmente peligroso" (21) began to appear, but the general deterioration of social and economic conditions for all Mexicans during the third decade of Porfirio Diaz's presidency created a forum for public debate where women could articulate their concerns more openly; and increasing numbers of women made their voices heard in favor of both the revolutionary cause and that of their gender. In 1901, for example, Juana Belen Gutierrez de Mendoza had founded Vesper, a newspaper whose objective was to "defender a los trabajadores mineros, atacar al clero y al regimen de Porfirio Diaz" (23).
The disruption and insecurity of daily life caused by the war led to the formation of large groups of female camp followers, poor rural women who loaded their cooking utensils and other housekeeping items on their backs, and set out after their men, who had left home to join the revolutionary militias. Many pitched camp in and around railroad cars; and in addition to the usual duties of wife, mother, and lover, these women took on new roles that blurred traditional gender distinctions: they learned to load and shoot dries, and take part in battle, just like their men. Some even went so far as dressing like men and adopting male postures, thereby creating a new type of soldadera who was not merely a camp follower (the original nineteenth-century connotation), but a combatant in her own right. In Historia grafica de la Revolucion Mexicana, 1900-1970, Gustavo Casasola tells us that: "En las columnas volantes, la soldadera necesita masculinizarse...
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