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Soldaderas

Not to be confused with Soldadeira.
Adelita, an idealized image of a soldadera in the Historical Museum of the Mexican Revolution.

Soldaderas, often called Adelitas, were women in the military who participated in the conflict of the Mexican Revolution, ranging from commanding officers to combatants to camp followers.[1] "In many respects, the Mexican revolution was not only a men's but a women's revolution."[2] Although some revolutionary women achieved officer status, coronelas, "there are no reports of a woman achieving the rank of general."[3] Since revolutionary armies did not have formal ranks, some women officers were called generala or coronela, even though they commanded relatively few men.[4] A number of women took male identities, dressing as men, and being called by the male version of their given name, among them Ángel Jiménez and Amelio Robles Ávila.[4]

The largest numbers of soldaderas were in Northern Mexico, where both the Federal Army (until its demise in 1914) and the revolutionary armies needed them to provision soldiers by obtaining and cooking food, nursing the wounded, and promoting social cohesion.[5][6]

In area of Morelos where Emiliano Zapata led revolutionary campesinos, the forces were primarily defensive and based in peasant villages, less like the organized armies of the movement of Northern Mexico than seasonal guerrilla warfare. "Contingents of soldaderas were not necessary because at any moment Zapatista soldiers could take refuge in a nearby village."[5]

The term soldadera is derived from the Spanish word soldada, which denotes a payment made to the person who provided for a soldier's well-being.[7][8] In fact, most soldaderas "who were either blood relations or companions of a soldier usually earned no economic recompense for their work, just like those women who did domestic work in their own home."[5]

Soldaderas had been a part of Mexican military long before the Mexican Revolution; however, numbers increased dramatically with the outbreak of the revolution. The revolution saw the emergence of a few female combatants and fewer commanding officers (coronelas). Soldaderas and coronelas are now often lumped together. Soldaderas as camp followers performed vital tasks such as taking care of the male soldiers: cooking, cleaning, setting up camp, cleaning their weapons, and so forth.

For soldaderas, the Mexican Revolution was their greatest time in history.[9] Soldaderas came from various social backgrounds, with those "to emerge from obscurity belonged to the middle class and played a prominent role in the political movement that led to the revolution."[10] Most were likely lower class, rural, mestizo and Native women about whom little is known. Despite the emphasis on female combatants, without the female camp followers, the armies fighting in the Revolution would have been much worse off. When Pancho Villa banned soldaderas from his elite corps of Dorados within his División del Norte, the incidence of rape increased.[11]

They joined the revolution for many different reasons; however, joining was not always voluntary.[12]

  1. ^ Gabriela Cano, "Soldaderas and Coronelas" in Encyclopedia of Mexico, vol. 1, pp. 1357–1360. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn 1997.
  2. ^ Friedrich Katz, The Life and Times of Pancho Villa. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1998, p. 290.
  3. ^ Cano, "Soldaderas and Coronelas" in Encyclopedia of Mexico, p. 1359.
  4. ^ a b Cano, "Soldaderas and Coronelas", p. 1359.
  5. ^ a b c Cano, "Soldaderas and Coronelas", p. 1358.
  6. ^ Frazer, Competing Voices from the Mexican Revolution: Fighting Words, 151.
  7. ^ Don M. Coerver, Suzanne B. Pasztor, Robert Buffington, "Mexico: an encyclopedia of contemporary culture and history", ABC-CLIO, 2004, pg. 472.
  8. ^ Frazer, Chris (2010). Competing Voices from the Mexican Revolution: Fighting Words. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood Press. p. 150. ISBN 9781846450372.
  9. ^ Salas, Elizabeth (1990). Soldaderas in the Mexican Military. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. pp. xii. ISBN 0292776306.
  10. ^ Katz, The Life and Times of Pancho Villa, p. 291.
  11. ^ Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution, vol. 2: Counter-revolutionaries and Reconstruction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986, p. 333.
  12. ^ Soto, Shirlene (1990). Emergence of the Modern Mexican Woman: Her Participation in Revolution and Struggle for Equality 1910–1940. Denver, Colorado: Arden Press, INC. pp. 44. ISBN 0912869127.

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