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Gentle reader, today we fight for Pedro. Presenting Colonel Petra “Pedro” Herrera, Mexican revolutionary, demolitions expert, and leader of a battallion of an all-female brigade that boasted hundreds of women.
Here’s the Mexican Revolution in one oversimplified paragraph: It’s the 1910s. President Porfirio Diaz is being a jerk. Revolutionaries (Pancho Villa, Zapata, others from the “bad boys of the revolution” calendar series) pop up and say, “hey, stop being a jerk and step down already.” Bam, war.
Most of the embedded women (soldaderas) were covering the minutia that the let’s-go-fight-already soldiers hadn’t thought through — like, you know, eating. With the war swallowing up town after town, more and more women (and children) joined up with the growing armies, although, some of the forces straight-up kidnapped them (and worse). The result of the whole thing was that the armies of the time looked like a giant block party (a journalist at the time described the revolutionary Carranza’s camp as appearing like “an immense picnic”).
Petra Herrera, though, was not about to cook or clean. Petra was there to kick ass.
Petra Herrera was not there to cook or clean. Petra was there to kick ass.
Her crowning achievement was to sack the city of Torreon, which is a big freaking deal. Taking Torreon — in the biggest fight in the war to that date — gave Pancho Villa access to heavy artillery, a half million rounds of ammunition, armored rail cars, the works. And yet, Herrera was not given much, if any, credit for her work in the massive fight. Now, mind, she’s not mentioned in the official papers on this, so take it with a pinch of salt, but according to another soldier in the battle, “she was the one who took Torreon, she turned off the lights when they entered the city.” Still: she received no promotion to general afterwards.
In response, Herrera said “I’m out.” She left Villa’s forces and made her own — an independent all-female brigade. By the end of the war, it was estimated to comprise around 300-400 women, down from (possibly wild) estimates of 1,000 at its peak. She looked after her women like a mama bear armed to the teeth. She wouldn’t let men sleep in her camp, and enforced that rule by staying up late and using any wayward male soldier that tried to get in as target practice.
She enforced the “no men” rule by staying up late and using wayward male soldiers as target practice.
Sadly, Petra met at ignominious end soon after. Working as a spy for Carranza’s forces in the role of a bartender in Jimenez, she was shot three times by a group of drunken men, and later died of her injuries.
And here’s the thing — as cool as she was, Petra was not unique in being an amazing soldadera. She wasn’t even unique in being an amazing soldadera named Petra who went by the male name of Pedro. There were so many awesomely distinguished women in the Mexican Revolution, it was hard to pick just one. Some others include:
Unfortunately, for most of the post-war history,soldaderas were largely memorialized through folk songs that, to my mind, didn’t quite do them justice, the most famous of which being La Adelita. In the song, the eponymous Adelita follows the army because she is in love with the sergeant. Although certainly that sort of thing happened, love wasn’t exactly the prime motivator for Petra “make me a fucking general already” Herrera.
Other portrayals of soldaderas, especially early on, tended to play into sexed-up gender stereotypes.Los de Abajo, a novel serialized in newspapers beginning in 1915, was a war novel that had two female leads: Camilla, the maternal, demure girlfriend, and La Pintada (the Painted One), who, though an excellent soldier, is portrayed as vulgar, out of control, and generally monstrous. She ends up stabbing Camilla out of jealousy and being exiled. Lame.
Giving the people what they want: 90 cats from a cloud.