Soldaderas and the Staging - Specialized Research AI at MIT

Soldaderas and the Staging
of the Mexican Revolution1

Alicia Arrizón

Si Adelita se fuera con otro
la seguiría por tierra y por mar.
Si por mar en un buque de guerra
Si por tierra en un tren militar.
Adelita, por Dios te lo ruego,
calma el fuego de esta mi pasión,
porque te amo y te quiero rendido
y por ti sufre mi fiel corazón.2

If Adelita should go with another
I would follow her over land and sea.
If by sea in a battleship
If by land on a military train.
Adelita, for God’s sake I beg you,
calm the fire of my passion,
because I love you and I cannot resist it
and my faithful heart suffers for you.3

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“La Adelita” was one of the most popular songs of the Mexican Revolution
(1910–1920). According to some sources (see Soto 1990:44), this ballad was
originally inspired by a Durangan woman who had joined the Maderista
movement4 at an early age. Troubadours made the song—and Adelita her-
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self—a popular emblem of the Revolution. As Baltasar Dromundo put it, “las
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guitarras de todas partes se iban haciendo eruditas en ese canto hasta que por
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fin la Revolución hizo de ella su verdadero emblema nacional” (guitarists
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from all over were becoming experts in that song and it became the true em-
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blem of the Revolution) (1936:40). Significantly, Adelita’s surname, as well as
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the family names of many other soldaderas (soldier-women), remained virtually
unknown. However, the popular songs composed in honor of these women
contributed enormously to their fame and to documenting their role in the
Revolution. Shirlene Soto has pointed out that: “Two heroines of the Revo-
lution, Adelita and Valentina, were considered ‘the essence of Mexican femi-
ninity,’ and the corridos written to honor them had widespread popularity”
(1990:44).5 Over time, Adelita’s name was used to refer to any female soldier
who participated in the Mexican Revolution, so that “Adelita” gradually be-

The Drama Review 42, 1 (T157), Spring 1998. Copyright © 1998
New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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came synonymous with “soldadera.” Today, among women in both México
and the U.S., Adelita is a symbol of action and inspiration, and her name is
used to mean any woman who struggles and fights for her rights.

But almost from the beginning, the song and the role of its subject have
been given different, often conflicting, interpretations. As the battle hymn of
Pancho Villa’s troops, “La Adelita” expressed the sensitivity and vulnerability
of men, emphasizing the stoicism of the rebellious male soldier as he confronts
the prospect of death:

Si supieras que ha muerto tu amante,
rezarás por mi una oración,
por el hombre que supo adorarte
con el alma, vida y corazón. (Dromundo 1936:39)6

If you find out your lover has died,
say a prayer for me,
for the man who adored you
with his soul, life, and heart.

Here, the speaking subject of “La Adelita” feels sorrowful at the prospect of
dying in combat and never seeing his beloved again, but he accepts his likely
death after expressing his love. In this guise, “La Adelita” is a song of hope,
based on virility, and the name Adelita becomes a metaphor for love in times
of war. Similarly, in other versions of the song analyzed by the feminist
scholar María Herrara-Sobek, Adelita’s bravery and revolutionary spirit are
lost to the fatalism and insecurities of male soldiers who are focused on pas-
sions, love, and desire as they face combat:

Recordando aquel sargento sus quereres
los soldados que volvían de la guerra
ofreciéndole su amor a las mujeres
entonaban este himno de la guerra. (1990:107)

The sergeant was remembering his loved ones
when the soldiers were returning from the battle
offering their love to the women
they would sing this song of war.

“La Adelita” is a composition that stages gender relations within their interre-
lated subjectivities. In situating “La Adelita” as the focus of my text, I discuss the
narrative and subject position of the protagonist as a soldadera of the Mexican
Revolution. Throughout this essay, as I employ the tools of literary criticism,
textual analysis, and historical interpretation to gain a deeper understanding of
the problematic identity of the soldier-woman Adelita, I am guided by insights
from the work of contemporary feminist scholars. Just as Anna Macías, Clara
Lomas, María Herrera-Sobek, and Shirlene Soto have attempted to reconstruct
the dynamic participation of women in various contexts during the Mexican
Revolution, so in this work I attempt to construct and deconstruct romantic no-
tions of the revolutionary subject in the contexts of culture, and specifically
drama, as I examine how the soldadera has been variously represented and mis-
represented. Adelita, whether in popular songs or in plays, represents a contested
paradigm that demands further critical reflection.

I begin my analysis by discussing the narrative included in Baltasar
Dromundo’s 1936 book, Francisco Villa y La Adelita, in which “La Adelita” is
presented as a major figure among the troops of General Francisco Villa. I also
analyze Josefina Niggli’s play Soldadera, which she wrote about the same time

92 Alicia Arrizón

that Dromundo’s book was released.7 Niggli’s drama stages the participation of
women in the Mexican Revolution, characterizing Adela, the protagonist of
“La Adelita,” as a hero of the Revolution. In both works, Adelita is presented
as a soldier, but in Dromundo’s book, the central tension involves the age-old
equation of male power with superiority and female subordination with infe-
riority. Niggli preserves Adelita’s bravery but undermines her position by at-
tributing to the heroine overwhelming naivete and romantic idealism.

Clearly, Adelita’s identity, in particular her subjectivity as a soldier of the
Revolution, has been shaped and reshaped many times and in many contexts.
Thus the aim of this study is to trace the connections between these various
treatments of Adelita and the gender and power relations embedded in the
larger social, political, and cultural environment.

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Adelita As an Object of Desire

Si Adelita quisiera ser mi esposa,
Si Adelita fuera mi mujer,
le compraría un vestido de seda
para llevarla a bailar al cuartel. (Dromundo 1936:38)

If Adelita wanted to be my wife,
If Adelita would be my woman,
I would buy her a silk dress
to take her dancing at the barracks.

In his short book, Francisco Villa y La Adelita, Baltasar Dromundo uses folk-
lore as a source of information about two legendary figures: General Francisco
Villa, the leader of powerful revolutionary troops in the northern state of Chi-
huahua and a champion of agrarian reform; and Adelita, a soldier-woman
whose beauty and courageous acts during the Revolution attracted much atten-
tion. Dromundo includes a version of “La Adelita” that he maintains is the
original composition of an anonymous troubadour of the Mexican Revolution.
He presents the story of Adelita, narrating a significant event in her life and
dramatizing the situation by combining his prose with dialogue between the
protagonists Adelita and Francisco Villa. As a text within a text, the musical
composition increases the dramatic tension of the story Dromundo presents:

Ya no llores, querida Adelita,
ya no llores, querida mujer,
no te muestres ingrata conmigo,
ya no me hagas tanto padecer. (39)

Don’t cry anymore, my beloved Adelita,
don’t cry anymore, my beloved woman,
don’t be hardhearted with me,
don’t make me suffer anymore.

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In Dromundo’s book, Adelita is described as a norteña (a woman from the
north) who is a beautiful and courageous soldier, but also a “heartbreaker.”
She is depicted as a major figure among the followers of Francisco Villa. Ac-
cording to Dromundo’s anecdote, the day the General first noticed Adelita,
she had been selected to give the speech at a banquet held in his honor.
Adelita was at that point romantically involved with Francisco Portillo (also
known as el güero), who was regarded as one of Pancho Villa’s most coura-
geous dorados.8 Villa, unaware of Adelita and Portillo’s romance, found the

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young woman’s beauty and sagacious personality irresistible. That the General
then followed up his feelings with immediate action was not surprising since
Villa was reputed to be a passionate and daring man—and a womanizer.

In Dromundo’s rendition, while Villa and Adelita are having a conversa-
tion, the General suddenly grabs her violently and kisses her: “Cerca de la
puerta se detuvo Villa y bruscamente tomó a Adelita entre sus brazos y la besó” (Near
the door, Villa stopped and violently grabbed Adelita in his arms and kissed
her) (36). Although this scenario is absurdly romantic, in its melodrama it re-
sembles images from commercial films produced in México since the 1930s, in
which the beautiful señorita is always seduced, conquered, and loved—or “dis-
honored”—by a handsome charro. More significantly, in Dromundo’s anec-
dote, gender relations are indirectly problematized so that domination comes
to determine the protagonists’ interrelated subjectivity. Moreover, this narra-
tive encapsulates the manly power of a nation that subordinates the female
subject, a symbolic paradigm of colonization. After the Spanish conquest of
México, the subordination of women, already instituted in both countries,
was reinforced by attitudes regarding caste and race. Anna Macías asserts that:

Undoubtedly machismo (“extreme male dominance”) and its counterpart,
hembrismo (“extreme female submission”), have been pervasive in
Mexico, in part because of the Aztec subordination of women and even
more because of the Spanish colonial experience. (1982:3)

Dromundo constructs a very dramatic text in order to explain the situation
that links Adelita with General Villa. The central event in Dromundo’s narra-
tive—in which Villa imposes his power and strength on Adelita—is easily in-
terconnected with the larger narrative of machismo and sexism in which the
male protagonist imposes his power and maleness on a female. In my reading
of Villa’s imposition, representations of superiority and inferiority in relation
to gender differences and sexual power are central. Villa’s compulsive behav-
ior is an affirmation of his superiority; Adelita’s submission is inevitable. The
physical and metaphysical force evident in Villa’s action is self-explanatory: “It
is force without the discipline of any notion of order : arbitrary power, the
will without reins and without a set course” (Paz 1985:81). In Dromundo’s
narrative, Adelita—by virtue of her beauty and intelligence—is the seducer.
She is Eve. Francisco Villa’s action is predetermined by his masculinity. His
attitude is never questioned; it is understood that his violent act is instinctual.

Villa’s actions embody the representations of manly power as the generative
force of his condition as a macho, and, of course, historically speaking, as the
General. Whether Adelita liked or disliked Villa’s imposition, or whether her
flirtation (as it was described by Dromundo) induced the General to commit
such an act, is irrelevant to my argument. I am much more concerned with the
effects produced by the representations of sexual power and gender relations.
Mexican poet and philosopher Octavio Paz believes that the inferiority of the
female stems from her sexuality (specifically, her vagina), which he defines as an
open “wound” incapable of healing. The macho’s essential attribute is mani-
fested in his capacity for “wounding, humiliating, annihilating” (1985:82). Ac-
cording to Paz, “the macho represents the masculine pole of life,” and he feels
superior because he cannot be made to “open” (81). The “real meaning” of
macho, Paz says, “is no different from that of the verb chingar and its deriva-
tives. The macho is the gran chingón” (81).9

In the Freudian scheme of thought, the female’s lack of a penis contributes
to her inferiority. For Freud, this connection between human sexuality and
subjectivity was a product of established, subliminal processes that could be
exposed and perhaps modified through psychoanalysis. In Paz’s work, the ob-

94 Alicia Arrizón

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session with the verb “chingar” is a manifestation of his own internalized rac-
ism. Emma Pérez has suggested that Paz’s inferiority complex “holds less
power than that of his symbolic white father, el conquistador” (1991:168). Au-
thoritarian and patriarchal, both Freud and Paz became trapped in the circles
of complex paradoxes involving women, sexuality, and male domination. In
Dromundo’s narrative, this paternal law seems to support the association of
power with masculinity and Villa’s role as the General. The bipolar relation-
ship between Francisco Villa and Adelita is a dramatization of the culture of
the superior-inferior dyad—the complex set of rules and rights embedded in
the position of “master” (the General, the man) and the “subordinate” (the
soldier, the woman).

Although Dromundo’s textual treatment of “La Adelita” emphasizes the
song’s narrative nature, it is important to remember that the story first gained
currency as a popular ballad, a corrido. Thus, the story was and is integrally
bound to its performance. In México, the corrido developed as a unique tra-
dition of the lower classes. In giving representation to the illiterate masses and
recounting (often satirically) stories of current interest, the corrido resembled
the English ballad of the 17th century. However, while the English ballad was
printed and then transmitted orally, the corrido was first performed and then
later printed, often anonymously. Sometimes the printed ballads were sold for
one or two cents each. Since corridos were transmitted orally before being
transcribed from memory, versions of any single song varied among troops
and between any one performer (or group of performers) and another. During
the Revolution, corridos were sung not only for the glorification of soldiers,
but also to disseminate news of national import. “La Adelita” served as model
for the glorification of the female soldier who became the potential lover,
girlfriend, or wife of combat soldiers. The performative functionality of “La
Adelita” lies in its enactment of real—albeit contested—history. As a text
within a text, the ballad is useful analytically because it helps expose the per-
formance of gender relations rooted in the upheaval of social transformation.

The story of Adelita in Dromundo’s text does not end with the narrative of
male imposition and cultural revenge. Portillo, witnessing the way in which
Villa grabs his sweetheart Adelita, automatically draws his gun, intending to kill
the General. But he hesitates, caught in the web of the master-subordinate rela-
tionship. He cannot kill his superior. He backs away, shooting himself, instead.
Adelita runs toward the dead body of her beloved Portillo and embraces him,
crying out. Francisco Villa, looking confused and upset, asks for an explanation:

—¿Qué sabes de esto? [What do you know about this?]

—Era mi novio, repuso Adelita sollozando. [He was my boyfriend,
Adelita replied, sobbing.] (37)

Villa’s reaction is to blame Adelita. In his eyes, she created the situation by
deliberately seducing him. In retaliation, he asks her to leave his troops, and
Adelita agrees. She joins General Domingo Arrieta’s forces, but later disap-
pears and then returns to Villa’s army disguised as a male soldier. Hiding her
beautiful face under the shadow of a wide straw hat, she passes as one of his
brave dorados. Adelita dies in combat in 1915, during one of the bloodiest
fights of the Villistas (the first battle of Celaya). After the battle, when Fran-
cisco Villa is walking among the dead bodies of his dorados, he finds Adelita’s
corpse. Very moved and surprised, Villa declares, “¡Era un dorado!” acknowl-
edging her bravery.10 Dramatically, he takes Adelita’s dead body in his arms
and gives orders for it to be buried beside Francisco Portillo’s grave. With
Adelita the woman dead, all that remains is “La Adelita,” the song:

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1. Two defiant soldaderas
appear ready for combat.
(Photo in Casasola
1969:67; courtesy of Alicia
Arrizón)

96 Alicia Arrizón

Y Adelita se llama la joven
que yo quiero y no puedo olvidar;
en el mundo yo tengo una rosa
y con el tiempo la voy cortar. (38)

And Adelita is the name of a young woman
whom I love and I can’t forget;
in the world I have a rose
and in time I will cut it.

The Role of Women in the Revolution

Adelita and Other Rebels

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Whether the Adelita celebrated in songs and plays was a real, historical sub-
ject or a mythical figure composed of bits and pieces of women who took part
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in the Mexican Revolution has not been definitively established. María
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Herrera-Sobek, for one, questions whether there was an actual Adelita. She
offers the well-known argument that Adelita was a nurse and not a fighting
soldadera. Herrera-Sobek’s sources claim that during a personal interview, a
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Adela insisted that Sergeant Antonio del Rio Armenta, a member of the
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If Adela Velarde was not a fighting soldier, many other women were, as
Gustavo Casasola’s pictorial work has documented. For example, in his
Biograf ía Ilustrada del General Francisco Villa 1878–1966, Casasola includes a pic-
ture of two unidentified soldaderas (1969:67; plate 1). One carries a sword; the
other holds a gun. Both women stare defiantly at the camera and appear ready
for combat. Each captures the spirit of Revolution; with their aggressiveness
and indigenous beauty, these women are models of the fighting soldaderas.11

Most of the soldaderas who joined the front lines of the Revolution were
mestizas or Indian women. Sometimes, they went into combat carrying their
children on their backs. Some soldaderas were teachers who left the classroom
to join or support the troops. They risked their lives and left their families to
take part in the Revolution. Regardless of their backgrounds, female partici-
pants in the Mexican Revolution did whatever was needed—they fought, for-
aged for food, cooked, nursed the wounded, and performed many other
essential services (Soto 1990:43–45).12 In México in 1986, I met Justina
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Carrasco, a mestiza. Doña Justina was then 94 years old and very proud to
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have participated in the Mexican Revolution. Called “mi coronela” (colonel)
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fought on the front lines (1986).13 Of course, many of them also took care of
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wounded soldiers. For example, Apolinaria Flores, a curandera (healer), was a
source of faith and hope for the Zapatista rebels (Soto 1990:46).

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Among Las Adelitas there were rich as well as poor women, educated as
well as uneducated.14 Some upper-class women fought not with guns but with
words. These aristocrats, rebelling against the ideals of their own social class,
were important advocates of an ideology of resistance and contributed to the
development of revolutionary feminist consciousness. Despite the intensity
and integrity of their struggle for social reform in a society where the conflict-
ing role of women demanded redefinition, these pioneering rebels have not
received the credit that is their due. In noting the diverse role women played
during México’s crisis, Anna Macías observes:

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Yet, except for occasional references to soldaderas, most historians of the
revolution have ignored the active role of Mexican women as precursors,
journalists, propagandists, political activists, and soldiers. Only artists and
novelists have given serious attention to the way the revolution victim-
ized millions of women and, outside of religious publications, there has
been a vast silence concerning the active role women played in opposing
the anticlerical aspects of the Mexican Revolution. (1982:49)15

Macías contends, further, that it was from the status of these women that the
Mexican feminist movement of the 1920s and 1930s drew its power.

One important feminist voice among the aristocrats was that of Leonor
Villegas de Magnón. A vehement critic of dictator Porfirio Díaz, Villegas was a
conspirator and a willing participant in the Mexican Revolution.16 She rejected
both the ideals of the aristocratic class and the traditional role assigned to
women in Mexican society. Villegas migrated in 1910 from México to Laredo,
Texas, where she began to write for a Laredo newspaper and became a member
of the Junta Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Council). In her introduction to
Villegas de Magnón’s memoir, The Rebel, Clara Lomas describes the author:

Villegas de Magnón protagonizes an “aristocratic” rebel whose task is to
immortalize the border activism of los fronterizos, to move them from a
marginal backstage to center stage. Her story provides yet another in-
stance of the struggle for authority and interpretative power waged by
the various revolutionary factions of the borderlands through one of the
most powerful mediums of their oppositional discourse, the alternative
press. (in Villegas de Magnón 1994:xi)17

Villegas de Magnón supported the ideals of the Mexican Revolution. In us-
ing her writing as a tool for liberation and intellectual growth, she joined
many other women of her generation (such as, Sara Estela Ramírez, the
Villareal sisters, Jovita Idar, and other members of La Voz de La Mujer and
Pluma Roja) and contributed enormously to the growth of political and socio-
cultural awareness at the turn of the century.18 Clara Lomas has pointed out
that, in their writings, these women expressed different discursive positions
with regard to nationalism, religion, and anarchism. In spite of these differ-
ences, however, they all consistently rejected the many restrictions attributed
to gender inequality and sexual oppression, helping to shape a feminist con-
sciousness on both sides of the border. But in much the same way as the par-
ticipation of women in the Revolution has been overlooked as a historical
subject, these women’s writings and ideology have gone unrecognized.
“These women’s stories and publishing efforts, nonetheless, capture the reali-
ties of a people, the significance of whose daily existence transcends the limi-
tations imposed by political and national borders” (Lomas 1994:xvii).

It is not unusual for the writings and activities of women, and especially
those of feminists, to be wholly absent from the annals of history; often, how-
ever, women’s deeds and words are not so much deleted as they are trans-
formed beyond recognition. This process of redefinition is strikingly clear in
the case of “La Adelita.” Historically, the subject position of Adelita represents
the female revolutionary. In many versions of the song, however, little men-
tion is made of her participation as a soldier. Instead, Adelita is viewed as an
object of male desire. As María Herrera-Sobek has observed, the transforma-
tion of Adelita into a love object “became problematic for the troubadour
since he or she could not employ the classic form of the heroic corrido; a
more flexible structure, a more lyrical framework, had to be employed to fit
the romantic contents of the ballad” (1990:104).

98 Alicia Arrizón

2. Calavera
revolucionaria by José
Guadalupe Posada. The
calavera (skull or skeleton)
represents the soldadera who
rode, marched, and fought
with the rebellious bands
against the federals. The
drawing is from circa 1910.
(Photo in Berdecio and
Appelbaum 1972:12; cour-
tesy of Alicia Arrizón)

In her discussion of the status of Adelita, Herrera-Sobek compares in detail
the form and content of two versions of “La Adelita” taken from the
Guerrero Collection19 (104). One version leaves Adelita’s status unclear; the
other more obviously presents her as a soldier (106). As a historical figure,
Adelita was a soldier-woman, attracting attention with her military uniform—
cartridge belts slung across her chest, a rifle hung on her shoulder—and her
bravery. Adelita’s revolutionary subjectivity represents the feminist spirit of
the Mexican Revolution, but in many well-known renditions of the “La
Adelita” song, that spirit has been distorted by the romanticization of her sub-
ject position as a lover of men.

Still, not all representations of Adelita have de-emphasized her role as a
soldadera. In fact, as a paradigm of the female rebel, the soldadera was a source
of inspiration for many people during and after the Revolution. The work of
the artist Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913) is important in this regard. During
the Revolution, Posada used calaveras (skulls or skeleton) as characters in his
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drawings in order to address the subject of the Revolution as a social mani-
h
festo. In 1910, as a part of his calavera collection, he created the Calavera
revolucionaria, representing a woman soldier riding a horse among the rebel-
lious troops (plate 2).20 More than 25 years later, in homage to this same fe-
m
male revolutionary subjectivity, Josefina Niggli, one of the most prolific
writers of the Mexican American period, created the drama Soldadera.21

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Niggli’s Depiction of Adelita and Other Soldaderas

Josefina Niggli’s Soldadera, a full-length play in one act, was the first theatri-
cal representation, north or south of the border, of the participation of female
soldiers in the Mexican Revolution. Niggli’s edi-
tor, Frederick H. Koch, described this play as em-
bodying “the heroic struggle of Mexican
Valkyries in the Revolution of 1910” (in Niggli
1938:vii).22 The play depicts this struggle in
strong, vivid terms, referring to “the women who
left their homes and dragged along after their
men, cooking for them, tending their wounds,
guarding their ammunition, fighting when neces-
sary” (x). Niggli uses the drama to explore the he-
roic role of women in the Revolution and to
illustrate the personal and ideological reasons for
becoming active protagonists.

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“She is the poetry of the Revolution, and the
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death finds life very gay” (1938:57).

This depiction of Adelita as “the poetry of the
Revolution” is evident in the theatrical lyricism
embedded in the musical compositions of “La
Adelita.” In her play, Niggli represents Adelita,
other soldaderas, and the Revolution in romantic
terms. She views them all through the lens of her
own reality, one significantly shaped by the cir-
cumstances of her life as part of a particular gen-
eration in the United States. Her formative years
were divided between Monterrey, México, where

Soldaderas

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she was born (in 1910), and San Antonio, Texas (where she was sent in 1913
to escape the disruption of the Revolution). Niggli started her writing career
in 1928, when her father financed the printing of her first book, Mexican Sil-
houettes, a collection of poems; she also published poems and short stories in
magazines such as Mexican Life and the Ladies Home Journal. As Niggli tells it,
her career owed much to the no-nonsense approach of one of her teachers:
Sister Mary Clement, of Incarnate Word College, locked Niggli in a room
and would not let her come out until she had written a piece for the Ladies
Home Journal short story contest. Niggli won second prize in that competition
and later also won the National Catholic College Poetry Award.

During the late 1920s and 1930s, Niggli became very popular in San Anto-
nio, Texas, where she was writing and producing for KTSA radio (55.5 AM).
After receiving her B.A. in 1931, Niggli began to study playwriting at the San
Antonio Little Theatre. In 1935, she decided to join the Carolina Playmakers,
a graduate program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She
completed her M.A. degree with Singing Valley, a play produced by the Caro-
lina Playmakers in 1936. These were very creative years for Niggli. In addi-
tion to Soldadera, she wrote three historical plays about México, The Fair God,
The Cry of Dolores, and Azteca. During the late 1930s, she returned to México
to work as stage manager for Rodolfo Usigli, a well-known Mexican drama-
tist who was at that time directing the theatre department at the Universidad
Autónoma de México. In 1956, Niggli was hired to teach English and drama
at Western Carolina University, where she headed the theatre department un-
til her retirement in 1975 (Shirley 1981:279–86).23

As a privileged upper-class writer, Niggli took part in the intellectual search
for community that characterized the emerging Mexican American upper and
middle classes during the 1930s. Her writing developed as a product of her
Americanization, mediated by such institutions as the family, the Catholic
Church, and the educational system. Moreover, her ideological consciousness
was shaped by the ideas of the exiled Mexican ricos who settled in San Antonio
between 1908 and 1914 (see García 1983:67–93). Thus, it is not surprising that
Soldadera is suffused with romanticism. Niggli’s writing reflects her desire to
make the Anglo-American public appreciate the Mexican experience in the
U.S.24 Portrayals of “the Mexican” and an exploration of her own Mexicanness,
carefully translated and adapted for a foreign audience, are the core themes of
Niggli’s work.

In Soldadera, most of the characters were played by Anglo-Americans, in-
cluding the role of Adelita (and except the role of Maria, who was played by
Niggli). For Niggli, the Mexican spectator/protagonist—on both sides of the
border—remained absent. Her didactic system of representation was specifi-
cally crafted to target Anglos. The system of production in Soldadera (and in
her work in general) was a means of demanding her rights as a Mexican
American, of making herself heard by the Anglo majority, of making herself
known and “visible” as an ethnic “other.” Niggli’s dramatic work embodies
Mexicanness as an inscription that marks ethnic subjecthood as a model for
performing identity. This is evident in plate 3, where Niggli is pictured in fes-
tive attire, wearing a traditional zarape over her left shoulder and allowing her
wide straw sombrero to ride across her shoulders. Her expression is narcissistic;
she seems to be engaging in a deliberate performance of Mexican folklore.

Most of Niggli’s plays, including Soldadera, were originally produced by
Professor Frederick H. Koch and performed by the Carolina Playmakers for
Anglo-American audiences. Rodolfo Usigli has noted this regrettably narrow
focus: “Her source is essentially Mexican, but the treatment strikes in certain
ways as a deliberate one, intended for a foreign public” (in Niggli 1938:xix).
Focusing on a “foreign public,” he makes clear, simultaneously implies the ab-

100 Alicia Arrizón

sence of a Mexican audience. This was disturbing. An
admirer of Niggli’s work, Usigli ranked her highly
among such contemporaries in Mexican theatre as
Celestino Gorostiza, Xavier Villaurrutia, and Amalia
de Castillo Ledón. Still, he did not hesitate to criti-
cize Niggli’s failure to write for the Mexican audi-
ence of the 1930s, as his closing remarks in the
foreword to Mexican Folk Plays demonstrate:

It has been my contention for some time that we
will be in no position to promote the advent of a
poetic theatre in Mexico so long as we do not have
a true realistic drama created by playwrights well
possessed of their craft and of the necessities and
limitations of the theatre. I will, therefore, take this
opportunity to excite Miss Niggli to write some-
thing along this line in Spanish to give the contem-
porary audiences of Mexico an occasion to
appreciate her talents and to rejoice at the appear-
ance of a new Mexican playwright. (1938:xx)

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“The United States needed the folk drama more
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than Mexico. I wanted people to know the wonder-
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ful world south of the border and that there was
something besides Europe” (in Shirley 1981:286).

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3. In this photo from the
1930s, Josefina Niggli poses
in traditional festive attire
with a zarape and wide
straw sombrero over her
shoulders. Her expression
is narcissistic; she seems to
be engaging in a deliberate
performance of Mexican
folklore. (Photo in Niggli
1938:viii; courtesy of Alicia
Arrizón)

For Niggli, the essence of the “wonderful world”
of México lies in its vividness, its dramatic potential. She is not concerned
with bringing to her audiences an understanding of the complex realities of
life in México, nor is she interested in examining the dilemmas facing Mexi-
can Americans. She evokes instead a kind of magical world summoned from
objective knowledge and memory—a gauzy mixture of the real and the imag-
ined. Niggli’s artistic imagination was dominated by her yearning for her be-
loved México and by the conflict implicit in trying to integrate her cultural
and social heritage into Anglo society. Her (unsuccessful) solution to the diffi-
culties of blending her two heritages was to place the Mexican world wholly
in the past and situate the inevitable process of assimilation in the present. A
poem she wrote, included in the introduction to Mexican Folk Plays, clearly il-
lustrates her strongly nationalistic sensibility:

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Mexico, my beloved,
is not the clashing of cymbals
not the curving of vermilion sails
over the heart
of the wind;
it is not
a vivid slash
across the mouth
of the world.
But when the moon touches the silken waves
of the Lerma,
and the carnations
breathe their scents
into the souls of a thousand birds

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101

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forcing them to sing
of something
they but dimly understand—
this, my beloved,
is Mexico. (1938:vi)

Faced with the crisis of the Great Depression, she uses her poetic imagination
to try to capture the Mexican soul as the essence of her own identity. For
Niggli, México is a “landscape” with a colorful and rich past.

Thus, in Soldadera, as she translates the folklore of México and gives form to
history and tradition within the medium of the theatre, Niggli emphasizes her
country’s dramatic, passionate qualities. The play’s stark setting is meant to
impart a particular atmosphere more than to capture a specific, historical site:

The rocks are rugged spikes of stone against the dark blue sky. Here is no
flowery green softness, no delicacy of outline, but a grim fortress built by
nature against the valley below. What vegetation exists is sparse and scat-
tered. Perhaps a yucca palm stands aloof from the organ cactus that rears
its pointed leaves here and there, while small round cacti, studded with
thorns, wear scarlet flowers for crowns. (1938:55)

This romantic vision on the stage represents a camp in the middle of the
desert, located in the Sierra Madre Mountains, near the capital city of Saltillo
in the northern state of Coahuila. Niggli’s staging of the desert represents the
terrain characteristic in the northern states of México where Villa’s troops
gained control. While she uses rich metaphors to describe the setting in natu-
ral terms, the portrayal of the desert captures real geography. Set in the spring
of 1914, the play’s action involves an event in the life of a group of soldaderas
who support the Villistas. Their task is to guard the rebels’ ammunition,
which is stored at this camp. When the play opens, “It is the hour just before
dawn, that hour when even nature seems to be asleep, and the only moving
thing in all that silence is the figure of a woman standing on the high rock
that shields a part of the path from view” (1938:59).

Among the characters are Maria, the sentinel (played by Niggli);25 Concha,
the leader (Gerd Bernhart); The Blond One (Christine Maynard), the ammu-
nition guard; and Adelita (Barbara Hilton), the youngest of the group. Two
other soldiers are Cricket (Phoebe Barr) and Tomasa (Jessie Langdale). There
is also The Old One (Mary Lou Taylor), a woman who decries the death of a
son killed by the federales, their enemy. The enemy forces, known as pelones
during the Revolution, are the “rich ones” in the play. The action develops
when a spy, The Rich One (Robert du Four), who has been captured by the
women and is being held in the camp, pretends to support the revolutionary
cause and takes Adelita as his chosen target. He tries to seduce her in order to
obtain information that later will be sent to the enemy.

Addressing the content of this play, Usigli asserted, “It is my feeling that, if
presented to a Mexican public, the treatment of Soldadera would have to be
somewhat different to be altogether satisfactory” (xix). I agree. Niggli’s dra-
matic idealization of the Mexican subject makes her work more suitable for
the very audience she wanted to reach—the Anglo-American public of the
1930s, most of whom knew nothing about the Mexican Revolution. That she
was consciously trying to transmit to an Anglo audience a sense of the culture
and folklore of the country she loved is evident in the notes she wrote to ac-
company Soldadera. For example, when she introduces very specific cultural
markers such as “mescal,” she provides this explanation: “Mescal is a colorless

102 Alicia Arrizón

liquor made from the sap of maguey” (58). Later, she includes another foot-
note to explain its significance: “Maguey: type of cactus found extensively in
Mexico. Grows exceedingly fast—three feet in a night. The sap of the
maguey is used as an inebriating drink, called mescal” (103). And, to explain
the meaning of the word tequila, she remarks, “This is refined mescal” (101).

Niggli introduces the subject of Francisco Villa in a song.

MARIA: One thing always gives me laughter,

Pancho Villa the morning after.
Ay, there go the Carran[c]istas…
Who comes here?

THE OTHER WOMEN (joining in the chorus):

Why, the Villistas.
Ay, Pancho Villa, ay Pancho Villa,
Ay, he can no longer walk.
Because he lacks now, because he has not
Any drug to help him talk! Ay-yay! (64)

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The protagonists joyfully sing and dance “La Cucaracha” (cockroach), a fa-
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north. The ballad tells the story of a cockroach who can travel no further
r
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without marijuana. This refrain became symbolic among the revolutionaries,
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for whom travel and fighting had become a way of life. Niggli reworked some
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verses by substituting “Francisco Villa” for “la cucaracha.”26 Again, Niggli in-
d
cludes a footnote to provide her audience with basic information about Villa:
“Pancho Villa was the leader in the north of the Agrarian Revolution of 1910.
His followers were called Villistas. He was opposed to the government of
Venustiano Carranza whose followers were known as Carran[c]istas” (64).27

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Notes like these, which place the Mexican world wholly within cultural
markers, demonstrate the didactic nature of Niggli’s approach to theatre. At
the same time, her system of representation was intended to transcend all geo-
graphical and psychological borders, and in so doing reveal the richness of her
culture. In that sense, her writing also displays her efforts to transcend her
own state of exile. Tensions and unresolved conflicts remained, however, as
plays like Soldadera make clear. Although Niggli uses the Mexican Revolution
and the role of the soldaderas mainly as an intertext in her play and infuses the
action with didactic romanticism, she never strips her key female characters of
either strength or spirit. When she incorporates some verses of “La Adelita,” it
is Concha, the strong, brave leader of the group, who sings the song:

If Adelita should go with another,
If Adelita should leave me all alone,
I would follow in a boat made of thunder,
I would follow in a train made of bone. (73)28

Concha is depicted as a “woman of the earth.” She is a fearless, combative,
and vehement soldadera:

As dirty as the rest of them, there is strength that flowers in her body and
sets her above and beyond them. Born of the earth, it is the earth’s pulse
that she has for her heart. She is the one who keeps these fighting, snarl-
ing women together…who can punish with a sure, cold hand, but at the
same time can heal their wounds. As merciless as the wind and rain, she
is as warm and healing as the sun. (74)

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Soldaderas

103

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Concha is a force comparable to the strong elements associated with Mother
Nature. A loving woman, she is also capable of going to extremes, if circum-
stances require.

When Concha is challenged by the prisoner, whom she has threatened to tor-
ture, he replies: “But you [are] women…not hardened soldiers” (94). Men and
women are posited in separate and distinct categories. Even in times of war, one
can be only a woman, never a “hardened soldier,” suggests the Rich One. Here,
gender interrelations are placed within the context of male domination and he-
gemonic ideology. These relations, Jane Flax suggests, “have been concealed by
a variety of ways, including defining women as a ‘question’ or the ‘sex’ or the
‘other’ and men as the universal, or at least without gender” (1990:45).

Concha rejects the prisoner’s presumption regarding the weakness of the fe-

male sex:

CONCHA (more to herself than to him): Are we women? Sometimes I wonder.
The Old One who cooks our food […] she saw her son crucified by men of
your kind [… and] another one saw her son hunted down by dogs for the
sport of it. That doesn’t make women, my friend. That makes something
worse than the devils in hell.

THE RICH ONE: But I had nothing to do with their sorrows. Why do they
want to torture me?

CONCHA: You called Adelita a symbol of the Revolution. Well, you’re a
symbol to us. You’re a symbol of all the hate and horror that the Rich Ones
have made for us. There are no men here to tell us what to do. We stand
alone. You are merely the victim. That is not our fault. (94)

These exchanges between Concha and the prisoner are perhaps the most
powerful articulations in Niggli’s dramatic text. In staging class struggle as the
main conflict of the Mexican Revolution, while also capturing as a subtext the
internal struggle over gender differences, these passages clearly define the
playwright’s feminist and ideological consciousness. Furthermore, Niggli’s char-
acters’ dialogue embodies some of the important ideals of the Revolution, in-
cluding the demand for extensive reforms that would distribute land to the
Indians, the mestizos, and to other dispossessed communities.29 Soldadera’s theat-
ricality connects directly with a powerful discourse of class struggle in which the
rich are understood to be the enemy of the poor. Niggli’s ideological formation,
then, represents the Revolution as an act against the Mexican bourgeoisie.

In fact, the Mexican Revolution arose in response to social evolution moti-
vated by the Díaz regime and the generation of the so-called Científicos. At the
turn of the century, with the development of industry and railroads, and the
freedom to acquire wealth, materialism, and dehumanization were champi-
oned as models of modern life. Of course, it was a type of modernism and
freedom in which not all classes could participate. Concha strongly believes in
the Revolution as a class struggle, as is clear in her remarks to The Rich One:
“You’re a symbol of all the hate and horror that the Rich Ones made for us.
There are no men here to tell us what to do” (94). As a true soldadera, she
defends the ideals of the Revolution with passion and bravery:

THE RICH ONE (sneering): I suppose you women think you can stop the
Federales, now you know so well they are coming.

CONCHA: I’ll stop them, never fear. They’ll be making a nice warm nest for
you on the tail of Grandfather Devil. (96)

While Concha represents the force that holds the women in the group to-
gether, young Adelita is depicted as childlike. She is the essence of vulnerabil-

104 Alicia Arrizón

ity. Sweet and innocent, she readily believes the lies The Rich One tells her
and tries to persuade her fellow soldaderas that he is trustworthy.

ADELITA: This man is different. He believes in the Revolution. Why, he
even knows the words of “Adelita”…

TOMASA (sneering): What does he know about the great song of the Revolu-
tion?

ADELITA: He’s crazy about the Revolution and he wants to know all about
us, what we think about, how we live, everything.

MARIA: And I suppose you tell him everything, eh? Not that the news will
do him any good, when he is dead.

ADELITA: He says that if he hadn’t sworn an oath to the Federales, he’d like
to join Hilario.

THE BLOND ONE: So he tells you that, eh? That eater of cow’s meat.

MARIA (gibingly): And she believes him.

ADELITA: Why shouldn’t I believe him? What do you know about him?
Any of you? You’ve never spoken to him…not seriously you haven’t.

CRICKET: Didn’t I capture him?

ADELITA: You? It was Concha. (71)

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It is Adelita who represents virtue. She wants to save The Rich One’s life,
and she becomes distraught over the cruelty of the women whom she loves
and respects. Listening to the group deciding what to do with their prisoner,
Adelita is appalled by their plans:

CONCHA: Adelita! Come here, child.

ADELITA: I don’t want to touch you. I don’t want to touch any of you. You are
not the women I used to know…you’re not the women who used to carry me
around on your backs when my mother died. You’ve changed, all of you, horri-
bly changed! Why, you’re just like you’re dead to me. All of the goodness and
sweetness that used to be in you…it’s dead! (Crouches on the ground, crying bitterly.)

TOMASA: This is the Revolution, not a nursery.

ADELITA: What do you know about the Revolution? It’s beautiful, it’s glo-
rious, it’s heroic. It’s giving all you’ve got to freedom. It’s dying with the sun
in your face, not being eaten to death by little red ants in a bottle. If this is
your Revolution, I don’t want to see it…I don’t want to see it!

CONCHA (standing): Yes, this is the Revolution. We had to forget how to
weep, and how to be kind and merciful. We are cruel, because the Revolu-
tion is cruel. It must crush out the evil before we can make things good again.

TOMASA: Crush it lower than earth.

CONCHA: Adelita, Adelita, for you there is tomorrow, but for us there is
only yesterday. The Revolution is a fire that flames up and destroys, and we
are the fire.

THE BLOND ONE: Burning, burning, let us burn them all.

CONCHA: We are the flame, calling to flame, and we are the earth calling to
earth, and we are the tempest blowing across the sky! (109)

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Niggli uses rich metaphors to address the nature of the Revolution, both
poetically and ideologically. The power of these dramatic representations is
reinforced in the weaknesses and strengths of her protagonists. Beyond these
symbolic representations, the portrayal of Adelita as unlike the rest of the
members of the group gains additional import in the final outcome, when she
becomes their unexpected hero. Concha discovers that the enemy troops are
on their way to the camp to destroy the rebels’ ammunition. The group’s plan
requires a sacrificial victim—one of the women must throw a bomb at the
troops as they arrive. This means certain death for the woman who agrees to
do the deed. The intended hero is Cricket, but at the last moment she be-
comes immobilized by fear. Adelita steps in and takes Cricket’s place, giving
up her own life without hesitation:

CRICKET (screams): No! Not me! (Runs down, flings herself on her knees and
throws both arms about Concha’s knees.) I wouldn’t have a chance in a landslide.
I don’t want to die. Not me! I was only fooling. I didn’t mean what I said.
Please, Concha, not me, please. I don’t want to die.

CONCHA: Choose quickly, my friend. Would you rather have Tomasa’s red
ants eating out your eyes? (CRICKET screams and flings both arms up over her face.)

ADELITA (running toward them): Wait! I will throw it. (She snatches the bomb
from Concha.)

CONCHA (horrified): No!

ADELITA (strikes CONCHA with her free arm and knocks her to the ground):
This the Revolution! The sun will be in my face! (She flings back her head after
the triumphant cry and THE RICH ONE, seeing the path free, gives a desperate
pull, dashes past the women, and up the path.)

THE RICH ONE (screaming to the Federales): Back, you fools, back!

ADELITA (running up the path after him): Long live the Revolution! (113).

Adelita is killed, but the ammunition is safe. Her bravery is exalted in this fi-
nal act. The innocent and sweet Adelita sacrifices her life for the Revolution.
This event represents Niggli’s idealization of Adelita’s character; the dramatist’s
sense of poetic justice makes Adelita the symbol of the revolutionary cause.
Beyond Niggli’s romantic metaphors, however, lies her rich ideological and
feminist consciousness. She is intent on revealing the courage of women who
fought in the Revolution, and therefore, she makes Adelita a hero. Carmen
Salazar Parr and Genevieve M. Ramírez, in “The Female Hero in Chicano
Literature,” include Soldadera and consider both Adelita and Concha heros
(1985:50). They make a comparison between Adelita and the mythical Ifigenia.
Although noting similarities in the two characters’ sweetness and innocence,
they point out a major difference. Adelita’s self-sacrifice is motivated by her
own conscious will in support of the Revolution; Ifigenia’s sacrifice was influ-
enced by her father, Agamemnon. They describe Niggli’s soldaderas:

Niggli’s women are not the stoical mujeres sufridas (women who are sub-
missive to a social station imposed by male-dominated society and their
maternal obligations); instead, their form of self-sacrifice is their deliber-
ately assumed role as active agents. (1985:50)

Niggli’s soldaderas are both theatrical subjects and products of the dramatist’s
dialectical imagination. Her marked discursive conventionalism, evident in the
play’s many romantic metaphors and fanciful staging, is intertwined with a

106 Alicia Arrizón

4. The Rich One, Concha,
and Adelita (seated) in a
scene from the original pro-
duction of Soldadera by
the Carolina Playmakers at
Chapel Hill, North Caro-
lina (27–29 February
1936). (Photo in Niggli
1938:88; courtesy of Alicia
Arrizón)

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feminist consciousness. Contradictions abound: Anglo women play Mexican
soldaderas; they wear clean and colorful skirts and shawls; they are surrounded
by basketry and cacti meant to evoke folk art and a warm, exotic countryside
(see plate 4). At the same time, the theatrical subject is hard-edged, formulated
on the ideological premise of the Revolution. The playwright’s message is
clear. Despite her childlike qualities, Adelita is revealed in the end as an aggres-
sive, valiant hero. Beyond the folklore and subjective historical interpretation
presented in Soldadera, Niggli’s depiction of Adelita and the other soldaderas
centers the courage and bravery of these women. The song “La Adelita” and
the character Adelita become powerful intertexts which help to reconstruct the
subject of history in relation to the courageous participation of women.
Adelita’s self-sacrifice was inevitable as the dramatist’s metaphoric discourse.
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But this conventionalism helps to increase the dramatic tension and the cultural
8
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condensation, as Niggli’s identity, too, is affirmed as a feminist and as a Mexi-
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The play closes with the women in the camp softly singing verses of “La

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Adelita”:

CONCHA: Well, she got to them in time. The ammunition is safe. Aren’t
you glad? Aren’t you happy? Hilario can fight on for the Revolution. You
should show how happy you are. You should sing. Yes, sing, you devil’s
vomit, sing!

If Adelita should go with another,
If Adelita should leave me alone…

(As the women slowly join in the song, Concha stops singing, and her outflung arms
drop slowly to her side.)

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THE WOMEN (singing softly):

I would follow in a boat made of thunder,
I would follow in a train made of bone.

(The curtains close.) (114)

Metatheatrical and representative of folkloric interventions, “La Adelita”
functions in Soldadera as an explicit link between history and popular culture.
This use of the song is found in Dromundo’s work as well. In his narrative, the
song breaks the monotony of the anecdotal. In Niggli’s play, “La Adelita” is a
theatrical metaphor embedded in the emerging construction of Mexican Ameri-
can identity. This construction is heightened by Niggli’s sense of Mexicanness,
which provided a consciousness of joy touched by the Americanness underlying
the economy of the play’s stage production.

The fact that most of the characters in Soldadera are played by Anglo-
Americans is not an accident. As members of the Carolina Playmakers at
Chapel Hill, the actors and actresses who brought Niggli’s work to life were
students in the Department of Dramatic Arts, headed by Frederick H. Koch
(editor of Niggli’s folk plays). Indeed, The Carolina Playmakers gained a na-
tional reputation on the American stage as the founders of folk theatre. As a
student at Chapel Hill, Niggli’s imagination was influenced by Koch, who de-
fined folk theatre as a performance concerned with “legends, superstitions,
customs, environmental differences, and the vernacular of the common
people” (in Spearman 1970:16). Thus, Niggli’s construction of Mexican
American identity is intertwined with the folklorization of culture. The theat-
rical methodology she learned at Chapel Hill shaped the way Niggli expressed
herself, resulting in a bifurcated image of the Mexican American. One aspect
represents the legacy of her culture and traditions, while the other reflects the
reality of her present condition as a playwright for Anglo-American society.

Despite the dire economic conditions of the 1930s, which were detrimental
for Mexican Americans, Niggli was able to succeed as a dramatist, novelist, di-
rector, actress, and teacher. Being in North Carolina during the 1930s was cru-
cial for her development as a dramatist. The Playmakers at Chapel Hill provided
her with the necessary space to create and develop her career as an artist of
eclectic aptitude. Had she remained in San Antonio, she might never have suc-
ceeded; the Depression was devastating for theatre workers in the Southwest as
was the resultant forced and voluntary repatriation. As a Southwestern artist who
achieved great popularity, Niggli became the first dramatist of Mexican descent
to have published previously produced material. Lo mexicano (Mexicanness) pro-
vided authentic material for a series of plays which deal in a colorful and theatri-
cal way with the memories of her own exile. In Soldadera, Niggli represents the
struggle of women and their active participation in the Revolution. In romantic
terms, she “stages” herself as one of these women. Indeed, Niggli’s revolutionar-
ies are the subjects of specific historical circumstances, but their staging becomes
a reflection of her own experience at Chapel Hill.

Conclusion

Determining what constitutes representation and misrepresentation can be
problematic. What one understands to be the relation between the real and its
distortion, between what something is and what it can be imagined as, in-
volves subjective judgment. From the musical composition of “La Adelita” to
Dromundo’s narrative of deception and Niggli’s folkloric theatricality, the
gendered position of the protagonist is repeatedly represented in romantic
concepts. In the song, the subject clearly becomes the object of sexual desire,

108 Alicia Arrizón

5. La Adelita, by Angel
Martin, from the popular
calendars produced annually
in México by Calendarios y
Propaganda. (Courtesy of
Alicia Arrizón)

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Adelita’s subjectivity, both authors present her as a hero of the Revolution. In
our contemporary society, north and south of the U.S.-México border,
Adelita’s heroism is frequently popularized. Today, however, this same
soldadera has evolved into a glaring example of commodification. For in-
stance, Angel Martin’s calendars, which exalt Adelita’s beautiful face and
body, continue to be very popular, year after year. Nationalism and sensualism
merge as the glamorous femme fatale is pictured with two cartridge belts slung
across her ample chest; she holds the Mexican flag in one hand, a cornet in
the other (plate 5). Thus, the current popular representation of Adelita, a
product of consumerism and the exploitation of the female body, preserves
nothing of her feminist spirit. Instead the portrayal of Adelita in her revolu-

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tionary ensemble is sexualized and objectified. As an object of desire and
erotic pleasure, Adelita is a commercial commodity.

And yet, the story of Adelita the fighting soldier lives on. Her revolutionary
spirit inspires young Chicanas to challenge the exclusionary forces of American
society of the 1990s. The song “La Adelita” continues to captivate people’s
imagination, and as a cultural site, helps to construct and deconstruct Adelita’s
subjectivity.

Ya me despido, querida Adelita,
de ti un recuerdo quisiera llevar,
tu retrato lo llevo en el pecho
como escudo que me haga triunfar. (39)

Farewell my beloved Adelita,
from you a token I wish to take,
your picture I carry in my heart
as a shield that will bring me victory.

Notes

1. The Center for Ideas and Society at UC Riverside supported work with my “Perform-
ing Identities” research group during the winter quarter of 1997. This article was dis-
cussed as part of that group.

2. These are popular verses. They were not taken exactly from any particular written text.
Their oral character corresponds to the nature of the song itself. For more information
about some of the collected verses of “La Adelita,” consult Baltasar Dromundo, Fran-
cisco Villa y La Adelita (1936), and María Herrera-Sobek, The Mexican Corrido: A Femi-
nist Analysis (1990).

3. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
4. The Maderistas were the followers of Francisco I. Madero, the educated son of a
wealthy mining family. Madero was an outspoken critic of Porfirio Díaz’s autocrat
government and is widely credited with having started the Mexican Revolution. The
Maderistas defeated Díaz and made Madero president of México in 1912. Unfortu-
nately, Madero’s government was chaotic and short-lived. Counterrevolutions broke
out in the north, led by Generals Venustiano Carranza, Francisco Villa, and Alvaro
Obregón. Francisco “Pancho” Villa (also known as the “Centaur of the North”) gained
control of the northern state of Chihuahua. Villa demanded agrarian reform, calling for
the confiscation of large haciendas in 1913. While Villa created powerful troops and of-
ten lead them into battle himself, his flamboyance earned him a dubious reputation
both north and south of the border.

In the south, Emiliano Zapata (the “Attila of the South”) led a peasant movement
aimed at securing land and liberty for the poor. The Zapatistas, as his troops became
known, saw the struggle as a chance to control their lands. In the 1990s, the Zapatistas
continue the struggle for social change as the Mexican government isolates and harasses
the country’s indigenous communities.

5. Verses of “La Valentina” express a representative stoicism similar to that in “La Adelita”:

Valentina, Valentina,
rendido estoy a tus pies,
si me han de matar mañana,
que me maten de una vez.

Valentina, Valentina,
I surrender at your feet,
if they’re going to kill me tomorrow,
let them kill me now. (Soto 1990:44)

6. These verses of “La Adelita” and others that I include in this discussion are taken from
Dromundo’s Francisco Villa y La Adelita (1936). Later in this article, the discussion is
based on verses of the song found in Josefina Niggli’s play, Soldadera (1938).

110 Alicia Arrizón

7. Soldadera was originally produced by the Carolina Playmakers at Chapel Hill, North
Carolina (27–29 February 1936). A few years later, Josefina Niggli included this play in
her Mexican Folk Plays (1938:53–114). Frederick H. Koch, editor of Niggli’s work and
director of the Carolina Playmakers, was responsible for the publication of Niggli’s col-
lection of plays. The foreword to this edition was written by the well-known Mexican
dramatist Rodolfo Usigli. Other plays by Niggli in this collection include Tooth Shave:
A Mexican Folk Comedy; The Red Velvet Goat: A Tragedy of Laughter and a Comedy of
Tears; Azteca: A Tragedy of Pre-Conquest Mexico; and Sunday Costs Five Pesos: A Comedy
of Mexican Village People. Soldadera was also included in Margaret Mayorga’s The Best
One-Act Plays of 1937 (1938). The next year, Niggli’s play This Is Villa was published in
The Best One-Act Plays of 1938 (1939).

8. This term was used to refer to Francisco (Pancho) Villa’s troops; they were also known

as the Villistas.

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9. Note that there are alternative definitions of machismo that emphasize a man’s honor and
ability to provide for his family. These versions represent the male’s power as a positive
feature in patriarchal cultures. I use Paz’s definition of machismo in this study because his
f
r
theoretical formulations are consistent with my critique of the gender relations embed-
o
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ded in Dromundo’s narrative. For Paz as for many in Mexican culture, the gran chingón is
h
the perpetrator of violation. The verb chingar does not have an absolute definition.
However, in some instances it can be translated as to fuck, to despoil, to subordinate,
and subdue. In the context of my analysis, the gran chingón is the motherfucker.
m

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10. This statement, ¡Era un dorado!, is self-explanatory: Villa recognizes Adelita as one of his

heroic dorados.

11. See Gustavo Casasola’s Biografía ilustrada del General Francisco Villa 1878–1966 (1969:67).
On the same page are other pictures of women soldiers. In one, the woman is playing a
cornet; in the other, a female soldier is standing next to her man. Although this is the
only page in this book that portrays female soldiers, Casasola includes other pictures of
female soldiers in his four-volume Historia gráfica de la Revolución: 1900–1960 (1960).

12. Soldaderas were also known as galletas (cookies) during the Revolution.
13. I had many conversations with her during 1986. I met Doña Justina Carrasco in San
Luis Rio Colorado, a Mexican border town located in the state of Sonora, before she
moved to the capital city, Hermosillo, to live with relatives.

14. Shirlene Soto has pointed out that Zapata’s movement attracted women from all social
classes and from all parts of Mexico. She notes, “Paulina Maraver Cortés, a professor
and former Maderista, with Nachita Vázques, initiated the agrarian movement in the
state of Puebla” (1990:46).

15. Macías’s book examines the history of the feminist movement in México from 1890 to
1940 and assesses the contribution of three significant women: the journalist Juana Belén
Gutiérrez de Mendoza (1875–1942); the school teacher Dolores Jiménez y Muro (1848–
1925); and the private secretary of President Carranza, Hermila Galindo de Topete
(1896–1954). Macías’s book is one of the best feminist works published in México.
16. Another aristocratic rebel was Elisa Acuña, who financed the publication of her work
La Guillotina (The Guillotine) with her own money. During the Revolution, she was
forced to leave México, but she later returned and joined the Zapatistas.

17. This book is introduced and annotated by Lomas, who discovered this work and others

by the same author.

18. For more information about the contributions of these women see Clara Lomas’s intro-

duction to The Rebel, the memoirs of Leonor Villegas de Magnón (1994:xi-lvi).

19. The Guerrero Collection is an archive located at the Biblioteca Nacional de México.

Eduardo Guerrero, composer of many corridos, started this collection in 1931.

20. Other figures represented in Posada’s work were Emiliano Zapata, Francisco I.
Madero, and dictator Porfirio Díaz. Prints of this type were created for sale on the Day
of the Dead (2 November). See Roberto Berdecio and Stanley Appelbaum, Posada’s
Popular Mexican Prints: 273 Cuts by José Guadalupe Posada (1972).

21. This period incorporates different cultural, social, and political trends throughout the
Southwest. However, in the 1930s, Mexican American thought emerged as a symbol of
the rising middle class who wanted assimilation. The League of United Latin American
Citizens (LULAC), founded in Texas (but with chapters throughout the Southwest),
promoted this ideology. While the members of this organization emphasized the vir-
tues of Mexican culture, they advocated for constitutional rights for all Mexicans living
in the U.S. The Mexican American middle class demanded equal access to education

and to other public and private institutions. They wanted to stop discrimination against
Mexicans. For more information about the Mexican American experience, consult
Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (1988:198–250) and Richard A.
García, “The Mexican American Mind: A Product of the 1930s” (1983:67– 93).

22. This edition is the basis of my analysis and is the source of the material I quote here

(appropriate page numbers are included in parentheses following each quote).

23. For more information on Niggli, see also my entry, “Josefina Niggli,” in The New

Hand Book of Texas (1996:1013–14).

24. For example, in the novel Mexican Village (1945), Niggli portrays life in a Mexican rural
community. The novel is structured around ten absorbing stories set in Hidalgo, one of
the five villages in the Sabinas Valley of Northern México. In 1953, Hollywood re-
leased the film Sombrero, a romantic musical featuring Ricardo Montalbán, based on
this novel. The movie was filmed in México, in the state of Morelos, near Cuernavaca.
Norman Foster, the film’s director, lived in Mexico City for several years before re-
turning to Hollywood.

25. The year Niggli went to Chapel Hill, she became an active participant in the Carolina
Playmakers, acting, directing, designing costumes, and most importantly, writing.
26. This song also appeared in a southern, Zapatista version, ridiculing Carranza, making fun
of his glasses and his beard. During the Mexican Revolution, four songs—“La Adelita,”
“La Valentina,” “La Cucaracha,” and “El Pato”—attained a popularity that continues to-
day.

27. Niggli returned to the subject of Pancho Villa in a later play, This Is Villa. In it she de-
picts him as a man of many contradictions: cruel, violent, and indecent; sensitive, gen-
erous, and brilliant. While in Soldadera she presents the heroism of women soldiers, in
her later play, she explores various types of people involved in the Revolution: the in-
tellectual, the killer, and the faithful soldier. When Villa kills the faithful soldier’s
fiancée on their wedding day, the would-be groom chooses to kill himself rather than
to avenge the death of his beloved.

29.

28. Niggli includes a note after these verses to point out that the song “La Adelita”: “holds the
same place that Annie Laurie did to English soldiers during the World War” (1938:73).
It is important to point out that the Revolution increased contacts between Indians and
other Mexicans, as Indians left their own communities to fight and as mestizos traveled
to the Indian areas.

References

Acuña, Rodolfo
1988

Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, 3rd edition. New York: Harper
Collins Publications.

Arrizón, Alicia
1996

“Josefina Niggli.” In The New Hand Book of Texas, vol. 4, edited by Ron
Tyler, et al., 1013–14. Austin: The Texas State Historical Association.

Berdecio, Roberto, and Stanley Appelbaum
1972

Posada’s Popular Mexican Prints: 273 Cuts by José Guadalupe Posada. New York:
Dover Publications.

Carasco, Justina
1986

Conversations with author. San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora, México.

Soldaderas

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Casasola, Gustav
1960

1969

Historia Gráfica de la Revolución: 1900–1960. 4 vols. México: Editorial F.
Trillas.
Biografía ilustrada del General Francisco Villa 1878–1966. México: Editorial
Gustavo Casasola.

Dromundo, Baltasar
1936

Francisco Villa y La Adelita. Durango, México: Victoria de Durango.

Flax, Jane
1990

“Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory.” In Feminism/
Postmodernism, edited by Linda J. Nicholson, 39–62. New York: Routledge.

112 Alicia Arrizón

García, Richard A.
1983

“The Mexican American Mind: A Product of the 1930s.” In History, Culture
and Society: Chicano Studies in the 1980s, 67–93. Ypsilanti: Bilingual Press/Edi-
torial Bilingüe.

Herrera-Sobek, María
1990

The Mexican Corrido: A Feminist Analysis. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.

Macías, Anna
1982

Martin, Angel
1993

Niggli, Josefina
1938

1939

Paz, Octavio
1985

Pérez, Emma
1991

Shirley, Paula W.
1981

Soto, Shirlene
1990

Spearman, Walter
1970

Against All Odds: The Feminist Movement in Mexico to 1940. Wesport, CT:
Greenwood Press.

“La Adelita.” In Impreso en México. Mexico City: Calendarios y Propoganda,
S.A.

Mayorga, Margaret, ed.
1938

The Best One-Act Plays of 1937. New York: Dodd, Mead.

Soldadera. In Mexican Folk Plays, edited by Frederick H. Koch, 53–114.
Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Reprinted in 1976 by
Arno Press, New York.
This Is Villa. In The Best One-Act Plays of 1938, edited by Margaret Mayorga,
285–318. New York: Dodd, Mead.

The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writing. Translated by Lysander Kemp, et
al. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.

“Sexuality and Discourse: Notes from a Chicana Survivor.” In Chicana Lesbi-
ans: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About, edited by Carla Trujillo, 159–
84. Berkeley: Third Woman Press.

Salazar Parr, Carmen, and Genevieve Ramírez
1985

“The Female Hero in Chicano Literature.” In Beyond Stereotypes: The Critical
Analysis of Chicana Literature, edited by María Herrera-Sobek, 47–60.
Binghamton, NY: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe.

“Josefina Niggli.” In Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook 1980, edited by
Karen L. Rood, et al., 279–86. Detroit: Gale Research Inc.

Emergence of the Modern Mexican Woman: Her Participation in Revolution and
Struggle for Equality 1910 –1940. Denver: Arden Press.

The Carolina Playmakers: The First Fifty Years. Chapel Hill: The University of
North Carolina Press.

Villegas de Magnón, Leonor
1994

The Rebel: Leonor Villegas de Magnón. Edited by Clara Lomas. Houston: Arte
Público Press.

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Alicia Arrizón is Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Califor-
nia-Riverside. She coedited a volume on latina theatre and performance, Latinas on
Stage: Practice and Theory (1998, Third Woman Press), and she is currently com-
pleting her book Traversing the Stage: Latina Theatre, Performance and Politics
(forthcoming, Indiana University Press). Her work deals with the specificities of race,
nationality, gender and sexuality, and cultural identity. Soldaderas and the Staging image

Soldaderas and the Staging image

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