Why don't you hear about us?

Us Soldaderas were many times classified simply as camp followers or prostitutes. Perhaps male chauvinism played a part in denying or minimizing the truth that female Soldaderas often stood shoulder to shoulder with male soldiers and fought to the death. What can I say machismo is a large art of my culture then and even today.

If we live on at all in the culture of present day Mexico it is usually because we have caught the eye of moviemakers, song writers and novelists. This is called a fictionalized " Adelita", a girl with a heart of gold who was the "sweetheart of the troops" that became the heroine of countless corridos. Corridos are songs of romance often accompanied by a guitar. Unfortunately these songs and movies portray a woman who had many romantic relationships and rivalries with other soldaderas but finally ends up redeeming herself as true patriots. It is sad to say that these songs, movies, even ballets, have perpetuated an image of a Mexican womanSoldadera as a sex symbol rather than a true soldier which is what we were.

Now the story is not one sided I know that it is true that the vast majority of the Mexican women who were involved with the military were non-combatants but it is also factual that thousands of us lost our lives while performing their very necessary tasks. Because many of my compañeras did become involved sexually with the soldiers they served it has become too easy to dismiss all of them as simply prostitutes or else simply ignore our existence.