potrait of serious woman

Dolores Jimenez y Muro (1848-1925)

A major figure in the Mexican revolution, she had been a schoolteacher, a member of the editorial staff of La Mujer Mexicana, and president of Las Hijas de Cuauhtemoc, whose members were arrested in 1910 for their activism against the Diaz regime.

The following year, Jimenez y Muro founded Regeneracion y Concordia from her prison cell to "improve the lot of indigenous races, rural people, workers; to unify revolutionary forces, and elevate women economically, morally and intellectually." She created a plan for a rebellion to put Madero in power and to raise wages. Zapata was impressed, especially with her call for restitution of lands, and invited her to Morelos, where she joined his forces in 1913.

Jimenez y Muro attained the rank of colonel in the Mexican revolutionary army, and remained in the Zapatista inner circle until his assassination in 1919. Another female colonel was Juana Gutierrez de Mendoza. A number of women revolutionaries who fought disguised as men gained the rank of colonels: Carmen Robles, Carmen Amelia Flores, and Limbania Fernandez.

The above is mostly drawn from Elizabeth Martinez' classic
500 Years of Chicano History
, originally published in 1976
(and full of great pictures).

 

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