Las Soldaderas. Elena Poniatowska

And at the end of the day, there’s the hungry baby to breastfeed.

      Without the soldaderas, there is no Mexican Revolution—they kept it alive and fertile, like the earth. They would be sent ahead of the rest to gather firewood and to light the fire. They kept it stoked during the long years of war. Without the soldaderas, the drafted soldiers would have deserted. During the Spanish Civil War in 1936, the militiamen couldn’t understand why they shouldn’t return to their homes at night. They would abandon their posts, leaving the trenches, watchtowers and barracks empty, and head home to their own beds without a care in the world. In Mexico, in 1910, had the soldiers not carried their homes on their backs—their soldadera with their cots, blankets, pots and provisions—the number of men who would have taken off to shelter themselves in a warm corner somewhere would have meant the end of their armies.

      Besides the large armies of Francisco Villa, Emiliano Zapata and Venustiano Carranza, more than 1,900 leaders fought in rebel bands. The soldaderas crop up everywhere in the photographs—anonymous multitudes, superfluous, apparently not much more than a backdrop, merely there to swell the ranks, yet without them the soldiers would not have eaten, slept or fought.

      The horses were treated better than the women.

      As time went on and as the number of battles increased, the women’s tasks were no longer limited solely to making sure the gunpowder didn’t get wet, or to warming the beds, or to distributing cartridge boxes before the battle. Instead they began to climb the military ranks, although the military men never allowed them to reach any position of high command.