Women Guerrilla Fighters of the Mexican Dirty War

Foreground: Our film and photo crew's insignia. Background: Lourdes Quiñones at left, Gladys López at right. Photograph courtesy of Mirada Documental.

…the 2011 conference of female ex-guerrilla insurgents of the Mexican Dirty War. From the afternoon of July 15th through the evening of July 17th, eleven ex-guerrilleras participated in over 20 hours of both classroom-style discussions (mesas de trabajo) and one-on-one interviews (testimonios) about their experiences in the guerrilla insurgency of the 1970s. Did female guerrilla fighters play a unique role within the insurgency, or did they share the same responsibilities as their male comrades? What was the government’s objective in torturing captured dissidents? Did the sexual and gender revolutions (which were occurring at nearly the same time around the globe) influence the social structure or political agenda of the guerrilla?

Marisol Cabrera and Mirada Documental

Typical setup for both testimonios and mesas de trabajo: Professor Gomez seated in front of the speaker and the film crew positioned behind. Photograph courtesy of Mirada Documental.

Each mesa de trabajo ended with a filmed, all-group discussion. These video recordings, conference photos, and additional tapings of every testimonio, were all made possible by Mirada Documental, a documentary film crew headed up by UAEM student Marisol Cabrera (UAEM is the Autonomous University of Mexico City ).

Documentary filmmaker Marisol Cabrera and me.

Marisol visited Haverford last spring to attend a screening of her documentary Casa Libertad; and the guerrilla fighters’ conference was officially kicked off with a private screening of this same film: a close look at the experiences of one political activist who was incarcerated in Mexico following her nonviolent participation in the 1968 student movement.

Takeover! Professor Gomez and I try to relieve the camera crew so that they can say a few words on film. At least one of them kept working though because this photograph is courtesy of Mirada Documental.

The Women Are Here!

Ex-guerrilla fighter Yolanda Casas embraces the head of the film crew, Marisol Cabrera. Photograph courtesy of Mirada Documental.

La Casa's conference room awaiting the women's arrival. Photograph courtesy of Mirada Documental.

The conference was scheduled to begin at 2PM, and the women – who had flown into the capital from all different parts of Mexico – began arriving at around noon. It was two hours of hugs, cheek kisses, chatter, and noises of happy recognition. Although some of the women, in groups of twos or threes, live quite close to each other and maintain frequent contact, others had not seen one another in months. All eleven had been held as political prisoners (and thus in the same section) of Santa Martha Acatitla prison in the 1970s.  Living at close quarters for a period of several years and sharing their devotion to the guerrilla in common had clearly drawn the women into a very close camaraderie that stands to this today.

Who They Are and Why They Joined

The women are mostly in their sixties. That means they were roughly my age or even younger when they joined the guerrilla. Most have children, many have grandchildren. My first impression of the ex-guerrilleras was a group of very friendly, family-oriented ladies.

Left to right: Ex-guerrilla fighters Alma Gómez, Elia Hernández, and Yolanda Casas at the conference's first mesa de trabajo. Photograph courtesy of Mirada Documental.

All eleven were taken into custody for politically-motivated reasons by the Mexican government during the 1970s. They were transferred between clandestine and official prisons (disappeared), tortured, and released in the late 1970s, at which point many went into exile. Ten of the eleven were guerrilla insurgents, some of whom received training in North Korea. Gladys López, the only participant who was not a trained insurgent, worked as a messenger on behalf of the anti-government movement. Most were members of the guerrilla group Movimiento de Acción Revolucionaria (the MAR, or Revolutionary Action Movement), but some fought on behalf of the Lacandones and the FUZ (Frene Urbano Zapatista).

Almost all of the women described their entrance into the guerrilla movement as a nearly inevitable development in their moral and political maturation. They remember being swept up into a struggle to protect their country’s and their family’s future. The government-perpetrated massacres of 1968 and 1971 were pivotal in convincing many of the women that joining the guerrilla was the right choice, indeed, seemingly the only choice in the face of such terrible government crimes. A great deal of them had fathers and/or brothers who participated in the anti-government movement, and thus some were exposed to the political ideals of the struggle from a very young age. A few of the women say they had very little political consciousness prior to encountering the movement in student circles or other education-related forums. Elia Hernández, for example, did not identify with the movement until after she became a teacher and began to meet politically conscious people in education.

Elia Hernández during her imprisonment at Santa Martha Acatitla in the late 1970s.

Ex-guerrilla fighter Elia Hernández and I at the conference. Photograph courtesy of Mirada Documental.

Many thanks to Elia for recently giving me permission to share her photo and parts of her personal history on this blog.

The place we're going.

Tomorrow morning Professor Gomez and I will be on a plane to Mexico City, and by the following afternoon about a dozen female ex-guerrilla fighters will have joined us to spend three days talking (and hopefully writing) about their experiences fighting government forces in the Mexican Dirty War. Few Mexicans are aware of the role women played in the guerrilla insurgency of the 1970s. The Dirty War itself is little more than a vague memory to most Mexicans of my (the younger) generation – a memory they received secondhand and already blurred. The Mexican government has spent a great deal of time and effort ensuring that the Dirty War continues to recede into a distant, half-forgotten past. Those who survived the struggle and have attempted to share their experiences of the period have routinely been silenced by government authorities. Few first-hand accounts have escaped censorship, and women – a minority within this already marginalized group – have received little to no recognition for their role in the conflict.

This was one of the most helpful books written in English that I could find on Latin American female guerrilla fighters. Not surprisingly, it neglects the women of Mexico.

For that reason, I’ve spent the past several weeks sifting through texts on women insurgents in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Columbia, even a few female Vietnam War vet memoirs, as well as the testimonials of  Latin American women who lost male relatives in guerrilla resistance struggles – but I’ve encountered very little literature on the experiences of Mexican female guerrilla fighters themselves.That said, here is the abridged version of what we do know, the historical context that indicates there must be a story here, just waiting to be told:

The 1960s in Mexico

Although it is difficult to pinpoint an exact date or even the year in which the Mexican Dirty War truly began, this violent, internal struggle is generally recognized as a two-decade conflict, spanning the 1960s and the 1970s. During that period, Mexico’s Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI or “Institutional Revolutionary Party”) maintained control of the federal government through the successive presidencies of three politicians selected from its own ranks: Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverría, and José López Portillo. The reign of PRI politicians in the presidential office preceded Díaz Ordaz’s administration and continued after Portillo’s departure, but these three presidencies, together, are recognized as among the least democratic, most repressive periods of modern Mexican history and thus stand apart.

In the years leading up to and during Díaz Ordaz’s administration, economic policies that favored the ruling elite as

Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, president of Mexico when the Tlatelolco massacre occurred.

well as increasing censorship of political dissidents fueled popular discontent, provoking citizen strikes and demonstrations. In particular, a growing student movement organized several major protest marches and rallies in Mexian cities. By early October of 1968, just days before Mexico City was scheduled to host its first Olympic Games, the PRI regime decided that its country could not afford to appear unstable or divided  - nor did the president wish to appear unpopular –  in front of an international community that would undoubtedly have its eye trained on Mexico for the duration of the Olympic Games. And thus, on October 2nd, in the Tlatelolco section of Mexico City, government forces opened fire on a crowd of peaceful protesters and onlookers, killing hundreds of Mexican citizens. Though initially devastating to the student movement, the Tlatelolco killings, as well as a second government massacre known as “Corpus Christi” that occurred on June 10th of 1971, inspired a new wave of anti-government fervor, galvanizing many to join the guerrilla insurgency that dogged the PRI regime through the 1970s.

The 1970s in Mexico

Mexico’s guerrilla insurgency began years before Tlatelolco, and even before Díaz Ordaz was elected president. But the struggle took on a new vigor and urgency following the two massacres: not only did the ranks of pre-existing groups increase, but also entirely new resistance troupes were formed and the insurgents expanded their activities into urban areas where they had rarely ventured before.

A line hung with photos of the desaparecidos of the Mexican Dirty War.

The events of the 1960s convinced many Mexican citizens that peaceful, democratic means of expressing their discontent had been closed to them, and thus most of the guerrilla fighters of the 1970s describe their participation in the insurgency as a last resort. Life as a guerrilla insurgent meant cutting one’s self off completely from one’s family and friends, and living clandestinely, likely nomadically. Capture by government paramilitary forces (forces created for the purpose of quashing the insurgency even though the Mexican administration publicly denied any insurgency was taking place) meant one of two scenarios: the first, and far preferable case, would see the insurgent incarcerated in an official prison, a prison that the press was permitted to visit and to which family members might have limited access. Torture occurred within these institutions, but the abuses permitted within official prison walls barely rivaled those committed against prisoners at clandestine camps. These camps, the second possible destination of any captured dissident (or suspected dissident), routinely tortured their inmates, even to the point of death. Torture was not practiced for the sole purpose of extracting information, but also for instilling terror. Lucky inmates were subsequently transferred to official institutions or even released, but many died during torture sessions or were assasinated immediately after their release from prison, their bodies quietly disposed of. When individuals were captured and sent to one of these institutions, they joined the ranks of the “disappeared;” no one in the victims’ community knew where they were being held, nor if they might ever return. The individuals who did not survive these camps remain the desaparecidos of the Mexican Dirty War.

The Women

We don’t know if women joined the guerrilla movement of the 1970s in order to support their male relatives, or to fight on behalf of their own goals and convictions. There is no comprehensive documentation that describes what it was like to be a woman in the guerrilla insurgency, what it was like to interact with male counterparts, what it was like to be a female political prisoner and victim of torture. Even less frequently discussed but no less important topics include: motherhood from within prison, relationships between guerrilla fighters, familial and cultural attitudes towards female guerrilla members, and the impact of women’s involvement in the armed struggle upon women’s status within Mexican politics and society. But we know that there were women who joined the guerrilla movement. We just want to know more.

Female political prisoners at Santa Martha Acatitla prison in the 1970s. Several of the women pictured will be attending the conference.