The Erotic Power of Sensuality and Sexuality: The Identity of Women in the Mexican Revolution

Date

2012-03

Authors

Aragon, Cecilia J.
Carle, Sarah L.

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Texas State University, Center for Diversity and Gender Studies

Abstract

This essay examines Mexican Revolution plays from Mexican playwrights, María Luisa Ocampo, El corrido de Juan Saavedra (1929); Josephina Niggli, Soldadera (1936); and Elena Garro, Felipe Ángeles (1966), and their featured roles of soldaderas (female soldier). By theorizing the various roles that women held in the Mexican Revolution, these plays demonstrate how the soldadera body, consisting of 'sensuality and sexuality,' is negotiated within a political and social context to generate the roles of prostitutes, soldiers, and intellectuals. These roles intend to show the complexities on how soldaderas adjusted and endured the conflicts of war, specifically, within the Mexican Revolution. Soldaderas identify with a subjectivity that claims agency through a self-conscious process recreating the transnational Latina female body as an instrument of political resistance in the roles of prostitutes, soldiers, and intellectuals.

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Keywords

Mexican Revolution, sensuality, sexuality, identity, playwrights

Citation

Aragon, C. J., & Carle, S. L. (2012). The erotic power of sensuality and sexuality: The identity of women in the Mexican Revolution. <i>Journal of Research on Women and Gender, 3</i>(1), pp. 185-214.

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