(The Rebel, by Leonor Vilegas de Magnón, is the autobiogra...)
The Rebel, by Leonor Vilegas de Magnón, is the autobiography of the Mexican-American feminist and pacifist who served as a nurse in the Mexican Revollution and became active in Texas politics and culture. Originally written in the 1920s but never published, The Rebel stands as one of the few written documents which consciously challenges misconceptions of Mexican Americans.
Leonor Villegas de Magnón was a political activist, teacher, and journalist who founded a brigade of the international Mexican American relief service, La Cruz Blanca, during the Mexican revolution.
Background
Leonor Villegas de Magnon was born on June 12, 1876, in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, just a few days after Porfirio Diaz, who would be dictator of Mexico for thirty-four years, took control of Mexico City. When soldiers searching for hidden revolutionaries searched the area, they heard the newborn girl crying, and thought she was a hidden rebel fighter. As a result, her father affectionately nicknamed her “La Rebelde,” a name she proudly used later as the title for her autobiography. The name was appropriate, as she later opposed the Diaz government, rebelled against the aristocratic class system, and fought the traditional view of women in Mexican society.
Villegas de Magnon grew up in a wealthy family: her father, Joaquin Villegas, who came from Spain, was a rancher and mine owner and ran an import/export business. Her mother, Valerian Rubio, came from a rich family. Villegas de Magnon and her siblings, Leopoldo, Lorenzo, and Lina, were raised in a privileged, aristocratic setting on their family rancheria, but their world was abruptly altered when their mother died at a young age and their father remarried. Their stepmother, Heloise Monsalvatge, urged their father to move to Laredo, Texas and then sent the children to boarding schools.
Education
Villegas de Magnon attended the Ursuline Convent in San Antonia from 1882 through 1885 and then transferred to the Academy of the Holy Cross in Austin, Texas until 1889. After this, Heloise sent all four of the siblings to New York, where Villegas de Magnon entered Mount St. Ursula’s Convent. She considered becoming a nun and studied education, but after graduating in 1895 with honors, she went back to Laredo.
Career
On January 10, 1901, Leonor married Adolfo Magnon. The couple moved to Mexico City, where he worked for several steamship companies. Her lifestyle during this time was, like that of her childhood, steeped in luxury and ease, but she saw poor people all around her and was troubled by their fate. After the births of their children, Villegas de Magnon became involved with revolutionaries who supported Francisco Madero, a leader who opposed Diaz. She began writing insurgent articles against the Diaz dictatorship, which she signed with her original family name of Villegas.
In 1910, she took her children to visit her father, who was terminally ill, and found that most of his property had been taken by the Mexican government as punishment for her revolutionary writings. Soon after this, the revolution broke out, and Villegas de Magnon was separated from her husband. She threw herself more deeply into the revolutionary cause, becoming a member of the Revolutionary Council. She wrote more articles on the revolutionary movement and provided housing for political exiles. When Madero finally took over the government in 1911, she opened a bilingual school and founded an organization called Union, Progreso y Caridad (Union, Progress, and Charity). The organization encouraged women to extend their influence beyond the home to society, and use their abilities and influence to educate children, beautify the city, promote charity work, and hold cultural and social events.
In January of 1911, when the revolutionary forces attacked Nuevo Laredo, she used her inheritance to found and finance the Cruz Blanca (White Cross), a medical relief group for wounded soldiers. Soon after this, she recruited women and men from the border area to travel with the Constitutionalist forces from El Paso, Texas, to Mexico City; after the revolution, the returned to Laredo and their normal lives. Villegas de Magnon worked at her bilingual school as well as for the State Democratic Executive Committee, Women’s Division, of Texas.
In 1940, with her money gone, Villegas de Magnon went to Mexico City to look for a job with the Mexican Veterans’ Administration. She joined the Women's International Club, and after years of lobbying, she and other women were officially recognized as veterans of the revolution. In 1946, as part of the Mexican land redistribution program, she agreed to work her own piece of land in Rancherias Camargo. Tamaulipas, but the program was a failure. In two years she had exhausted all her credit and money, and she returned to Laredo.
She began writing her autobiography, El Rebclde, because she wanted to “do justice to those worthy nurses and brave women who so patriotically defended their country.” The autobiography is written in the third person. and romanticizes the revolution and her own life. For example, she writes that several incidents foretold her dramatic life as a revolutionary: her birthdate on the eve of the revolution, her nickname, and a burn on her right hand that was identical to that of Venustiano Carranza who was President of Mexico from 1915 to 1920. She was not successful in having the Spanish version of the autobiography published, so she wrote a longer English version titled The Lady Was a Rebel, but was also unable to find a publisher for this version.
Both the Spanish and English versions of the book describe the idyllic, pastoral life of her childhood on her father’s hacienda, and the transition from that life to the insecure one with her Americanized stepmother, and her experiences in the boarding schools. After this, both books present diary entries describing the work of the Cruz Blanca and the work of its members as nurses and doctors, but also as spies, informers, reporters, propagandists. printers, telegraph operators, and railroad engineers. Villegas de Magnon also tells the stories of several brave women, including Maria de Jesus Gonzalez, who worked as a messenger, then as a spy, and who, dressed as a man. eventually became a colonel. Many other anecdotes present Villegas de Magnon as La Rebclde, a resourceful and shrewd revolutionary.
Although Villegas de Magnon wrote the book in order to preserve the memory of the revolutionaries, the autobiography, and the stories it contains, was nearly lost. She died in Mexico City on April 17, 1955 at the age of 78.
Many years after her death, however, editor Claire Lomas visited her family and received drafts of both versions, as well as scrapbooks, letters, and albums. From these, Lomas began reconstructing the book, now titled The Rebel.
(The Rebel, by Leonor Vilegas de Magnón, is the autobiogra...)
Personality
Leonor presents herself as a sensitive, lonely orphan who became a brave, bold woman who was devoted to her duty and her country.
Quotes from others about the person
“Neither Villegas de Magnon’s aristocratic background nor her humanitarian or rebellious deed have allowed her to overcome limitations imposed by gender.” explained Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Clara Lomas. “Restoration of autobiographical narratives such as hers will allow us better to understand links within our cultural heritage which take into account class, ethnic/national, gender, and spatial considerations.”
Connections
On January 10, 1901, Leonor married Adolfo Magnon, who was an American citizen. They had three children: Leonor, Joaquin, Adolfo.