Reframing stories: A Woman and Her Building at the Dawn of the Mexican Revolution

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Annmarie Adams, Kristin Norget, Cynthia Hammond, Carolina Dayer, and two anonymous reviewers who provided insightful comments for the different stages of this piece. I am also thankful for the editorial suggestions of Maria Agnes Olaguera and the drawings and models created by David Jaime Ruiz.

Notes

1 “It’s been hundred years since the beginning of the Mexican Revolution and the role of women in this war has not yet been sufficiently studied or efficiently represented,” translation by author from María Teresa Martínez Ortiz, “Carmen Serdán: La invisibilidad histórica de las guerreras de la Revolución Mexicana frente a representaciones culturales del mito de la soldadera,” Revista de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (2018): 45.

2 This piece is now on display at the second patio. On the first patio, four busts of the Serdán family members have replaced the sculpture of Aquiles.

3 Whereas the museum is also known today as the House of the Serdán Siblings, the prominence of Aquiles until recently remains reflected in archival materials. A case in point are the images used for this essay. Their original titles are: Fachada de la casa de Aquiles Serdán (Figure 1) and Hombres en la azotea de la casa de Aquiles Serdán (Figure 4). See https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/, accessed May 13, 2021.

4 To mention a few: Angeles Mendieta Alatorre, Carmen Serdán (Puebla, Mexico: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, 2010); María Teresa Martínez Ortiz, “Carmen Serdán”: 44–57; Martha Eva Rocha, Los rostros de la rebeldía. Veteranas de la Revolución mexicana, 1910–1939 (México D.F.: INEHRM/INAH, 2016), 42–60. See also Martha Eva Rocha, “Guadalupe Narváez Bautista (1881–1956): De revolucionaria a veterana,” in De espacios domésticos y mundos públicos. El siglo de las mujeres en México, ed. Anna Ribera Carbó et al. (México D.F.: INAH-DEH, 2010), 15–46.

5 To cite only a few examples of these scholarly efforts: Annmarie Adams, “The Eichler Home: Intention and Experience in Postwar Suburbia,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 5, (1995): 164–78; Rebecca Ginsburg, “‘Come in the Dark:’ Domestic Workers and Their Rooms in Apartheid-Era Johannesburg, South Africa,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 8 (2000): 83–100; Francisco Quiñones, “Mi casa es mi refugio: at the Service of Mexican Modernism in Casa Barragán,” The Avery Review 48 (June 2020): 1–11; Cynthia Hammond, Architects, Angels, Activists and the City of Bath, 1765–1965 (Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2012).

6 Martha Rocha Islas, “Guadalupe Narváez Bautista,” 22.

7 Since her name is also Carmen, I use the “Mrs.” to avoid confusion. As was common in Mexico, Carmen Alatriste kept her maiden name after marrying the father of the Serdáns.

8 Martha Rocha Islas, “Guadalupe Narváez Bautista,” 22.

9 Martha Eva Rocha, “Guadalupe Narváez Bautista,” 23–26.

10 Gustavo was the brother of the revolutionary leader Francisco I. Madero.

11 Statement by fellow revolutionary Guadalupe Narváez Bautista. “La mujer poblana en la Revolución,” Exp. 6/9, Folios 1–7, Caja 1.1, Colección documental del INEHRM, Documentos históricos, Archivo Guadalupe Narváez, Archivo General de la Nación.

12 Ignacio Herrerías, Sucesos Sangrientos de Puebla (Mexico City: Biblioteca de la Ilustración, 1911); Ignacio Herrerías, “Relato de un testigo presencial sobre los graves sucesos de Puebla,” El Diario (November 20 1910), 1.

13 Ignacio Herrerías, Sucesos sangrientos de Puebla, 46–7.

14 Among them was the family of Rosario Saldaña, the housekeeper.

15 However, by the time the Serdáns occupied the building, its original purpose of accommodating a single family was replaced by inhabitation of several families in the same (subdivided) space. See Enrique Ayala Alonso, “Tipologías habitacionales neoclásicas en la Ciudad de México,” in Estudios de Tipología Arquitectónica, eds. Luis Guerrero Vaca and Manuel Rodríguez Viqueira (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 1998), 25–38.

16 Gladys Arana López states that this gendering resulted in larger sleeping chambers for women, which is visible in the dimensions of Carmen’s bedroom. The task of decorating these spaces also attests to their feminization, as well as furniture such as the dresser/chiffonier. Gladys Arana López, “Espacios, sujetos y objetos del habitar cotidiano en el México de entre siglos. Mérida la de Yucatán, 1886–1916,” Memoria y Sociedad 17, no. 35 (July–December 2013): 257–8.

17 Probably thinking that the police search was over, the two families came back in the morning of the 18th, only to be caught within their living units in the ensuing crossfire. Ignacio Herrerías, Sucesos sangrientos de Puebla, 58, 73–8.

18 Ignacio Herrerías, Sucesos sangrientos de Puebla, 47–55.

19 Ignacio Herrerías, Sucesos sangrientos de Puebla, 64–5.

20 Ignacio Herrerías, Sucesos sangrientos de Puebla, 64–5.

21 Fellow rebel Guadalupe Narváez Bautista stated that the three of them participated in the fight. Herrerías saw Carmen fire at the invading troops. Signed testimony by Guadalupe Narváez Bautista, March 14, 1940, Archivo General de la Nación, Colección documental del INEHRM, Documentos históricos, Archivo Guadalupe Narváez, Actividades revolucionarias 1910, Exp. 6/1, Folios 48, 49, 50. Ignacio Herrerías, “Las mujeres combatiendo,” El Diario, November 19 1910, 1.

22 Ignacio Herrerías, Sucesos sangrientos de Puebla, 64–5.

23 “Carta de Baraquiel Alatriste a Porfirio Díaz fechados en México el 13 de diciembre de 1910,” Documentos 19515–19518, Legajo 35, Caja 40, Colección Porfirio Díaz, Universidad Iberoamericana.

24 “Carta de Baraquiel Alatriste.”

25 “Carta de Baraquiel Alatriste,” translation by author.

26 “Carta de Baraquiel Alatriste,” translation by author.

27 It was arguably Carmen’s pretense of being a passive, neutral woman that kept her alive, unlike Aquiles. After months of imprisonment, she continued her revolutionary work.

28 The scholarly gap has been noted and addressed by scholars such as those mentioned in note 5. By introducing architectural analysis to these critical narratives of the Mexican Revolution, my work has built on earlier developments from the fields of history and the social sciences. Martha Rocha, for instance, has worked to unearth female participation in the civil war, following the path both of women such as Carmen Serdán and of lesser known subjects who were unable to claim veteran status, but who played a crucial role in the uprising. See Martha Rocha, Los rostros de la rebeldía, 25.

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Tania Gutiérrez-Monroy

Tania Gutiérrez Monroy is an architectural historian who is completing a Ph.D. in architecture at McGill University. She is starting a position as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design at the University of Houston in the Fall 2021. Her research interests include architecture and women during conflict, as well as the way in which different categories of identity in general (gender, class, race, and sexuality) intersect in space. She has practiced as an architect in Mexico and has taught at the University of British Columbia, Université Laval and Louisiana State University.