To the extent that history has remembered Elena Arizmendi at all, it is as the fictional character ‘Adriana’ in José Vasconcelos' Memorias. Adriana was a classic femme fatale, who bewitched Vasconcelos through a seductive black magic; she was a caricature of the Jungian negative anima. Gabriela Cano's new biography shows that Arizmendi was far more interesting in real life: she was a trained nurse, a Maderista, founder of the Mexican Red Cross, an international women's rights advocate, a journalist, editor and writer. In just over 250 pages Cano traces Arizmendi's life story and then uses that narrative as a springboard to enrich our understanding of her time. The book is insightful, drawing meaningful inferences from sometimes scant data, yet it does not attempt to assert more than can be known.
Elena Arizmendi led an extraordinary life. Like Vasconcelos, she was born into a distinguished and privileged Oaxacan family. On her mother's side, her great-grandfather fought with Iturbide for independence, and her grandfather with Juárez in the wars of the Reforma. Like many other female children of the elite, she probably received her early education from the Catholic and traditionally minded Colegio de Vizcaínas in Mexico City. After her mother's death, however, the 15-year-old Elena found herself charged with the management of her large family's household and the care of numerous younger siblings. When her father remarried a much younger woman, only a few years older than Elena herself, tension between the two women became unbearable. Elena married a soldier, which permitted her to leave her father's house. Sadly, their first child was stillborn, and the experience left her unable to conceive again, a loss she felt deeply. Additionally, she found herself subjected to physical abuse, which drove her to seek and obtain an early form of divorce. She then left Mexico to study nursing in San Antonio.
Arizmendi's experience at the hospital where she trained was formative. She had her first encounters with US racism towards Mexican immigrants. She also made close friends with a young Mexican couple who spent a great deal of time in San Antonio, Sara and Francisco Madero. She had nearly finished her training, but not yet received her certification, when the outbreak of revolution in Mexico induced her to return home. The Mexican Red Cross had already been established, but it lacked both experience and resources, and its formal attachment to the federal government led its leadership to decide against providing medical services to wounded combatants from the Battle of Juárez. Horrified, and doubtless motivated in part by her Maderista sympathies, Arizmendi formed the Mexican Neutral White Cross as an alternative provider of care for the casualties of the insurrection. During this period she gained increasing popularity among the public, appearing stylish and beautiful in photographs, and patriotic and compassionate in print. She used both her popularity and her political connections to raise funds to establish her new organisation. Following the movement's success, she met José Vasconcelos (who later falsely intimated in his memoirs that it was he, rather than she, who was the close personal acquaintance of the president). Vasconcelos had valiantly intervened to defend Arizmendi's reputation against a public assault that had been mounted against her by several members of her own organisation, who had accused her (accurately) of elitism and (less fairly) of mishandling funds. In this context friendship turned to love, and Arizmendi began her four-year affair with Vasconcelos, who was already married with two children.
The couple met in secret at first, and later with less discretion. After the fall of Madero's government, Arizmendi moved back to San Antonio, and the Vasconcelos family installed themselves nearby. The lovers travelled together to Washington and New York as Vasconcelos worked to support opposition first to Huerta and later to Carranza. Finally, when their funds ran out, Vasconcelos accepted a post in Lima as a school administrator. There Vasconcelos became increasingly obsessed with irrational jealousies, which eventually led Arizmendi to flee back to New York. She broke off her relationship with him, citing his marriage as the principal reason. Vasconcelos' own friends sympathised with Arizmendi as his behaviour worsened. He seemed unable to accept her rejection; he threatened her, slandered her, and made her so fearful of returning home to Mexico that she decided to remain in New York, where she married a US citizen, Robert Deutsch. The couple were ill suited, however, with little in common, and they soon separated.
Alone in New York, Arizmendi became active in the international women's movement. She attended the Pan-American Congress of Women in Baltimore in 1922 and edited the periodical Feminismo Internacional. She found herself, due to her biculturalism, lodged between ideological currents. She was a proponent of international feminism, yet she was knowledgeable about and critical of North American racism at a time when few of her colleagues had raised the issue. She perceived a distinction between North American and Hispanic American feminisms, and did not want to see North American imperialism extend into the realm of international feminism. To this end, she created the Liga de Mujeres de la Raza, which offered an alternative to organisations dominated by the North Americans. On the other hand, she also defended the United States against what she perceived as unwarranted critiques. Like Vasconcelos, she was an Arielista, yet she also disparaged what she called ‘idiotic’ Arielista ‘hatred’ of the United States. She felt that pan-Hispanic unity did not need to be based on an irrational dislike of everything associated with the United States, whose culture, she believed, contained many admirable elements.
Late in life, no longer fearful of Vasconcelos' ability to harm her or her family, Arizmendi returned to Mexico. She lived her final years in relative obscurity in the company of her favourite sister, Dolores. When she died, she was buried without fanfare. Sadly, it was Vasconcelos' fictitious Adriana who lived on. Gabriela Cano's thoughtful and well-researched reinterpretation is a welcome corrective.
