Prologue
The revolutions and counter-revolutions that swept over Mexico following the downfall of Don Porfirio Diaz in 1911 did more than topple a dictatorship, oppressive and harsh for the masses, with the wealth of Mexico going to a favored few.
For decades the Mexican peasant suffered indignities at the hands of the haceridados and autocratic landowners. His land was stolen and his women violated. He had to stand by, silent and without recourse, while the young women of his family were used casually for a moment of pleasure by those who ruled his destiny.
At every turn his manhood, the very roots of his masculinity, was denied him. He was worse than impoverished, for he was made to be less than a man.
The bitterness of decades exploded with primitive violence when the revolutions came. Rape and pillage have always been a routine part of any war, an accepted reward for the conquerors of the moment. But the Mexican peon, at long last given the means to fight back against his oppressors, had a deeper and more personal motivation. He had no need to rape to satisfy his animal instincts, for his sexual needs were satisfied by the soldaderas the women camp followers-who served the forces of Pancho Villa and Zapata.
For him rape was not unleashed sexual passion, but revenge -- revenge for the violation of his own womenfolk that he had been forced to witness silently in the past, revenge for the castration of his male dignity, revenge for the impotency of his previous existence.
The sex sadism that ran rampant during that bloody period did not stem from the perverted instincts of a more sophisticated people. Men acted like animals because they had long been treated like animals.
To strip bare the captured women of the overlords to ravish and rape was not alone a brute pleasure.
The act was a symbol-a symbol of regained manhood and human dignity.