The Demon and the Nun

To his enemies, Felipe Carrillo Puerto was the “Red Demon”. To her admirers (and enemies), his sister Elvia was the “Red Nun”. Between the two of them, they brought more change to the Yucatan in two years than there had been in two centuries.

The Yucatan of the late 19th century was, in many ways (and still is), an outlier in Mexico. Its economy at the time rested mostly on sisil (used for making rope) exports, and tied economically more to Cuba and the British Caribbean than to Mexico as a whole. It had, as had Texas (and at the same time) been a seperatist republic, only brought back into Mexico when the ruling elite sisil plantation owners (the “divine caste” as they styled themselves) were nearly driven out by what essentially was a proletarian (and serfs… yes — serfs) revolt known as the Casta War. While — technically — slavery did not exist, the conditions of the Mayan majority was a little below that of African-Americans in the post-Reconstruction US South, the worst of the “Jim Crow” era. Mayans could not vote, hold office, or even walk on the sidewalk when a criollo went by, no matter what the laws might say. The “Divine Caste” liked it that way, and preferred to spend their ill-got gains on elegant homes in Merida, or on their plantations to anything that might ease the lot of their “peons”…. roads, housing, and the like, let alone basic human rights. 

The extremely large Carillo Puerto family (there were 14 siblings) with a Mayan father and criollo mother. Desite — or because of — the discrimination the children were likely to face, the bilingual and bicultural Carriollo Puertos were conscious of their needs to come across as “the good ones”. Half the despised minority, they had to be twice as good at whaterver they did… and for Elvia, being a woman… four times better. 

Obtaining any sort of career would be a challenge: Felipe (born in 1874) went to work for the railroad (what few rail lines there were in Yucatan meant he traveled throughout the Republic) while Eliva (born in 1881) managed to obtain a secondary school education, despite being married off at 13. Widowed at 21, she opened a primary school for Mayan girls. 

Both were inveterate readers, intimately familiar with their father’s culture, and able to express themselves in their mother’s tongue. Leading both to journalism, and to political agitation for change. They were hardly the only ones, with Felipe slowly building a political career, moving further and further to the left. Elvia — based partially on her own experience having become the mother of four by the time she was 21 — naturally focused not just on women’s sufferage, but the then radical cause of birth control (and, incidentally, was one of the few proponents not also pushing the now discredited eugentic movement). 

Being a somewhat forgotten corner of Mexico, the Revolution came largely from the outside. Salvador Alvarado, a Sinolan druggist turned general came marching in with the Constitutionalists in 1915, ready to take names and kick ass.  

There’s no denying that Alvarado made massive changes, although… again like the post-Reconstuction Southern United States… they were well intentioned, and had the potential to radically reform the region (things like opening agriculural colleges, not standing in the way to protect plantation owners whose peons seized the land, and abolising the petty discrimination laws it did little to change the entrenched attitudfes and prejudices that had festered over the last few centuries.

However, it did open the doors to politicians like Felipe and Elvia. Even if women couldn’t vote, nothing said they couldn’t run for office, or hold it. Since 1912, she’d headed the “Feminist Resistance League”, building a cadre of educated middle class and working women pushing for yet more change. She would be the first woman in Mexican history elected to a state legislature. While she wasn’t seated, the popularity of women for the Revolution was enough to give women the vote in state elections.. a first in Mexico, and one that Felipe — having become head of the Southeast Socialst Party (which he founded) would push though when he was elected governor in 1922. 

As Governor, he pushed through more Mayan education (Alvado’s schools only had Spanish, effectively limiting Mayan advancement to a very small number of citizens) and… at the behest of his sister, Yucatan became the first place in the Americas to not just legalize birth control, but make it freely available. With his railroading background, he was a century ahead of his time, realizing the need for a diversifed economy less dependent on a single crop and foreign exports. And. he reconginized one economic sector not much considered at the time: tourism.

Not only would tourism diversify the state’s economy and create jobs (even if crappy ones, an alternative to cutting sisil), but also create an awareness of, and appreciation for, Mayan civilizations and cultures. And a need for not just tour guides and waiters, but well-educated Mayanists. One of his unfinished and most ambious projects was not just the archeological exploration of Chichin Itza, but his plans to build trains to carry those tourists, and to bring transportation to the rural masses and whatever industrial or manufacturing opportunities might arise.. something finally being done now. 

With Elvia as his back, he also consciously appointing women and Mayans to executive positions with the state government (an early form of affirmative action). He was pushing for yet more, and more radical change, when the fall-out from Carranza’s attempted self-coup led to uprising throughout the country when Alvaro Obregon sought to “consolidate” the Revolution, and conservatives, radicals, and the “centerists” (like Obregon, the evenual winner) took up arms. The Carillo Puertos were clearly on the side of more change, a workers state, but alas…

Only two years into his revolution from above, he … and eight of his siblings… faced a firing squad for supposed “treason” on the third of January 1924. Elvia survived (she fled to Mexico City) continuing her work until she was blinded in an auto accident in the 1950s. She died in 1968, having won her long struggle to bring women into government and making Mexico one of the world leaders in birth control What she would think of the upcoming election in which two women are the leading candidates, one can only speculate. 

“The murder of Felipe Carrillo Puerto brings sorrow to the homes of the proletariat and to many thousands of humble beings who, upon receiving the news, will feel tears of sincere pain slide down their cheeks. Don Adolfo de la Huerta will understand the monstrosity of his crime when he receives the furious protests that workers from all over the world will launch.

Alvaro Obregon Mexican revolutionary, President of Mexico (1920-1924)