Train Station Scene

The cropping of a photograph which depicts several men, women, and children standing in front of a train has a similar function to that of Adelita. The original photograph, although many of its subjects are posed, contains several elements of “everyday life”: children are laughing at a dog nearby, women are looking after the children in the scene, and the woman seated on the left of the frame appears to possibly be in the middle of some kind of work. The women in this photograph clearly belonged in the space, and the baskets in the photo filled with plates and food suggests that they have just finished or are about to begin feeding the soldiers present.

The cropped version, however, negates these elements. The soldadera is again picture alone, suggesting that camp followers were unique aberrations, rather than an unofficial segment of the military. The existence of a few women who followed their men to war is less threatening to positivist ideology than the presence of enough women to create their own spaces of resistance within the army. Cropping this photo also places more emphasis on the rifle which lays awkwardly across the woman’s lap, encouraging the viewer to see the soldadera as having been brought to the army by her revolutionary spirit, rather than by the desire for employment or against her will.