Elena Arizmendi Mejía

After her separation, Arizmendi returned to Mexico City to care for her siblings and evaluate whether she wanted to become a nurse or a teacher, the limited options available to women of her era.[1][3] To supplement her education she read widely, including Greek classics, and was influenced by Swedish feminist Ellen Key's views on women's sexuality.[8][9] Her family connections protected her from the repercussions and typical social stigma of divorce.[2] Choosing nursing, she decided to study at the School of Nursing of the Santa Rosa Hospital (now the School of Nursing at the University of the Incarnate Word) in San Antonio, Texas.[1][3] Her family had close ties with Francisco I. Madero,[3] who would later become President of Mexico, and the school in which Arizmendi was enrolled was near Madero's Texas retreat.[3][10] In 1910, while she was studying, the Mexican Revolution began. On 17 April 1911, a few weeks prior to her graduation, Arizmendi returned to Mexico City to help wounded combatants,[3] as the Mexican Red Cross refused to provide aid to insurgents.[11] She viewed her involvement as a patriotic duty, to serve her country in war as her grandfather had done.[12] Arizmendi arranged a personal meeting with the head of the Red Cross, who reiterated the refusal to support revolutionaries. Determined to help her countrymen, Arizmendi founded an aid organization and, with her brother Carlos, rallied medical students and nurses to organize Cruz Blanca Neutral (Neutral White Cross).[13]

Elena Arizmendi (holding the anesthesia bottle and cotton) and volunteers of the Neutral White Cross, 1911

Forming an association under the guidelines of the Geneva Conventions, Arizmendi became the fundraiser, enlisting the help of celebrities like María Conesa, Virginia Fábregas, and Leopoldo Beristáin. After numerous appeals, they collected sufficient funds for a field hospital and on 11 May 1911, set off for Ciudad Juárez. Arizmendi and Carlos formed the first brigade with doctors Ignacio Barrios and Antonio Márquez, and nurses María Avon, Juana Flores Gallardo, Atilana García, Elena de Lange, and Tomasa Villareal. The second brigade, led by Dr. Francisco, left the following day, and on the 14th a third brigade followed, headed by Dr. Lorenzo and ten nurses, including Innocenta Díaz, Concepción Ibáñez, Jovita Muñiz, Concepción Sánchez, María Sánchez, Basilia Vélez, María Vélez, and Antonia Zorilla.[14]

Arriving in Juárez, they found devastation, and again Arizmendi had to rally for funds. By the end of 1911, the Neutral White Cross had established 25 brigades across Mexico.[15] Arzimendi was elected as the first woman partner of the Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística, but she rejected the honor. She did accept a gold medal presented to her for dedication to helping the wounded by the Gran Liga Obrera (Grand Worker League). Arizmendi was both revered for her philanthropy[16] and disliked for her leadership at a time when women were expected to be docile and submissive.[17] Tensions arose with the medical students over her role as the public voice of the organization in light of her limited medical training and because of her connections with elite donors.[18] There were attacks on her leadership of the White Cross, such as when she had a photograph taken as a joke with the crossed cartridge belts of male revolutionary soldiers and soldaderas and was accused of violating the neutrality of the health organization.[17] She was also accused of mismanagement of the organizational funds.[19] Arizmendi asked Madero for assistance with her role in the White Cross, and was referred to seek legal council from José Vasconcelos.[20] He successfully defended her of the accusation of mishandling the organizational funds.[5]

Jose Vasconcelos, 1914

The working relationship of Arizmendi and Vasconcelos, who was married with two children, turned into a long-term affair.[10][20] Historian Enrique Krauze described Arizmendi as "the first of many lovers in his life but certainly his most intense and madly beloved liaison".[10] Upon the assassination of Madero in 1913, Arizmendi and Vasconcelos joined the faction known as convencionistas, who were against President Victoriano Huerta. When Álvaro Obregón defeated the convencionistas in 1915, she and Vaconcelos went into exile.[21] Though at one time Arizmendi had taken refuge in a convent in Victoria, Texas, to hide from the public scandal of her relationship with Vasconcelos, when she left Mexico in mid-1915 it was with the intent of maintaining her relationship with him.[22][23] They first lived in the United States and she accompanied him to Lima, Peru.[24] Arizmendi broke off the relationship in 1916, tiring of being the other woman, as Vasconcelos prepared to return to Mexico.[25][26] He wrote about her in his autobiography, La Tormenta, giving her the pseudonym "Adriana". Vasconcelos's description of the relationship "is the most famous depiction of 'mad love' in Mexican literature", according to Krauze.[25] Vasconcelos described Arizmendi as a perfect lover until she left him, when she became a "femme fatale", a "harpy", and a "devourer of men".[27][28]

Arizmendi made her way to New York City, where Vasconcelos attempted an unsuccessful reconciliation with her.[29][30] He remained in exile, traveling between California and Texas until he was able to return to Mexico in 1920.[30] Helped by Pedro Henríquez Ureña, she began working as a journalist, writing for newspapers and magazines, and giving music lessons.[26][31] On 24 December 1918, she married Robert Duersch, a German national, acquiring his nationality.[32][33] Under the 1886 Mexican Law of Alienship and Naturalization, women automatically took the nationality of their spouse upon marriage.[34][Notes 2] German nationality laws required the entire family to follow the nationality of the husband and father. If a man naturalized all members of his family were considered to have naturalized.[37][Notes 3] Duersch naturalized as a United States citizen in 1924 and Arizmendi became a US national under Mexican law, despite the fact that she identified as Mexican.[39][Notes 4] In a series of letters exchanged with Mexican Consul General in New York, Arturo M. Elías, Arizmendi replied to his chastisement of her political involvement in the United States, that under the Mexican statute she was a US national because her husband was and thus she had a right to be politically active.[33] Laurie Fransman, a leading expert on British nationality law,[42] pointed out that the legal practice of changing a woman's nationality upon marriage based upon her husband's nationality assumes that a nation has the ability to confer the nationality of another nation upon a subject.[43] Under the terms of the 1922 US Cable Act, foreign women could not automatically acquire a husband's status. She would have been allowed a preferential process, which waived residency requirements, but required her to complete an individual application and pass the naturalization examination in order to become a United States citizen.[44]

Arizmendi was one of the founders of the International League of Iberian and Latin American Women (Liga Internacional de Mujeres Ibéricas e Hispanoamericanas) and served as its first vice president from 1921.[45] The following year, she attended the Pan-American Conference of Women, held in Baltimore, Maryland, as a private attendee rather than part of the official Mexican delegation, which included among others, María Luisa Garza, Eulalia Guzmán, Julia Nava, Elena Torres, and Luz Vera.[46][47] Though the official delegates did not resent the racism and superiority displayed by attendees such as Lady Nancy Astor, who declared she would never visit Latin America because of the prevalence of violence there, Arizmendi was angered by such assertions.[48] When Carrie Chapman Catt abandoned a proposed trip to Latin America because of stereotypical ideas, Arizmendi realized that European and American feminists did not grasp the cultural realities of Hispanic women.[49] She and other Latin American feminists saw matrimony and motherhood as an integral part of their identity.[50][51] They believed that well-educated wives and mothers, without leaving the domestic sphere, could engage in professional and political activities.[52][53] In her view, Spanish custom, culture, history, language and Catholicism, were the characteristics that united Hispanic feminists.[54] Though she was not Catholic, Arizmendi saw the anti-clerical movement of the post-revolutionary governments as an attack on a central part of her Mexican identity.[55][56]

Vida Incompleta, Arizmendi, 1927

To confront these perspectives and to give a voice to Latin American women, Arizmeni planned to found a feminist center to disseminate information by and about Spanish and Latin American women.[49][57] She founded a feminist magazine, Feminismo Internacional (International Feminism), and began publishing articles reflecting Hispanic versions of feminism.[58][59] Arizmendi promoted legal reforms, specifically those impacting women's personal and marital rights.[60] The magazine operated from November 1922 to October 1923 under Arizmendi's leadership and was then merged with La Revista de la Raza (The Magazine of the Race), published in Madrid.[61] She published articles about feminist movements in various Latin American countries and included articles written by both women and men to show that the misogynistic and sexist stereotypes of Latin men were unfounded.[62] Though they sought to unite feminists from Spain and Latin America, Arizmendi's vision did not include indigenous heritage as part of their shared culture.[63] As an Arielist, she valued Spanish culture and Christianity over the expansion of values from the United States in Latin America and devalued the cultural contributions of indigenous people and Africans. Though she defended United States' culture from unwarranted criticism, believing that it did have some valuable elements.[64][65] Her views were representative of the upper and middle-class women who saw the wide-spread participation of women in industry as harmful to the family, while simultaneously recognizing that modernization of public and family relationships was needed.[53]

In 1923, Arizmendi co-founded with G. Sofía Villa de Buentello a co-operative union, Mujeres de la Raza (Women of the [Hispanic] Race), with aims of uniting Latin American women in the struggle for rights.[58][60] The operations of both the Mujeres de la Raza and its magazine under the same name were primarily funded by Arizmendi.[57] Mujeres de la Raza rejected feminism as a solely political action, instead maintaining it was focused on moral leadership and an intellectual battle against incompetence.[52] For example, women attaining the franchise was a moral action because it was illogical that illiterate men could vote while educated women could not.[56] At the time, Latin America was seen as the next "staging ground", as suffrage had been gained in Europe and the United States and Pan-Americanism was gaining ground.[47][49][53] Arizmendi and Villa planned a conference for the Mujeres de la Raza funded by the International League of Iberian and Latin American Women, for which Arizmendi had become the secretary general.[66] Arizmendi used her press contacts and secured coverage in The New York Times to promote the event.[67] On 2 March 1924, an extensive article about the feminist movement in Mexico titled "New Women of Mexico Striving for Equality" carried an interview with Villa, who gave an overview of their goals.[68] The meeting occurred in July 1925 in Mexico City with Villa as president of the conference. There were more than a hundred delegates from various Latin American nations.[69] Arizmendi did not attend due to differences of opinion with Villa, whose views were conservative.[67] Villa attempted to close the conference when her view of marriage, that it was a lifetime commitment and divorce would only harm women by giving men their freedom, was rejected.[70][71] The feminists attending the conference ignored Villa and continued their work to consolidate resolutions to improve women's lives.[70]

By 1927, Arizmendi had separated from Duersch, because of incompatibility, and when Vasconcelos returned to New York that year, she interviewed him for the Revista de la Raza.[72][64] The interview was focused on the political climate of Mexico and his candidacy for the National Anti-Reelectionist Party in the upcoming presidential election.[73] That year, Arizmendi published an autobiography, Vida incompleta; ligeros apuntes sobre mujeres en la vida real (Incomplete Life: Quick Notes about Women in Real Life), with the purpose of airing her side of the affair and silencing rumors about her public life.[74] Since Vasconcelos had published two works, Ulises Criollo and La Tormenta, vilifying Arizmendi as a fictionalized character, Arizmendi's fictionalized autobiography is a reflection on the double standards women encountered and her attempt to explain male-female relationships in a feminist context.[75] She wrote candidly about the conflicts in her relationships with both Vasconcelos and Duersch, but also covered cultural and gender differences between Anglo- and Latin-American society.[73][76] In later editions of his works, Vacsoncelos expunged some of his most damaging descriptions of their affair from his works.[77] In addition to her writing, Arizmendi continued to administrate the International League of Iberian and Latin American Women through the mid-1930s.[8][56]

For the 25th-anniversary commemoration of the organization of the White Cross in 1936, and partly because President Lázaro Cárdenas supported suffrage, Arizmendi returned briefly to Mexico. She returned to New York, but moved permanently back to Mexico City in 1938.[78] At the time she returned to Mexico, the period of social reforms had ended and she distanced herself from the government and feminist organizations. Though the furor over her relationship with Vasconcelos had cooled, it remained a factor in her choice to lead a private life.[79] Throughout her life, she had continued to administer the White Cross, but it had shifted focus to offering services for children, operating as a social assistance center, medical center, children's shelter, and eventually a polyclinic. Government indifference led to her seeking private funding in 1942, and Rodulfo Brito Foucher became the benefactor of the organization.[80] A two-decades-long battle ensued over the funds when the Secretariat of the Treasury blocked the organization from receiving the funds.[79]