Beyond the ‘Heroine’: The Women Who Made Mexican Independence Possible
A movement needs more than famous men and a few exceptional women. It needs couriers, financiers, informants, organizers, fighters, caretakers, recruiters, and people whose names the archive did not preserve.
The phrase ‘women also participated’ is too small
By the time we reach September 16, the familiar names arrive quickly: Hidalgo. Morelos. Guerrero. Allende. Maybe Iturbide, depending on how the story is being told.
Then, if the lesson is trying to be inclusive, two women usually appear: Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez and Leona Vicario.
They belong there. The problem is the structure of the sentence around them.
From participants to acceptable heroines
Historian Sergio Moreno Juárez has shown that public commemorations of Independence did eventually elevate Ortiz and Vicario—but often through carefully gendered ideals. The “heroine” could be honored as patriotic, sacrificial, virtuous, maternal, or supportive without forcing the national story to fully reconsider women as political actors.
That matters because the archive points to a wider world of participation.
Women moved information. They financed insurgent activity. They recruited. They carried messages. They supplied troops. Some fought. Some were imprisoned, punished, displaced, or executed. Official Mexican educational sources now name figures such as Gertrudis Bocanegra, Manuela Molina, and many others alongside Ortiz and Vicario.
Four names, four different kinds of action
Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez was embedded in the Querétaro conspiracy and helped move a warning when the network was exposed.
Leona Vicario used resources, intelligence, and communication to support insurgent activity. Later commemorative culture celebrated her, but often recast her political agency through domestic ideals.
Gertrudis Bocanegra worked in insurgent intelligence and communication networks in Michoacán and was eventually executed.
Manuela Molina, known as La Capitana, is remembered for military participation and command.
Even these four should not become another closed list. They are better used as doorways into the kinds of labor movements require.
Teach the roles, not only the names
This is the shift I want SPC to make.
Instead of one slide labeled “Women of Independence,” build the movement like a system. Who warned? Who carried information? Who funded? Who recruited? Who provided food or shelter? Who fought? Who kept a family functioning while somebody else disappeared into the war? Who paid the price when the authorities retaliated?
Some of those people are named. Many are not.
That is part of the historical truth too.
And there is something powerful about ending the series here, two days before September 16. National celebrations naturally pull us toward heroes. Socio-cultural storytelling asks us to widen the camera.
Independence was not made by a pantheon. It was made by people in networks—famous and anonymous, celebrated and forgotten, moving information, resources, bodies, care, and risk through eleven years of conflict.
So when the bell rings this year, remember the names. Then remember the roles that made the movement possible.
CTA: Save the role map for September 16. Teach the movement as a network, not a pantheon.
Sources & further reading:
Moreno Juárez, Sergio. 2012. “Presencia, participación y representación femenina en los dos Centenarios de la Independencia nacional (1910 y 1921).” Signos Históricos 14(27): 24–62.
Espejo, Beatriz. 2010. “Algunas palabras sobre nuestros héroes impuros.” Literatura Mexicana 21(1): 23–34. DOI: 10.19130/iifl.litmex.21.1.2010.632.
Navarrete Núñez, Christopher. 2015. Review of Mujeres y revolución en la independencia de Hispanoamérica, edited by Moisés Guzmán Pérez. Tzintzun. Revista de Estudios Históricos 62: 362–368.
Secretaría de Educación Pública / Nueva Escuela Mexicana Digital. 2025. “Las mujeres en el movimiento de Independencia.”
