Robles joined the Zapatista movement and, within the context of the chaotic military struggle, actively forged a masculine identity that he would maintain after the revolution and for the remainder of his public and private life. Robles’s gender transition, Cano argues, illuminates how Mexico’s revolutionary process simultaneously reinforced the nation’s prevailing gender norms while also opening cracks in them. Sifting through newly discovered documents in both Mexico’s National Defense Ministry Archives and the National Institute of History and Anthropology’s Archive of Family Testimonies, Cano pieces together Robles’s gender transformation during the war years, which was validated not only by his comrades-in-arms but also in the nation’s official military records, where he was honored as a (male) “Veterano de la Revolución.” Nevertheless, in later decades Robles’s masculinity became the subject of some dispute. The former Zapatista revolutionary was subsequently refashioned as an exemplar of women’s participation in the armed movement. The denial of Robles’s masculinity and the attempt to feminize him was illustrated in journalistic and historical accounts that advanced a portrayal of Zapatismo that left little room for com- plex gender identities like Robles’s.
The central character in Cano’s account, Amelio Robles, joined the Zapatista struggle to leave a small rural community that placed rigid restrictions on the autonomy of women. Unlike many Zapatistas, Robles’s motivation was neither ideological nor economic; it sprang from a desire to pursue the less scripted path of a rebel insurgent. On the field of battle, in the midst of the revolution’s destructive impulses, Robles created a masculine identity and physical demeanor that he maintained long after the violence ended.
One can almost see it: a smile of satisfaction spreading across Amelio Robles’s face as he looks at the studio portrait in which he poses like a dandy in the dark suit, white shirt, tie, wide-brimmed black hat, leather shoes, and a white handkerchief peeking out of the breast pocket.1 Standing with a cigarette in one hand and the other placed prominently over his revolver, as if to draw attention to the weapon holstered in his belt. The staged photo was taken around 1915 in one of many photographic studios that flourished across the nation during the first decades of the twentieth century, when technological simplification and falling costs made it possible to satisfy a growing demand for portraits.
Studio portraits sought to establish the social identity of individuals being photographed by following the prevailing code of etiquette. Posing with elegant decor and furniture projected a cosmopolitan attitude, while the prominently exhibited pistol symbolized the subject’s virility. The masculinity of the pose, gesture, and mode of dress are perfectly credible. No one would guess that the dandy in the portrait had once been a rural young lady.
The radical and permanent transgendering of a rural woman from the state of Guerrero occurred during the Mexican Revolution. Amelio Robles previously, Amelia Robles joined an uprising taking place across southern Mexico under the agrarian banner of Emiliano Zapata and forged a masculine identity within the rough environs of war. His link to the Zapatista movement was not ideological, but emerged instead from a passion for the intensity of war, so full of dangers and strong emotions. Once the armed struggle had ended, Amelio Robles continued to live as a man, maintaining this masculinity for the rest of his life, in public and private, even through old age and infirmity. Unlike the backdrop, the pistol and cigarette in the image were not props from the photographic studio, but Robles’s personal belong- ings. His masculine appearance expressed his sense of being a man; it was not a momentary pose for the camera.
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