A nun-lieutenant, a depraved widow and other conquistadores who became heroines of the wars of Latin America

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Latin America is a land of hot women. Usually this phrase is pronounced, remembering actresses, dancers, or dreaming of an affair with some Brazilian woman. In fact, the real hot women of the New World are conquistadors, warriors and revolutionaries, who have always been enough here. The names of some of them have long been included in legends.

Catalina Eraso

Most often she is remembered under the nickname "Nun-Lieutenant". Catalina was from the Basques - a people who are considered hot-tempered even by the Spaniards themselves. Her father and brothers were soldiers, and so that the girl did not have to rub among the soldiers, she was sent to a monastery for education at the age of four. However, when Catalina was fifteen, she was severely beaten for some offense, and she fled from the monastery, managing to get a man's clothes and dress as a boy.

After wandering a little in Spain, Catalina hired a cabin boy and sailed to the American coast. It sounds simpler than it is carried out: the voyage across the ocean in those days was very long, and the cabin boys were the object of claims from the lusty sailors, so Catalina managed to keep herself incognito by a miracle.

In Chile, Catalina hired herself as a soldier, posing as Alonso Diaz Ramirez de Guzman: the conquest of the indigenous population was in progress, which, of course, desperately resisted, and the soldiers were not questioned too much, but simply given weapons and, if necessary, taught how to use them. Alonso Ramirez took part in a large number of fights. According to legend, he even fought under the command of his brother, but he, of course, did not recognize Catalina: he had not seen her since four years.

Thanks to her courage, Catalina rose to the rank of lieutenant governor, but in one of the battles she received such a serious wound that what had been hidden for so long surfaced: maybe she had long been the soul of Alonso, but Catalina's body was female, and this was extremely scandalous. However, thanks to universal respect and achieved fame, Alonso-Catalina managed to do without serious consequences, but after recovering, she had to go to live in a monastery.

Later, Catalina returned to Europe, where the entire Catholic world wanted to see her. After visiting the Pope, she received special permission to wear men's clothing. In Europe, she also wrote an autobiography, after which she returned to the New World and began to live peacefully there under the name of Antonio de Erazo. She died at the age of fifty-eight, which was a fair age for most conquistadors.

Ines de Suarez

Another legend of the times of the conquest of the future Latin America by the Spaniards is the conquistadora (la conquistadora) Ines de Suarez. At thirty, the noble senora went to the New World to find her husband, from whom there was neither a rumor nor a spirit. After wandering along foreign shores and reaching Chile, she finally found traces of him - it turned out that he had drowned a long time ago. As the widow of a Spanish soldier, she was given land and several Indian serfs.

Ines was not alone for long. Chile lacked Christian women, and around Ines there were many heated soldiers and officers. She got along with her fellow countryman, Pedro de Valdivia. Later, romantically inclined minds will come up with a fairy tale about how they loved each other from childhood and finally met in the New World, but in fact Ines saw Pedro for the first time in Chile.

In order not to part with his beloved (and not to leave her among the same crowd of heated soldiers), Valdivia procured permission for Ines to accompany him on the expedition. She not only steadfastly endured the hardships of the road, but also looked after the wounded, took care of her unofficial husband and found water in the desert for the entire detachment.

At the end of the campaign, the Spaniards founded the city of Santiago. However, the locals were not going to put up with the fact that someone comes to their lands and disposes so easily. An uprising broke out. Valdivia went to suppress him, but Indian warriors in huge numbers came out to the fortress of Santiago, which was left without a commander. Soon, Ines actually had to lead the defense.

She chose the methods to match the time. So that the seven leaders, who were hostages to the Spaniards, stopped cheering the troops of local residents with shouts, she ordered them to be beheaded and hung out to the Indians. Then she rode out on a white horse in front of the tired Spanish soldiers and provoked their spirits by ridicule and calls. After that, the Spaniards managed to defeat the Indian army.

After the expedition, Valdivia was tried, including for the debauchery that he indulged in with Ines. According to a court order, the lovers had to part, Valdivia - to summon his legal wife, Ines - to get married. Ines chose Valdivia's friend as her husband and lived the rest of her life in a quiet family life.

Irene Morales

Irene was one of only two Latin American New World women who rose to official rank without dressing up as a man. She was a native of Chile, grew up in a poor family and by the age of thirteen had already managed to be widowed twice. In general, she did not have the happiest childhood.

In the late seventies of the nineteenth century, Chile unleashed a war that unofficially went down in history as the "war for guano", attacking the lands of Peru and Bolivia, where there were deposits of saltpeter. In addition to saltpeter, in fact, a large number of birds and bird excrement (guano), these lands were only known. The war began with the capture of a Bolivian city under the pretext that the majority of its inhabitants are Chileans.

Fourteen-year-old Irene tried to get into the army, disguised as a guy. She was instantly exposed. Irene still remained with the troops, performing the duties of a nurse and a waitress (unlike France, in the Chilean army this could only be done unofficially). However, she soon showed such miracles of bravery on the battlefield that she was awarded the rank of sergeant and put on a ration like other soldiers.

Before her, only a woman named Manuela Hurtado and Pedraza, an Argentine woman who distinguished herself in battles against the British invaders at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, received the title. For miracles of bravery, she was officially recognized as alferes (which roughly corresponds to the rank of lieutenant). Manuela is still Argentina's favorite national heroine.

Irene served in the army until the end of the war. When asked why the woman had to fight, she said that her second husband was killed by the Bolivians (after he himself killed a Bolivian in a fight, but she considered this part of the story unimportant). Many times she had to listen to advice to return to the sewing machine, putting the rifle aside, but she, of course, did not follow them.

Although civilians did not know anything about the brave Irene Morales, her fame in the army was so great that when after the war the monument to the Chilean soldier was opened and Irene came to look, everyone who served in the war greeted her with thunderous applause - to the amazement of the rest of the townspeople. However, fame did not bring her either money or health. She died at the age of twenty-five in a free hospital for the poor. But after her death, many poems were dedicated to her. After death, in general, people somehow like people more, such are the laws of the human psyche.

But in the Old World there was not only Jeanne d'Arc: the maiden knight, the gaduchka, the Russian admiral and other heroine warriors of the past as a guarantee.