Elena Arizmendi Mejía (18 January 1884 – 4 November 1949) was a Mexican feminist who established the Neutral White Cross to care for casualties of the Mexican Revolution that the Red Cross would not aid. Participating in the first wave of Mexican feminism, she established two international women's rights organizations: the "Mujeres de la Raza" (Women of the [Hispanic] Race) and the International League of Iberian and Latin American Women.
Arizmendi was born in 1884 to a prominent and well-connected family in Mexico City. After completing her studies, she had a brief marriage which ended in divorce. As options for women were limited, she decided to study nursing at the School of Nursing of the Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio, Texas. Shortly before her graduation in 1911, Arizmendi returned to Mexico to found a medical relief organization. Since the Mexican Red Cross refused to provide care for revolutionaries, Arizmendi used her contacts to raise funds and organize the Neutral White Cross. The organization was apolitical and established field hospitals to care for any wounded combatants involved in the Mexican Revolution. During the war, she sought legal advice from José Vasconcelos and their relationship turned into a long-term love affair.
In 1915, the political climate in Mexico caused Arizmendi and Vasconcelos to go into exile. The couple lived briefly in the United States and Peru. When he made plans to return to see his wife in Mexico, Arizmendi broke off their affair and moved to New York City in 1916. She began working as a music teacher and journalist and married a German national, who later became a US citizen. Arizmendi lost her Mexican nationality because of nineteenth-century legislation which required married women to have the same nationality as their husband. Though the marriage was brief, Arizmendi remained in the United States working in feminist causes from 1921 to the mid-1930s. In addition to founding two feminist organizations, she founded the magazine, Feminismo Internacional (International Feminism), to publish feminist information by and about Spanish and Latin American women and combat the stereotypical views held about them from Anglo-American feminists. In 1927, she wrote a fictionalized autobiography, Vida incompleta (Incomplete Life), to explain her views on feminism and the double standards women faced in living their lives.
Returning to Mexico in 1938, she helped the White Cross change its direction into an organization to benefit children. At the time of her death in 1949, she was remembered primarily for her philanthropy. The White Cross, which still operates as a children's health organization, named its dispensary in the Xochimilco borough of Mexico City after her and persuaded the government to name a street in Colonia del Valle in her honor in 1985. Scholarly interest in her life emerged in the 21st century, recovering her legacy as a feminist and writer.
Early life and education
Elena Arizmendi Mejía was born on 18 January 1884 in Mexico City to Jesús Arizmendi and Isabel Mejía. Her well-to-do family was connected to those involved in the modernization of Mexico. She was the granddaughter of , who served as Mexican Secretary of War and was a Division General under the regime of President Benito Juárez. Her great-grandfather was Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Cristóbal Mejía, who fought in the Mexican War of Independence in the army of Agustín de Iturbide. Arizmendi spent some of her early years with her grandfather in Oaxaca and then returned to Mexico City at about the age of eight. She was schooled in Mexico City, likely at Colegio La Paz, where girls could attend for six years. When her mother died in 1898, Arizmendi became responsible for caring for her siblings and looking after the household. When her father remarried in 1900, Arizmendi hastily married Francisco Carreto that same year in Chilpancingo, Guerrero. The union quickly crumbled because of domestic violence and the death of their only child to meningitis in 1903. She was able to secure a divorce because she had the financial means to leave their home and did not demand his continued financial maintenance.
Career Nursing 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. To supplement her education she read widely, including Greek classics, and was influenced by Swedish feminist Ellen Key's views on women's sexuality. Her family connections protected her from the repercussions and typical social stigma of divorce. 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. Her family had close ties with Francisco I. Madero, who would later become President of Mexico, and the school in which Arizmendi was enrolled was near Madero's Texas retreat. 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, as the Mexican Red Cross refused to provide aid to insurgents. She viewed her involvement as a patriotic duty, to serve her country in war as her grandfather had done. 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).
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.
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. 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 and disliked for her leadership at a time when women were expected to be docile and submissive. 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. 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. She was also accused of mismanagement of the organizational funds. Arizmendi asked Madero for assistance with her role in the White Cross, and was referred to seek legal council from José Vasconcelos. He successfully defended her of the accusation of mishandling the organizational funds.
The working relationship of Arizmendi and Vasconcelos, who was married with two children, turned into a long-term affair. Historian Enrique Krauze described Arizmendi as "the first of many lovers in his life but certainly his most intense and madly beloved liaison". 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. 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. They first lived in the United States and she accompanied him to Lima, Peru. Arizmendi broke off the relationship in 1916, tiring of being the other woman, as Vasconcelos prepared to return to Mexico. 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. Vasconcelos described Arizmendi as a perfect lover until she left him, when she became a "femme fatale", a "harpy", and a "devourer of men".
Activism Arizmendi made her way to New York City, where Vasconcelos attempted an unsuccessful reconciliation with her. He remained in exile, traveling between California and Texas until he was able to return to Mexico in 1920. Helped by Pedro Henríquez Ureña, she began working as a journalist, writing for newspapers and magazines, and giving music lessons. On 24 December 1918, she married Robert Duersch, a German national, acquiring his nationality. Under the 1886 Mexican Law of Alienship and Naturalization, women automatically took the nationality of their spouse upon marriage. 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. 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. 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. Laurie Fransman, a leading expert on British nationality law, 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. 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.