“ Loreta’s memoir gives us rare insight into war from a woman and a Latina’s point of view,” Agui Carter says. “She was an immigrant serving her country by fighting for it, as so many generations have done.“
The Albuquerque Journal Current Screens
By Adrian Gomez
Life of secret female soldier on
PBS
By Adrian Gomez / Asst. Arts Editor, Reel NM on Sun, May 19, 2013
Under the alias of Harry Buford, Loreta Velazquez, played by Romi Dias in the film “Rebel,” passed as a Confederate soldier during the American Civil
War. (Courtesy of Gerard Gaskin)
Loreta Velazquez has a role in history – and it’s a significant one.
On TV
University of New Mexico
professor Jesse Aleman appears
in the documentary “Rebel,” which
airs at 10 p.m. Friday, May 24 on
Channel 5. The documentary is
about Loreta Velazquez, a Cuban
immigrant who was one of the
estimated 1,000 women who
secretly served as soldiers in the
American Civil War.
The Cuban immigrant was one of the estimated 1,000 women who secretly served as soldiers during the American Civil War.
Velazquez is the subject of director Maria Agui Carter’s new film, “Rebel,” which will premiere on PBS, Channel 5, at 10 p.m. Friday, May 24. It’s part of the Voces series. “Loreta’s memoir gives us rare insight into war from a woman and a Latina’s point of view,” Agui Carter says. “She was an immigrant serving her country by fighting for it, as so many generations have done. Growing up in New Orleans she naturally aligned herself with the South and even kept a slave, but records show she would end up spying for the North. She was a complex woman who ultimately turned against war as a solution to the world’s problems.”
While Agui Carter explores the life of Velazquez, it’s University of New Mexico professor of English Jesse Aleman who appears in the film as one of the experts on Velazquez. In fact, Aleman is responsible for rediscovering Velazquez’s book, “The Woman in Battle,” in 2003. It was his first major research project at UNM. Originally published in 1876, “The Woman in Battle,” offers Velazquez’s impossible autobiographical account of participating in the Civil War. Aleman says Velazquez moved to New Orleans in the 1850s and eloped with her
American lover. She fought in the Civil War for the Confederacy as the cross-dressing Harry T. Buford.
As Buford, she single-handedly organized an Arkansas regiment; participated in the historic battles of Bull Run, Balls Bluff, Fort Donelson and Shiloh, he says.
“She seduced both men and women,” he explains. “In the north, she posed as a double agent and worked to traffic information, drugs and counterfeit bills to support the
Confederate cause. She had everyone fooled.” Aleman says Agui Carter started her project on “Rebel” because the narrative came back into circulation. He was then hired to talk about Velazquez and his research in the docudrama. “It’s so interesting because the film captures the essence of Velazquez and pulls out the central theme,” he says. “The viewers can understand what Velazquez went through
and how she became a Latina participant in the Civil War. She’s a spy, cross-dresses and went from being Catholic to Protestant. The film captures the book well.”
Drawing by REA of Loreta
Velazquez, aka Harry T. Buford,
around 1876. From “The Woman In
Battle,” by Loreta Janeta
Velazquez, sold by subscription,
Hartford, T. Belknap, 1876. REA
was John Rea Neill from
Philadelphia, known for his work
illustrating the “Land of Oz” series,
and “Little Black Sambo.” (Courtesy
of REA)
Aleman says if the movie piques an interest he would suggest reading the book. “The book doesn’t end with the Civil War,” he says. “She goes on to travel through Europe and then to Cuba and Latin America to restart a Confederate colony. She also travels through New Mexico and El Paso and that’s where the book ends. One of her last dates in the book is dated in New Mexico.”
Aleman says while he was doing research on Velazquez, he found out that as a young girl she had fantasies of heroism and likened herself to Joan of Arc. “In her narrative she says she wishes she had been born a man,” he says. “Which leads to her cross dressing. She did this to be with her husband, but many women did this during that time to get where they needed to go. She also felt like Southern men weren’t getting the job done and critiqued those men for not being manly enough and thought if she cross dressed, she could turn the tide of the war.”
Although Velazquez’s memoir, which most historians acknowledge to be somewhat embellished, was dismissed as a hoax for more than a century, historians have recently discovered documents in the National Archives as well as newspaper articles and letters proving that she did indeed exist.
“Loreta Velazquez was a rebel who flouted all the rules to become a part of American history,” Agui Carter says.
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