“With the nation in the midst of a modern war and also half-way through the sesquicentennial for the Civil War in which Loretta fought, its focus on a woman warrior gives {REBEL} a relevance and appeal that goes beyond the normal target audience of other Voces projects.”
Mark Laughlin
http://www.examiner.com/review/rebel-an-hispanic-woman-a-white-man-s-war-premieres-on-pbs
Rebel: “An Hispanic Woman in a White Manʼs War” Premieres on PBS
PLACES & FACES
MAY 23, 2013BY: MARK MCLAUGHLIN
Loreta Velazquez passing as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, soldier and spy of
the American Civil War, played by actress Romi Dias.
Credits: Courtesy Voces/PBS
Places & Faces newsletter
“There was horror in battle, but I was bent on showing I was as good as
any man.” Such sentiments by women in uniform may be quite common
today, but things were very different when those words were written by
Loretta Velazquez nearly 150 years ago. Loretta masqueraded as a man to
fight in the Civil War, and her story, which she first told in her 1876 memoir
A Woman in Battle, is being brought to television by PBS.
Actress Romi Dias, familiar to many viewers from roles on Law & Order
and other television series and movies, brings Loretta to life in the film,
entitled Rebel, which dramatizes her story. A Cuban-born widow of an
American soldier whose children were taken by a fever, in 1861 Loretta cut
her hair, donned her late husbandʼs uniform and joined the Confederate 7th
Louisiana Regiment as “Lieutenant Harry T. Buford.” Aided in her disguise
by a male slave named Bob, this former “daddyʼs little girl” as she once
referred to herself was determined to “play my part in a great game” – and
did so on the battlefields of Bull Run and Shiloh. Wounded in that later
engagement in April 1862 she was sent to recuperate in Richmond – where
her true sex was revealed.
Masquerading as a man was not only a crime in both the Union and
Confederate armies; it was considered an act of treason against the state
and an abomination against God. Accused of being a Yankee spy she was
jailed and faced a hanging – until the head of Confederate military
intelligence accepted her offer to spy for the South. The former soldier
spent the next two years conducting espionage and smuggling money to
other Rebel agents in the North. Near the end of the war she may have
become a double-agent, or at least appears to have convinced the U.S.
Army Provost Marshalʼs office in Baltimore that she was working for the
Union in that capacity.
Romi Dias narrates the story using Lorettaʼs own words to a backdrop of a
period costume-drama complete with pretty gowns and bloody battle reenactments,
much of which were shot on location where the original story
took place. A number of historians, professors and other experts on the
Civil War, among them Vicki L. Ruiz, dean of humanities at UC Irvine, also
appear to offer insights into Lorettaʼs story and the era in which she lived.
Rebel, a film written, directed and produced by Maria Agui Carter, is
another in the Voces series and will debut on most PBS stations at 10 p.m.,
Eastern, Friday, May 24.
The story of Loretta Velazquez is in keeping with other entries on Hispanic-
American history and culture in the series, but with the nation in the midst
of a modern war and also half-way through the sesquicentennial for the
Civil War in which Loretta fought, its focus on a woman warrior gives it a
relevance and appeal that goes beyond the normal target audience of other
Voces projects.
Rebel premieres on most other PBS stations at 10 p.m. Eastern, Friday,
May 24. Connecticut Public Television has not yet scheduled a showing of
Rebel .
* * *
Mark G. McLaughlin is a Connecticut-based free lance journalist and game
designer with over 30 years of experience as a ghost-writer and columnist.
An author whose first published book was Battles of the American Civil
War, and whose games include the Mr. Lincolnʼs War set, Mark continues
to be enthralled by stories from the age of Lincoln. To view Mark’s 16th
published design, the American Civil War Naval strategy game Rebel
Raiders on the High Seas, visit his publisher at http://
www.gmtgames.com/p-238-rebel-raiders-on-the-high-seas.aspx
…or his blog at http://markgmclaughlin.blogspot.com/
Markʼs latest work, the science fiction adventure novel Princess Ryan’s Star
Marines, is available on Amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle e-book
formats athttp://www.amazon.com/Princess-Ryans-Star-Marines-Save/
dp/1466218487/ref…
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