Not your typical Spring Break!

When students say they are going on a trip for spring break to Mexico, it´s usually to some beach location to party all day and all night. But as a doctoral student that is passionate about their research topic, you can find me and my niece, my research assistant, in a archive taking notes and reading into the late hours of the afternoon.

Yesterday evening, my niece and I got on a bus in Juarez, Mexico headed for Durango, Dgo., Mexico. This past December I had taken the trip to Durango in search of Doña Juana Belén, journalist and activist. I found much more than I had ever dreamed. There was only one major problem, I didn't have the proper technology with me to take proper notes on the primary sources I discovered. Armed with my digital camera, my new computer, and a bottle full of nerves and daring, I came back to get the information I needed.

When I arrived at the library this morning and asked for the Marxists/Communist newspaper from 1900, La Bandera Roja, they informed me that they had lent it out. With that news, I just about died where I stood. "A twelve hour trip for nothing," I thought as my stomach churned. "No se precupe, lo consiguimos por Usted," they said trying to calm my nerves. The director of the archives directed me into the library director's office. After they assured me that I would have the newspaper, I decided to take another trip to the ICED, The Cultural Institute of Durango. While at the Instituto, I learned of another woman from Durango that wrote during her life, Olga Arias. A daughter of General Arias from the time of the Revolution, at an early age she new she wanted to write stories and poems. Throughout her life, she recieved some of the highest acolades a writer could recieve. But then I asked the museum director, "Conoces a Juana Belen Gutierrez de Mendoza, precusora y acatvista de la Revolucion?" She looked at me with a confused look, "No, no conosco a esta mujer?" No one in Durango, Dgo., Mexico seems to know who Juana Belen was, but I hope to some day change that fact.

Returning to the public library and the archive, they had for me the newspaper of La Bandera Roja. At that point in the afternoon, we were hungry, tired, and ready for some lunch and a beer. So today, I only took a couple of pictures of the newspaper, vowing to return tomorrow with a renewed frame of mind, ready to research all morning and afternoon.

This pictures you see above are from left to right: a dipiction of Juana Belen in a Mexican Feminist magazine and a picture of a mural at the Universidad de Juarez de Durango.