A Call to Action
On March 17, 1913, in her home in Laredo, Texas, Leonor Villegas de Magnón woke up to the sound of gunfire. Jesus Carranza and the Constitutionalists had entered Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. The Mexican Revolution was in full throttle and much bloodshed was expected. Her first thought was of helping the soldiers. Villegas de Magnón recalls in her autobiography, La Rebelde:
El problema que ya estaba trazado en su vida fue resuelto en pocos momentos, en los que ya estaban visualizados por aquella madre que vio a su hija enarbolando una bandera blanca, la hora había sonado y obedecía a su llamado. ... Entre las balas y los rugidos de los cañones, oía La Rebelde la voz de su madre que le decía cuando en sus juegos infantiles ella y sus hermanitos simulaban combate...: 'Tambien las mujeres van a la guerra, y llevan la bandera blanca, ellas cuidan de los soldados heridos.' (61)
Having already been involved as writer and activist in support of the revolution and the Constitutionalist movement, Villegas de Magnón did not hesitate to further her involvement in the Revolution and her support for the constitionalists and First Chief Venustiano Carranza by rushing to the soldiers' aid. Upon hearing the sounds of battle, the firing of guns, and the roar of canons, she gathers her things and rushes to Nuevo Laredo with an almost impulsive resoluteness. In this way, she fulfilled a vision that her mother had shared with her in her childhood, a vision of women at war who carry the white flag and heal soldiers.
Villegas de Magnón took with her a group of brave women that eventually would become the first group of nurses of La Cruz Blanca Constitucionalista: Jovita Idar, Elvira Idar, María Alegría, Araceli García, Rosa Chávez, señora Antonia S. de la Garza, Refugio Garza Góngora. Risking their lives to reach the injured soldiers, these women, like Villegas de Magnón, responded to an important call to action, what Villegas de Magnon called a "patriotic and pious duty" (translated). One by one the soldiers were removed from the battle grounds and treated. In a makeshift hospital, the nurses treated soldiers from both sides of the conflict. But eventually, their loyalty to Venustiano Carranza and the Constitutionalists would materialize. Upon learning that the Constituionalist soldiers would be executed, La Rebelde devised an escape plan. Never letting on that they were on the side of Carranza and his men, Leonor Villegas de Magnón and her nurses snuck the soldiers out to safety, in the middle of the night, across the river to Laredo.