My favorite passage in Insurgent Mexico is this one, in which John Reed argues the Woman Question with Pancho Villa:
Once I asked him if women would vote in the new Republic. He was sprawled out on his bed, with his coat unbuttoned. “Why, I don’t think so,” he said, startled, suddenly sitting up. “What do you mean–vote? Do you mean elect a government and make laws?” I said I did and that women already were doing it in the United States. “Well,” he said, scratching his head: “if they do it up there I don’t see that they shouldn’t do it down here.” The idea seemed to amuse him enormously. He rolled it over and over in his mind, looking at me and away again. “It may be as you say,” he said; “but I have never thought about it. Women seem to me to be things to protect, to love. They have no sternness of mind. They can’t consider anything for its right or wrong. They are full of pity and softness. Why,” he said, “a woman would not give an order to execute a traitor.”
“I am not so sure of that, mi General,” I said. “Women can be crueller and harder than men.”
He stared at me, pulling his mustache. And then he began to grin. He looked slowly to where his wife was setting the table for lunch. “Oiga,” he said, “come here. Listen. Last night I caught three traitors crossing the river to blow up the railroad. What shall I do with them? Shall I shoot them or not?” » Read more..
