My name is Petra Rivas. I was born on October 5, 1892 on land next to a large hacienda known as La Cofradia in the territory of Nayarit in the mountainous northwest region of Mexico.

The year I was born Don Porfirio Díaz was dictator of Mexico. When I was eighteen small farmers led by Emiliano Zapata began a revolt in Morelos, near the capitol of Mexico, against the injustices of the system of "Porfirismo" which catered to the interests of the "hacendados. " These large plantation owners and other foreign investors benefited greatly from President Diaz's policies which manipulated the historic rights of the indigenous to their land. Land was taken for export crops as well as for new railway lines.

Porfirismo made the hacendados and foreigners extremely rich. In the early 1900s Mexico had become a major exporter of cash crops like sugar, corn and tropical fruits grown on haciendas just like La Cofradia where I was born. My abuelito, Encarnación Rivas, had worked as an overseer on the La Cofradia hacienda and I remember how wonderful it was when he came home with left over pieces of caña or mangos, at the end of a harvest and shipment.

As a girl born into humble circumstances I had to work from a young age. I didn't get a formal education. I eventually did learn to read and write when I was about 13 thanks to the kindness of a woman named Sabinita Ibarra who was my employer. I had been sent to live with her to care for her brother's baby daughter Emilia. "Emi" had lost her mother as a baby. We grew up loving each other just like sisters.

I lived through the revolution that ended the 30-year dictatorship against Porfirio Díaz as a young woman. Of course, I never met Presidente Díaz. But I did live to see some of the dramatic consequences of his demise, some of them quite terrible and violent. His downfall began with the political efforts of Francisco Madero, a member of one of the richest families in Mexico at the time. He ran for President against Díaz and technically won. But Díaz system prevented him from taking office. So with all his money he began to hire an army.

The reform movement known as "Maderismo"
advocated Constitutionalism and reform. But with such stiff opposition from a crook the movement for reform turned into a mess by 1913. Madero was assassinated in 1913 aided in no small part by U.S. amabassador Wilson, whose friends in Mexico were the rich investors and hacendados. The revolt was now all out war between the landed powerful rich, all of them conservative Catholics, and the masses of disenfranchised and poor. Their leaders in the revolutionary struggle for land reform was led by Zapata and a Madero recruit from the state of Chihuahua, Franciso "Pancho" Villa.

While all of these politics were developing I was becoming a young woman in Jala. Although I now knew how to read and write I knew little about politics or the reasons for the chaos that was surrounding our small town and other villages nearby. At the time Xala, as it is spelled in the indigenous Nahuat'l language, was at least two days' away by horse from La Cofradia because of the treacherous mountain roads. Jala was important to the region because it had a Catholic Basilica which had been built by the wealthiest family in the region, the Salazares. Jala was also famous because it was known as "Jala Mayor" because it was actually a new rebuilt Jala. The first small village of "Xala" had been destroyed when Monte Ceboruco exploded sometime in the early 1700s.

By 1914 the region would experience another explosion of sorts. Many of us would see the hunger, despair and violence of brutal military operations mostly against any sign of wealth taken by soldiers led by Pancho Villa. The mention of "Villistas" in the area was usually not good news.

In 1914, the year the Mexican revolt by anyone who had a gripe against Don Porfirio and his cronies turned into a bloody civil war, I was a live-in nanny for the Ibarras, who owned one whole block in Jala, most of it dedicated to fruit orchards. The Ibarras were considered one of the rich families in Jala. Just as the revolution was becoming so scary to anyone who appeared to have land or wealth, my employers, the Ibarras, decided to escape from Jala and go to the big city of Guadalajara. I was only 22 and really had nowhere to go.

In this same year I would end up marrying a man who was 17 years older, a decent small business man who had a civil service job in Jala and who liked politics. He had often come to the home of the Ibarras and my grandfather and father knew him when I was but a baby girl myself. His name was Pedro Arriola. From the moment I agreed to marry Pedro our lives would be affected by La Revolución Mexicana.

These are some of my stories.