Canadian Journal of History: Juan Soldado: Rapist, Murderer, Martyr, Saint

Juan Soldado: Rapist, Murderer, Martyr, Saint, by Paul J. Vanderwood. American Encounters/Global Interactions series. Durham, North Carolina and London, Duke University Press, 2004. xi, 332 pp. $79.95 US (cloth), $22.95 US (paper).

Paul J. Vanderwood's Juan Soldado explores the circumstances around the life and execution of Juan Castillo Morales, a Mexican soldier stationed in Tijuana who may (or may not) have been framed for the rape and murder of eight-year-old Olga Consuela Camacho and Juan's unofficial rise to sainthood and protector of the Mexican poor who are forced to cross the US-Mexican border to look for work thereafter. Vanderwood breaks his study into three main sections. The first deals with the rape and murder of Olga, Juan's confession to the crime, the rise of a mob demanding justice, Juan's staged execution through the ley fuga, and the belief by some that Juan had been unfairly executed. The second section treats the political circumstances surrounding the murder and, most importantly, the highly-charged atmosphere in Tijuana as a result of the struggle between President Lázaro Cárdenas and local union members over the important role that gambling played in the local economy. The final section explores Juan's rise to unofficial sainthood and the faith that many Mexican Catholics place in Juan's (and other unofficial saints') power to intercede on their behalf. By expanding his research beyond the multiple existent stories surrounding Olga's rape and murder to the political and social circumstances in Tijuana, Vanderwood has done a great service for both the general readers and academics interested in lay religiosity, state-building in post-revolutionary Mexico, and borderlands studies.

Vanderwood's best work is in the second section. He persuasively argues that, while Olga's rape and murder were the proximal cause of the riots that erupted in Tijuana in 1938, it was not the underlying reason. Tijuana was the stage for the political struggles between President Cárdenas and the leader of the previous regime, Plutarco Elías Galles, whom Cárdenas had forced into exile in San Diego. Calles and his political cronies had relied heavily on the taxes generated by the gambling and drinking establishments in Tijuana (and had even invested in many of them). Calles' strongest local supporters, members of the Congreso Regional de Obreros Mexicanos (Regional Congress of Mexican Workers or CROM), a national-level union, also relied on those establishments for jobs. In order to solidify his political power in Tijuana, Cárdenas outlawed most forms of gambling in the area and expropriated one of the major casinos/country club complexes, turning it over to the Education Ministry as a school. In response, the four hundred union members who had worked at the complex and their families occupied it. Cárdenas offered incentives to the union members, hoping to split the union. Some members agreed to leave the complex, while others were determined to stay. It was in this atmosphere that Olga's rape and murder led to riots and, later, a mob demanding Juan's execution. Vanderwood makes it clear that the local military officers who applied the ley fuga did so on orders from Mexico City and presumably from Cardenas, as the riots (heavily participated in by CROM members) were a direct threat to his rule.

The author never does tell us whether he thinks that Juan was guilty. In any case, the few sources remaining lead him to believe that his trial and execution did not follow normal procedures and that the procedures that were followed were patently unfair. More interesting to Vanderwood is Juan's rise to unofficial sainthood, perhaps as a result of the blood that supposedly arose from Juan's grave some days after his burial, the unfairness of the ley fuga used to execute him, or Juan's presumed innocence (though the vast majority of contemporary commentators thought he was guilty). Again, he is unable to delineate the exact beginning of Juan's holiness, but that is not his aim. Instead, Vanderwood seeks to explain the multiple uses that Mexicans have for their unofficial saints, both as a means of undermining some of the Catholic Church's teachings and as a supplement to them.

Some scholars may be a bit put off by Vanderwood's breezy writing. He remarks early in his footnotes that "to footnote every tidbit of information would hopelessly clutter the text and unduly burden the reader." He chose to footnote only "substantial direct citations" and "large blocks of material taken from a single source" (p. 293). While this approach will make it more difficult for scholars to track down his sources, it adds immeasurably to the book's readability - at times I felt like I was reading a good novel - and makes it more accessible to non-scholars. Overall, Juan Soldado will be an entertaining and informative read for both scholars and non-scholars alike. This is another solid performance by a veteran scholar on the history of Mexico.

Andrae Marak

California University of Pennsylvania

Canonsburg, Pennsylvania