Life has so many chapters . . .

Alma Marie Sullivan Reed (1889-1966)

The first time I heard of Alma Reed was in 1992, in the lobby of the Gran Hotel in Mérida, capital of the state of Yucatán. I had arrived after a twenty-six-hour bus ride from Mexico City, which included frequent stops in towns and villages along the way. Upon my arrival, I was immediately captivated by the once-imposing surroundings of the hotel, which, as I would soon discover, was a local landmark in the cultural and political history of the city. As the receptionist, Don Eusebio, handed me the key to my room, he mentioned that Fidel Castro had occupied my suite many years before, when he and his rebels were searching the Gulf Coast for a boat to take them back to overthrow Batista's Cuba. Encouraged by my interest, he rattled off the names of several other foreign celebrities who had once stayed there: Charles Lindbergh, Sergei Eisenstein, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and so on until he happened upon a woman popularly known as La Peregrina. When I failed to show any enthusiasm, he quickly explained that La Peregrina was a gringa from San Francisco, California, whose name was Alma Reed. He was astonished that I had never heard of this locally revered figure, especially given that we were paisanos, or countrymen, and he proceeded to narrate the story of her tragic romance with the revolutionary hero and martyred governor of the Yucatán, Felipe Carrillo Puerto (1874-1924). Alma Reed met, fell in love with, and became engaged to marry the Yucatán's charismatic populist governor, known to his detractors as the "red dragon with eyes of jade," while on assignment for the New York Times Sunday Magazine in the early 1920's.

Immediately after their formal engagement, Reed returned to San Francisco to gather her trousseau and make plans for the wedding. Although she had been previously married to Samuel Payne Reed, Alma was again in love and willing to face the consequences of this union, as Felipe was a married man. In January 1924, a week before the marriage was to take place, Alma received a telegram with devastating news: her fiancé, three of his brothers, and nine of their followers had been executed by a firing squad.

Carrillo Puerto had fought alongside Emiliano Zapata for "Land and Liberty." In the spirit of the Mexican Revolution, the governor made great attempts during the early 1920's to modernize his distant state, whose land barons were members of la casta divina, the "divine caste." This landed aristocracy had steadfastly resisted agrarian reform and other social advances put into practice by the new constitutional government. In the Yucatán, these included the creation of feminist leagues, led by Felipe's sister Elvia, which instituted the first family planning programs with legalized birth control in the Western Hemisphere, as well promoting women's suffrage, which was obtained far earlier than in the rest of Mexico.

The radical governor also founded more than four hundred local schools to educate Maya youth, until then virtual slaves held by debt peonage on the enormous henequen haciendas of the ruling class. Indeed the coat of arms of the all-powerful Montejo family, which adorns the facade of their sixteenth-century palace in Mérida, is composed of a Spanish foot planted squarely on the head of a Maya slave. In clear defiance of the status quo, the socialist governor revived the ejidos, or communal villages, characteristic of pre-Hispanic Mexico, arguing that the land of the Yucatán was the inhabitants' legal birthright. He also reformed the prison system and constructed roads into Mérida from numerous villages, so that farmers could transport their goods to the market more efficiently.

Despite his towering height and green eyes, Carrillo Puerto was said to be a descendant of Nachi Cocom, the last indigenous cacique of the Mayapán federation, who in the mid-sixteenth century had steadfastly resisted the invading Spanish. Whatever the case may be, as a result of his childhood spent in the countryside and his regular contact with indigenous peasants, Carrillo Puerto was fluent in Yucatec Maya and in his youth even translated the Mexican Constitution so that the non-Spanish-speaking majority could know their rights.

As a direct result of the socialist-inspired reforms enacted during his governorship, which lasted only twenty months, the first democratically elected governor of the Yucatán was murdered on January 3, 1924, along with his brothers Edesio, Benjamín, and Wilfrido and nine political confidants, including Manuel Berzunza, Carrillo Puerto's closest adviser.

The assassins were agents of the Delahuertista rebellion, led by Adolfo de la Huerta and headed in the Yucatán by Colonel Juan Ricárdez Broca, from the northern state of Sonora. The Delahuertistas supported the efforts of the Yucatán's ruling class to regain the henequen haciendas and de facto slave labor they were forced to give up as a result of the Mexican Revolution. This once-privileged group, supported by the Catholic Church, openly challenged the presidency of Álvaro Obregón, Carrillo Puerto's staunch ally, and would later unsuccessfully attempt to overthrow him. Although de la Huerta condemned the executions the same day they occurred, shortly afterward Ricárdez Broca was promoted to general and named acting governor of the Yucatán. His provisional—and illegitimate—government was short-lived, due in part to the immediate response of the important Ward Line—its suspension of cargo service to and from the region paralyzed the henequen industry, whose revenues were the backbone of the local economy.

In a stirring attempt to emphasize the improbable couple's everlasting love, Don Eusebio intoned the first lines of the popular ballad through which Reed is still remembered in Mexico and abroad. The ballad was composed upon Carrillo Puerto's request by Yucatecan poet Luis Rosado Vega and arranged by Ricardo Palmerín:

La Peregrina

Peregrina de ojos claros y divinos,
y mejillas encendidas de arrebol,
peregrina de los labios purpurinos
y radiante caballera como el sol.

Peregrina que dejaste tus lugares,
los abetos y la nieve virginal,
y viniste a refugiarte en mis palmares,
bajo el cielo de mi tierra, de mi tierra tropical.

Las canoras avecitas de mis prados
por cantarte dan sus trinos si te ven,
y las flores de nectarios perfumados
te acarician en los labios, en los labios y la sien.

Cuando dejes mis palmares y mi sierra,
peregrina del semblante encantador,
no te olvides, no te olvides de mi tierra,
no te olvides, no te olvides de mi amor.

Don Eusebio didn't recall how the song was conceived, only that it was dedicated to Carrillo Puerto's American sweetheart, the reporter Alma Reed. Ten years later, in a letter dated May 1951 from the composer to La Revista Ilustrada director Ramón Ríos Franco, I discovered the "Only True Account Concerning 'La Peregrina.'" In it Rosado Vega recounts that Reed, Carrillo Puerto, and he were driving through Mérida on a warm summer evening en route to a dinner party. It had just rained, and the poet describes the origin of the song:

Upon perceiving that fragrance which emanated directly from Nature and which has no equal, Alma, widening her brow, breathed in deeply and exclaimed:

"What a lovely bouquet!"

I immediately answered: "That perfume is because you are passing by and the earth, trees and flowers wish to caress you."

Alma laughed in her distinctive crystalline way and Felipe immediately remarked, looking at me:

"You shall tell that to Alma in verse."

"I will tell it to her in a song," I answered.

"I have your word," replied Felipe.

Throughout my first visit to Yucatán, Reed's ghost would appear on numerous occasions, most often in this famous song but also in the collective memory of the emeritenses, residents of Mérida. As I would later discover, the images conjured up by the ballad "La Peregrina" aren't always pleasant, and during a recent interview with a granddaughter of Carrillo Puerto, she was quick to point out that her grandmother always changed the channel whenever the song was played on the radio, as it inevitably reminded her of that "gringa oportunista" who stole her husband's love.

Ever since that first visit to the Yucatán in 1992, I have been captivated by this woman. Before becoming a living legend in Mexico, she had begun her journalistic career in San Francisco under the pseudonym "Mrs. Goodfellow," a columnist for the leftist San Francisco Call. Under this byline, she documented the tragedies and injustices suffered by the disenfranchised, earning her the dubious sobriquet of "sob sister."

Reed's reputation as a champion of human rights and as a journalist was established in 1921 by her celebrated defense of Simón Ruiz, a seventeen-year-old undocumented Mexican worker who was sentenced to death by hanging after being advised by his state-appointed lawyer—in incomprehensible English—to plead guilty to trumped-up charges. As a result of Reed's campaign, which lasted several months and produced many impassioned articles in the Call, the state laws of California were amended to prohibit the execution of minors. The law, passed in 1921, was popularly known as the Boy Hanging Bill.

The legal amendment attained as a direct result of Reed's efforts is a clear case of how journalism could lead to tangible advances in government and society, and Reed was a visionary in this sense. Indeed her absolute support of Álvaro Obregón's revolutionary government, as reflected in several articles written for the Times as well as the Hearst papers (under a pseudonym), would soon result in the official recognition of Mexico's new government by the United States. Given her defense of the disenfranchised, which, in the case of Ruiz, resulted in a major change in the California legal system, it may be argued that Reed heralded a type of reporting that had nothing to do with the antics of "daredevil girls" such as Nellie Bly, popular at the time. This was in part thanks to Fremont Older, "who gave newspaper women extraordinary opportunities on the San Francisco Call Bulletin and backed them in many original exploits, and believed that editors did not employ enough women."

Reed's crusade to save Simón Ruiz attracted the attention of Mexico's new revolutionary government, and in September of 1922 Reed traveled to Mexico City for the first time as the semiofficial guest of President and Mrs. Álvaro Obregón. Upon her arrival, Reed was treated like royalty; her suite at the elegant Hotel Regis was festooned with flower bouquets and caged songbirds, while a chauffeur waited outside to take her to her various official engagements, which included a trip to the pyramids of Teotihuacán, tours of the schools constructed by the new government, and luncheon with the president and first lady at their residence in the former castle of Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlota, perched atop Chapultepec Hill.

At the time, Mexico had just emerged from a revolution that had left thousands dead but that, upon its triumph, had distributed arable land to the peasant population, for this had been the greatest demand of the landless majority. The new government was also attempting to overcome a long history of educational neglect and undergoing a cultural transformation spearheaded by Secretary of Education José Vasconcelos. It was said at the time that just as the revolution had handed over large tracts of land for cultivation, Vasconcelos had given to the artists enormous public walls to adorn with images of such changes. This official sponsorship gave rise to the Mexican mural movement, whose main exponents (Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros) would soon transcend Mexico's borders.

Upon Reed's triumphant return to San Francisco, Adolph Ochs Sulzberger, owner and editor of the New York Times, contacted her at the Call, where she had gone back to work. Like many journalists of the time, Sulzberger had followed Reed's successful campaign to change California's capital punishment law, and he now wanted her to write for his daily. The two met face-to-face, and the newspaper magnate offered her the position of California correspondent. Duly flattered but having been bitten by the bug, Reed explained that what she really wanted was an assignment that would take her back to Mexico. Sulzberger was surprised by such a request, especially as she was then enjoying a growing visibility in the United States. However, he had also come to California looking for someone to cover an important upcoming archaeological expedition to the Yucatán.

After a series of brief negotiations, Reed was hired to cover the Carnegie Expedition to the Yucatán Peninsula, where she would document the activities and discoveries of American archaeologists, including Harvard Mayanist Sylvanus G. Morley. His plan was to excavate the ruins of the classical Maya city of Chichén Itzá, located on the former henequen hacienda owned at that time by legendary American explorer and archaeologist Sir Edward Thompson, who had lived there with his family since 1885.

As Reed recalls in her autobiography, Thompson considered her to be "simpática," and he admired her professionalism and work ethic. Soon after, he would choose Alma as his confidant, revealing to her that over the years he had dredged up countless treasures from the sacred cenote, or sinkhole, of Chichén Itzá and had gradually sent them back to the Peabody Museum at Harvard University via diplomatic pouch. When Reed's exclusive story broke in the New York Times on April 8, 1923, under the title "The Well of the Maya's Human Sacrifice," the taking of the artifacts at once became an international event. Mexico demanded repatriation of the items or the payment of a large indemnity, and Reed actively championed this petition. Nearly ten years later, in 1930, the Peabody Museum reluctantly returned a portion of Mexico's national treasure, largely as a result of Reed's efforts in journalistic and legal circles.

It was also upon her first visit to Mérida, in February 1923, that Reed became enamored of the Yucatán's governor, Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Their passionate romance would last for less than a year but would leave an indelible mark on the life and work of La Peregrina and also on the history of twentieth-century Mexico.

According to her own recollections, Reed first met Carrillo Puerto at an official reception attended by all the North American "Yucatologists," as they were soon christened by the local media. After being introduced to the governor—who worked out of the "Casa del Pueblo," having converted the Governor's Palace into a cultural center and archaeological museum for the residents of Mérida—Reed shared her impressions with Brigadier General William Barclay Parsons, an American railroad and subway engineer who accompanied the expedition. According to Reed's autobiography:

A Carnegie Trustee and the senior member of the group, he voiced what was obviously the amazed reaction of his fellow expeditionaries when he whispered: "This is the most personable red dragon I've met with in any of my safaris . . . What do you think, young lady?"

With total conviction, I unhesitatingly answered: "He's my idea of a Greek god!"

The intensity of their love and utopian dreams is fully documented in the letters and telegrams, composed mainly in Spanish, that Carrillo Puerto sent to Reed in New York and San Francisco between April and December 1923, which I will reproduce in a scholarly edition to be published in Mexico. As I explain in detail below, the henequen bag in which I found one version of Reed's memoir also contained three manila envelopes labeled "Felipe's Letters and Telegrams," "Letters of November, 1923," and "The Final Letters and Maya Poem." These original materials—a total of twenty-seven telegrams and thirteen letters, many written in red ink on the official stationery of the Liga de Resistencia del Sureste (Alliance of Resistance of the Southeast)—cast an entirely different light upon the governor of the Yucatán. As his correspondence reveals, Carrillo Puerto was utterly captivated by his "idolatrada Alma," although it was rumored that he had pursued affairs with other women, including an American he had met in Mexico City a few years prior and an alleged mistress in Mérida. His love for the "niña periodista," whom he soon gave the Mayan name "Pixan Halal," was apparently so genuine that in his letters he regularly informs her about the status of the divorce he had requested from his first wife and the mother of his four children, María Isabel Palma de Carrillo, so he and Reed could marry in San Francisco on January 14, 1924. The wedding would never take place, for Carrillo Puerto was assassinated on January 3 of that year. His last missive, in Spanish and dated December 10, 1923, sets the ominous tone for his violent death, which occurred less than one month later. His last words to his "linda niña" were these:

With all tenderness I send you greetings and I hope that you realize how desperately unhappy I am that you are not at my side. I have no one to comfort me, nor the slightest caress. Receive all the kisses from my lips and all the love from this poor man who is thirsting for happiness. Yours until death.

Underlining his pressing situation, at the bottom of the typewritten letter, which had been interrupted by a bomb that exploded nearby, he scrawled: "Communicate our matters by aerogram until I can send you a code."

In the notes for Katherine Anne Porter's unpublished novel Historical Present, "a full history of a period as seen by certain people that moved through it," the author records Reed's "dramatic account of how she was standing by what chance she never explained in the hotel lobby, in full white satin with veil and orange blossoms rehearsing in her wedding dress, when the news came of Felipe's death." The novelist "was both envious and contemptuous of Reed's notoriety," according to Thomas Walsh, Porter's biographer of her Mexican sojourn: "In fragments of Historical Present, a novel she was working on in 1930, she planned to begin with Reed's 'cashing in on Felipe's death' and go on to her gradual building up the legend to become 'patroness of all Mexico.'" This hurtful remark, as well as the women's shared romantic interest in Carrillo Puerto, explains why Reed never attended Porter's well-publicized lectures in Mexico City during the 1950's and 1960's.

After Carrillo Puerto's assassination in January 1924, Reed traveled to North Africa, again as a correspondent for the New York Times, and reported on the archaeological excavations in Carthage led by Polish count Byron Khun de Prorok. A series of five articles, bearing such intriguing titles as "Science Ferrets Out Carthage's Secrets," "'Curse' Still Hovers over Carthage," "Science Hunts for the Lost Atlantis," "Under-Water Camera Films Ruins of Deep," and "Explorers Seek Traces of African 'Joan of Ark,'" appeared in the New York City daily from October to December 1924 and bear witness to Reed's renewed interest in classical studies, an area that had fascinated her since childhood. While studying archaeology for a year in Naples, Reed translated G. Consoli Fiego's archaeological treatise, Cumae and the Phlegraean Fields, which was published in Naples in 1927. She later traveled to Greece as a guest of her childhood friend Eva Palmer, wife of the Greek poet Angelo Sikelianos, and translated Sikelianos's works as The Delphic Word . . . The Dedication, published the following year. During this period, Reed continued to write for the Times and in 1926 published two articles dedicated to one of the greatest mysteries of the Greco-Latin world: "Virgil's Hades Gives Up Its Secrets" and "Sibyl Renews Her Challenge to Man." While in Athens, Reed participated in the first Delphic Festival, which was organized by Palmer and Sikelianos in May 1927 as a way to return Greek culture and traditions to their rightful heirs.

Inspired by this Hellenic spirit, Reed and Palmer traveled to New York later that year to found the Delphic Society's first colony in the United States. In early 1928 they moved into an apartment once occupied by celebrated Russian author Maxim Gorky, located at 12 Fifth Avenue. The flat, near Washington Square and its triumphal arch, was baptized "the Ashram" in homage to the "apostle of pacifism," Mahatma Gandhi, whom both Palmer and Reed greatly admired. Like Gandhi's settlement, Reed's New York apartment was the center of communal activities while also serving as headquarters for a cultural movement born of ancient philosophy, both Eastern and Western. Eventually Reed's Delphic Studios Gallery would emerge as the most enduring product of their initial collaborative effort. Unfortunately, only a few photographs survive that evoke the cosmopolitan atmosphere of their innovative literary and political salon.

One day in 1928, Reed received a telephone call from Anita Brenner, a young woman from Aguascalientes who shared her fascination with Mexico and whose parents had immigrated to San Antonio, Texas, at the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. Later, Brenner would return to Mexico on numerous occasions, first to complete research for her well-known books, which included her study of religious syncretism and Mexican art, Idols behind Altars, published in 1929. During their conversation, Brenner informed Reed that the artist José Clemente Orozco had been living in Manhattan since December 1927 and was a bit down on his luck.

During Reed's second visit to the Mexican capital, in 1923, when she and Carrillo Puerto were the toast of the town, Secretary of Education José Vasconcelos showed Reed the murals then being painted by Diego Rivera in the Public Education Secretariat, as well as those recently begun by Orozco in the National Preparatory School. In her 1956 biography of Orozco, Reed remembers that as she and Vasconcelos "approached the main patio of the preparatoria, where Orozco was engrossed in the decoration of a high vault, Vasconcelos called up to him: 'Orozco, this is the North American periodista (journalist), Alma Reed. She likes your painting. I don't! It's the worst yet. But it's your wall, hombre, not mine, so go ahead.'" Surely Orozco's powerful images of peasant struggles, warring revolutionary factions, the dissolute upper classes, and ruthless critiques of the Catholic Church made a great impression on the young journalist, and statements made during her first visit reveal a budding fascination with Mexico. In an interview with one of the capital's most important dailies, Excélsior, Reed announced: "Mexico should be the Mecca of all the world's artists: here every object and every scene is an occasion for art and beauty." This developing interest would soon lead her to join the ranks of other North American women who arrived on the heels of the revolution, including Katherine Anne Porter, Ione Robinson, and Frances Toor, founder and editor of the magazine Mexican Folkways. Although their activities have yet to be fully documented, these women were all actively engaged in important cultural endeavors during a period referred to as the Mexican Cultural Renaissance, when the artistic and educational ideals born of the revolution were being put into practice.

Reed immediately volunteered to assist Orozco and planned to visit him at his "parlour-floor studio on a shabby Chelsea block somewhere in Manhattan's West-Twenties" (Reed, Orozco, 3). In a letter written to his wife, Margarita Orozco de Valladares, in June 1928, he mentions Reed for the first time:

The other day Anita [Brenner] told me that there are possibilities that I might sell a drawing and a small picture of those I have made here. Apparently, a Miss Alma Reed, who was the fiancée of Carrillo Puerto, the governor of the Yucatán who was killed, likes my works a lot, but naturally I was not introduced to her. Ms. Reed is a close friend of [José Juan] Tablada, but that cad hasn't introduced me to her or to anyone else.

Two months later, according to a note dated August 2, 1928, Orozco had apparently still not met Reed, but in a second letter written later that same day, he informs his wife that she is interested in visiting him at his studio:

I have just received a letter from Alma Reed, whom I haven't met, but who is a friend of Tablada and the person Anita [Brenner] showed my drawings to a few days ago. She tells me that she has been a profound admirer of mine for a long time, and that "The entire series on the Mexican revolution holds a very intimate appeal to me, but one of them, 'Cemetery Scene,' is irresistible," and she includes 20 dollars towards the $100, which is the price of the drawing. She wants to come to my studio with a friend to talk about the publication of who knows what. My luck is changing a little bit, Miti. From your mouth to God's ear!

After visiting Orozco at his improvised studio for the first time, Reed recalls: "The next morning I resolved to help the Mexican painter pursue his career in the U.S. I did not try to rationalize the inner compulsion that had shaped my decision." She also confesses: "I had no precise idea as to what I might do—if anything at all—to further his career in New York. But I could at least buy a picture, perhaps induce my friends to do likewise."

In a letter to his wife dated August 15, 1928, Orozco's reaction to their meeting is equally enthusiastic:

On Sunday night, Anita introduced me to Alma Reed, who is a lovely woman and seems quite cultivated. She says that she is a great admirer of my work. She told me that she wants to illustrate a book she is writing with some of my Revolutionary drawings, and that tomorrow (Thursday) she will come to my studio with a woman she says is involved in some 40 magazines, in order to see my works, and that perhaps there will be business, that she wants a poster to announce some festivals in Delphos, Greece, patronized by a woman millionaire, that is celebrated every two years and is attended by people from all over the world. She says that there is some kind of group of literati and philosophers I will be presented to next winter, with a conference and projections of my paintings, and that they have spoken about me to all of their friends.

Soon afterwards, Reed convinced her friend Eva to commission a portrait of herself from the painter, who set up his easel in a small room of the Ashram that he dubbed "the Pulquería," in honor of the notorious Mexican watering holes.

As Reed recalls in her biography of Orozco, first published in Spanish in 1955 by the Fondo de Cultura Económica, the artist later painted odd pieces of homemade furniture and completed two canvases for the decoration of what he called the Ashram's "Mexican Sector." He also painted Reed's portrait but soon destroyed it in a paroxysm, provoked by what he considered to be a far superior rendering by Lebanese poet and engraver Kahlil Gibran, another famous habitué of her salon. The latter's admirable likeness includes the following dedication: "For Alma Reed: My dear and gracious friend, whose heart dwells in the world of truth and beauty. K. G. 1928."

In his autobiography, Orozco recalls frequenting the Ashram and the great impact its cosmopolitanism had upon him:

When I met [Alma Reed] and Mrs. Sikelianos, they were living in a spacious place on lower Fifth Avenue. They had come to New York to secure financial aid for the cause of Greece's resurgence and to organize an excursion to the festivals that were celebrated every two years in Delphi. . . . The literary-revolutionary salon of Mrs. Sikelianos was extremely well attended. Some days the Greeks came, among them Doctor Kalimacos, patriarch of the Greek Church in New York. There one heard Modern Greek spoken to perfection by the owners of the house. On other days bronze-colored Hindus with turbans arrived, champions of the cause of Mahatma Gandhi. . . . Alma Reed recited her translations of Sikelianos's epic poems, some of which had already been collected in a volume entitled The Dedication.

Orozco held his first solo U.S. exhibition in that fabled Greenwich Village apartment in September 1928, and some sixty guests attended the opening. A testimony of Reed's keen desire to promote the Mexican artist is to be found in a letter she sent to Orozco, dated September 26 of that year, which he transcribed in a letter to his wife, Margarita. In it Reed informs him of several developments and potential opportunities that had come about as a result of this first solo exhibition:

The interest in your exhibit grows. Yesterday we had several very important people here, some of whom are returning today with the owners of galleries and with wealthy prospective purchasers. We feel that in view of this continued interest that it would be wiser to keep the exhibition here until Friday night. There is likelihood too of some portrait orders, so we think that it would be well to have your marvelous portrait of yourself here. Several very distinguished critics who viewed your work yesterday made the same comment independently and quite spontaneously: "Orozco's grouping and anatomy would pass for that of Michel Angelo."

I have never seen such enthusiasm aroused by the work of any artist as was shown here yesterday. Many of our guests on Monday telephoned us yesterday to express their profound admiration again. . . .

There will be interesting developments, I am sure, in regard to your work very soon, for so many influential friends are deeply interested now. We are working towards obtaining a "pretty wall" for you at the "Architectural Exhibit" in January. There will be some heads of galleries here today, including Marie Sterner. I think that I shall have some news for you tomorrow evening.

The success of his first show led to a two-week exhibition of his Mexico in Revolution series, curated by the upscale Marie Sterner Gallery. The show opened on October 10, 1928, and, according to Orozco, Reed herself paid for the framing of his canvases as well as the printing and mailing of exhibition catalogs. Unfortunately, most of the guests had attended the opening in deference to the gallery owner, and they appeared more interested in Sterner's Biederman furniture than Orozco's revolutionary canvases. According to Alejandro Anreus, author of Orozco in Gringoland, "much to the disappointment of Reed and Orozco, the exhibition received no critical notice, and not a single work was sold." However, as Orozco himself points out in another letter to his wife dated October 11, 1928, Mrs. Sterner asked that his drawings not be sold, as they would "cause a sensation" in Paris, and asked Mrs. Sikelianos to take the "entire collection of drawings" with her to Europe on her upcoming trip.

Nevertheless, Reed didn't give up her hope for the artist's commercial possibilities, as she considered herself Orozco's self-appointed "mother, sister, agent, and 'bootlegger.'" Shortly after this first exhibition, she gathered enough funds to rent a space on the top floor of the same East Fifty-seventh Street building and there established Delphic Studios, her own formal gallery dedicated to the promotion of various artists, but principally Orozco. The Mexican painter designed the furniture and chose the colors to complement his work, which would be there on permanent display. In a letter to Mexican artist Manuel Rodríguez Lozano dated October 11, 1929, Antonieta Rivas Mercado, patroness of the arts, intellectual, and a tragic figure, describes Reed's new gallery while indirectly criticizing its founder:

Clemente [Orozco] met Alma Reed on November 10, 1928, quite by coincidence. Alma Reed is an Antonieta who never met a Rodríguez Lozano: all goodwill and disorientation. Until then, Cleme[nte] had done nothing. Alma, who is well connected, embroiders her tragedy with Carrillo Puerto with red thread and thus holds great interest in Mexico. Clemente, a Mexican, unprotected and brilliant, allowed her to avenge herself over Mexico, which killed her Carrillo eight days before the wedding. She adopted him, and the last three or five days has done nothing but create a reputation for Orozco in the United States: articles, exhibitions, lectures, etc. She has now rented a flat on Fifty-seventh Street, where all the best art galleries are, half a block from Fifth Avenue, where she will open a gallery (Clemente mentions it sotto voce) that will be dedicated to Orozco. He is going to paint a fresco on the façade that will be visible from Fifth Avenue and in February will hold an exhibition (it's the best month).

In An American in Art: A Professional and Technical Autobiography, U.S. muralist Thomas Hart Benton also recalls the Delphic Studios, an organization to which he felt obliged to belong and whose originator he describes:

The Delphic Gallery was founded by Alma Reed, who, as a buxom and attractive blonde reporter for some press organization, had found herself in Mexico at the time of the first successes of the Mexican School of painters. Alma envisaged a resuscitation of the Greek mysteries of Delphi in a new and modern form. This was considerably too esoteric for me, but because Alma had the Mexican painter Clemente Orozco in tow and because I had great admiration for his work, I joined her organization.

In a letter dated November 15, 1930, and included in her autobiography, A Wall to Paint On, North American artist and Diego Rivera's assistant Ione Robinson also comments on the Delphic Society and its eccentric cofounder:

There is an extraordinary woman by the name of Alma Reed, who has a gallery called the "Delphic Studios"! She is going to sponsor Orozco. Mrs. Reed originally came from California, and I'm afraid that she carried with her some of the mystic ailments that sometime befall the people out there. Mrs. Reed is a very fat woman and wears long black dresses, but she has the face and hands of a Madonna! She belongs to a secret Greek order called the Delphic Society. (I only hope that she concentrates on selling Orozco's work!) The other night she invited me to one of the meetings of the Delphic Society. A Mrs. Hambridge, the wife of the man who is supposed to have discovered Dynamic Symmetry (a system of drawing mathematical forms), was there, dressed in white veils, and she wore Greek sandals. The rest of the people (all women) wore long chains with Greek crosses. The lights were dimmed—and the discussion of "Art on a Higher Plane" commenced. I was really frightened.

When Mrs. Reed is talking, she waves her hands in the air and the words go up and down, all according to the dramatic incident she is recalling. The most dramatic part of her life was her engagement to Felipe Carrillo Puerto, the martyred governor of the state of Yucatan, Mexico. But in spite of her foolishness, Mrs. Reed has a rare quality. No matter what cause she is devoted to, she makes the most of every moment in order to arrive at some climax. She is determined that Orozco will paint a fresco in New York, that his genius will be recognized, and that with his recognition, Diego Rivera will fall into oblivion.

The stock market crash of 1929 caused an abrupt decline in the art market, of course, but it did not mean the end of Reed's first venture into the gallery business. Indeed, on October 15, 1930, Reed's Delphic Studios presented Edward Weston's first solo exhibition in New York City. The idea had been born during a trip to Carmel, California, where Reed and Orozco met the young photographer—recently back from his Mexican sojourn—and where Orozco posed for Weston's now-famous portrait of the artist. According to Orozco, Weston was "the first surrealist photographer," and there he proposed the idea of an exhibition in New York. Later that year Orozco himself hung the fifty photos making up the show. Reed would exhibit the work of other up-and-coming American photographers at her Fifty-seventh Street gallery, including that of Ansel Adams, who later complained that he never was paid for the eight prints Reed sold for him.

The California visit had been a professional venture, for earlier that year Reed had negotiated a commission for a mural by Orozco from Professor José Pijoan, head of art history at Pomona College in Claremont, California. The work, titled Prometheus Bound and informed by the ideas and individuals Orozco had encountered during many hours spent in conversation and debate at the Delphic Society, was completed in 1930. Soon after, Reed secured another commission for Orozco from the New School for Social Research in Manhattan. Thomas Hart Benton, in his autobiography, recalls Reed's role in what would be Orozco's second U.S. mural:

At this time, Alvin Johnson, founder of the New School for Social Research, had raised enough money for the erection of a building for the school on West Twelfth Street near Fifth Avenue. Hearing of this, Alma visited Johnson and offered Orozco's services as a muralist. They were accepted. Orozco would paint a mural for the New School's dining room for the expenses of execution.

The work was inaugurated on January 19, 1931, and its principal mural was entitled Table of Brotherhood.

Among the images included in the fresco cycle is a portrait of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, depicting him in the same pose as that of a photograph that the martyred governor of Yucatán had inscribed and sent to Alma after their first encounter in the Yucatán. In the background, Orozco painted the main pyramid of Chichén Itzá, which Alma and Felipe had climbed together almost ten years earlier. Below, the artist painted groups of women, recalling the progressive Feminist Leagues headed by Felipe's sister Elvia in Mérida. Other world leaders depicted by Orozco at this universal supper were Gandhi and Lenin, but in 1952, censorship brought about by McCarthyism forced school authorities to cover up not only Lenin's portrait but Carrillo Puerto's as well. In 1932, a year after the New School commission, Orozco was invited by Dartmouth College to paint what was to be his last U.S. mural, Indian Prometheus. Its title was a clear allusion to his growing fascination with the concept of the "cosmic race," an idea first proposed by José Vasconcelos in the early 1920's and certainly shaped by the numerous Delphic Society events Orozco had attended.

That same year Reed published the first book dedicated to the art of Orozco. The large volume contains a five-page introduction to the artist and his work, in which Reed describes Orozco's art as "an integral part of the drama evoked by the crash of age-old systems and the reversal of once immutable scientific laws." The book also includes "Biographical Notes of the Artist," as well as more than one hundred black-and-white reproductions, many of them photographs of the artist's frescoes taken by such essential photographers of Mexico as Tina Modotti, Edward Weston, and José María Lupercio, all acquaintances of Reed. It should be pointed out that Reed herself published this landmark book in her Delphic Studios press, which would later publish such works as Photographs of Mexico, by Anton Bruehl (1933), a book chosen by jury for an exhibit of American book illustrators held by the American Institute of Graphic Arts; Art Young's Inferno: A Journey through Hell Six Hundred Years after Dante, by Art Young (1934); Three Dollars a Year, by G. Russell Steininger and Paul Van de Velde (1935), the account of daily life of a Oaxacan Indian; Bowery Parade and Other Poems of Protest, by Stella Wynne Herron, with illustrations by Orozco (1936); System and Dialectics of Art, by John D. Graham (1937); Book of Job Interpreted, by Emily S. Hamblen, with illustrations by William Blake (1939); and I, Mary Magdalene, by Juliet Thompson (1940).

***

In 1997 I returned to Mérida, this time with a group of professors and students from the United States International University in Mexico City. Among the people I met during the trip was Lindajoy Fenley, a specialist in traditional Mexican music who was traveling with her mother. She too was fascinated by the legend of Alma Reed and, given her interest in Mexican popular ballads, had already begun to investigate Reed's life, motivated by the ballad that bears her name. During the course of our excursion, which took us to major Maya archaeological sites, as well as to the ruins of various henequen haciendas, we discussed this unique figure in Mexican history: Reed's life and fate had been caught up in the political designs of a country that, having overthrown the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, was in the middle of an ideological and artistic renaissance, with a special emphasis placed on Mexico's cultural heritage. During our stay in Mérida, Ms. Fenley visited Reed's grave, which had been strategically placed near that of her beloved Carrillo Puerto, himself interred next to his parents, siblings, and estranged wife, from whom he had filed for divorce at the time of his execution, to the shock and disdain of the traditional Catholic majority of Yucatán.

As previously mentioned, Alma herself had been briefly married to the businessman Samuel Payne Reed in 1915, but the marriage was annulled when he became hopelessly ill soon after their wedding. Nevertheless, she liked the name "Reed" and kept it all of her life. Over the years, this decision has caused some confusion, leading at least one researcher to assert that Alma was the sister of John Reed, author of Insurgent Mexico. Obviously, this is not the case, as her last name is Sullivan, one that she is said to have traced back to England's Mary Tudor. Although she was brought up in an Irish Catholic household, Alma had distanced herself from Catholicism from an early age, according to her close friend Richard Posner, when her mother told her that her pet dog would not go to heaven. More tellingly, while kneeling in prayer at the Vatican, Alma was once accosted by a priest. This was, as Posner recalls, the final "nail in the coffin," as she would later adopt a keen interest in Unitarianism.

Recently I had the honor of accompanying Sr. Ruperto Poot Cobá, former director of Mérida's Panteón General and the person responsible for placing Reed's funerary monument, on an excursion to visit her grave. There I was able to photograph it and appreciate its discreet proximity to Carrillo Puerto's monument.

Upon reviewing Alma's correspondence shortly after her death, Reed's friend and flatmate Rosa Lie Johansson discovered a letter dated a year before, in which Reed requests that "if anything happens to me, Rosa Lie, I want to be buried as close to Felipe Carrillo Puerto as possible." Upon learning that Alma's ashes had been kept for a year by the Gayosso funeral home in Mexico City because of lack of payment, Johansson contacted Reed's friend and patron Pablo Bush Romero, founder of the Club de Exploraciones y Deportes Acuáticos de México (CEDAM), which employed Alma as official historian.

In his unpublished memoirs, Joe Nash, senior Mexico City News reporter and a resident of Mexico City for more than fifty years, divulges the mystery of Alma's ashes as well as that of her lost autobiography, an enigma that was partially revealed upon his first encounter with Mr. Bush Romero in 1967:

I had never met Bush but enjoyed a warm welcome, being advised that CEDAM's Chairman of the Board was a constant reader of the decades-old Sunday travel section of Vistas, "perhaps mainly because that's where Alma regularly appeared."

"Don Pablo, do you have any idea where in the world Alma's ashes might be?"

"Right over there on the mantle."

One mystery had been solved. For the second question there was no answer. He too was puzzled as to the disappearance of the text of her autobiography.

Bush said he was glad I had dropped in, for the following week there would be a brief ceremony at the Mérida Cemetery, where Alma's ashes would be placed in a small pink concrete shaft he had provided. He invited me to attend at the lot the governor had given across the pathway from the center of the mammoth hemicycle erected to the memory of and marking the grave of her intimate friend, Felipe Carrillo Puerto.

I asked how Bush happened to acquire the urn of ashes. The courtly gentleman of the "old school," friend to the end, said: "It was simple. They had been at Gayosso's for more than a year with the family having no interest at all in acquiring them, so with their permission, I paid the bill and there they are."

Being advised that I had reservations for a travel trade exposition in London but was sure my editor would make it a point to cover the Mérida event, Don Pablo had one more thing to say: "By the way, tell him not to mention the governor's gift of the lot. There are still Carrillo Puerto descendants, as there are Orozcos in Guadalajara, and they're mossbacks about Alma."

The editor was so advised but spiced up his report with mention of the governor's kindness to the memory of a patrician lady. The newsmen still reside in Mexico City. Don Pablo chose to retire in El Paso, where he died at the turn of this century.

The director of the cemetery was able to comply with the governor's wishes, and he carved out a space for Reed's cenotaph directly in front of Carrillo Puerto's tomb, under the canopy of a large tree and separated from her true love only by a narrow road that passes between them. One side of the rose-colored shaft bears the following epitaph: "Alma Reed: prolific writer and engaging lecturer. She deeply loved Mexico, and Mexico honored her with the Aztec Eagle in recognition of her merits as promoter of the arts, critic, historian, and humanist. Greece and Lebanon also distinguished her with their highest decorations."

From this discreet angle, Alma and Felipe are, albeit obliquely, united in death.

***

For my part, I didn't forget the legend of Alma and Felipe's tragic romance, although five years would pass before they would again appear, this time in the pages of her lost autobiography, which I found in an abandoned apartment in Mexico City in August 2001. Several colleagues accompanied me, including Lois Parkinson Zamora of the University of Houston, whom I had managed to get involved in this "search and rescue mission" during our frequent "sit-downs" at Mexico City's time-honored restaurants, where I would describe the life of this exceptional woman whose fascination with Mexico was mirrored by our own. The succession of events that culminated in the recovery of Reed's autobiography is a complex one, as it involves more than a few people and places. However, the key figure who eventually led to the discovery of the 110,000-word typescript was Mrs. Lisette Parodi, whom I met in 1994 through her daughter Claudia, professor of Spanish linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Mrs. Parodi was born in Poland but came to Mexico in the aftermath of World War II and there married an Italian businessman. From the very start, she was active in the cultural and social life of Mexico City. In that context in 1958, she met Richard Posner, an aspiring playwright from New York who had recently arrived to teach drama at Mexico City College—now the Universidad de las Américas, located in Cholula, near the city of Puebla. Mrs. Parodi and Mr. Posner lived in the same apartment building where I eventually recovered the typescript, located on Melchor Ocampo Boulevard, in the Cuauhtémoc neighborhood. Mrs. Parodi recalls that she first perceived Mr. Posner melodically, as he had the habit of playing classical music at a high volume, something that she quite enjoyed. One evening they met at a cultural event, realized they were neighbors, and soon became fast friends.

Several years prior to their encounter, around 1956, Posner had met and befriended Alma Reed at a reception held by a woman who had shown interest in producing one of his plays. As he recalls, there were few people at the gathering, but among them was a woman who stood out because of her striking figure and rather unusual attire. As Posner would later learn, Reed never wore anything but the most extravagant satin ensembles, many of which she had designed for her by a local tailor, who created her trademark ample, flowing gowns, capes, and other garments. Such outfits, often combined with wide-brimmed hats trimmed with a feather, netting, or a silk rose, never failed to call attention to this older woman, who still conserved the radiant blue eyes and milky complexion so celebrated in her ballad.

Later on, when the two had become better acquainted and Posner worked up the nerve to ask Reed about her eccentric apparel, she demurely admitted that she suffered from "arrested development" when it came to contemporary fashions, preferring the styles in vogue around 1912. However, as may be noted in several of the reproductions included in this book, Reed also regularly donned indigenous Mexican dress and jewelry, the first of which was the legendary traje de mestiza, the traditional Yucatecan costume that Carrillo Puerto had had made for her upon her first visit to Yucatán in 1923 and which is now conserved in Mexico's National History Museum. In two of her surviving portraits, the first painted by Philip Stein—also known as Estaño, a name given to him by Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros—and the second by Roberto Cueva del Río, Alma dons native gear, including what appear to be pre-Hispanic earrings.

Her wardrobe later included embroidered huipiles, silk rebozos, and other outfits still worn today by many Mexican women. Sometimes she would top off such attire with an enormous rosary made of gold filigree, a gift from her beloved Felipe. Immediately before his abduction by de la Huerta sympathizers, Felipe sent to Alma, through a trusted courier, an engagement ring set with a large garnet. The ring is now apparently lost, although it might turn up among the items recently donated by the nieces of Rosa Lie Johansson to the National History Museum in Mexico City.

Before arriving in New York City in the late 1920's, Reed had spent four years studying classical archaeology in Greece and Italy. In 1933 she traveled to Chicago with Orozco, who had been invited to show his work at the Arts Club, one of the conservative bastions of the midwestern art world. Up to this point, Reed's activities are well documented, but little is known of her life between 1933 and 1941 when, at the age of fifty-two, she accepted a five-year stint as cultural editor of the Press Register in Mobile, Alabama. During this period, she also hosted a weekly radio program, dedicated to various cultural themes, and founded the Society for the Friends of Mexico.

Details of Reed's activities during this period have recently surfaced in the file that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) maintained on her activities in the United States and Mexico through the 1940's and 1950's, an expurgated version of which I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. According to an office memorandum sent to the director of the organization and dated December 16, 1948, one of its informants

advised that she suspected Mrs. Reed might be connected with Communistic activity and suspected her of Communistic tendencies because of her treatment of colored people and also because she had been connected with the [George] Wallace campaign, having been away from Mobile about two months last fall working for the Progressive Party. When asked about Mrs. Reed's treatment of colored people and in just what way it would indicate that she is a Communist, [blank] explained that Mrs. Reed is a Northerner and that the "Northern people like to stir up the colored people."

Six years later, on September 21, 1954, another anonymous informant mentioned that "Mrs. Reed had attempted to have [blank] attend a meeting of an inter-racial organization whose members included [blank]" and stated that "this, in addition to several other things she observed in Mrs. Reed indicating a 'strange' attitude of friendship between Mrs. Reed and the colored people of Mobile, had raised a question in her mind as to Mrs. Reed's sincerity and reliability."

Reed's alleged involvement with Communist activities in the United States and Mexico is detailed in a later memorandum, dated August 18, 1954, in which another unidentified FBI informant

reported that Miss Reed is reportedly a former member of the Communist Party and was an active promoter of anti-Catholicism in Mexico in the early twenties. During a trip from New York to El Paso, a period of nine days due to engine trouble, Miss Reed, according to [blank], consistently defended Russia and the Communist Party. He stated that she attempted to persuade [blank] to join the "Movement for World Peace," and made the statement to the effect that [John Foster] Dulles and the United States wish to destroy what is basic Christianity, the faith which has been given to us by Lenin, Stalin, and all such great men.

As illustrated by several notations in Reed's FBI file, many of these informants were less than reliable, and some of them even had criminal records or were described as compulsive liars. The lack of integrity on the part of the FBI's local informants—combined with the fervent anti-Communist atmosphere that in many ways defined the mid-twentieth century and was fueled by now-discredited politicians like Senator Joseph McCarthy—must be taken into consideration when determining Reed's supposed affiliation with such potentially incriminating political organizations. At the same time it will be recalled that, beginning with her "soul mate," Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Reed consistently supported socialist governments but, at least on the surface, would always identify herself as a Democrat, having been—according to the organization's cofounder, newspaper reporter Joe Nash—a charter member of Democrats Abroad, established in Mexico City in 1942.

In 1952 Reed finally returned to her beloved Mexico for good, where she was still a living legend and where her eponymous ballad was customarily performed by local musicians upon her arrival at a restaurant or cultural event.

There Reed was soon hired by the owner of the Mexican daily Novedades, Rómulo O'Farrill Sr., as a columnist for his recently founded English-language daily, The News, which, after almost fifty years, only recently ceased publication. She wrote a weekly column entitled "Alma M. Reed Reports" for its Sunday edition as she had for the New York Times in the 1930's, when she published many articles in its Sunday Magazine, often dedicated to pre-Hispanic and classical archaeology.

It was at this time that Richard Posner and Reed, who lived around the corner from one another, became friends, and he would often accompany her to various social and professional engagements in the capital. Dick, as she called him, would become one of her closest confidants: "everything but lovers," as he would later recall. He would remain so until Reed's unexpected death on November 20, 1966, the anniversary of the Mexican Revolution: a fitting coincidence, given Reed's extraordinary passion for freedom and democracy. As her friend Joe Nash recalls in his unpublished memoirs: "Had she been able to designate a date to terminate her militant career, that would have been it."

Several weeks before her death, Reed began to experience severe stomach pains, and when they became unbearable, her friend and flatmate Rosa Lie Johansson referred her to a Swiss doctor who shared Alma's political views and sense of humor. Evidently, he misdiagnosed her condition, believing it to be a severe case of "turista," a common bacterial infection that often assails foreigners in Mexico. When the pains worsened, Reed checked herself into the American British Cowdray (ABC) Hospital, where a few days after exploratory surgery revealed widespread intestinal cancer, she died. In a conversation in 2002, Richard Posner recalled Alma's last words: "Dick, I never regretted writing anything, even things that I never published." For his part, Joe Nash remembers:

Few of her friends knew Alma was in the ABC Hospital. One of her reporter friends visited her on November 19, and when questioning her about the manuscript, she said she was being released the following day, a Friday, that it was in her apartment and she would be sending it to her publisher on Monday. She died early in the morning on the 20, a national holiday commemorating the Revolution. A long-standing law in Mexico decrees that burials will be within twenty-four hours, so it was early in the afternoon on the day after that friends gathered, notably on Sullivan Street, at Mexico's most famed funeral home. Her brother, Stanley, on being escorted from the airport to the Continental Hilton, a block from the Sullivan Street wake and meeting a welcoming committee in the lobby, said he was particularly ingratiated that he had come, not realizing the popularity of his sister. She was cremated beside the double circle of Mexico's illustrious personalities in the Dolores cemetery.

The day Reed passed away, Posner entered her duplex apartment on Río Elba #53, where he recovered many of the author's papers and other documents, including one version of her life story, which provides part of the contents of this book. As mentioned earlier, he apparently stuffed all of her assorted papers and folders—which neatly contained the first twenty-one chapters of "Peregrina," along with Felipe's love letters and numerous telegrams—into one of her many henequen bags, or sabucanes, as they are called in Mayan. It was there that I found them in the back of a bedroom closet, hidden behind several mildewed pillows and blankets. On two previous occasions, accompanied only by Mrs. Parodi, I had unearthed a copy of Alma's last will and testament, as well as several Christmas cards with her photo and salutations, but the fabled typescript was nowhere to be found in the grimy flat.

But the third time was a charm: this valuable material had remained hidden in Posner's closet for almost forty years, and I was fortunate to have found it when I did. As it turned out, the apartment had a leaky roof, and all of the contents in the bedroom were ruined during a strong rainstorm only two weeks after I retrieved them. A few days later they were carted off to a local garbage dump.

***

After living in Mexico City for almost seven years, in the summer of 2000 I moved to New York City, where I had been offered a professorship in the Department of Spanish and Latin American Cultures at Barnard College, Columbia University. Upon my departure, Mrs. Parodi recommended that I contact Richard Posner, who had returned to Brooklyn from Mexico City in the early 1980's because of his mother's illness. She passed away soon after his return to the United States, and because of his own developing heart condition, Posner was unable to return to the high elevation of Mexico City. After settling into my flat on the Upper West Side, I called Posner and explained that I was a friend of Mrs. Parodi and that, given my interest in Mexican culture, she had recommended I contact him. We set up a meeting for the following week at a Chinese restaurant near his apartment on Ocean Parkway, in Brooklyn. In the meantime I prepared my interview; I wanted to learn more about the personal and professional life of the Mexican writer Salvador Novo, his close friend who had died in 1974. Posner was notably enthused upon meeting someone with a common acquaintance who was also very interested in Mexico's cultural milieu during the mid-twentieth century. We immediately became friends and began to meet—always near his apartment in Brooklyn—on a regular basis.

Reed's name never came up during our first conversations, as I was interested in Novo and his relationship with other key writers, including Federico García Lorca, with whom Novo was rumored to have been romantically involved. After we had met on several occasions, Posner briefly mentioned Reed, assuring me, however vaguely, that "there was a story there." Still focused on my interest in Novo, I failed to react, and my new friend apparently decided to wait for a better moment to reveal his long-kept secret. This happened late one December evening in 2000, when, as he was reminiscing about his friendships with various Mexican artistic and cultural figures, including actress Dolores del Río and writer Celestino Gorostiza, he again mentioned Alma Reed. After coolly reminding me that he had already hinted at a special story regarding his dear friend "La Peregrina," Posner began to discuss their unique friendship in detail, recounting how he was one of only two people that Reed trusted to read her proofs at The News and how, on many occasions, they traveled together to different parts of Mexico, often in the company of her favorite niece and literary heiress, Patsy Berman, or such noted figures as the archaeologist Eulalia Guzmán, who had allegedly discovered the remains of Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec emperor. Posner also recalled their long conversations about Reed's past and described the way Reed would close her eyes and throw back her head when speaking, especially when remembering her days with Carrillo Puerto, a topic that would invariably put her into a trancelike state. I assume this must have been a special attribute, because Elena Poniatowska also confessed to me one day that she was always afraid to approach Reed when they coincided along with Yucatecan poet Rosario Sansores in the elevator at the Novedades offices, because the former had the strange habit of closing her eyes and humming to herself during the lift upstairs, perhaps intoning the lines of "La Peregrina" and evoking her cherished moments with Felipe.

During our conversations, Posner recalled the names of other people—many now deceased—who had also enjoyed a friendship with Reed during the last years of her life. First and foremost, he mentioned Reed's flatmate, the Swedish painter Rosa Lie Johansson. After meeting the two met during a trip to New York City, Reed later invited Johansson to reside in her Mexico City apartment when she was away on numerous lecture tours in the United States, often speaking about Mexico for such organizations as the Columbia Lecture Bureau. Ms. Johansson, who had been a student at New York's Art Students League and in the 1950's was a regular at the celebrated Cedar Bar, where she often accompanied Willem De Kooning and Jackson Pollock, was eager to explore new horizons. She gladly accepted Reed's invitation to come to Mexico, arriving in 1960 and living there until her death in August 2004.

Following Posner's clues, I called the Swedish Embassy in Mexico City to request information about Johansson. Unfortunately, the personnel at the embassy had no knowledge of her, and it wasn't until Mrs. Parodi happened to read an article about one of her exhibitions in the Mexican daily Excélsior that I was able to track Johansson down. I headed to the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana in the Roma neighborhood, where I inquired about the artist. Indeed she had held several exhibitions at the gallery, and upon my request the receptionist agreed to phone Maestra Johansson and tell her that I would like to speak with her about her good friend Alma Reed. After a brief conversation, the young woman wrote down her telephone number on a scrap of paper. Later that afternoon I called Ms. Johansson, and she agreed to meet me the following Wednesday at her apartment, also located in the Colonia Cuauhtémoc, Reed's old neighborhood. At one time or another, Juan Rulfo, B. Traven, Juan José Arreola, Juan Soriano, Octavio Paz, Pita Amor, and Gabriel García Márquez all resided on the jacaranda-lined streets bearing the names of the rivers of the world: Nilo, Ganges, Hudson, Elba, Ebro.

That Wednesday afternoon an elderly woman with watery blue eyes, wearing traditional Swedish clogs and a tiny black ribbon pinned to her silver hair, received me with an inquisitive smile. Upon entering her apartment, I was immediately met by Reed's gaze, for there on the mantelpiece sat the bronze bust cast in 1924 by Vincenzo Miserendino, a photogram of which I had recently uncovered in an issue of the Brooklyn Standard Union published that same year. There were also portraits of Reed hanging on the walls of the sunny flat, in particular a canvas painted by Johansson of Reed standing in profile, with the pages of various newspapers incorporated as a reference to her journalistic activities in Mexico and abroad.

In the living room, the maestra had laid out a smorgasbord of various sweets, cakes, and other treats on the coffee table, along with the ever-present coffeepot—covered with what appeared to be the lid of a tin can. After we sat down, Ms. Johansson inquired as to my interest in Alma Reed.

At first the maestra was reserved about discussing the life of her dearly departed friend, because, according to Johansson, she had told the author of Passionate Pilgrim, Reed's biography, many things that later weren't recorded correctly, and she was particularly incensed about the suggestion that Alma Reed and artist José Clemente Orozco might have been romantically involved during the time they worked together in New York. Ms. Johansson couldn't bear the fact May had suggested they were "two lonely people" who came together during a time of emotional necessity. Indeed Orozco himself was obliged to clarify his relationship with Reed, and in a letter to his wife, Margarita, dated November 16, 1928, he cautiously describes their unique friendship:

Your last two letters make me sad for various reasons. I see that you have formed a very wrong idea regarding my relationship with Mrs. Sikelianos and Alma Reed. It is true that they greatly esteem and care for me, but it does not go beyond the purely intellectual plane, professional, that is, and has nothing to do with the family. There is no reason that we might have a personal relationship, and less with the dry and grim character of these people whom you already know something about. And you know very well that they don't understand favors or anything like that.

Joe Nash would later inform me that Reed had confessed to him on several occasions that she and Orozco were indeed in love, but that he was a married man and Alma, who had lost Felipe—also married—several years prior, was unwilling or unable to pursue this impossible romance.

Ms. Johansson's initial reservations about my project were assuaged when I happened to mention that I too was of Swedish ancestry and proceeded to tell her how my great-aunt Esther, who lived to be 103, used to make coffee with egg whites, often accompanying it with such delicacies as kroppkakor, diminutive meatballs, and other Nordic specialties. Johansson paused for several minutes in midsentence, apparently surveying my alleged Swedishness, and suddenly exclaimed; "Yes, now I remember. That's how the farm people used to make their coffee!" From that point on, she was more comfortable and insisted that because I was a "good Swede," I could be trusted with the information and materials she was about to provide me. When she inquired as to my interest and knowledge about Reed, I explained how I had come upon part of her autobiography. She expressed astonishment that Posner also possessed a copy of the typescript, because the maestra thought that she was the only one with a copy. As it turns out, more than one version of the document exists, but thanks to Johansson's copy, I was able to piece together what I believe to be the final edition, which is the contents of this book. I soon discovered that Posner's copy was missing the last three chapters, which deal with the death of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, and that the only reason Johansson had them in her possession was because they were given to her shortly after Reed's death by Ethel Turner. The widow of John Kenneth Turner, who wrote Barbarous Mexico to document the extreme abuse endured by Maya peasants during the height of the henequen industry in the Yucatán, Mrs. Turner had volunteered to edit Reed's autobiography and apparently had just finished correcting the last chapters when she received word of her friend's death.

After several initial meetings, Johansson agreed to lend me her copy of the typescript in order to compare it with the one I had already found in Posner's apartment. She also mentioned that there was more material to be had, but that in order for me to gain access to it, I would have to secure a written contract from a U.S. publishing house, thus guaranteeing that the book would finally be published. Ms. Johansson handed me a rejection letter that she had received in the late 1960's from Crown Publishers of New York, which was preceded by others sent to Reed herself, claiming that although Reed's was undoubtedly a fascinating story, it really held little appeal for wide audiences, as it covered a very particular time and place mainly unknown to U.S. readers. This was a severe blow for Reed, who had spent many months writing her life story, a saga that was supposed to be adapted for the big screen by producer and writer Budd Schulberg, author of the award-winning novel What Makes Sammy Run? and screenwriter of the critically acclaimed film On the Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint. Apparently, Reed had even proposed that Elizabeth Taylor play the role of La Peregrina.

Posner, a longtime friend of Schulberg's, had always believed that Reed's life would make a wonderful film, and he knew very well that she didn't want a Mexican production of her memoirs, because she feared it would water down the political aspects of her relationship with Carrillo Puerto and highlight only their tragic romance. Posner contacted Schulberg and told him about Reed, who had already begun her autobiography, which was also a biography of Carrillo Puerto and a political history of the Yucatán. They soon met at one of Reed's fabled "crèche parties," held at her apartment on Río Elba street during the Christmas season and attended by such local celebrities as painters Raúl Anguiano, José Segura, and Fito Best Maugard; Howard Phillips, editor of the magazine Mexican Life, where Reed sometimes published her articles; and José Luis Ramírez, owner and founder of Editorial Diana, which would later publish a posthumous translation of Reed's last volume on Mexican archaeology, entitled El remoto pasado de México. Once assembled, Reed would introduce everyone at her party, while presiding on the staircase above the crowd. According to Posner, Reed and Schulberg got along from the very start and would often meet at a Polynesian restaurant in the Zona Rosa for dinner and to discuss plans for the future film.

According to the producer, his interest in this project was sparked because of the way the story was at once individual and collective. In an interview published in The News on September 15, 1962, Schulberg explains:

Alma Reed's personal story is tellingly intertwined with the struggle of the Mexican people to achieve mature and liberal statehood in the face of countless tragedies. As a longtime admirer of Mexican life and culture, I have long been attracted to the relationship of two people from opposite sides of the border who meet and work with common purpose to fight against man's inhumanity to man.

As I later discovered, Mr. Schulberg had been providing Reed with a stipend in order that she complete her life story, an income that greatly aided her financial situation, which was always precarious. Indeed, Posner himself was worried that the project would never come to fruition because Reed kept postponing the completion of her autobiography in order to finish what would be her last work, The Ancient Past of Mexico, a survey of the archaeology of Mesoamerica, published in 1966 by Crown Publishers and, as mentioned above, by Mexico's Editorial Diana in 1972.

Upon Reed's death, the manuscript of her autobiography disappeared, and the portion that Schulberg had already received is said to have been lost in 1985 when a deadly earthquake struck Mexico City, leaving his Colonia Juárez studio condemned. According to Posner, the producer was never able to recover his belongings; he was prohibited from entering the structure, which was eventually demolished. Although his movie was never made, Reed's adventures in the Yucatán had already inspired the 1938 film La Golondrina (The Swallow), directed by Miguel Contreras Torres. More than twenty years after her death, Reed's adventures in the Yucatán provided the subject of the movie Peregrina (1987), starring the Argentine actress and vedette Sasha Montenegro. The movie centered upon Reed's romance with Carrillo Puerto—just what she had most feared. Reed was also featured in Julio Bracho's 1973 film, En busca de un muro (In Search of a Wall), the story of muralist José Clemente Orozco's life and struggles in New York.

Another essential link in the series of events that led to the discovery of this remarkable document, as well as its historical contextualization, was the information provided by aforementioned journalist and longtime Mexico City resident Joe Nash. After traveling to Mexico on bicycle in the early 1930's with Frances Toor's groundbreaking guidebook under his arm, he had returned to live in Mexico City soon after. He met Reed at The News during the early 1950's, where at the time he was a cub reporter specializing in cultural and historical topics. Mr. Nash, now in his early nineties, has recently begun to record some of his most vivid recollections of time spent working with Alma at The News, and these chronicles help illuminate certain aspects of Reed's character that would be otherwise forgotten. One of his most revealing vignettes documents Alma's forays into the heart of macho Mexico: the cantina, where, until recently, "decent" women were not allowed. As Nash recalls in his memoirs:

No one knows who introduced her to the comeliness of the Negresco cantina. At first sight of the first woman to patronize them, no one dared evict such a patrician person. So without any formal introduction, her acquaintance took root and grew as a meeting place far less stuffy than the newspaper office, whose owners had no contract with the employees to provide a den of inspiration. Following Alma's passing, one of her confrères asked for permission and provided a small envelope-size bronze plaque, which read, "In this booth sat Alma Reed, 'La Peregrina,' who leveled yet another barrier." The sign prohibiting women is long gone. No one knows what happened to the plaque in a city known for the wanton theft of bronze ID's large and small.

In another passage describing the inauguration of Acapulco's International Film Festival, Nash documents Alma's keen interest in cinema, while divulging a little-known incident that illustrates how La Peregrina could be roused to action:

Anatomy of a Murder was one of the films shown in the several nights of the festival and [Otto] Preminger, as the director of that film, participated. Some cub reporters for Mexico City papers were so awed by the Preminger presence, they asked no questions. A dishwater blonde whose father was posted at the Uruguayan Embassy and who did an occasional column for El Universal, the oldest Spanish-language daily in the capital, was widely unknown but there. A well-seasoned reporter, Alma started the jolly afternoon with: "Mr. Preminger, do you suppose you will ever do anything for cinematic art's sake? I was so tired of having dirty panties rubbed in my face through Anatomy."

"I might. I accept assignments to make money, and this film is certainly doing that."

Strangely, there was no newspaper photographer there. The cub reporters were so overwhelmed, they asked no questions. Alma sat to Preminger's right, and Miss Uruguay stood to his left until she directed a suggestion to the dowager lady of legend: "Why don't you shut up, you old bag, and give someone else a chance?"

All hell broke loose. Alma, half-rising from her deep-seated deck chair clambered over Preminger to get at Miss Uruguay; the Mexico City editor grabbed Alma's skirt and tugged mightily to keep her seated; and Preminger doubled over with his hands protecting his head. That well ended an otherwise drab session of inconsequential questions.

Fortunately, Reed's sustained dedication to Mexico and its culture didn't go unnoticed by Mexican authorities, and in 1961 she became the third woman inducted into the Orden del Águila Azteca in recognition of her outstanding contribution to Mexican culture over a period of almost fifty years. The only other women to have received the honor were aviator Amelia Earhart and opera diva Grace Moor. That year was pivotal for Reed because she was also inducted into the Order of Welfare by the Republic of Greece in acknowledgement of her contribution to the recovery of classical Greek culture through the foundation of the Delphic Society in New York, as well as her translations of the poetry of Angelo Sikelianos.

She was later awarded the Cross of the Holy Sepulcher by Patriarch Damianos as well as the Order of Merit from the Republic of Lebanon. It is my hope that through the recovery and publication of this most extraordinary autobiography Reed's place in the cultural histories of Mexico and the United States will be duly recognized and that the still unexplored contributions of other outstanding US women—such as Frances Toor, Margaret Shedd, and Ione Robinson—to post revolutionary Mexican culture will be object of future documentation and study.

About This Edition

Throughout the preparation of Reed's autobiography, a complex process that began with the transcription of the twenty-three typewritten chapters that make up Mexico's "Peregrina," my principal goal has been to respect the author's perceived intent, knowing that she had planned to send the manuscript to her publisher at Crown the day after she was released from the hospital, thus confirming that, in Reed's opinion, her autobiography was practically complete. The changes I made to her text were to correct typographical errors and the misspelling of several Spanish words, as well as several inconsistencies in dates, names, and titles. Some additional minor copyediting changes were also made.

As Mr. Posner's copy of "Peregrina" was missing the last three chapters and Ms. Johansson's was complete, I relied heavily upon the material contained in the latter, as I believe that it was Reed's final edition. After comparing both versions, often side by side, I detected corrections made in Alma's hand to Johansson's copy of what, in the first twenty chapters, was essentially a facsimile of Poser's document. However, I spliced two versions of chapter 21 because they were both fragmentary but, when combined, created a coherent unit. As the last three chapters bore no title, I inserted my own, while attempting to replicate the kinds of titles Reed had employed in her preceding chapters, often borrowing a phrase that the author had used in the body of the chapter. As mentioned previously, I have included endnotes throughout the text designed to assist readers unfamiliar with Mexican Spanish or Mexico's pre-Hispanic, colonial, and modern history, particularly that of the Yucatán. I have also provided bibliographical information where necessary, as Reed often refers to other historical and political works, especially in her re-creation of the events leading up to the death of Carrillo Puerto, the only event described in her autobiography that she did not witness herself.

The photographs included in my edition are principally those given to me by the late Rosalie Johansson, which I selected from more than one hundred images that she had inherited from Reed and stored in a cardboard box in her living room. They include an early photomontage depicting Reed as Mrs. Goodfellow, pictures taken by official photographers during her first trip to the Yucatán with the Carnegie Expedition, often accompanied by Carrillo Puerto, as well as studio portraits taken of her to accompany her books or publicize lecture tours in the United States. Several of the photographs I took myself during my research in Mérida, Yucatán, and at the National History Museum in Mexico City, while some I located in other archives, particularly that of the Smithsonian Institution. Where possible, the provenance and appropriate acknowledgment of all photographs is noted in each accompanying caption.

Michael K. Schuessler
Mexico City and Manhattan, 2003-2005