'Rebel,' the story of a New Orleans woman, Loreta Velazquez, who fought for the Confederacy, debuts on PBS

Via SHNV

Watch Rebel - Preview on PBS. See more from VOCES.

Filmmaker Maria Agui Carter’s “Rebel,” which will air at 9 p.m. Friday (May 24) on WYES as a presentation of PBS’ “Voces” series, tells the unlikely tale of Loreta Velazquez, a Cuban-born woman who, after a domestic life as a wife and mother in New Orleans, became one of an estimated 1,000 women who fought in the Civil War.

“A lot of my work is about exploring the absences in our national memory,” Carter said during a recent phone interview. “I work on race and gender stories often. This is a film that looks at the Civil War armies from a completely new angle. We feel like we know the Civil War, but this character broadens our consciousness of those armies and introduces us to the presence of southern Hispanic communities in the 19th century and the Cuban community of New Orleans and the women soldiers, who haven’t been talked about very broadly, who were fighting for both the North and the South.”
Havana-born, Velazquez was sent to school in New Orleans as a girl and married a Texas army officer. That husband, the first of several, died in a combat training accident. She also lost all three of their children to disease. Adopting the name Harry T. Buford, she joined the Confederate Army herself, saw action in several battles, and served as a spy – perhaps for both sides.

All of which was recounted in her autobiography, “The Woman in Battle,” published in 1876 to lasting controversy, but which is still in print today.

More @ NOLA