In the original photograph, Adela Velarde Pérez stands on a railway platform holding a rifle in one hand and the Mexican flag in the other. Two bandoliers of bullets cross her chest. She looks directly into the camera with complete composure. She is perhaps fourteen years old. She looks like a child, because she was.

Against her father’s wishes, she left home at thirteen to join the Mexican Revolution, becoming a battlefield nurse and creating a corps of women fighters known as the Soldaderas — women who healed the wounded, carried weapons, managed supplies, and fought when required. She became the inspiration for “La Adelita,” the ballad that gave the Soladeras the additional moniker of “Adelitas”.

After the war, she worked as a typist. It was not until 1962 that she was formally recognized as a veteran. She died in poverty in 1971.

The halo in this painting was not added to her. It was already there — her sombrero, transformed. The red teardrops that ring it carry two meanings: the blood of war, and her dream of studying medicine — a dream she never fully got to pursue. This series returns again and again to the way history canonizes women only after it has finished using them.