3-052-618 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Dolores Rodriguez, a Peruvian vivandière, 1880. '...a correspondent, Mr. H. Denison Pender...writes of this Amazonian heroine as follows: "Dolores Rodriguez is a...vivandiere [or cook and purveyor of food] of the 1st Regiment of Sappers, which took part in the campaign of November last, and in which her husband, Lorenzo Sanchez, was a private. Dolores marched with the regiment from Pisagua to Tarapaca, a distance of 150 miles, in five days, three of which were passed in a desert entirely without water. Early on the morning of Nov. 27 began the battle of Tarapaca, and soon after Sanchez fell, shot through the heart. His wife, who was at his side, immediately seized his rifle, and, determined to avenge her husband's death, she fought with her regiment...and is known to have shot several of the enemy. Though twice slightly wounded..., she was able to accompany the regiment down to the coast, and is now a corporal, though barely eighteen years old...Dolores, though almost entirely without education, seems intelligent...after having obtained leave she came off to the P. S. N. Company's steamer Pizarro, on board of which I took the inclosed likeness, and, through the help of an interpreter, learnt from her the above particulars".' From "Illustrated London News", 1880.