Cuban Woman as Southern Fidelio

I cant wait to read this book

"A Cuban woman who moved to New Orleans in the 1850s and eloped with her American lover, [her name was] Loreta Janeta Velazquez, fought in the Civil War for the Confederacy as the cross-dressing Harry T. Buford.

As Buford, she single-handedly organized an Arkansas regiment; participated in the historic battles of Bull Run, Balls Bluff, Fort Donelson, and Shiloh; romanced men and women; and eventually decided that spying as a woman better suited her Confederate cause than fighting as a man.

In the North, she posed as a double agent and worked to traffic information, drugs, and counterfeit bills to support the Confederate cause. She was even hired by the Yankee secret service to find 'the woman . . . traveling and figuring as a Confederate agent' — Velazquez herself."

This is sort of a Cuban-Southener-Confederate "Fidelio." I will do some more research on this subject which is sure to become my next series of drawings.

Loreta Janeta Velazquez hereby displaces Cuban Confederate Colonel: The Life of Ambrosio José Gonzales by Antonio Rafael de la Cova and the definitive biography of a Cuban and Confederate rebel; as my next obsessive subject.

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Article Author: Lenny Campello

F. Lennox Campello is a widely published Washington, DC based art critic, as well as an award winning artist and curator. He is also often heard on NPR and the Voice of America discussing visual art issues. …

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