Barefoot Dreams of Petra Luna

The novel is set during the Mexican Revolution, which took place from 1910-1920. Throughout her novel, Dobbs provides historical context for readers to inform the events of the novel and the impacts those events have on its characters. The Preface of the novel is set at the beginning of the war, in 1910, while the remaining chapters are set three years into the Revolution, in 1913.

The Revolution began in the wake of nationwide dissatisfaction with the policies of President Porfirio Díaz, which prioritized the wealthy at the expense of the poor. When Díaz announced his plan to run for reelection in 1910, he was met with opposition from Francisco Madero, a liberal from a well-to-do family and leader of a group of revolutionaries that opposed Díaz’s reelection. Early in the novel, after Petra and her family have fled their village, she recalls hearing about Madero from her father before he was forced by the Federales to enlist in the Mexican army on Díaz’s orders. Papá told her that despite having been born into wealth, Madero’s heart “had always been with the poor” (42). In an effort to support those in poverty, Madero had “opened schools for peasant children” and “paid all his workers well” (42). Seeing Madero as a potential threat, Díaz had Madero arrested and declared himself the winner following a mock election. When he was released from prison months later, Madero called for a revolt, and effectively “helped start the revolution that eventually overthrew Porfirio Díaz, a dictator who had ruled Mexico for more than thirty years” (42). Though ultimately a failure, the revolt instigated a kind of revolutionary hope throughout the nation. In 1911, the revolutionaries forced Díaz to resign and appointed Madero as president. To Petra’s Papá and many folks like him in Mexico, Madero was regarded as “a hero and a saint” (42).

In reality, Madero was more complicated, and his administration failed to address the country’s acute need for economic change, and developed an antagonistic relationship with the United States government. In 1913, The ousted Díaz and former General in the Mexican Federal Army, Victoriano Huerta, met in US Ambassador Henry Wilson’s office to sign the “Pact of the Embassy,” agreeing to conspire against Madero and elect Huerta as president. In the winter of 1913, Madero and Vice President Pino Suárez were shot to death after being arrested and jailed. In the novel, Petra recalls how Papá had become “solemn as if he’d lost another family member” upon hearing the news of Madero’s execution (60). The following day, Petra’s village “cried and mourned Madero’s death,” some saying that “the revolution…that had gotten rid of the dictator was about to return” (61). Indeed, the war raged on as Huerta was declared president following Madero’s execution. Toward the end of the novel, while desperately waiting to cross the border into the United States, Petra comes across a portrait of Huerta while searching for food in an abandoned schoolhouse. She immediately recognizes him as “the man Papá had referred to as…the bald man with snake eyes…the commander of the Federales” (143). Petra herself deems Huerta to be “the traitor who’d turned this country on its head” (143). In the summer of 1914, (after the events that take place in the novel, during which thousands of Mexican citizens left Mexico for the United States), Huerta resigned as president and fled to Europe on a German ship.