Rosa King - An English Lady & The Mexican Revolution

Rosa E Cummins King was a remarkable woman who owned The Bella Vista Hotel in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Rosa was a cousin of the world famous Victorian stage Actress, Mrs Patrick Campbell, and is mentioned briefly in her memoirs "My Life & Some Letters” .

Rosa wrote a brilliant personal account of her experiences and her life in Cuernavaca during the Mexican revolution, entitled "Tempest over Mexico".  It was her only published book but it is well worth a read - her story is little known, but it is totally enthralling from start to finish.

Rosa was born in Bombay, India in 1865 and had visited, Africa and Europe with her parents and their servants, whilst she was a small child. Her family had been involved with the tea trade for 3 generations and her husband, Norman King, was in charge of her Uncle's concerns with mining and oil out in America. Rosa had visited Mexico with Norman and had fallen in love with the culture, landscape and it's people.

Norman King died suddenly on 9th August 1909, in The American Hospital, Mexico City, He was aged just 46. He left Rosa £1293 19 Shillings and 2d in his will and was buried in Mexico City. Until she was widowed, she had led a privileged middle class life - now things were very different . Rosa temporarily left her 2 young children, Norman Junior & Vera, with relatives in the USA and decided to start a new life in Cuernavaca. She now had a responsibility to support herself and both her children. Many women would have been daunted by this situation and gone home to England- but Rosa was a strong minded, tenacious English lady who relished a challenge.

She had no real experience of working, and little practical knowledge about setting up a business. Running a home and being a good wife and mother had been her only occupation in life so far. She started by renting a local grocery store and with help from a friend, she created the perfect English Tea shop. This venture became very successful, mainly due to her excellent skills as a manager, her attention to details, and her insistence on only using quality teas. She soon branched out and began selling Mexican Pottery and Leather Crafts to the tourists who flocked to her establishment. She set up another shop adjacent to the cafe, and fully supported the development of a small artisan factory in a nearby village. She always paid the workers a fair price for their goods, She gave them full control over what they made for her, and which traditional designs they used.

As her businesses flourished, and she began to make a lot of money, she was able to employ managers to look after the day-to-day running of things and could also improved her own living quarters. She bought the Bella Vista Hotel, encouraged by the local mayor who knew that if she succeeded, it would bring even more tourists ( and therefore more money) into the town. She oversaw all the building renovations and designed all the interiors herself. Under her ownership, the hotel became THE most stylish and upmarket place to stay in Cuernavaca. Some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in all Mexico were the personal guests of Rosa King at the Bella Vista.

Rosa became friendly with many of Cuernavaca's local dignitaries and was highly respected both within the Ex-Pat community and by the locals. She was fascinated by the history and culture of the country and understood more about the politics and the plight of the working classes than many of the other American or English people working for the big sugar corporations in Mexico . She entertained her guests with wonderful stories about local myths and legends, and took them out on highly informative tours of the surrounding countryside. She was the perfect hostess and hotel guests came back time and time again to enjoy her very British approach to hospitality.

In 1910, as Mexico was celebrating 100 years of Independence from Spain, the gulf between the rich land-owning "Hacendado’s" and the poor displaced villagers was became even greater. Revolutionary men like Emiliano Zapatao and Pancho Villa were gathering a lot of support. They were encouraging the people to take up arms against the government and were marching on towards the Capital. The Dictator, President Porfirio Diaz, was eventually deposed and exiled and his political rival, Don Mandero was released from jail.

With the Revolution now gaining even more momentum, life changed once again for Rosa. The fighting eventually came closer to Cuernavaca. Rallying round in a typical British manner, Rosa and her lady friends helped tend to the wounded soldiers of both sides. Rosa objected to the way some of the younger revolutionary's behaved around the town, especially when they drunkenly intimidated the young daughter of one of her female employees. When her pottery factory was ransacked by the revolutionaries, Rosa marched straight into the Army camp at dawn and demanded a face-to-face meeting with General Ascensolo. She was shocked when the General offered to punish one offender by putting him in front of a firing squad. She asked instead that the poor soldier be spared and be given money to send back to his family. Thankful for her mercy, he then went on to be her personal bodyguard for the duration of his posting.

When the new President, Fransisco Mandero, visited Cuernavaca, Rosa was asked by the local dignitaries, to form a special reception committee to meet him at the train station. Whilst waiting for Mandero to arrive, she had her own personal run-in with the notoriously violent revolutionary leader, Emil Zapatao. Her typical English stubbornness, and her aversion to being bullied by a man, stood her in good stead when Zapata challenged her right to be there. She refused to move out of his way and in doing so, won her own small battle and Zapata's grudging respect into the bargain!

General Victoriano Huerta, who would one day become the new Mexican President, also stayed at the Bella Vista Hotel, before heading out with his troops to try and capture Zapata.  The hotel was a regular billet for many Government soldiers and Officers, including the burly, heavy drinking Captain Federico Chacon, who would eventually become Rosa's steadfast protector when things took a turn for the worst.

Before the revolution, Rosa had sent both her children away to be educated. Her young son Norman, was  attending boarding school in Canada, but her teenage daughter Vera was being educated in Tennessee, prior to finishing her schooling in England. Vera came out to Curnavacca to visit her mother for a holiday and ended up getting caught up in the revolution herself.

On a rare visit to Mexico City to buy essential supplies, Rosa was shocked by the sheer amount of cruelty, violence and bloodshed that she and her daughter witnessed. Bodies of dead men hung from trees all over the countryside and enemy prisoners were packed like cattle into trains and many suffocated. Despite Rosa's complaints to various Officers and officials, there was nothing she could really do to to help. Vera attracted some unwanted attention from the soldiers, but Rosa was a protective Mother and made sure her daughter was kept safe.

As the fighting around Curnavaca became more intense, Rosa's hotel saw a downturn in business. The tourist trade had all but ceased and the people of the town began to fear for their own safety. Communications to the outside world were often cut off, and the local railroad had become a regular target for rebel ambushes. Rosa refused to leave Curnavaca and continued to entertain some very important guests at her hotel, such as General Angeles and President Madero. 

For many of the Soldiers and Officers billeted with her, Rosa was a surrogate "Mother-figure" and a friend they could talk to. As a much needed morale booster, Rosa, Vera and General Angeles' wife arranged a special ball for all the local soldiers and town folk.

During the later part of the Revolution, Rosa was unsuspectingly duped into helping Helene Pontipirani, a beautiful Romanian woman who posed as a journalist and doubled as a spy for Pancho Villa. Helene met Rosa in Mexico City and went back to stay in Cuernavaca with her at the Bella Vista. Pontipirani cultivated a friendship with Rosa King in order to gain important information and contacts for the revolutionaries. Helene also fraternized very closely with the soldiers and would do anything to get them to talk and reveal their orders. When Rosa realized this, she sent Pontipirani packing. The information Pontipirani gathered, helped the rebels blow up the main railroad line to Mexico City, thus cutting off Cuernavacca and leading to the town's evacuation.

Throughout her memoirs, Rosa remained a neutral commentator on the revolution, but it is clear that her special relationships with some of Mexico's most powerful Generals and Politicians put her in a unique and sometimes very dangerous position. She admired the reasons behind the revolution, but while she did not support the actions of the Dictators or the Haciendos, she did not fully sympathize with the bloodthirsty revolutionaries either. Her heart lay with the ordinary people and within the landscape which was equally as scarred.

When Cuernavacca was eventually taken by the rebels, Rosa was forced to leave The Bella Visita, abandoning everything she owned and worked hard for. Her good friend, Captain Chacon, did much to help her escape. He saved Rosa's life and protected her friends on quite a few occasions.  Her descriptions of the Cuernavacans’ flight through the mountains are very harrowing. For many grueling days and nights, she and the thousands of other refugees marched onward. Often they were attacked by bandits or ambushed by deserters who stole what little food or water they had. She wrote that 8,000 people started out, but only 2,000 made it to safety. If they were not killed by the bullets, they were overcome by starvation, or exhaustion. To say that Rosa was a brave woman is an understatement. Throughout her ordeal in the mountains, she tried to aid and assist others less fortunate than herself.

Rosa eventually reached safety in the coastal town of Veracruz and was re-united with her children and her family. After the revolution, she did return to live in Curnavacca but the Bella Vista Hotel had been too badly damaged for her to resume business. The original Hotel building still stands today, but has been converted into a range of tourist shops.

Rosa's memoirs give the reader a fascinating insight into the tumultuous events of the Mexican Revolution from an outsiders point of view. They also depict an intelligent,independent Edwardian business woman whose staunch British stiff upper-lip attitude and practical good sense got her through whatever difficulties and dangers she encountered in her life. Despite doing some research, I do not know what eventually happened to Rosa - but I hope she had a comfortable and happy life in Mexico after all her adventures and tribulations!

Rosa's autobiography "Tempest Over Mexico" was first published in 1935 with a series of traditional Mexican Woodcut prints. Rosa has also been the inspiration for the fictional character of Grace Knight in the Historical Novel "Last Train from Cuernavaca" by the writer Lucia St. Clair Robson

A Review of TEMPEST OVER MEXICO from 1935

The Saturday Review of Literature: Saturday, July 27, 1935; Vol. XII, No. 13; New York

TEMPEST OVER MEXICO. By Rosa E. King. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1935. $3

Reviewed by J. Fred Rippy

This little volume of slightly more than three hundred pages is a fascinating account of what the author saw of the Mexican revolution which began in 1910. The setting of the main story is the State of Morelos, the scene of the revolutionary activities of Emeliano Zapata, leader of the Indian struggle for "land and liberty" in southern Mexico, and a man destined to retain a permanent place among the heroes of the Mexican nation.

In 1905, just as aristocratic Mexico was reaching its serene zenith under the iron rule of Don Porfirio Díaz, Rosa King, an English widow with two children and a living to earn, opened a tea room in the attractive little resort of Cuernavaca, some seventy miles through the mountains from the national capital. Five years later her tranquil and prosperous life was interrupted by the revolution, which lasted almost a decade and left the towns and sugar haciendas of Morelos in ruins. It was only a part of a much larger movement which swept over then entire Aztec nation–one of the most significant revolutions since the close of the eighteenth century–and Mrs. King suffered along with numerous others, foreigners like herself as well as Mexican plutocrats who with their ancestors had exploited the Indians for almost four centuries. She not only had to abandon her property but she almost lost her life during a harrowing flight across the mountains to Toluca.

Since the author was an alert observer and knew intimately many Mexicans of all classes who conversed with her freely, the book is an historical document of considerable importance, but it is even more important as a literary production. Mrs. King has a keen sense of the dramatic, and the story is presented with a freshness, vividness, and tolerance which charm and captivate the reader.

The spirit of the work evokes sincere appreciation. Despite her losses and suffering, Mrs. King harbors no ill will toward the insurgent masses who were attempting to assert their rights and attain their freedom. Her sympathies are with the underprivileged and exploited. She fully appreciates the ideals of the revolution. Sitting amidst the ruins of her vanished fortune, she views the struggle in its proper perspective.

"We were on the wrong side," she says–"cogs in the system that had enslaved free men."

J. Fred Rippy, professor of history at Duke University, is the author of "The United States and Mexico," and other books bearing upon Hispanic America.

Download a FREE copy of Rosa King's Memoir TEMPEST OVER MEXICO at www.tempestovermexico.com

Visit Author Lucia St Clair Robson's website here and read more about her award winning novel LAST TRAIN FROM CUERNAVACA 
at 
www.luciastclairrobson.com

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