Journal of World History, Vol. 23, No. 2 © 2012 by University of Hawai‘i Press 279 Women Warriors and National Heroes: Agustina de Aragón and Her Indian Sisters * adrian shubert York University T he eighty prints of Francisco Goya’s Disasters of War present a panorama of virtually unrelieved horror and barbarism. French and Spaniards, men and women, soldiers and civilians: all are per- petrators and victims of savage violence. There is very little that is redeeming here. One exception is print 7 (Fig. 1). A single woman in a white dress, bodies at her feet, stands beside a cannon, which she is about to fire. Goya’s lapidary caption, “Qué valor!” (What bravery!), provides a very rare positive comment. The woman in the print has her back to us, but she is far from anonymous. Unlike the other scenes Goya portrays, either of generic violence or actual events involving nameless—and faceless—people, the protagonist of print 7 has a name, and one that has a distinguished place among Spain’s pantheon of national heroes. She is Agustina de Aragón. The topic of hero cults in modern Europe has attracted considerable attention lately: special issues of European History Quarterly in October 2007 and July 2009 are but two indications. 1 Within this literature, the * I want to thank Antonio Cazorla, Jesus Cruz, Aitana Guia, Arthur Haberman, Doug- las Peers, Lucy Riall, Chris Schmidt-Nowara, and Enric Ucelay da Cal for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. 1 October 2007 on gender war and the nation in the period of the Revolutionary wars, and July 2009 on hero cults and the nation. The issue on war and gender includes an article on Agustina de Aragón: John Lawrence Tone, “A Dangerous Amazon: Agustina Zaragoza