Photo from the private collection of Alfonso Cornejo

Margarita Montes “Kid Maya”
Boxer

Enrique Vega Ayala
Official chronicler of Mazatlán

Margarita Montes was a pioneer in turning the proclamations of gender equality into reality. She was not necessarily the very first in Mazatlán to carve out a place for herself in spaces long thought to be exclusively for men, but she was certainly one of the most significant Mazatlecan women of her time in the task of “breaking stereotypes,” as Olga Trujillo writes in her article “Margarita ‘La Maya’ Montes, heroine and myth of boxing.”

Margarita was born in the village of Chilillos in 1913, according to what she told her biographer, Alfonso Cornejo. She was brought to Mazatlán at the age of four, and from then until her death on October 9, 2007, she lived on what is now Rosales Street. She barely attended school. At twelve years old she began working in a corn mill. From a young age she was known by the nickname “La Maya.”

She liked playing baseball with her neighbors; fortunately for her, she lived during a time when women’s baseball teams became fashionable. She joined one of those teams and played at the Municipal Stadium, back when it was located on the grounds where the Nautical School stands today.

In 1931, when boxing was just beginning to grow in popularity in Mazatlán, a Mexican professional boxer, Josefina Coronado, came to the city. To be allowed to perform locally, she issued a challenge to any women who dared to face her. Margarita Montes, already recognized for her strength and physical condition from baseball, was offered the chance and she accepted. For 150 pesos she decided to take the challenge. Some local boxers helped train her, taught her the rules, and showed her a few secrets of the sport. The surprising outcome was that, despite having no prior ring experience, she managed to defeat the professional boxer from Sonora. That first fight took place at the Teatro Rubio (today the Ángela Peralta Theater) and was part of a card that also featured Joe Conde against Mike Herrera.

Once her talent was discovered, she was called by Conde to be his sparring partner. But she went further—since there were so few women in boxing, she managed to fight male opponents in her weight class. According to Alfonso Cornejo, the boxing record of this Mazatlecan fighter included 33 professional bouts, 28 of them against men and only five against women, some of them American (whom she fought in the U.S.). She earned the title of Champion of the Pacific.

“La Maya” liked to say she had been a bullfighter, after a couple of ventures in the ring, though bullfighting was not her true calling. She survived a difficult marriage and raised three children. She worked as a “húngara” (a traveling projectionist), bringing film screenings to remote ranches in southern Sinaloa and northern Nayarit. She also ran a bicycle workshop and later ventured into business as a pig trader.

Beyond the pride her career gave her, boxing also brought Margarita Montes other satisfactions: being featured on the television show “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” as well as having her life story and accomplishments published in the sports section of the French magazine Liberation in March 1988.