Mexican revolutionary novel (with an English translation of Vámonos con Pancho Villa, by Rafael Muñoz)

229 Pages·011.757 MB·English

by  Harris, Ruth Donnelly

zsmsmmAm
the ismc&H hotel
(Tilth an English translation of
vmauos cm fakehd villa.
by 3afael Munbs)
by
B. 1a., Montana State unixorsity, 19o5.
Presented in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
Montana State University
1942
Approvedi
Chairman of Board
of Examiners
}\J' ^
Chairman of tiamoittee
on Graduate Study
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Vb'b.bZ
H 3l£>rr\
the hexicah i&tolutiomhy hotel
"Viva la licrrolucioni Viva Ileadcot"
That cry of more than three aillloa Mexicans in arras rang frm
onora to Yucatan in 1910, when the seemingly inert ansa of slave Indi-
ns rose to shoot out a place for themselves in national govermsnt.
/
Preaidant Porfirio Dias, salf-aade dictator, for thirty-five years
ad been building a oouirtry T,-ho3e international credit was unimpeachable,
hose business ■was flourishing, vhose eity streets were cloan and polioo-
roteoted, whose liaoiendos were jorld-faraous— -had been building it on
he backs of nineteen rail lion Indians with, no civil rights whatever.
In 1910 the Indian in sarape and sombrero grabbed his carbine, if
e had one, and wont barefooted to war, to the '’evolution! He fought
lindly, often unwisely, but he fought*
Proa the south cane ragged fSnilisno 2apata, who could not even
rite his own name, but who led the men of Morelos straight to the heart
f the capital, Panoho Villa, Azte© from Atila, and his Tigers of the
orth raged and closed their vnxy through Chihuahua and Durango* There
ppearod the round of other famous chiefs* Madoro, Huerta, Carraasa,
bregon. Groat battles, victorios, defeats, loyalties, and hates* A
housond prisoners assassinated in a dayj houses burned! crops ruinedj
ities ravaged. And the Indian with fever in his heart and eyes foi­
lsw ed the leader through the mass of days* Little by little he found
sioe in smother word, a more definite word erven than devolution?-—
Tierra!" Land! That ms it, that was what he wanted— -Land!
1 Iferrxhg, Hubert, Good neighbors (Hew Haven* Yale Oniversity
ress, 1941), pp. 310-*3lTi
The Indians* desire for land, and the complexity of problems tiiat
ent with it, are detailed in this chapter*
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The Revolutionary spirit had boon bred in the very bones of the
raM* the Indian had resisted tire Spaniards and the Church, and now he
prepared to resist the "caciques'1 and "hacendados", those over lords who
allowed twenty-five centavos per day to -work as a slave on land which
Me father* had owned# How he demanded his rights* "a piece of ground,
2
a house and bed, a little happiness, and independence".
His wife and children weop to see him go? -.ell, won't they part on
new faces *dien he rides book on a good horse, with liis carbine under his
leg, with much dinero in his pocket? And, who knows? Perhaps he will
ease b&ok a eolonel, or wren a goner-all Hhy rust?
/
The aagie formula of Dias which produced such catastrophic results
*
west "He politics and much administration"• There was to be no judg­
ment but his own passed upon the conditions of his country. If it looked
all right, it was all right# And to make sure that sufficient money
flowed in to keep the surface machinery running, lie opened all gates to
foreign* especially American and rnglish, capital, to come in and buy up
what It wanted. Public utilities, mines, oil fields, and ranches func­
tioned under foreign money# The socially elite and the wealthy rode in
cream-colored Hudsons through beautiful Mexico City, where an Indian was
forbidden by law to appear in native garb in certain fastidious sections.
Hie was the servants* alley and book way.
WmSSBSZ Arturo Torres, Novelistas Contecaporaneoa de America
(Santiago, Chi let Editorial lfescimento",lDo9 J, p. 11.
S Cro»b .Mil Spaxdsh American Life (The University of California
«t bee Angeles* Bmay HoTF and Uctmpany,"’ Ijj?41), pr>. ;A05-207.
This chapter further explains the Dias regime, and gives a char­
acter! satim (la Spanish) of the man himself, as semi by his oontaapo-
rarles.
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iv
/
Before the XtUm regime, asst of the Indians lived in ooamutml vil­
lages, called ejldos, surrounded by leads whioh they all -sorted and all
shared together* Shis might Include as mush as four square leagues of
iandT There were hundreds upon, hand reds of ejidos all over MeariLoo, The
4
lmr&«*hn rl rig oiatftoB m ©anfcurie* old*
or hereditary estates* He gstes
oootrol tweglyMSiae sad a half Billion acres to private interests* By
191% the nation wee so sliced i* into hastendas* that only one per oent
of the M n d s held eixh1a**flva osar east of the land* One fedlSi the Ter-
rasas* held iaslte Billion a s m in Chlhnaiaia* Three hrothers owned the
-■nai^ state of Hidalgo* Tsui is ailH en mm narked as 11 lines as ifwn»
fonurly theirs* for a plttnnes of twenty-five to thirty eestsavof par day*
Bsesnss this vac dlssally insufficient for the bars necessities of life*
the Indian families sere kept in debt through generations to their haoan*
dados* and sere often paid in loeal seript good only within a radius of a
fee niles*5
Ihoy could not appeal to lav* for the Indiana had no oivil represen-
/
tatien* Bias openly scorned then* and eaoh landowner had the right of
life sad death osar his washers* Hot only that* but he had the right to
their wweeo* *Ty* to anything fl^t he fansied*
In 1910 the Indians raws* they began a campaign of violence which
burned haciendas and wardered haeeadados* Each man tried at first to re»
4 1{kmaa* ^ssnsl 8uy* Latin Aac-rla* (See York* Willett* Clark and
Company, 1937), p, 580*
5 Tkislsi Carleton* Mexioo, in Interpretation (Hew York* B. W*
Huebseh, Ins*, 1925), ppTTDPESTT -------
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pay hfrm personal wrongs, The wrongs .ver® as many as there v*sro men in
/
the Nero lution. Dias heard them cosing* gathered wimt loot he oould#
tiw? took the first boat to Europe, In Ms ears rang the cry, "Tierra
y Libertadl" hand and Libortyt
Next to the demand for land, the demand for eduoation ms the most
insistent cry in the liervolution. "fierra y Libras**•—— “Lead and Books*
0
seemed s fitting combination* Brsn. wild Panefao Villa heoane so ob­
sessed with the Idea that education could benefit Mm* he laboriously
set hireelf to learn to read and writs two years before he began his
7
terrible career as a guerrilla, mare were no schools in Mexico in
IS 10 to which a eoBsaon man might go. The priest was his only teacher.
Be— use he could neither read nor write# had no means to easy oaonunW
cation, be was isolated by his ignorance* Isolated# but not unmindful
of it*
Although it has sometimes been erroneously connected with the
Russian. Hswolution, actually the Mexican Hero lution. predated the former
by eight years* Turkey# China* and Russia all had their own brands#
quite unlike Mexico's,® Iren Mexico's maimer of fighting has been dis­
tinctly her oku, The best method by which untrained* generally inade­
quately equipped men can. combat their enemies is a Mexican product of
her Revolution# and the teas “guerrilla war* has became internationally
$ herring* op, oit,* p, 320,
7 Reed* John* Insurgent Mexico (Now York and Londons D. Appleton
and Company# 1914)* p. 157.
8 Inman, op. elt.* p. 375.
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vi
understood* It involves aporadio, surprise attack* from suabush or uo»
expected quarters, It delight* la pinching off fragments of a larger
amy— beware, the vanguard or rearguard of a travs ling oolisml And
that most deadly weapon first introduoed in Mexico, sfeiah struck terror
in the enemy Panoho Villa*a night attackl®
Rules of organised mar Meant nothing to the fierce rebel Isadora*
The only similarity to Btaropeea beetles ms in Villa1* sometimes start­
ling reaarablamoe to Hapoleon*s methods* Us seereey, rapidity, and mk>»
vwloua adaptation of plans to the country and situation in shieh he
found himself were like these of the other leader* Villa** plans were
always a mystery to his men* and may harre been spur>»of-the -m/aaent de­
cisions at times* At any rats, he kspt everybody, friend sad foe alike,
guessing* His own personal movements ware welled in secrecy, and not
even his most trusted dared to spy upon him ehen he rode off alone to
sleep only God knew where at night**0
Faaatioiam of the men who followed their *;)«f«s" through hardship
and every sort of danger, experienoing disappointment in what they had
hoped to accomplish, might be a source of wonder to anyone with no un­
derstanding of the Mexican character* When a merciless leader like
Villa eould command the wry souls of his sen* deprive them of all octa-
fort and love, the faot that his men still clung to him, still gave
homage to "ad general", is powerful testimony to the fortitude of the
rass*
— r'ssarog. oi*«» pp* uo-us.
10 Mono*, Rafael, Vemonos eon Panoho Villa (Madrid* Espasa-Calpe,
3. A*, 1956), pp. 95-137;
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vii
The novel of tiie Mexican Revolution -was bora during the revolution­
ary period, between 19ID and 1917, It was* like its ora, a complete de­
parture from what had gone before.11
During the thae of D^Las, the iexiean novel had been modeled after
the realistic novel of France (Qnile Zola) end Spain (Peres Galdos J.1^
Hie realistic Mexican novel was very long, of seme four hundred to five
hundred pages, and contained u-ordy descriptions, roraaatio episodes, and
aoralisationa• It did not concern itselfw ith the fundamental problems
of Mexico, nor did it pick up thec olor of the country. Those novels
were written for the higher classoa, whose tastes were not nourished by
their own land, Hie Indian, if he entered in at all, served merely to
lend a picturesque touch.
The Revolutionary novel is a violent protest against life under the
dictatorship* The author neither expresses his own opinions nor Invents
artificial characters.1*^ heroes do not stand out as such, only insofar
as they are a part of the Revolution itself, and as circumstances force
greatness or meanness of deed* The action is rapid and constant, often
abrupt* Descriptions waste no tiiaa nor page space, and a. e used solely
to give feeling and reality to action. The pages generally number
around two hundred. In some of the novels various characters are not
oven named. The author might be likened to tlie operator of a movie
camera, who -takes in the whole panorama, and then projects it Inter in
— •• "Ti ?iw; jun, cit*, p. .uOS.
12 Crow, op. cit., p. 203.
IS Hioeeoo, on, cit,, pp. 11-44.
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viii
a film on which he himself does not firure* True, the characters might
be called stock characters, as they arc often types rather than individ­
uals, patterns of the time in which they lived the Indian and the mes­
tizo-^, the soldier, the jefe^5, the always-included horses who galloped
from prairie to sierra, down railroad tracks, through rocky ravines, and
sometimes into houses tins?.solves.
The novel is yet too new to be considered as a part of universal
literature, but it is sufficiently strong to indicate vigorous Mexican
thought. It is considered one of to© best products of Mspanlo-dtaeriean
culture*^®
For Americans, in particular, the Mexican novel is an eye-opener
into to© hearts and minds of a people to whcet they have, vdth sxeeptiomv
always considered themselves superior*1? The popular prevailing notions
of what a Mexican is— mostly musi c&l-oomedy ideas— are sharply opposed
in toe native novel.
Contemporary Mexican novelists may be artificially grouped into
three classificationsi novelists of the 1evolution, the proletarian
school, and the Indian!sta group.They all use the basis material of
their country, but each writer1* approach is h's own* In style, end to
a large degree, in language, they differ greatly. However, while
14 I'iat'xvc liexieaxi, of mixed Indian and Spanish blood,
15 Chief, leader, military oamandor.
16 Crow, op* oit., p. 209*
17 Herring, op, cit*, p* 306, In this chapter the author gives a
very amusing account of toe average American *s conception of Mexico.
18 Saglckirk, John, "The Ckmteeroorary Period", pr>. 119-1' 3. E.
Homan Hespelt, editor, An Outline History of Spanish American Litera­
ture (Hew York* F, S, C roFte and Ccmr any, 11T¥1T»
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ix
differing fron each other, all their diction is of the Herr orldi they
®rploy certain coarsenesses and animal similes which are distinctly the
product of their country.
The beet-known of these Jiovelists is Mariano Azuela, a doctor whose
work had deeply identified bin with the peo-lo tdiom he has treated.^9
I£La mastorpieee, "Los de Aba jo” ("The TJoder-Bogs*), a story of the devo­
lution and its men, has been translated into every major living language.
This novel, and his prolific other works, form a vast picture of Mexico
during a quarter of a century. There is a universal quality about his
character* that is understood by all readers. The translations attest
the fact that, in spite of the birth of the novels in Mexico, his work
ha* been ap resisted by peoples of greater and lesser refinement, of
cultural differences, of cosmopolitan tastes. Arnela paints human
color.
”Los de Abajo" might be the one great title of all his work. There
are people oppressed by crime, niaery, ignorance, vice, and lack of
moral sense. There are rogues, inbeoilio men, and, in the same scene,
good and kindly characters. He docs not maintain that op-rcssion neces­
sarily always breeds corruption, he conceals his indignations and en­
thusiasms. The reader only occasionally sees a fleeting glimpse in a
line or two which reveals the author** attitude toward one or another
of his characters.
Another Mexican novelist of importance is Gregorio Lope* y Puentes,
who is the youngest and, according to some critics, the most promising
of the later novelists.^® lie writes in a stirring personal style, and
op. cit., p. 15.
20 Englekirk, on. cit., p. 14-3.
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