SOURCE: Dulsey, Bernard. “The Mexican Revolution as Mirrored in the Novels of Mariano Azuela.” Modern Language Journal 35, no. 5 (May 1951): 382-86.

[In the following essay, Dulsey traces Azuela's use of historical events in his novels, contending that the drama in his works stems from real events, and that his novels chart the course of the Mexican revolution.]

In the novels of one man, Mariano Azuela, the Mexican revolution becomes a warmly pulsing segment of history. Azuela, who is primarily known as the author of Los de Abajo, has lived through the entire revolution—the social and economic upheaval as well as the military—and has recorded much of what he has lived. His plots are not furthered by taking liberties with historical data; rather the historically significant data serve him as a foundation on which to erect his novels.

Mexican history furthermore, from 1810 to the present years, is reflected in his novels. In Precursores (1935), Pedro Moreno, el Insurgente (1933), and El Padre Agustín Rivera (1942), Azuela portrays a part of the fight for independence and a part of the political and religious chaos that ensued. These biographies of a period that Azuela himself could not know (he was born in 1873) are the results of painstaking research and are historically sound. They are not historical novels.

In 1855 Juárez and the liberals took over the government but the church and other political conservatives did not accept their defeat gracefully. The church and state were now officially separated and for the first time since the conquest the church was playing a subordinate rôle. In El Padre Agustín Rivera, Azuela describes some of the events of the years from 1855 to the end of the century. Sixty years ago, he published his first literary efforts. They were short stories that angrily attacked contemporary social conditions. His stories published in the first decade of this century play on the same theme. They condemn the hypocrisy of the people and their abject kotowing before the almighty peso.

Azuela, now seventy-seven, is not likely to write further of the revolution. In a letter to the writer Azuela stated “Ya no pienso escribir otra novela de la Revolución.”¹ Let us then examine the Azuelian novels as a whole and venture some conclusions on their presentation of the Mexican revolution.

Azuela's first novel was María Luisa (1907), and in it one finds excellent descriptions of life in student boarding houses and in Guadalajara in general during the days of Porfirio Díaz.

In Los Fracasados (1908), Azuela depicts the corruption and hypocrisy of a small town during the Díaz epoch. The mythical Jalisco town of Alamos is Azuela's native Lagos de Moreno.

The most informative novel about the Díaz regime is Azuela's Mala Yerba (1909), which gives a true account of the desperate life of the peons and their exploitation by the hacendados.²Mala Yerba, written on the eve of the 1910 revolution, is in itself a sufficient indictment of the Díaz government to have warranted its overthrow. The peon in this novel is a subhuman being subjected to the caprice of the hacendado. Justice did not exist for the peon, nor did education. Ignorance and the tienda de raya often combined to chain him to the land. The tienda was a store that did all the authorized trade on the hacienda and the peons were granted credit to such an extent that they were often unable to pay their “debts.” Should the father die in “debt,” the son assumed his financial burden.

Azuela's first novel to appear after the fall of Díaz was Andrés Pérez, Maderista (1911). It is a forerunner of all his succeeding novels of the revolution. Instead of contentedly viewing the recent turn of national affairs, this book is laden with pessimism: the same pessimism that is later met in his masterpiece, Los de Abajo. For a vivid picture of the significant events of the Díaz downfall the novel is interesting. In it there is an account of the Serdán incident in Puebla. In it also there is a masterly description of the insincere hangers-on of the newly won revolution—the same individuals who had formed the scum of the Díaz reign shrewdly appraising the new movement and quickly realizing how it could be perverted to their own mean ends.

In 1912 Sin Amor was published. This novel has almost nothing of the revolution in it. But it does reveal the shortcomings of the Mexican bourgeoisie. Azuela lashes out at their baseness and corruption.

Los de Abajo was first published serially in the Texan paper El Paso del Norte in the last three months of 1915. The author had just lived through the most trying military months of the revolution and had been obliged to flee Mexico to escape the soldiers of Carranza. This novel, which has been translated into many languages, masterfully depicts the life of the soldier. His stoicism, recklessness, and fatalism are matched by his inability to comprehend just why he is fighting—especially after the downfall of Huerta.

Los Caciques (1917) and Las Moscas (1918), two short novels of the chaotic military period of the revolution, serve further to illustrate the author's often expressed opinion that the bourgeoisie corrupted the revolution. In Las Moscas, as in Los de Abajo, we find graphic accounts of the decisive battle of Celaya in April of 1915.

Of the portraits of the revolutionary leaders, only Zapata's does not hang in the Azuelian gallery. But Villa, Carranza, Obregón and Calles emerge from Azuela's pages as flesh and blood persons. Villa is a rash, impulsive, intuitive warrior who, had he become president, would have been a menace to the nation. His military genius is great but not equal to that of Obregón. His rashness and the absence of General Angeles, his able artillery commander, cost Villa the victory at Celaya.

Carranza is reincarnated for us as a stubborn bearded man who looked smugly at the world through his tinted glasses. His principal virtue seemed to be the ability to coordinate the military leaders of the revolution—at least until the overthrow of Huerta. He was not popular with the citizens of the capital during his presidency, for he had shaken the Mexican financial structure by issuing and then repudiating paper monies. According to Azuela he purified the revolution with his death as did Villa with his.

Obregón is presented as a poor statesman, insincere, and with a fervent belief in his own infallibility. He spoke easily and well but it was the man and not the message that swayed his listeners. He, like Carranza before him, freely dipped a private hand into the public funds. He surrounded himself with ruffians who did much to subvert the professed aims of the revolution. Azuela, in an interview, has admitted that perhaps some of his animosity toward Obregón stems from the fact that he (Azuela) had opposed him militarily.³

Calles appears in some ways to have been like Obregón, but more obvious and less hypocritical. He persecuted the church to such an extent that he alienated most of the public, the apathetic as well as the fervently Catholic. The Cristero rebellions resulted from the Calles persecutions. Thus the church gained much support and more sympathy as a result of Calles' having gone to extremes in repressing the Cristeros. In Azuela's novels it appears that a not too religious Mexico City became, in one year under the Calles rule, a fairly devout community.

Calles' henchmen were no better than Obregón's. In fact, many were holdovers from the Obregón regime.

In Las Tribulaciones de una Familia Decente (1918), the capital becomes the scene for Azuela's continued harangue on the worthlessness of the bourgeoisie—in this case the familia decente. The rotten moral fibre of the carrancista leaders pervades the novel to such an extent that the sensitive reader figuratively holds his nose. Azuela depicts the bourgeoisie of the capital gone mad in their lust for wealth and power. Any persons or virtues blocking the attainment of these desiderata are thrown by the wayside. The race is to the strong and the unscrupulous.

In La Malhora (1923), and La Luciérnaga (which first appeared in 1928), Azuela portrays the dregs of society in Mexico City. Alcoholics, drug addicts, thieves and murderers move through these pages, and the capital law enforcement is feeble and corrupt. These two novels, like El Desquite (1925), are written in a highly esoteric manner and must be studied before they can be fully understood. Azuela was at this time dabbling in the then popular school of estridentismo.

The author's most vicious attack on Calles and Obregón may be found in El Camarada Pantoja. This book, written about 1928, was not published until 1937. The delay is easily understood by anyone who has read this savage indictment of the two revolutionary leaders. In it there is a vivid relation of the Cristero rebellions and a graphic account of the Obregón campaign for reelection. Both presidents are portrayed in angry red colors and Obregón's assassination is dramatically depicted.

Azuela says little about the three puppet presidents who filled the 1928-1934 term that was to have been Obregón's. He considered the government still to be that of Calles, in whose grasping hands the reins of political power were securely held.

During the Cárdenas regime the persecution of the church eased and land distribution was hastened. Cárdenas himself does not figure in the works of Azuela but his government is accused of graft as rotten as that of any of the previous ones. Azuela mentions the oil expropriation but does not give his personal opinion on its merits. It is in his novels of the Cárdenas epoch that he tries to show that the revolution has benefited the campesino very little. He maintains that the leaders of the farm worker unions treated the agricultural laborers little better than had the hacendados of the Díaz days.

Azuela distinguishes acutely between the laws of the land and their enforcement—or rather their lack of enforcement. He himself deplores the chronic alcoholism of many Mexicans and the ease with which alcoholic beverages may be obtained. But in spite of government laws to the contrary, such beverages were readily available on holidays. The mordida was so generally practiced in all of Mexico that vendors of liquor continually hoodwinked the law by a regular bribe to the local enforcement officers. Naturally the size of the mordida increased with the increasing importance of the official to be bought. But Azuela indicates that all of the government officials had their price.

Though there is no widespread agreement on the year the revolution ended, the writer believes that it came to an end with the final year of the Cárdenas government. It reached its peak in 1938 with the petroleum expropriation and then slowly declined. Church schools once more were opened and the agrarian reforms were slowed considerably. When Avila Camacho “won” the 1940 election the revolutionary epoch seemed definitely drawing to a close. Most Mexicans seemed to think that Almazán had won the election, but Camacho became President with the support of the United States. Azuela's Nueva Burguesía (1941) is an excellent study of political opinion in the capital during the 1940 presidential campaign.

Thus Mexico had not really changed very much in the years from Porfirio Díaz to Lázaro Cárdenas, according to Azuela's novels. Schools were still too scarce in Mexico and the teachers provided by the government were none too capable. The government candidate still could win an election even if the popular vote might favor the opposition candidate. The clergy still did the political thinking for many Mexicans, especially for the women. In fact the church is stronger now than it has been in many years. Though some of the lower clergy were sympathetic to the revolution the clerical hierarchy always identified itself with the reaction. And the power of the church, needless to say, lay in this hierarchy.

The picture viewed in the above terms is not a happy one. But Azuela has hope for the future of Mexico and thinks the revolution did awaken the people. This awakening, Azuela believes, is the first step toward the redemption of his country.

Notes

1. The letter is dated January 16, 1950.

2. Gregorio López y Fuentes, in an interview with the writer on May 31, 1949, called this novel Azuela's best.

3. This interview took place in Azuela's home on April 20, 1949.