In this article it is proposed to examine the largely contemporaneous short stories of three Mexican women writers: Rosario Castellanos, María Lombardo de Caso, and Emma Dolujanoff, in order to produce not only an evaluation of the indigenista short-story output of each individual author but also to cast some light on the relationship between cuento and novel in the evolution of Mexico's indigenista literature.

The short story has tended to be neglected in studies of Mexican literary indigenismo. One reason for this is perhaps that the various significant collections of short stories within the indigenista genre, mostly emerging alongside the later novels, complicate the chronological linear evolution from early novels like Gregorio López y Fuentes' El indio (1935) to Rosario Castellanos' Oficio de tinieblas (1962) that many critics have attempted to see in Mexico's indigenista novel. Nonetheless, in its approach to the Indian and in certain technical innovations, the indigenista cuento does in fact tally with developments in the later indigenista novel, the major difference seeming to be that the cuento was more able to avoid the pitfalls of the early novel. The cuento, of course, is a very different literary art form from the novel and it is, in part, precisely this difference which has made the cuento a most fruitful form of expression for indigenista content.

One of the principal problems critics have seen in Mexico's early indigenista novels of the 1930s and 1940s is their seeming lack of unity. Falling into the category established by Juan Loveluck of the “novela impura”, typical of the regionalist current,¹ these novels resented two major types of “impurity”: propaganda and folklore. The strong commitment of the pioneer indigenistas led them to express their ideological convictions in an overt manner, to the detriment of their literary art, while their fascination with the diverse manifestations of the indigenous idiosyncrasy, which they tended to view from a largely costumbrista stance, produced numerous folkloric interludes but little true perception of the Indian cosmovisión. Both of these elements frequently detracted from the novels' structural coherence.

We can perceive such “impurities” albeit part and parcel of the indigenista content of these novels—very clearly to López y Fuentes' El indio. Its cuadros de costumbres (the fishing scene, the crossing of the river on a log, the hunting scene, the brujerías …) have in themselves inspired critical acclaim as evocative descriptive pieces and clearly they form much of the raison d'etre of this novela mexicana, especially in Part II. However, they lend little to the novel's coherence, being more important per se than the tenuous story-line of the crippled young Indian, el lisiado, around which they are grouped and which is intended to provide the essential unity of the novel. The overt didacticism of the early indigenista novel is evident in El indio too, especially in Chapter 5 of Part I, “Castigo”, where the use of mouthpiece characters who discuss the Indian problem produces a gratuitous scene which is little more exciting than a Platonic dialogue, the conversational form offering only the thinnest veneer over the ideological content.

The suitability of the cuento to express indigenista content is clearly suggested by César Rodríguez Chicharro in one of the first comprehensive studies of the Mexican indigenista novel. Referring to Miguel N. Lira's Donde crecen los tepozanes (1947), for example, he maintains that the author impaired a potentially dramatic story with the inclusion of prosaic extras while as regards Armando Chávez Camacho's Cajeme (1948), which he terms “un conjunto de relatos defectuosamente hilvanados”, the suggestion is made that various chapters would have stood individually as excellent short stories.²

The cuento, based usually on a single incident or theme, often expressed by means of a moment of crisis or culminating in a final twist, seems to offer an easier road to artistic coherence than the novel. Its very brevity and simplicity—being typically without digressions or secondary characters—forestalls the need for the various kinds of “padding” often found in the early Mexican indigenista novel. While many of the early novels appeared to suffer from extraneous impurities, often enough in the cuento it is these very impurities of indigenista content—elements of the Indian world-view or events that reflect on the Indian problem—which form the central concern. Furthermore, the scope of the cuento does not demand the deeper and more sustained kind of character creation that we find lacking in the novels of the 1930s and 1940s.

We first see this alternative approach of the short story producing a collection of highly effective indigenista cuentos if fairly traditional in narrative approach—with Francisco Rojas González's El diosero (1952). The author of this collection commonly uses a point of indigenous custom or belief as either the axis or the final twist of his stories. A comparable but much more experimental approach as concerns narrative technique is found in the four excellent indigenista short stories within Eraclio Zepeda's later Benzulul (1959). It is in the short story output of three women writers, however, that we perceive the full range of developments offered by the short-story approach to (1960), by Rosario Castellanos, the fairly long La culebra tapó el río (1962), by María Lombardo de Caso, and all the stories in Emma Dolujanoff's collection, Cuentos del desierto (1959).

Castellanos' Ciudad Real deals with both the oppression of the Indians at the hands of the “whites” and with the indigenous idiosyncrasy. Although all of the ten cuentos in this collection involve the Indian to a greater or lesser degree, usually involving his relationship with the ladino (mestizo or “white”), the first four stories, having indigenous protagonists, will be our prime concern. These are: “La muerte del tigre”, “La tregua”, “Aceite guapo”, and “La suerte de Teodoro Méndez Acubal”. In these stories we begin to see the move away from an overt ideological thrust (though this is not always maintained) while we also appreciate Castellanos' ability to penetrate the Indian world-view and to present her indigenous protagonists from a universal standpoint, on a par with their ladino counterparts.

In “La muerte del tigre” we have a collective Indian protagonist: the Bolometic tribe. Castellanos achieves here in the compact form of a cuento what was attempted earlier by López y Fuentes in part of his two indigenista novels, El indio and the later Los peregrinos inmóviles (1944): the combination of historical overview with action in the present. The story opens with a narration of the fate of the Bolometic in the past. It is a largely timeless evocation—“las pasadas grandezas”; “Cuando la llegada de los blancos”³—the most concrete time reference being, “Los siglos de sumisión” (p. 15). The overall historical perspective of the tribe's being conquered, deprived of land, and forced up into the infertile, inhospitable land of the high mountain plateau then gives way to the moment of crisis which provokes the central present action of the cuento: hunger forces the men of the tribe to go down to Ciudad Real to seek employment in debt peonage. Once the subsequent deal with the engauchador has taken place, told largely in dialogue to dramatize it, the story finally reverts to a more timeless plane as the men of the tribe are stricken by death or disease or are condemned by their debts to spend the rest of their days on the coast.

The overall allegory of this cuento is summed up by the title, for the tigre was the tribes's protective spirit, “cuyo nombre fueron dignos de ostentar por su bravura y por su audacia” (p. 13), a bravura and audacia which is eventually crushed by the white man. One of the pleasing effects of the timeless, allegorical approach is that it avoids insistent propagandistic social realism. Rather than crude emphasis of brutal exploitation, in the style, say, of B. Traven's novel, La rebelión de los colgados (Berlin 1936; Mexico 1938), here one key example of exploitation, limited to its initial bureaucratic stages, is presented: enganche. However, the relationship of this incident to the overall dimension of the crushing of the tribe's place and identity still implies profound criticism. In another of Castellanos' cuentos, however, “La tregua”, an over-insistent ideological concern does emerge, though admittedly in a secondary section.

The major story-line of “La tregua” deals with the arrival of axlán (an indigenous word for “ladino”) at a remote Indian village. Encountered by a young girl, he is identified by her with a threatening spirit, el pukuj, and is finally set upon and brutally killed as such by the men of the village. One of the main points that emerges implicitly from this cuento is the total rift in outlook between Indian and caxlán, deriving partly from the Indian magico-religious cosmovisión but also from a combination of this and oppression at the hands of the ladino. The caxlán in this story, it seems, is dying of exhaustion and thirst, having travelled so far to such a remote area. Ironically, however, Rominka perceives nothing of this, her interpretation of the situation being based on the concept of the pukuj, lord of all things, which sometimes appears in the guise of a ladino. Criticism of the ladino's oppression of the Indian thus emerges implicitly in that the traditional ogre has come to be identified with the ladino.

To this Castellanos adds a second story-line, a flashback, to emphasize ladino oppression of the Indian. Forced by poverty to distill their own alcohol, the Indians suffered appalling punishment: the authorities burned their dwellings, forcing the Indians back into the flames. The Indians' murder of the caxlán because of “cólera irracional” (p. 33) and because he is a scapegoat is clearly intended to seem no worse than the Secretario Municipal's “escarmiento”, converted by the hardships he had suffered while locating the illicit stills into a more personal desire for vengeance.

The function of this second story-line is an explicitly ideological one, emphasizing the ladinos' brutal oppression of the Indian. Apart from the fact that it is not well integrated—emerging as an extra abruptly introduced by “No todos estaban allí” (p. 30) when a child runs to tell the menfolk in the fields about the caxlán—it is largely redundant, for such oppression has already been implied by the major story-line, and in a much more subtle fashion. We might perhaps deduce that, in this case, Castellanos has not taken the concise approach of the cuento far enough. For it is precisely secondary story-line, almost a digression, that provokes the kind of propagandistic piece more typical of some of the early novels.

The two sides of an argument—the Indian and the ladino are much more successfully integrated in “La suerte de Teodoro Méndez Acubal”, where Teodoro's good luck ironically turns to a different kind of suerte. We appreciate the actions of Teodoro—his daring to walk on the pavement, his lurking outside Don Agustín's shop, his feeling for something in his belt once he eventually dares to enter—because we know of the coin he has found which has made him “otro hombre” (p. 51). However, his arrest as a thief is not simply presented as undeserved oppression for we also perceive the thoughts and motivation of Don Agustín which bring this about. Castellanos' success in this story comes from her juxtaposition of two different outlooks, each with a very limited and biased knowledge of the other but both incorporating universal human characteristics and failings. Thus we can sympathize with both and infer that it is the lack of communication between the two which causes the problem.

We see our main protagonist, Teodoro, an Indian, in a predicament which could happen the world over: he has found what to him is a lot of money. His actions and reactions can all be easily related to by the reader: he stoops to adjust his sandal in order to pick up the coin unobtrusively, he feels a sensation of power but also of fear because of his riches and he fears momentarily that it might all have been a dream. His selfishness—“No tenía por qué participar a nadie su hallazgo ni mucho menos compartirlo” (p. 52) in itself universal, gives rise to further well-recognizable symptoms: vergüenza, soledad, even “un malestar físico” (p. 52). Then, of course, there is the usual question of what to buy and of having to frequent unfamiliar places, making unfamiliar moves, in order to buy it.

Don Agustín, the antagonist, manifests reactions partly conditioned by his environment but also due to natural human emotions: he notices Teodoro because he is doing something unusual, he ponders on a reason and momentarily fears the worst: an uprising, vividly evoked in his imagination. His train of thought leads him on to a more likely answer: “El hombre que aplastaba su nariz contra el cristal de su joyería era un ladrón” (p. 57). And in this the timid niño viejo, responding to a typical human failing, sees an opportunity to increase his prestige, by warning the neighbourhood of such danger.

A successful universality is also achieved in the preceding story, “Aceite guapo”. As with the barren Indian woman, Catalina, in the author's novel Oficio de tinieblas, here we have a central figure whose problem is universal—in this case old age but whose response is based on local conditions and world-view. Thus in its moment of crisis this story satisfies the need for a point of contact between reader and protagonist but also distinguishes the protagonist as Indian. As an old man, Daniel knows that he will be rejected. He therefore seeks refuge, as many might, in the Church. In his case, this entails becoming martoma or “mayordomo de algún santo de la iglesia” (p. 39). Through his motivation to become martoma we discover various details about Indian belief and custom and also about the relationship between Indian and ladino.

The first detail of indigenous belief concerns the Indians' interpretation of old age. Daniel knows he will be rejected as a source of evil because of his old age: “esas miradas. … Significaban que un hombre, si a tal edad ha sido respetado por la muerte, es porque ha hecho un pacto con las potencias oscuras, porque ha consentido en volverse el espía y el ejecutor de sus intenciones, cuando son malignas” (p. 37). The syncretic nature of Indian belief, incorporating both pre-Hispanic and Christian elements, is succinctly captured when Daniel has to reveal the name of his guardian spirit to the enganchador: “Daniel asintió; sabía que don Juvencio estaba en poder de su nombre verdadero, de su chulel y del waigel de su tribu. Tembló un instante, pero luego se repuso. Junto a los altares de San Juan ya no lo amenazaría ningún riesgo” (p. 41). Indian customs involved in the post of martoma emerge when Daniel attains his post: the ceremony of the cambio de ropa and the ritual alcohol consumption that accompanies the removal of each length of material from the image of the saint.

Through these customs and beliefs we gain an insight into the indigenous world-view. The story offers us, in addition, however, details about the Indians' socio-economic status and relationship with the ladino. We see this in Daniel's failure to secure a loan from the hacendado, in his decision to enlist his two sons with the enganchador in order to obtain the advance payment, and we see it in how he is treated in the drugstore where he goes to buy aceite guapo to help him speak Spanish to the white saint he tends in the church. Ironically, while he had hoped by this means to attain the help of the saint to enjoy for longer the security of his post of martoma, the drunkenness caused by the aceite guapo brings Daniel to be thrown out of the church, his place of refuge. The irony is double-edged, however, for, having been cast out in a stupor, Daniel does come to find a permanent release from his predicament: the release of death.

Information about the Indian world-view and socio-economic position is by no means forced into the story. Rather, it comes over in relation to the central crisis we witness in the protagonist, accompanied by his own personal reactions. The question of enganche to obtain money (though with no intention here of doing the work) brings out Daniel's thought process, expressed initially in estilo indirecto libre:

Pediría el anticipo y se fugaría. ¿Quién iba a encontrarlo si se marchaba de su paraje? Además, nadie tendría interés en buscarlo a él sino a sus hijos, que eran los del compromiso, y de quienes llevaría el retrato. Si los encontraban los fiscales y los obligaban a irse a las fincas, Daniel estaría contento. Justo castigo al abandono en que lo mantuvieron durante tantos años; justo castigo a su ingratitud, a la dureza de su corazón.

(p. 41)

The whole story is extremely successful in its integration of Indian concerns along with individual focus and profound human appeal, all springing from a central protagonist caught at a time of crisis. With the indigenista stories of Castellanos, then, we find the benefits of universal terms of reference and also the successful incorporation into the story of both the indigenous outlook and the Indians' position in relation to the ladino. Of technical interest is her brief use of estilo indirecto libre (exploited much more fully in Oficio de tinieblas) and her experimentation with different time-scales in “La muerte del tigre”. It seems, nonetheless, that Castellanos does see the cuento as a vehicle for ideological comment and on occasion, from an artistic point of view, she expresses this too overtly.

María Lombardo de Caso, while doubtless no less committed to the Indian than Castellanos, manages to avoid the more overt type of message in her indigenista contribution. Although much longer than the other cuentos referred to here (some 18,000 words) La culebra tapó el río has been aptly described by Joseph Sommers as “más cercano en largura y alcance a cuento que a novela”.⁴ Indeed, it does not have the breadth of vision we tend to associate with the novel: it has a single central protagonist (and his dog) with only two other characters (and one other dog) individualized; a single theme—hunger—relating to the protagonist; and one central indigenous belief. This central belief, that the dead must be accompanied by a dog on their journey over the River to the happiness of the Other World, interacts with the question of hunger to pose the central crisis of the cuento: although the Indians' starving dogs are ravaging the crops, if the Indians keep all the food for themselves the dogs will die, thus jeopardizing the people's passage to the Other World:

Jamás podrían desprenderse de la pobreza hasta que, acompañados de sus perros, pasaran a la otra margen del Río donde para siempre serían felices.

Si los perros, como había dicho Nicio, se les adelantaban, entonces …⁵

The central crisis relates directly to the child protagonist for, at the end of the story, his beloved dog, having had its teeth pulled out like all the rest, dies: “Pero Monito no se movió. Ahora empezaba a cruzar las turbulentas aguas que para siempre lo separaban de su amo” (p. 79). Taken in the context of the central belief and moment of crisis this has clear symbolic implications: Juan, the child protagonist, and possibly by extension the Indian in general, is condemned to a life of wretched poverty. This symbolic implication is emphasized by the “para siempre” and by the circular structure of the book, which ends as it began with the discovery of five snails to eat. Even the onset of rain immediately prior to the ending does not relieve the pessimism for drought has struck before and no doubt will strike again. The subtle symbolism of the end of this cuento, which critics have overlooked, is one of Lombardo's means of gently implying a message.

Another means of making the reader aware of the predicament of the Indian is her evocation of sympathy for the central protagonist. This is achieved partly by various emotive features, all of which are universally appreciable. Firstly, Juan is a child, which in itself has a certain emotive appeal. He is also a loving child, judging from his bond with his dog, and this increases our emotional response to him. His hunger adds to our sympathy, though the author is careful not to over-exploit the lengths to which Juan is driven by hunger. Instead she keeps the opening incident about the snails on a mildly humorous level:

De pronto el estómago se le hizo una bolita … ¿Esos ojos pelones, estarían espiándole las tripas?

¡Recaracho! … ¿Le estaría caminando, ahora, por toda la barriga?

(p. 9)

The potential danger of an over-sentimental presentation of Juan is further offset by his being naughty and even inconsiderate: he may think of taking the mouse he has found back to his mother for food but he is also interested in the prestige of hunter it will give him; he slips out of collecting wood for her but still hopes to find some food awaiting him on his return home.

It is not only through an emotive appeal that María Lombardo de Caso seeks reader identification with Juan. The mode of expression is direct and simple, establishing a bond of familiarity with the reader. Furthermore, the narrative, although third-person, tends to use Juan as a centre of consciousness and often exploits the capacity for interiorization of estilo indirecto libre:

Lanzó un suspiro al cerrar la puerta; también faltaba el atole que esperaba encontrar en su jícara; y no había tortillas para la cena. Quizá su madre regresara con los restos de la bebida en el fondo de la olla, y aun cuando esto no se acostumbraba, algunas veces solía hacerlo. Entonces podría calmar los retortijones que otra vez empezaban a fastidiarlo. ¿Y Monito? Pues tendría que contentarse, una vez más, con perseguir a la luz de las estrellas algún bicho nocturno que se atreviera a salir de su madriguera ¿Y los otros perros … ?

(p. 24)

In fact, even Juan's spoken utterances tend to be an expression of his inner thoughts, for they are either chatter spoken to his dog or prayers directed to natural deities.

A child protagonist with whom we sympathize is also a successful means of introduction to the indigenous magico-religious cosmovisión. As Rosario Castellanos also shows in her novel, Balún-canán (1957), and the Peruvian José María Arguedas in his Los ríos profundos (1958), “we are perhaps more willing to accept a magical outlook in a child than in an adult. We do not, therefore, question Juan's conception of lightning as a powerful deity which lives in the cave. Furthermore, through him we appreciate the belief that gives the book its title: the dry river is caused by “una culebra muy gorda que se mete en el sumidero de la montaña y ataja con su enorme cuerpo la corriente” (p. 15). Juan is also used to reveal to us the central belief of the story concerning dogs accompanying the dead. We do not see this directly through his own belief, as with el Rayo, but rather we learn through his curiosity when he spies on the old men in discussion: a situation which adds an element of drama and suspense. Both directly and indirectly, then, Juan offers an easily assimilable insight into the world-view of the Indians of the area.

The overall result is a successful triple focus on the Indian, incorporating the following: a personal emphasis on Juan, which draws us to sympathize with him; a reminder, through the universal question of hunger and the isolation suffered by both our protagonist and the whole tribe, of the low socio-economic position of the Indian; and an insight into the indigenous world-view, an element of which is dramatized in the story. Apart from the use of estilo indirecto libre for interiorization, a feature we also find with Castellanos, a significant innovation in Lombardo de Caso's story is the use of an Indian child protagonist.

In the thirteen stories of Emma Dolujanoff's Cuentos del desierto, along with various technical innovations we again find little overt ideological comment, an increase in universal human appeal, and a notable decrease in concern with Indian customs and belief, these only being evident in three of the stories.

The cuento in which this latter aspect is most patent is “La correría del venado”, involving a special deer hunt which qualifies the young men who have participated to get married. However, although this tradition is central to the plot, and the action includes the ritual and the hunt, the primary focus is a personal one. It concerns a young man whose attitude and aspirations conflict with both traditional custom and family pressures. Lázaro is unwilling to participate in the hunt and will not kill a deer because he has a pet one at home. He is also being pressurized by his family to marry not the girl of his choice but the pregnant La Coyo, his deceased elder brother's cast-off. Due to these additional elements involving a central protagonist, it is very much a personal and psychological emphasis we find in this story, rather than ethnological, no doubt revealing Dolujanoff's neuropsychiatric training.

Indian custom and belief are used also as the axis of the story in “El pascola” and “El huellero”. In the latter, only God's forgiveness can save Ignacio's wife from death at her husband's hands, for she has helped and probably slept with a murderer. Traditional belief, expressed by Ignacio's father, reveals how God's forgiveness can be ascertained:

—En las huellas de los justos retoña el maíz. Es el pecado el que pudre el grano, pero a veces Dios perdona cuando no hay sangre. Si es que es buena de veras y la tierra no está muy enconada por su pecado, puede ser que en siete días se aparezcan las puntas verdes de los tallos.⁶

This belief combined with traditional justice may be the axis of the plot; the outcome, however, springs from a more universal sentiment in the main protagonist: love for his wife and a desire to forgive, which he does regardless of the finer details of traditional belief: “Pues como si la hubiera visto … más que otra cosa, sentí como si fuera a brotar el grano” (p. 113).

In “El pascola”, the tradition that the pascola dancer must tell the truth is central for it is used to ascertain the supposed truth about a crime. What emerges over and above this, however, in this complex tale, is Matías' eventual love for his crippled wife and his family ties. For these reasons the innocent Matías gives himself up as the criminal, thus avoiding betraying his brother, the true culprit, while saving the unjustly accused young Matías, his wife's son by another man.

It is a personal emphasis, asserting universal human sentiments, that characterizes Cuentos del desierto as a whole, even in these, the three most ethnologically oriented stories in the collection. This sets it apart from the exoticism of many of the early indigenista novels. The stories here deal primarily with universal problems like love, death, or disease as their key moment of crisis, portraying the reactions of one central character, occasionally more, in the face of such problems.

An eternal triangle provokes the moment of crisis in the opening story, “María Galdina”, when she sends her husband hunting deer one night and brings home a white man, a yori, from the Casa Grande. The story weaves in both a traditional world view: through the intervention of Lola la Vieja and her warning, and also the conflict between Indian and white man, implied in the love triangle. Uppermost, however, is the personal focus on Juan Eugenio, whose love for María Galdina is forever present: he hopes to find her a better variety of fish; he accepts her proposal of hunting a deer, despite his misgivings about her going to the Casa Grande; on his return he watches the yori leave their hut but yet can still embrace his wife lovingly and cast the presence of the yori from his mind.

In other cases also it is by means of a character's universally identifiable emotions that Dolujanoff evokes contact between reader and protagonist. We can feel, for example, for Toribio Chacón's respect for his dying father's wish for him to marry another girl from the one he loves but also with his eventual anger against the vieja bruja Apolonia who put this idea—which has brought Toribio so much suffering—into his father's head. Likewise, we sympathize with Toño's father's preoccupation with his child's blackening hand in “Las ollas de los remedios” and feel for his anger at the curandera's avarice and his final outburst of violence when his child dies yet could have been saved. In “Dios me prestó sus manos” we can appreciate the grandmother's fear of death while Tencho's love for her and desperation to save her from the “pestilencia negra” (as in the previous story) which is spreading up her leg is entirely understandable, as is his sense of miracle, evident in the title, when he successfully amputates and binds up the leg himself.

In these last three cuentos and, indeed, in the six remaining in the collection which have not yet been discussed, Dulajanoff uses a first-person narrator. This is always the local protagonist, never the first-person outsider, and so immediately evokes reader sympathy and identification with the Indian protagonist. The variety of first-person narrators Dolujanoff uses is impressive: the cross-eyed old fisherman of “La cuesta de las ballenas” whose confessional story reveals that the only woman he ever slept with was his brother's wife; the young girl of “Llano grande” who looks back a year later on her mother's death when they left home; the young man who saves his grandmother; the father who fails to save his son, the peón of “Siéntate Teófilo” who decides to leave his job for fear of what his boss has in mind for him; the young Tatán faced with an apparent ghost who brings him a letter from his faithless loved-one …

The first-person narrative allows Dolujanoff to penetrate into the mind of her characters. Prócoro confesses he has no regrets about having slept with Tanasia: “Y después de todo este tiempo, Dios no me ha dado el arrepentimiento, porque yo sólo siento una pena muy grande que me maltrata por dentro, pero no tengo remordimiento …” (p. 44). We see the curandera's avarice in “Las ollas de los remedios” through the father, who is ill able to pay: “Vieja mula, avorazada, sinvergüenza. Le di ochenta centavos más. También se puso a contarlos y también se le hicieron pocos” (p. 82). It is the first-person narrator which allows us fully to appreciate Toribio Chacón's predicament: having gone to ask Tiburcia's hand in marriage, as was his father's last wish, he ends up helping the family with a cow stuck in the mud: “Sus patitas … malditas sus patotas y sus becerros y toda ella completa. Por el pescuezo es por donde yo quisiera pasarle el mecate para írselo aprentando con todo mi coraje y sacarla bien muerta de este atascadero” (p. 123). This annoyance increases when another prospective husband turns up, his interruption interfering with the task of saving the cow: “‘El diablo es que te tiene tan ayudado y tan aconsejado de venir con tus saludos a estas malas horas’, sigo pensando yo al mirar cómo va sumiéndose la pata que soltó Regino” (p. 126). Finally, we have direct access to his anger about his final fate with a stream of consciousness technique used for the whole of Part III of the cuento:

“—Apolonia, Apolonia … ! vieja bruja, bruja negra, bruja mentirosa … Apolonia, Apolonia, bruja ratera, hija del diablo … Dios te tenga condenada y más que condenada por haberle metido en la cabeza al difunto Toribio Chacón, todas estas desgracias mias.”

(p. 129)

Stream of consciousness is used again in “El venado niño”, this time for the whole of the cuento, an evocation of daily life and aspiration to transcendence: “Santo pasmado y terco: el rezo de mi madre, el cauto de mi padre, ¡cántaro vacío! Yo soy Juana, soy Juanita, adentro me cabe un una ría. Yo soy Juana Llorando y tú, más desidia que santo” (p. 52).

First-person narrative caters for easy flashback, as we see in “Arriba el mezquite” where the current narrative slips into recollection: “También me tendí yo, pero no para dormir, sólo esperando a que amaneciera. No dormíamos desde que ella se fue, de eso eran ya cinco días. El domingo salió muy de mañanita, dijo que a misa” (p. 67). We are brought back to the present over three pages later with “de todo eso me acordaba yo, mientras estábamos tumbados esperando a que ameneciera” (p. 70).

Much more extensive use of this retrospective emphasis characterizes “Siéntate Teófilo”. This is the most technically complex of the cuentos in this collection, especially in the temporal sphere, for the whole story is built around the moment when Teófilo is called in to see his boss and goes over in his mind the possible motives for being summoned and the background which suggests them. By means of a simultaneous retrospective focus we receive a vivid impression of how Teófilo expresses himself, we get to see the workings of his mind, his attitudes, and how he sees his boss. Furthermore, his memories, sometimes dramatized in dialogue, offer us an insight into the relationship between patrón and peón, thus vindicating his decision to leave before finding out why the boss has summoned him:

En eso estaba yo pensando sin poderme mover todavía cuando no sé cómo, se me salen los sapos de las orejas y oigo a don Pablo:

—Pero ¿dónde vas indio maldito? ¡Siéntate, te digo!

Entonces yo pude ganar la puerta y agarrarme de la manija. Él siguió hablando:

No te vayas, Teófilo … ¿pero cómo te atreves? ¡Siéntate, idiota!

Yo seguía agarrada de la manija, oyéndolo nomás. Él no salía de lo mismo:—Siéntate y siéntate.

Yo no quise seguir oyendo ni averiguar qué era lo que quería con tenerme allí sentado. Salí corriendo y no paré hasta el jacal nuestro y se lo platiqué todo a mi jefecita.

(p. 62)

The use of the recurrent key phrase “Siéntate Teófilo” in this story to pin-point the axis is a highly effective device. “Dios me prestó sus manos”, likewise, has recourse to variations on the urgent central plea of “Por vida tuya, Tencho. No dejes que me muera debajo de un mezquite”, again forming the axis of the story. We are reminded by both of these cuentos, to this use of a recurrent key phrase, of Rulfo's “Diles que no me maten”.

Looking back on Dolujanoff's cuentos, we welcome the technical advances evident in retrospective passages and stream-of-consciousness. Incorporation of a psychological focus and the use of first-person Indian narrators are further significant features enabling us to penetrate into the indigenous characters' outlook. Occasionally, we cannot be sure if the protagonists are, in fact, Indians. Usually a passing reference to the yori, the inclusion of a few elements of the indigenous world-view and customs, and once in a while the word “indio”, generally spoken by a white man, distinguish the protagonists as Indian people. In four or five of the stories, all the same, we cannot be sure. Nonetheless, we can hardly assert this as a criticism. Rather it emphasizes the universality of Dolujanoff's approach, a universality which is perhaps her most striking contribution to the indigenista genre. We can, therefore, agree wholeheartedly with the opinion of one of her reviewers: “de seres humanos están hechos estos cuentos”.⁷

Coming now to place the indigenista cuentos of these three women writers in the context of the evolution of the indigenista genre in Mexico overall, we find that the diminution in them of the ideological impulse and of the folkloric emphasis so evident in the early novels is, in fact, achieved at much the same time in the novel, in particular with the novels of Castellanos: Dalún-canán (1957) and Oficio de tinieblas (1962). There seems to be, then, an evolution in the indigenista novel towards a “purer” narrative while the cuento was perhaps more intrinsically “pure” from the start.

An increasingly profound appreciation of the indigenous world-view is achieved also in the novel, partly by means of techniques which we have seen in the cuentos examined here. A first-person Indian narrative first emerges early in the novel with the nonetheless remarkably objective and very anthropologically oriented Juan Pérez Jolote (1948), by Ricardo Pozas. This is followed by Carlo Antonio Castro's much more novelesque Los hombres verdaderos (1950) which affords a more genuine “inside view” of the Indian along with the more subjective approach one tends to associate with a first-person narrative. The use of a sensitive child protagonist as a bridge to an appreciation of the indigenous cosmovisión is found in the early chapters of Castro's novel, while the narrator is still a child and, again, in Castellanos' Balún-canán, though her child, again a first-person narrator, is not herself Indian though she clearly feels for the Indian and his outlook. The greater personal focus, interiorization, and universal terms of reference that are found in all the cuentos studied here emerge contemporaneously in the novel with Castro's Los hombres verdaderos and, more especially, with Oficio de tinieblas, by Castellanos, the only woman amongst the indigenista novelists.

Notes

1. “Crisis y renovación de la novela hispanoamericana”, in La novela hispanoamericana, ed. Juan Loveluck, 3rd ed. (Santiago de Chile, 1969) 17.

2. “La novela indigenista mexicana” (unpublished Master's thesis Mexico: UNAM, Filosofía y Letras, 1959), Lira: 155; Chávez Camacho 129-133.

3. Rosario Castellanos, Ciudad Real, 2nd ed. (Naucalpan de Juárez, Estado de México: Novaro, 1977), 13. All subsequent references are to this edition and are incorporated in the text.

4. “El ciclo de Chiapas: nueva corriente literaria”, Cuadernos Americanos, 133: 2 (March-April 1964) 246-61; 254.

5. María Lombardo de Caso, La culebra tapó el río (Xalapa, Mexico: Veracruzana, 1962) 32. All subsequent references are to this edition and are incorporated in the text.

6. Emma Dolujnoff, Cuentos del desierto, 2nd ed. (Mexico: UNAM, 1972) 109. All subsequent references are to this edition and are incorporated in the text.

7. O.S., “Dolujanoff, Emma: Cuentos del desierto”, Estaciones: Revista Literaria de México, 4: 14 (Summer 1959) 241-42; 242.