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 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number EP35841 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT Dissertation Publishing UMI EP35841 Published by ProQuest LLC (2012). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code uestf ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 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* Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 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. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 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 ------- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 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. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 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; Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 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. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 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» Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 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. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.