Race and Social Class in Azuela's Characterization of the Bandido (Part TWO: THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION OF 1910 AND ITS CULTURAL Legacy) (Report‪)‬

In his article "La novela mexicana frente al porfirismo" John Brushwood observes that Mariano Azuela's The Underdogs was seen by most Mexicansas a novel that, having captured the essence of the revolutionary commotion that followed the fall of Porfirio Diaz, had the function to define the Mexican nation. ["Cuando los mexicanos se dieron cuenta de que Mariano Azuela habia captado en Los de abajo la esencia de las conmociones revolucionarias que siguieron a la caida de Porfirio Diaz, la novela comenzo a desempenar con plena seguridad su funcion de interprete de la nacion mexicana" (Brushwood 7).] A document that virtually antecedes the journalistic and graphic reports of contemporary wars, The Underdogs was conceived and presented as "Pictures and Scenes of the Present Revolution" ["Cuadros y escenas de la revolucion actual" (Robe 123)], that is, as a realist depiction of what was happening in Mexico at the time. The novel narrated the same events that were being reported and commented on in the pages of El Paso del Norte, the Spanish-language newspaper in El Paso, Texas, that published the novel in folletin form in 1915. As such, The Underdogs gave a fairly true account of the social forces that were the cause, in part, of what for the author had turned out to be a failed revolution. Disenchantment with politics and revolution is the essential thematic element of The Underdogs, and that can be seen in its three-part narrative structure that represents in its development Azuela's own intellectual experience with the revolution: his initial idealized optimism, followed by the sobering experience of his direct involvement in the military action and, finally, the sense of disillusionment and doom that took hold of him when he faced the political reality and the human egotistical interests behind the revolution. In order to express his loss of faith in what he had thought was a revolutionary movement for the betterment of the Mexican underdogs, Azuela had to weave the story of an ideal betrayed by the practical ways of the world: a literary representation of his own intellectual and moral story of a mistaken revolutionary, someone who fought not for himself but for the others, his people, the ones he knew had lost all hope of a change for the better. Azuela "observed at first hand the wild excitement, the bewilderment, the brutality, the hopes, the frustrations of the people of the sierras, of the underdogs" (Hendricks xvii) and depicted them as realistically and directly as he knew how to do, being the experienced realist writer he was: a keen observer of his society.