Los de abajo / The Underdogs: Novela de la revolución mexicana / Novel of Mexican Revolution - Softcover

Azuela, Mariano; Englekirk, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0881336629 ISBN 13: 9780881336627

Publisher: Waveland Pr Inc, 1992

Synopsis

First published as a serial in the newspaper El Paso del Norte, in October and November of 1915, then as a book published by the same newspaper, the novel Los de abajo has been translated into all the main languages of the world. Mariano Azuela's masterwork came out one hundred years after José Loaquín Fernández de Lazardi's El Periquillo Sarniento created the genre of the Novel of the Revolution, as it left behind the norms of the European novel and forged new parameters for Hispanic American fiction. The impact of Los de abajo is owed in large part to the sustained dramatic tension of the novel, from the opening scene to the death of the protagonist - in the same geographic location, creating a sense of circularity - but its success is partly the result of the fulfillment of the title's promise to depict the underdogs. Who are the underdogs but those at the bottom of the social and economic ladder, that is, the poorest and most disinherited. And the underdogs in Azuela's story have decided to fight against the injustices perpetrated by those on top. The struggle is bloody, the suffering intolerable. And all for what? All just in order to remain in the same place - as underdogs - after two years of hardships. This attitude of defeat, of failure, is one of the elements that sustain lively interest in the novel and give it permanent value. The descriptions of nature serve to soften the violent revolutionary scenes, and it is this technique of interweaving human actions with descriptions of the landscape that confers an unusual equilibrium upon the novel and has caused it to be considered the best of the many novels about the Mexican Revolution. This edition, annotated and with a prologue by Luis Leal, is a fundamental text for any course in Hispanic literature, and is indispensable for courses focusing on early 20th century Latin America.

About this title

About the Author:

Mariano Azuela, the first of the "novelists of the Revolution," was born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, Mexico, in 1873. He studied medicine in Guadalajara and returned to Lagos in 1909, where he began the practice of his profession. He began his writing career early; in 1896 he published Impressions of a Student in a weekly of Mexico City. This was followed by numerous sketches and short stories, and in 1911 by his first novel, Andres Perez, maderista.

Like most of the young Liberals, he supported Francisco I. Madero's uprising, which overthrew the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, and in 1911 was made Director of Education of the State of Jalisco. After Madero's assassination, he joined the army of Pancho Villa as doctor, and his knowledge of the Revolution was acquired at firsthand. When the counterrevolutionary forces of Victoriano Huerta were temporarily triumphant, he emigrated to El Paso, Texas, where in 1915 he wrote The Underdogs (Los de abajo), which did not receive general recognition until 1924, when it was hailed as the novel of the Revolution.

Azuela was fundamentally a moralist, and his disappointment with the Revolution soon began to manifest itself. He had fought for a better Mexico; but he saw that while the Revolution had corrected certain injustices, it had given rise to others equally deplorable. When he saw the self-servers and the unprincipled turning his hopes for the redemption of the underprivileged of his country into a ladder to serve their own ends, his disillusionment was deep and often bitter. His later novels are marred at times by a savage sarcasm. During his later years, and until his death in 1952, he lived in Mexico City writing and practicing his profession among the poor.

About this edition

• Publisher: Waveland Pr Inc
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0881336629
• ISBN 13: 9780881336627
• Binding: Paperback
• Editor: Kiddle Lawrence