¡Descarga Mariano Azuela's 'Los de abajo': The Betrayal of the Mexican Revolution's Ideals y más Monografías, Ensayos en PDF de Cultura Española solo en Docsity! The death of Azuela's idyllic Revolution The only outstanding work by Mariano Azuela, Los de abajo, is considered a masterpiece and quasi-official text of the revolution. Based on a historical event of national importance: the great revolutionary victory of Zacatecas, Azuela manages to capture in his novel the epic aspect of the whole Revolution that describes the adventures of a small group of guerrilleros. In all the novels and chronicles set in the Mexican Revolution, different purposes and points of view can be identified, whether they represent national or regional interests, for or against the ruling political regime. Azuela narrates most of the story through dialogue using the characters to expose these different points of view about the Mexican Revolution. As will be seen later, he will use the character of Alberto Solís, an idealist revolutionary intellectual, to give voice to his own opinion. Although Azuela plays with different narrative modes, shifting from one to another smoothly, uses the Dramatic Mode of the dialogues to remove himself from the story and divert the attention of the reader from the author's personality to the action itself. However, he uses what Norman Friedman calls Selective Omniscience with the character of Luis Cervantes, a character through whom the author does not identify himself in real life as in the case of Alberto Solís, to embody the main theme of the novel: the betrayal of the Revolution's ideals (Gerdes, 1981: 560). To understand the purpose and point of view of Azuela when writing his novel, it is necessary to know the historical context in which his childhood and adolescence develop. The first generation of novelists of the Mexican Revolution, born between 1873 and 1890, emerged during the peaceful and materially prosperous dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. These authors were, like Mariano Azuela, mostly professionals with good academic preparation, enthusiastic about the ideals of Francisco Madero and who applauded the fall of the dictator Porfirio Diaz —a description with which the character of Alberto Solís fits perfectly. As described by Theresa Avila (2014: 220), for the Maderistas, Madero’s followers, the civil war consisted in establishing a democratic political system. Nevertheless, they defended maintaining a centralized government and creating more opportunities in politics and business for the middle and upper classes of the regions. On the other hand, for the Zapatistas, Zapata’s followers, the rebellion pursued a government with power distributed among the different regions, a labour and agrarian reform, as well as the improvement of social and political conditions. In any case, this generation will soon be disillusioned with the Revolution when observing acts of barbarism committed by the people (Menton, 1967: 1001). This disappointment is perfectly shown in the novel during the conversation between Cervantes and Solís at the end of the first part, just before Solís's death (32-33). Until this point, the author presents an idealized popular peasant movement, moved by the basic principle of the right to live free of harassment, with human dignity (Parra, 2005: 26). Solís details to Cervantes with pride and admiration the heroic action of Demetrio Macías to whom he attributes the capture of La Bufa in Zacatecas, the decisive battle of the revolution against Victoriano Huertas. A sign of this is the use of expressions such as “¡Qué machito es su jefe!” (What a macho your boss is!), “nos dejó con tamaña boca abierta” (Left us with such an open mouth) or “¡Qué hermosa es la revolución, aun en su misma barbarie!” (How beautiful the revolution is, even in its own barbarism!). But thereafter, as if expressing a thought aloud instead of addressing Cervantes, he revels with a certain melancholy his disappointment with “las turbas entregadas a las delicias del saqueo” (the mobs delivered to the delights of looting), and this disillusion cannot be better expressed than when he says “¡Qué Chasco, amigo mío!”. The author, through Solís’ character, points out as a racial heritage of the Mexican the acts of “¡Robar! ¡Matar!” (Robbery! Murder!). After expressing his fear that all those deaths of rebels have been in vain since they had only managed to change one dictator for another, he affirms: “¡Pueblo sin ideales, pueblo de tiranos!... ¡Lástima de sangre!” (People without ideals, people of tyrants! ... Pity of blood!). Azuela expresses with this phrase, practically the last one that Solís pronounces before dying, the reason why he anticipates as a prophet the failure of the revolution. As Menton suggests (1967: 1004-1005), it is quite significant and ironic that the triumph of the revolution represented symbolically by Demetrio's victory in La Bufa coincides with the death of Solís and also with the end of the first part, coinciding in turn with the mathematical centre of the novel (The three parts consist respectively of 21, 14 and 7 chapters). It could be said that the author wanted to point out a before and after in the future of the revolution with the incorporation of Macias and his guerrillas into the constitutional army, abandoning their home territory and losing control and freedom of their actions. To reinforce this point of view, Azuela once again uses his irony when making the end of the novel coincides with the death of Demetrio Macías “En esta misma sierra” (in the same mountain) (67) of La Bufa in which he defeated the federal army with only twenty men. Azuela uses the deaths of Solís and Macías to reinforce his pessimistic thesis about the future of the revolution. The idyllic rebellion of the rural lower classes is transformed by the manipulation of Cervantes taking advantage of the ignorance of the peasants. The author, by killing Solis but letting Cervantes live until the end of the novel, reflects his disappointment at the people's choice to follow charlatans and not intellectuals with ideals. He warned it through the last speech of Solís before dying and with the death of Macías wants to confirm this vicious circle: the underdogs who rebelled, after a process of moral degeneration, become the oppressors’ workmen.
