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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
No one would deny that contemporary Mexico, the Mexico of Lázaro Cárdenas, the Mexico of widespread agrarian reform, of militant trade unions, of advanced social legislation, of expanding popular education and expropriation of foreign oil companies, has entered an era of great historic significance. We who are close to the scene are acutely aware of the swift tempo which this peaceful phase of the thirty year old Mexican Revolution has assumed. However we may evaluate the direction in which Mexico's social order is moving, we are especially conscious of the fact that for the past half-decade, Mexico has been a nation in rapid transition.
1 Cf. Maurice Halperin, “What About Mexico?” New Republic, January 12, 1938, and “Mexico Faces the Test,” Living Age, November, 1939.
2 “The book publishing business in Mexico is a great racket. Anyone can publish a book—so long as he pays for it—and the majority of books that see the light of day each year are dutifully financed by their authors. These misguided beings scrape and save for years to reproduce their tiny volumes, which they immediately urge upon their friends. And they are so very proud of their books that it would be cruel indeed to tell them how serious is the havoc which they wreak upon all literary tradition.” Verna Carlton Millan, Mexico Reborn (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1939); cited by Howard S. Phillips, “Literary Appraisals,” Mexican Life, Mexico City, December, 1939, p. 32.
3 Arturo Torres-Rioseco seems to be the first scholar and critic to examine the modern Mexican novel with sufficient objectivity to bring out its limitations. In his La Novela en la América Hispana (University of California Press, 1939), p. 237, he writes:“ … la novela [mexicana], como creación artística, levantada a cierta altura de análisis psicológico, estudio de carácteres, pureza de estilo, no existe.”
4 Both Pellicer and the younger Octavio Paz, like their master López Velarde, reveal a certain awareness of the Mexican scene. However, the situation in general is well summed up by Antonio Castro Leal in “La Poesía Mexicana Moderna,” Sur, Buenos Aires, no. S3, February, 1939, p. 53: “Nuestra poesía se ha enfrentado en los últimos años con un problema que no acaba de resolver: el imperativo social, la exigencia de que viva y haga sentir la importancia de los nuevos valores sociales … Su expresión poética tendrá que venir,—porque esos valores sociales se sienten cada vez más y porque están ya en el horizonte del hombre y acabarán por entrar en su mundo poético.”
5 “La literatura, después de todo, no es un fruto de un capricho de iniciados, ni juego de una capilla de compadres. La literatura resulta de un complejo, fuerte y hondo proceso espiritual y material. A él no son ajenas la política ni la sociología, la pintura ni la economía, la religión ni la biología, la historia ni la geografía.” Luis Alberto Sánchez, “La Novela en la Costa del Pacífico,” La Nueva Democracia, New York, December, 1939, p. 24.
6 “En … El indio … llega a su mejor expresión terrígena aunque en su prurito de hacer obra costumbrista, debilite la unidad de acción de su novela a tal punto que aparece corno una sucesión de cuadros.” Arturo Torres-Rioseco, op. cit., p. 238.
7 Cf. Ruth Stanton, “The Realism of Mauricio Magdaleno,” Hispania, December, 1939, for a discussion of this novel.
8 Cf. Maurice Halperin, “Mexico's Melting-Pot,” Current History, July, 1937, for an account of this project.
9 For a brief analysis and appreciation of Medio Tono, see Maurice Halperin, “Mexico's Literary Scene Grows Brighter,” Living Age, June, 1939.
10 For a keen analysis of this phenomenon, cf. Renato Molina Enriquez, “La evolución histórica del ejido y sus transformaciones económicas,” Revista del Banco Obrero, Mexico City, no. 11–12, October–November, 1938.
11 Manuel Pedro González goes into this question at some length in “Apostillas en torno a dos novelas mexicanas recientes,” Revista Iberoamericana, vol. 1, no. 2, Nov., 1939. Also cf. Maurice Halperin, “Mexican Literature Is Marking Time,” New York Times (Book Review), September 9, 1934, for a discussion of Azuela's present day social and economic status.
12 The Spanish emigration is especially significant. The traditional, popular Mexican antipathy of feudal, monarchical Spain has given way in recent years, and especially since the fascist rebellion of 1936, to a warm appreciation of republican Spain and its culture. The Mexican government openly supported the Spanish Republic during the civil war, and since then has received some six thousand Spanish refugees on its soil. Among these are outstanding Spanish writers, scientists and intellectuals, men like Ramón Sender, José Bergamín, Navarro Tomás, Díez-Canedo, Pedro Carrasco, Roberto Balbuena, Adolfo Salazar, etc., who are already beginning to exert a profound cultural influence. Both of the emigré organizations, the Casa de Espana en México and the Junta de Cultura Espanola, have announced impressive lists of publications, some of which have already appeared. The latter also publishes a number of periodicals, among them the literary journal Romance.
13 Part of this investigation into the social background of Mexican literature was made possible by a grant-in-aid awarded the author by the Faculty Research Committee of the University of Oklahoma.