The Underdogs

by Mariano Azuela

  “But how are they supposed to like us, then, compadre?”

  And they spoke no more of it.

  They reached a plaza facing a coarse, massive octagonal church reminiscent of colonial times.

  At one time the plaza must have been a garden, judging from the bare, mangy orange trees planted amid the remains of iron and wood benches.

  The deep, joyful tolling of the church bells was heard again, followed by the harmonious voices of a female chorus rising with solemn melancholy from inside the church. The women of the town were singing the “Mysteries” to the accompanying chords of a bass guitar.

  “What fiesta is being celebrated today, señora?” Venancio asked a little old lady who was rushing toward the church at full speed.

  “The Sacred Heart of Jesus!” the pious woman replied, nearly choking.

  They remembered that a year had passed already since they had taken Zacatecas, and they all became even sadder.1

  Juchipila was in ruins, just like the other towns through which they had passed since Tepic, including Jalisco, Aguascalientes, and Zacatecas. The black traces of fire could be seen on roofless houses and burnt porticos. The remaining houses were boarded up. And occasionally a store would still be open, as if sarcastically, to show its empty shelves, which resembled the white skeletons of the horses scattered along every road. The awful mark of hunger could already be seen on the dirt-ridden faces of the people, in the bright flame of eyes that burned with fiery hatred whenever they beheld a passing soldier.

  The soldiers wander the streets looking for food, but in vain; so they bite their tongues, burning with rage. The only eating house that is open immediately becomes full. They do not have any frijoles or tortillas: just chopped chilies and salt. The leaders show their pockets stuffed with bills; but they are useless, as are their threats.

  “Pieces of paper, sure! Tha’s what ya’ve brought us! Well, then go ahead and eat that!” says the owner, an insolent old woman with an enormous scar across her face, who adds, “I’ve already gotten in bed with death, so I’m certainly not scared to die now.”

  And in the sadness and desolation of the town, as the women sing in the church, the birds keep chirping in the foliage, and the song of the warblers is still heard from the dry branches of the orange trees.

  VI

  Beside herself with joy, holding her son’s hand at her side, Demetrio Macías’s wife runs up the path of the Sierra to meet her husband.

  Absent for nearly two years!1

  They embrace but do not speak. She is overcome by sobs and tears.

  An astounded Demetrio sees that his wife has aged, as if ten or twenty years had passed. Then he looked at the boy, who was staring at him with fright, and his heart skipped a beat when he saw a copy of his own steely facial lines in the boy’s face, and of his own bright glare in the boy’s eyes. He tried to reach out and hug him, but the child was very afraid and hid between his mother’s legs.

  “It’s your father, son! It’s your father!” But the boy, still fear-stricken, buried his head in the folds of his mother’s skirts.

  Demetrio, who had handed his horse off to an orderly, walked slowly next to his wife and son along the steep path of the Sierra.

  “You’re finally back, thank God that you’ve returned! Now you’ll never leave us, right!? Say that you’ll stay with us forever now!”

  Demetrio’s face clouded over.

  An anguished silence grew between them.

  A black cloud was rising behind the Sierra, and muffled thunder could be heard. Demetrio held back a sigh. Memories rushed upon him like bees to a beehive.

  The rain started to fall in large drops, and they were forced to take refuge in a small rocky grotto.

  The downpour erupted with a thundering sound, shaking all the white San Juan flowers, those bundles of stars found everywhere in the Sierra: hanging from the trees, on the boulders, amid the weeds, and between the pitahaya cacti.

  Below, at the bottom of the canyon, through the veil of rain, could be seen straight, swaying palm trees, their angled tops rocking back and forth until a strong gust of wind blew their foliage open into green fans. And the Sierra was everywhere: sloping lines of hills and more hills, hills surrounded by mountains, which in turn were encircled by a wall of Sierra summits so tall that their blue tops were lost in the sapphire above.

  “Demetrio, for God’s sake! Don’t leave again! My heart tells me that this time something’s gonna happen to you!”

  And once again she is overcome with sobs.

  The frightened boy cries out loud, and she has to repress her own tremendous sorrow to console him.

  The rain slowly ceases. A swallow with a silver underside and angled wings flies obliquely through the glass threads of rain, gleaming suddenly in the late afternoon sun.

  “Why are you still fightin’, Demetrio?”

  Demetrio raises his eyebrows, absentmindedly picks up a small rock, and throws it toward the bottom of the canyon. Staring pensively down into the abyss, he says:

  “Look at that rock, how nothin’ can stop it now . . .”

  VII

  It was a truly glorious morning. After raining all night long, the sky had dawned covered with white clouds. Along the top ridge of the Sierra trotted wild colts, their manes standing on end and their tails sticking straight back, as proud as the peaks of the mountains raising their heads to kiss the clouds.

  The soldiers marching along the steep, rocky terrain have caught the joy of the morning. No one thinks about the artful bullet that might be waiting for them further on. The great joy of setting out lies entirely in the unforeseen. And for this reason the soldiers are carefree, singing, laughing, talking. Their souls brim over with the soul of ancient nomadic tribes. Where they are going and whence they come matters not at all. Their only desire is to walk, to keep walking, and to never stop; to be the masters of the valley, of the plains, of the Sierra, of everything as far as the eye can see.

  Trees, cacti, ferns: everything looks as if it has just been washed. The stones—with ocher like the rust of old armor— drip thick, transparent drops of water.

  Macías’s men are quiet for a moment. Apparently they have heard a familiar noise: a weapon fired in the distance. But several minutes pass and nothing more is heard.

  “In this same Sierra,” Demetrio says, “I, with only twenty men, took out more than five hundred Federales.”

  As Demetrio begins to recount that famous military deed, his men realize the grave danger in which they now find themselves. What if the enemy, instead of still being two days away, is actually hiding in the tall weeds of the ravine around them, along the bottom of which they are currently marching? But who among them would dare show his fear? When had Demetrio’s men ever said: “No, we won’t go that way”?

  When distant firing begins, up ahead where the vanguard is, no one is even that surprised. The recruits turn on their heels in an unbridled retreat, seeking some way out of the canyon.

  A curse escapes from Demetrio’s dry throat:

  “Fire! Shoot anyone who runs away!”

  “Let’s take the heights from them!” he then roars, like a wild animal.

  But the enemy, hiding by the thousands, unleashes its machine guns, and Demetrio’s men fall like ears of corn cut by a sickle.1

  Demetrio sheds tears of rage and pain when Anastasio slides slowly off his horse, without as much as a sigh, to lie outstretched, motionless. Venancio falls beside him, his chest horribly ripped open by the machine gun, and the Indian goes off the edge of the precipice and rolls to the bottom of the abyss. All of a sudden Demetrio finds himself alone. The bullets whiz by his ears like a hailstorm. He dismounts, drags himself along the rocks until he finds cover, places a stone to protect his head, and—with his chest set against the ground—begins to fire.

  The enemy spreads out, chasing the rare fugitives still left amid the chaparral.

  Demetrio aims and hits every time . . . Bang! Bang! Bang! His famous mar
ksmanship fills him with joy. He hits everywhere he sets his eye. He goes through one magazine and loads another into his rifle. And he aims again . . .

  The smoke from the firing guns does not dissipate. The cicadas intone their mysterious, imperturbable song; the doves sing softly in the nooks between the rocks; the cows graze peacefully.

  The Sierra is dressed in gala. Above its inaccessible peaks, a pure white fog descends like a snowy veil on a bride’s head.

  At the foot of a craggy hollow—enormous and magnificent as the portico of an old cathedral—Demetrio Macías, his eyes fixed forever, continues to aim with the barrel of his rifle . . .

  Notes

  INTRODUCTION1 See Chronology of the Mexican Revolution (p. xxi).

  2 Julián Medina is mentioned in part I, chapter II.

  3 See Chronology of Mariano Azuela’s Life and Work (p. xxv).

  4 For a thorough critical study of the evolution of Azuela’s Los de abajo, see Stanley L. Robe’s Azuela and the Mexican Underdogs .

  5 Modernismo was a Spanish-American literary movement that lasted from approximately 1880 to 1910. Although styles differed from writer to writer, Modernista writers believed in and practiced an aesthetic and a cult of beauty; emulated the French symbolist, Parnassian, and decadent poets; and often made references to exotic lands. The most important Modernista writers were the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío and the Cuban José Martí. Mexico also had two leading Modernista writers—Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera and Amado Nervo—with whose work Azuela would certainly have been familiar.

  PART 1

  I1 Palomo: Demetrio Macías’s and his wife’s dog is named Palomo, Spanish for a kind of dove or pigeon. The dog’s name is relevant in several of the first few scenes.

  2 Federales: The common term for the Mexican regular or federal army, especially during the three decades of authoritarian rule by Porfirio Díaz (1876-80; 1884-1911). During the revolution, the Federales were the government troops who fought against the revolutionaries—first under Díaz (through 1911) and then under Victoriano Huerta (1913-14).

  3 “I’ll turn your house into a dovecote”: In Spanish, the Federale tells Demetrio’s wife that he will turn her house into a palomar (dovecote). This is a play on words, since the Federales have just killed her dog, Palomo.

  4 Escobedo: Small town in the state of Coahuila.

  5 Jalpa: Town in the state of Zacatecas.

  II1 Moyahua: Town in the state of Zacatecas.

  2 pitahaya cacti: Tall cacti that bear edible fruit, native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.

  3 Hostotipaquillo: Small town in the state of Jalisco.

  4 Julián Medina: Reference to the leader—who became one of Villa’s generals—of a revolutionary band with which Azuela traveled as medical officer from October 1914 through April 1915.

  5 metate: A flat or partly hollowed, usually oblong stone on which grains, such as corn, are ground by means of a smaller stone.

  6 Quail’s name in the Spanish original is Codorniz. See Introduction, p. xvi for a discussion of the translation of most of the characters’ nicknames.

  7 Lard’s name in the Spanish original is el Manteca.

  8 huisache trees: A thorny, shrubby acacia found in the southern United States and throughout Mexico and Central America.

  9 thirty-thirty: Nickname given by the rebels during Mexico’s revolution for their carbines; refers to the Winchester 30-30 carbine. There is even a famous corrido (Mexican ballad) of that name from the time, entitled “Carabina 30-30.”

  III1 The Indian’s name in the Spanish original is Meco.

  2 vara: A Spanish measure varying in length in different localities, usually about thirty-three inches.

  IV1 Juchipila: Town in the state of Zacatecas.

  2 The Wandering Jew: 1844 novel by the French author Eugène Sue (1804-57). The Sun of May (El sol de mayo): 1868 novel by Juan A. Mateos (1831-1913), one of the most popular Mexican writers of the second half of the nineteenth century. The novel has not been translated into English.

  3 jícara: The Spanish name, used in Mexico and Central America, for the calabash tree or its fruit, the calabash gourd.

  V1 curro: Derogatory term denoting a city slicker who in turn looks pretentiously down on the poor. See Introduction, p. xvi for a discussion of the translation of most of the characters’ nicknames and why curro is left in Spanish.

  2 “Carranzo”: Luis Cervantes probably says “Carranza,” not “Carranzo,” but Anastasio in all likelihood misunderstands, unaware of who this key political figure is, or why Cervantes would identify himself as being on the side of Carranza. At this stage in the revolution (in mid-1913, near the start of the novel), Venustiano Carranza (1859-1920), the governor of the state of Coahuila and an elder of the revolution, was considered the commander in chief of the revolutionary forces against General Victoriano Huerta’s federation forces. It is reasonable, then, that Cervantes would call out the name Carranza hoping that the group of revolutionaries would respond favorably.

  VI1 Most Holy Mother of Guadalupe: A sixteenth-century Mexican icon of the Virgin Mary, said to have appeared to Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City from December 9 through December 12, 1531. The Virgin of Guadalupe is Mexico’s most famous religious and cultural image. A key element of the Virgin of Guadalupe’s uniqueness and importance is that she is a mestiza Virgin, and thus representative of Latin American mestizo culture and Mexican identity in particular.

  2 Villa: Francisco “Pancho” Villa (1878-1923). The foremost leader of the Mexican Revolution in the northern area of Mexico, especially in the state of Chihuahua, where Villa was provisional governor in 1913 and 1914. Often referred to as El centauro del norte (the centaur of the north) because of his celebrated cavalry attacks as a general, Villa organized an army of twenty thousand men during the height of the revolution. Most of these soldiers were vaqueros and peasants, and Villa’s own humble origins contributed to what would become his legendary fame.

  3 “We get lousy paper money”: Reference to the issue of the different denominations of money with which soldiers—both Federales and revolutionaries—were paid during the Mexican Revolution. “That murderer” refers to Victoriano Huerta and the (probably accurate) rumors circulating during the revolution that he ordered the assassination of Francisco Madero in February 1913.

  VIII1 “before long she was addressing him informally”: In the Spanish original, Camila begins to address Luis Cervantes in the informal tú instead of the formal usted.

  2 the federation: refers to the official government of Mexico, consolidated under the authoritarian presidencies of Porfirio Díaz until the revolution, and then reinstated during Victoriano Huerta’s dictatorship, 1914-15. The reference to Huerta’s friends and family fleeing Mexico City, which preceded Huerta’s own exile from Mexico, places the action of the novel at this point right around July 1914, at the fall of Huerta’s dictatorship.

  IX1 nixtamal: Blue corn ground by hand—usually with a metate (see chap. II, n. 5)—to make tortillas.

  2 “Well, María Antonia has got her the ’curse’ ” : As part of their gossip, the women here are saying that another character, María Antonia, is currently having her menstrual period (the euphemism they use for this is “the curse”), from which she apparently suffers cramps (which they refer to as “the colic”).

  3 palomo: In the Spanish original, the small pigeon is a palomo, which is meant to resonate with the beginning of the novel and the name of Demetrio’s dog.

  X1 Spanish flies: Dried beetles formerly considered an aphrodisiac.

  XI1 madroño: A small, attractive evergreen tree with dark, lustrous green leaves, red berries, and hard wood.

  2 “La Adelita”: The most famous corrido [ballad] of the Mexican Revolution. Intimately associated with the revolution and sung especially by the Villistas, the song tells the story of a soldier in love with a girl named Adelita. “La Adelita” was almost as much a defining image a
s the sombreros worn by the revolutionaries.

  3 atole: A kind of corn or other meal, or gruel or porridge made of this.

  XII1 aguardiente: A very strong distilled liquor, such as brandy or pulque, usually made from the sap of the agave or maguey.

  2 “The Federales had fortified El Grillo and La Bufa”: The news that Demetrio Macías and his men hear corresponds to the historical moment right before the revolutionaries attacked and took Zacatecas, capital of the state of Zacatecas. At this point in the novel, the federal armies, under Huerta’s leadership, are preparing to defend Zacatecas, while the revolutionaries, under the leadership of Villa and including Villa’s general Pánfilo Natera, are preparing to attack the city. El Grillo and La Bufa are summits overlooking the city; the fighting over these was central to the outcome of the battle. The battle itself (Toma de Zacatecas [taking of Zacatecas]), in June 1914, was one of the bloodiest of the Mexican Revolution and the turning point that would lead to Huerta’s defeat.

  3 Pánfilo Natera (1882-1951): A veridical revolutionary leader who would become one of Villa’s generals. Interestingly, Natera is the only historical figure who actually appears as a character in the novel; the other major ones (Villa, Huerta, Carranza, etc.) are referred and alluded to many times but do not actually make an appearance per se.

  XIII1 “the one about how they killed Señor Madero”: Macías is referring to the assassinations of Madero and his vice president (Pino Suárez), but is confusing several key names here. In what was known as La decena trágica (the ten tragic days), in February 1913, Huerta usurped power from Madero in a military coup and in all likelihood ordered Madero and Suárez killed. Félix Díaz was the nephew of Porfirio Díaz and an old political crony from the Porfiriato period with whom Huerta conspired as part of his coup.Macías’s confusion raises the issue of his motivations for fighting, and the extent that they are personal rather than ideological, as revealed by his ignorance of and distance from the main political events of the revolution during this time. Macías himself speaks to how he became a revolutionary in the first place in the account he tells Cervantes at this moment of the novel.