Week 7

This past week in Latin American Civilization we have spent some time analyzing the book The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela. This book followed some fictional men in the Mexican Revolution who Azuela used to represent his general sentiment towards the war. When he wrote this novel, he had been exiled to the U.S. and his opinions were rather bleak as he did not know that the war would pick back up. He takes a hard look at the revolution as well as the revolutionaries motives. We looked at his views in comparison of the men who fought in the revolution in comparison to the men portrayed in the film Viva Zapata! It was interesting to see the differences but also the similarities between the two. In Viva Zapata!, we see Emiliano Zapata who was simply fighting for the rights of his people. When he saw himself begin to become corrupt, he quickly drew away from power and went back to fight for his people once more. In The Underdogs the corruption is seen in revolutionaries pretty quickly. They murder and steal, as well as partake a whole host of other miscreant deeds. Azuela, seemingly, was trying to portray that there was not a big of a difference between the Federales and the rebels as others seemed to believe. It was as if he wanted to point out that both sides of the war were being fought for selfish reasons, fought because it benefited the individual and the ideology of the war came second. This stark contrast demonstrates that there was more to this war than simply one idea or one motivation. It was deeply complicated and personal.