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Mexican "Machismo" In Novels By Lawrence, Sender, And Fuentes

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Mexican "Machismo" In Novels By Lawrence, Sender, And Fuentes

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Content MEXICAN MACHISMO IN NOVELS BY LAWRENCE,
SENDER, AND FUENTES
by
Janet Barber, IHM
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Spanish)
August 1972
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University Microfilms
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BARBER, IHM, Janet, 1925-
MEXICAN MACHISMO IN NOVELS BY LAWRENCE,
SENDER, AND FUENTES.
University of Southern California, Ph.D., 1972
Language and Literature, modem
University Microfilms, A XEROX Com pany, Ann Arbor, Michigan
© Copyright by
JANET BARBER, IHM
1972
THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
T H E G R A DU A TE S C H O O L
U N IV E R S IT Y PARK
LOS A N G E L E S , C A L IF O R N IA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, w ritten by
Janet Barber, IHM
under the direction of h.QX... Dissertation C om
mittee, and approved by a ll its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Graduate
School, in p a rtia l fu lfillm e n t of requirements of
the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
Dean
D a te A u§ust_.19_72
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairman
PLEASE NOTE:
Some pages may have
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To Joan, with gratitude and love
Oh pain which is defeating itself, oh pain
lasting so long that you don't matter, so long that
you become normal: oh pain, I wouldn't be able to
get along without you now, I've gotten used to you,
oh pain, oh. . . .
--Carlos Fuentes, La muerte de Artemio Cruz
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is with the greatest pleasure that I thank all
of the people who in any way helped me to write this
dissertation. My thanks go first to Dr. Helen Kelley, IHM,
president of Immaculate Heart College, and to Dr. Francis
Bernard Rang, both of whom in their own way gave me the
precious gift of time. There is no adequate way to express
my thanks to Joan Palevsky and her family for their equally
precious gift of place. I am grateful for the loving
support of my many sisters in the Immaculate Heart Commu
nity, and especially for the forbearance and laughter of
those with whom I live. Most special thanks, of course, go
to the members of my dissertation committee, Dr. Dorothy
McMahon, Dr. Robert Curtis, and Dr. Gerald Larue, for their
gift of concern, time, wise suggestions, and patience. To
countless colleagues, students, friends, and to all the
gracious and dedicated librarians and other university
personnel who have smoothed my path in so many quiet ways
over the last ten years, my sincere thanks.
INTRODUCTION
CONTENTS
Page
1
Chapter
I. MEXICAN MACHISMO: THE PERSONAL DIMENSION . . 6
Definitions of Mexican Machismo and
Its Importance
The Mexican Woman
Developmental Cycle of the Mexican Male
Sentimentality, Passion, Inactivity,
Desgana. Irresponsibility, and La
Chingada
II. MACHISMO: SOME HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS,
AND A SYNTHESIS.................... 66
Possible Historical Roots of Machismo
The Macho's Social Context
Self-esteem and a Synthesis
III. THE PLUMED SERPENT: MEXICO NEEDS A MIRACLE . 148
IV. THE PLUMED SERPENT: RAMON SPEAKS HIS WORD . . 206
V. EPITALAMIO DEL PRIETO TRINIDAD: THE DEFLATION
OF MACHISMO.............................. 254
VI. LA MUERTE DE ARTEMIO CRUZ: NO E X I T ........ 333
CONCLUSIONS........................................ 393
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................... 401
v
INTRODUCTION
There is a test for color blindness which consists
of "hiding" a figure composed of certain-colored dots in a
field of other dots. If a person is blind to that particu
lar color, the figure does not emerge. Just so, I believe,
does the pattern of machismo figure in novels which have
been inadequately understood by otherwise competent
critics. The basic aim of this dissertation is to show how
this machismo is functioning in three important twentieth-
century novels about Mexico, and thus to reveal hitherto
undiscovered values of message and form. The novels chosen
are The Plumed Serpent (1926) by D. H. Lawrence; Epitalamio
del Prieto Trinidad (1941) by Ramon J. Sender; and La
muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962) by Carlos Fuentes.^
The meaning of the word "machismo" is often mis
understood. In both the United States and Mexico, the word
elicits reactions which include admiration of its content,
well-bred shudders regarding the word's "vulgarity," and
denial of the existence of a special content. In the
United States especially, even in the Southwest, people
^These novels by no means exhaust the list of good
novels that treat machismo. ranging from Tirano Banderas
(1923) by^Valle-Inclan, to Las tierras flacas (1962) by
Agustin Yanez.
1
2
either have never heard the term or use it in ways that
seem to bestow a positive value to its meaning ("the new
'machismo' look in men's fashions," or the admirable
so-called "machismo" of a certain sports figure), or use it
as a catchword for that other popular catch-term, "male
chauvinism." In the first two chapters of this disserta
tion, then, I attempt to show what Mexican social thinkers
take machismo to be: the exact opposite of real virility,
of real manhood. I go on to trace the interrelated
familial, historical, and social causes of machismo and
this lack of self-esteem as proposed by Mexican social
commentators. Since environmental patterns are presumably
best known and understood by members of the culture under
discussion, I have tried to use the interpretations only of
Mexican social thinkers, with very limited exceptions. In
this way, I hope also to avoid the problem of credibility
that could be incurred by an "Anglo" woman presuming to
speak an informed word on machismo. I must assume full
responsibility, of course, for the selection and arrange
ment of the material and for judgments regarding its
interrelationship and meaning. I have chosen to interpret
the larger meaning of machismo and its related culture in
light of the ideas of Rollo May regarding the human task in
life, ideas based on an interpretation of the universal
biological development of man, independent of his cultural
3
environment.^
It has seemed desirable to explore the question of
machismo and its cultural matrix in considerable detail in
the first two chapters in order that very few explanations
need be given in the chapters dealing with the literary
works. In Chapters III and IV, however, fresh supportive
material, not strictly pertinent in the previous chapters,
is introduced in an attempt to demonstrate that D. H.
Lawrence's ideas concerning Mexico and his "program" aimed
at restoring their "manhood" to Mexican men are not as
fanciful as critics have generally thought.
It should be made clear that the introductory
chapters do not explore the influence of the Spanish and
Arabic cultures on Mexican machismo, partly because Mexican
commentators themselves seem not to have treated the ques
tion in depth, and partly because the novelists are not
primarily concerned with it.
A word of caution is in order. This dissertation
is concerned with machismo as it has existed in Mexico, not
as it may exist in the United States. At no point do I
o
A very clear and helpful discussion of the term
"biological" in psychoanalysis, and of the possible dynamic
meaning of the cultural environment of the developing ego,
is given in Heinz Hartmann, Ernst Kris, and Rudolph M.
Lowenstein, "Some Psychoanalytic Comments on 'Culture and
Personality,"' in Psychoanalysis and Culture: Essays in
Honor of Geza Roheim. ed. by George B. Wilbur and Warner
Muensterberger (New York: International Universities
Press, Inc., 1951), pp. 3-31.
4
presume to describe phenomena of the Mexican American
culture. While this dissertation might serve to illuminate
some aspects of background, direct application of its
contents to the Mexican American culture would be highly
questionable.
The dissertation is the fruit of twenty-five years
of involvement and preoccupation with the country that
first captivated me in 1947. Lest my work be taken for
something which it is not, I wish to quote here some words
with which Francisco Gonzalez Pineda introduces his book,
El mexicano: psicologxa de su destructividad. words which
could equally well apply to the dissertation:
[The fact that] the constructive elements of
human conduct are not being studied here [leads to]
the risk that a study which only tries to be a
partial one, of one area of destructive social
conduct to be found in Mexico, will be mistaken for
one which asserts that this is Mexican conduct in
its entirety. Anyone who cannot make this distinc
tion will doubtless have trouble with the material
discussed.3
Gonzalez goes on:
Since the negative aspects of Mexican life are
being treated here and not the positive, to affirm
that Mexico is only what is analyzed in these pages
would be a lie, an act of bad faith, such as many
have committed in the past or still commit. Mexico
3 ^
Monografxas psicoanaliticas, Vol. VII (Mexico:
Editorial Pax-Mexico, S.A. for the Associacion Psicoana-
lxtica Mexicana, A.C., 1961), p. 8. (Hereinafter referred
to as Destructividad.) (All translations of directly-
quoted material are mine, unless the quotation is taken
from a published English translation.)
5
is like this; but it is also a thousand other things
besides, constructive and richly positive. The
combination, the totality, is Mexico, not just one
part or the other.4
^Ibid., p. 10.
CHAPTER I
MEXICAN MACHISMO: THE PERSONAL DIMENSION
Definitions of Mexican Machismo
and Its Importance
The word machismo is a derivative of the Spanish
word macho. which in turn is an early derivation from Latin
mascuius. the diminutive of mas, maris. "of the masculine
sex," and it retains this meaning as its basic one.^ Among
the various secondary meanings of macho, the 1732 Diccion-
ario de autoridades of the Spanish Royal Academy gives:
"By way of allusion this is said of a man of excessive
2
strength and endurance." In addition to the meaning
"animal of the masculine sex," the 1970 edition of the
3
Academy Dictionary gives "strong, vigorous, brave." In
his Diccionario de meiicanismos, Francisco J. Santamaria
says of macho: "This is used in reference to the man who
^Joan Corominas, Breve diccionario etimologico de
la lengua castellana. 1961, p. 364.
2
Real Academia Espanola, Diccionario de autori
dades , Edicion Facsimil, Vol. II, 1963, p. 446.
3
Real Academia Espanola, Diccionario de la lengua
espanola. 19th ed., 1970, p. 824. (Hereinafter referred to
as Diccionario de la Academia. 1970.)
6
7
has vast energy, or is very brave or of a great deal of
i.4
character. Renato Rosaldo has described the term as
implying "not only the concepts of 'a real he-man,' of
virility, of sexual superiority," but also "a masculinity,
a feeling of manhood in which are conjoined all the quali
ties that Man--we can almost say Superman--can have."^
Christian Brunet defines the macho as "the man whose entire
range of attitudes regarding life must be the expression of
his [sexual] masculinity."^
Interestingly enough, although the word machismo
has been used by serious writers since at least 1950, it is
still not given in the Academy Dictionary. Santamaria
lists it as "a crude popular form, for manliness,
virility."^
But what is the content of the popular Mexican
tinder standing of manliness or virility, the real signifi
cance of the word machismo? It can be said, of course,
that every Mexican has his own definition of what it is to
be a man, and that to many Mexican men, machismo consists
of a life-style of personal integrity, of protecting one's
^Mexico: Editorial Porrua, S.A., 1959, p. 677.
■*"E1 lexico como reflejo de la psicologia del
mexicano," Hispania. XXXVI (February, 1953), 67.
£
"Le Mexique, terre d1ambiguite," Revue de Psvcho-
logie des Peuples, XXIII (September, 1968), 233. (Herein
after referred to as "Le Mexique.")
^Diccionario de meiicanismos. p. 677.
8
family, of respecting the rights of others, of struggling
for social justice. On the whole, however, the term
machismo is understood as referring to values and behaviors
involving forces that tend to be destructive rather than
Q
productive. In fact, Mexican psychologists, philosophers,
novelists and social thinkers in general have been analyz
ing and condemning machismo for almost forty years.
According to the Mexican psychoanalyst Aniceto Aramoni, the
term "definitely does not refer to the qualities of a
g
mature, productive man." Octavio Paz has written, "One
word sums up the attributes of the macho: power. It is
force without the discipline of any notion of order: arbi
trary power, the will without reins and without a set
course."^ "The essential attribute of the macho--power--
Francisco Gonzalez Pineda defines "destructive
forces" as those which are disintegrative, and lead to
death if other forces do not control or limit them
(Destructividad. p. 9). Life forces are those which seek
to harmonize, to unify, to conserve life or to seek
pleasure. Both types of forces are necessary, because,
"paradoxically, when one predominates in an exaggerated way
over the other, the two can become dangerous or destructive
for the individual" (ibid.).
^Psicoanalisis de la dinamica de un pueblo (Mexico:
UNAM, 1961), p. 275. (Hereinafter referred to as
Psicoanalisis.)
^ The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in
Mexico, trans. by Lysander Kemp (New York: Grove Press,
Inc.; London: Evergreen Books, Ltd., 1961), p. 81.
(Originally published in 1950 by Cuadernos Americanos.
Mexico, and revised and expanded in 195 9 for the second
edition, published by the Fondo de Cultura Economica,
Mexico, under the title El laberinto de la soledad.)
(Hereinafter referred to as Labyrinth.)
9
almost always reveals itself as a capacity for wounding,
humiliating, annihilating."^
The macho commits chingaderas. that is, unfore
seen acts that produce confusion, horror and
destruction. He opens the world; in doing so, he
rips and tears it, and this violence provokes a
great sinister laugh. . . . The humor of the macho
is an act of revenge.^
The Colombian essayist and novelist Sebastian Romero-Buj,
writing of Latin American machismo in general, calls it "an
anxious concern for virility . . . which ends up in
- 1 Q 1 /
inhumanity." "Machismo is cruel among us." The Mexi
can philosopher and essayist Salvador Reyes Nevarez writes,
"[The machista has] the tenacious, unbreakable, obsessive
purpose of proving in every way that he is free in relation
15
to the woman and that she is totally subjected to him."
These quotations suffice to introduce the general
tone of the machismo to be treated in this paper before I
go on to analyze it in detail. The reader could well
interject at this point, however, "But why make an issue of
what is surely the stance of a small minority? And does
not every nation or culture have its own form of machismo?
1:LIbid. . p. 82. 12Ibid. , p. 81.
■JO
"Hispanoamerica y el machismo," Mundo Nuevo. No.
46 (April,^1970), p. 29. (Hereinafter referred to as
"Hispanoamerica.")
14Ibid.
15 ^
"El machismo en Mexico," Mundo Nuevo. No. 46
(April, 1970), p. 15. (Hereinafter referred to as
"Machismo.")
10
Why single out Mexican machismo?1 '
Indeed there is. "a machismo of each society and
1 f \
each epoch." It is a characteristic of the Mediterranean
17
area, especially of Spain, Greece, Italy, and France.
There is an Arab machismo. I would like to suggest, how
ever, that the machismo of other contemporary societies,
even of Italy and Greece, does not have the fatal social
consequences of Latin American machismo. According to
United Nations statistics, in 1966 Colombia ranked first in
the world for male deaths due to homicide and operations of
war (38.7 deaths per 100,000 total population, a figure
18
based on burial permits. This had increased from 36.5
in 1962.^) It is significant to me that Mexico ran a
close second in this regard, without the factor of the
political violence which has plagued Colombia in recent
years. Mexico's provisional figure for 1966 was 34.1, up
from 31.9 in 1962.^ Nicaragua's rate for 1965 was 29.3.^
16
Romero-Buj, "Hispanoamerica," p. 28.
^Reyes Nevarez, "Machismo," p. 14.
18
United Nations, Demographic Yearbook 1967 (New
York: Statistical Office of the United Nations, Department
of Economic and Social Affairs, 1968), p. 473.
19
United Nations, Demographic Yearbook 1963 (New
York: Statistical Office of the United Nations, Department
of Economic and Social Affairs, 1964), p. 599.
90
Demographic Yearbook 1967. p. 468.
21
United Nations, Demographic Yearbook 1968 (New
York: Statistical Office of the United Nations, Department
of Economic and Social Affairs, 1969), p. 419.
11
It is startling, puzzling, and encouraging to note that the
1968 Demographic Yearbook shows a sharp drop for Mexico and
Colombia in 1967: Mexico was down to 18.9 and Colombia to
21.5 (again, based on burial permits). These Latin
American rates are still the highest in the world, however.
The Mediterranean rates contrast sharply with them: Spain,
0.1 (1965); Greece, 0.7 (1967); Italy, 0.9 (1966); France,
0.8 (1965); Turkey, 2.1 (1965); the United Arab Republic,
4.1 (1963); Jordan, 3.0 (1965). The United States, with
its already heavy military casualties in Vietnam and its
increasing domestic violence, had a rate of 6.8 in 1967, up
from 4.8 in 1962.^
Now, how can one explain the pronounced gap between
the homicide rate of certain Latin American countries and
23
that of the rest of the world? Aramoni says that
although crime in Mexico certainly has diverse and complex
causes, "it should be considered the machismo can, in
itself alone, explain [the extremely high homicide rate],"
and Romero-Buj sees machismo as a primary cause of the
"bloody persecutions, assassinations and exaggerated
Ibid., pp. 419-427; Demographic Yearbook 1967.
pp. 493, 523 (U.A.R. and Jordan).
23
The fascinating task of trying to discover why
Peru's rate was only 1.0 (1964) and Ecuador's only 6.0
(1965) lies beyond the scope of this paper. The absence
in these countries of some of the factors to be discussed
in these chapters might be suggestive.
12
0 /
violence" which have plagued Latin American history.
But as can be readily imagined from the preliminary
descriptions of it, machismo has other more subtle and
possibly more destructive effects on Mexican society as a
whole. I expect to show that it deeply affects the quality
of Mexican family life and the early, decisive years of
Mexican children; that it seriously hinders the possibili
ties of psychological maturity on the part of Mexican women
and of their normal participation in public life; that it
has not only perpetuated individual poverty but has helped
delay the economic, democratic and humanistic development
of the whole country; that it is one of the causes of
delinquency in general; and, above all, that machismo and
the interrelated complex of attitudes that both feed it and
derive from it are a serious obstacle to the possibilities
in Mexico of a widespread genuine and productive human love
based on reality and leading to rich personal development
and fulfillment through the communication and sharing of
self. In fact, Octavio Paz goes so far as to say that
25
because of the hypersensitive "hermeticism" that is part
^Psicoanalisis. p. 318; "Hispanoamerica," p. 31.
^Paz initiated a widespread use of "hermetismo"
and "hermetico" in regard to the Mexican man in his essay
"Mascaras mexicanas." "Mexican Masks." "Hermetismo" or
"hermeticism'* means "the quality of hermetico, closed,
impenetrable" (Diccionario de la Academia. 1970, p. 702).
Everything, says Paz, serves as a defense to the Mexican
man, who passes through life like a man who has been
flayed; everything can hurt him, including words and the
13
of the general male mystique, a hermeticism so defensive
that it pretends one's fellow man does not exist,
the shadow of Nobody spreads out over our land . . .
covering everything. Silence--the prehistoric
silence, stronger than all the pyramids and sacri
fices , all the churches and uprisings and popular
songs--comes back to rule over Mexico.26
In response to the earlier question, "Is not
machismo the stance of a minority?" I can only report that
Aramoni says that it is "extremely common," characterizing
the "representative Mexican man," and it is "still in full
27 -
vigor" in 1959. Maria Elvira Bermudez says that her
characterization of family life, which of course includes
machismo, is more or less true of all three social
28
classes. Samuel Ramos, professor of social philosophy
and aesthetic theory at the University of Mexico, states
very suspicion of words" (Labyrinth. p. 29). Hermeticism,
as Paz uses the term, refers to invulnerability, a refusal
to "open [oneself] up to the outside world" (ibid., p. 31)
and a refusal to emerge from oneself, to "let oneself go"
(ibid., p. 32). The virtue most admired in men, according
to Paz, is reserve (ibid., p. 35). Fromm and Maccoby
state, "The narcissicism characteristic of the village male
. . . implies a certain isolation and self-protectiveness.
Our results seem to confirm the picture, which has been
described so eloquently by Octavio Paz, of the Mexican
male's resistance to being touched, to being made open and
vulnerable" (Erich Fromm and Michael Maccoby, Social
Character in a Mexican Village: A Sociopsychoanalytic
Study (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970),
p. 116. (Hereinafter referred to as Social Character.)
^ Labyrinth. p. 46.
^ Psicoanalisis. pp. 318, 164, 165.
^ La vida familiar del mexicano. Mexico y 10
mexicano, Vol. XX (Mexico: Antigua Libreria Robredo,
1955), p. 50. (Hereinafter referred to as Vida.)
14
in 1951 that "within an extensive group of individuals with
members in all of the social classes, one observes character
traits like distrust, aggressiveness, and hypersensitivity
29
to insult." Octavio Paz lets his remarks apply to Mexican
30
males in general. Possibly the Mexican psychoanalyst
Francisco Gonzalez Pineda makes the most sweeping statement,
saying in 1961 that the national character traits include a
"need for defense or of indirect aggression . . . because
of the constant, intense collective fear by everyone of
31
everyone." "The balance of aggression and counter
aggression is established on the level of general culpabil-
32
ity." The aggression he speaks of includes more than the
aggression of machismo, actually. It is part of the
"interrelated complex of attitudes" mentioned above. On a
more moderate note, Rogelio Diaz-Giierrero, a Mexican
psychologist and psychoanalyst whose opinion is based on
actual experimentation, says in 1959, "As a matter of fact,
29
Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico, trans. by
Peter G. Earle (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., and
The University of Texas Press, 1963), p. 9 ("Prologue to
the Third Edition"). This is the translation of Ramos' El
perfil del hombre v la cultura en Mexico. , first published
in 1934 and expanded in the 1951 Third Edition. (Herein
after referred to as Profile.)
30
"The habitual reactions of the Mexican are not
limited to a single class, race or isolated group in an
inferior position. The wealthy classes also shut them
selves away from the exterior world, and lacerate them
selves whenever they open out" (Labyrinth, p. 72).
31 32
Destructividad. p. 49. Ibid. . p. 95.
15
this need to be tmiv macho ... is truly a quite character-
33
istic, typical aspect of the Mexican male."
One should realize, of course, that the manifesta
tions of machismo in upper-class men are not so crudely
apparent as they are in the lower classes. As the discus
sion of machismo proceeds, the reader will quite probably
be able to distinguish for himself behavior which would be
an expression of the lower classes and very possibly caused
by poverty, and behavior which could exist in the upper
classes and even be made possible by the protection or
3 /
status afforded by wealth.
It is time to turn, then, to a more careful
analysis of the behavior of the Mexican macho. According
to Aramoni, the term machismo refers to "the genital sex
33 • *
Estudios de psicologxa del mexicano (3rd ed.;
Mexico: Editorial F. Trillas, S.A., 1968), p. 54. (Here
inafter referred to as Estudios.) Schwartz reports that at
least a third of the adult male population of Chiconcuac,
Morelos, prefer to be with other males, and consider it
unmanly to spend time with their families if married. She
calls this "the macho type of male friendship" (Lola
Romanucci Schwartz, "Morality, Conflict and Violence in a
Mexican Mestizo Village" [unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
Indiana University, 1963], p. 108. [Hereinafter referred
to as "Morality, Conflict and Violence."] Chiconcuac is
the same village reported on by Fromm and Maccoby in Social
Character).
O /
Angelina C. de Moreleon mentions the "creido."
the type of macho who tries to maintain his own image by
putting others down, "ninguneandolos." acting as if they
did not exist. "You doubtless all know the type because we
find it daily in the patios and halls of this [university]
department" ("Algunas formas del valor y de la cobardia en
el mexicano," Filosofia Letras [Mexico], Nos. 45-46
[January-June, 1952], p. 173).
16
function, to a peculiar sort of courage, to a special way
of settling human conflicts, and expresses a special
35
attitude toward woman, life, and death." The macho is
characterized by "a compensatory exaggeration of the
personality; narcissism, petulance; aggressiveness, intense
destructivity; important hatred toward anyone superior in
any sense; and profound contempt and fear of women, except
for his own near female relatives."3^ He expresses great
love for his own mother, but great contempt for everyone
else1s. "The macho's hypersensitivity toward the attitudes
of others makes him take any innocuous attitude to be an
37
insult." He cannot tolerate discussion of his wishes,
orders, or whims. "He concedes great importance to
OQ
genitality and the primary sexual act." Aramoni says
that
functioning in terms of his sex, a man should domi
nate women, be capable of committing aggression, show
superiority by fighting openly either with his body
or with a knife or pistol; he should not tolerate any
insult or doubt regarding his "manhood" nor any
compliment to the woman he is accompanying; and he
must show temerity and contempt of danger and thus
affirm himself (almost always in trivial circum
stances) regarding human values.39
He must be able to ingest great quantities of alcohol.49
33Psicoanalisis. p. 275.
36Ibid.. p. 149. 37Ibid.
38Ibid.. pp. 149-150. 39Ibid., pp. 275-276.
4QIbid., p. 292.
17
It is not particularly useful to give examples of
machista conduct, because no matter what particular mani
festation is shown, it will be similar to some aspect of
conduct found in other countries. It must be emphasized
that the over-all configuration of a machista pattern is
what is unique to any country, and the particular national
causes which might account for that configuration. How
ever, the following newspaper account seems to be a classic
example of machista behavior:
SHOOTING DUEL; ONE DEAD AND ONE WOUNDED
Two men had a duel. One of them died from a
shot in the head and the other was seriously wounded
with a winnowing fork.
Gregorio Pizaha Cajiga, 27 years old, lay dead
in the Ixtapalapa garbage dump.
His brother-in-law, Joaquin Nolasco Mendez, 23
years old, was taken in a Cruz Verde ambulance to
the Xoco emergency hospital in Coyoacan.
The events occurred night-before-last, shortly
after 11:30.
The two men got drunk, and while they were
returning home, Joaquin Nolasco reproved his
brother-in-law Gregorio for the bad treatment he
was giving his sister Alicia.
Gregorio grabbed a winnowing fork and attacked
Joaquin, who pulled out a pistol and fired at him.^
Regardless of what the actual background and com
plete details of the occurrence may have been, this little
vignette can summarize in part the phenomenology of
machismo. It seems to involve the macho’s "special atti
tude toward woman, life, and death," his "special way of
^"Duelo a tiros; un muerto y un herido,"
Excelsior (Mexico City), August 1, 1970, p. 20-A.
18
settling human conflicts," his "peculiar sort of courage,"
his inability to tolerate any kind of criticism, and his
use of alcohol. It probably does not matter where I start
in my analysis of these characteristics, since they are
all interrelated; so I shall arbitrarily begin with the
attitude of the Mexican male, and indeed, of Mexican
society in general, toward woman.
The Mexican Woman
In a consideration of the Mexican woman, one of the
first things that strikes one is the ambiguity of her
social position. Oddly enough, both poles of the ambiguity
seem false. Basically, while woman in general is devalued
in Mexico, the position of the mother is acknowledged as
/ Q
supreme. Aramoni speaks of Mexico as a society that is
"profoundly, radically impregnated with maternity."^
/ o
See Jose Gomez Robleda, Psicologia del mexicano:
motivos de perturbacion de la conducta psico-social del
mexicano de la clase media (Mexico: Instituto de Investi-
gaciones Sociales, UNAM, 1962), pp. 62-97 (hereinafter
referred to as Perturbacion): Diaz-Guerrero, Estudios,
p. 23; Paz, Labyrinth, p. 30; Bermudez, Vida, pp. 91, 52-
53; Aramoni, Psicoanalisis. pp. 158, 302; Santiago Ramirez,
El mexicano: psicologia de sus motivaciones, Monografias
psicoanaliticas, Vol. I £5th ed.; Mexico: Editorial Pax-
Mexico, for the Asociacion Psicoanalitica Mexicana, A.C.,
1968), p. 24 (hereinafter referred to as Motivaciones):
Gonzalez Pineda, Destructividad. pp. 119, 141.
^Aramoni, Psicoanalisis. p. 261; Diaz-Guerrero,
Estudios. p. 30.
^Psicoanalisis. p. 261.
19
Ramirez characterizes the Mexican family as "uterine."^
Even so, the word madre is deprecatory, insulting. Woman
is at once the "rajada" ("the opened one") so effectively
described by Octavio Paz, constitutionally inferior because
of her very anatomy,^ and at the same time an object of
near deification, either because of her early innocent
purity or because she has finally earned the right to
adoration through her total self-abnegation as wife and
mother
It seems clear to me, however, that the exaggerated
tribute paid the mother in Mexico is on the whole an
49 ^
exacted rather than an authentic tribute. Bermudez
observes that the negative attitude toward woman is empha
sized in the Mexican "and the extolling tendency seems
vague and uncertain. Possibly this is because the impor
tance of honor and the exalted function of the woman within
^ Motivaciones. p. 185.
kfs
Brunet, "Le Mexique," p. 239; Ramirez, Motiva
ciones . p. 86; Bermudez, Vida, p. 99.
^ Labyrinth. p. 30. This idea is not exclusive to
Mexico, of course. It is interesting to note that Sigmund
Freud said as late as 1939, "The repudiation of femininity
must surely be a biological fact, part of the great riddle
of sex" (Collected Papers. Vol. V (London: Hogarth Press,
Ltd., 1949), 357, cited by Heinz L. Ansbacher and Rowena R.
Ansbacher in The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler
(New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1956), p. 52.
48
Gonzalez Pineda, Destructividad. p. 120.
4 9
Ibid., pp. 121, 157. See infra, pp. 289-292.
20
the family are imposed concepts, not spontaneously elabo
rated by the people.Paz is of the opinion that male
"respect" for women is simply a hypocritical way of
subjecting her, and points out that in any event it is only
accorded her in public.^ According to Bermudez, "Lack of
respect and of consideration on the part of the man toward
the woman seems to be the most frequent characteristic of
5 2
the average Mexican family."
Woman is considered by men to be an instrument, a
function, an "incarnation of the life force, . . . essen-
53
tially impersonal." "The Mexican woman quite simply has
r / j — p
no will of her own." She is an acquisition of the man.
This basic attitude regarding woman is confirmed by social
fact. Draz-Guerrero states that the Mexican wife, long
before maternity, begins the total denial of all her own
needs and the absolute service of the satisfaction of the
t r £
needs of everyone else in the family. And the execution
of her social role helps make her supposed impersonality a
reality: through suffering, says Paz, the woman becomes
invulnerable, impassive, and stoic.^
50Vida, P- 85. ^^Labyrinth. p. 38.
5 2
Vida, p. 58. See also Brunet, "Le Mexique,"
p. 240.
■^Paz, Labyrinth. pp. 35, 38, 36.
^Ibid. , p. 37. ^Bermudez, Vida, p. 90.
^ Estudios. p. 29. ^ Labyrinth. p. 39.
21
But the Mexican man not only considers woman to be
inferior while adulating her as mother. He seems to fear
her. Paz implies that man fears woman's passive, secretive
5 8
magnetism, her hidden sexuality. Brunet, with the Aztec
goddess Coatlicue in mind, points out that woman is Mother
5 9
Earth: she feeds, but she is also a sepulcher.
Ramirez helps in explaining these apparently
contradictory attitudes toward woman by asserting that the
culture accepts the maternal expression of femininity, but
is hostile toward its genital expressions.8^ (The only
time in history that the Mexican woman could express her
femininity more as "woman" than as "mother," he says, was
58Ibid.. pp. 37-38.
8^"Le Mexique," p. 239. This is more than a primi
tive telluric image, of course. One thinks immediately of
the supposed male castration fears felt at the sight of
woman's genitals and Freud's idea that post-coital flaccid-
ity is at the root of man's dread of woman. (See Philip
Rieff, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist. Anchor Books
[Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1961], p. 196,
quoting Sigmund Freud, "The Taboo of Virginity" [1910], The
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Standard
Edition. Vol. XI [London: Hogarth Press, 1953], 198-199.)
Myth and dream would seem to confirm that on unconscious
levels, woman has always been feared, if only because man
has such enormous difficulty in freeing himself from his
first "imbeddedness" in her. If he cannot cut his tie with
Mother, man cannot develop his own consciousness and
autonomy of action. (See Rollo May, Love and Will [New
York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1969], p. 134; and J. E.
Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols. trans. from the Spanish by
Jack Sage, with a Foreword by Herbert Read [New York:
Philosophical Library, 1962], p. 356 [hereinafter referred
to as Symbols].)
^ Motivaciones. p. 88.
22
f i 1
during the Revolution of 1910. ) This maternal-genital
dichotomy may shed light on the tendency of the Mexican
male to think in terms of the "good1 1 woman and the "bad"
6 2
woman. Here again both poles are unreal. The "good
woman" is chaste (that is, her hymen is intact). She has
no sexual ideas and absolutely no genital experience. She
is unfailingly tender and affectionate; she unceasingly
gives the loved one understanding, protection, comfort,
courage, hope, ambition, will power, faith. This is the
63
woman the man will marry. After marriage he expects her
to continue her chastity by not soliciting his sexuality or
64
enjoying sex, by being totally passive. The ordinary
Mexican husband fulfills the marriage obligation with his
wife, but is careful not to teach her to enjoy the act. He
/ r
engages in sex play with his mistress. The "good" woman
is passive like the "self-denying mother," "the waiting
sweetheart," "the hermetic idol."^ And who is the "bad"
61Ibid., p. 72.
62
See Paz, Labyrinth. p. 39; Gonzalez Pineda,
Destructividad. pp. 123-126; Reyes Nevarez, "Machismo,"
p. 18 .
63
Gonzalez Pineda, Destructividad. p. 124.
6A ^
Ramirez reports that only 15 percent of the women
in a certain area of Mexico City have actively solicited
sex from their husbands (Motivaciones. pp. 183-184).
fiS
Diaz-Guerrero, Estudios. p. 29.
^Paz, Labyrinth. p. 39.
23
woman? She is both the virgin who yields to the sexual
6 7
importunity of the man and the one who will not yield!
68
She is any woman who rejects his advances. She is the
aggressive woman.^ She abandons the man.^ Reyes Nevarez
suggests that the popular image of the woman who is chal
lenging, free, haughty and proud, is simply the social
71
picture of the woman who is no longer a virgin. In other
words, the "good" woman corresponds to the idealized
maternal construct, and the "bad" woman is essentially
genital and self-indulgent; she lacks the self-abnegation
and eternal constancy of the mother. The emphasis is on
the giving maternal breast rather than on the absorbing
female vagina.
This intolerance of female genitality seems at
first glance paradoxical in a society in which the males
are said to have a very intense sexual need.^ Maria
Elvira Bermudez helps one to see a possible link between
^Gonzalez Pineda, Destructividad. pp. 127-128.
^Bermudez, Vida. p. 88.
69
Paz, Labyr-vth, p. 39.
^ Ibid.. p. 39; Gonzalez-Pineda, Destructividad,
p. 123.
^"Machismo," p. 18.
72
"The [Mexican man] needs woman more intensely
than other men do" (Bermudez, Vida, p. 89). "The sexual
need is very highly intensified in the Mexical male" (Diaz-
Guerrero, Estudios. p. 57).
24
woman's position of inferiority, the man's sexual need, and
an aspect of his macho behavior. She says that the Mexican
man's interest in women is quite indiscriminating and
73
merely physical. The man sees that his intense need for
woman--any woman--is bound to put him in a position of
inferiority in comparison with the object of this need.74
He consequently tries to compensate by acts of courage and
strength, but, "like all behavior that does not flow spon
taneously from natural motivations, this compensation turns
75
into abuse and boastings." It is circular. He aggra
vates the inferior position of woman by his need for her:
"The Mexican . . . [masks] his constant preoccupation with
the opposite sex by an intense, exaggerated contempt, In
7 A
other words: he scorns Woman, but is obsessed by women."
One begins to understand better the previously quoted
statement from Reyes Nevarez: "[The machista has] the
tenacious, unbreakable, obsessive purpose of proving in
every way that he is free in relation to the woman and that
7 7
she is totally subjected to him."
But since Mexican macho behavior is in part due to
the attitudes and conduct of women, I will now turn to an
examination of the patterns which the Mexican woman has
73Vida. p. 87. 74Ibid.
75lbid. 76Ibid., p. 85.
77Supra, p. 9.
25
evolved in her attempts to live the role assigned her by
the culture.
Unless several boys have come first, the Mexican
78
baby girl is born under the sign of tragedy. The father
wants the financial help of sons; he prefers not to have to
protect her "honor"; eventually he will either have to
accept a "male intruder" into his home through marriage or
79
live with a frustrated old maid. Even the mother is
disappointed. At first she considers herself less a mother
if she gives birth to a girl, although later she feels more
womanly with her daughter than with her sons. She
genuinely believes the girl is worth less and will suffer
80
more.
It is basic to understand at this point that the
mother's inability to live up to the 'unrealistic cultural
expectations put upon her, for she must be an un-sexed,
all-giving, all-enduring saint, and a useful thing rather
than a person, intensifies her feelings of inferiority and
78
Diaz-Guerrero, Estudios. p. 24; Gonzalez Pineda,
Destructividad, pp. 115-118.
79 *
Diaz-Guerrero, Estudios, p. 24.
80
Gonzalez Pineda, Destructividad, p. 141. As an
example of their assertion that girls are less valued,
Fromm and Maccoby report that in Chiconcuac, Morelos, the
midwife "charges up to twice the price for delivering a
boy" ( ' Social Character, p. 146).
26
81
gives her a marked tendency to depression and guilt. So
she sees the baby girl as someone in whom she can remake
herself, achieve a perfection she has not achieved in her
8 2
own life. She also wishes for the baby a destiny better
than her own. This laudable desire is ultimately destruc
tive, however, because in her anxiety to form her daughter
perfectly, she projects her insecurity regarding her own
worth, fidelity and chastity onto the little girl and
83
treats her as being completely untrustworthy. The result
is that the daughter believes herself to be bad, incapable
of defending her own integrity or of living by moral
standards.84 The mother destroys any possibility in the
child for real maturity and any capacity for real love and
85
coping adequately with her own vital situation.
The little girl's genitals are hidden from birth,
her sphincter training is begun earlier than the boy's, and
her masturbation is punished more severely, all this as
part of the mother's attempts to form a rigid, severe moral
86
and social conscience in the girl immediately. What she
does achieve is the child's almost complete identification
81 +
Diaz-Guerrero, Estudios. p. 32; Gonzalez Pineda,
Destructividad. p. 143; Gomez Robleda, Perturbacion. p. 97.
82 ^
Gonzalez Pineda, Destructividad. p. 141.
83Ibid. . pp. 161-162. 84Ibid.. p. 162.
85Ibid. . p. 163. 86Ibid.. p. 144.
27
with her at an age in which later elaboration of the
attachment is most difficult.87
Because of her early training regarding men and her
own inferiority, the girl loses any possibility of a later
relationship with men that might be characterized by mutual
88
trust, affection, and mature respect. From her second
year on, she is taught to submit to the man (she must serve
not only her father, of course, but her brothers). She is
also soon taught that men are bad; among other things, she
is told to fear her brother’s sexuality. She is taught to
89
see man as an enemy, From infancy on, the mother
maneuvers to make the children tolerable to the sensitive,
90
easily irritated and jealous father. And as the girl
grows older, she is drawn into a conscious and highly
verbal complicity with her mother against her father. The
mother often succeeds in making the daughter feel constant
guilt, and that any criticism or conscious hostility toward
her would be a terrible crime, adding to those committed by
91
the father. This generally completes her identification
with the mother, and the internalization of "a destructive,
87Ibid., p. 148.
88Ibid.. p. 149; Bermudez, Vida, p. 91.
89Bermudez, Vida, pp. 52-53.
90 ^
Gonzalez Pineda, Destructividad. p. 147.
91Ibid., p. 153.
28
malign father who sacrifices women, humiliates, despises,
does not love, a father who above all only knows how to be
dependent. 1,92
One must remember that most Mexican women cannot
directly vent their frustration on their husbands. It is
not surprising, then, that Bermudez, Gonzalez Pineda and
Aramoni call attention to the inconsistent and arbitrary
alternation between close love and brutal punishment in the
93
mother-child relationship. The little girl soon becomes
a virtual maid in the home, not so much for the sake of her
education as for the mother's convenience. The mother,
treated as a thing, in turn treats her daughter as a
94
thing. As a result of direct and indirect maternal
aggression, reactions of auto-aggression are created in the
95
girl, part of which leads to masochistic processes.
Gonzalez Pineda concludes that the girl is fixated
at sadistic oral and anal levels and can very seldom
achieve genital maturity.9* ^ In fact, Ramirez says that she
92Ibid.
9^Vida, p. 62; Destructividad. p. 33; Psicoanali
sis . p. 314.
9^Gonzalez Pineda, Destructividad, pp. 158-159.
95Ibid., p. 148.
96
Ibid. I assume this is what he means. The text
seems to contain a misprint. "Fijaciones predominantes de
tipo oral y oral sadicas" is meaningless.
It might help the reader to know that Lidz says,
referring to Erik Erikson's paradigms, "In the oral phase
29
approaches adulthood with a long-standing fear of sexual-
The period of courtship has its built-in paradoxes.
The young woman who has been taught to accept her inferior
ity and lack of integrity suddenly becomes the Midons of
the courtly love convention, all-powerful and all-adored.
The brothers are the custodians of their sister's chastity.
So great is the male concern for the girl's "honor" that
frequently not even the father's or brothers' friends are
98
allowed into the home, except for fiestas. It seems
paradoxical that the men who feel that every woman, "good"
of psychosexual development the psychosocial task concerns
achievement of a basic trust in the self and others, with
failures leading to varying degrees of basic mistrust: the
'basic' is emphasized to convey that the task is not
particularly conscious but blends into and forms an inher
ent component of the total personality. Emphasis in the
second year of life is upon the attainment of muscular
control in general rather than upon bowel control in
particular. . . . Loss of self-esteem and shaming in the
process leads to a pervasive sense of doubt and shame"
(Theodore Lidz, The Person; His Development throughout the
Life Cycle [New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1968], p. 81
[hereinafter referred to as Person]).
"The genital character is characterized, for Freud,
by achieved harmony, efficiently deployed energy, direct
ness, and fully employed libido. . . . Genitality is not so
much another stage as the abolition of stages. The genital
character is an idea" (Rieff, Freud: The Mind of the
Moralist. pp. 58-59). Rieff mentions that Karen Horney
replaces Freud's synecdochal use of the word "genital" with
"the sincere character," Thomas French with the "inte
grated" character, and Erich Fromm with the "productive"
orientation (ibid., p. 59).
97
Motivaciones. p. 183.
98
Diaz-Guerrero, Estudios, pp. 28-29.
30
or "bad," is fair game to them and should feel honored by
their desire, should protect the purity of their own so
99
jealously. Brunet suggests that to the Mexican, every
woman is "good" and "bad" at the same time--except his own.
Because they are his, they escape the duality. Hence he is
aggressive toward other men who do not view his women as he
does.^^ Diaz-Guerrero says that the concern for "honor"
really reduces itself to the fact that "the loss of a
woman's virginity outside matrimony brutally wounds the
essential [sociocultural] premise of femininity and abnega-
101
tion in the woman." Gonzalez Pineda suggests that the
Mexican father's almost universal antagonism to his
daughter's suitors is based on the implication in marriage
of the aggression of the young male toward the old male and
102
his symbolic reduction to impotence.
Brunet points out that female coquetry, a rebellion
against her condition, solicits both the man's homage and a
mastery of his imagination. By keeping him distant, she is
103
present in idealized form in his imagination.
Whatever the historical, social, and psychological
reasons for the difficulty of the young couple in carrying
^See Aramoni, Psicoanalisis. pp. 158, 161-162.
■^^"Le Mexique," p. 240.
^^Estudios. p. 24.
102
Destructividad, p. 150.
"^^"Le Mexique," pp. 238-239.
31
out a relatively calm, open, wholesome courtship, the
result is that they frequently are not really acquainted by
the time they marry. They have not learned to tolerate
each other’s defects (which were never revealed in the
artificial contacts of the courtship), or learned what each
other likes.In other words, the conventions of court
ship are the final factor which, added to the earlier
psychological ones, prevent man and wife from being friends
as they enter upon their life together.
With marriage (regardless of which type it is,
legal or simply cohabitation), the man's idealism is
diverted toward his mother, and the young woman enters upon
an intensification of the life of cloistered inferiority
105
and service which she knew as a child. She frequently
106
lacks even feminine friends. As was said before, her
husband tries not to give her sexual gratification.
Because higher education is on the whole still considered
■^^Bermudez, Vida, p. 54; Ramirez, Motivaciones.
p. 183.
105
Diaz-Guerrero, Estudios. pp. 28-29.
106
Schwartz reports, "The virtuous woman has no
friends by traditional concept which is somewhat modified
for the youngest women. A good woman stays at home except
when some household necessity brings her out" ("Morality,
Conflict and Violence," p. 111). Bermudez writes, "On the
whole, Mexican women neither understand nor feel friendship
for one another. Other women are merely rivals in the
terrible struggle for survival or for a stable spot on the
social ladder. A woman’s most terrible censor is another
woman" (Vida, p. 61).
32
107
unfeminine in Mexico by men and by many women, and
because few women have interests outside the home unless it
108
be the Church, the woman is almost inevitably an
uninteresting companion, and "rarely possesses the deepest
affections of her husband. In most cases she has his
fatigue and boredom."-^9 jj er on^y way cf compensating for
^Aramoni, Psicoanalisis. p. 303; Diaz-Guerrero,
Estudios. p. 28; Bermudez. Vida, pp. 63-64.
1 08
Aramoni, Psicoanalisis. p. 301.
^^Bermudez, Vida, p. 55. Carlos Fuentes writes
regarding the depersonalization of the Mexican woman, "The
struggle of the middle-class woman for her personalization
is another fact ... of these ten years [1953-1963].
Victim of a triple misogynous tradition (Aztec, Spanish,
and Arabic) which makes her a mere object of masculine
will, destined to avenge herself of the macho behind the
knotty thicket of family life and the thin gauzes of the
seraglio. or to be victimized by him with all the melo
dramatic incidents of Mariano Azuela's Maria Luisa, the new
Mexican woman . . . demands not the Jacobin rights of
feminism, but the full ability to be a person, to be con
sidered as a person, to act like a person. The atrocious
Mexican machismo. the paradox of a vital cowardice dis
guised as valor, is the chief obstacle to the Mexican
woman's achieving personhood; nevertheless, an understand
ing of the nature of machismo helps the woman, by contrast,
to act as a person; the macho is a non-person, trapped by a
deep sense of non-existence, of weakness, and even of
latent homosexuality, who must affirm himself in violence,
in the negation of feminine personality, and in the tight
embrace of his macho pals. Little by little, her entry
into the professions and the job market, her contact with
more rational forms of life through literature and the
movies, and the very insolence of the macho who would
reduce her to a thing, have led the Mexican woman to a new
spiritual disposition, which consists not only in denying
the old sexual and intellectual taboos, but in affirming
new values of freedom, self-awareness, and self-possession"
(Tiempo mexicano [Mexico: Cuadernos de Joaquin Mortiz,
1971], p. 82) .
33
the abandon in which she finds herself is by having many
children and by giving love to them. Unfortunately, how
ever, she repeats the only examples she knows, and
possesses them as she was possessed. She may even find
that the children's grandmother is trying to possess them
in an attempt to counteract the depression of the menopause
and the melancholy of old age, clinging to the only thing
that ever gave her security.
In a less sympathetic vein, Maria Elvira Bermudez
is of the opinion that the woman herself contributes in a
sadly efficacious way to fostering machismo. "because her
legendary abnegation and fidelity, rather than being
authentic virtues, are the product of her ineptitude and
egoism," and "because the falsely humble attitude of the
111
victim exasperates rather than moves to pity." She
accuses the woman of easily adhering to anyone who thinks
she is weak, so as to avoid responsibility and hard work.
She clings to complaints and constant unmotivated and
112
ostentatious tears. To Reyes Nevarez, she abets
machismo by carrying her passive feminine virtues to a
113
"ridiculous, counterproductive" extreme. "For [the
macho's] airs of unsatiable virility, a woman who endures
110
Ramirez, Motivaciones. pp. 87, 129.
m vida, pp. 93-94. 112Ibid. , p. 93.
^^^"Machismo," p. 17.
34
all infidelity is ideal; for his sudden whims, abuses and
other tyrannical acts, an enormously passive, submissive
and resistant woman is indispensableAramoni criti
cizes her for becoming passive and letting her life weigh
on that of her husband. "She attempts nothing, begins
115
nothing, resolves nothing." "The 'abnegation' of the
woman in Mexico, especially of the other, cause of satis
faction for [women] and a favorite theme of those who
praise them, is frequently absolute passivity, dependence,
excessive receptivity, lack of interests and a special form
of narrowing the vital area in an incestual, provincial
way, in which the real interest is a strictly circumscribed
ring with a minimal content.In fact, Brunet observes
that a Mexican woman reproaches and doubts the masculine
integrity of the man who lets her take the liberty she
wants, because she perceives that if the man ceases to be
power and will in relation to her, she will experience her
own ruin as a female. She wants his macho psychology to be
a certain way (whether or not her construct of it accords
with his reality).
With this picture in mind of the development and
social role of the Mexican woman, one is ready to
^^Ibid. • ^ ^ Psicoanalisis , p. 301.
116Ibid., p. 303.
^■■^"Le Mexique," p. 238. See also Aramoni,
Psicoanalisis. p. 302.
35
understand better the developmental pattern of the Mexican
boy and his relationship to the woman.
Developmental Cycle of the Mexican Male
Since he is frequently enough the consequence of
immature attempts on the part of his parents to satisfy
their own unmet needs, even the little boy is born in
Mexico with two strikes against him. Bermudez has empha
sized a conjugal lovelessness and loneliness in the average
118
"middle-class" home. It will soon be made clear that
the sexual need of the male proceeds in part from psycho
logical deficiencies which also make mature love
impossible. The mother, too, says Gonzalez Pineda, uses
procreation destructively. Her children are born not so
much to be loved as to be used as "guilt-causing stigmas"
119
against the husband, who is needed rather than loved.
As has been stated already, she understands motherhood as
the solution and the compensation for her pleasureless
life. But regardless of her motivations in conceiving the
child, she can be expected to pour into the baby all the
love that cannot find other normal channels of expression.
Here it should be noted that her spouse is characterized by
118
"Countless conjugal lives, placid in appear
ances, really conceal a devastating loneliness of two
people-in-company, and often the constant repression of
genuine hate" (Vida, p. 56).
119
Destructividad. p. 169.
36
his absence. Ramirez found that 32 percent of the families
he once studied had missing fathers--but remarks that this
figure is deceptive, because even if the father is phys
ically present, from the psychological point of view he is
virtually an absent figure. It is interesting that in 70
percent of these families, the man abandoned the woman on
120
the occasion of her pregnancy. Unfortunately, the
woman’s affective and sexual situation causes this compen-
121
satory mother-child love to be highly narcissistic.
While the mother-infant relationship seems very
intimate, it is not consistent, and on the whole, it is not
122
positive. This might be confusing to Americans who tend
to have a stereotype of the "warm, close Mexican home,"
characterized by an instinctively tender mother and a
father who is gentle and warm in the home. Not seen is
that the Mexican woman is starved for love, and wants it
from her child. But the child does not know how to give
much love--he only has needs--, so the relationship is
eventually resented by the mother. Secondly, she simul
taneously fears that her own negative impulses will
^2^"Personalidad y cultura, con referenda especi-
fica a Mexico y lo mexicano," in El mexicano: Educacion.
historia v personalidad (Mexico: Secretarxa de Educacion
Publica, for the Instituto Federal de Capacitacion del
Magisterio, 1965), pp. 23-24. (Hereinafter referred to as
"Personalidad.")
121
Gonzalez Pineda, Destructividad. p. 33.
122Ibid.
37
reappear in the child, and she does violence in the child
123 -
to her own inhibited impulses. Diaz-Guerrero simply
points out that the child is denied nothing in his first
two years, but then feels increasingly the pressure of
exacted obedience, with physical punishment if he does not
TO/
conform. To Gonzalez Pineda, "the relationship becomes
125
more punitive as time goes on." Aramoni expresses the
situation more strongly: "The form of treatment of the
child covers an incredible range: extreme closeness and
tolerance and incredible, unworthy psychological and
physical brutality
It has been found that 94 percent of Mexican lower-
class through upper-middle-class mothers breast-feed their
children, with no schedule other than the child's
127
demands. The average lactation period at the time of
the study was eleven and a half months, compared to twenty
to thirty days in the United States, according to
< ■ 128
Ramirez. It must be remembered also that many, many
Mexican babies are carried for long periods of time in the
mother's--or mother-substitute' s--rebozo.. While this
^^Ibid. ^^Estudios. p. 30.
125
Destructividad. p. 34.
^^Psicoanalisis. p. 314.
127
Ramirez, "Personalidad," p. 24.
128
Ramirez, Motivaciones. p. 180. The results of
the study were first published in 1957, I believe.
38
psychological and physical closeness tends to create a
situation of paradise for the infant, it also increases his
129 -
narcissism. Ramirez emphasizes the trauma of the wean
ing, which in 70 percent of cases is caused by the mother's
130
next pregnancy. This is not banishment simply from the
breast, but from the rebozo also, for the weaning
frequently corresponds with the period in which the child
131
learns to walk. From breast to dirt floor after almost
a year of an almost symbiotic relationship is probably more
than the little boy's psyche can endure. I say "little
boy's" not because it is not extremely hard for the girl
too, but because boys have a more intense and more eroti-
132
cized attachment to their mother. Furthermore, the
little boy is frequently banished to the street, where he
must protect himself precociously from all the dangers of
129 -
Gonzalez Pineda, Destructividad. p. 53.
^■^Ramxrez, "Personalidad," p. 24.
131
John H. Bushnell, "La Virgen de Guadalupe as
Surrogate Mother in San Juan Atzingo," American Anthropolo
gist , LI (April, 1958), 262. (Hereinafter referred to as
"Guadalupe.")
1 3?
Lidz, Person, p. 215. Lidz hypothesizes that
this may be true because masturbation is commoner in little
boys than in little girls. "The penile sensations stimu
late fantasies of an erotic nature, which in the little
child are rather naturally connected to the mother and the
bodily care she provides" (ibid., p. 214). See also Erich
Fromm, The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil.
Religious Perspectives, Vol. XII (New York: Harper & Row,
1964), pp. 95-108.
39
133
the barrio, whereas the little girl is more often in the
home, learning domestic tasks. Ramirez goes so far as to
say that the breaking of the pinata (nine days--nine
months'.) is an unconscious aggression toward the pregnant
1 o /
womb of the mother and the little brother. He suggests
that the high incidence of abandonment at the time of
pregnancy is because the man's wife is experienced as his
own mother and the pregnancy as the birth of his own little
brother. He abandons actively as an adult, avenging his
135
passive abandonment as a child.
But his hostility is only part of the complication.
Ramirez maintains that the basic problem of the Mexican
male is that he has a terrible yearning for his lost
13 ( 5
mother. The macho is intensely narcissistic and has an
intense dependency need; he constantly seeks the all
giving, all-tolerant Mother, daring and expecting society
to tolerate him as the mother did in the first paradisiacal
eleven months. In the face of any frustration, the macho
133
Ramirez, Motivaciones. p. 84.
134Ibid.. p. 130.
1 35
Ibid., p. 90. Ramirez says, "The intensity of
the bond with the mother and the lack of compensatory
figures (father, institutions) to substitute for her, cause
the traumatic fact of weaning due to the next pregnancy to
acquire such magnitude that it can be the dynamic cause of
the man's future conduct" (ibid., p. 111).
^3^Ibid., p. 86.
40
137
turns to alcohol as a substitute for the lost breast.
Ramirez points out that one of the defense mechan
isms heavily used by the Mexican is denial. He denies
everything that really matters to him. This would explain
the apparent contradiction between his reverence for his
own mother and his deprecatory use of the word madre. His
"importamadrismo" (Me importa madre means "I don't give a
damn") protects him from being conscious of the pain of
TOO
abandonment, anguish, and depression.
To sum up the basic effect of the mother-son
relationship of early childhood: the over-closeness and
indulgence favors his narcissism, whereas the severity and
early domination accentuates his passivity and masochism
(and later his feminization) through an early identifica-
1 3Q
tion with the mother.
It is time now to turn to the relationship of the
little boy with his father or whatever father-substitute(s)
he has. Ramirez remarks that the Mexican child frequently
has to endure not only his own father, but occasional
"stepfathers" who merely serve to ratify the negative
137
Ibid., p. 68. The^Spanish: "Buscara un substi
tute en el alcohol, 'se mamara. Mamar, to suck, obvi
ously contains the word mama. (See also Gonzalez Pineda,
Destructividad. pp. 96-97, 99-101, 102, 206, 243.)
1
Ramirez, Motivaciones. p. 86.
^■^Gonzalez Pineda, Destructividad. p. 53.
41
i / n
characteristics of the real father. Gonzalez Pineda
traces the dynamic patterns of this relationship in
families ranging all the way from "mestizo-ized Indians" to
"Mexicanized criollos.1 1 I shall adhere to his analysis
quite closely in my following description of the boy-father
relationship.
The*father is generally distant, and severe when
not pleased. He emphasizes that the little boy must not
cry, not play with dolls, must only be macho. Both the
distance and the treatment cause the boy's second identifi
cation, then, to be with an all-perfect, super-strong,
enormously idealized and exigent macho. This becomes his
^ / | 2
Ego ideal. The other members of the family strengthen
this ideal. His whole early training from his mother and
his siblings of both sexes is aimed at eliminating from his
conduct or attitudes anything that might be identified with
femininity: sentimentality, concord, prudence, elegance,
beauty. A man must be pitiless, a fighter, impulsive,
careless, ugly. They insult and shame him if he shows any
*1 / 0
"feminine" tendencies. One immediately sees danger
ahead. It is now known that every man has both biological
^^Motivaciones. p. 96.
^ ^ Destructividad. pp. 53 ff.
^^Ibid., pp. 53-54.
^^Bermudez, Vida, p. 51.
42
and psychological female characteristics within him, and
that if the psychological characteristics are denied or
repressed, the man will live tinder unnatural, severe
stress. Why is it that Mexican culture polarizes the
supposed sexual behavior patterns so markedly? Reyes
Nevarez suggests a partial answer might be found in the
circumstances of the Spanish Conquest, which will be dis
cussed in Chapter II.
The little boy's idealized father-image begins to
• i / r
collapse in the first years of latency, that is, around
the age of seven, when he begins to realize that his father
abandons, that he is selfish and demanding, a braggart
without substance, a liar, and instead of being powerful
and independent, he is really under the control of
others.The boy loses his great object of love and
admiration, but does not lose his Ego ideal. He wants to
See Sigmund Freud's essay, "Three Contributions
to the Theory of Sex: Contribution III, 'The Transforma
tion of Puberty,"' in The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud,
trans. and ed. by A. A. Brill (New York: Modern Library,
1938), p. 613n. See also the chapter, "Some Lethal Aspects
of the Male Role," in Sidney M. Jourard, The Transparent
Self (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc., 1964),
pp. 46-55.
■j y r
The "latency period" is a period from about age
four or five to about age twelve during which interest in
sex is sublimated. See Horace B. English and Ava Champney
English, A Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychological and
Psychoanalytical Terms (New York: Longmans, Green and Co.,
1958), p. 287.
14-6
Gonzalez Pineda, Destructividad. p. 55.
43
become what his father is not, but lack of real models
1 / 7
makes the project impossible. Since cultural pressure
U O
forces him to deny his primary maternal identification,
he must take refuge in his second, more superficial
paternal identification, that of the sadistic, dependent,
149
lying aggressor. His constant future compulsion has
been established: to seek the heroic identification of his
earliest infancy, but, knowing and fearing that he cannot
150
achieve it, to find it through putting up a false front.
Ramirez summarizes the boy's later dynamic neatly: "Since
basically his prevailing identifications, the most constant
and permanent ones, are feminine, he will avoid everything
that can allude to the scant paternal introjection.
"It is necessary at all costs to hide the feminine aspects
which [he] carries in his personality, all the more
intensely inasmuch as they are not neutralized by the
masculine identifications which only the father could have
15 2
fostered." "The figure vehemently yearned for, . . .
everything that in one way or another represents the
absent, fantasized, potent masculinity of the father will
147Ibid.
1 A O
Ramirez, Motivaciones. p. 68.
149Ibid.. p. 56. 150Ibid.
151Ibid.. pp. 62-63. 152Ibid., p. 64.
44
153
be an object of aggression." "Mexican machismo is
basically only uncertainty of one's own masculinity;
baroque virility. " ' * ' 34
Erikson points out the importance of the success or
failure of these early developmental stages:
The mechanism of introiection [the mechanism of
"incorporation" of another s image] depends for its
integration on the satisfactory mutuality between
the mothering adult(s) and the mothered child. Only
the experience of such initial mutuality provides a
safe pole of self-feeling from which the child can
reach out for the other pole: his first love
"objects."155 (Italics mine.)
This "safe pole of self-feeling" is lacking in the
Mexican male. In fact, Diaz-Guerrero has found that the
Mexican's need for self-esteem is so intense that not only
can he deny its existence, but he can seem to find no way
1 f \
of feeling sufficiently sure of himself. Since this
severe problem of low self-esteem is caused by far more
157
than patterns of child-rearing, I will discuss it later.
It is necessary now to return to the relationship
of the mother to her adolescent son as described by
Gonzalez Pineda. In her effort to make him a man, she
urges him to commit aggression outside the home. She lets
him attack socially and sexually. Actually, this all-
153Ibid. 154Ibid.„ p. 62.
155
Erik H. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1968), p. 159.
(Hereinafter referred to as Identity.)
~ * ~ 3^Estudios. pp. 60-61. ~ * ~ 3^Infra. pp. 127-131.
45
suffering mother is proud of his aggression, and identifies
ICO
with it. She justifies him if he gets his sweetheart
15 9
pregnant; she condones his stealing, bribery, and lies.
Later, she will always justify her son against her
daughter-in-law, partly because of aggressive identifica
tion with her son against the rival who really represents
160
the repetition of her own problems with her own mother.
It must be remembered that it is the mother who
controls, teaches, and guards the mestizo home and the
majority of criollo homes, and that all too often her
weapon is her own "martyrdom" at the hands of her husband.
Although she allows her adolescent son freedom in the areas
mentioned, she continues to impose her will in other areas,
especially domestic, so frequently that he has to divide
his object and become an aggressor and devaluator of other
161
women in order to rebel against her. Aramoni expresses
the situation well: "How to fight against that mountain of
gratitude, an endless debt, toward the sanctified, self-
renouncing martyr-figure? How to rid oneself of a society
that is profoundly, radically impregnated with maternity?
Only obliquely and symbolically, by insulting the mother of
•^^Destructividad. p. 155.
159tU.j 160t, . ,
Ibid., p. 157. Ibid.
1 61
Francisco Gonzalez Pineda, El mexicano: su
dinamica psicosocial (Mexico: Editorial Pax-Mexico, S.A.,
195 9), pp. 80, 83-84. (Hereinafter referred to as
Dinamica.)
46
somebody else [and by] direct, serious, cruel aggression
16 2
against [other women]."
But there is another important way in which he
rebels against his mother, reinforces his sense of mascu
linity, and even manages to rebel against his father: by
163
rebelling against the priest.
His own father does not attend church, possibly for
reasons of intellectual disaffection or for the same
reasons his son will later have. The little boy, then,
identifies church and priest with his mother, particularly
since the mother's sole source of comfort and strength in
her impossible feminine role is the sympathy and advice of
the priest in the confessional and the reception of the
sacraments. However, the priest is also a symbolic father
to the boy, more frustrating and severe than the real
father, because his many scoldings and admonitions to him
as a child reached especially deep levels of guilt and fear
1 ( \ L l
due to the boy's maternal identifications. Relatively
few adolescents are able to resist the mocking of their
peers in order to continue to practise their religion
165
openly. The exigencies of their sexual needs, the
support of the older adolescents, and the example of their
^ ^ Psicoanalisis. p. 261.
"^^Gonzalez Pineda, Dinamica. pp. 80-81.
^^Tbid . , p. 81.
~^~*Ibid.. p. 80.
47
fathers help the adolescent boys cut themselves off from
the Chur ch.
Because of his extremely strong maternal identifi
cation, the Mexican male is guilt-ridden regarding his
deviation from the feminine value pattern, regarding his
mother's sacrifice for him and his own hatred for her, and
because of his own poor treatment of his wife and
children.Since he does not have strong, mature
spiritual outlets, he can only cope with his guilt by
committing more domestic and social aggression, by turning
1 f i l f t
to alcohol, and by his "Guadalupanismo
One begins to understand why the cult of the Virgin
of Guadalupe seems to be stronger among the men than among
Ibid., pp. 81-82. I would like to point out
here that this break is accomplished before the age at
which the Church could give the boys any truly mature
religious concepts that would help them resolve their
personal and social problems in a creative way.
• j £ . *7
Diaz-Guerrero, Estudios. p. 33; Gonzalez Pineda,
Destructividad, p. 109, and Dinamica. p. 97.
168 *
Diaz-Guerrero, Estudios, p. 33; Gonzalez Pineda,
Destructividad. p. 109; Ramirez, Motivaciones. p. 85;
Gonzalez Pineda, Dinamica. p. 97. Is it any wonder that
Diaz-Guerrero has found that 32 percent of the males and 44
percent of the females of Mexico City are neurotic? The
males show problems with authority (the symbolic father),
sexual potency, living a double role of tenderness and
virility, an exaggerated dependence on their mother,
matrimony (their love for their mother interferes with
their love for their wife), and oedipal problems in
general. Of the men questioned, 95 percent said that their
mother was the dearest person in the world for them, 3 per
cent said she was not, and 2 percent were not sure. For
the women, the figures were 86, 10, and 4 percent, respec
tively (Estudios, pp. 30, 34).
48
169
the women. The women not only have other religious
outlets denied the men by the culture, but in addition the
men have a stronger maternal identification. La Virgencita
is the all-powerful, all-benign, all-tender, all-faithful,
170
all-generous mother; she is "kiss, food, sweetness--
171
absolute, total protection." Devotion to the ideal
mother cannot possibly be criticized by other males,
especially as she is their mother also!
In concluding the family cycle of the male, he must
be seen briefly as father and husband. It has already been
implied that he will repeat the only pattern he knows, the
only pattern his childhood and adolescence have prepared
him for: that of his own father. Underlying this pattern
172
is the tragic fact of loneliness, already mentioned.
While the wife tries to compensate her loneliness through
her children, the husband tries to compensate his outside
the home. But generally he is lonely even in his illegiti
mate relationships. The other women do not provide him
real companionship. Frequently they are simply using
173
him. Gonzalez Pineda puts it most pathetically: "The
■^^Bushnell, "Guadalupe," p. 264.
170
Gonzalez Pineda, Destruetividad. p. 121.
1 71
Aramoni, Psicoanalisis. p. 230.
172
Supra. p. 35. See also Gonzalez Pineda,
Destructividad, p. 134; and Paz, Labyrinth, p. 29.
■^^Bermudez, Vida, pp. 56-57.
49
man, in his destructive search for his own masculinity and
in his infantile attempts to have something, ends up alone.
Even if surrounded by his family at death, he is alone.
They see his death as their liberation."'*'7^
If loneliness is the rule rather than the exception
for the middle- and upper-class married man, what must it
be for the lower-class or rural macho who has tried to
protect himself from others by making them fear him? He
is the loneliest of all, isolated by the very fear he has
created. ' * ' 7^
The hermeticism of the Mexican male has already
176
been suggested. One reason for this hermeticism seems
evident when one recalls that woman is considered to be
inferior partly because of her passive receptivity. The
corollary would seem obvious. If the Mexican male is not
the opposite of woman, physically and psychologically
closed and invulnerable, he risks being considered effemi
nate and inferior. Samuel Ramos and Octavio Paz attribute
the hermeticism to a profound and basic sense of distrust.
"This reaction [of hermeticism]," says Paz, "is justifi
able if one considers what our history has been and the
17 7
kind of society we have created." I would like to
^Destructividad. p. 168.
175Ibid., p. 107. 176Supra, pp. 12-13.
177
Ramos, Profile. p. 64; Paz, Labyrinth. p. 30.
50
discuss this society in Chapter II. Right now it is enough
to realize that the Mexican thinks he can never know
whether the world will be friend or enemy, danger or help,
178
so he does not expose himself. So hermetic is the
Mexican, says Paz, that "any opening in our defenses is a
179
lessening of our manliness." "Our response to sympathy
and tenderness is reserve, since we cannot tell whether
180
those feelings are genuine or simulated." "Every time
a Mexican confides in a friend or acquaintance, every time
he opens himself up, it is an abdication. He dreads that
181
the person in whom he has confided will scorn him."
At this point in the discussion it seems very easy
to understand the Mexican's reliance on alcohol. Com
pletely apart from the fact that pulque is almost as cheap
as milk and that in many areas of the country water can
kill one faster than pulque. the Mexican male very
possibly drinks in order to find relief not only from his
wretched economic situation but from his unbearable
domestic loneliness and the loneliness imposed by his
182
unnatural male role. Psychologically, the cantina is to
178
Emilio Uranga, "Ensayo de una ontologia del
mexicano," Cuadernos Americanos. VIII (March-April, 1949),
143. (Hereinafter referred to as "Ontologia.")
^ ^Labyrinth. p. 30.
180Ibid . 181Ibid.
182 ^ ^
Jose Gomez Robleda, Imagen del mexicano
51
1 O O
the man what the confessional is to the woman. Here he
is given material and psychological help in "opening up."
Alcohol releases him from "that law of silence which is his
184
male condition." Here he conquers woman imaginatively,
■ j o tr
and is never confronted by her reality. But "underneath
the self-affirmations of the cantina, it is easy to distin-
186
guish a radical knowledge of weakness." And when he
gets home, he often beats his wife because he cannot cope
io n
with his fear and anguish in her presence. Alcohol, of
course, frequently increases destructivity; it reduces
self-criticism, dulls or incapacitates one's judgment, and
dangerously reduces inhibitions. It can increase one's
188
tendency to paranoia. So there is a vicious circle:
the source of temporary relief from the macho condition
serves to make the condition all the more deep-rooted. It
worsens the man's economic and domestic situation, and
(Mexico: Secretaria de Educacion Publica, 1948), pp. 28-
34 (hereinafter referred to as Imagen); Perturbacion.
p. 77. ~
^88Aramoni, Psicoanalisis. p. 293. I retain
cantina, because "barroom" or "tavern" seem an inadequate
translation.
^8^Brunet, "Le Mexique," p. 234.
185Ibid.. p. 240.
18 6
Reyes Nevarez, "Machismo," p. 15.
^8^Aramoni, Psicoanalisis. p. 294.
188Ibid.
52
■ton
frequently leads to personal aggression and homicide.
Sentimentality. Passion. Inactivity. Desgana.
Irresponsibility. and La Chingada
Thus far I have drawn heavily on the opinions of
Mexican psychologists and psychoanalysts. I would like to
turn for a moment to some supposed characteristics of the
Mexican male which have been discussed by men who are not
psychologists, notably Uranga, Ramos, and Reyes Nevarez.
Although the statements which follow are based on experi
ence and reflection rather than on scientific data, they
have been regarded as significant milestones in the
"Mexican search for identity" which preoccupied many
Mexican thinkers in the decades of the forties and fifties.
The statements of these men, generalizations though they
may be, help to reveal the phenomenology of machismo. if
not its psychological and sociological roots. They center
around what these men take to be the propensity of the
Mexican male to sentimentality, passion, inactivity,
desgana. and irresponsibility. Interestingly enough, it
was the psychologist Jose Gomez Robleda who seems to have
given impetus to the discussion. Gomez Robleda wrote in
189
Ibid., p. 293; Gomez Robleda, Imagen. p. 64;
Ramon Prida, "La criminalidad en Mexico en los ultimos
anos," in Centenario de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografia
y Estadistica. Vol. II (Mexico: Sociedad Mexicana de
Geografia y Estadistica, 1933), pp. 717-720.
53
1947, as the result of exhaustive measurements, that the
Mexican man, being a "longitype of the third variety" (he
was referring to the classifications of the Italian bio-
typologist Jacinto Viola), has a theoretic-idealist atti
tude toward life, is introverted, schizothymic (schizoid
within the bounds of normality), and is liable to obsessive
neurosis and schizophrenic insanity.In a statement
that seems based less on pre-established biotypological
categories than on direct observation, Gomez Robleda said
that the Mexican flees reality; he takes refuge in dreaming
and fantasy; he constantly creates conflicts which he uses
as a systematic life style, to find "the absurd and
neurotic pleasure of living in a chronic state of lamenta
tions and exigencies." By preference he constantly relives
the bad luck of the past, and insists, through his "com
fortable and mysterious philosophy of gana (feeling or not
feeling like doing a thing)" in not opening his eyes to the
Imagen, p. 21. A classification of character
based on body measurements could well seem suspect these
days. It is interesting, however, that Maier said (only
two years after the publication of Imagen, it should be
noted), "The problem of why one individual expresses his
frustration one way and another in a different way . . .
requires extensive study and it is probable that Sheldon's
studies with body types may supply some of the answers"
(Norman R. F. Maier, Frustration: The Study of Behavior
without a Goal [New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc.,
1949], pp. 164-165). Sheldon's classifications, different
from Viola's, are of considerable interest (W. H. Sheldon,
The Varieties of Temperament: A Psychology of Constitu
tional Differences fNew York: Harper & Brothers,
Publishers, 1942]).
54
present. He likes to dream of a future "so near that it
191
will probably begin tomorrow." This description
parallels Rene LeSenne’s definition of the sentimental
192
type.
In 1949, the philosopher Emilio Uranga defined the
Mexican as "sentimental" in character, explaining that the
sentimental character is constituted by strong emotivity,
193
inactivity, and a disposition to ruminate on the past.
This is according to the classification of Rene LeSenne.
Uranga defines emotivity as a kind of interior fragility,
which accounts in his opinion for the defensiveness of the
Mexican, his gentility, his courteous social forms, his
avoidance of brusqueness: in general, for his attempt to
pass unseen, to conceal himself, an attempt that borders on
194
dissembling or hypocrisy. He explains fragility as "the
quality of the person who is constantly threatened by
195
nothingness, by falling into not-being." He says that
the Mexican is "a melancholy creature," and his melancholy
196
is rooted in his liberty.
191Ibid.. p. 74.
192 + < *
See his Traite de caracterologie (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1945).
193"Ontologia," p. 136.
194Ibid. 195Ibid.
196Ibid., p. 142.
55
Reyes Nevarez picks up the theme in 1952, somewhat
more inductively than Uranga. "It has been said that the
Mexican is a sentimental. As a matter of fact, to the
observer his character does coincide with the schematic
197
type that modern Characterology calls sentimental." For
Reyes, emotivity is "the peculiar predisposition to concede
exaggerated importance to what happens to us. The emotive
person contemplates through a magnifying glass everything
affecting his psyche. Events and impressions that for
another person would not remotely have importance, for the
emotive person are things that disturb, that cause pain,
that preoccupy him at length, that possibly make him think
he is menaced by something in relation to which he is
1 98
vulnerable." The inactivity alluded to by LeSenne and
Uranga "shows itself in a certain sluggishness in ridding
199
oneself of spiritual postures already adopted." Reyes
echoes Gomez Robleda when he defines the "secundaridad"
(rumination) of the Mexican as "the tendency to preserve in
the intimacy of one's psyche impressions received long
ago."^99 He finds it undeniable that Mexicans are senti-
mentals, and characterizes Mexican sentimentality as being
197 -
El amor v la amistad en el mexicano, Mexico y lo
mexicano, Vol. VI (Mexico: Porrua y Obregon, S.A., 1952),
p. 41. (Hereinafter referred to as Amor.)
198Ibid.. pp. 41-42. 199Ibid., p. 42.
200t. . ,
Ibid.
56
tinged by the ordinary meaning of the word. "The common
meaning of the word for our people refers to a passive
conformity to the imperatives of passion, of the friendly
spirit, of the force of vengeance. Sentiment is something
that springs up within ourselves and in the face of whose
power it is difficult if not impossible to attempt any
slight gesture of resistance "We conceive of amorous
passiori, political action, our world view as occupations
carried out always under the unamendable standard of senti
ment, a standard that admits of no rectification or
202
appeal." "[The sentimental man] complains insofar as
he perceives that the passion which has possessed him is
stronger than he, but he is proud of being capable of feel
ing it. In Mexico there is a silent, profound admiration
203
for the man who suffers this way." This assertion would
seem to explain in part the social acceptance and relative
AA/
impunity in Mexico of crimes of passion.
Reyes Nevarez serves as a bridge between Uranga's
attempt to explain the sentimentality of the Mexican
character ontologically, in terms of Sartre and Heidegger,
201T, ., ,, 202t, . ,
Ibid., p. 44. Ibid.
203t, • j / c
Ibid., p. 45.
^^Gonzalez Pineda, Dinamica. pp. 137, 139;
Aramoni, Psicoanalisis» pp. 297-298; Alfonso Quiroz Cuaron,
La criminalidad en la Republica Mexicana (Mexico:
Universidad Nacional, Instituto de Investigaciones
Sociales, 1958), pp. 64, 67. (Hereinafter referred to as
Criminalidad.)
57
and the observations regarding passion made by Samuel Ramos
205
in 1951. According to Ramos, "passion is the note which
sets the tone of life in Mexico, especially when some
206
private activity attracts attention." He attributes
many of the historical ills of Latin America to passion.
"We are the most romantic race on earth. Our romanticism
is immature, typical of adolescents who sacrifice reality
207
to ideas." Ramos distinguishes between what he calls
the passion of interest and the interest of passion, and
attributes the second to Mexicans. In the first, passion
is "subservient to a vital or even spiritual interest," and
is not to be condemned, being the means to a superior goal.
In the second, however, passion constitutes an end in
itself, and "strives to satisfy an individual need: self-
love, vanity, pride. "2^
To pick up the thread of the Mexican's supposed
propensity to "inactivity," I find an interesting relation
ship between that and a seminal idea of the psychologist
205
It is difficult to know when these ideas were
first articulated in Mexico, and by whom. The books of
these men were in many instances first given in the form of
lectures, which were very possibly elaborated on the basis
of a great deal of mutual discussion, since the authors
were all colleagues or students at the University of
Mexico. Any chronological ordering of the publication of
their books simply shows when their ideas became available
to the public at large.
206Profile, p. 133. 207lbid. . p. 135.
208t, .j qc .
Ibid. , p. 1.36.
58
Rogelio Diaz-Guerrero. In an attempt to discover why
Americans are so active and prize efficiency so much and
why Mexicans are traditionally considered "lazy" and do not
hold efficiency as a value, he hit upon the following idea.
Both cultures know that life is to be lived, and life is
difficult. But whereas Americans as a cultural group have
decided that the best way to cope with stress is actively,
Mexicans as a cultural group have decided that the best
210
way to cope with stress is passively. He suggests that
it should be possible to show through research that the
active confronters of stress have a low capacity for endur
ing stress passively, and that the passive copers have a
iow capacity for dealing actively with stress. "From the
psychological standpoint, the active confronters of stress
should value conflict, competition, action, aggressiveness,
equality, individual freedom, opportunity for all, inde
pendence, informality, content rather than form, and
pragmatism. The passive acceptors of stress should value
harmony, protection, dependence, cooperation, idleness,
prescribed roles in social relationships, formality, form
^ ^Supra. p. 54. See Diaz-Guerrero's chapter,
"Premisas socioculturales, actitudes e investigacion
transcultural," especially pp. 156-164, in Estudios.
^"^He uses the term "stress" in the sense defined
by Hans Selye in The Stress of Life (New York: McGraw-Hill
Book Co., Inc., 1956). See Chapter VII especially.
59
211
rather than content, and platonic philosophy." Mexican
sociocultural virtues, he says, include abnegation, obedi
ence, self-sacrifice, submission, breeding, courtesy--all
212
of them passive ways of handling stress. "The greater
the desire to avoid active coping with stress, the greater
will be the number of a priori norms regulating interper-
213
sonal and social interaction." Among the passive
endurers, Diaz-Guerrero suggests, there will be more explo
sive aggressiveness after reaching the limits of passive
endurance, and in relation to emotional problems. There
will also be a greater acceptance of alcoholism, economic
exploitation, economic distance between rich and poor, and
greater personal, emotional, and economic exploitation of
one person by another. He points out that Catholicism is
fundamentally a philosophy of passive coping and
^^Estudios . p. 159.
212
ZJ^ Ibid. . p. 158.
21 3
Ibid., p. 162. This simple theory of Diaz-
Guerrero's helps one understand the rather impressionistic
but very possibly valid application of the Quetzalcoatl
symbolism which Reyes makes to the Mexican psyche: "The
Mexican seems to shy away from a face-to-face encounter
with unadorned reality. ... We oscillate. We always
slither along inconspicuously and we undertake vertiginous
flights, which are frustrated by their very inopportune
ness. . . . Quetzalcoatl, bird and serpent, is completely
Mexican. ... A figure of Baroque profile, his ultimate
project consists of perpetual feinting. . . . With a twist
of the wrist he changes his line of action and draws the
filigree in which, by means of constant evasions and
surrenders, he imprisons reality without becoming caught
himself either in its mass or in its inertia" (Amor, pp.
27-28).
60
Protestantism one of active coping.
Diaz-Guerrero's theory makes it possible to see a
connection between the hermeticism of the macho and his
context of extremely profound and deep-rooted cultural
values. Diaz-Guerrero's idea helps one understand an
assertion of Ramos, that Mexican life drifts, with neither
discipline nor organization. Distrust and hypersensitiv
ity, says Ramos, are natural consequences of the chaos
215
attendant upon such drift.
Uranga emphasizes the haphazard and passive drift
of Mexican life: "In that pendular movement there is a
passive synthesis; things come about through the painful
chance of unrelated coincidences. It is impossible to join
the component elements of this accidental mode of being in
one formula. There is back-and-forth, movement, pain,
tearing, bleeding, and synthesis. Uranga attributes
the seeming passivity of the Mexican to desgana. the
217
inability or refusal to make a decision. "The resist
ances offered to the self-realization of the Mexican do not
impel him to grow and level the obstacles, but rather repel
^^Estudios. p. 160.
Profile. pp. 65-66.
2X6
Emilio Uranga, Analisis del ser del mexicano
Mexico y lo mexicano, Vol. IV (Mexico: Porrua y Obregon,
S.A., 1952), p. 183. (Hereinafter referred to as
Analisis.)
^■^"Ontologxa," p. 137.
61
2X8
him and force him in upon himself." Uranga calls
desgana the exact opposite of generosity, the refusal to
utilize free choice to move history, essentially indeter
minate, to a lesser degree of indetermination and a greater
degree of precision and coherence. He asserts that
Mexicans have given their assent to irresponsibility: "Hot
219
to decide is to decide to be irresponsible." "The
person with desgana is precisely lacking the will to give
meaning; he feels that he possesses meaning, but he will
220
not stretch out his hand [to convey meaning]." This
inactivity gives rise to the Mexican feeling which Uranga
calls "dignity," the will not to stain oneself by getting
221
involved. He calls it a will to cleanliness, probity.
Passivity, non-involvement, and irresponsibility go
hand-in-hand. Bermudez states that irresponsibility is a
clear component of machismo: "The Mexican male, always
partial regarding himself, remembers his rights very
222
clearly; but he frequently forgets his obligations."
In an attempt to analyze the elements of the Mexican's
218Ibid. 219Ibid.
22QIbid.. p. 138.
991
Ibid., p. 139. Reyes Nevarez believed in 1952
that this false dignity was disappearing. "The Mexican
knows--he has slowly realized it--that dignified renuncia
tion, no matter how pretty it may be, is not worth as much
as effective achievement of proposed goals" (Amor, p. 38).
222Vida, p. 99.
62
social posture in general, Leopoldo Zea has said, "Irre
sponsibility [defines] the horizon on which the Mexican
223
operates." "We do not accept the responsibility which
the existence of others imposes on us, the others of
224
society and history."
It would seem, then, that the irresponsibility of
the individual Mexican macho, caused by multiple familial
and social factors, is supported by a larger cultural and
225
historical framework of irresponsibility. The cultural
La filosofia como compromiso v otros ensavos
(Mexico: Tezontle, 1952), p. 177.
O O /
Ibid.. p. 178. Zea suggests that the criollos
of the nineteenth century did not accept their past because
they had been accorded absolutely no responsibility during
the long Colonial period. "Our entire nineteenth century
was a constant struggle to tear our past off ourselves, as
we refused to assume its responsibility." It did not take
long for them to realize, however, that their past was an
ineluctable part of their being, "a part that had given
origin in [them] to countless defects." "Then came the
lamentations and useless exigencies, and with them, the
justification for all our irresponsible attitudes." Zea
finds at the root of this irresponsibility the sentiment of
pride which was wounded by the nineteenth-century defeat of
Mexico at the hands of the descendants of the people who
had frustrated the Spanish dreams of universal domination
in the sixteenth century. This wounded pride, says Zea,
has determined the Mexican’s choice of his vital stance.
Rather than undergo the humiliation of changing the unreal
istic national goals chosen in the nineteenth century, the
Mexican denigrated himself, declared himself insufficient
and refused to give himself generously to the task of
achieving progress in accord with his real possibilities
(La filosofia como compromiso. pp. 180-188).
225
It seems only fair to the Mexican to point out
that a terror of responsibility is apparently part of the
human condition. Reyes says, That sensation that man is
alone with his freedom in the middle of the world tends to
be an uncomfortable one for men in general. . . . Men try
63
setting of machismo will be discussed in Chapter II.
Before leaving these remarks by Mexicans concerning
the Mexican character, it is appropriate to call attention
to Octavio Paz's widely accepted and quoted characteriza-
2 26
tion of the Mexican male mystique, touched on very
briefly at the beginning of this chapter. Speaking of the
"forbidden" word chingar, to violate another, the "sign and
seal" of the Mexican people, Paz says:
By means of it we recognize each other among
strangers, and we use it every time the real condi
tions of our being rise to our lips. To know it,
to use it, to throw it in the air like a toy or to
not to assume the total responsibility for their acts.
. . . The average man tries to mutilate his freedom" (Amor,
p. 50). This is metaphysical (not psychological) bad
faith, as defined by the existentialists. (See Justus
Streller, To Freedom Condemned: A Guide to Jean-Paul
Sartre's! Philosophy, trans. by Wade Baskin [New York:
Philosophical Library, I960], p. 52.) Grene says, "The
realization of my responsibility to make of my world what
it, and with it I, can be brings inescapably, when it is
genuine, terror before the full meaning of that responsi
bility" (Marjorie Grene, Dreadful Freedom: A Critique of
Existentialism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1948], p. 51).
22&The psychoanalyst Santiago Ramirez, calling Paz
"one of our great . . . essayists," believes he has sharp
insight ("ha captado agudamente") into the male-female
relationship in Mexico (Motivaciones, p. 49). He quotes
admiringly his description of the mestizo "Ninguno,"
"Nobody" (supra, p. 13) and affirms his analysis of the
meaning of chingar in Mexico (ibid., pp. 54, 67). Carlos
Fuentes calls Labyrinth a "brilliant characterization of
Mexicans" (Casa con dos puertas [Mexico: Joaquin Mortiz,
1970], p. 153). As has already been said (supra, pp. 12-
13, n. 25)y Fromm and Maccoby report, "Our results tend to
confirm [Octavio Paz's] picture of the Mexican male's
resistance to being touched, to being made open and vulner
able" (Social Character, p. 145).
64
make it quiver like a sharp weapon, is a way of
affirming that we are Mexican.227
Paz says that while the Spaniards enjoy using blasphemy and
scatology, the Mexicans "specialize in cruelty and sadism,"
that in Mexican expressions, one finds "the dichotomy
between the closed and the open. The verb chingar signi
fies the triumph of the closed, the male, the powerful,
4 - u "228
over the open.
To the Mexican there are only two possibilities
in life: either he inflicts the actions implied by
chingar on others, or else he suffers them at the
hands of others.229 This conception of social life
as combat fatally divides society into the strong
and the weak.230
In a world of chingones [those who violate
others], of difficult relationships, ruled by vio
lence and suspicion--a world in which no one opens
out or surrenders himself--ideas and accomplishments
count for little. The only thing of value is manli
ness, personal strength, a capacity for imposing
oneself on others.231
The macho is the gran chingon. One word sums up
the aggressiveness, insensitivity, invulnerability
and other attributes of the macho: power. It is
force without the discipline of any notion of order;
arbitrary power, the will without reins and without
a set course.232
22^Labyrinth, p. 74. 223Ibid. , p. 78.
229
The original Spanish: "Para el mexicano la vida
es una posibilidad de chingar o de ser chingado. Es decir,
de humillar, castigar y ofender. 0 a la inversa" (El
laberinto de la soledad [2nd ed.; Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
Economica, 1959], p. 71) .
23QLabvrinth. p. 78. 231Ibid., p. 79.
232Ibid., p. 81.
65
The macho, says Paz, is "power isolated in its own potency,
without relationship or compromise with the outside world.
He is pure incommunication, a solitude that devours itself
233
and everything it touches."
In terms of machismo, then, the Mexican male has
been described in this chapter as having a deep need to
manifest a superiority not only over women, but over other
men, in part because of the domestic patterns and values in
which he was reared, patterns which leave him with a
radical doubt regarding his own masculinity and self-worth.
The traditional Mexican understanding of the male role,
possibly combined with a value placed by the culture on
passive acceptance of stress, forces him to be invulnerable
and hermetic, a condition which intensifies the loneliness
caused by his destructive attempts to assert his masculin
ity. His inability to achieve true personal autonomy in
relation to his mother and father might well be a factor of
the "fragility" and sense of being "threatened by nothing
ness" which Uranga thinks to find in him. I shall postpone
a discussion of the possible relationship of lack of adult
autonomy and self-esteem on machismo. turning next to an
examination of historical and social factors which seem to
have a bearing on machismo and lack of self-esteem.
233Ibid.. p. 82.
CHAPTER II
MACHISMO: SOME HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS,
AND A SYNTHESIS
Possible Historical Roots of Machismo
Several Mexican writers have discussed the idea of
a contributory influence on machismo by the Aztecs. It
would seem that at one point in history, women had consid
erable status among the Aztecs, in daily life and in
mythology. Aramoni demonstrates convincingly that at one
time women ruled, made important decisions, and were
obeyed. ^
The eventual loss of their power appears to be
expressed in myth. The god Huitzilopochtli, powerful son
of Coatlicue or Coyolxaucihuatl, abandoned his sister
Malinalxochitl, because she had become an evil woman, a
cannibal and a witch; he then beheaded his mother and ate
her heart, and killed his uncles and ate their hearts.^
^Psicoanalisis. pp. 27-30.
o
While there is confusion regarding the details of
this myth, as is frequently the case with pre-Columbian
myth, the important thing is that the power of woman is
symbolically represented as destroyed. (See Aramoni,
Psicoanalisis. pp. 36-37, 58.)
66
67
Furthermore, when Copil, son of Malinalxochitl, attempted
to defeat Huitzilopochtli in revenge for the insult to his
mother, Huitzilopochtli beheaded him, removed his heart,
and ordered one of his teomamas or bearers to hurl the
heart into the lake where Tenochtitlan would be built. It
was to be done while the teomama stood on the tepetate or
- 3
stone on which Quetz ! icos i rested when he left Tula.
Aramoni interprets this detail to represent the ultimate
rejection by the Aztecs of the meaning of Quetzalcoatl--
authentic maturity, productivity, plenitude and wisdom,
synthesis of the best masculine and feminine aspects of
life. ^ Tenochtitlan, city of Huitzilopochtli, was built on
the defeat of feminine power and its last "knight-errant,"
Copil.^ Women retained their importance only in the region
of Coatzacualcos, from which Malinche, Dona Marina, was to
6
emerge.
But the power of woman is not in fact so easily
destroyed'. Feminine importance lingered on as "phantasm,
harm, fear and terror of the unknown, nocturnal and
^Psicoanalisis; pp. 58-59. See also Miguel Leon-
Portilla, Imagen del M fc ’ xico antiguo (Buenos Aires: EUDBA,
1963), pp. 46-51 (hereinafter referred to as Mexico
antiguo); and Cesar A. Saenz, Quetzalcdatl (Mexico: Insti-
tuto Nacional de Antropologia e Histoifa, 1962), pp. 9-17.
The Quetzalcoatl myth will be seen in more detail in
Chapter IV in connection with the analysis of The Plumed
Serpent.
^Psicoanalisis. pp. 54, 47, 49.
^Ibid., pp. 60-61. 6Ibid., p. 31.
68
solitary; [it was] magic and sickness; [it was] modified
only to become less objective."7 Aramoni suggests that
women were thought to be able to attract supernatural
powers, thus scaring men on the one hand and curing them on
the other. So woman exercised the attributes which could
not be taken from her: to give birth and to be a midwife
(childbirth was accomplished beyond the vision of men); to
O
be a priestess, curandera or doctor, and prostitute.
But above all, she exercised the power of mother
hood, and in a manner so thorough that it would appear that
the Aztec men struggled for the rest of their lives to
overcome her early influence. The child of an Aztec lord
was with his mother for his first five years. She nursed
9
him for four years. The father was absent from the
home.^^ Aramoni suggests that this pattern must have
created a strong fixation toward the mother and deeply
influenced the Aztec man's attitudes toward existence,
religion, women, work, and death. From the age of five,
the boy received a male-dominated education in the temple
7Ibid. 8Ibid.. p. 78.
9
Ibid., p. 71, citing Zurita, Breve relacion de los
senores de la Nueva Espaha. Soustelle states, on the basis
of the Codex Mendoza, that ordinary families entrusted the
education of the boy to the father from the age of three
on (Jacques Soustelle, Daily Life of the Aztecs, trans. by
Patrick O'Brian [Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1961], p. 66 [hereinafter referred to as Daily Life]).
^ Psicoanalisis. p. 73.
69
(calmecac or telnochcalli) . He had to learn to be a
warrior, to be strong, stoic, disciplined, cruel, proud,
11
with an enormous sense of conscious superiority. How to
throw off the early strong maternal identifications? Only
by reactive methods. One may speculate that among the
Aztecs, man’s power over woman was rooted not in his own
12
inner security, but in coercion. It is easy to under
stand why to call an Aztec "cuilon," male prostitute, was
13
the greatest possible insult. If a man was proven to be
the passive partner in a homosexual act, he had to die by
1 /
impalement. No wonder the Aztec men developed a "hyper
trophic pride which [did not] tolerate the slightest
15
aggression or insult'."
The Aztec moral code was strict. For example,
alcoholism was prohibited except to old people or captured
warriors about to be sacrificed, and repeated drunkenness
was punished by death. Anyone who departed too much from
16
the moral code was burned alive. The code, however, did
permit the "double standard." Adultery in a woman was
llIb±d.. pp. 73-74. 12Ibid. . pp. 281-282.
13Ibid., p. 281.
■^Rogelio Diaz-Guerrero, Estudios de psicologia
dinamica (Mexico: UNAM, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras,
1963), p. 94. (Hereinafter referred to as Psicologia
dinamica.) See also Paz, Labyrinth. pp. 39-40.
^Aramoni, Psicoanalisis, p. 55.
■^Diaz-Guerrero, Psicologia dinamica. p. 94.
70
punishable by death, but promiscuity was permitted in men.
Adultery as such (having two wives?) was considered more a
question of greed than of sexual immorality on the part of
a man. Aramoni suggests that the tinder lying purpose of the
17
laws was to protect the man from deception.
Diaz-Guerrero hypothesizes that the group ideals of
virtue were unrealistically high, and that the only outlets
for the tensions of the ordinary Aztec were mass human
sacrifice and the attendant guerra florida, battles waged
for the purpose of capturing future sacrificial victims.
18
The Aztec vented his aggressiveness on weaker tribes.
The foregoing would be attempts at psychological
explanations of Aztec aggression. The possible philosoph
ical or religious factor in Aztec aggression is well
summed-up by Justino Fernandez:
The Aztec world-vision and its mythification
have a radical dynamism, and it was the sense of
astral movement and the movement of living bodies
which constituted their mythology. The explanation
. . . that they managed to find for the principle
of all creation was conflict, the war of opposites.
Generating movement as struggle, oppositeness as
war--that is what being, existing, is. The essence
of the existence of the gods is to be a warrior.
And man could do no less than to be similar to the
gods; therefore his fundamental activity is war,
which involves the sacrifice of one's life as the
way to divinization and has as its end the
•^Psicoanalisis. pp. 280-281.
18 * ^
Psicologia dinamica. pp. 95-97.
71
nourishment of the gods. So, the essence of man's
existence is also to be a warrior.19
While it goes without saying that any conquest of
one people by another is bound to be traumatic to the
conquered, the Aztec trauma caused by the Spanish Conquest
was unusually intense, profound, and tragic. Once "owners
of the world," the surviving Aztecs suddenly became
20
slaves. "There was nothing ahead of them but systematic
21
destruction and limitless exploitation." The defeat w:.s
made more bitter by the sense of orphanhood caused by
betrayal. The Indians believed that their gods had treach-
22
erously denied them and that Moctezuma II had contra
dicted the most fundamental aspect of their tradition,
belief in their own superiority over others, making them
serve a foreign god and men like Quetzalcoatl, an effemi
nate savior who had been thrown out of Tula by Tezcatlipoca,
Coatlicue: Estetica del arte indfgena antiguo.
with a prologue by Samuel Ramos (Mexico: UNAM, Instituto
de Investigaciones Esteticas, 195 9), pp. 249-250.
on
Only one-fifth of the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan
survived the final siege of the city. Most of the leaders
and nobility died (Agustin Palacios L., "El problema de la
Malintzin como expresion concreta del encuentro," in El
mexicano: Educacion,. his tor ia v personalidad [Mexico:
Secretarra de Educacion Publica, 1965], p. 56 [hereinafter
referred to as "Malintzin"]). See "Cantos tristes de la
Conquista," in Miguel Leon-Portilla, Vision de los vencldos
(Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1969),
pp. 164-170.
^Aramoni, Psicoanalisis. p. 116.
9?
Paz, Labyrinth. p. 56.
72
x 23
using Quetzalcoatl's own weapons. Aramoni suggests that
the shortness (194 years) of the culture of these people,
still adolescent, who believed themselves to be eternal and
necessary to the life of the God-Sun simply added to the
0 /
impact of their misery. The Aztec male, who could not
tolerate male prostitution, was symbolically raped in his
powerlessness to defend his women. Unable to direct his
aggression toward anyone else, not even toward his women,
whose imagined contempt he now feared, he had to direct it
25
within himself. This could only intensify his depression
and make his new reliance on alcohol the more dramatically
26
exaggerated. Fromm and Maccoby offer the hypothesis that
the Indian's extreme vulnerability to alcoholism was caused
by the breakdown of the Aztec patriarchal structure, a
structure which Aramoni suggests was not yet secure in its
dominance.^
^Aramoni, Psicoanalisis. pp. 102-103.
^Ibid., pp. 49, 54, 70, 112. I would question
Aramoni's assertion that the Aztecs believed themselves to
be eternal. They expected the era of the Quinto Sol to end
on a day "Four Earthquake," last day of a fifty-two-year
cycle. (See Caso, People of the Sun, pp. 19-20.)
25
Fromm and Maccoby, Social Character, p. 116.
^Diaz-Guerrero, Psicologia dinamica. p. 99.
27 „
Social Character, p. 170; Psicoanalisis« p. 305.
"If our sources may be believed, few peoples in the whole
of history were more prone to drunkenness than the Indians
of the Spanish colony (Charles Gibson, The Aztecs under
Spanish Rule [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964],
73
There is another element in the trauma of the
Conquest which seems to be an important factor in present-
day Mexican machismo: the archetypal role played by Cortes
no
and Malinche. After analyzing the presumed psychological
p. 409, quoted in Fromm and Maccoby, Social Character,
p. 171).
28
In case any of my readers do not know who
Malinche was, I will briefly tell her story, following the
version given by Agustin Palacios L. in his interesting
psychoanalysis of her (see "Malintzin," pp. 54-58).
Malinalli Tenepal was born in 1505, in Painala or in Oluta,
on the right side of the Coatzacoalcos River, in the terri
tory of the Olmecas, who were allied with the Aztecs.
(Her tribe spoke Nahuatl in addition to Chontal, their own
language.) Malinalli was the only child of a tecuhtli, or
minor lord, chief of the tribe. Her father died, probably
when she was five to eight years old, and her mother
remarried shortly thereafter, bearing a son by the new
stepfather. Malinalli was the legitimate heir to the
chiefdom of the tribe, but her mother and stepfather
decided to eliminate her in favor of their new son. Pass
ing off a dead slave girl as Malinalli, they sold her to
some slave merchants of Xicalango, who in turn sold her to
a chief in Tabasco, who, when defeated by Cortes in March,
1519, gave her to Cortes with nineteen other young slave
girls. Baptized Marina four days later (Doha Marina was
the first Christian woman in Mexico), she was given to
Alonso Hernandez Puertocarrero as a concubine, at the age
of fourteen. In July, when Hernandez was sent to Spain,
she became the mistress, translator, and advisor of Cortes
and was at his side almost constantly during the rest of
the Conquest. The legitimate wife of Cortes, Catalina
Juarez, arrived in July, 1522, but died three months later.
(Cortes was suspected of having murdered her. See Alfonso
Toro, Un crimen de Hernan Cortes [Mexico: Ediciones
Patria~ 1947].) After Catalina's death, Malinalli became
pregnant, apparently for the first time, and bore Martin
Cortes, who has become an archetypal symbol of the first
mestizo ("Malintzin," p. 51). In November, 1524, Cortes
"married her off" to Juan Xaramillo, "a fawning, greedy
drunkard" (ibid., p. 58), and named her encomendera of
Oluta and Tequipaque in the Coatzacoalcos region.
Malinalli died in 1531 at the age of twenty-six, of an
unknown cause, leaving a five-year-old daughter to be an
orphan just as she had been. Her name, "Malinche," is a
74
content of the childhoods of Hernan Cortes and Doha Marina,
Dr. Agustin Palacios L. says:
[They] go to their encounter, oedipal in aspect,
as in the Biblical myth, the Spanish Adam and the
Nahua Eve. The encounter, burdened by unresolved
conflicts, aggression, guilt and melancholy, becomes
an Original Sin which determines the definitive
expulsion from the paradise of genuine achievement
and of identity. The expelled pair, the Quijote of
transitory glories and the antivirgin who symbolizes
treason, have turned into the mythical origins of
Mexicanness.29
Freud has said, "It is universally admitted that in
the origin of the traditions and folklore of a people, care
must be taken to eliminate from memory such a motive as
30
would be painful to the national feelings." Far from
eliminating any memory of La Malinche, however, the early
Mexicans turned her into the popular legend of "La
Llorona," "the Wailing Woman." Even before she died,
persons reported seeing visions of Malinche's suffering
31
soul. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the
ancient indigenous legend of the nocturnal premonitory
lamentations of the goddess Cihuacoatl had merged into the
Spanish corruption of Malintzin. To her Indian name, the
Spaniards added the suffix -tzin. which shows affection or
respect. The Indians applied the name Malintzin to Hernan
Cortes, also.
^"Malintzin," p. 61.
30
Brill, The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud,
p. 104.
31 - ~
G. Rodriguez A., Dona Marina (Mexico: Editorial
Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores, 1935), pp. 45, 46.
75
full-blown legend of La Llorona, Dona Marina returning to
32
expiate her sinful betrayal of her people.
Salvador Reyes Nevarez, writing in 1970, shows the
dynamics of this "Mexican Original Sin": "Frustrated love
[for La Malinche, the Mother who is repudiated] is . . .
the prime mover of machismo. Love and shame and a
centuries-old rage that cannot even articulate itself.
Frustrated love that is still love, and therefore keeps its
virulent power and festers in our breasts. La Malinche,
the universal mother of the Mexican, constitutes a sort of
33
Original Sin that is exclusive to this people." Reyes
32
Palacios, "Malintzin," p. 59. I cannot resist
"defending" Malinche. Palacios points out that Malinche
as a symbol of betrayal "was obviously created a posteri
ori ." "In a region completely disorganized because of the
existence of numerous cultural groups . . . one could not
speak of nation in the sense that superficial historians
do. For Malintzin, as for the groups under Aztec control,
Moctezuma was as much a foreigner as Cortes, and conse
quently she did not owe loyalty to either one; if they
joined the Spaniard it was because of the circumstances,
and because of their inner desires for vengeance" (ibid. ,
p. 60) .
"^"Machismo," p. 17. It is interesting that Maria
Elvira Bermudez uses the idea of an "original sin" in dis
cussing mestizaje, or the fact of mixed blood: "In the
love relationships of the Mexican, mestizaie is like an
original sin. Every Mexican male has to struggle with the
legacy of violence and incontinence from the Spanish adven
turer; and every Mexican woman bears the weight of the
passive Indian woman who submits because of ambition or
convenience. The Indian stripped of his woman perdures in
the Mexicans who suffer an inferiority complex; and the
Spanish woman deceived by her husband survives in the
'bossy wife'" (Vida, p. 109). Of course it is unnecessary
to point out that none of these writers who are using the
analogy "original sin" is implying that it is a matter of
theological sin; they obviously are using it in the sense
76
states what has been said often, that Mexicans have chosen
to praise and show love only to the indigenous side of
Q /
their ancestry. He points out that they have thus chosen
to identify with the feminine, passive side, and "when [the
Mexican] is left with the feminine side of the Conquest, an
35
ambiguous wind seems to blow over his shoulders." "In
some obscure way, he has stumbled upon a terrifying possi-
Of.
bility--that his virility could be suspect."
There is no reason to suspect the masculinity
of the average Mexican. It is a question of a kind
of metaphysical propensity toward a feminine
conduct, in itself metaphysical. The Mexican
senses the abyss. He intuits the crack, and vio
lently refuses to continue forward in life except
by validating at every step of the way, over the
most trivial occasions, a manhood which no one
really belittles or questions.37
In other words, says Reyes, somewhere in the remote fibers
of his consciousness, the Mexican realizes that he too
might receive the stigma of that first, original posses
sion. So, while the erotic act will constitute the prime
proof of virility, all other actions will have their
of an influence or event that has caused social and psycho
logical repercussions which are practically irreversible.
Q /
"Machismo," p. 16. In regard to the question
posed in Chapter I, n. 23, it is suggestive that other
countries of Latin America have either not rejected their
Spanish ancestry at all (the case of Peru), or have not
done it as vigorously as Mexico. Of possibly more signifi
cance is the fact that no other Latin American people has
Cortes and Malinche as its archetypal parents.
35Ibid. 36Ibid.
37Ibid.
77
machista coloring."^
Thus, it is clear that even while the Mexican
seemingly accepts the indigenous side of his ancestry in
preference to the Spanish side, he is at the same time
repudiating it, with disastrous consequences. In the words
of Octavio Paz:
The strange permanence of Cortes and La Malinche
in the Mexican's imagination and sensibilities
reveals that they are something more than historical
figures: they are symbols of a secret conflict that
we have still not resolved. When he repudiates La
Malinche . . . the Mexican breaks his ties with the
past, renounces his origins, and lives in isolation
and solitude.39
It can be easily gathered that even without the
unforgettable archetypal pair of Cortes and Malinche, the
Conquest engraved upon the emerging mestizo mind an indel
ible equation of the conquering society as male and the
conquered society as female. Santiago Ramirez points out
that even in place names, the indigenous name took the
position of the maternal name in the Spanish system: San
Andres Tetepilco, Santiago Ixcuintla, and so on.^ Slowly,
says Ramirez, the mestizo equated a set of categories:
strength, masculinity, capacity for conquest, social
38
Ibid., p. 17. Does this suggestion by Reyes
Nevarez shed light on the assertion by Bermudez (supra.
p. 23, n. 72) that the Mexican male needs woman more than
other men do?
39
Labyrinth. p. 87.
^ Motivaciones. p. 55.
78
predominance, and foreign paternity took on a strong mascu
line sign, while weakness, femininity, submission, social
devaluation, and strong telluric roots became feminine,
indigenous signs.Gradually, woman was devaluated by the
new Mexicans insofar as she was identified with what was
Indian; man was overvalued insofar as he was identified
/ 0
with the conqueror, the dominant and prevailing.
Applying the theory of infantile identifications to
the social level, Gonzalez Pineda accepts Ramirez’s account
of the historical genesis of the primitive identification
"conqueror, male; conquered, female," and asserts that both
mestizo and criollo (Mexican-born son of Spanish parents,
or eventually, a Mexican with no Indian admixture to his
Spanish blood) had the compulsion of seeking regressively
the ideal identification, "which can still be defined as
almost exactly that of the conquistador of the first years
of the Conquest."4^
Because, however, of the de facto colonial restric
tions upon the power and upward mobility of the mestizo»
the latter could not possibly equal his actual or symbolic
41Ibid.. p. 51.
/ 9
Ibid., p. 49. For a very interesting presenta
tion of the idea "Spain, masculine; Aztecs, feminine," see
in its entirety the article by Jorge Carrion, "De la raiz
a la flor del mexicano," Filosofia v Letras. XLI-XLII
(January-June, 1951), 9-24.
/ 9
Gonzalez Pineda, Destructividad, pp. 57-58.
79
father, the Spaniard.^ In connection with the first
mestizos. Ramirez quotes Octavio Paz's impressionistic
description of "Nobody," the contemporary mestizo. "Nobody
is afraid not to exist: he vacillates, attempting now and
then to become Somebody. Finally, in the midst of his
useless gestures, he disappears into the limbo from which
he emerged."^
Agustin Palacios L. is a little more optimistic,
writing some fifteen years after Paz. Referring to the
real life of Martin Cortes, the symbolic first mestizo, he
shows the mestizo identity problem as it spans the
centuries:
Martin, the mestizo Mexican, on losing his
father . . . and his mother ... is left with a
double rejected identity, and, in the last analysis,
with none. He lives in permanent depression, which
he denies in chinampinas fbuscapies. the firework
Americans call "snakes"], in revolutions and in
feigned joy, yearning for the generous brown breast,
the only object that sustains him in his solitude.
He seeks false identities in what is French, in what
is Yankee, and even in deformed Spanish and Indian
images, identities that are not genuine and conse
quently do not give him the necessary internal
cohesion. . . . The son, still an orphan in terms of
his genuine identity, is gradually achieving it,
after enormous struggles and bloody quests through
out his entire existence ' .46
See C. H. Haring, The Spanish Empire in America.
Harbinger Books (New York: Hareourt, Brace & World, Inc.,
1947), pp. 201-202; and Lesley Byrd Simpson, Many Mexicos
(3rd ed.; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961),
p. 235.
45 < •
Ramxrez, Motivaciones. pp. 54-55, quoting Paz,
Labyrinth, p. 45.
^"Malintzin," pp. 61-62.
80
But it is not enough to consider the effect of the
history of the mestizo upon machismo. The dynamic of the
criollo must also be examined. It should be quite obvious
that the criollo of Mexico would have an identity problem,
torn between two loyalties. Metaphorically, points out
Santiago Ramirez, he is torn between his real Spanish
mother and the native nurse who gives him her milk and
emotional warmth. Will he obey his parents and take on the
values of the "mother-country” he does not know, or risk
their displeasure and conform to his new indigenous
environment? "The Mexican criollo as well as the mestizo
finds himself facing an acute conflict of multiple, complex
identifications, a victim of contradictions that will
necessarily leave some part of his personality unsatis
fied."^ His problem is not helped by the fact that
criollos did not enjoy all the privileges of Spaniards in
48
Mexico, the hated and resented "gachupines." In fact,
says Ramxrez, speaking of Latin America in general and
Mexico in particular, "The fundamental characteristic of
creole culture is the need to achieve reparation, compensa
tion: the basic structural mechanism under which the
^ Motivaciones. p. 57. See Fernando Benitez, Los
primeros mexicanos: la vida criolla en el siglo XVI
(Mexico: Ediciones Era, S.A., 1962), p. 250.
^See Benitez, Los primeros mexicanos, pp. 275-278;
Simpson, Many Mexicos. p. 180; Haring, The Spanish Empire
in America, p. 31.
81
49
creole is born is reparation."
This inability of the criollo to achieve the status
of the gachunin should help the reader understand Emilio
Uranga's attempted analysis of the real dynamic of the
criollo in seeking Independence from Spain. Uranga points
out that "independence" can mean "both autonomy of choice
and liberation through one's own efforts, and independence
in terms of one’s capacity to dispose of wealth one
owns."^ He believes that both ideas converged for the
criollo in a project of private property, of economic inde
pendence. However, since property only "apparently permits
us to join dialectically what we are within to what is
outside and other, . . . such a project, . . . far from
51
satisfying, brings one to the edge of despair."
The idea that he [the criollo1 was robbed by
the peninsular did not let him see that he was poor;
and when he had kicked the intruder out, he found
that the goods whose enjoyment he had promised him
self had vanished. Bitterness was inevitable then,
and also despair, which unfortunately did not reach
the extreme, because he still continued deceived by
the fallacious idea that the meaning of his life
was to be found in material goods rather than in
action.52
Those criollos who were sincerely trying to help
their country were simply not equipped for the task.
"Unaccustomed to freedom of action," says Ramos, "when
confronted by their first difficulties they show a sense of
49
Motivaciones. p. 58.
51Ibid., p. 57.
^ Analisis. p. 56.
^Ibid. , p. 56.
82
53
inferiority." Ramos points out that after Independence,
the governing minorities overlooked the real problem of the
Mexican people:
A heterogeneous race geographically isolated by
wide expanses of territory; a wretched and uncul
tured population, passive and indifferent like the
Indian, accustomed to dissolute life; and a dynamic
and educated minority, whose individualism was
nevertheless aggravated by a sense of inferiority,
antagonistic to all order and discipline.*4
Although the most pressing problems were those of the econ
omy and education, only the political problem was attacked,
"with an idealism totally blind to the lessons of experi
ence."^
I have already alluded to Zea’s ideas regarding
the supposed irresponsibility of the nineteenth-century
criollos and the exacerbation of their pride in the face
c / :
of Mexico’s defeat by the United States.
What I would call the basic vital insecurity and
inauthenticity of both criollos and mestizos was not
53Profile, p. 41. 54Ibid.. p. 42.
55Ibid.
3^Supra. p. 62, n. 224. The psychologist Jorge
Carrion writes, "Many manifestations of Mexican life--
boasting, machismo. and the predominance of the world of
sense perceptions and daydreams--, if they do not originate
in [the trauma of the War of 1847], have definitely become
fixated by it as characteristics of our life" (Mito y magia
del mexicano. Mexico y lo mexicano, Vol. Ill [Mexico:
Porrua y Obregon, 1952], pp. 38-39).
Ramirez says that the territorial mutilation
effected by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was "experi
enced in the real and symbolic order as a castration"
(Motivaciones. p. 71).
83
ameliorated by Juarez's efforts to reform the country.
Very possibly the Reform Movement confused the Mexican
vital situation further. Octavio Paz suggests that it both
cut Mexico off from her roots ("necessary matricide") and
accentuated the feudal system that had prevailed since the
Conquest
The historical project of the liberals was to
replace the colonial tradition, based on Catholic
doctrine, with an affirmation equally universal:
the freedom of the individual. . . . The Reform
movement founded Mexico and denied the past. It
rejected tradition and sought to justify itself in
the future.5°
Geometry cannot take the place of myth. To
convert the schemes of the liberals into a truly
national project it would have been necessary to
win the support of the country as a whole. This
would have been supremely difficult, because the
Reform was attacking a very concrete and particular
affirmation: that all men are the sons of God, a
creed permitting a genuinely filial relationship
between the individual and the cosmos. In its
place the Reform offered an abstract postulate:
that all men are equal before the law.59
Paz points out that the sale of church properties under
Juarez and the disappearance of communal indigenous land
holdings accentuated the feudal character of Mexico, a
character which Porfirio Dxaz prolonged with unchecked
60
severxty.
Aniceto Aramoni believes that the manifestations of
machismo as we know them today did not break out actively
^Labyrinth, p. 114.
^9Ibid., p. 128.
58Ibid.
6QIbid.. p. 129.
84
until the Revolution of 1910.^ The humus from which it
would emerge, however, had been gradually prepared, and the
seeds sown, over a period of some seven hundred years. It
can be said in general that the Mexican people reached the
eve of the Revolution having very little real sense of
identity either as a nation or as individuals. Their sense
of self-confidence as a nation must have been extremely
low. The long colonial period of static routine and
inertia had been followed by a half-century of political
and economic chaos which included the shock of the national
military defeat and the loss of over half their territory,
and the confusion of having foreigners occupying the throne
for three years.^ Although Dxaz achieved political
stability, he intensified the political and economic
immaturity of the masses, maintaining their dependence upon
the patronage system. The vast bulk of the population was
63
victimized by poverty and illiteracy.
The explosion of the Revolution was all the more
violent because of the long "Porfirian" repression in which
61 +
Psicoanalisis. p. 138. See, on the other hand,
Iduarte's portrayal of pre-revolutionary machismo in the
state of Tabasco (Andres Iduarte, Nino: Child of the
Mexican Revolution, trans. and adapted by James F. Shearer
[New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971]).
^Ramos, Profile, p. 34; Ramxrez, Motivaciones.
pp. 71-72.
See Ernest Gruening, Mexico and Its Heritage
(New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1928), p. 64.
85
allowed manifestations of aggression were limited to occa
sional subtle newspaper attacks.^ Says Zea, "An almost
primitive world burst forth as if by magic, ripping the
ridiculous cardboard world fabricated by the Porfirian
,,65
system.
The Revolution was both a vehicle for the open,
unrestrained expression of repressed resentment and
violence, and an influence in shaping machismo as we find
it today. Aramoni writes, "We have the right to suspect
that for 350 years there had been a fundamental and invari
able ’something' inside the man of Mexico, which exploded
and made a cataclysmic eclosion, broke the dam and dragged
everything with it, with no moral, intellectual or cultural
limitations."^ The Revolution not only gave the individ-
6 7
ual new movement and freedom from old constraints, but it
also established many violent and arbitrary superego
figures who by their very example endorsed cruelty and
power as a way of life. Pancho Villa, of course, is the
prime model. Aramoni, in a careful analysis of his
^Aramoni, Psicoanalisis, p. 140.
^Leopoldo Zea, "Dialectica de la conciencia en
Mexico," Cuadernos Americanos, Aho X, No. 3 (May-June,
1951), p. 101.
^ Psicoanalisis. p. 141. Aramoni creates a nice
image with his use of "eclosion" (the act of emerging from
a pupal case or of hatching from an egg). In other words,
the "real" Mexican did not shatter from the explosion--he
emerged.
^Gonzalez Pineda, Dinamica, p. 31.
86
background and life, describes him as having an authori
tarian and sadistic character, with a choleric, sanguine
temperament and a personal and social inferiority complex.
While he reacted brutally to any insult, doubt or aggres
sion, and was despotic with his inferiors, he was submis-
68
sive and servile with his superiors. But Villa was not
only a model of cruelty, he permitted it freely. Under him
the humblest soldier could do any act of violence. "Every
69
single one was the most important personage in Mexico."
Villa, born a peon, is also the prime example of the new
upward mobility made possible by the Revolution. "To be a
general was no longer the privilege of the ruling classes,
but rather the possibility of anyone who could get a few
men to follow him and go with a fatalistic sense of adven
ture in search of his destiny."^
It is important to remember that the chaotic phase
of the Revolution lasted from 1910 until approximately
1929, and the violence of the Cristero period did not
really subside until around 1932.^ The briefest reflec
tion on the unprincipled chaos of this long period will
show why Aramoni speculates that the Revolution produced
^ Psicoanalisis. p. 147.
69Ibid., p. 151.
^Gonzalez Pineda, Dinamica. p. 32.
^Aramoni, Psicoanalisis. p. 140; Simpson, Many
Mexicos, p. 285.
87
"an individual accustomed to killing, to using weapons in a
precipitate, unreflective way, sure of his strength and
power, of his importance and of the lack of need to answer
7 2
for his actions." That Mexico's homicide rate is higher
73
than that of most other Latin American nations might be
due in part to the fact that no other Latin American nation
has undergone such a protracted period of unrestrained
violence. Aramoni asks if the Mexican can forget those
years and submit to the new civilization which is the
product of the cause he fought for. "The answer seems
negative. He continues to be violent and insecure, a
bully, a fighter; he still reacts as he did in the years
when he could do it with impunity. Swift with physical
punishment, he tolerates nothing and kills easily.But
how can the Mexican forget those years? The spirit of
violence of the Revolution is kept alive all over Mexico in
songs and movies and art, and thus is suggested as accept
able to every little Mexican who has ears and eyes.
The violence of the Revolution, however, was not
the only reason for the new emergence of machismo. It
should be remembered that after the Revolution there was
both a new emphasis upon the return to indigenous roots and
^ Psicoanalisis. p. 310.
^ Supra. pp. 10-11.
^ Psicoanalisis. pp. 163-164.
88
a vast pictorial reminder to the people of the vicissitudes
of their history. As only one of myriad possible examples,
La Malinche is represented as the Mexican Eve in the mural
by Orozco in the National Preparatory School.7^ The uncon
scious fear of the macho of being identified with the
passive, feminine side of the Conquest was very possibly
intensified by this cultural movement. Be this as it may,
Mexico’s attempt to discover her own essence has not yet
given her people an image they can accept without pain.
In the words of Laurette Sejourne:
No nation seems to be so culturally torn as
Mexico between two poles that are so contradictory
and apparently irreconcilable: on one hand, the
profound trauma caused by the terrible mutilation
at the time of the Conquest; on the other, a past
whose rebirth entails serious inner conflict.76
If . . . the flesh has forgotten the degrading
brands of red-hot iron forced on it by the conquis
tadors, the tragic consciousness of the Mexican can
only feed itself on the unacceptable image of a
reality which he believes it a duty to make his own.''
75
For a good reproduction of this picture, see
Justino Fernandez, Mexican Art (Feltham, Middlesex: Paul
Hamlyn Ltd., 1965), Plate 49.
7^"Vigencia del pasado en Mexico," Sur (Buenos
Aires), No. 293 (March-April, 1965), p. 1. (Hereinafter
referred to as "Vigencia.")
77Ibid.
The Macho’s Social Context
89
It is finally appropriate to examine some of the
elements of the social context in which machismo exists.
"From a psychosocial point of view," says Erikson, "basic
social and cultural processes can only be viewed as the
joint endeavor of adult egos to develop and maintain,
through joint organization, a maximum of conflict-free
energy in a mutually supportive psychosocial equilibrium.
Only such an organization is likely to give consistent
support to the egos of growing and grown beings at every
78
step of their development." It will be seen in the
course of the next pages that not all of the Mexican social
processes are "mutually supportive." In fact, they are to
such an extent mutually non-supportive that the individual
must live in a constant attitude of defensiveness and
distrustThe "chingar o ser chingado" mystique in
itself hardly points to a "mutually supportive psychosocial
equilibrium.
While the following material appears here in the
form of generalizations, these are the generalizations
^ Identity. p. 223.
^It will be recalled that Gonzalez Pineda has
referred to the existence of a great sense of lack of pro
tection, a sense of fear, a need for defense or indirect
aggression as part of the national character (supra, p. 14).
80
Supra, pp. 63-65.
90
which Mexicans believed to have a bearing on their analyses
81
and criticisms of their own social milieu. That research
completed in the last few years is not included should not
invalidate the conclusions cited.^ As Carlos Ibarra has
written, "One cannot expect a society to change in thirty
or forty years, and one can expect even less to be able to
perceive any such changes.
Possibly one of the most serious handicaps of the
Mexican "body social" is its rather complex fragmentation.
Even the national superego is split and conflicting,
according to Gonzalez Pineda. In his chapter "Conflictos
en el superyo nacional," he traces the very imperfect
understanding of Christianity (in the form of Catholicism,
of course) on the part of the vast majority of Mexicans,
and then points out that a small anticlerical, antireli
gious minority not only managed to impose constitutions
(the political superego) on the country that were really
81
The only exception is Christian Brunet, a French
philosopher who lived in Mexico for ten years and taught at
the University of Nuevo Leon for eight. When Americans are
cited in this section, it is for their documentation of
generalities formulated by Mexicans.
82
According to Carlos Fuentes, an "objective study"
of Mexican reality is lacking, and until it is accom
plished, "the intellectual class of Mexico will not have
fulfilled its most urgent task: that of penetrating the
curtain of mystifications which alienate our daily life"
(Tiempo mexicano. p. 86).
83
Carlos M. Ibarra, Teoria de Mexico (Puebla:
Cajica, 1941 and 1967), p. 417.
91
not in accord with the beliefs of the majority (the
national ego), but actually managed to maintain the situa-
84
tion for a century. Not only is the political superego
in conflict with the national ego, but the national super-
O C
ego itself is split between Church and State. And even
though Catholicism is now less hated and feared than in the
recent past, "the real, permanent and operating fact is
that the national ego has been enduring severely and pain
fully the conflict between the two most important fractions
86 -
of its superego." Gonzalez Pineda criticizes the clergy
for what has been on the whole a severe and distant rela
tionship with the people and he points out that both
government and Church have
with their own conflicts constantly increased the
weakness of an ego lacking solid superego figures
which besides being punitive would also be under
standing, loving, and tender. All this leads to
greater confusion, to greater difficulty in resolv
ing problems of multiple identification, and to an
increased feeling of lack of protection and to the
development of greater hostility and a g g r e s s i o n .87
Unfortunately, the split superego is not the only
form of national fragmentation. Gonzalez Pineda speaks of
the conflict of the multiple ego identities co-existing in
Mexico (identities which are basically criollo. mestizo.
8^Dinamica. pp. 66-71, 73, 98.
8~ *Ibid. . pp. 98, 100.
86t, . ,
Ibid.
87Ibid.. pp. 101-103.
92
88
and Indian). Tragically enough, "the simple fact is that
in Mexico no one accepts being the same as the national
identities." The criollos want to be equal to other
criollos that they think are superior, or to foreigners,
but not to their fellow criollos: the mestizos want to be
equal to the criollos. and despise or fear the Indians; and
the Indians, if they leave their own communities, either
quickly take on mestizo attitudes or fear everyone else,
since identities other than their own have only destroyed
O Q
them in the past. Gonzalez says:
For the mestizos, the destruction of the Indian
identities would betheir theoretical liberation
from an identity which they still despise and still
fear, and which, therefore, on deep levels, they
long to destroy so that only the European or occi
dental or white identity would subsist in them, an
identity which even today is the only one they have
been able to esteem and envy, and which they want
to obtain.90
(If one recalls the association "indigenous-feminine-
mother" mentioned in the previous chapter, one can better
understand the deep confusion of the ordinary Mexican male
regarding his personal identity and worth.) In a later
work, Gonzalez points out that the uprooting and demo
graphic movement caused by the Revolution destroyed the
previous external structures which had limited the overt
88 +
Gonzalez uses the word "identity" here to refer
to a group (racial on the whole) to which one feels that
one does or does not belong, with which one identifies or
does not.
89Ibid.. p. 145. 9^Ibid., p. 146.
93
expression of the national fragmentation. Physical,
economic, racial, and cultural distances were erased,
causing new contact and friction between persons who feared
each other. New balances are being sought, he says, even
91
today.
Another factor contributing to the relative lack of
mutual psychosocial support is the fact that on the whole,
Christianity is quite imperfectly understood and lived in
92
Mexico. Very simply, for complex historical and cultural
reasons which I prefer to discuss in Chapter III, Mexican
Catholics for the most part do not understand that self
giving love of neighbor is of the essence in Christianity.
In fact, to the contrary, Francisco Gonzalez Pineda
asserts, "[We seek] the exploitation of others as the only
value that is important and worthy of being achieved and
93
lived." Samuel Ramos went so far in 1934 as to say,
"Generally speaking, the Mexican lacks principles. . . .
Ideas make no sense to him." He stated flatly, "[The
Mexican of the city] has no religion and professes no
social or political creed. He is the least 'idealistic'
Q1
Destructividad, pp. 135, 93.
92
I realize full well that it is imperfectly under
stood and lived in the United States, too. It is both
impossible and fruitless to discuss the differences here,
however. The task is simply to try to see what relation
ship might exist between the religious situation in Mexico
and machismo.
^ Dinamica, p. 186.
94
person imaginable."9^ As late as 1951 Ramos reiterated
that the Mexican rejects values, and went on, "Only in
exceptional cases do I believe the Mexican possesses that
virtue of triple veneration which Goethe defined as every
man's need: veneration of what is above him, beside him,
and below him."9^ When Ramos says that the Mexican "has no
religion," he is not saying that the Mexican is not reli
gious . It is one thing to yearn for spiritual communion
with a Power or Person beyond oneself, and another to
translate such a communion or its possibility into a cohe
sive and fruitful worldview and ethic. Ramos himself has
said:
The real motivation for our culture, given the
nature of our psychic activity since the time of
the Conquest, is religiosity. . . . One can say
that Mexican history, especially in its spiritual
sense, is a matter of the affirmation or negation
of religious sentiment. Whichever branch of our
ascendancy is considered, . . . the most notable
resultant characteristic is our exalted religios
ity. 96
Profile, pp. 64-65. Elsewhere Ramos says, "The
Mexican is idealistic because idealism exalts the idea he
has of his own personality. Individualist that he is, he
devotes his effort not to any specific project, but rather
to an affirmation of himself as an individual. When
reality opposes itself irremediably to the achievement of
his projects, he does not renounce his purpose but uncon
sciously strives to attain a new fictional level of
existence" (ibid., pp. 42-43). It is clear, then, that
Ramos uses the word idealistic" in two different senses.
95Ibid., p. 178.
96Ibid., p. 77.
95
Maria Elvira Bermudez observes:
The Mexican has taken from Catholicism only the
rites coinciding with his old religion; but in
general terms he does not know the dogma that
inspires them and the morality which informs them.
Actually, Catholicism neither took the place of
paganism nor achieved a dialectical synthesis with
it. 97
In fact, Bermudez says, referring to the level of action
rather than of belief, that if the practice of religion
includes adhesion to a domestic and personal morality, it
is "unquestionable that Mexican families do not practise
no
the religion they say they profess." Octavio Paz sums
the situation up, it seems to me, in a succinct and true
image: "The religious feelings of my people are very deep,
. . . but their fervor has done nothing but return again
and again to a well that has been empty for centuries.""
His image can be partially understood in the light of his
statement, "The decadence of European Catholicism coincided
with its apogee in Spanish America: it spread out over new
lands at the very moment it had ceased to be creative. It
offered a set philosophy and a petrified faith, so that the
originality of the new believers found no way of expressing
itself. The adherence to it is passive.Christian
Brunet gives the following overview:
97Vida, p. 109.
qq
Labyrinth. p. 25.
98Ibid. . p. 115.
~^^Ibid., p. 105.
96
Except for a few among them, quite rare, who are
informed about their dogmas and have a developed
religious understanding, Mexicans rarely live their
religion in the form of hope. If they are Chris
tians in the sense that they adhere to the Church,
they are not profoundly religious. ... Of the
three theological virtues, the Mexican knows only
the first.101
I regard a third sort of social fragmentation in
102
Mexico to be a lack of ordinary altruism. This lack of
altruism ranges from the negative characteristic mentioned
by Gonzalez Pineda (exploitation of others) all the way to
a lack of a positive sense of society and the common good.
Salvador Reyes Nevarez, paraphrasing Jorge Portilla, says
that in Mexico, community is achieved only in small
circles. The Mexican does not experience civic community
with complete conviction, and political community seems
vague to him. "In Mexico one does not live the phenomenon
of the State nor of society. . . . Only two communities are
lived: the family and friendshipAnd Leopoldo Zea
echoes this, maintaining that Mexico is "a world in which
101
"Le Mexique," p. 241. For the benefit of any
readers who may not be familiar with the traditional
terminology of the Church, the three "theological" virtues
are faith, hope, and charity. In view of the popular
understanding of the term "charity" (in distinction to the
more technical definition of charity as love of God, which
after all cannot be understood apart from love of neighbor
--"A man who does not love the brother that he can see
cannot love God, whom he has never seen" [I John 4:20]) one
may interpret Brunet to mean that Mexicans on the whole do
not practise charity toward their neighbor.
109
See Bermudez, Vida, pp. 104-105.
^^Amor, p. 74.
97
society is established by bonds that do not go beyond the
forms of friendship or blood relations. A society without
citizens, a society of friends and relatives. . . .
A society whose laws and legalities only serve to cover de
facto situations brought about by concrete wills.
Gomez Robleda speaks in 1962 of Mthe indifference or
selfish passivity of the overwhelming majority regarding
political activities. Fernando Benitez links the
Mexican’s political attitude with his Colonial past:
In political matters, the Mexican never shows
his face. He moves cautiously and suspiciously, as
if he were still up against the repressive Colonial
structure, [forced to operate] with forbidden arms
and sotto voce. His antagonism and the sad idea
which he has formed about all government, like the
criollo, do not move him to resolute political
participation.106
Gomez Robleda mentions "the total lack [in Mexico]
107
of what can be called the mystique of nationality."
This lack has been a preoccupation of Zea, who has spoken
in several of his works of what the nineteenth-century
thinker Jose Maria Luis Mora referred to as Latin America's
"sentido de cuerpo" as opposed to a "sentido de nacion."
that is, a sense of the local group to which one belongs
TQ/i
Conciencia v posibilidad del mexicano. Mexico y
lo mexicano, Vol. II (Mexico: Porrua y Obregon, 1952),
p. 103. (Hereinafter referred to as Conciencia.)
105
Perturbacion. p. 87.
106
Los primeros mexicanos. p. 280.
•^^Perturbacion. p. 87.
98
rather than a sense of nation. Mora attributed this to
their Spanish heritage (the Spanish fueros were in essence
local privileges, local exemptions from a general law), and
Zea adds the contributory factors of the local isolation
caused by Mexican geography and the fact that the man
struggling for the simplest daily sustenance cannot concern
1 OR
himself with the general welfare.
"For the Mexican," writes Maria Elvira Bermudez,
"the Country is not a collection of fellow human beings to
whom one owes solidarity, nor a set of ideals that should
be pursued in common; the Country is rather the Govern
ment. ,,10° In fact, says Zea, even when conceiving of the
government, the Mexican reduces this idea to the concrete,
in the form of a relative or the friend of a friend who has
"pull."110
This brings the discussion full circle, back to the
assertion of Ramos that the Mexican does not operate on the
basis of political creed. Zea puts it in these words:
"Mexicans are ready to die not for an ideology, but for a
big-boss friend to whom loyalty has been promised in
exchange for the expectation that he will in turn be loyal
to the promises of material well-being he has made to his
1 OR
Conciencia. pp. 42-43; El pensamiento latino-
americano (2 vols.; Mexico: Editorial Pormaca, S.A. de
C.V., 1965), II, 91-93.
1Q9Vida. p. 105. 110Conciencia. p. 44.
99
111
follower or followers." Here one sees the abiding
influence of the feudal patronage system, which was not
extinguished with the exile of Diaz in 1911.
Reyes Nevarez characterizes Mexican political
action as being based on personal passion rather than being
112
a unitary projection toward a foreseen goal. One is
reminded of Ramos' distinction between "the passion of
113
interest" and "the interest of passion." "Introverted
passions," says Ramos, "are a negative and destructive
force in social life. They spoil the most meritorious
projects, converting these into a mere pretext for their
own fulfillment. For this reason so many endeavors and
1 - i /
struggles in our history seem to make no sense."
The discussion has moved from the question of
social fragmentation in Mexico to that of unsatisfactory
superego figures. The people simply do not have enough
honest, responsible, dedicated, altruistic persons in posi
tions of major and minor leadership. Gonzalez Pineda,
speaking in general terms, says that ordinary politicians
and government functionaries do not aspire to govern or to
administer for the people in a democratic way, but rather
111
Ibid., p. 45. Fuentes refers to "the terrible
weight of political personalism" (Tiempo mexicano. p. 86).
112 113
Amor, p. 47. Supra, p. 57.
^ “ ^Profile. p. 138.
100
aspire to give "supposed life to the illusion of having
achieved participation in a secretly admired, but previ-
115
ously openly hated, identity." Instead of regarding a
position won by election or appointment as a victory of
one's social or economic group, the winner regards it as a
victory over the identities that originated him. These
attitudes, says Gonzalez, would be impossible if they were
116
not permitted by a whole national psychology.
A major factor contributing to the widespread fear
which Gonzalez says prevails in Mexico is the falsity which
115 ^
Dinamica, p. 147.
^^Tbid. , pp. 147-148. Gonzalez states that the
present governmental system requires submission not to
ideas and causes but to the most powerful men; it requires
degradation and loss of self-respect; it favors money as
the only compensation, which is a value esteemed by the
identities to which most of the politicians want to belong.
The situation makes integrity dangerous (Dinamica, p. 162).
The general trend of the discussion thus far, and this
statement: of Gonzalez in particular, would seem to indicate
that Mexico at the present time is a society of "low
synergy," to use the concept of Ruth Benedict, elaborated
by Abraham Maslow. "High synergy" can be defined as "a
fusion of what the individual wants personally with what is
good for him and at the same time good for others." "The
society with high synergy is one in which virtue pays."
A society with "low social synergy" is one in which "the
advantage of one individual becomes a victory over another,
and the majority who are not victorious must shift as they
can." Synergy, then, might be defined as the degree to
which the social forms of a society provide areas of mutual
advantage and eliminate acts and goals that are at the
expense of others in the group (Abraham H. Maslow, "Synergy
in the Society and in the Individual," Journal of Individual
Psychology. XX [November, 1964], 153-164. See also T.
George Harris, "About Ruth Benedict and Her Lost Manu
script," Psychology Today. June, 1970, pp. 51-55, 74-77).
101
prevails in all levels of Mexican life, from the very
framework of government to the ordinary daily speech and
117
actions of ordinary people. Ramos and Paz have both
written about the failure of the nineteenth-century leaders
to build a governmental structure which would be consonant
118
with the Mexican reality. Speaking of the "more or less
. . . liberal and democratic constitution" which each Latin
American nation had after Independence from Spain, Paz says
of Mexico:
This liberal, democratic ideology, far from
expressing our concrete historical situation, dis
guised it, and the political lie established itself
almost constitutionally. The moral damage it has
caused is incalculable; it has affected profound
areas of our existence. We move about in this lie
with complete naturalness. For over a hundred years
we have suffered from regimes that have been at the
service of feudal oligarchies but have utilized the
language of freedom. The situation has continued to
our own day.119
Paz points out that the best the revolutionaries of the
twentieth century could do was take over the program of the
nineteenth-century liberals, with certain modifications.
"The revival of the liberal program, with its classical
division of powers (nonexistent in Mexico), its theoretical
117
Among Americans, says Gonzalez, lying is looked
on with contempt, and is considered immoral. Americans'
common form of defense, he says, consists in the use of
half-truths, ambiguities, and "hedging," all of which
permit the listener to infer something which the speaker
strictly did not say (Destructividad. pp. 28-29).
- I 1 Q
See Ramos, Profile. pp. 21, 25.
11 Q
Labyrinth, p. 122.
102
federalism and its blindness to our realities, opened the
120
door once again to lies and pretenses." According to
Gonzalez Pineda, the idealized constitutional forms simply
create an idealized "conscience" which the vast majority
cannot live by. The result is destructive, since Mexicans
learn they can violate the laws with advantage and
121
impunxty.
The phenomenon of personal falsity has been dis
cussed at length by Mexicans ever since Ramos published his
well-known Perfil del hombre y la cultura en Mexico in
1934. Possibly the most careful analyses of the problem
have been done by Gonzalez Pineda, in 1961 and 1965. He
points out that no human being can be totally truthful,
that any approach to complete truth is achieved only with
the result of extremely intense anxiety, "until a limit is
reached at which any attempt to pass it would lead to the
122
dissolution of the ego." The ego, in order to organize
itself and its balance with its internal and external
world, has to create a series of defense mechanisms, based
on an alteration of the total truth. Such mechanisms as
^ ^ Ibid., pp. 145-146.
^^^Francisco Gonzalez Pineda, "El mexicano, psico-
logia de su destructividad," in El mexicano: Educacion.
historia v nersonalidad (Mexico: Secretaria de Educacion
Publiea, 1965), pp. 95-96. (Hereinafter referred to as
"Psicologia.")
1 22
Destructividad. pp. 29-30.
103
denial, regression, projection, and sublimation (the only
mechanism called "normal") can all be called "primary
123
psychological lies," and are found in everyone.
Gonzalez says, however, that Mexico uses not only the
"primary lie" of other countries, but uses the conscious
lie to such an extent that "practically speaking, there is
no social area exempt from lying, and one could scarcely
point out some small cultural nuclei where the practice of
lying is not constant. In the big cities it is perceptible
in all social strata, in all kinds of work, in political,
10/
ideological, and even religious spheres." He refers to
the "almost national need to lie."
With the word "lie" I am referring to the fraud,
pretense, and surreptitiousness which contain the
violence and destruction in which the immense major
ity of us Mexicans live as victims and aggressors.
The thing that makes these forms of conduct hard for
us to advert to is the fact that their vast extent
and daily presence in social life make them either
hardly perceptible or imperceptible for the
majority.126
(Emilio Uranga had stated flatly in 1949, "The Mexican is
an untruthful being, with all the shades of dissembling,
covering-over, lying, feigning, and duplicity that the word
involves.")
123Ibid.. pp. 30-31.
^2^lbid., p. 32; "Psicologia," p. 95.
^23"Psicologxa," p. 94. ^2^Ibid.
■^^"Ontologxa," p. 142.
104
Gonzalez explains this phenomenon as being a result
of the fear caused by the friction of the "multiple ego
identities" of Mexico (lying is an active way of defending
128
oneself, of avoiding fear), and as a result of the
historical Mexican tendency to operate on the basis of
idealizations rather than of reality. In brief, the power,
wealth, and social prestige which once had been the privi
lege only of Spaniards and criollos now constitute the
"image of social valuation which still is extremely impor
tant in what one could call the search for belonging and
identity, for self-esteem and the esteem of others on the
part of Mexicans." (When Rodolfo Usigli said in 1938
that the colonial system was "the first official factory of
Mexican truth," he meant that it protected hypocrisy and
lying in Indians, mestizos, and criollos by depriving,
130
limiting, and frustrating them. It is clear now that
the stratification of the system also generated the false
idealizations plaguing Mexican society today.) Gonzalez
points out that the images are now only masks, that the
reality no longer exists, but that this does net prevent
^^Destructividad, p. 50.
^^"Psicologia," p. 93.
130
Rodolfo Usigli, El gesticulador: Pieza para
demagogos. en tres actos. con un eprlogo sobre la
hipocresia del mexicano, y doce notas (Mexico: Libros del
Hijo Prodigo, Ediciones Letras de Mexico, 1944), p. 172;
see Benitez, Los primeros mexicanos. p. 278.
105
them from being the "objectives of a great majority of
,» . M131
Mexicans.
Gonzalez traces the development of lying in the
Mexican child, and, as with the emotional and familial
aspects of the man and woman, it is a circular process.
First the parents lie to the children, in order to achieve
something easily--for example, to leave them or be rid of
132
them or to be held in higher esteem by the child.
Gonzalez insists that the lying begins in the pre-verbal
stage of infancy when although the mother pretends to love,
her actions are to the contrary. In the verbal stage, "the
most frequent relation in Mexico is that of lying to the
133
■child with extraordinary frequency." It seems to me
this widespread behavior might be understood in the pos
sible light of Diaz-Guerrero's "active-passive" hypothe-
1
sis (that is, it supposedly causes less stress to lie
than to endure the consequences of the truth). Even as the
parents lie to and in front of their children, however,
they demand only the truth from them, always on the basis
135
of punishment or of arousing guilt feelings in them.
^3^"Psicologia," p. 93.
132Ibid., p. 94.
1 33
Destructividad. p. 32.
134
Supra, pp. 57-60.
1 33
Destructividad. p. 33.
106
The child thus learns to lie in imitation of his parents,
"but with the emotional connotation that the truth is
linked with an idealization, with a yearning to be accepted
136
and to accept oneself as true." As was seen in Chapter
I, the Mexican child suffers a severe disturbance in the
integration of the ego and in the organization and forma
tion of the superego, with a fixation in oral psychosexual
levels. Gonzalez explains that there results a fragmented
lack of harmony between the ego and superego which permits
137
a double behavior. There is a very punitive need to be
truthful and upright, but it is joined to a real inability
to be this way, since the child has neither sufficient
emotional means nor enough affective maturity. The part
of the person which demands truth of oneself, however,
"periodically demands a reckoning from the liar. This is
when moments of disgust with oneself, depression, inferior-
138
ity, occur." These manifest themselves through auto
aggression, which cannot be tolerated for long. In order
to be, the person will have to commit exterior aggression,
will have to choose "either of the two roads which the
Mexican habitually chooses, that of direct aggression or
that of lying and concealed aggression: both psychopathic
■^^Gonzalez Pineda, "Psicologia," p. 94.
Destructividad, p. 52.
138"psicoi0gxa," p. 95.
107
roads,"139
The ideal meaning of the Mexican’s lying is this,
says Gonzalez: "All the fear, all the aggression, all the
frustrated yearnings are really only expressing the great
human yearning to love, to love oneself and respect one
self, to be loved."^4^ But most Mexicans have been given
the idea that they are bad, incomplete, and believe they
1/1
must present a false image in order to be loved. The
basic point of lying and similar conduct is that with it
one hopes to get what he thinks he cannot get with his own
truth. Gonzalez implies, then, that the idealizations
of power, wealth, and prestige in which Mexicans have
placed their idea of self-worth from colonial times to the
present day simply intensify their feeling of inadequacy as
they contemplate their own inner truth. It is because of
the Mexicans' permanent need of external reaffirmation that
1/Q
they choose the lie rather than another mechanism. One
is reminded here of Diaz-Guerrero's finding that the
Mexican's need for self-esteem is so intense that he can
a ‘4 - • 144
even deny its existence.
Mexican lying and falsehood has had an extremely
deleterious effect upon the material and social progress of
139
Destructividad, pp. 50-51.
^^Ibid., p. 60. ^4^Ibid. . pp. 60, 27.
142Ibid., p. 27. 143Ibid.. pp. 51-52.
144
S u p r a , p. 44.
108
the country since the Revolution. It takes very little
imagination to perceive its influence in such public
spheres as politics, labor organization, police protection,
health services, marketing, civil service, and even educa-
■ 1 / r
tion. Gonzalez Pineda gives as an example the frightful
infant mortality which is due in part to dishonest food-
handling. "The authorities know, the people know, the
producers and those who directly cause it know, but every
thing goes on the same; it is a matter of a collective
psychology .M^4^ One can now understand more clearly the
statement of Gonzalez quoted partially in Chapter I, "What
does this whole situation express but a national character,
a great helplessness and fear, the need for defense or of
indirect aggression. Insecurity is present in everyone,
because of the constant, intense collective fear by every-
1 / 7
one of everyone."
At this point, various previous threads of the
discussion converge with these ideas regarding falsity, and
lead to another characteristic of the Mexican body social,
namely, a love for form. It was seen that Diaz-Guerrero
predicts that "passive acceptors of stress" should value
form rather than content; Uranga speaks of the "interior
1 / p
See Gonzalez Pineda, Destructividad, Chapter iv,
"Algunos grandes agresores," and " Psicologia," pp. 99-107.
^^Destructividad. pp. 42-43.
147Ibid.. p. 49.
109
fragility" of the Mexican which makes him try to avoid
brusqueness, to use courteous social forms, to pass unseen;
1A8
and Paz emphasizes the hermeticism of the male mystique.
Paz knits the threads together when he says, "This predom
inance of the closed over the open manifests itself not
only as impassivity and distrust, irony and suspicion, but
also as love for Form. Form surrounds and sets bounds to
our privacy, limiting its excesses, curbing its explosions,
isolating and preserving it."'*'4^ He suggests that both the
Spanish and Indian heritages have contributed to the
150
Mexican's fondness for ceremony, formulas and order.
One must link this love of form, I think, to the long
static colonial period and to the importance placed by the
Church on orthodoxy, ritual, and formulistic expressions of
piety, which, whatever their sincere personal content, tend
to be eventually assumed as having value even in their mere
151
external form. Basic also as contributing factors to
both tradition and love of Form are the incalculable influ
ence of Catholic defensiveness after the Protestant
148Supra, pp. 12, 13; 49-50; 54; 58-59.
^4^Labyrinth. pp. 31-32.
1 SO
Ibid. See also Ramos, Profile, pp. 32-36.
151
The Rosary might be an example of this, and any
number of indulgenced prayers which have been recited
unchanged for centuries. This formulism is gradually
disappearing in the Church.
110
152
Reformation and the possibly unconscious but profound
cultural conviction that a passive coping with stress leads
to a happier, more successful life. Again, Paz seems to
sum this up well: "Order--juridical, social, religious or
artistic--brings security and stability, and a person has
only to adjust to the models and principles that regulate
life; he can express himself without resorting to the
153
perpetual inventiveness demanded by a free society."
Oddly enough, Paz also says, "Our mechanisms of defense and
self-preservation are not enough, and therefore we make use
of dissimulation, which is almost habitual with us. It
does not increase our passivity; on the contrary, it
demands an active inventiveness and must reshape itself
from one moment to another. Perhaps the essential
point here is that the psychic energy required for the
inventiveness of dissimulation is chosen as being in the
long run less demanding and stress-causing than the energy
required for the creative inventiveness either of personal
growth or of an authentic participation in a free society.
One should advert here to the relative lack of models
already mentioned in this chapter, and to the relative lack
of education on the part of great masses of the population.
152
If you change, you seem to be admitting that
something needed to be changed. The Catholic Church has
maintained a hypersensitive and hermetic posture of defense
until our own day, when the Second Vatican Council (1962-
1965) officially heralded a new possibility of openness.
^Labyrinth, p. 32. 154Ibid.. p. 40.
Ill
While education is improving in both quantity and quality,
the long-range effects of either little education or a
155
formulistic education are hard to change.
In fact, something should be said here about the
problem of education in Mexico, since it seems to be a
factor influencing machismo. It is common knowledge,
surely, that when Porfirio Diaz left office, the nation was
i r /:
largely illiterate, and that since approximately 1920,
enormous energy and sums of money have been dedicated to
the unbelievably difficult task of not only introducing
popular education in Mexico, but of keeping up with the
157
increase of population. In spite of heroic educational
efforts, the census of 1950 revealed that in 1950 about 90
percent of the adults had had no schooling at all or either
had not completed or gone beyond the primary cycle, which
^^See Fromm and Maccoby, Social Character, p. 186.
i r/ !
Cline mentions the pre-Revolutionary days when
’ ’scarcely 10 percent of the eligible children outside the
capital had any hope of primary instruction" (Howard F.
Cline, Mexico: Revolution to Evolution. 1940-1960 [New
York: Oxford University Press, 1963], p. 198). Ramirez
gives an illiteracy rate of 78.42 percent during the
Porfiriato (Motivaciones. p. 173). According to Whetten,
at the end of the Diaz regime, "70 percent of all persons
in Mexico ten years and over could neither read nor write"
(Nathan L. Whetten, Rural Mexico, with a Foreword by Manuel
Gamio [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948], pp.
403-404).
^■^See Cline, Mexico, chap. xxi; Whetten, chap.
xvii; and Frank Tannenbaum, Peace by Revolution: Mexico
after 1910 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1933),
chaps, xxiv, xxv, xxvi.
112
ico
includes sixth grade. In 1956, 40 percent of the popu
lation were still illiterate and 46 percent of the children
15 9
were not in school. Whatever the exact statistical
details of the situation are at the present time, they are
not so important here as an understanding of the effects of
the massive under-education which has prevailed for so
long.
The psychologist Jose Gomez Robleda has found that
the greatest contributory factor of a widespread perturba
tion among Mexicans of both sexes is that of mystery, of
the unknown.He points out that mystery intimately
depends upon ignorance, and he attributes much of the
perturbation to the "notoriously deficient" state of public
1 fi 1
education, "principally in terms of its quality." He
believes that if the schools could teach science better,
for example, people would not find mystery where there is
none, as they do still with electricity and the electrical
appliances with which they are increasingly more
162
surrounded. He severely condemns the "dogmatism,"
"theorism," "verbalism," and the cult of memorizing pre
vailing in the Mexican school system at the time of writing,
^^Cline, Mexico, p. 199.
15 9
Oscar Lewis, The Children of Sanchez: Autobiog
raphy of a Mexican Family (New York: Vintage Books, 1961),
p. xxix.
^^Perturbacion. p. 66. ^ ^ Ibid. , p. 67.
162Ibid.. pp. 67-68, 100-102.
113
and the common error of parents and school personnel in
thinking that authority is a principle unrelated to genuine
respect for everyone. Gomez criticizes the formal,
arbitrary, non-functional discipline which fails to achieve
the personal conviction from which real self-discipline
should emerge. He calls for a massive change in the entire
1
educational system. Gonzalez Pineda also criticizes the
use of authority which is imposed for its own sake, saying
that it turns the child into a possessed thing, continuing
I
and intensifying the tragic parent-child struggle. In
fact, in an extremely strong speech to Mexican teachers,
given under the auspices of the Secretariat of Education,
Gonzalez characterized the entire national educational
system as being seriously involved in the complex of
1 f . O
Ibid.. £p. 88, 90. See the very interesting
study by Rogelio Diaz-Guerrero and R. F. Peck regarding the
meaning and extent of "respect" among the high school and
college students of Mexico and Texas, reprinted as chap.
v of Estudios de psicologia del mexicano. In brief, the
Texan students conceived of ''respect" as a relation between
equals, believing that one can admire a superior quality in
another without thereby feeling generally inferior or
subordinate oneself. There seemed to be a relatively
detached democratic "give and take" connected with respect.
In contrast to the Texan pattern, "the majority of the
Mexicans portrayed respect as an intricate web of duties
and reciprocal dependencies, in a hierarchical [and author
itarian] setting, with a strong emotional involvement to
support it and at times to imperil it" (Estudios, p. 116).
^ ^Perturbacion. pp. 89-90.
Destructividad. pp. 37-38.
114
1 f i £ \
destructivity prevailing in Mexican social life.
Even the family is not a strong social institution
in Mexico. To be sure, it has been seen in this chapter
that societal bonds are strongest between family members
and between friends. Gonzalez Pineda, however, character
izes the Mexican domestic situation in 1961 by referring to
the astonishing Mexican statistics of broken homes,
of women abandoned by their husbands or by one, two,
or three successive lovers, of women with children
by many fathers, of fathers with children by four or
five women simultaneously, of men with three "houses'1
in which they are regularly present, with the knowl
edge and tolerance of their various wives, a more or
less unwilling acceptance, but acceptance nonethe
less . . . [and] the frequency of seductions and
real incestuous sexual attacks.167
Abandonment is relatively easy in Mexico, partly
because many couples never marry legally. The Mexican
sociologist Luis Lenero has estimated that approximately 40
percent of the marriages in Mexico are de hecho, simple
-I Z1Q
co-habitation or common-law.
Maria Elvira Bermudez has said flatly that in the
upper classes, family is experienced as a battle of egos,
and in the lower classes it simply does not exist, since
the fleeting unions that characterize the lower classes
166upsic0iogfa," pp. 99-107.
•^^Destructividad. pp. 165-166.
X 6 8
Cited by George R. McMurray in Hispania. LIII
(May, 1970), 309.
115
1 f s Q
cannot be called "families." She makes a rather inter
esting observation when she points out the "topsy-turvy"
terms of endearment prevailing in Mexico. (For example,
she says for the pelado, "mamacita" is any attractive
passerby. For a lower-class woman, "papacito" is her male
child. "Hiio" and "hiia" are terms of endearment among
married couples of the more cultured classes. "Family"
means "children.") "In one way or another," she says,
"familial relations are turned around with us. Such a
situation cannot be accidental; it must reveal a family
170
confusion that is very deep and very old."
Gonzalez Pineda states:
Mexican society considered as a whole ... is
. . . increasing its psychopathic expressions and
its destructive antisocial impulses. This is not
the result of poverty nor of ignorance; there is
less real poverty in the country, even in the lowest
classes, there is much less ignorance among the
poorer classes, and in spite of this the disintegra
tion of the family [is increasing].171
He believes that the principal reason for the apparent
national unconcern about the increasing number of unstable
homes can be attributed to "an even more extensive pathol
ogy," namely, that many of those who do not live in such
patterns would like to, in order to avoid responsibility.
Other reasons might be that the classes who could do some
thing about the situation are generally not face-to-face
169Vida, p. 103. 17QIbid.. pp. 103-104.
171
Destructividad. p. 139.
116
with it, and that the situation is ultimately too shocking
172
for researchers to cope with.
There is another aspect of social life in Mexico
which has a bearing on machismo. namely, the economic
situation. In 1947, Jose Gomez Robleda described the seven
great problems of Mexico as being infant mortality, sick
ness, malnutrition, inadequate housing and clothing,
inefficient and primitive modes of work, the inefficient
173
educational system, and obstacles to communication. The
ordinary Mexican, he said, was in a state of deficiency,
17/
explained by deficient nutrition and excessive work.
The precise statistics of poverty do not matter to the
argument here. What is important is that even if the situ
ation has improved somewhat by now (as Gonzalez suggests
above), the effects of centuries of poverty are hard to
eradicate, and there is still enough poverty in Mexico
175
today to breed frightful social consequences. Gomez
17?
Ibid., p. 137. Lest one think that he is making
the mistake of attributing to Mexico a phenomenon that
might be typical of a particular social or economic class
the xtforld over, Gonzalez Pineda insists that the Mexican
reality cannot be compared with the "belts" of poverty and
social and value confusion found in other countries (ibid.,
p. 138).
l73Imagen, pp. 72-73. 174Ibid.. p. 28.
175
See Fernando Carmona et al., El milagro mexicano
(Mexico: Editorial Nuestro Tiempo, 1970), "Los problemas
sociales," pp. 103-163. The author of this section,
Guillermo Montano, a physician, says, "the pathology of the
poor is the fundamental problem of our country" (ibid.,
p. 160). Echeverria, now president, is quoted as having
117
Robleda found that the economic situation is the third
greatest cause of perturbation in both men and women (the
second cause, by the way, is a sense of guilt). Aramoni
has alluded to the poor as being "a social class that
suffers enormous vital frustration and accepts alcoholism
as a solution, which in turn creates an atmosphere suitable
for the expression of machista conduct." The criminolo
gist Alfonso Quiroz Cuaron, writing in 1958, said, "We are
violent because we are poor, not because we are Mexicans.
Because we are poor, we lack adequate mechanisms for
restraining the impulses arising from the deep, primitive
17 7
self, which is above all instinctive and brutal."
It might be appropriate to mention in connection
with the poverty of Mexico the supposed propensity of her
people to drift from opportunity to opportunity, instead of
trying to foresee the future and live by plan, as people
seem to do in the United States, even to some degree among
the poorer classes. Zea has said, for example, that the
Mexican is not apt for accumulation; he lives by the day.
said, "The Revolution has not achieved even a third of its
goals" (ibid.). The real Mexican miracle, according to the
introduction by the publishing firm, is "that of the
patience of a people who up till now have not managed to
modify the daily more intolerable burden of misery, hunger,
lack of shelter, and the complex of injustice and repres
sion . . . which go along with them; a miracle of resist
ance and suffering . . ." (ibid., pp. 9-10).
^^ Psicoanalisis. p. 317.
^ ^ Criminalidad. p. 44.
118
"He is satisfied with what is necessary, and squanders the
178
rest." Because he depends on what is immediate and
circumstantial, "the Mexican easily falls into opportun
ism," the opportunism that he is always suspiciously trying
179
to protect himself against in others. "Relationships,
far from being firm, turn into relationships of opportuni-
180
ties." Uranga, it will be recalled, spoke of the
181
haphazard drift of Mexican life. Gomez Robleda speaks
of "the deeply-rooted fondness of the people for games of
chance, whose publicity constantly reinforces the atmos
phere of mystery joined to the sense of guilt--that is, to
18 2
luck that can be good or bad." I myself believe that
the sense of fatalism permeating the Mexican worldview
since preconquest times influences not only the passivity
and haphazard nature of the culture, but the apparent lack
of a sense of responsibility as well. Octavio Paz points
out that in the Aztec world, "everything was examined to
determine, from birth, the life and death of each man: his
social class, the year, the place, the day, the hour. The
Aztec was as little responsible for his actions as for his
183
death." "Only the gods were free, and only they had the
power to choose--and therefore, in a profound sense, to
^ 8Conciencia. p. 100. ~*~^Ibid. . p. 91.
180Ibid. 181Supra, p. 60.
^88Perturbacion. p. 107. ~ * ~ 8 8 Labyrinth. p. 55.
119
The haphazard, occasional, improvisational tone of
Mexican life both helps explain poverty and is itself
influenced by poverty. Hundreds of thousands of people who
buy tomatoes two at a time because they have neither
refrigeration nor enough money to buy more than what is
needed for the day sometimes have the tendency to buy only
18 S
what is needed for the next meal. Leopoldo Zea makes an
interesting link with this attitude of the provisional, the
opportune, and an attitude toward death which he implies
prevails in Mexico:
The Mexican's whole existence is caught in this
difficult world of "the opportune." His life is
lived in accordance with the latest opportunity; it
goes from occasion to occasion. This is what gives
rise to his confusing life with death, confusing
what should be permanent with what is transitory.
Death presents herself to him as the latest "oppor
tunity," as if she were the highest and surest of
opportunities for fulfilling oneself while yet
remaining within the realm of the circumstantial.
Therefore he easily adopts that theatrical posture
which seems to be contempt for death, "machismo"
with all its negative consequences.186
■^^Ibid., p. 56 .
I O C
An interesting example of this is given by Oscar
Lewis: "By serving a late breakfast, the family could do
without lunch; this saved money on food and gave Julia time
to earn money for supper" (Five Families: Mexican Case
Studies in the Culture of Poverty. Mentor Books fNew York:
New American Library, 1959], p. 151). Between pages 153
and 193, the reader can find examples of ten single food
purchases that could have been foreseen and effected all at
once, the money clearly being available at the beginning of
the day (ibid.).
•^^Conciencia. pp. 91-92.
120
Zea's link with death brings the discussion around
to the last social characteristic which will be considered,
the peculiar attitude toward death which seems to prevail
in Mexico. People in the United States, who seem to fear
death so much that they are often reluctant to use the word
and make death as lifelike as possible in the casket, might
be puzzled that Mexicans go to the other extreme--that is,
of representing it constantly and in a jocular way. Death
has been a motif of Mexican art "from the earliest
187
period" right up through the marvelous etchings of Jose
Guadalupe Posada in the first part of this century and to
our very day. Practically everyone is familiar, for
example, with the sugar skulls and the skeleton bread on
November 2. It is not so well known, though, that the
vocabulary of death is so extensive in Mexico as to provide
material for an entire book.^^^ As Octavio Paz has said in
his now classic essay, "The Day of the Dead," "The Mexican
is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps
with it, celebrates it; it is one of his favorite toys and
his most steadfast love. True, there is perhaps as much
fear in his attitude as in that of others, but at least
death is not hidden away: he looks at it face to face,
■^^Fernandez, Mexican Art, p. 31.
■^^See Juan M. Lope Blanch, Vocabulario mexicano
relativo a la muerte (Mexico: Direccion General de
Publicaciones, 1963).
121
18 9
with impatience, disdain or irony." In fact, says Paz,
the Mexican is indifferent to death, and this because he is
indifferent to life. "He views not only death but also
life as nontranscendent. ... We kill because life--our
own or another's--is of no value. Life and death are
inseparable, and when the former lacks meaning, the latter
becomes equally meaningless. . . . And the Mexican shuts
himself away and ignores both of them."^"9^
Salvador Reyes Nevarez gives a different interpre
tation of the Mexican's reaction toward death, according to
which, far from being indifferent to it, he is so concerned
by it that he has to escape from it.
In Mexico, when people manage to see death as
inevitable but unpredictable, they end up by
anticipating it always and by taking it with [a]
rare mixture of respect, faith, grace, and fatalism.
Throughout his long history the Mexican has been a
person who knows how to endure whatever misfortune
befalls him, who does not reveal himself except on
extremely rare and prized occasions, and who has an
escape for all his unhappiness, anger, and pain.
That escape is ridicule. Ridicule of others and of
himself. In Mexico we are cruel with ourselves,
. . . so how could one expect a different reaction
toward death?191
Death, says Reyes, is the strongest cause for zozobra
(here, an anxiety caused by not knowing what to expect) to
surface in the Mexican.
The Mexican lives in zozobra and acts accord
ingly. ... He never forgets [the image of death].
^ 9Labvrinth. pp. 57-58.
190Ibid., p. 58. 191Amor, pp. 70, 71.
122
He has incorporated it into his life and has finally-
made it familiar, laughs a little at it, fears it
without great gestures, uses it to hurt others, and
eats it on the Day of the Dead, sprinkled with
grains of sugar and decorated with silver paper.192
Christian Brunet, offering the nice image of the
risque attitudes with which the Mexican likes to brush past
death (it is almost an image of the bullfight), suggests
that the behavior does not reflect stoicism, since the
stoic is silent. The Mexican's attitude, rather, is that
of coquetry, defiance, a seduction of death. He lives the
anguish of death as a vertigo and is attracted by what he
vainly tries to repel. "It is an empty attempt to pretend
193
to want what you cannot avoid."
In the same way Pascal advised us to perform the
exterior gestures of faith first, saying that belief
would follow, the Mexican effects all the actions
proper to a man whom death does not scare, perhaps
in the secret hope that serenity will follow. But
it does not ensue, and he sees in anticipation, in
the ambiguity of drama and of derision, the last
annihilation, rediscovering, perhaps, those danses
macabres which the Middle Ages extracted from the
ambiguity of their clear insight and their obscure
dread.194
Aniceto Aramoni, in trying to explain the machista
attitude toward death, namely, that the code of the macho
involves the possibility of killing or being killed in
order to prove one's manhood in front of another man,
192Ibid.. pp. 71-72.
^9^"Le Mexique," p. 242.
194Ibid.. pp. 242-243.
123
points out that the society in which the macho moves has
always accepted this particular pattern and has never
reacted against it in defense of more deeply human values.
195
In fact, the symptom has become a virtue. One is
reminded of the social acceptance of crimes of passion,
mentioned in Chapter I. Aramoni suggests that if one dies
as a hero, for a woman, one is sure to be eternalized in
song or in memory, and will have achieved "the maximum
'IQ/'
possible in the culture." He is referring to the
culture of poverty, that is, in which "one cannot produce
or achieve anything during one’s miserable and bitter life
of inferiority and exploitation by others, [nor] get the
197
slightest thing in sufficient quantity and quality."
If death is inevitable, if it produces terror and bitter
ness, if it causes respect because of its power and the
inevitable need to confront it, then if you conquer it, you
~^"*Psicoanalisis. p. 285.
•^^Ibid., pp. 286-287. I find very suggestive in
this regard the fact that among the Aztecs, the only way a
man could avoid eventual annihilation or nothingness after
death (that is, by going to the Paradise of the Sun God
rather than to Mictlan, the place of nothingness, absolute
annihilation), was to die by violence as a warrior or as a
sacrificial victim, and this possibility was decided fatal
istically by the gods. Has this concept filtered down to
survive in a somewhat distorted form, explaining in part
the social acceptance of death by violence? (See Alberto
Ruz Lhuillier, El pensamiento nahuatl respecto de la
muerte," Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, Vol. IV [Mexico:
UNAM, for the Instituto de Historia: Seminario de Cultura
Nahuatl, 1963], pp. 251-261.)
^ ^ Psicoanalisis« p. 286.
124
are more powerful than the very thing that takes your life.
You are better than death if you can produce it at will.
And why not produce it? Life constitutes a heavy burden
with no hope. Aramoni further suggests that the existen
tial meaning of life for the macho is that one is born
merely to die, that death is the goal of life. His belief
in a life beyond death is weak, and in this regard he is
more pagan than Christian, closer to his Aztec roots than
198
to his Spanish ones.
Gonzalez Pineda, consistent with his discussion of
the Mexican male's compulsion to achieve in his own life
his earliest identification with an all-perfect, all-
powerful father, and consistent with his analysis of the
Mexican's need to lie, says that the Mexican, "in his
sublimated vision of a brave death . . . lies in the most
pathetically tragic way, faced with his denied need to live
and love life and to want to preserve it, in order to
199
preserve himself in the objects he loves." That is, the
male's sole concern is to leave with others the image that
he cannot be wounded in his own integrity and courage. The
pose of indifference at the moment of death is an obvious
attempt to achieve a masculine identification in the eyes
of those who witness or cause one's death.
198Ibid.. pp. 284, 286.
1 QQ
Destructividad. p. 62.
125
201
Death prowls in Mexico. It is massively present.
202
It strikes children especially. It smells. Unembalmed
corpses are visible and attended in the home until nature
forces the burial. Awareness of the reality and constant
presence of death, then, is far harder to suppress in
Mexico than in the United States. One available way of
escaping normal dread is to minimize the enemy by mocking
it, by pretending one does not care, that one is not
203
afraid. But the Mexican has another way of triumphing
over the unsuppressible. A passage from Rollo May seems
pertinent and suggestive here.
When I strive to prove my potency in order to
cover up and silence my inner fears of impotence, I
am engaging in a pattern as ancient as man himself.
Death is the symbol of ultimate impotence and
finiteness, and anxiety arising from this inescap
able experience calls forth the struggle to make
201
"Orozco . . . drew the terrible conclusion that
Death prowls around us, . . . that human sacrifice con
tinues and seems inevitable" (J. Moreno Villa, Lo mexicano
[Mexico^ El Colegio de Mexico, 1948], p. 134, cited by
Sejourne, "Vigencia," p. 6).
202
I would like to share with the reader an image
from Carlos Fuentes, who is speaking of a masked child
being devoured by a yellow dog: "I don't know the child's
face, but I'm sure that it must be very sad. Our children
only laugh with masks on. The masks laugh for them, sugar
masks, sweet skulls. Death is alive and is the puppet
theatre of these sad-eyed children who recognize themselves
in Death because Death will be theirs before they leave
their childhood" ( ’ Cambio de piel [Mexico: Editorial
Joaquin Mortiz, S.A., 1967], pp. 441-442).
203
Throughout this discussion, one is reminded of
Ramirez' assertion that one of the most-used defense
mechanisms of the Mexican is denial (supra, p. 40; Motiva-
ciones, pp. 86, 92, 125).
126
ourselves infinite by way of sex. Sexual activity
is the most ready way to silence the inner dread of
death and, through the symbol of procreation, to
triumph over it.^-O^
In fact, says May, "As long as you can hang on to the vir
tue of individual potency, you can laugh in the face of
death."205
The need to overcome his dread of ubiquitous and
menacing death, then, may very possibly intensify the
sexual need of the Mexican male, already prone enough to
have to prove his masculinity through sexual and sexually-
related activity. One can see a circle here. Part of the
macho code is to be able to kill or be killed "fearlessly."
This phenomenon contributes to the reduced life expectancy
in Mexico, which presumably makes the intensity of the
0f\£\
Mexican's awareness of death more acute. To overcome
the effects of this awareness, he intensifies his macho
behavior.
I will close this incomplete approach to the ques
tion of death in Mexico by quoting Quiroz Cuaron again:
The Mexican suffers from the complex of
Coatlicue (the mysterious goddess . . . who . . .
represents the devouring earth, toward which we
204Love and Will, p. 106. 205Ibid.. p. 108.
206
Quiroz Cuaron states that according to the 1951
fsic 1 census, Mexico had, for every 100,000 of the total
population, 93 deaths due to malaria, 66 due to heart prob
lems, 48.1 due to homicide, 42 due to tuberculosis, and so
on. Can it be assumed that in 1951 homicide was the third
greatest killer in Mexico? (Criminalidad. pp. 89, 68.)
127
are all gradually headed); we devour each other
without compunction; we first learn to die or to
surrender to death and then we learn to kill;
today, these factors combine with geographical and
climatological ones to explain why every hour . . .
more than one human life is cut down . . . without
its arousing the scandal and the alarm that one
would logically expect.207
Genuine ego strength and mature autonomy are not
easily achieved under the social conditions just described.
In fact, Aramoni characterizes the Mexican people as
follows:
On the whole, with exceptions, of course, the
Mexican people is still a childish people, approach
ing adolescence, with few examples of maturity or of
the so-called productive character type. Common
attributes of the people are receptivity, dependence,
irresponsibility, lack of respect, contempt for life,
the use of physical force, feminine conquest, duel
ing and death, armed aggression, and that dependence
on the mother which seeks a miracle for the solution
of problems. This people avoids using its own
resources, it does not use a sustained effort, con
stancy, or efficiency. It likes facilitation,
improvisation, the "helpful little push," patronage
or protection, recommendation. This people demands
pardon and consideration on the part of others.208
Self-esteem and a Synthesis
It is now appropriate to take up the crucial ques
tion of the Mexican male’s lack of self-esteem. Samuel
Ramos created a furor in 1934 when he suggested that "the
Mexican psyche is the result of reactions that strive to
^^Criminalidad. pp. 75-76.
^ ^ Psicoanalisis. p. 287.
128
20 9
conceal an inferiority complex." In 1951 he reiterated
the idea, specifically relating to Adler's "virile protest"
the distrust, aggressiveness, and hypersensitivity to
210
insult found in all social classes. He believed that
the "sentiment of inferiority" of Mexicans originated in
the periods of the Conquest and Colonization and began to
211
manifest itself after Independence. Emilio Uranga tried
in 1952, with considerable philosophical ingenuity, to show
that the problem was not a sense of "inferiority," but of
212
"insufficiency" or "inadequacy."
It is clear, I think, that whether the problem is a
sense of inferiority or of inadequacy (or of both), it is
definitely a lack of sufficient self-esteem. And one is
hardly surprised. As has been seen, the average Mexican
probably lacks from his infancy that "safe pole of self-
213
feeling" mentioned by Erikson. Since the father's
authority is capricious, since recompense and punishment do
not depend so much on the child's conduct as on the mood of
209Profile. p. 58. 21QIbid.. p. 181.
211
Ibid., p. 9. Uranga offers an intriguing idea:
"According to Sartre, man is fundamentally the desire to be
God. The transference of this direction toward the person
of the Other is precisely inferiority. One is inferior to
the extent that one is idolatrous. The confusion between
men and gods that lies at the origin of our conquest opened
the possibilities of a choice of an inferiority complex"
("Ontologxa," p. 146). For clarification of the desire to
be God, see Streller, To Freedom Condemned, p. 98.
2^2See Analisis, chap. iii. 2 Supra. p. 44.
129
the father, there is no logical way for the child to build
01/
his self-esteem on real bases. Practically nothing in
his childhood or youth will afford him genuine self-esteem,
and later his very physiological needs (hunger, for
example) will keep him from developing self-esteem. As
Diaz-Guerrero says, self-esteem depends on one’s having
taken advantage of opportunities to learn, to create, to
become, on one's feeling more or less satisfied with what
215
one is doing or has done. But it has been seen that the
Mexican, far from having such positive satisfactions, has
multiple personal, historical, and social reasons for being
unsure both of his worth and of his identity. He cannot
91 fi
"reach out for the other pole," his love objects. His
insecure identity, his hermeticism, and his loneliness must
all combine to produce in him a conscious or unconscious
sense of separateness.
In addition, the average Mexican is troubled by a
sense of guilt, and a chronic, abiding sense of guilt does
not contribute to one’s self-esteem. It has been implied
that the Mexican feels guilt about his inability to achieve
the ideal role proposed both by his first identifications
217
and by the culture, and about his consequent falsity.
^^Diaz-Guerrero, Estudios. p. 63.
^ ^ Ibid. , p. 51. ^^Erikson, Identity, p. 159.
Supra, pp. 42-43; 106-107.
130
One can assume, possibly, that he feels guilt about his
218
alcoholism, guilt about his whole system of relation
ships with his family, all kinds of profound guilt regard
ing his relationship with the Church (which for so long has
taught that non-attendance at Sunday Mass is a mortal sin,
to name but one of her teachings which the average Mexican
219
contravenes), guilt regarding his irresponsibility and
his aggression, guilt regarding the many laws appropriate
220
and inappropriate which he breaks with impunity. Gomez
Robleda points out that many ignorant people understand
sickness, natural phenomena, and bad luck as punishments,
and consequently feel an obscure guilt in connection with
218
Fromm, in discussing attempted orgiastic solu
tions in a non-orgiastic culture to the problem of human
separateness, points out that those who try to escape
separateness by taking refuge in alcohol feel all the more
separate after the orgiastic experience is over, and suffer
from guilt feelings and remorse (Erich Fromm, The Art of
Loving [New York: Bantam Books, 1965], pp. 9-10).
219
Jose Gomez Robleda believes that religious norms
generally do not perturb the Mexican, partly because they
are accepted by faith and partly because confession is
possible (Perturbacion. p. 69). I would suggest that the
ordinary Mexican violates the norms in a radically profound
way, and on the whole, does not avail himself of the sacra
ment of penance (see supra. pp. 46-47). While forgiveness
is indeed possible apart from the sacrament, the average
Mexican has probably not been taught this, and very possi
bly feels a great deal of guilt which is not only due to
genuine violations of the "natural" law available to be
known by every man, but due also to violations of non-law
which he assumes to be law. I must confess that I am
puzzled by Gomez1 statement.
220Supra, pp. 56, 102, 123.
131
221
them. Since chance, ignorance, and sickness still play
quite a preponderant role in Mexican life, one can see that
the Mexican's sense of guilt may be even more intense than
his actions would justify. Be all this as it may, Gomez
Robleda found that a sense of guilt is the second greatest
cause of perturbation on the part of both men and women in
222
Mexico.
In speaking of the Mexican's blocked need for self
esteem, Diaz-Guerrero states that such a condition can
either provoke basic and chronic pessimism and even com
plete apathy, or it can provoke abnormal tendencies to
compensate by serious boasting, boasting of having what in
223
fact one needs most. "[The human being's need for self
esteem] is so intense," he says, "that when it is not
sufficiently satisfied, it can force us to dedicate the
best part of our energy and time, that is, the best part of
our lives, to satisfying it, whether it be by appropriate
o o /
or abnormal ways."
991
Perturbacion, pp. 73-75.
^^Ibid., p. 65 . ^^^Estudios, p. 53.
224
Ibid., p. 51. Diaz-Guerrero believes that the
Spanish language has no simple way to express that balance
of adequate self-esteem understood in the English phrase
"self-esteem." If the affirmation of Whorf is correct, he
says, that human beings can only think with the language
they have, then it could be said that the "Hispanic-Mexican
group, for historical and sociological reasons, has never
managed to resolve the problem of its self-esteem" (ibid.,
P. 52).
132
I wish now to consider Mexican machismo in the
framework of Rollo May’s ideas regarding the nature and
functions of the daimonic and eros in human life. These
concepts offer an ultimate explaining and unifying dynamic,
I believe, for the phenomena considered thus far.
Basing his discussion of the daimonic on the
thought of outstanding men from Hesiod and Socrates to
Freud and contemporary psychoanalysts, and on his own long
career of psychoanalytic practice, May defines the daimonic
as "any natural function which has the power to take over
the whole person," such as sex, rage, or the craving for
225
power. It is "the urge in every being to affirm itself,
9 9fi
assert itself, perpetuate and increase itself." It is
the "voice of the generative processes within the individ-
227
ual." "The daimonic fights against death, fights always
228
to assert its own vitality." It refers to the power of
nature and is consequently neither good nor evil. "Its
source lies in those realms where the self is rooted in
natural forces which go beyond the self and are felt as the
grasp of fate upon us. The daimonic arises from the ground
225
Love and Will, p. 123. May explains that he
prefers the Greek "daimonic" to the medieval and poetic
"daemonic" or the popular (and I would say misunderstood in
our day) "demonic, since "daimonic" is unambiguous in
including the positive and negative, the divine and
diabolical (ibid.).
226t , . , 227T, . j
Ibid. Ibid.. p. 125.
228t, . j n-.
Ibid., p. 127.
133
of being rather than the [organized] self as such."229
May calls it "a fundamental archetypal function of human
experience--an existential reality in modern man and, so
far as we know, in all men," "the unique pattern of sensi
bilities and powers which constitutes the individual as a
self in relation to his world."239
The daimonic begins as impersonal (in fact, Freud's
231
"id" is the impersonal daimonic). The baby is pushed by
232
"the clamor of gonads and temper." This daimon is what
Socrates was referring to when he said that God has given
every man a daimon, and that the daimon is man's tie with
TOO
the divine. As the child's consciousness of himself as
a separate person develops, the daimonic urges must become
r\ q /
personalized, available for individual integration.
This integration is symbolized by Plato's metaphor of the
powerful, snorting horses which require all a man's
235
strength to control. In its right proportion, says May,
the daimonic is "the urge to reach out toward others, to
increase life by way of sex, to create, to civilize; it is
the joy and rapture, or the simple security of knowing we
229Ibid. . p. 124. 230Ibid., pp. 123, 125.
231Ibid., pp. 177, 161. 232Ibid. , p. 177.
ooo
Ibid., p. 137, referring to Plato's Apologia.
23^Love and Will, p. 137.
235Ibid., p. 138.
134
matter, that we can affect others, can form them, can exert
power which is demonstrably significant. It is a way of
making certain that we are valued."
But what happens when the daimonic is denied, or
the daimonic is not made personal, or when the wrong
proportion is achieved, and how can the failure occur?
First, the little child must go through the diffi
cult stage of asserting his independence from the "biolog
ical imbeddedness" that characterized his early relation
ship to his mother, in order to possess himself, to develop
his own consciousness and autonomy of action, to develop
237
mature freedom and responsibility. He must say "no" to
the original "yes" of symbiosis. But if the parents inter
pret this natural need as being personally against them, if
they show excessive anger in face of the budding efforts of
the child to develop his will, if they punish him for his
choices, he may be tempted to give up the struggle and try
to return to the impossible, fictitious "bliss" of the
238
first paradise. The daimonic may be denied altogether,
as I believe is the case with the Mexican woman, who is
denied the possibility of integrating her sexual urges and
is forced into an attempted stoicism, the repression of her
239
desires --or it may not be integrated on the personal
236Ibid.. p. 146. 237Ibid., p. 134.
233Ibid. , p. 285. 23^Supra. pp. 20, 26 ff.
135
level, which I believe is the case with the macho. Either
the daimonic remains impersonal, "a blind, unconscious push
unintegrated with consciousness," thus making the person
nature's tool and setting up a vicious-circle mechanism,24* ^
or it is not individualized in a balanced way. One element
of the personality "usurps command," "with disintegrating
effects upon the total self."24^
The daimonic becomes evil when it usurps the
total self without regard to the integration of
that self, or to the unique forms and desires of
others and their need for integration. It then
appears as excessive aggression, hostility,
cruelty . . .242
The daimonic can be either creative or destruc
tive, and is normally both. . . . When this power
goes awry and one element usurps control over the
total personality, we have "daimon possession," the
traditional name through history for psychosis.243
If the Mexican child, and especially the boy, because of
0/ /
the cultural pressures on him to be masculine, represses
his "feminine" daimon (or anima. to use the Jungian term),
he will only set in motion a "whole train of new repres
sion," and the denied element of the self becomes the
24QIbid.. p. 159. 241Ibid.. pp. 126, 336.
242Ibid.. p. 123.
2 /. 3
Ibid. May I remind the reader that Gonzalez
Pineda has asserted that the Mexican "habitually chooses
. . . psychopathic roads," and that he believes that
"Mexican society considered as a whole . . . is . . .
increasing its psychopathic expressions" (supra, pp. 106,
115.
244
Supra« pp. 41-42.
136
A/ p
source of hostility and aggression. Even if he has
successfully freed himself from the original imbeddedness,
Mhe must welcome the daimonic back again on a conscious
plane. This is the healthy dependence of the mature
t i 246
man.
I have several times adverted to the hermeticism
which is forced upon the Mexican male by the culture and by
Q / «7
his own inability to risk himself with others. Even the
248
Mexican woman, according to Paz, becomes invulnerable.
I wish to suggest again that this hermeticism contributes
249
to the loneliness already mentioned, by making Mexicans
"anonymous," not known. Rollo May says that loneliness
can become daimonic possession. "[The lonely man’s] self-
doubts . . . eat away at his innards; he lives and
breathes and walks in a loneliness which is subtle and
250
insidious." So loneliness contributes to the Mexican's
24~ * Love and Will, pp. 157, 133.
24^Ibid. . p. 134.
247Supra, pp. 12-13; 49; 63-65; 109.
248
Supra. p. 20. Schwartz remarks that "the woman
has the expectation of being abandoned by the weak, irre
sponsible, child-like man, ... a philanderer whose every
adulterous relation is a threat to her, . . . and learns
the defenses of independence, self-reliance on the one hand
and token submission and minimization of her expectations
on the other" ("Morality, Conflict and Violence," pp. 75-
76) .
24^Supra. pp. 32, 35, 48-49.
2~^Love and Will, p. 162.
137
lack of self-esteem. This condition of loneliness and lack
of self-esteem becomes absolutely tragic in view of May’s
assertion that the most powerful need of human beings is
for "relationship, intimacy, acceptance, and affirmation,"
and that "we love others to the extent that we are able to
love ourselves, and if we cannot esteem ourselves, we
251
cannot esteem or love others." This, of course, is a
variation of Erikson's "safe pole of self-feeling."
In the daimonic, says May, lies "our capacity to
25 2
open ourselves to the power of eros." But if the
daimonic is denied or repressed, Eros is "castrated." We
rob ourselves of "the very sources of fecundity in love.
For the polar opposite to the daimonic is . . . the 'return
to the inanimate'--in Freud’s terms, the death instinct.
253
The antidaimon is apathy." Eros is neither sex and
eroticism nor the daimonic. The daimonic is part of
OK /
eros. Interpreting Plato’s Symposium, May says:
Eros is . . . the power that binds all things
and all men together, the power informing all
things.... Eros is the god or demiurge . . . who
constitutes man's creative spirit. Eros is the
drive which impels man not only toward union with
another person in sexual or other forms of love,
but incites in man the yearning for knowledge and
drives him passionately to seek union with the
truth.255
251Ibid.. pp. 311, 84. 252Ibid.. pp. 146, 126.
253Ibid., pp. 122-123. 254Ibid.. pp. 72, 164.
OK K
Ibid., pp. 122, 78. The Symposium, May says,
138
May goes on to say:
Eros [is] the power in us yearning for whole
ness, the drive to give meaning and pattern to our
variegation, form to our otherwise impoverishing
formlessness, integration to counter our disinte
grative trends. [Eros is] a dimension of experience
which is psychological and emotional , as well as
biological.256
[Eros is the drive toward] union with significant
other persons in our world in relation to whom we
discover our own self-fulfillment.257
We are in eros not only when we experience our
biological, lustful energies but also when we are
able to open ourselves and participate, via imagina
tion and emotional and spiritual sensitivity, in
forms and meanings beyond ourselves in the interper
sonal world and the world of nature around us.258
(Italics mine.)
Eros is the binding element par excellence. It
is the bridge between being and becoming, and it
binds fact and value together. Eros, in short, is
the original creative force of Hesiod now transmuted
into power which is both "inside" and "outside" the
person.25 9
Eros, said St. Augustine, is the power which drives men
9 fin
toward God. Eros is our capacity to participate in a
261
constant dialogue with the other. And dialogue, accord
ing to May, is the most important criterion which saves the
daimonic from anarchy--the precious daimonic in which lies
our vitality, our capacity to open ourselves to the power
"still surprises and delights readers with the contempora
neousness of its insights into love" (Love and Will.
P. 77).
256Ibid., p. 78. 257Ibid., p. 74.
258Ibid.. pp. 78-79. 259Ibid.. p. 79.
260Ibid., p. 72. 261Ibid., p. 87.
139
. 262
of eros.
Eros needs form and discipline in which one can
develop, forms which protect one from unbearable
o / r o
anxiety. It has been seen, however, that Mexican forms
seem designed for the avoidance of dialogue, for protection
264
from the need to be open. And in the very protecting,
it seems to me, a sterile and vicious circle is set up
which further impoverishes the Mexican's ability to satisfy
his basic and powerful human need for contact and affirma
tion. Forms understandably designed to protect from the
anxiety caused by the Mexican social situation described in
this chapter ironically protect the Mexican from the possi
bility of exercising eros; and the forms thus help generate
an anxiety which is so deep and pervasive that it is ulti
mately destructive.
When the need for relationship, intimacy, and self
esteem (which implies "knowing that we can exert power which
Of* C
is demonstrably significant" ) cannot be fulfilled in a
genuine, wholesome manner, it tends to seek satisfaction in
another way, usually pathological. "The dehumanizing
thing," says May, "is . . . so-called emotion without any
relatedness; and sex is the most ready drug to hide one's
262Ibid., p. 155. 263Ibid.. p. 97.
264Supra. pp. 54, 59, 109-110.
265Supra, p. 134.
140
terror at this dehumanization."288 The hermetic Mexican
male, as has been seen, for historic, cultural, and per
sonal reasons, is overconcerned with his sexual potency.
I am led to the conclusion, however, that in his very need
to prove that he has not been castrated, he is castrating
Eros itself, man's creative force which gives him the power
to love.
Now, hate is not the opposite of love, says May--
267
apathy is. "Apathy, operating like Freud's 'death
instinct,' is a gradual letting go of involvement until one
268
finds that life itself has gone by." Apathy would seem
to be the vital equivalent of what Maier calls "resigna-
0 C \ o
tion." Resignation, Maier conjectures, may be a final
or end condition of frustration, and aggression, regres
sion, and fixation more preliminary or intermediate
270
conditions. Indeed, May quotes Sullivan as saying:
[Apathy] is a way used to survive defeat without
material damage, although if it endures too long one
is damaged by the passage of time. Apathy seems to
288Love and Will, p. 331, n. 5.
287Ibid . , p. 29.
268Ibid.
269
Frustration, pp. 111-113. Maier reports that
frustration, depending on the individual and the situation,
induces aggression, regression, fixation (a stereotyping of
response unrelated to what results and reason might sug
gest) , or resignation (ibid., pp. 113-114).
270Ibid., pp. 114-115.
141
me to be a miracle of protection by which a person
ality in utter fiasco rests until it can do some
thing else.271
May adds, "The longer the situation goes unmet, the more
apathy is prolonged; and it sooner or later becomes a char-
27 2
acter state." Maier, toe, believes that the "frustra
tion of one generation creates the conditions for frustrat
ing the next generation, and man's ability to think is used
to justify frustration-instigated behavior rather than to
273
remove frustration." The trauma of the Conquest with
0 7 /
the disorientation of self which it produced could well
275
have resulted in a paralysis of will that was only
271
Harry Stack Sullivan, The Psychiatric Interview
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1954), p. 184, cited in
May, Love and Will, p. 31.
^^Love and Will, p. 31.
278
Frustration, p. 122.
0 7 /
Santiago Ramirez, interpreting the indigenous
literature of the Conquest, says, "It is clear that the
Indian felt upon himself the destruction of his world of
values and of his primitive objects [in the psychological
sense]; he felt his relationship to them disintegrated, as
well as his form of life and interaction. He was left
desolate and destroyed, in a profoundly melancholy situa
tion" (Motivaciones. p. 44). He speaks of "the tragedy of
the encounter, that extraordinarily sadistic encounter in
which one of the parties had to renounce its ways of liv
ing" (ibid., p. 45). "The union of [the indigenous] women
with Spanish men was a deeply dramatic transculturation.
The woman was incorporated suddenly and violently into a
culture for which she had net been formed; her union
involved a betrayal of her original culture. Therefore the
birth of her child was the expression of her separation
from one world, but not a door opening onto another"
(ibid., p. 48).
275
May, Love and Will, p. 189.
142
intensified by the frustrating conditions which have
276
prevailed right up to the present time.
The feeling of emptiness or vacuity [which May
later prefers to call "a state closely allied to
apathy"] . . . generally comes from people's feeling
that they are powerless to do anything effective
about their lives or the world they live in. Inner
vacuousness is the long term, accumulated result of
a person's particular conviction about himself,
namely his conviction that he cannot act as an
entity in directing his own life, or change other
people's attitudes toward him, or effectively influ
ence the world around him. Thus he gets [a] deep
sense of despair and futility. . . . And soon, since
what he wants and what he feels can make no real
difference, he gives up wanting and feeling.277
Maier has found that under conditions of frustration,
availability of the response is a factor in its choice,
rather than anticipated consequences (which is the case in
O7O
states of motivation). One can take both resignation
and violence to have been choices culturally available to
Mexicans, in view of the value placed upon stoicism and the
279
social acceptance of crimes of passion.
Supra, pp. 116-117, n. 175.
^^Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself. Signet
Books (New York: New American Library, 1953), p. 22. See
Love and Will, p. 327, n. 20. "Apathy occurs when a person
feels he has no control and has no identification with his
destiny or any ability to create his destiny" (personal
communication from David Markel, M.D.).
^ ^ Frustration. p. 160.
Supra. p. 56. "Resignation," writes Paz, "is
one of our most popular virtues. We admire fortitude in
the face of adversity more than the most brilliant triumph"
(Labyrinth, p. 31). Stoicism, he says, is the most exalted
military and political attribute in Mexico (ibid.).
143
The hermeticism of the Mexican male, in part a
function of his stoicism, is one of the causes of his
loneliness and lack of relatedness, which in turn is
related to violence. May finds "a dialectical relation
between apathy and violence. To live in apathy provokes
violence; and . . . violence promotes apathy. Violence
is the ultimate destructive substitute which surges in to
280
fill the vacuum where there is no relatedness.M
Apathy is the antidaimon, the ’ ’silence--the
prehistoric silence, stronger than all the pyramids and
sacrifices, all the churches and uprisings and popular
OQ I
songs--[which] comes back to rule over Mexico." One
can now understand better--and possibly accept--Paz's
statement that the Mexican kills because life is of no
value. "The Mexican shuts himself away and ignores [life
and death]."^82
Care is the opposite of apathy; care is a state in
which something does matter; care is "the necessary source
28 8
of eros. the source of human tenderness."
[Care] is a state composed of the recognition
of another, a fellow human being like one's self;
of identification of one's self with the pain or
joy of the other; of guilt, pity, and the awareness
^^Love and Will, p. 30.
281
Labyrinth, p. 46. See supra. p. 13.
282
Labyrinth, p. 58. See supra. p. 121.
^^Love and Will, p. 289. (Italics mine.)
144
that we all stand on the base of a common humanity
from which we all stem.284
When we do not care, we lose our being; and
care is the way back to being. If I care about
being, I will shepherd it with some attention paid
to its welfare, whereas if I do not care, my being
disintegrates. Heidegger "thinks of care as the
basic constitutive phenomenon of human existence."
It is thus ontological in that it constitutes man
as man.285
The discussion has come full circle to Mexican
286 ^
gana. How right Jose Gomez Robleda was when he said in
1947 that the great undertaking of Mexico's rebirth can and
will be assumed by her young people when and if "s_e les de
la gana." when and if they "feel like it"--the hallowed
OO7
Mexican phrase, when and if they care.
Countless Mexicans care very much, of course, and
are trying to propose solutions and put them into effect.
All the men who have been quoted in this discussion of
machismo and its related social conditions have suggested
beginning points which are closely related to their analy
ses of the problem. Santiago Ramirez, for example, has
suggested that since a woman who is adequately satisfied
genitally is less likely to burden her children with her
284Ibid.. pp. 289-290.
2 8 Love and Will, p. 290. May is citing John
Macquarrie, "Will and Existence," The Concept of Willing,
ed. James N. Lapsley (New York: Abingdon Press, 1967),
p. 78.
286Supra, p. 53.
28^Imagen. pp. 75-76.
145
unsatisfied needs, there should be more sexual activity
between marriage partners, and Mexicans should "learn that
the genital role is not in contradiction to nor has any
288
reason to be opposed to the maternal role."
The most fundamental suggestions, it seems to me,
have been made by Francisco Gonzalez Pineda, and they are
all related to Mexico's need, so often mentioned by the
people quoted in this paper, to discover and face her own
reality. Mexicans must undertake the enormous task of
rediscovering and interpreting their history. "[The
patient must be helped] to accept his past and integrate it
into his present life without the previous fears, hatreds,
289
shame, and anguish." Mexico must learn to confront the
unreality of that "super-Utopia," the false idealizations
which motivate so many of her people. Mexico, says
Gonzalez, is schizoid, and the healing of the split in the
national Superego must be initiated by the political half.
Only it can do what must be done to bring Church and State
into harmonious collaboration.299 The governments of
Mexico have to confront the problem of their own integ-
291
rity. In the area of the organization and conduct of
2^ Motivaciones. p. 189.
2^9Pinamica. p. 191.
29QIbid.. pp. 156-157, 188.
291Ibid.. p. 162.
146
justice, Gonzalez suggests that reform must begin with the
national Superego: that the access to justice must be
permitted to everyone, from the Indian right up to the
president, and if it is not applied to the top members of
the government, it is useless. If there were effective
justice on the top levels, it would give the national ego
the security that there is worth in the father figure.
Fear would be reduced and the people could submit and
collaborate more securely with the government. The govern
ment must share the truth with the people, allowing them to
be responsible and work out the national problems
292
together. In 1961, Gonzalez pointed out that the word
manana contains the possibility of "hope, the most ter
rible enemy of hate and destruction." He proposed that
Mexicans begin "in the daily and microscopic struggle" of
their individual lives to accept themselves as they are and
consequently to love themselves and others more, thus put-
9QO
ting more truth into Mexico's tomorrow. He suggested
psychoanalysis as a solution to the aggression of everyday
life, since through it the patient gets in touch with the
best of his real parents through the transitory maternity
0 Q/
and paternity of the analyst. Above all, if the country
Dinamica. pp. 165-169.
291
Destructividad. p. 67.
294Ibid.. p. 113.
147
is to achieve a new unity of national values, it will
depend on the good will and desire of all Mexicans, and on
the energy, inner discipline, and control of their individ
ual destructiveness. The task, says Gonzalez, calls for
true heroism, leadership, and goodness on the part of those
who have the capacity to be images of real love for the
people. If Mexico is incapable of producing these figures,
295
Gonzalez warns, it will mean disaster.
Ibid., pp. 181-182. The reader will be inter
ested in chapter x, "Possibilities for Change: Character
and Cooperation," in Fromm and Maccoby, Social Character.
Three institutions are discussed (CONASUPO, Father William
Wasson's orphanage in Cuernavaca, and the Village Boys
Club established by the study in the Morelos village) and
the reasons for the changes they have effected are
analyzed.
CHAPTER III
THE PLUMED SERPENT: MEXICO NEEDS A MIRACLE
"No, madam!1 1 [mourned Toussaint.] "There is no
hope for Mexico short of a miracle."
"Ah!" cried Mirabal, flourishing his wine glass.
"Isn't that wonderful, when only the miracle will
save us! When we must produce the miracle! We!
We! We must make the miracle!" He hit his own
breast emphatically. "Ah, I think that is marvel
lous!" And he returned to his turkey in black
sauce.
Ever since its publication in 1926, D. H. Lawrence's
Mexican novel, The Plumed Serpent, has received a strangely
disparate array of critical judgments. Anthony West dis
misses it as "an outrage"; Moore calls it Lawrence's "most
notable failure"; Vivas terms it "unpleasant and defective"
and accuses Lawrence of "egregious bad taste"; Freeman, on
the whole sympathetic to Lawrence, finds The Plumed Serpent
marred by "sentimental posturing"; and even Clark,
Lawrence's most appreciative critic of the Mexican works,
says that The Plumed Serpent is "a flagrant piece of propa
ganda," in which "the worst side of Lawrence [is] never
1
D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent, with an intro
duction by William York Tindall (New York: Vintage Books,
1951), pp. 68-69. Hereafter, page references to this
edition will be given parenthetically in the text.
148
149
2
more evident." William York Tindall, in his earlier
Lawrence criticism, although calling The Plumed Serpent
"by far his best novel," prophesies that it will perish
because it is based on nonsensical ideas; in his later
criticism, the novel becomes "darkly splendid," "a great
3
metaphor for a feeling about reality," "a wonderful book."
Kessler calls it a "profoundly moving and beautiful tale"
in a "clumsy superstructure," and Moore compares it to "an
opera with magnificent music and a ridiculous libretto."^
Hough calls it a "curiously mixed work," and Clark takes it
2
West, D. H. Lawrence (London: Arthur Barker Ltd.,
1950), p. 127; Harry T. Moore, "The Plumed Serpent: Vision
and Language," in D. H. Lawrence: A Collection of Critical
Essays. ed. by Mark Spilka (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963), p. 61 (hereinafter referred to
as "Vision and Language"); Eliseo Vivas, D. H. Lawrence:
The Failure and the Triumph of Art, Midland Books
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960), pp. 65, 69
(hereinafter referred to as Failure and Triumph); Mary
Freeman, D. H. Lawrence: A Basic Study of His Ideas
(Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1955), p. 216
(hereinafter referred to as Ideas): L. D. Clark, Dark Night
of the Body: D. H. Lawrence's The Plumed Serpent (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1964), pp. 4, 13 (hereinafter
referred to as Dark Night).
3
D. H. Lawrence and Susan His Cow (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1939), p. 204 (hereinafter
referred to as Susan); The Literary Symbol (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1955), p. 189; Introduction to
The Plumed Serpent (New York: Vintage Books, 1951), pp.
xiv, v (hereinafter referred to as Introduction).
^Jascha Kessler, "Descent in Darkness: The Myth of
The Plumed Serpent." in AD. H. Lawrence Miscellany, ed. by
Harry T. Moore (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University
Press, 195 9), p. 258 (hereinafter referred to as
"Descent"); Moore, "Vision and Language," p. 67.
150
to be Mthe most perplexing of D. H. Lawrence’s novels,”
"one of the strangest books in English literature, and, as
such, one of the most widely misunderstood."^ Sagar comes
close to the heart of the critical situation, I believe,
when he says:
The wholesale condemnation fThe Plumed Serpent]
has received is indicative, it seems to me, of far
deeper failings in the critics than in the book; a
failure in imaginative range and flexibility; a
failure to meet the basic critical challenge, the
challenge to enter wholly, if only temporarily,
into the fictional world.6 (Italics mine.)
I suggest that the critics have been unable to
enter wholly into the fictional world in large part because
they do not know Mexico intimately enough to be able to
perceive Lawrence's devastating portrait of it as accurate,
and to see that his "ridiculous libretto” is a serious
attempt to offer a solution to Mexico's social problem, to
point the way to the miracle.^ Consequently, they are
Graham Hough, The Dark Sun: A Study of D. H.
Lawrence (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1957), p. 135;
Clark, Dark Night, pp. v, 8.
g
Keith Sagar, The Art of D. H. Lawrence (Cambridge:
The University Press, 1966), p. 159. (Hereinafter referred
to as Art.)
7
Even Clark insists that Lawrence's Mexico is not
"Mexico as it is, in the realistic sense” (Dark Night,
p. 78). "The world of The Plumed Serpent, though it may at
times look like the common world of Mexico} is far from
being so" (ibid.). Vivas, one of Lawrence s harsher
critics, answers such an opinion by saying, "However we
take the Mexican record, its authenticity cannot be
doubted. In this respect there is nothing phony about the
book" (Failure and Triumph, p. 72). I hope to show in some
151
unable to evaluate the objective worth of that solution and
accept it as a legitimate part of the book's structure.
Vivas, to be sure, sees and summarizes much of Lawrence's
vision of the Mexican people, but he is completely unable
to accept his response to the vision. Clark's valuable
work, an indispensable vade mecum for the ordinary reader
who would appreciate the novel in depth, falls short in
that Clark seems not to realize that the program presented
has as much, if not more, meaning for Mexico than for the
Irish protagonist. Sagar, perceptive as his analysis of
the novel is, misunderstands the potential consequences of
the message for Mexico. Only Freeman seems to state
clearly the double purpose of the novel:
The Plumed Serpent was written with a double
motive: on the one hand to explore for the European
those modes of living that he had so carefully
denied, and, on the other, to suggest a move toward
an indigenous Mexican renaissance. If Europe should
look to her roots in sensuous fact, Mexico should be
drawn slowly from her primordial helplessness and
fear--but in her own time and in her own way, not
under the lash of European "ideals.
My aim, then, in this chapter and the next, is to
show what I take to be the meaning and value of Lawrence's
Mexican "Logos" in terms of the analysis of Mexico given in
Chapters I and II of this dissertation, and especially in
terms of machismo--to explain Lawrence's proposal for "an
detail that Lawrence's Mexico is very close to "the Mexico
of the social scientist" (Clark, Dark Night, p. 78).
^Ideas, p. 181.
152
indigenous Mexican renaissance," to reveal his "miracle."
Specifically, in this chapter I shall present Lawrence's
description of the Mexico he found, and in Chapter IV, I
shall deal with his proposal.
The plot of the novel is quite simple. A forty-
year-old Irish widow, Kate Leslie, goes to Mexico in quest
of she knows not what--she simply is sure that in Europe,
"she had heard the consummatum est of her own spirit. It
was finished, in a kind of death agony" (52). Initially
uncertain that she can find what she needs in this land of
"death rattles" (62), she soon obscurely senses that there
is hope, at least, in going to Sayula (Chapala), where
hacendado Ramon Carrasco and army general Cipriano Viedma
are involved in a movement to restore--or recreate--the
old religion of Quetzalcoatl. There she visits Ramon and
gradually learns what the movement is about; she witnesses
the removal of Catholic idols from the town church and the
dedication of the latter to Quetzalcoatl, of whom Ramon is
now the manifestation on earth; she saves Ramon's life when
a clerically-instigated attempt at assassination almost
succeeds; she marries Cipriano (by now the "living
Huitzilopochtli") and becomes herself the earthly manifes
tation of the "goddess" Malintzi; and after a constant
oscillation between attraction and revulsion, she eventu
ally decides to stay in Mexico, for the time being at
least, where the type of love that Cipriano offers her
153
provides more meaning and promise of ongoing personal
vitality than Europe can give her.
Viewed this starkly, the matter of the plot indeed
seems to invite critical derision. With only one or two
jarring notes, however, Lawrence constructs on this plot an
authentic and convincing novelistic world, thanks primarily
to his superb grasp of the Mexican "spirit of place," and
to his "uncanny skill at synthesizing form and setting and
symbol."^
In the critical work that was his least favorable
treatment of Lawrence, Tindall calls attention to
Lawrence's "peculiar sensitivity to what he called the
spirit of place. . . . [He] had the ability to seize upon
and convey the feeling of localities. Vivas concedes
Lawrence's "power of creative observation, his superior
sensibility, his unerring grasp of the spirit of place to
which most of us are simply blind.Lawrence's sense of
place did not, of course, concern itself only with land and
climate; it was able to fuse these with the personality of
the people who interacted with their environment. The
validity of his perception of the Mexican people is
confirmed by Antonio Castro Leal, a leading Mexican liter
ary critic (who has himself written a book about the
^Clark, Dark Night. p. 13.
^ Susan, p. 201.
^ Failure and Triumph, p. 72
154
12
contemporary Mexican situation ): "It cannot be doubted
that in his association with city Mexicans, and especially
with rural Mexicans, Lawrence perceived the psychological
13
depths and the underlying elements of their personality."
It must be kept in mind, of course, that Lawrence's
Mexican experience occurred between the months of March and
July, 1923; September and October, 1923; and between
October, 1924, and February, 1925.^ He saw a Mexico that
was still turbulent as a result of the Revolution. The
violent De la Huerta revolt exploded in 1923; the corrup
tion of the labor movement under Luis Morones was obvious;
political assassinations continued under the Calles regime;
and the frightful violence of the "Cristero" rebellion
(1926-1932) was brewing. (So unsettled was Mexico still
that in The Plumed Serpent Cipriano's army troops travel
around putting down insurrections and capturing bandits.
It is clear to me that this military activity is in the
legitimate service of the Mexican government, and is an
accurate reflection of the actual situation. I wonder,
12 - ^
iAdonde va Mexico? Reflexiones sobre nuestra
historia contemporanea (Mexico: Editorial Porrua, 1968).
13
"El Mexico de David Herbert Lawrence," Cuadernos
Americanos. I (July-August, 1942), 190.
■^Clark, Dark Night. pp. 25-49. Clark is espe
cially helpful in tracing Lawrence's Mexican experience,
the reading Lawrence did on Mexico, and the circumstances
of the composition of The Plumed Serpent.
^Simpson, Many Mexicos. pp. 278-280.
155
however, if some Lawrence critics in part base their idea
that this is a "political" novel on their misconception
that Cipriano's troops are acting on behalf of a nonexist
ent "state” established by Ramon.)^
How, then, does Lawrence sense this "spirit of
place" to be?
First of all, and most important, Lawrence feels a
strong atmosphere of death in Mexico. In his starkest
expression of this feeling, he even defines Mexico in terms
of death ("in the horror and climax of death-rattles, which
is Mexico" [62]). Speaking of Kate, Lawrence links land
scape and the ambient mood of death in one of the most
powerful images of the book: "In the great seething light
of the lake, with the terrible blue-ribbed mountains of
Mexico beyond, she seemed swallowed by some grisly skele
ton, in the cage of his death-anatomy" (116). Kate wonders
whether America is "the great death-continent, the great
No1 , to the European and Asiatic and even African Yes'. ,"
"the continent whose spirit of place [fights] purely to
pick the eyes out of the face of God" (83). "The spirit
Moore says, for example, "This novel concerns the
taking over of a country and, by corollary, profound polit
ical problems are involved. Government by mysticism simply
will not do" ("Vision and Language," p. 65). Eugene
Goodheart, in The Utopian Vision of D. H. Lawrence
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), states that
in The Plumed Serpent Lawrence "conceives a political
program" (p"! 143) . Nowhere in the novel do I find such a
political program.
156
of place was cruel, down-dragging, destructive. Death to
this, death to the other, it was all death! death! death!
as insistent as the Aztec sacrifices. Something for ever
gruesome and macabre” (51).
This characterization could appear exaggerated to
the reader. It might seem to be a characterization not of
the real Mexico, but of what Moore calls "the other Mexico,
17
the Mexico of Lawrence's mind.” Interestingly enough,
however, Octavio Paz also speaks of "the other Mexico,” in
his Posdata. written after the massacre of students and
their sympathizers at Tlatelolco in October of 1968.
What occurred on October 2, 1968, was at the
same time the denial of what we have wanted to be
since the Revolution and the affirmation of what
we have been since the Conquest and even earlier.
It can be said that it was the apparition of the
other Mexico, or, more accurately, of one of its
aspects. I hardly need to repeat that the other
Mexico is not outside us but within us: we would
not be able to extirpate it without mutilating
ourselves. It is a Mexico which, if we can learn
to name it and recognize it, we will someday trans
figure: it will cease being that ghost which slips
around in our reality turning it into a nightmare
of blood.
Paz believes that any "history” of a people is merely
symbolic of a hidden history, that it is merely the visible
manifestation of a hidden reality, and that on that fateful
October afternoon, "visible history unfolded our other
Harry T. Moore, The Life and Works of D. H.
Lawrence (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1951), p. 234.
(Hereinafter referred to as Life and Works.)
1 ft
Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, S.A., 1970,
p. 107.
157
history, the invisible one, like a pre-Columbian codex.
19
. . . The symbols became transparent." This other
Mexico, this latent reality, is the Mexico of the Aztecs.
"Between the ancient society and the new Hispanic order
there stretched an invisible thread of continuity. . . .
This thread_has—not-been, broken: the Spanish viceroys and
the Mexican presidents are the successors of the Aztec
20
tlatoanis." Paz goes on:
Ever since Independence, the process of sentimen
tal identification with the Prehispanic world has
been emphasized, until it has become, since the
Revolution, one of the most notable characteristics
of modern Mexico. What has not been said is that
Mexicans, in their immense majority, have made the
Aztec point of view their own, and have thus unwit
tingly bolstered the myth which the pyramids and
their sacrificial stones incarnate.21
The other Mexico is the Aztec Mexico, and "in all the mani
festations of that extraordinary and terrible nation, from
its astronomical myths to its poets' metaphors, and from
its daily rituals to the meditations of its priests, [there
22
was] the obsession, the odor, the stench of blood." Paz
asks why,
by what obfuscation of the spirit, no one among us
--I am not thinking of the stale old nationalists,
but of our wise men, our historians, our artists and
poets--is willing to see and admit that the Aztec
world is one of the aberrations of history? The
Aztec case is unique because its cruelty was the
^Posdata. pp. 108, 109. 2^Ibid.. p. 116.
21lbid.. pp. 118-119. 22Ibid.. p. 126.
158
result of a system of impeccable and implacable
coherence, an irrefutable syllogism-dagger.23
And Paz says, in a sentence that is reminiscent of Gonzalez
r\ t
Pineda, "I believe that a critique of Mexico and her
history--a critique which resembles psychoanalytic therapy
--must begin with an examination of what the Aztec vision
25 - •
of the world meant and still means today." Mexico-
Tenochtitlan is dead, says Paz, and he is not so much
concerned with a problem of historical interpretation as
with the fact that Mexicans cannot look its corpse in the
2 6
face: "Its ghost inhabits us." The ghost, as Paz said
27
earlier, must be named if it is to be exorcized.
D. H. Lawrence dares name this ghost some forty-
four years before Paz's striking words. Lawrence calls it
the dragon of the Aztecs.
Superficially, Mexico might be all right . . .
until you were alone with it. And then the under
tone was like the low angry snarling purring of
some jaguar spotted with night. There was a
ponderous, down-pressing weight upon the spirit:
^ Ibid. , pp. 126-127. ^Supra. p. 146.
^Posdata, p. 128. ^ Ibid.
27
In his discussion of "the daimonic in dialogue,"
Rollo May says, "Traditionally, the way man has overcome
the daimonic is by naming it. In this way, the human being
forms personal meaning out of what was previously a merely
threatening impersonal chaos" (Love and Will, p. 167).
And, linking name with "logos, the meaningful structure of
reality, which is man's capacity to construct form," May
goes on, "The Word discloses the daimonic, forces it out
into the open where we can confront it directly. The Word
gives man a power over the daimonic" (ibid., p. 176).
159
the great folds of the dragon of the Aztecs, the
dragon of the Toltecs winding around one and weigh
ing on the soul. And on the bright sunshine was a
dark stream of an angry, impotent blood, and the
flowers seemed to have their roots in spilt blood.
The spirit of place was cruel, down-dragging,
destructive (51).
Over and over Lawrence characterizes Mexico as
cruel, sinister, menacing, and subtly links these qualities
with her past, her geography, and her bright sun.
It was a place with a strange atmosphere: stony,
hard, broken, with round cruel hills and the many-
fluted bunches of the organ cactus behind the old
house, and an ancient road trailing past, deep in
ancient dust. A touch of mystery and cruelty, the
stonyness of fear, a lingering, cruel sacredness
(104).
The dark-green bulks of organ-cactus sticking up
mechanically and sinister, sombre in all the glare.
Grey ground-squirrels like rats slithered ceaselessly
around. Sinister, strangely dark and sinister, in
the great glare of the sun! (105)
But it is not merely the geography which is cruel. The
people are divided into victims and victimizers, and they
frequently change roles. Lawrence's keenest literary image
of this victimizing and cruelty is a vignette of a child
torturing an apathetic duck. Kate concludes that in this
way "the mite could wreak the long human vengeance and for
once be master" (241).
Lawrence, of course, is not alone in his commen
tary. Reyes Nevarez has been quoted as saying, "In Mexico
we are cruel with ourselves," and Quiroz Cuaron, referring
to the complex of Coatlicue, as saying, "We devour each
160
28
other without compunction." Paz has pointed out that the
great Mexican word chingar has a cruel meaning, that the
power of the macho "almost always reveals itself as a
29
capacity for wounding, humiliating, annihilating." The
most specific reference which I have found to this supposed
tendency of the Mexicans to cruelty was made in 1900 by
Julio Guerrero in his book, La genesis del crimen en
Mexico: estudio de psiauiatria social. Speaking particu
larly of the Mexican living on the Central Plateau (where
30
the density of the population is the greatest ), Guerrero
said, "Character in much of society has degenerated and the
ferocious tendencies of the Aztecs have reappeared. After
ten generations the barbaric soul of the adorers of
Huitzilopochtli palpitates again in some of the breasts of
31
our fellow countrymen." He called attention to the love
of the people for bullfights and cockfights, the avid
interest of the spectators who would gather whenever a
knife-fight broke out in the street (according to Guerrero
there were 11,692 of these fights in the Federal District
28Supra, p. 127.
29
Labyrinth. pp. 77, 82. See supra. pp. 8-9.
30
Cline, Mexico. pp. 86-87.
8^Mexico: Librerxa de la Vda. de Ch. Bouret, 1901,
cited by Juan Hernandez Luna in "Primeros estudios sobre el
mexicano en nuestro siglo," Filosofia y Letras (Mexico), XL
(October-December, 1950), 345-346. (Hereinafter referred
to as "Primeros estudios.")
161
in 1896), and not only the morbid attraction that execu
tions had for the spectators who would wait for them in
spite of "sun, hunger, fatigue and rain," but their
32
humorous response to such tragic events.
It would seem clear from all that has been said so
far that the macho's often sadistic striving for power or
domination is rooted not in strength but in impotence. In
the words of Erich Fromm, "It is the expression of the
inability of the individual self to stand alone and live.
It is the desperate attempt to gain secondary strength
33
where genuine strength is lacking." Mexico's cruelty,
then, may possibly be attributed both to the latent pres
ence of "the other Mexico," Aztec Mexico, and the long
history of the lack of any real power on the part of most
Mexican men, culminating in their present lack of self
esteem. How simply Lawrence says all this with "the mite
could wreak the long human vengeance and for once be
master"' .
Lawrence senses a sinister quality to Mexico, a
feeling of evil, and this provokes an atmosphere of dread,
of "the strange grisly fear that so often creeps out on to
the darkness of a Mexican night" (27). He characterizes
the Mexicans as a race old in subjection to fear, unable to
32Ibid.. p. 346.
33
Escape from Freedom. Discus Books (New York:
Avon Books" 1941) , p. 184.
162
shake it off (146). But it is not ordinary fear. "There
is something truly mysterious about the Mexican quality of
fear. As if man and woman collapsed and lay wriggling on
Q /
the ground like broken reptiles, unable to rise" (316).
What is this evil sensed by Lawrence? Antonio
Castro Leal quotes Lawrence's poem "Cypresses," in which he
says, "Evil, what is evil? / There is only one evil, to
35
deny life." Malevolence is certainly a way of denying
life. And Lawrence does feel a malevolence in Mexico; he
is aware of "that peculiar invisible jeering tone, some
thing peculiar to the American continent. A quiet, invisi
ble, malevolent mockery, a desire to wound" (161).
Ramon and Montes suffered alike from the deep,
devilish animosity the country sent out in silence
against them. It was the same, whoever was in
power: the Mexicans seemed to steam with invisible,
grudging hate, the hate of demons foiled in their
own souls, whose only motive is to foil everything,
everybody, in the everlasting hell of cramped
frustration.
This was the dragon of Mexico. . . . (442)
Actually, in The Plumed Serpent Lawrence defines evil as
"the lapsing back to old life-modes that have been surpassed
in us" (150). Could not this definition be linked to Rollo
May's idea that the daimonic is evil (in fact, cruel) when
it does not become personalized, when it remains
n /
This image is reminiscent of the quotation from
Gonzalez Pineda in Chapter II regarding the national feel
ing of "a great helplessness and fear, "[a] constant,
intense collective fear by everyone of everyone" (supra,
p. 108).
^"El Mexico de David Herbert Lawrence," p. 187.
163
undifferentiated? Lawrence's use of the words "devilish,"
"demons," and "hell" can well be equated with May's use of
O £
the term "daimonic possession." Both men's terms essen
tially refer to anti-life. As for the phenomenon noted by
Lawrence of attacking authority, it is interesting to see
what Gonzalez Pineda said in 195 9:
Mexico as a real whole has no importance. Its
fragmentation makes it impotent before the aggres
sive repression of an aggressive, vindicative group.
Any vindicative group which shows a possibility of
attacking authority successfully, no matter what
kind it is--government, religion, business, school,
etc.--immediately inflames the barely suppressed
desire of being able to dominate and destroy the
father.37
But malevolence is not the only way of denying
life. Life can be simply withheld. Lawrence pictures it
repeatedly as withheld or absent, in images of silence,
dryness, stoniness, colorlessness, dust.
Everywhere the same weary indifference and
brokenness, a sense of dirt and of helplessness,
squalor of far-gone indifference, under the perfect
morning sky, in the pure sunshine and the pure
Mexican air. The sense of life ebbing away, leav
ing dry ruin (95).
Silence, an aboriginal, empty silence, as of
life withheld. The vacuity of a Mexican morning.
Resounding sometimes to the turkey-cock (105).38
Always something ghostly. The morning passing
all of a piece, empty, vacuous. All sound withheld,
everything holding back. The land so dry as to
^ Supra, p. 135. ^ Dinamica. p. 94.
38
The turkey-cock suggests the gallo. the rooster,
a symbol of strutting machismo or false potency.
164
have a quality of invisibility, the water earth-
filmy, hardly water at all (106).
The weight of black ennui that hung in the
air1 . (235)
Lawrence senses not only a great ponderousness and
depression in Mexico, but an "active" resistance. He finds
"something so heavy, so oppressive, like the folds of some
huge serpent that seemed as if it could hardly raise
itself" (22) . "To pull one down. It was what the country
wanted to do all the time, with a slow, reptilian insis
tence, to pull one down" (77).
And all the noise subdued, suppressed.
The sense of strange, heavy suppression, the
dead black power of negation in the souls of the
peons.
And the peon men only emitting from their souls
the black vapour of negation, that perhaps was
hate. They seemed, the natives, to have the power
of blighting the air with their black, rock-bottom
resistance (255).
Kate and other foreigners almost despair over the
apparent indifference, carelessness, apathy, and hopeless
ness they find in Mexico.
The country gave her a strange feeling of help
lessness and of dauntlessness. Unbroken, eternally
resistant, it was a people that lived without hope,
and without care. Gay even, and laughing with
indifferent carelessness (82).
People who never really changed. Men who were
not faithful to life, to the living actuality.
Faithful to some dark necessity out of the past.
The actual present suddenly collapsing in the souls
of the men and the women, and the old, black,
volcanic lava bursting up in violence, followed by
a lava-rock indifference (456).
Toussaint, a friend of Ramon's, in an outburst over the
165
apparent preference of the Mexicans to shiver on a petate
on the ground rather than make a bed of corn leaves, ends,
"And it is terrible. It is terrible! As if they wanted to
punish themselves for being alive!" (69) Describing the
family attached to the house that Kate rented in Sayula
(really the house in which he lived while in Chapala),
Lawrence says:
It was a reckless family. Juana admitted a
different father for Jesus, but to judge from the
rest, one would have suspected a different father
for each of them. There was a basic, sardonic
carelessness in the face of life, in all the
family. They lived from day to day, a stubborn,
heavy obstinate life of indifference, careless
about the past, careless about the present, care
less about the future. They had even no interest
in money. Whatever they got they spent in a
minute, and forgot it again (153).
One could so easily react indignantly to these
impressions, say that Lawrence is prejudiced or is simply
repeating harmful American stereotypes of the Mexican.
And yet, did not Uranga and Zea speak of the haphazard
drift of Mexican life, caught in the "difficult world of
39
'the opportune?'" Julio Guerrero spoke of the Mexican's
"muscular laziness," his "lack of dynamic initiative," his
"diminution of vitality," his "inertia in living," revealed
in the attitudes and movements of the masses and individ
uals both, and he lamented Mexican apathy.^
39
Supra, pp. 117-118.
^Cited in Hernandez Luna, "Primeros estudios,"
pp. 341-342.
166
The reader will recall that Rollo May associates
apathy with Freud's "death instinct" or "Thanatos," with
the return to the inanimate, and takes it to be the
opposite of eros, "the power which drives men toward
/ 1
God." So it can be seen that Lawrence's primary vision
of Mexico is that of a country in the toils of a great
down-dragging serpent of death and the return to the
inanimate. He speaks of various aspects of this death,
this negation: the spirit of place is cruel, oppressive,
impotent, destructive, sinister, evil, malevolent, resist
ant, indifferent, careless, with a great withholding of
life and energy.
Up to this point, I have been discussing Lawrence's
impression of the Mexican "spirit of place," which merges
inevitably with his impression of the national character.
His view of Mexicans, however, is of course more complex
than the over-all impression of death and negation por
trayed thus far.
Actually, it is sometimes quite difficult to know
just whom he is talking about. Even though Lawrence
notices regional differences ("The wild, sombre, erect men
of the north'. . . . The big men in Tlascala . . . ' . The
quick little Indians, quick as spiders, down in Oaxaca'.
. . . The big black eyes on the coast of Sinaloa'. The
41Supra, p. 138.
167
handsome men of Jalisco . . . !" [81]), he often seems
vague regarding the difference between Indian and mestizo.
"Mexico meant the dark-faced men in cotton clothes, big
hats: the peasants, peons, pelados, Indians, call them
what you will. The mere natives" (80). He uses the word
"Indian" rather ambiguously. I tentatively assume, on the
strength of his phrase "the inaccessible village of the
pure Indians, who spoke no Spanish" (115), that ordinarily
in The Plumed Serpent "Indian" refers either to Indians who
speak Spanish and are somewhat "assimilated," or to men
whose mestizai e is weighted more heavily toward Indian
"blood" and culture.
At any rate, "the dark-faced men in cotton clothes"
are on the whole handsome, with "a certain richness of
physical being" (54). They have "a strange gentle appeal
and wistfulness, strange male voices, so deep, yet so quiet
and gentle" (53). Kate feels a sympathy with them: unlike
the white man, they have "blood in their veins: they [are]
columns of dark blood" (48). She finds a "strange, soft
flame of courage in the black Mexican eyes" (84). Her
boatman on the lake responds to her laugh with a lovely
smile, and she feels he is "naturally honest and truthful
and generous. There was a beauty in these men, a wistful
beauty and a great physical strength" (96) . She notes a
"sensitive masculine sincerity" that "comes sometimes so
quickly from a native" (102). "There is something so rich
168
and alive in these people" (119). Ezequiel, one of the
sons of the family referred to earlier, is erect, shy,
proud, more responsible for his family than his oldest
brother is, and he finds his identity in his relationship
to the land. He works for it rather than for the man who
owns it (158).
But Kate is forever baffled by the contrast between
the physical beauty of the men and their seeming inertia
and indifference. She sees pitiful huts in a litter of
rags and bones, with "a sharp smell of human excrement."
And standing silent and erect not far from the
hole of the doorway, the man, handsome and impas
sive. How could it be, that such a fine-looking
human male should be so absolutely indifferent,
content with such paltry squalor? (167)
The superiority of men is manifest.
The women served [Ezequiel] his tortillas and
fetched him his drink of water as if he was a king,
boy though he might be. And his rough, breaking
voice was heard in quiet command.
Command was the word. Though he was quiet and
gentle, and very conscientious, there was calm,
kingly command in his voice when he spoke to his
mother or sisters. The old male prerogative (157).
Kate notices the preference of the men to be with other men
in the plaza instead of with their families at home.
"Impassive, motionless, they would sit side by side on the
benches of the plaza, not exchanging a word. Each one
isolated in his own fate" (166). "They seemed to be wait
ing, eternally waiting for something" (177). As for their
attitude toward women, "Careless in their morals, always
169
changing their loves, the men at least resisted all the
time any real giving of themselves. They didn't want the
thing they were pursuing. It was the women who drew them
on" (165). In fact, Kate believes that marriage in Mexico
will "always be a casual thing," that the highest thing
Mexico might produce would be "some powerful relationship
of man to man" (167). (The upper-class brothers of Teresa,
Ramon's second wife, believe that women belong in "a
secluded sort of prostitution" [432].)
Lawrence observes, however, that the "by no means
down-trodden women of the peon class" "seemed, on the
whole, softly callous and determined to go their own way:
to change men if they wished. And the men seemed not to
care very profoundly" (166). He finds the "bird-like
women" shy (131), with a "certain sensitive tenderness,
. . . a certain chirping charm," with a "bud-like feminin
ity," in spite of their dirty clothes and lice (53).
Juana, Kate's servant, has "sudden touches of warmth and
the peculiar selfless generosity of the natives. She would
be honest out of rough defiance and indifference, so long
as she was not in a state of antagonism" (120). Lawrence
describes something in Juana that makes me wonder if
resistance and goading may not be the only weapon of the
underdog, the only way he can feel any kind of power, even
though there might be an admixture of masochism in his
attitude:
170
It pleased Juana that she had been able to make
Kate's eyes blaze with anger. . . . She felt a
certain low power in herself. True, she was a little
afraid of that anger. But that was what she wanted.
She would have no use for a Nina of whom she was not
a bit afraid. And she wanted to be able to provoke
that anger, of which she felt a certain abject twinge
of fear (162).
[Juana] had not been treated very well by the
world, and there was a touch of bottom-dog insolence
about her (120).
Kate felt that the cry: Nina--chiId! by which
she was addressed, held in it a slight note of
malevolent mockery (120).
Juana is a curious combination of aggression and inertia
or is it simple ignorance?
Sometimes she had hot, fierce pangs of maternal
protectiveness, when the boy was unjustly treated,
as he often was. And if she thought he were ill, a
black sort of fatalistic fear came over her. But
Kate had to rouse her into getting some simple medi
cine (160) .
Lawrence observes that men and women seem incon
stant; they
worked in fits and starts, and could be very indus
trious; then came days when they lay about on the
ground like pigs (165).
They could not abstract themselves to a routine.
Everything must be fun, must be variable, must be a
bit of an adventure. It was confusion, but after
all, a living confusion, not a dead, dreary thing
(164).
He perceives the hermeticism of Mexico, manifested
in a peculiar guardedness, an evasion of contact and
speech. This is in part due to the historical period:
"You don't elbow your neighbor if he's got a pistol on his
171
hip and a knife at his belly" (8) . ^ Kate notices "the
curious soft veiling which these people [know] how to put
into their voices, speaking only to the unconcerned third
person in her" (353) . Lawrence tries to explain the
hermeticism and guardedness as due in part to a lack of
svn-nathos with other living creatures. The urchin with
the duck, for example, "could not see that the bird was a
real living creature with a life of its own. This, his
race had never seen" (241). To the "Indian," the world is
an uncouth, monstrous universe of monsters big and
little, in which man [holds] his own by sheer
resistance and guardedness, never, never going
forth from his own darkness (241).
Walking forever through a menace of monsters,
blind to the sympathy in things.... Hence the
stiff, insentient spines, the rich physique, and
the heavy, dreary natures, like the dark-grey mud
bricks, with a terrible obstinate ponderosity and
a dry sort of gloom (241).
Although the expression of his insight seems exag
gerated, my own experience in Mexico makes me wonder
/ 2
Jorge Carrion, arguing persuasively that because
of the pre-conquest Indian psyche the present-day Mexican's
psyche is governed by feminine soul rather than by mascu
line spirit. says of Mexican evasion in speech, so
frequently commented on by Mexicans and foreign observers,
"For the same reason, the language of the Mexican is ellip
tic and slippery, not because of any lack of vocabulary,
which, just the opposite, is enriched by thousands of
Mexicanisms, but rather to cover up in this way his inse
curity and to hide his own intentions. When he speaks, the
Mexican is flirting, or he is throwing buscapies [firework
'snakes'], or playing bullfighter, if you will, but he is
not confronting reality. Flirting, deceptive and slither
ing 'snakes,' and bullfighting are perfectly clear manifes
tations of the feminine sign that lies at their essence"
(Mito y magia, p. 54).
172
whether Lawrence has not hit upon something that is very
real and might be an element in a vicious circle. Society
in Mexico is undeniably menacing. This has been shown
repeatedly in Chapter II. But is it not menacing partly
because Mexicans do not trust each other and feel that they
must attack first? Is the macho enabled to live his
mystique of violation because of a lack of syn-pathos, or
is he responding in kind to the cruel pressures of history
and culture? Does suffering necessarily make one aware
that another creature feels pain too? What factor, in the
most literal sense, can transfigure Mexican suffering into
svn-pathos ?
Would Lawrence's idea of a lack of empathy help
explain the albur (the masculine duel of words, the ulti-
/ O
mate purpose of which is to violate the other person) and
the chuela ("that witty but cruel and malevolent ridicule
/ Q
Carlos Fuentes calls the albur "[that] fearful
denial of others which leads to the suicide of not being
able to recognize ourselves outside our own selves" (Tiempo
mexicano, p. 25). He goes on, "The 'albur,' in Mexico, is
an operation of language which consists in deflecting the
simple meaning of words in order to confer upon them an
insulting, aggressive intention that denies the personality
of one's interlocutors. The 'albur' makes any dialogue
impossible" (ibid.). Fuentes says that to Mexicans,
Spanish is essentially the language "of lack of identity,
of the offensive 'albur,' and of rhetoric that is as hypo
critical as the embrace men give each other in Mexico, the
original function of which is to find out if the other man
is carrying a pistol" (ibid., p. 26). (See Paz, Labyrinth.
pp. 39-40.)
173
which is made of persons considered inferior"^1 ' ) ? Would it
help explain the peculiar Mexican custom (although cer
tainly not unique to Mexico) of ridiculing people by giving
them nicknames based on their physical defects or abnormal
ities?^ Would it help explain the popularity of the bull
fight in Mexico?
Essential to Lawrence’s vision of Mexico, and
underlying practically everything he says about the
44
Julio Guerrero, quoted by Hernandez Luna,
"Primeros estudios," p. 347. Octavio Paz, it will be
recalled, has pointed out that in their respective expres
sions, the Spaniards enjoy using blasphemy and scatology,
while Mexicans "specialize in cruelty and sadism" (supra,
p. 64).
^See Hernandez Luna, "Primeros estudios," p. 347.
Antonio Alatorre has called attention to the Mexican fasci
nation with physical defects and wonders if it does not
stem from Aztec beliefs ("El idioma de los mexicanos,"
Universidad de Mexico, X [November, 1955], 7 ff.). Max
Leopold Wagner believes that the "extraordinary frequency
and importance of words for physical and moral defects in
Latin American speech" are due to indigenous beliefs and
superstitions ("El sufijo hispanoamericano -eco para
denotar defectos fisicos y morales," Nueva Revista de
Filologia Hispanica, IV [January-March^ 1950], 106. [Here
inafter referred to as "El sufijo -eco"]). Of great
interest is Margit Frenk Alatorre’s compilation, "Designa-
ciones de rasgos fisicos personales en el habla de la
Ciudad de Mexico," Nueva Revista de Filologia Hispanica.
VII (January-June, 1953), 134-156. Samuel Ramos said in
1934 of the middle-class Mexican, "He is ingenious in
detracting from others to the point of annihilating them.
He practices slander with the cruelty of a cannibal. The
ego cult is as bloodthirsty as the ancient Aztec ritual; it
feeds on human victims. Each individual lives closed
within himself, like an oyster within its shell, in a fixed
gesture of distrust toward others, exuding malignity, so
that no one will come close to him. He is indifferent to
collective interests and his action is always individualis
tic by nature" (Profile, pp. 71-72).
174
country, one of his motifs, is his idea that the Mexicans
are unfinished, half-created, that they have no center.
Over and over he attributes the insolence, resentment,
cruelty, indifference, and fear which he perceives in them
to their inability to win their own integrity out of the
chaos of their circumstances.
The strange, soft flame of courage in the black
Mexican eyes. But still it was not knit to a
centre, that centre which is the soul of a man in a
man (84).
Somewhere at the bottom of their souls, she felt,
was a fathomless resentment, like a raw wound. The
heavy, bloody-eyed resentment of men who have never
been able to win a soul for themselves, never been
able to win themselves a nucleus, an individual
integrity out of the chaos of passions and potencies
and death. They are caught in the toils of old
lusts and old activities as in the folds of a black
serpent that strangles the heart. The heavy, evil
smelling weight of an unconquered past (147).
The boatman is "a half-being, with a will to disintegration
and death" (116).
. . . The dark eyes of uncreated women, soft,
appealing, yet with a queer void insolence! Some
thing lurking, where the womanly centre should have
been; lurking snake-like. Fear'. The fear of not
being able to find full creation (82).
Uncreated, half-created, such a people was at
the mercy of old black influences that lay in a
sediment at the bottom of them. While they were
quiet, they were gentle and kindly, with a sort of
limp naivete. But when anything shook them at the
depths, the black clouds would arise, and they were
gone again in the old grisly passions of death,
blood-lust, incarnate hate. A people incomplete,
and at the mercy of old, upstarting lusts (147).
So in the black eyes of the family, a certain
vicious fear and wonder and misery. The misery of
human beings who squat helpless outside their own
175
unbuilt selves, unable to win their own souls out of
the chaos and indifferent to all other victories
(153) .
This, then, is the fundamental problem of Mexico, according
to Lawrence: the great Mexican negation of life is due to
the inability of the people to shape their souls, to win
their identity, to possess their own integrity. Actually,
Lawrence is saying in his own impressionistic images, in
his own incomparable personal style, what Ramos, Paz,
Uranga, Diaz-Guerrero and others have said in their own
style, be it lyrical or scientific. Octavio Paz has summed
it up as follows: "Everything that makes up the present-
day Mexican . . . can be reduced to this: the Mexican does
46
not want or does not dare to be himself." Lawrence is
simply saying that the Mexican cannot be himself yet, and
the two statements mean the same thing.
Paz, years after Lawrence’s intuitive analysis,
ties up into one statement Lawrence's ideas regarding an
alien world, violence, apathy, and loss of the source of
life:
In the Valley of Mexico man feels himself
suspended between heaven and earth, and he oscillates
between contrary powers and forces, and petrified
eyes and devouring mouths. . . . The Mexican feels
himself to have been torn from the womb of . . .
reality, which is both creative and destructive,
both Mother and Tomb. He has forgotten the word
that ties him to all those forces through which life
manifests itself. Therefore he shouts or keeps
silent, stabs or prays, or falls asleep for a hun
dred years.47 (Italics mine.)
^ Labyrinth, p. 73. ^ Ibid. , p. 20.
176
I repeat what I said in Chapter II, the Mexican is out of
touch with care, the source of eros. If care, as Heidegger
and May say, is "ontological in that it constitutes man as
48
man," Lawrence is vindicated. This Mexico that he
portrays is only half-created.
Actually, white men are in much the same predica
ment, except that they had a soul and lost it. "[The white
men of the United States] have conquered the lower worlds
of metal and energy, so they whizz around in machines,
circling the void of their own emptiness" (153). Even the
white men of Mexico have lost their souls:
And all the efforts of the white men to bring
the soul of the dark men of Mexico into final
clinched being has resulted in nothing but the
collapse of the white man. Against the soft, dark
flow of the Indian the white man at last collapses,
with his God and his energy he collapses. In
attempting to convert the dark man to the white man's
way of life, the white man has fallen helplessly down
the hole he wanted to fill up. Seeking to save
another man's soul, the white man lost his own, and
collapsed upon himself (84).
The conquered race'. Cortes came with his iron
heel and his iron will, a conqueror. But a conquered
race, unless grafted with a new inspiration, slowly
sucks the blood of the conquerors, in the silence of
a strange night and the heaviness of a hopeless will.
So that now, the race of the conquerors in Mexico is
soft and boneless, children crying in helpless hope
lessness (84-85).49
48Supra, p. 144.
49 -
Jorge Carrion expresses this absorption of the
conqueror by the conquered in a remarkably similar image:
"Meekly, impotently [the Indians] see [the Spaniards]
violate their women, exploit their labor, knock down their
idols and their temples. They silently surround them with
177
Lawrence characterizes many of the white men of Mexico as
having become soft. Teresa's brothers, cowardly bullies,
are "like so many Mexicans of that class, soft and suicidal
towards themselves" ( 4 3 3 ) The "fifis" from the city
smile at the young women accompanying them, "soft, fatherly,
sensuous smiles, suggestive of a victim's luxuriousness"
(126). The hacendados and ranchowners, with "their tight
trousers and weak, soft sensuality, [are] pale victims of
their own emotional undiscipline" (80) . The bullfighters
"looked like eunuchs, or women in tight pants" (11).
If Mexicans and white men do not possess their
souls, the corollary comes easily: they do not have their
own manhood or womanhood. They are not yet human. "Men
are not yet men in full, and women are not yet women. They
are all half and half, incoherent, part horrible, part
pathetic, part good creatures. ... I mean all the world"
(231). Ramon tells Carlota, his first wife, "All I want
[Mexicans] to do is to find the beginnings of the way to
their own manhood, their own womanhood" (231). And as
Carlota lies dying, Kate wonders if "perhaps after all life
the moist contact of their autochthonous, primary soul.
Painfully, slowly, and with effort, the Mexican is born of
this conjunction. He is the child of astonishment and of
silence. The astonishment of the Spaniard, emphatic,
authoritarian and paternal; and the fecund silence--because
primitive and unexpressed--of the Mexican world, drawn into
the passive, concave Indian womb" ("De la raiz a la flor
del mexicano," p. 24).
“ ^"It is a country where men despise sex, and live
for it," said Ramon. "Which is just suicide" (433).
178
[will] conquer again, and men [will] be men, so that women
[can] be women. Till men are men indeed, women have no
hope to be women" (383) . When Mexicans have found true
manhood, machos will no longer be machos, and women can be
fulfilled beings who will not need to destroy their
husbands and children.
Such is the Mexico that Lawrence saw some fifty
years ago. If one may judge by the social commentators
quoted, the human situation has not changed much in spite
of a considerable over-all economic progress.
To what does Lawrence attribute the death-like
quality of Mexico? It may seem strange to the American
that the first of several intertwining causes that he finds
for the human attitude of negation is the physical environ
ment. At first he merely wonders if this can be so:
Perhaps something came out of the earth, the
dragon of the earth, some effluence, some vibration
which militated against the very composition of the
blood and nerves in human beings. Perhaps it came
from the volcanoes (56-57) .
Later he states that this is the case.
Blackened under a too-strong sun, surcharged
with the heavy sundering electricity of the Mexican
air, and tormented by the bubbling of volcanoes
away below the feet. The tremendous potent elements
of the American continent, that give men powerful
bodies, but which weigh the soul down and prevent
its rising into birth (147-148).
And again, toward the end of the novel:
Kate firmly believed that part of the horror of
the Mexican people came from the unsoothed dryness
of the land and the untempered crudity of the flat-
179
edged sunshine. If only there could be a softening
of water in the air, and a haze above trees, the
unspoken and unspeakable malevolence would die out
of the human hearts (443).
I find it interesting that Julio Guerrero had
thought much the same thing in 1900. Hernandez Luna
synthesizes his argument as follows, and I quote the
passage at length because of its striking resemblance to
Lawrence:
Guerrero maintains that the psychic deformations
and character defects of [the Mexican of the Central
Plateau] have a telluric explanation; one must seek
their cause in the meteorological and geographic
conditions of the Central Plateau. Its great alti
tude, the thinness and dryness of its air, its sharp
and exaggerated atmospheric changes, its brilliant
light and arid landscape exert a powerful influence
on the physiology, character, customs, culture,
industry, mining, and agriculture of the Mexicans of
this region. This influence, if it is not combatted
with hygienic means or efforts of the will, becomes
"chronic" and produces those "character modifica
tions," those climatic anomalies" already pointed
out. Thus, the "thinness of the air and its extreme
dryness in the burning hours of the day" dulls the
activities of the highland man and produces atony or
muscular laziness: the "depressive and repeated
action" of the **ennervating hours and seasons of our
climate" occasions "pena" or mortification: with the
"bad odor" of lakes, streams, and gullies that is
diffused in the air through rapid evaporation one's
head becomes poisoned and a bad mood infilters one's
spirit; the "extremely dry, hot, luminous air" puts
one's nerves on edge and produces cruelty: "when the
atmosphere is not charged, one's spirit becomes calm,"
but it reacts in a depressive way, engendering long
attacks of melancholy: the constant contrast between
the "magnificence of Nature and human pettiness"
predisposes one to the fondness for ridiculing; the
"apparent lack of uniformity in natural phenomena"
explains the belief in luck and fondness for
gambling .51
51"primeros estudios," pp. 352-353.
180
Guerrero goes on to say that the fact that the Mexican's
"deformations" have a telluric origin shows that they are
accidental, not ontological; they attack the "superficial
energies of the spirit" rather than its profound ones.
When the climatic conditions have disappeared thanks to a
good hygienic policy, the character anomalies of the high-
52
land Mexican will also disappear.
Possibly Mexico can eventually change her odor.
Lawrence, suggesting that Nature herself is the model for
Mexico's lack of communion, laments, "No soft, sweet smell
of earth. The smell of Mexico, however subtle, suggested
violence and things in chemical conflict" (236) . He is
surely not the first to note "a faint, old smell of urine"
(236). How a "good hygienic policy" can change the other
qualities of Mexican air and climate, however, is difficult
to understand. If men are indeed affected by electrical
charges in the air and the quality of the atmosphere, by
the tremendous activity of underground forces manifesting
themselves in volcanoes, then I fear that these influences
must be combatted with "efforts of the will," as Guerrero
more realistically said before his optimistic prediction
that the climatic conditions could disappear.
Other interrelated reasons that Lawrence finds for
Mexico's spirit of negation and death lie in the double
52Ibid.. p. 353.
181
cultural inheritance of the mestizo, and the spirit in
which he is engendered.
Early in the novel Kate visits the house of Mrs.
Norris in Tlacolula. (Actually, it was the home of the
distinguished anthropologist-archaeologist Zelia Nuttall,
in Coyoacan. Mrs. Nuttall had ascertained that the house
had belonged to Pedro de Alvarado, one of the toughest of
53
the conquistadores.) The house is described in images of
death.
The square, inner patio, dark, with sun lying on
the heavy arches of one side, had pots of red and
white flowers, but was ponderous, as if dead for
centuries. A certain dead, heavy strength and
beauty seemed there, unable to pass away, unable to
liberate itself and decompose. . . . Dead, massive
house of the Conquistadores, with a glimpse of tail-
grown garden beyond, and further Aztec cypresses
rising to strange dark heights. And dead silence,
like the black, porous, absorptive lava rock . (31).
While this passage contains the germ of the idea that the
conqueror was absorbed by the conquered, its imagery also
implies either that the Spanish contribution was dead
before it reached Mexico, or died since and has lain dead
on the land, unable even to become fertilizing humus--or
that the contribution was death itself. Octavio Paz gives
some insight into what the nature of this "death" might be;
The colonial order was imposed from above and
its social, economic, judicial and religious forms
were immutable. It was a society ruled by divine
right and an absolute monarchy, having been created
■^Clark, Dark Night, p. 28.
182
in all its aspects as an immense, complicated arti
fact designed to endure but not to change.54
The "grandeur of Mexico" was that of an immobile
sun, a premature noonday that no longer had anything
to conquer but its own decay.55
Says Ramos, "The monotonous and routine life of New Spain
tended to perpetuate the inertia of will and to destroy
C f .
every stimulus to novelty in the Mexican spirit."
Spanish death, then, is stagnation, the failure to
change. But there is also death in the form of sadism.
Santiago Ramirez characterizes the encounter between
Spaniard and Indian as "that extraordinarily sadistic
encounter, in which one of the sides had to renounce its
ways of life." He quotes Sanchez Albornoz: "Spain came to
the Indies in a spirit of crusading and of rapine, with the
cross on high and her pockets empty, greedy for riches and
for souls.
Toussaint, Ramon's friend, has the theory that much
of Mexico's condition is due to the spirit in which the new
race has been conceived ever since the Conquest. This is
reminiscent of the discussion of "original sin" in Chapter
^Labyrinth. p. 110. ^Ibid. , p. 105.
^^Profile, p. 34.
•^Motivaciones. p. 45. He quotes from C. Sanchez
Albornoz, Espaha v el Islam (Buenos Aires, 1943).
Supra. p. 75, n. 33.
183
It depends on the moment of coition. At the
moment of coition, either the spirit of the father
fuses with the spirit of the mother, to create a
new being with a soul, or else nothing fuses but
the germ of procreation.
Now consider. How have these Mexicans of mixed
blood been begotten, for centuries? Answer me that,
and you have told me the reason for this Mexico
which makes us despair and which will go on making
everybody despair, till it destroys itself. In what
spirit have the Spanish and other foreign fathers
gotten children of the Indian women? What sort of
spirit was it? What sort of coition? And then,
what sort of race do you expect? (67-68)
All, everything depends on the moment of coi
tion. At that moment many things can come to a
crisis: all a man's hope, his honour, his faith,
his trust, his belief in life and creation and God,
all these things can come to a crisis in the moment
of coition. And these things will be handed on in
continuity to the child (69).
One could take Toussaint's impassioned ideas about the
moment of coition figuratively, of course. But I find a
passage in Rollo May which would seem to justify also a
somewhat more literal interpretation of Toussaint.
The fact that love is personal is shown in the
love act itself. Man is the only creature who makes
love face to face, who copulates looking at his
partner.... This opens the whole front of the
person--the breasts, the chest, the stomach, all the
parts which are most tender and most vulnerable--to
the kindness or the cruelty of the partner. The man
can thus see in the eyes of the woman the nuances of
delight or awe, the tremulousness or the angst; it
is the posture of the ultimate baring of one's self.
This marks the emergence of man as a psychological
creature: it is the shift from animal to man.59
The looking is fraught with intensity; it brings
a heightened consciousness of relationship. We
experience what we are doing--which may be play, or
exploitation, or sharing of sensuality, or fucking,
~ ^Love and Will, pp. 311-312.
184
or lovemaking, or any form thereof. But at least
the norm given by this position is personal. We
have to block something off, exert some effort, to
make it not personal. This is ontology in the
psychological area: the capacity for self-relation-
ship constitutes the genus Homo sapiens.60
How much "capacity for self-relationship," how much
capacity for care can be transmitted in a culture which was
originated and perpetuated to a large degree in the force
ful possession and exploitation of one race by another, so
much so that one race is still perceived subconsciously as
masculine and the other as feminine?
To return to the content of Lawrence's image of
Mrs. Norris' house, there is in it the implication that the
Aztec heritage was death-like also. The ancient dark Aztec
cypresses, a Western symbol of death, and the black absorp
tive lava can only signify, in my opinion, that the
present-day Mexican inherits death from both sides of his
ancestry, and oddly enough, for somewhat the same reasons.
The Aztec culture was static, changeless, and sadistic in
its own way. While "a will to the immutable was engraved
on [the pre-Columbian] style of culture," according to
Ramos, the truly creative period of pre-Columbian life had
died out several centuries before the Aztecs arrived at the
6 X
Valley of Mexico. The only real "creation" of the Aztecs
was their bloody economic hegemony based on Tlacaelel's
6QIbid.. p. 312.
^ Profile. p. 34; Paz, Posdata, p. 119.
185
great rejection of the truth of their past, the destruction
of their real history, in order to elevate Huitzilopochtli
and the bloody cult of the sun, and to wear the mask of
62
Toltec descendancy. Apart from this sun cult, their cul
ture was merely a synthesis of what they understood of the
63
great cultures of the past. The Aztecs were absorptive
and repetitious, not creative. As Carlos Fuentes says,
"Coatlicue is the symbol of a ceremonial culture: a cul
ture of sacred repetitions that excludes historical reno-
fth
vation." A spirit of death rather than of life informed
the Aztec state, saturated in the stench of "impotent
ft ^
blood," to use Lawrence's phrase quoted earlier.
Lawrence finds an explanation for the "resistance"
of the Mexicans in their history of exploitation. It
should be remembered that the Aztecs had been exploiting
the native peoples for a century or so before the Spaniards
arrived. "A people without the energy of getting on, how
could they fail to be hopelessly exploited? They had been
^R. C. Padden, The Hummingbird and the Hawk: Con
quest and Sovereignty in the Valiev of Mexico, 1503-1541.
Colophon Books (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1967) ,
pp. 2-74. (Hereinafter referred to as Hummingbird.)
^See Paz, Posdata, pp. 119-127.
^Tiempo mexicano. p. 20.
ft s
Supra. p. 159- It might be argued that repeti
tion in itself does not deserve the charge of being a
characteristic of death. I would refer the reader to Erich
Fromm's discussion of necrophilia and biophilia in The
Heart of Man. pp. 37-55.
186
hopelessly and cruelly exploited for centuries. And their
backbones were locked in malevolent resistance" (163).
Besides the effects of geography and climate, of a
Spanish "fertilization" that was not truly life-giving in
terms either of social institutions or the psychic content
of mestizaie. besides the effects of a static and essen
tially lifeless Aztec heritage and of a history of system
atic exploitation, Lawrence finds another great cause for
the Mexican negation of life: the Catholic Church in
Mexico.*^
His view of the Church in Mexico is summed up in a
devastating image: "The Church inside was a dead interior,
like all Mexican churches. . . . The interior of almost any
Mexican church gives the impression of cynical barrenness,
cynical meaninglessness, an empty, cynical, mocking shell"
(303). Among the things he is saying with this image, I
believe, is that Christianity, life, is gone from the
institutional Church, that the latter is an empty shell.
How does he account for the death in Mexico even of
Christianity?
In the first place, he observes that the Mexican
66
I wish to make clear that I write this section as
one who was a Catholic nun for over ten years and still is
a member of a community of religious women who are trying
to find more valid contemporary ways of dedicated service
to the Church and mankind than the narrowly canonical modes
of the past. I sincerely believe that I write in a spirit
of loving concern for the Church.
187
Indian is unable now to understand Christianity, and has
been since the beginnings of the Catholic conquest.
We in Mexico are for the most part Indians.
They cannot understand the high Christianity,
Father, and the Church knows it. Christianity is
a religion of the spirit, and must needs be under
stood if it is to have any effect (289).
Mexicans are "a people entangled in the past and unable to
extricate itself. A people that has never been redeemed,
f\~]
that has not known a Saviour" (148).
Lawrence was certainly not the first or last to say
that Christianity has not been understood in Mexico.
Octavio Paz says in a very pregnant statement:
Catholicism . . . reduced the participation of
the faithful to the most elementary and passive
religious attitudes. Very few could gain a larger
understanding of their new beliefs, and the immobil
ity of these beliefs . . . made any creative partic
ipation still more difficult. . . . Hence the
comparative sterility of colonial Catholicism. . . .
Religion and tradition have always been offered to
us as dead and useless forms that mutilate or stifle
our individuality.68
Lawrence suggests that the dead Christ was introduced into
Mexico, not the living Christ of the Resurrection, and that
all the Church offered the Indians in this life was hope of
f i 7
Madsen says, "The principal concept of God which
the Spaniards succeeded in communicating to the Indians was
the concept of a jealous, wrathful deity who sent idolators
to hell. The Indians never fully understood the Christian
idea that God wants to save human souls" (William Madsen,
"Christo-Paganism: A Study of Mexican Religious Syncre
tism" [unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of
California at Berkeley, 1955], p. 151. Hereinafter
referred to as "Christo-Paganism").
^ Labyrinth. pp. 105-106.
188
relief in the next.
[The white men out of the east] came with a dead
god on the Cross, saying: Lo! This is the Son of
God'. He is dead, he is bone! Lo, your god is bled
and dead, he is bone. Kneel and sorrow for him, and
weep. For your tears he will give you comfort again,
from the dead, and a place among the scentless rose-
trees of the after-life, when you are dead (135).69
It would seem, though, that hope went hand in hand with
fear. Paz says:
f i Q
The question of how "alive" was the Christ
brought to America by the Spaniards is difficult both to
define and to pursue. Ricard has said, "Naturally, the
Spaniards brought to America the Catholic tradition that
prevailed in the mother country, together with the corpus
of ideas, sentiments, and customs that it encompassed"
(Robert Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, trans. by
Lesley Byrd Simpson [Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1966], p. 298). Any attempt to ascertain the com
plex Catholic tradition of the mother country must take
into account Americo Castro's extremely important inter
pretations of what it meant to be a "Christian" in Spain
after the expulsion of the Moors and the Jews in 1492.
(See La realidad historica de Espana [3rd ed.; Mexico:
Editorial Porrua, S.A., 19661: Asnectos del vivir hispanico
[Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1970]; De la edad conflictiva
[2nd ed.; Madrid: Taurus, 1961].) The Christian renova
tion attempted by the Spanish Erasmists was brought to
Mexico, and flourished briefly, most notably in Michoacan
under Vasco de Quiroga. (See Marcel Bataillon, Erasmo v
Espana [2nd ed.; Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica,
1966],^pp. 816-831, especially^ Silvio Zavala, La "Utopia"
de Tomas Moro en la Nueva Espana v otros estudios [Mexico:
Robredo, 1937]; Carlos Fuentes, Tiempo mexicano, pp. 29-
32.) The Church's excessive temporal power in Latin
America has been documented, but an objective study of her
"spirituality" during the Colonial Period seems yet to be
done. Essential to such a study would be, of course, her
theoretical posture and her reality as a result of the
Council of Trent. Louis Bouyer, Cong. Orat., mentions "the
sternness of post-tridentine Christianity" (Erasmus and His
Times [Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1959], p. 57. See
also pp. 130, 134).
189
The Indians, with their own theocracy destroyed,
their gods dead or exiled, and without lands to
develop or other regions to which they could emi
grate, embraced the Christian religion as a mother.
She was a womb, a resting place, a return to
origins, like all mothers; but at the same time she
was a devouring mouth, a woman who punished and
mutilated them: a terrifying mother.'®
Paz also points out what I take to be one of the most
tragic aspects not only of the Conquest, but of Western
historjT-:
The decadence of European Catholicism coincided
with its apogee in Spanish America: it spread out
over new lands at the very moment it had ceased to
be creative. It offered a set philosophy and a
petrified faith, so that the originality of the new
believers found no way of expressing itself. The
adherence to it was passive. The fervor and pro
fundity of Mexican religious feeling contrasts with
the relative poverty of its creations. We do not
have a great religious poetry, just as we do not
have an original philosophy nor a single important
mystic or reformer.71
Much as the Mexican missionaries dreaded its devel
opment, religious syncretism is an undeniable fact in
72
Mexico (and, of course, in most of Latin America). The
phenomenon was practically inevitable, given the circum
stances of the introduction of Christianity. While this
syncretism might be taken by the casual observer to provide
sufficient faith and moral guidance for the millions of
Mexicans whose religion it is, Gonzalez Pineda condemns the
^ Labyrinth, p. 127. ^ Ibid. . p. 105.
72
Madsen concludes that "syncretism has changed the
pagan world view and the pagan concept of deity but it has
not changed the pagan code of ethics in the Valley of
Mexico" ("Christo-Paganism," p. 158).
190
fact that
the prevalence of remains of the indigenous religious
tradition which, apparently congruous with Catholic
religiosity, were accepted and are still considered
to be indications of the intense Catholic religiosity
of the people (e.g., the prevalence of sometimes
tremendously brutal and masochistic vows and peniten
tial practices) is not limited or oriented toward
better and more sublimated forms of religious expres
sion, but on the contrary is accepted and admired.73
Lawrence, too, senses a masochistic quality to Mexican
Catholicism. He gives Kate's impression of the atmosphere
of the church in Sayula on Saturday nights:
A hush, not exactly of worship, but of a certain
voluptuous admiration of the loftiness and glitter,
a sensual, almost victimised self-abandon to the god
of death, the Crucified streaked with blood, or to
the pretty white woman in a blue mantle, with her
little doll's face under her crown, Mary, the doll
of dolls ....
It was not worship. It was a sort of numbness
and letting the soul sink uncontrolled. And it was
a luxury, after all the week of unwashed dullness
in their squalid villages of straw huts (302).
The hybrid and superficial faith of Mexico cannot serve as
a spring of living water to nourish men in the supremely
difficult task of being full human beings.
Oh, if there is one thing men need to learn,
but the Mexican Indians especially, it is to collect
each man his own soul together deep inside him, and
to abide by it. The Church, instead of helping men
to this, pushes them more and more into a soft,
emotional helplessness, with the unpleasant sensuous
Dinamica, p. 189. See Mark G. McGrath, "The
Teaching Authority of the Church: The Situation in Latin
America" in Religion. Revolution, and Reform: New Forces
for Change in Latin America, ed. by William V. D1Antonio
and Fredrick B. Pike (New York: Frederick A. Praeger,
Publishers, 1964), pp. 51-52.
191
gratification of feeling themselves victims, victim
ised, victimised, but at the same time with the
lurking sardonic consciousness that in the end a
victim is stronger than the victimiser (303).
In connection with the Marian devotions of the
month of May, Lawrence notices something which can be
explained by the unthinking transference of religious
forms from the culture out of which they originated to a
culture in which they are not authentic: "Curious, the
old gentle ceremonials of Europe, how trashy they seem in
Mexico, just a cheap sort of charade" (303). The Church
itself was a transference, a structure lying on the country
instead of growing out of it. As Ricard says:
The Mexican Church . . . was an incomplete foun
dation. Rather, a Mexican Church was not founded
[at all], and a Creole Church was barely founded.
What was founded, before and above all, was a Spanish
Church, organized along Spanish lines, governed by
Spaniards, in which the native Christians played the
minor part of second-class Christians. The rule of
the [Royal] Patronato . . . accentuated still further
this aspect of the Church in America. ... It suf
ficed . . . for the monarch to have the disposal of
bishops, clergy, and friars, to make its national
character, that is, Spanish, even stronger and more
evident. In short, a Spanish Church was imposed
upon a native Christian society, and the Mexican
Church appeared finally, not as an emanation of
Mexico itself, but of the mother country, something
brought in from without, a foreign framework applied
to the native community.74
Ricard is of the opinion that the failure of the religious
orders to admit the natives into the monastic life or the
priesthood, understandable though their decision might be,
^The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, p. 308, Preface
to the Spanish Edition.
192
is "the essential omission that has weighed heavily upon
the destinies of the Church in Mexico."7^ Lawrence alludes
to the inability of the imported priesthood and hierarchy
to understand the domestic reality, speaking of a bishop
who in every other respect is an exemplary Christian:
"Bishop Severn did not know the real Mexico: how could he,
he was a sincere Catholic!" (88) The trouble with Bishop
Severn and with Christ himself, according to Lawrence, is
that they are white.
"Think of it! The Santissima is a gringita [sic],
and She came over the sea like the Nina, from the
countries of the Nina!" Juana spoke in a wicked
wonder, horrified, delighted, mocking.
"And the Lord is a Gringito--pure Gringito?"
barked Concha (246-247).
Judas is white too.
Holy Week, in Mexico City, is to all appearance,
the great week of Judas. Everywhere you see men
carrying home in triumph the great, gaudily-varnished
dolls of papier-mache. They are all men-dolls, more
or less lifelike grotesque. Most frequently it is a
fat Mexican-Spanish hacendado, landowner and big
farmer, who is represented with his tight trousers,
sticking-out belly, and huge upturned moustaches.
The old-fashioned patron. Some of the figures are
like Punch, some are like harlequin. But they all
have rosy faces and the white man's get-up. You
never see the dark-faced image of a native-blooded
Mexican; always a stiff, haughty grotesque of a
white man (286) .
Rodolfo Usigli wrote in 1943:
Another Spanish error, for which we have paid
very dearly, is that of the nationality of God. In
the sixteenth century, without the slightest doubt,
God was Spanish. That is why, in spite of the
75Ibid., p. 288.
193
magnificent efforts of those marvellous missionar
ies, the closest to divinity that Mexico could reach
was the Virgin of Guadalupe.... To reach that God
of Spain who deigned to illumine Mexico with a side
ways glance, it was not enough to be a mestizo, least
of all Indian; it was not even enough to be a criollo
--one had to be Spanish. . . . This grave error
produced the lack of a Mexican God. . . .76
Can gachupines, gringos, achieve the development of
an organic Christianity in a culture that is foreign to
them? Can Mexico or any other dark country accept a Savior
and a God that are "white”? Lawrence says no.
Different peoples must have different Saviours,
as they have different speech and different colour.
The final mystery is one mystery. But the manifes
tations are many.
God must come to Mexico in a blanket and in
huaraches, else He is no God of the Mexicans, they
cannot know Him. Naked, all men are but men. But
the touch, the look, the word that goes from one
naked man to another is the mystery of living. We
live by manifestations.
And men are fragile, and fragments, and strangely
grouped in their fragmentariness. The invisible God
has done it to us, darkened some faces and whitened
others, and grouped us in groups, even as the
zopilote is a bird, and the parrot of the hot lands
is a bird, and the little oriole is a bird. But the
angel of the zopilotes must be a zopilote, and the
angel of the parrots a parrot. And to one, the dead
carcase will ever smell good; to the other, the
fruit (394-395).
The Church, says Ramon, "does not possess the key-word to
the Mexican soul" (289).
It is puzzling that Lawrence mentions the Virgin of
Guadalupe only once, with reference not to her color or to
her special significance for Mexico, but only to the fact
^ El gesticulador. pp. 225-226.
194
that her face is oval. The omission of La Virgen Morena,
however, does not affect the validity of his basic
argument, that "the real Christ has not been able to save
Mexico" (230). No matter how much genuine comfort Our Lady
of Guadalupe has given her suffering children, she is not
her Son, and cannot take his place in bringing them to
spiritual maturity. Lawrence does depict Mary as being the
only one announced by the friars to have the water of
refreshment for Mexico ("Lo! His mother weeps, and the
waters of the world are in her hands. She will give you
drink and heal you, and lead you to the land of God"
[135]), but it is not in fact a transforming water; it only
gives them the strength to wait for death and "peace among
the scentless rose-trees, in the Paradise of God" (135-
136),77
Jorge Carrion is very illuminating regarding the
significance of Our Lady of Guadalupe for the Indian of the
Colonial Period and even of today. After arguing that the
psyche of the Indian was moving slowly from feminine to
masculine in its orientation, from "soul" to "spirit" in
the Klagian sense, but was not cnly interrupted in this
progression by the brutal trauma of the Conquest but was
forced to regress to the feminine orientation again,
Carrion says, "None of the masculine Catholic symbols say
anything to the withdrawn, frightened, timid Indian soul,
because he is seeking protective feminine signs. . . .
Groping around in the complex world of Catholic symbols, he
finally finds an object for his religious impulses, ade
quate to what in his circumstances he will need from it:
the Virgin Mary. She is sweet, gracious, and has suffered
also. Her lines are softly curved and feminine, and
nothing in her causes fear or anguish. Before the Virgin
of Guadalupe appeared to any one particular Indian, she was
already a psychic reality in the collective mind, and when
she finally imprints herself sweetly on the avate of the
195
Lawrence capsulizes the condition of the majority
of Mexicans in one image: "Kate thought of the man polish
ing his oranges half-an-hour before: his peculiar beauty,
a certain richness of physical being, a ponderous power of
blood within him, and a helplessness, a profound unbelief
that was fatal and demonish" (54). The fatal, demonish
quality which Lawrence ascribes to this unbelief might be
the apathy and impotence which is said to result from a
78
lack of faith. But there is still hope in the men, in
spite of their fatal unbelief. Lawrence observes of the
Mexican men standing or crouching motionless for hours on
end, "They seemed to be waiting, eternally waiting for
something" (177). His implication is clear: "Indifferent
to all other victories," they are waiting "helpless out
side their own unbuilt selves," waiting for the key-word
that will enable them to "win their own souls out of the
chaos" (153) P^
Indian Juan Diego, she adopts the oval shape, the discreet
color, the concave feminine appearance adequate to shelter
ing the age-old misery and the ineffable and regressive
yearning in the Mexican for feminine symbols. God, on the
other hand, is a god of terror, of punishment. He is
invoked in order to be propitiated" (Mito y magia. pp.
53-54). Lawrence implies this quality of fear in Mexican
Catholicism with his observation that "men . . . took off
their big hats, with a curious cringing gesture, as they
went by the gateway of the church" (302).
^See May, Love and Will, p. 213.
79
It is interesting that Rollo May speaks of "a
profound wishing that still takes place in despair, a wait
ing that may be pictured as a wish for a state beyond
196
But what of those educated, upper-class, European
ized Mexicans who have received thorough instruction in
pre-Vatican II Catholicism? What does Lawrence think of
them? The answer may be found in Carlota, Ramon's first
wife, who is from a European family of Torreon whose source
of wealth is mining. Her father was Spanish and her mother
French. She is pale, thin, faded, with a "doglike finesse
of gentleness" (170-171). She had once worshipped Ramon,
and had loved him spontaneously (171, 229). But when she
realized that Ramon was changing in his life orientation
and was irrevocably committed to his hope of changing
Mexico through his new religion of Quetzalcoatl, "her love
had turned from being the spontaneous flow, subject to the
unforeseen comings and goings of the Holy Ghost, and had
turned into will. . . . She became filled with charity:
that cruel kindness" (229). This is the kind of "love"
that gives--dispenses--from a self-assumed position of
superiority, without the genuine self-sharing of one who
knows he shares essentially the same condition as the
person who needs help. The giving is essentially a form of
condescension, which is the opposite of the kind of love
and giving taught by the gospels. "Life had done its work
despair. . . . But it also has within it the hope for the
way out, however latent, the dynamic beginning of the wish
for constructive possibilities that transcend the empti
ness, futility, and apathy" (Love and Will, p. 215).
197
on one more human being, quenched the spontaneous life and
left only the will. Killed the god in the woman, or the
goddess, and left only charity, with a will" (229).
Carlota continues to love Ramon, and to love the world
(people in the abstract), "steadily, pathetically, obsti
nately, and devilishly" (228). Carlota's love is destruc
tive, hence "devilish." She is caught up in the "victim-
victimizer" pattern, and is the kind of mother who
unwittingly keeps her children from developing autonomy.
Ramon says at one time to her, "I don't like the love you
have for your god: it is an assertion of your own will.
I don't like the love you have for me, it is the same.
I don't like the love you have for your children. . . .
I dislike your insistence. I dislike your monopoly of one
feeling ..." (228). Carlota, with her "monopoly of one
feeling," seems to have repressed the daimonic in herself.
But alas, May would have it that "our capacity to open
80
ourselves to the power of eros" lies in the daimonic.
This is what Lawrence means, I think,when he says that
life (the process of living, what happens in time) has
killed the goddess in her. If Augustine is right and eros
is "the power which drives men toward God," if eros is "our
capacity to participate in a constant dialogue with the
other," then poor Carlota, for all her piety and her
80
Supra, p. 137.
198
prayer, is in a desperate vital condition.
Carlota, I believe, is a sado-masochist. Masochis
tic because she clings to Ramon by "worshipping" him, by
idealizing him and thus not giving him the freedom to be
what he really is, and masochistic because she "exalted
herself in the Church, and in her work for the Cuna," a
Catholic charity to which she was extremely attached (172).
Erich Fromm has said:
The annihilation of the individual self and the
attempt to overcome thereby the unbearable feeling
of powerlessness are only one side of the masochis
tic strivings. The other side is the attempt to
become a part of a bigger and more powerful whole
outside of oneself, to submerge and participate in
it. This power can be a person, an institution,
God, the nation, conscience, or a psychic compulsion.
By becoming part of a power which is felt as unshak-
ably strong, eternal, and glamorous, one participates
in its strength and glory. One surrenders one's own
self and renounces all strength and pride connected
with it, one loses one's integrity as an individual
and surrenders freedom; but one gains a new security
and a new pride in the participation in the power in
which one submerges. One gains also security against
the torture of doubt.81
And Lawrence says, "Dona Carlota, confident as she was in
her good works, still had just a bit the look of a victim;
a gentle, sensitive, slightly startled victim. As if some
secret enemy drained her blood" (173). As Ramon says to
Kate, it would be very easy for him to deny himself and
make a sort of sacrifice of his life. "Which is being
ravished" (300). Carlota is her own unknown enemy, ravish
ing and victimizing herself.
O -I
Escape from Freedom, p. 177.
199
But she is sadistic, too, because as Ramon says,
she tries to ravish him, not sexually but psychologically
and spiritually. She wants to control him. She had wanted
to be "eternally and closely identified" with him; "conse
quently she hated him and hated everything which she
thought drew him away from this eternal close identifica
tion with herself" (277). Men and women, says Lawrence,
should know that they cannot, absolutely, meet on
earth. In the closest kiss, the dearest touch,
there is the small gulf which is none the less
complete because it is so narrow, so nearly non
existent. They must bow and submit in reverence
to the gulf. . . . Any attempt to close it is a
violation, and the crime against the Holy Ghost
(277).
Attempts at symbiotic union, then, are crimes against life.
And attempts to control any human being, even one's chil
dren, are anti-life. Carlota plays the martyr to her boys,
and Ramon tells her, "You are weakening and vitiating the
boys. You do not love them, you are only putting your
love-will over them. One day they will turn and hate you
for it" (229).
Like so many sincere Catholics, Carlota is a victim
of the confusion in the teaching of the Church regarding
"mortal sin." She believes that Ramon is in mortal sin
because he has not only left the Church, but has taken over
the church in Sayula for his religion of Quetzalcoatl,
stripping the church of its Christian signs and burning the
statues. (It is only fair here to say that he does it
200
reverently and leaving the possibility open for the ulti
mate return of Christianity.) What Carlota does not
realize is that the Church teaches that man’s conscience is
sacred, man's ultimate authority, which he must not dis
obey. Not to follow one's conscience is in fact a sin, and
a "formal" sin, in contrast to the "material sin" which
Ramon committed, which was not sin at all if done in good
conscience. Carlota, from her vantage-point of "the truth"
and "right," prays for his soul. "And, praying for his
soul, she seemed to gain a victory over him, in the odour
of sanctity. She came home in frail, pure triumph, like a
flower that blooms on a grave: his grave" (229). Not open
to the Holy Spirit herself, she ironically says to Kate,
"Don't you think it was just against this danger that
Christ came, to teach men a proper humility? To teach them
the sin of pride?" (181)
Hermetically sealed by her false faith from any
possibility of fresh air or growth or new life, out of
touch with her own generative processes, Carlota is in the
grip of what May calls the destructive daimonic. One
element of her personality has "usurped control over the
total personality," and that situation is psychosis,
82
"daimonic possession." Lawrence is -unmistakably clear
about this. Carlota interrupts Ramon's first ceremony as
^ Supra, p. 135.
201
the "living Quetzalcoatl" by creeping on her knees toward
the former altar steps, shrieking and moaning to Jesus and
the Virgin as she advances. She has convulsions, stran
gling "in her ecstasy." In a "metallic and terrible"
voice, she implores God to take Ramon's life now in order
to save his soul. After further convulsions she falls
"with a strangling moan in a heap on the altar steps. Kate
. . . found her stiff, with a little froth on her discol
oured lips, and fixed, glazed eyes" (376-377). She dies
shortly thereafter, and Ramon tells his sons, when the
youngest accuses him of killing her, that she sought her
own death (388). She did indeed, without knowing it.
It is very difficult not to take Carlota as a
figure of the Catholic Church at that time not only in
Mexico, but indeed, in the whole Western world. Lawrence
is characterizing the Roman Church as necrophilous, I
believe, in his image of the Bishop of the West: he is in
a "dusty, uninteresting" library, clad in a "not too clean"
cassock, with a dull amethyst ring. It is a "dusty, dreary
room" (288). And it is the Knights of Cortes who promise a
large reward for the man who would murder Ramon (345).
Perhaps Lawrence sums up the basic evil of the Church of
that time with his phrase, "The Church, with its evil will
for turning the people into humble, writhing things that
202
83
shall crave to be victimised, to be ravished" (301). He
has tried to show it to be true in both the case of the
vast majority of peasants, victimized by their lack of
mature faith, their apathy, and their lack of a sense of
self-worth, a center, and in the case of the "soft,
suicidal" upper-class men, "pale victims of their own
emotional undiscipline," and of the criolla Carlota.
Apart from his description of the city "butterflies
and fifis" in the plaza at Sayula, Lawrence alludes to the
city Mexicans almost in passing. "There are all sorts of
inferiority complex, and the city Mexican has a very strong
sort, that makes him all the more aggressive, once it is
used" (10). Also, at the bullfight, the people take
pleasure at what is essentially "dirty little boys maiming
flies. . . . Only grown-up, they are bastards, not boys"
(24). The "fat mammas had a pleased, excited look in their
eyes, almost sexual, and very distasteful in contrast to
their soft passive bodies" (18). What the relation of
these people to the Church might be, one can only guess.
It would seem safe to assume that the "fat mammas" at least
are faithful to church attendance.
83
There is only the slightest allusion to the
wealth of the Church in Mexico, certainly a major problem
since the earliest days. Cipriano says, "The old Jesuit
. . . I know them. All they treasure, even more than their
money, is their centipede power over the frightened people;
especially over the women" (292) .
203
So much, then, for Lawrence's estimate of the role
of the Church in Mexico. (He seems not to be antagonistic
to Jesus Christ himself. Ramon says, "When my heart is not
bitter, I am grateful forever to Christ, the Son of God"
[290]. His quarrel is with what men have used Christ for,
with the distortions of Christianity which have hurt Mexico
so terribly.) I would have to agree with Lawrence: the
Catholic Church has been a principal factor since the
Conquest in keeping Mexicans from becoming complete human
beings with their own centers, from achieving a mature
personal autonomy--in keeping them from that act of separa
tion from Mother that lets them be self-assured men. Much
of the responsibility for Mexican machismo can be laid at
the door of the Church. In the name of Christ, who said,
"I have come that they may have life, and have it more
OA
abundantly," the Church has unwittingly fostered psycho
logical death.
Regarding Lawrence's portrayal of the Church, crit
ical opinion has been largely silent. Perhaps it has been
thought more discreet to criticize his proposed solution--
not that the critics have always perceived the solution as
being to that problem. Freeman, however, does recognize
some of the main lines. Of all the Lawrence critics,
Eliseo Vivas undertakes the most complete discussion of
8^John 10:10.
204
Lawrence’s portrayal of the Mexican Church. He states,
"His notion that Jesus is not a Saviour to the Mexicans is
a theory made up entirely out of his own head, and one
that has very little to do with Mexican reality. . . . The
Q E T
Mexicans are a deeply religious people." Vivas goes on
to show that he is very much aware of the polytheism and
the syncretism of the peasants. He is under no illusions
regarding the faith content and psychological implications
of Mexican faith. He even says, "The Spanish Christ . . .
was made to order for a people who were as obsessed with
8 6
death and blood as the aboriginal Mexicans." The only
relevant question, he says, is
whether the Roman Catholic religion has been accepted
by the Mexicans and meets their needs. And the
answer is that it has been accepted and so far as one
can see it seems to meet their needs. That it meets
their needs because in the process of accepting it
the Mexicans have interpreted it in their own terms
--that is another question. And whether it ought or
ought not to meet their needs, as humanists and
Marxists argue, on the ground that needs ought not
to be satisfied by spiritual "opium," that is still
another question.
The reader might ask, on the basis of his "so far as one
can see it seems to meet their needs," does Vivas know
Mexico well enough to see Mexicans’ needs? Apparently he
^ Failure and Triumph, pp. 81-82.
86Ibid.. p. 83.
8^Ibid. , p. 84. I include his last idea in this
quotation for the sake of honesty. The whole question of
whether Christianity at its ideal best is "spiritual opium"
cannot be discussed here.
205
does. It is he who praises Lawrence's unerring sense of
the spirit of place, the sense which perceived, in Vivas'
words, "the terror, the cruelty, the untameable savagery of
the land and its people. Under the thin film of impeccable
courtesy and specious friendliness, he saw the unapproach
able monadic inwardness, the radical indifference of each
man for the rest."88
It becomes a question, then, of the definition of
"human needs," and what a "Savior" is for. If a human
being needs to live, and if a Savior helps a people triumph
over death, I maintain that Vivas' acceptance of Lawrence's
description of the Mexican situation contradicts his own
rejection of Lawrence's thesis--unless terror, cruelty,
savagery, specious friendliness, monadic inwardness, and
radical indifference of one human being toward another are
indeed contributors to and manifestations of life rather
than death.
Lawrence saw that only a miracle could save Mexi-
89
co. His miracle will be considered in the next chapter.
88Ibid.. p. 88.
89
Lesley Byrd Simpson himself told me in 1947 that
in his opinion there was no hope for Mexico. I believe
that he was referring to her economic crisis. Subsequent
international developments contributed to giving Mexico the
"empuioncito" that she needed, the massive "little push."
Contrary to Lawrence's opinion, I believe that economics
and spiritual life are intimately related. It is very hard
for a child born of an undernourished mother not to be
apathetic and unimaginative from birth, and imagination and
hope go hand in hand.
CHAPTER IV
THE PLUMED SERPENT: RAMON SPEAKS HIS WORD
"Do you think one can make this miracle come?"
[Kate] asked of [Ramon].
"The miracle is always there," he said, "for
the man who can pass his hand through to it, to
take it" (71) .
"Now ... we must speak to the Mexicans in
their own language, and give them the clue-word to
their own souls. I shall say Ouetzalcoatl" (28 9). ^
Mexico needs the miracle, and Lawrence suggests a
"What if?" for Mexico. Of course the rest of the world
needs a miracle also, but Lawrence is not proposing that it
find its miracle specifically in the religion of Quetzal-
coatl. Vivas would seem to believe that the one program is
put forward as a universal solution: "Here is a writer
seriously proposing a program for the regeneration of a
nation and of the world the heart of which consists of men
painted as savages, with befeathered foreheads and loin-
cloths." This statement must be taken as careless in
light of his later sentence, ". . .He intended the program
of reform not only for Mexico but for the whole world:
1 ^
The written accent of "Quetzalcoatl" will not be
used whenever the name is being quoted from an author who
does not retain it, such as Lawrence or Lawrence critics.
^Failure and Triumph, p. 69.
206
207
each country was to revive its old, pre-Christian gods.
This is Lawrence's intention and the intention of the
3
book." Vivas quotes the 1925 letter to Seeker in which
Lawrence says, ". . .1 do mean what Ramon means--for all
of us."^
If Vivas overestimates the role of Lawrence’s
Quetzalcoatl religion, Hough underestimates it, thinking it
is only an artistic "objective correlative" for the
struggle of the protagonist, Kate:
The Quetzalcoatl revival is intended to provide
an explanation of the changes that are going on in
Kate's nature, the way her sympathy flows and
recoils. . . . Nearly all of it is implicit in the
first plot. We would be just as fully possessed of
all we need to know about Kate’s progress without
any details of the Quetzalcoatl ritual. But Lawrence
cannot leave it implicit.5
Actually, critics seem to have overlooked a signal
that Lawrence gives the reader twice during the novel. On
two separate occasions Kate says to Cipriano that she feels
^Ibid., p. 73.
^Ibid., quoting from The Letters of D. H. Lawrence,
ed. Aldous Huxley (New York, 1932), p. 648. Vivas takes
too literally and attaches too much importance to the
passage in Chapter XVII in which Ramon wishes the various
peoples could return to the mysteries of their own cultural
roots. I believe the passage out of tone with the novel-
istic world established, constituting a flaw. The opera
tive sentence of the paragraph is very much in harmony with
the rest of the novel, however: "And the mystery is one
mystery, but men must see it differently" (273). Even
Ramon says at the end of the intrusive passage, "But it
doesn't matter," and gets back to his work for Mexico (273).
^The Dark Sun, p. 136.
208
Ramon to be European, and Cipriano replies that to him he
is Mexican (224, 261). ^ In other words, although Kate is
clearly the protagonist, the novel's double conceptual
message is united in Ramon. "In a remote, far-off way, the
contact with him was more precious than any contact [Kate]
had known" (207). Her quest, then, is really for the mean
ing of Ramon. She finally is able to see that he embodies
the saving message of the "fusion of the old blood-and-
vertebrate consciousness with the white man's present
mental-spiritual consciousness. The sinking of both
beings, into a new being" (455). Ramon's great effort was
"to bring the great opposites into contact and into unison
again. And this is the god-power in man" (458-459). (The
integrated daimonic makes possible eros, the creative power
in man.) Kate knows that "without Ramon, Cipriano [is]
just an instrument, and not ultimately interesting to her"
£
He is both. "Instantly Kate and he, Europeans in
essence, understood one another" (41). Toussaint tells
Kate, however, that Ramon is "almost pure Spaniard, but
most probably he has the blood of Tlaxcalan Indians in his
veins as well" (67) . It is significant that his probable
Indian admixture is Tlaxcalan, since the Tlaxcalans have
been popularly regarded as the enemies of the Aztecs,
victims of their "flower wars" waged for the purpose of
obtaining bloody Huitzilopochtli's sacrificial victims.
As a reward, probably, for their alliance with Cortes
during the Conquest, the Tlaxcalans were the only Indians
who were allowed to ride horseback during the Colonial
period (Castro Leal, iAdonde va Mexico? p. 164). See
Miguel Leon-Portilla, Los antiguos mexicanos (Mexico:
Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1961), p. 116. See also
Padden, Hummingbird. pp. 38-40, for a different understand
ing of the Aztec-Tlaxcalan relationship.
209
(446). The "Anglo" reader finds meaning in the dynamism of
the person and world-view of Ramon, the European, as well
as in Kate's struggle with his meaning.^ But Ramon the
Mexican proposes a program for Mexico which, because its
essence is also fusion, because it too is aimed at achiev
ing an integrated daimonic and resulting eros for Mexicans,
has been confused by some critics with Kate's personal
quest for life and wholeness. If there are two plots in
the novel, it is because they serve the author's larger
purpose, not because he does not know how to handle the
main plot. With Ramon as their common fulcrum, they inte
grate not only Lawrence's representation of the needs of
two different cultures, but also the oscillation of the one
culture, represented by Kate, and the response and reaction
of the various Mexican identities, in the face of Ramon's
solutions. The symbol of Ramon as the bird between the
two beating wings of "the dual-created power to which man
has access" (459) serves also as a model of the novel's
structure.
^John B. Vickery gives some new and helpful dis
tinctions in his treatment of Ramon's significance "for all
of us," in "'The Plumed Serpent' and The Eternal Paradox,"
Criticism. V (Spring, 1963), 119-134. In his article
"Descent in Darkness," Jascha Kessler, while convincingly
revealing the pattern of the monomyth in Kate's quest,
overlooks the dual message of The Plumed Serpent. He dis
misses the Mexican message as "the clumsy superstructure of
the novel's manifest content," and says "there is, in a
deep sense, nothing more in the novel than [Kate's mythic]
story" (p. 258).
210
Freeman’s summary of Lawrence's double motive,
quoted in Chapter III, becomes more meaningful now: "On
the one hand to explore for the European those modes of
living that he had so carefully denied, and, on the other,
to suggest a move toward an indigenous Mexican renais-
g
sance." When the double conceptual purpose is seen, not
only can the artistic development of the novel be better
appreciated, but the "nonsensical ideas" and the "ridicu-
9
lous libretto can assume some of their real dignity.
Before they can assume it fully, however, the basic
question of the religion of Quetzalcoatl must be consid
ered. Clark, saying that The Plumed Serpent is "the gospel
of a would-be religion," believes that "it is not the
business of the critic to decide on the worth or worthless
ness of that religion. He will do well if he can explain
what it is.”"^ That would be fine if the worth of the
religion were not inextricably involved with the credibil
ity and justification of the responses to it within the
novel. It becomes an artistic problem whether or not one
wishes it to. Hough writes, for example, "We can only
guess at what the book might have been if Lawrence had
11
avoided the temptation to illicit god-making." And
Moore, besides highlighting the relative ignorance of the
^Supra, p. 151. ^Supra, p. 149.
^^Dark Night, p. 5. ^ The Dark Sun, p. 138.
211
English-speaking reader regarding the "subterranean"
currents of Mexico, implicitly attacks the truth-value of
the new Quetzalcoatl religion with his statement:
Lawrence once said that one can't lie in the
novel, but much of The Plumed Serpent tries to lie.
The hymns of Quetzalcoatl, the people hypnotized
into chanting in the plazas, the ceremonials of Don
Ramon and Cipriano--all these have a partial effec
tiveness, but ultimately they are meaningless to
the reader.12
His reader can only wonder what Moore really means with his
phrase, "tries to lie." Is he saying that the novel's
religious dynamics are too weak to support the action which
they supposedly motivate? Eliseo Vivas is clearer in his
implications:
However naive and irresponsible it may sound to
us, Lawrence's thinking, when he proposed the revival
of the old gods of the pre-Columbian world, was based
on two ideas that in his mind were related. The
first was his conception of the religion of early
man, which, although it manifested itself differently
in different cultures, was at bottom one. He took
that early religion to be a powerful, life-giving
religion. The second was that Christianity was dead.
It was not able to touch the heart of the Mexicans.13
I have already dealt with his second point. I now wish to
show that, contrary to the suggestions of Vivas and Moore,
the early religion of Quetzalcoatl was in fact a "powerful,
life-giving" religion, eminently worth reviving and
perfectly capable of sustaining the "new" content which
■^"Vision," p. 66.
•^Failure and Triumph, p. 73.
212
* | /
Lawrence gives it. The old and "new" religions of
Quetzalcoatl are remarkably similar in their main lines.
Lawrence resurrects the "skeletons of gods that cannot die"
(103) in a meaningful contemporary form which is consonant
with their previous one. He does not grind the bones to
powder and then reshape them, or simply attach an old name
to a new content.
Quetzalcoatl was first of all a god. According to
one variant of the creation myths, he was one of the four
sons of the two generative gods, male and female, Omete-
cuhtli and Omecxhuatl, "Two Lord" and "Two Lady," Lord and
Lady of Duality, who dwelt in Omeyocan, "the place two."
To these sons they entrusted the creation of the other
15 *
gods, the world, and men. Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl,
however, constituted but one of various figurative ways of
representing Ometeotl, "god of duality," "an active gener
ating principle which was at the same time a passive
1 f \
receptor capable of conceiving." Ometeotl was the
1 /
For a resolution of the apparent contradiction
between this statement and the condemnation of the religion
of the Aztecs expressed in Chapter III, see infra, pp. 245-
250. In brief, the earlier religion of Quetzalcoatl and
the cult of the Aztec Huitzilopochtli were irreconcilably
antagonistic.
^Alfonso Caso, The Aztecs; People of the Sun,
trans. by Lowell Dunham (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1958), pp. 9-10. (Hereinafter referred to as
People of the Sun.)
16 +
Miguel Leon-Portilla, Aztec Thought and Culture:
A Study of the Ancient Nahuatl Mind, trans. by Jack Emory
213
"supreme metaphysical principle," "master of all that
exists because of his perpetual generative faculty and
17
universal sustaining action." As "mother and father of
18
the gods" he was origin of the cosmic forces. His light
19
illumined all that existed. Another of several names for
Ometeotl was Yohualli-ehecatl, "night and wind," a symbolic
20
way of saying "invisible and intangible." The great
Texcocan poet-king, Nezahualcoyotl, referred to Ometeotl as
Tloque Nahuaque, which is rendered by the Nahua scholar
Angel Maria Garibay as "the one who is near to everything
21
and to whom everything is near." Another of his titles
was Moyocoyani, "Lord who mentally conceives or creates
himself ."^
How similar this concept of the ultimate principle
of the Nahuas seems to the Judaeo-Christian concept of God
transcendent and immanent, the great "I am who I am," the
"Father of light" who "gives everything--including life and
breath--to everyone," in whom "we live, and move, and
• * . u23
exxst."
~^Ibid. . p. 84. ~^Ibid. . p. 90.
19Ibid., p. 86. 20Ibid., p. 92.
2^Ibid., pp. 92-93, quoting from Garibay's Historia
de la literatura nahuatl. II (Mexico: Porrua, 1953-54),
p. 408.
OO
Leon-Portilla, Aztec Thought, p. 95.
22Exodus 3:14; James 1:17; Acts 17:25, 28.
214
Lawrence roots his religion of Quetzalcoatl in an
"Unknown Mover" (378), the "Great One, whose name has never
been spoken" (136), "the dark sun, the same that made the
sun and the world, and will swallow it again like a draught
of water" (134), "the source and the End, of which we know
only that it is, and its life is our life and our death"
(421).
To return to the Nahuas, one myth has the god
Quetzalcoatl (symbolization of the wisdom of Ometeotl),
after the creation of the Fifth Sun, go to the region of
the dead in search of the bones of the men who had existed
in the four previous suns or eras. He takes the bones of
men and women from Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of the Dead, who
causes Quetzalcoatl to stumble into a pit. While Quetzal
coatl temporarily dies, then comes to life and despairs,
quail chew the bones. Encouraged by Xolotl, his "double,"
Quetzalcoatl gathers the bones and takes them to Quilaztli,
his consort (both are simply manifestations of Ometecuhtli
and Omecihuatl). She grinds them to powder and Quetzal
coatl bleeds his member upon them. His blood and the
penance of the other gods gives life to the bones, thus
0 /
creating the men who live in this era of the Fifth Sun.
Lawrence provides a creation myth involving
Quetzalcoatl, laying it in Sayula instead of the Nahuatl
Tamoanchan.
^Leon-Portilla, Aztec Thought, pp. 107-111.
215
A long time ago, the lake started calling for
men. . . . And there were no men. ... So one of
the gods with hidden faces walked out of the water
and climbed the hill . . . and looked about. He
looked up at the sun, and through the sun he saw
the dark sun.... He said: Is. jjt time? And from
behind the bright sun and the four dark arms of the
greater sun shot out, and in the shadow men arose
(133-134).
"The man on the top of the hill, who was a god," is
Quetzalcoatl. He gives the men water to drink, but they
drink too much, and their bones become moist and their
hearts weak (134-135). Lawrence's Quetzalcoatl also
teaches them to sow corn and beans, and to build boats
(134), just as the other Quetzalcoatl (a combination of
myth, legend, and fact) had discovered corn and taught men
25
to cultivate it and to do metal and lapidary crafts.
Quetzalcoatl, besides being the personification of
divine wisdom, seems to have been a beneficent god of
agriculture. He is represented by the symbol of the
feathered serpent, the snake signifying the earth and the
26
feathers the wind which blows the water-laden clouds.
The Aztecs believed that his function as god of the wind
^Leon-Portilla, Los antiguos mexicanos, p. 22;
Soustelle, Daily Life, p. 66.
^Saenz, Quetzalcoatl. pp. 29 ff. Quetzalcoatl was
not a feathered serpent, as Harry T. Moore seems to think
('*Kate even marries Cipriano in the mystic rites of the
ancient religion of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent of
the pre-Columbian Mexicans" ["Vision," p. 66]). Moore
seems to take one of the symbols of Quetzalcoatl for his
reality.
216
27
was to clear the way for the god of rain. Laurette
Sejourne, recalling that it was the wind that set the
newly-born Fifth Sun in motion, interprets from the symbol
ism of these functions that Quetzalcoatl really represents
the spiritual breath which permits interior birth, the wind
that drags away the laws to which matter is subject.
Quetzalcoatl draws opposites together and reconciles them;
OO
he turns death into life. The flowering tibia of his
headdress as God of Wind represents "the birth of matter
29
into a spiritual order." In Teotihuacan his staff is
crowned by the symbol of penance, "the only force which
30
enables one to advance along the road of spirituality."
After careful analysis of the frescoes of Teotihuacan,
Sejourne concludes that man "constitutes the symbol" of an
invisible principle of unification, that Quetzalcoatl
"establishes as the prime reality of the human situation
the potential force of integration which is exclusive to
31
[man]." "It is interesting to note," she goes on, "that
in proportion as the [vitality of this Nahuatl principle]
07
Laurette Sejourne, Pensamiento y religion en el
Mexico antiguo (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1957),
p. 151. (Hereinafter referred to as Pensamiento.)
28Ibid. . pp. 151-152. 29Ibid., p. 151.
3QIbid., p. 154.
31 ,
Laurette Sejourne, El universo de Quetzalcoatl.
with a Preface by Mircea Eliade (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
Economica, 1962), p. 162. (Hereinafter referred to as
Universo.)
217
weakens, these dynamic representations will little by
32
little give way to symbols of destruction."
In another myth, Tezcatlipoca and other envious
gods decide to eliminate the chaste young ruler Quetzal
coatl in order to enjoy his material situation. With a
mirror they "give him his body"; he and his sister Quetzal-
petlatl become intoxicated and sleep together. Overcome
with horror and remorse, Quetzalcoatl calls for a stone
box, lies in it for four days, and then goes with his pages
to Tlillan Tlapallan, "the place of the black and the
33
red." There he dresses himself in his royal attire and
incinerates himself on a bonfire. His heart rises to
Q /
heaven and becomes the morning star. Quetzalcoatl goes
32Ibid.
33"The place of the black and the red" has been
taken generally either to mean the west, place of the set
ting sun where the red of day meets the black of night, or
the east, Yucatan ("red and black ink" was a way of refer
ring to writing, which the Mayas did). Nicholson says that
"black and red in conjunction signify wisdom," and that
Tlillan Tlapallan was "the paradise of the initiates who
had found a practical application for the teaching of the
god-king Quetzalcoatl" (Irene Nicholson, Mexican and
Central American Mythology [London: Paul Hamlyn, 1967],
p~! 91 [hereinafter referred to as Mythology 1) . See
Sejourne, Pensamiento. p. 70; Saenz, Quetzalcoatl, p. 15;
Portilla, Mexico antiguo. pp. 50-51; Caso, People of the
Sun, p. 25.
o /
Lawrence includes this aspect of the myth, merg
ing it as Mexicans do (infra, p. 219) with the mystery
surrounding the disappearance of Quetzalcoatl the man, in
his account of the advent of Jesus and the exit of
Quetzalcoatl:
"Then fire rose from the volcano around the old
Quetzalcoatl, in wings and glittering feathers. And with
218
to the underworld, however, and rises after eight days with
arrows for his use in heaven. This is why in his manifes
tation as Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, Lord of the Dawn, he is
always portrayed with arrows. The significance of this
myth is interpreted by Sejourne as follows:
After its presence in the western sky, Venus
disappears "underground," where she remains hidden
several days, to appear, more dazzling than ever,
in the eastern sky where she rejoins the sun. This
is the soul's itinerary also: it descends from its
heavenly dwelling and enters the darkness of matter,
to rise again, glorious, at the moment of the body's
dissolution. The myth of Quetzalcoatl has no other
meaning. The absolute purity of the king refers to
his condition as a planet, when he is only light.
His sins and remorse correspond to the phenomenon
of the incarnation of this light and to the painful
but necessary assumption of the human condition;
his abandonment of the things of this world and the
bonfire which he builds with his own hands signify
the precepts which must be followed if existence is
not to be lost: to achieve eternal unity through
detachment and the sacrifice of the transitory ego.
[The myth represents] the origin of an individ
ual soul, which, by means of the painful human
condition in which sin--the dark, corporeal side of
life--is as necessary as the luminous side, can
achieve a higher liberating consciousness.36
the wings of fire and the glitter of sparks Quetzalcoatl
flew up, up, like a wafting fire, like a glittering bird,
up, into the space, and away to the white steps of heaven,
that lead to the blue walls, where is the door to the dark.
So he entered in and was gone.
Night fell, and Quetzalcoatl was gone, and men in
the world saw only a star travelling back into heaven,
departing under the low branches of darkness.
Then men in Mexico said: Quetzalcoatl has gone.
Even his star has departed. We must listen to this Jesus,
who speaks in a foreign tongue" (245-246).
Q r*
3Pensamiento. p. 69.
^ Ibid. , p. 65 .
219
Sejourne believes that Quetzalcoatl initiates man into the
mysteries of the hidden life which liberates him from the
helpless solitude of the pre-individual, magical existence
37
he has been in. Both the plumed serpent and the planet
Venus, symbols of Quetzalcoatl, represent the dynamism, the
effort by which man integrates body and spirit. This
dynamism is symbolized also by movement. Nahuatl ollin.
What makes Quetzalcoatl a king is his determina
tion to alter the course of his existence, to
initiate a journey to which he is forced only by
inner necessity. He is the Sovereign because he
obeys his own law instead of that of others; because
he is the source and origin of movement.38
The myth of Quetzalcoatl as the planet Venus is
strangely fused with the legendized fact of the man Que
tzalcoatl who was priest-king of the Toltecs in the tenth
39
century. That he existed seems beyond dispute. Ce Acatl
Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was one of the countless priests of
the god Quetzalcoatl who traditionally bore the same name
as the god. Extremely spiritual, he preached a religion of
love, peace, self-sacrifice, penance and austerity, and
refused to participate in the human sacrifice entailed in
the religion of Tezcatlipoca. He was bested by Huemac,
powerful priest of Tezcatlipoca, and forced to emigrate
37Ibid.
90
Sejourne, quoted in Nicholson, Mythology. p. 91.
39
The most thorough account of the man Quetzalcoatl
is given in Saenz, Quetzalcoatl, pp. 9-17.
220
with his followers from Tula to Yucatan.^ The death or
disappearance of this culture hero is as confused with myth
and legend as his birth, a fact which, while it has made
very difficult the task of disentangling the man from the
god, serves to help fuse man and god, strengthening the
idea of Quetzalcoatl as a god-man. Was he a god who became
a man through his "virgin birth" from his mother Coatlicue,
who was impregnated from on high,^ or was he a man who
became a god, the planet Venus, as a reward for his self-
sacrifice? What matters is that he was both, and that
consequently, like Jesus, he was the ideal man. In the
words of Aramoni:
Quetzalcoatl, the man-god of the Toltec mytho-
theogony, embodies the best of the species, respect
for human life, goodness, truth, tolerance and
productive work; he embodies love for one's fellow
men and pardon; he expresses moderation in food,
drink, and sex.
Quetzalcoatl is maturity or the beginning of
Jorge Carrion points out that, unlike the case of the other
gods,
Saenz, Quetzalcoatl. pp. 11-14; Leon-Portilla,
Mexico antiguo. pp. 50-51. Laurette Sejourne has shown
conclusively that a culture-hero Quetzalcoatl existed
centuries before Tula, in Teotihuacan (Universo. p. 42).
It seems perfectly reasonable that there could have been
two great priests who rose to heroic stature by virtue of
their exemplary lives.
Sejourne, Pensamiento. pp. 66-67; Nicholson,
Mythology. p. 85.
^ Psicoanalisis. p. 48.
221
in Quetzalcoatl the characteristics of civilizer,
disseminator of science, industry, and agriculture,
have no terrifying or cruel counterpart. He is the
most serene, least monstrous, most human ... of
all the gods in the mythic firmament of the ancient
Mexicans.43
The feathered serpent as symbol and Quetzalcoatl as the
mythic-human reality, says Carrion, "condense the signifi
cant masculine attributes and those of the opposite sex
into one object.Quetzalcoatl offers "the possibility
of reconciling in one rhythm the antagonistic feminine and
masculine forces."^ Aramoni, too, characterizes him as a
synthesis of the best of masculine and feminine character-
understanding The Plumed Serpent. To return to the orig
inal question regarding the "worth" of Lawrence's religion
his Introduction:
Quetzalcoatl, unlike Jesus, is "only the symbol
of the best a man may be." Identifying this symbol
with another, Don Ramon exclaims: "The universe is
a nest of dragons, with a perfectly unfathomable
mystery at the centre of it. If I call the mystery
the Morning Star, surely it doesn't matter'."48
Quetzalcoatl does indeed represent "the best a man may be,"
istics .
46
Some lines have emerged here that are helpful in
of Quetzalcoatl,^ it is interesting that Tindall says in
43
Mi to y magia. p. 49.
^ Ibid . , p. 50
^ Supra, p. 210.
48t . ,
Introduction to The Plumed Serpent. p. xi.
Ibid
222
But this "best" is more than Tindall implies. Quetzalcoatl
was the manifestation of the wisdom of Ometeotl, it must be
remembered, as Christ was God’s Word. Ramon says to the
men of Quetzalcoatl, "I tell you, you are not men alone.
The star of the beyond is within you" (374). The identity
of the star seems to shift,^ but it always suggests divine
immanence. The ancient Nahua, and especially the Aztec,
believed that man carried the divine within him, and that
consequently divinity needed him.~^
Since [divinity] puts a little of itself into
every creature, it would finally die if the individ
ual, by a dark and unaware life, should destroy the
particle received instead of returning it more
luminous.
That is, creation was considered possible only
through sacrifice: the sacrifice of the Sun
dispersed in human beings (the Evening Star is a
fragment of light torn off before its setting); the
sacrifice of man in order to restore the original
unity of the sun.51
The dynamism of struggle for unification discovered
by Sejourne in the meaning of Quetzalcoatl is expressed in
the sentence of the novel which follows immediately upon
49
"I am the inward star invisible. And the star is
the lamp in the hand of the Unknown Mover. . . . But the
spark of me that is me is more than mine own. . . . For I
am Quetzalcoatl, the feathered snake" (378).
50
Dom Aelred Graham, theologian and Benedictine
abbot, has said, "We are nearer to salvation in realizing
that there is a share of the divine in every man and woman,
including ourselves, than by seeking to be saved by a God
who is 'out there'" (The End of Religion [New York and
London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971], p. 241).
"^Sejourne, Pensamiento, p. 70.
223
Tindall's excerpt: "And man is a creature who wins his own
creation inch by inch from the nest of the cosmic dragons.
Or else he loses it little by little, and goes to pieces"
(299). The particle of divinity becomes more lustrous
through struggle, or it is eventually lost. In connection
with the task of winning creation or being, Graham says:
According to my basic way-of-being-in-the-world,
Being offers itself to me in proportion to the
degree of my openness to receive it. Being, which
is the same as transcendence, is beyond man and not
at his disposal; it can therefore be considered as
grace. Grace, as thus understood, is the drawing
near of the divine Being. When my openness and the
gift of Being coalesce, there results the transfor
mation, the "rebirth," whereby I become my authentic
self. Here we do not have a meeting of two
substances. The key concept is that of "openness"--
the unrestricted openness of Being in giving, the
elimination of my closedness in receiving. It should
be added that we are not at this point entering the
realm of "mysticism," of something hidden from common
observation. That a sustained authenticity can
actually be achieved demands faith, but in itself it
is a matter of experience, answering to the familiar
test that a tree can be known by its fruits. When I
try to think of other ways of speaking of Being, or
what I have called "pure Existence," God is the
easiest. For the Hindu it might be Brahman, for the
Muslim, Allah, but for the Christian it will always
be God and in particular God as existentially real
ized in Christ.52
Graham says, in fact, "If I were asked for the impossible,
to sum up what I mean by enlightened religion in a phrase,
c 3
I would say that it consisted in enlightened openness."
Openness and life and dynamic struggle are of the
3^The End of Religion, p. 260.
53Ibid., p. 261.
224
essence in Lawrence’s religion of Quetzalcoatl. The
posture of prayer and worship (left hand down and relaxed
to cradle the head of the "snake of the deep" [215], right
arm tense and high, to receive the bird "with terrible
wisdom in [its] flight" [218], is designed to achieve open
ness to the life forces of the cosmos.
The snake undoubtedly represents what Lawrence
elsewhere called the potency "which surges in us to make us
move, to make us act, to make us bring forth something: to
make us spring up and live. Modern philosophers may call
it Libido or Elan Vital, but the words are thin, they carry
54
none of the wild suggestion of the dragon.” Sagar
believes that "Lawrence's snake functions in its mythic
status" exactly in the sense meant by Ruskin when he
describes the snake as "a divine hieroglyph of the demonaic
55
power of the earth--of the entire earthly nature." Since
Lawrence wrote, Freud and others have refined Freud's
earlier concept of libido in such a way that the more
appropriate term for what Lawrence is talking about would
be precisely the one suggested by Ruskin, or, as Rollo May
56
prefers, the "daimonic." The daimon, it must be
D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse, quoted in Sagar,
Art, p. 161.
55Art, p. 161.
"^See May, Love and Will, pp. 127, 142.
225
remembered, was to the Greeks "man's tie with the
divine.May provides a direct link with Lawrence's
symbolism in saying that the Greeks' idea is easier to
understand "in our post-Enlightenment and post-Freudian age
when we explore the id and know the 'dark' and irrational
springs not only of inspiration and creativity but of all
58
human actions." "The denial of the daimonic means only
that the earth spirits will come back to haunt us in a new
5 9
guise; Gaea [mother earth] will be heard. ..." And
Ramon says to the people of Quetzalcoatl:
I tell you, the earth you dig is alive as a
snake that sleeps. . . . Speak then to the snake of
the heart of the world, put oil on your fingers and
lower your fingers for him to taste the oil of the
earth, and let him send life into your feet and
ankles and knees, like sap in the young maize press
ing against the joints and making the milk of the
maize bud among its hair (216).
With this imagery, then, Lawrence is proposing a way for
Mexicans to re-establish contact with what Paz calls "all
60
those forces through which life manifests itself."
According to Lawrence, Jesus has to be banished; he
is supposedly Lord only of the one way, and one way alone
leads to death. The Catholic Church, regardless of what
its finest teachings might be, had effectively taught men
to deny and repress the daimonic. It is very significant
that as Carlota lies dying, and as the people of
57Ibid.. p. 137. 58Ibid.
~ ^Ibid.. p. 72. ^ Supra, p. 175.
226
Quetzalcoatl learn a dance on the island where the
Christian images have been burned, Kate has hope that
"life would conquer again, and men would be men" (383).
New life can come to Mexico only through Quetzalcoatl, the
Morning Star, harmonious integration of man's daimonic
61
forces and his power of reason.
That the religion is life-oriented and that new
life is its goal is clear throughout. Ramon writes, "Seek
life, and life will bring the change. . . . Fight for the
vulnerable unfolding of life. But for that, fight never to
yield" (376). Many of Lawrence's minor symbols contrast
life and death. The drum (made of organic materials, as
opposed to the inorganic metal of the bells) symbolizes the
beating of the heart; it is "like a pulse inside a stone
beating" (144). The church is decorated in rich, dark
primary colors, in contrast to its previous pallid, "dead
interior." The people not participating in the dance
"seemed outside the nucleus of life" (131). The dances are
f i 1
Mark Spilka criticizes Lawrence for "manifestly
[neglecting] the 'second way'; he makes no provision, that
is, for the mental-spiritual consciousness, which remains
singularly 'unfused' in the course of the novel" (The Love
Ethic of D. H. Lawrence [Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1955], p. 210 [hereinafter referred to as Love
Ethic]). To the contrary: Ramon has achieved this fusion,
and it is clear that Kate can achieve it if she will just
be true to the struggle. In the effort to correct an
imbalance, the opposite extreme is often stressed, in the
expectation that synthesis will follow. Surely the desir
able fusion is one of the most prominent themes of the
novel.
227
essentially a ritual, a way of establishing contact with
6 2
what Joseph Campbell calls "the substratum of being."
That the dances are not so ridiculous as some Lawrence
critics imply is suggested in the following excerpt from
Campbell:
The apprehension of the source of this undiffer
entiated yet everywhere particularized substratum of
being is rendered frustrate by the very organs
through which the apprehension must be accomplished.
The forms of sensibility and the categories of human
thought, which are themselves manifestations of this
power, so confine the mind that it is normally
impossible not only to see, but even to conceive,
beyond the colorful, fluid, infinitely various and
bewildering phenomenal spectacle. The function of
ritual and myth is to make possible, and then to
facilitate, the jump--by analogy. Forms and concep
tions that the mind and its senses can comprehend
are presented and arranged in such a way as to
suggest a truth or openness beyond. And then, the
conditions for meditation having been provided, the
individual is left alone.°3
Awakening the people to dynamic struggle is not
left to chance. In the poem or "hymn" in which Quetzal
coatl returns to Mexico wearing the sandals of Jesus after
f \ 9
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Meridian Books
(Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Co., 1949),
p. 258. The Anglican priest, "Father Tiverton" (William
Jarrett-Kerr), says, "Lawrence was a supreme ritualist, and
most successful, not when he was trying to ape ecclesias
tical ritual (as in the dressing-up scenes in The Plumed
Serpent. which are merely rather comic and sententious) but
when he is treating nature ritually. Think, for instance,
of . . . the solemn Mexican dances in The Plumed Serpent
and elsewhere. There is the ritual. And the liturgy"
(D. H. Lawrence and Human Existence, with a Foreword by
T~ S. Eliot [New York: Philosophical Library, 1951],
p. 87).
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, p. 258.
228
the latter goes to sleep "the long sleep" in "the healing
waters" of the Father's "womb of refreshment" (130), Que
tzalcoatl puzzles at the Mexicans' inertia and passivity,
their drunkenness and heavy hearts, their deafness to his
repeated calls. Laughing, he throws the Stone of Change
into the lake. Ramon is given the name "First Man of
Quetzalcoatl" precisely because he is the first one to hear
his laughter. Quetzalcoatl says to him, "Tell them they
are like frogs with stones in their bellies, can't hop'."
(265) "Sun and stars and earth and the very rains are
weary / of tossing and rolling the substance of life to
your lips" (266). Later, Quetzalcoatl challenges them to
conquer. "Conquer! says the Morning Star. Pass the
dragons and pass on to me" (284). And the people hear in
the songs "a new voice, the voice of a master and author
ity" (286). They are called to decision, to the choice of
response to the Stone of Change.
But the hymns alone cannot provide the dynamic that
will enable them to let the miracle of openness happen
within their persons.
Religious insight is imparted only superficially
by words; what moves and stimulates others is a
presence, ... a human embodiment, an actualization
in flesh and blood, of existential truth, demanding
attention for the sufficient reason that under given
conditions of space and time it happens to be there.
. . . Today any such presence is rarely found; we
are left, for the most part, with intermediaries. ^
64
Graham, The End of Religion, p. 9.
229
The people must see the authority to whom the voice
belongs. Ramon tells the people, "The Morning Star is
sending you a messenger, a god who died in Mexico" (219).
The Unknown Mover, that is, the Morning Star that dwells
within each person, is sending again the manifestation of
his wisdom, Quetzalcoatl, to Mexico. As the mythic
Quetzalcoatl bled his member on the bones rescued from the
underworld and thus created the men of this era, so will
Ramon lose blood in his struggle against the powers of
darkness represented by the assassins sent by the Catholic
Knights of Cortes, and recognize his authority to recreate
the people of Mexico. One finds in Ramon's case a subtle
parallel to Jesus' acceptance of his mission at the time
65
of his baptism:
This is a thing that must be done. There must
be manifestations.... I accept the must from the
oldest Pan in my soul, and from the newest me.
Once a man gathers his whole soul together and
arrives at a conclusion, the time of alternatives
has gone. I must. No more than that. I am the
First Man of Quetzalcoatl. I am Quetzalcoatl him
self, if you like. A manifestation, as well as a
man. I accept myself entire and proceed to make
destiny (347).
His loss of blood seemed to have washed him
curiously fresh again. . . . She saw now his power
over Cipriano. It lay in this imperative which he
acknowledged in his own soul, and which really was
like a messenger from the beyond (347-348).
Ramon is at the very least the latest of the
John S. Dunne, A Search for God in Time and
Memory (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1967), pp. 9-10.
230
culture-hero Quetzalcoatls, authoritative representatives
of the god they serve. ("The Omnipotent is with me, and I
serve Omnipotence" [377]). He seems not to be claiming
"hypostatic union," although the novel is sprinkled with
reminiscences of Jesus. Ramon is acting in accord with the
mysterious inner authorization and empowering which other
men of destiny have known before him.
The Plumed Serpent has often been criticized for
the nature of the leadership of Ramon and Cipriano. The
latter, to be sure, does not have Ramon's insight, and like
any new disciple, depends heavily on the strength of his
model. He is a complex, even ambiguous figure, very human
in his weakness, and at times he is reminiscent of Peter,
in his preference, for example, of "meeting metal with
metal" (394).^ Both Ramon's and Cipriano's leadership,
however, is characterized by Lawrence as the kind that
evokes life and strength from within their followers.
Cipriano constantly tries to combat the apathy, careless
ness, and desgana of his men, to teach them strength
through cooperation, to give them skills, to draw out their
inherent Mexican pride in doing well what they know how to
do. "It is the discipline from the inside that matters"
66 +
Ramon's answer, "Let it spread of itself," which
can recall Christ's reply to Peter in the garden of
Gethsemane, or the parable of the yeast, has been called by
Moore, "precisely the strategy Hitler was to use a few
years later when he won the chancellorship not by violence
but through voting strength" ("Vision," p. 69).
231
(399). Above all, he tries to put them in touch with "the
second strength," not the strength of oxen and machines and
guns (the false strength of machismo), but that strength
which comes from "the secret sun behind the sun" (398),
through the medium of the silent, concentrated dances,
through their own belief that they can get it, and through
new cleanliness, courage, and moral self-control (398-399).
He tries to give them a realistic basis for genuine self
esteem. To be sure, "they [get] their splendour from his
power and their greatest consciousness [is] his conscious
ness diffusing them" (400), but this charismatic phenomenon
is very possibly the one found in the case of such contem-
f\7
porary leaders as Cesar Chavez or Martin Luther King.
Ramon tells Cipriano that he wishes to be an
"initiator," not a Savior. "Every country its own Saviour,
Cipriano: or every people its own Saviour" (272). When he
destroys the Christian images, he says, "It's no good until
you've got something else moving, from the inside" (319).
Convinced that the policies of President Montes are like
washing the outside of an egg, Ramon says, "But I . . .
want to get inside the egg, right to the middle, to start
it growing into a new bird" (210). The Initiator will
fertilize the egg and let life do the rest. In touch again
with the sources of life, the people can save themselves.
^Cipriano's function as the "red Huitzilopochtli,"
the weakest element of the novel, is discussed infra, pp.
240-242. -----
232
On these bases, it is difficult to agree with those
critics who see a total or partial repudiation of The
Plumed Serpent in Lawrence's 1928 letter to Witter Bynner:
The leader of men is a back number. After all,
at the back of the hero is the militant ideal: and
the militant ideal or ideal militant seems to me
also a cold egg. . . . The leader-cum-follower
relationship is a bore. And the new sort of rela
tionship will be some sort of tenderness, sensitive,
between men and men and men and women, not the one
up one down, lead on I follow, ich dien sort of
business. So you see I'm becoming a lamb at last.
. . .68
It constitutes a repudiation of a concept of leadership
which is not the one expressed in The Plumed Serpent.
Lawrence's "program for Mexico" consists, then, in
a religion which, by re-establishing the Mexicans' contact
with the ultimate source of energy, will give them new life
and genuine manhood, will engage them in the task of every
human being, to struggle to make themselves more complete,
to expand and refine their being. The feathers and paint,
the "mummery," as Tindall calls the ceremonies of Quetzal
coatl, are the most superficial part of his program, not
69
the "heart" of it as Vivas said. The program is to
succeed by virtue of its tapping the authentic and finest
70
pre-Columbian spirituality, and by the contagious
^Cited in Moore, "Vision," p. 70. See also Moore,
Life and Works. p. 237; and Spilka, Love Ethic. p. 211.
69
Tindall, Introduction, p. xiv; Vivas, Failure and
Triumph. p. 69.
^See infra, pp. 245-250.
233
dynamism of a credible and genuinely charismatic leader and
model.
The program succeeds in the novel, in terms of its
goal: new contact with life forces is achieved, life does
conquer again, and men do find their manhood. "The people
had opened hearts at last. They had rolled the stone of
their heaviness away, a new world had begun" (385) .
"Strange, the change that was taking place in the world.
Always the air had a softer, more velvety silence, it
seemed alive" (393). "The whole country was thrilling with
a new thing, with a release of new energy" (461). This is
in marked contrast to the previous "Nowhere in Mexico is
there any sign of energy. This is, as it were, switched
off" (167).
An extremely significant sign of genuine new life
is the people's laughter. Quetzalcoatl, messenger of life
from Pure Being, laughs when he sees the grotesque inver
sion of life which prevails in Mexico. "It is funny'. / To
see them so glum and so lumpish!" (265) Spontaneous
laughter and play are mysteriously linked with life and
openness. Real spontaneity and play can only be predicated
on an identity so secure that it can risk. My experience
suggests that the humor of Mexico tends to be somewhat
cruel, taking the form of ridicule, as Reyes Nevarez has
234
said.7' * ' A people with a strong need to be defensive cannot
72
be spontaneous, except in the escape of the fiesta. But
after the religious instruction and the singing and the
dancing in the plaza, the laughter of the peons "came like
little invisible flames, suddenly from the embers of the
talk," not like their previous laughter, which would break
from them "in a sound almost like pain" (141). In his last
hymn, Ramon invites men to laugh with him (484). When Kate
cries of a new-born foal, "How nice it is!" the peon owner
"laugh[s] at her with a soft, grateful flame" (477) .7^
A new harmony exists. The cruelty of the boy with
the duck and the nauseous sadism of the bullfight are
replaced at the end of the novel by the gentleness and
evenness of an old man as he handles the ring in a bull's
nose and lifts his head (473). It is not Eden, because men
are still human beings, with a destructive daimonic that is
not to be easily integrated. There is still a "sense of
71Supra, p. 121.
7^See Paz, Labyrinth. p. 53: "[In the fiesta] the
Mexican is . . . seeking ... to escape from himself.
. . . Our fiestas are explosions. Life and death, joy and
sorrow, music and mere noise are united, not to re-create
or recognize themselves, but to swallow each other up.
There is nothing so joyous as a Mexican fiesta, but there
is also nothing so sorrowful. Fiesta night is also a night
of mourning."
73
Moore faults The Plumed Serpent for its lack of
humor ("Vision," p. 68). Only a god could laugh at
Mexico's tragic situation, it seems to me. That Mexico's
laughter becomes purified in the course of the novel is
more important than "good comedy" (ibid.).
235
violence and crudity" in the "release of new energy," a
touch of horror (461). But the hermeticism has been
broken, and love and risk and change are now possible. As
Rollo May says:
We participate in the forming of the future by
virtue of our capacity to conceive of and respond to
new possibilities. and to bring them out of imagina
tion and try them in actuality. This is the process
of active loving. It is the eros in us responding
to the eros in others and in the world of nature.74
But what does Kate, the European, learn in all
this? Well along in her personal quest, she is finally
convinced of one thing:
that the clue to all living and to all moving-on
into new living lay in the vivid blood-relation
between man and woman. A man and woman in this
togetherness were the clue to all present living
and future possibility. Out of this clue of
togetherness between a man and a woman, the whole
of the new life arose. It was the quick of the
whole (436).
Rollo May echoes this idea in calling eros the "bridge
between being and becoming."7^ Lawrence is saying, as part
of the novel's message for Europe and white America, that
the white man will recover eros through a successful quest
for the daimonic. Woman must accept and find her fulfill
ment in being a "valley of blood" instead of a "column of
blood" (451, 457). That is, the sexual relationship must
be a profound personal realization of cosmic procreation,
74Love and Will, p. 92. 75Ibid.. p. 79.
236
7 6
the all-pervading cosmic linga. This idea is vividly-
represented in the relationship between Cipriano and Kate.
Mexicans, too, must change their sexual attitudes. Men
must cherish their partner (362, 451), and women must give
themselves generously, nourishing and building their
husband instead of slowly destroying him (216). Teresa,
Ramon's second wife, is the personification of the ideal
woman (449).
While on the whole, Kate's relationship with
Cipriano is of importance only in terms of Lawrence's
message to the white world, Clark points out a symbolic
value of great interest in this discussion of machismo;
If the dark mother forced by the white father
is the history of the amatory conquest of Mexico,
what takes place in The Plumed Serpent is the
reversal of history necessary for a fresh start;
it is a new fusing of the white spirit coming over
from Europe and the dark spirit of the American
continent, with opposite identification of the
sexes; not conquest by the strong subjugating the
weak but conquest by mutual submission to the gods.''
Lawrence would thus counteract the "Original Sin" mentioned
by Palacios and Reyes Nevarez, which has so plagued Mexican
"When the Hindus worship the linga, they do not
deify a physical feature; they merely recognize the divine,
eternal form manifest in the microcosm. It is the human
phallus, which is a divine emblem of the eternal causal
form, the all-pervading linga" (Alain Danielou, Hindu
Polytheism. Bollingen Series LXXIII [New York: Pantheon
Books, 1964], p. 23, cited in Graham, The End of Religion,
p. 118). On the same page Graham also cites Danielou s
idea that the notion of "God the Father" substitutes the
person of the creator for the symbol of procreation.
^ ^Dark Night, p. 72.
237
The Plumed Serpent has been criticized for a sup
posed absence of love. Tindall says, "Nothing approaching
charity or compassion is apparent in the great design.
^ 79
Indeed, Don Ramon particularly condemns them." Vivas
finds "misanthropy, unqualified and unexplained," in the
novel,and defines Lawrence's essential heresy as failure
to acknowledge not the Father or the Holy Spirit, but the
Son.
Lawrence denied Him, and he denied Him because
he hated Him. To acknowledge Him would have meant
acknowledging the role of love--not eros but agape
--in our Western world. And to make this acknowl
edgement would have involved a repudiation of his
deepest feelings, his radical alienation and his
radical misanthropy. Lawrence, a bundle of incon
sistencies, was consistent on one point: he never
would give up the assumption of the radical differ
ence between his own superiority and the inferiority
of the mob. He was willing to call himself the
priest of love, but the love he served was eros.
Agape he would not and could not serve.81
And indeed, one does seem to find both a misanthropy and
o o
an absence of agape in the novel. Kate admits to an
Supra, pp. 75-76.
79
Introduction, p. ix.
on
Failure and Triumph, p. 69.
81Ibid.. p. 102.
82
Rollo May defines agape as "esteem for the other,
the concern for the other's welfare beyond any gain that
one can get out of it; disinterested love, typically, the
love of God for man. Charity, as the word is translated in
the New Testament, is a poor translation, but it does con
tain within it the element of selfless giving" (Love and
238
"unconquerable dislike, almost disgust of people. More
than hate, it was disgust" (276). "Between herself and
humanity there was a bond of subtle, helpless antagonism"
(276) . Ramon, too, was filled with disgust by "mere
personal contact, mere human contact" (276). "He had to
meet them on another plane, where the contact was differ
ent; intangible, remote, and without intimacy. His soul
was concerned elsewhere. So that the quick of him need not
be bound to anybody" (277) . The passage following this
quotation shows that Ramon rejects Carlota's attempt to
close the narrow but unbridgeable gulf between even persons
most dear to each other. "If we would meet in the quick,"
Lawrence says as the narrator, "we must give up the assem
bled self, the daily I, and putting off ourselves one after
the other, meet unconscious in the Morning Star" (277) .
Dom Aelred Graham would seem to harmonize Christian agape
and Lawrence's idea of meeting "unconscious in the Morning
Star":
Perhaps the Buddhist and Christian ways of loving
can meet if the emphasis is thrown on enlightened
understanding rather than on benevolence. Such
understanding is not a matter of forming correct
ideas about another person; it means becoming exis-
tentially one with him. This can only happen at the
level of being--not my being in relation to his
being, but being at its ground, or in its "suchness."
Will, p. 319). "Each kind of love [sex, eros, philia, and
agape] . . . presupposes care, for it asserts that some
thing does matter. In normal human relations, each kind
of love has an element of the other three, no matter how
obscured it may be" (ibid.. p. 320).
239
To love another person is to sit down in front of
him, so to speak, without any preconceptions, to
lose one's self-centered awareness, to drop thoughts
about any interpersonal relationship, because atten
tion is then impeded by being focussed on action and
reaction between self and the other. When under
standing passes from a mental activity to full real
ization, there is neither self nor other, only that
which really is. Love is selfless in the sense that
it is the attainment of the basic harmony of being,
which is both obscured and revealed by the distinc
tive surface egocentricities of those who love.83
When we love our neighbor in the New Testament
sense, the focus of love is not his personality or
character structure, but his being.84
Agape, then, is not necessarily what Carlota thinks it is.
Why couldn't [Ramon] go on being gentle, good,
and loving, and trying to make the whole world more
gentle, good, and loving?
He couldn't, because it was borne in upon him
that the world had gone as far as it could go in
the good, gentle, and loving direction, and any
thing further in that line meant perversity. So
the time had come for the slow, great change to
something else--what, he didn't know (227-228).
Repression of the destructive daimonic, Ramon has discov
ered, cannot bring about true peace. Only integration of
the daimonic can, and this is achieved as a consequence of
real "Quetzalcoatlian" struggle. The paradox is that one
must be willing to be vulnerable in the struggle.
[Ramon's] eyes, his voice seemed kind. Kind?
The word suddenly was strange to [Kate], she had to
try to get its meaning (343).
There was a certain vulnerable kindliness about
him, which made her wonder, startled, if she had
ever realised what real fatherliness meant. The
88The End of Religion, p. 263.
84Ibid.. p. 264.
240
mystery, the nobility, the inaccessibility, and the
vulnerable compassion of man in his separate father
hood (206) .
So it may be possible to feel disgust at those of
our fellowmen whose personalities or character structures
or "unexamined1 1 lives are very different from our own, who
seem unconcerned about wresting ever more "being" from the
nest of cosmic dragons, and yet to be concerned for their
welfare and that they not be "poisoned" (230). Perhaps
Lawrence is "serving agape" after all; perhaps he is not
basically so misanthropic as is thought.
Cipriano's role as "the red Huitzilopochtli" has
been severely criticized, and indeed, his role would seem
inconsistent with the basic message of Lawrence as per
ceived thus far. Cipriano treats the bandits he captures
according to their essential courage (their quality of
"heart").
If [the bandit] seemed to him a brave man, he
would swear him in. If it [sic] seemed to him a
knave, a treacherous cur, he stabbed him to the
heart, saying:
"I am the red Huitzilopochtli, of the knife"
(401).
This might strike the American reader as being an
intolerable arrogation of the justice which should be left
to a court of law. But even though poetic justice is
generally the case in the "wild west" of American televi
sion, the "lynch law" is in actuality far from dead in
America. Neither this fact, however, nor the fact that the
240
mystery, the nobility, the inaccessibility, and the
vulnerable compassion of man in his separate father
hood (206) .
So it may be possible to feel disgust at those of
our fellowmen whose personalities or character structures
or "unexamined" lives are very different from our own, who
seem unconcerned about wresting ever more "being" from the
nest of cosmic dragons, and yet to be concerned for their
welfare and that they not be "poisoned" (230). Perhaps
Lawrence is "serving agape" after all; perhaps he is not
basically so misanthropic as is thought.
Cipriano's role as "the red Huitzilopochtli" has
been severely criticized, and indeed, his role would seem
inconsistent with the basic message of Lawrence as per
ceived thus far. Cipriano treats the bandits he captures
according to their essential courage (their quality of
"heart").
If [the bandit] seemed to him a brave man, he
would swear him in. If it [sic] seemed to him a
knave, a treacherous cur, he stabbed him to the
heart, saying:
"I am the red Huitzilopochtli, of the knife"
(401).
This might strike the American reader as being an
intolerable arrogation of the justice which should be left
to a court of law. But even though poetic justice is
generally the case in the "wild west" of American televi
sion, the "lynch law" is in actuality far from dead in
America. Neither this fact, however, nor the fact that the
241
O C
novel takes place in the Mexico of the "lev fuga" days,
can justify Lawrence's seeming condoning of Cipriano's
self-authorized capital punishment. It must be realized,
however, that Cipriano is consistently portrayed as having
an insecure and incomplete understanding of Ramon's vision,
as having not achieved Ramon's fusion of consciousness and
the daimonic.
Cipriano was watching Ramon with black, guarded
eyes in which was an element of love, and of fear,
and of trust, but also incomprehension, and the
suspicion that goes with incomprehension (210).
Cipriano, whenever he was away on his own for
some time, slipped back into the inevitable Mexican
General, fascinated by the opportunity for further
ing his own personal ambition and imposing his own
personal will (278).
The range of him was very limited, really. The
great part of his nature was just inert and heavy,
unresponsive, limited as a snake or a lizard is
limited. But within his own heavy, dark range he
had a curious power (340).
"I say I am Ramon's man," replied Cipriano
stubbornly.
Kate . . . mistrusted him. In the long run he
was nobody's man. He was that old, masterless Pan
male, that could not even conceive of service;
particularly the service of mankind. He saw only
glory; the black mystery of glory consummated. And
himself like a wind of glory (344).
It can easily be seen that Cipriano is still very much the
macho. in spite of his insistence on "the second strength."
8 S
The "lev fuga" was the killing of prisoners on
the fictitious ground that they were trying to escape. See
Tannenbaum, Peace by Revolution, pp. 78-79; and Whetten,
Rural Mexico, p. 525.
242
Weakness of conviction can make a literary character
credible; but this radical ambiguity in Cipriano only makes
him somewhat inauthentic as a character and flaws the
novelistic world.
But what of the ritual execution of Ramon's would-
be assassins, the men who killed three of Ramon's servants?
(332) This cannot be explained in terms of Cipriano's
inferior grasp of what Ramon is about. Strictly speaking,
it is the Law of Talion, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for
86
a tooth," an improvement over the demonic attempt of the
"Christian" Knights of Cortes to kill Ramon for what he was
doing (345).
Was Mexico ready in 1925, or is she now, for
Christ's improvement over Talion, "offer the wicked man no
87
resistance"? Most certainly not, and the same can be
said for most Western countries. As has been shown already
in this paper, Mexicans must learn to feel sufficiently
secure in their own worth, to feel a real love for them
selves, before they can even carry out the Old Testament
injunction to love their neighbors as men like them-
88
selves. As Fromm says, "Love is based on an attitude of
affirmation and respect, and if this attitude does not
exist toward oneself, who is after all only another human
86Exodus 21:24. 87Matt. 5:38.
88Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:39.
243
8 9
being and another neighbor, it does not exist at all.”
It has been objected, of course, that punishment is
the business of the state, that Ramon is instituting a
fascistic theocracy. While Freeman, Spilka, Goodheart and
Moore have cleared Lawrence of the "fascist" charge,^ the
"theocracy" charge has not been so well refuted, partly
because critics do not perceive that Cipriano1s army is in
91
the service of the national government. Actually, it is
easy to speculate that Ramon is merely setting up his own
"ecclesiastical court," parallel to the ineffectual civil
o q
Psychoanalysis and Religion, p. 84.
^ Ideas. pp. 189-207; Love Ethic, pp. 208-209; The
Utopian Vision of D. H. Lawrence, pp. 140-141; Life and
Works, p. 236. (While denying on the one hand that
Lawrence was fascistic, Moore repeatedly, by insinuation
and overemphasis, leaves his reader with the opposite
impression. See n. 60, supra.)
^ Supra. p. 154. Kessler even says, "’A kind of
war' breaks out, but the combination of Ramon's religious
inspiration with Cipriano1s intensively trained and mobile
shock troops sweeps away the feeble resistance of the
government" ("Descent in Darkness," pp. 256-257). It is
incomprehensible that Kessler can make this error. In the
very passage he quotes, there is the following section,
which he omits: "In Zacatecas General Narciso Beltran had
declared against Montes and for the Church. But Cipriano
with his Huitzilopochtli soldiers had attacked with such
swiftness and ferocity, Beltran was taken and shot, his
army disappeared (461; italics mine). Tomas Socrates
Montes (Elias Plutarco Calles!) was. president of Mexico in
The Plumed Serpent (34). Hough calls Cipriano "the leader
of a Mexican pronunciamiento" (The Dark Sun, p. 132).
Tindall says, "Dictators now as well as saviors, they
secure political rebirth by revolution" (Introduction, pp.
x-xi). It is difficult to deal with criticism based on
such important misreadings.
244
system of protection and justice prevailing in the Mexico
92
of 1925 and later. Ramon is operating within a larger
national context of painfully de facto criteria, and,
whether one likes it or not, has decided to deal in kind.
(When the Bishop of the West reminds him that it was
illegal to remove the Christian images from the Sayula
church, Ramon replies, "What is illegal in Mexico? What is
weak is illegal. I will not be weak, my Lord" [291].)
Spilka is generous in his treatment of "the red
Huitzilopochtli":
Lawrence would later speak, in Apocalypse, of the
great green and red dragons of the emotions: the
green dragon was the great vivifier, the life-bringer
and the life-maker, whom the Chinese celebrate and
the Hindus see as coiling "quiescent at the base of
the spine of a man"; but the red dragon was evil and
destructive, "the great 'potency* of the cosmos in
its hostile and destructive activity." Both dragons
appear, of course, in The Plumed Serpent. but Lawrence
has wisely combined them into a single serpent,
Huitzilopochtli, whose colors vary with his function
--red when militant, green when fertile and creative.
But the red or militant power is now designed to
protect creative life, rather than destroy it.93
92 -
Gonzalez Pineda, in 195 9, spoke of the national
ego's (the citizens') constant fear of the national super
ego figures. They are not seen as protectors of the "good"
ego, but as possible aggressors of any part of the ego, be
it "good" and "bad" (Dinamica. p. 144). Aramoni speaks of
the social acceptance, even admiration, of certain types of
homicide (Psicoanalisis. pp. 297-298), and Schwartz and
Quiroz Cuaron, writing in 1963 and 1958 respectively, are
concerned by the high rate of impunity in Mexico ("Moral
ity, Conflict and Violence," pp. 171, 192; Criminalidad,
pp. 64-67). See supra. pp. 56, 102, 120-124.
Love Ethic. pp. 208-209.
245
Lawrence's failure, says Spilka, is in failing "to provide
an effective check against [evil ends], in the hearts of
94
his own 'judges."' The greater flaw in Lawrence's think
ing, Spilka goes on, is "his naive roxnanticization of
society itself. ... He fails to recognize the need to
work with institutions, even at the cost of occasional
95
injustice." His word "occasional" does not fit the
Mexican reality.
My basic objection to Lawrence's use of Huitzilo
pochtli is one that has not been made in previous criticism
of The Plumed Serpent. In fact, misunderstanding of the
point has only served to confuse the criticism further. It
will be necessary to give some background first, however,
in order to make my objection clear.
The reader will recall that the Toltec culture-hero
Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was in opposition to the
96
bloody cult of Tezcatlipoca. Although his father was the
barbarian chieftain Mixcoatl, Ce Acatl Topiltzin presumably
imbibed the religion of Quetzalcoatl while being reared by
his maternal grandparents in Tepoztlan, Morelos, near the
ceremonial center of Xochicalco, where remnants of the
Quetzalcoatlian worship of Teotihuacan were still
94Ibid.. p. 209.
95Ibid.. pp. 209-210.
96Supra, pp. 217, 219.
246
97 * -
smouldering. Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was exiled
from Tula sometime between 895 A.D. and 999, depending on
98
the basis chosen for calculation. From then on, the
beneficent, enlightened teachings of the religion of Que
tzalcoatl gradually yielded to the ascending belief in the
need for human sacrifice. By Aztec times, the basic
distinction between the two religions or philosophies had
come to lie in how their followers tried to confront the
fact that the Fifth Sun would come to an end. The follow
ers of Quetzalcoatl sought, on the personal level, "the way
to create within themselves a 'wise face and a heart firm
as rock,1 which would make man worthy to go beyond this
life, to 'the region of the fleshless,' in search of the
99
supreme principle, Tloque Nahuaque." The Aztecs,
however, tried to avoid or postpone the death of the Sun-
Huitzilopochtli, by giving him the vital energy contained
in blood, the precious liquid which maintains the life of
men.^ But, as Paz points out, "Huitzilopochtli himself,
supposed center of the cosmogony of the Fifth Sun, . . .
was only a tribal god, a late-comer among the ancient gods
97 ^ ^
Saenz, Quetzalcoatl. p. 10; Andre Emmerich, Art
Before Columbus (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963), pp.
168-171.
no
Saenz, Quetzalcoatl. pp. 12-13.
99 -
Leon-Portilla, Los antiguos mexicanos. pp. 93-94.
See supra. p. 213.
1QQIbid.. p. 94.
247
of Mesoamerica."^^^
It is indisputable that Tlacaelel (the Aztec
102
"Richelieu" for some sixty-eight years!) rewrote both
history and religion in order to establish the cosmic need
for sacrificial victims, a fiction invented to serve Aztec
1 03
politico-military ends.
Huitzilopochtli ceased to be the patron deity of
a poor and intimidated tribe. Through the activities
of Tlacaelel, the prestige and power of this deity
increased, so that Huitzilopochtli finally appeared
as the most powerful god, the one to whom the ancient
prayers of Nahuatl religion were directed. The
priests composed hymns in his honor similar to those
which had been sung in praise of Quetzalcoatl.104
Even before the machinations of Tlacaelel (1398-
1496), the fiction was created that the Aztec rulers,
beginning in 1375 with Acamapichtli, were descended from
the Toltec line of Quetzalcoatl, who by then was legendary;
in fact, they were divine.Tlacaelel, however,
proclaimed that the Aztec emperors were really living
101
Posdata, p. 130. Ironically enough, "Huitzilo
pochtli" means "Southern Hummingbird," or "Hummingbird on
the Left." The hummingbird was a Nahuatl symbol of
resurrection! (Sejourne, Pensamiento. p. 172; Soustelle,
Daily Life, p. 106.
10?
Padden, Hummingbird. p. 22.
■^^Leon-Portilla, Aztec Thought, pp. 160-165;
Padden, Hummingbird. pp. 6-99.
■^^Leon-Port ilia, Aztec Thought. p. 161.
■^^Soustelle, Daily Life, pp. 87-88; Padden,
Hummingbird. pp. 17, 63.
248
106
manifestations of Huitzilopochtli. Aramoni speculates
that the Aztecs found the myth of the incestuous and weak
Quetzalcoatl very useful in justifying the new hegemony of
Tezcatlipoca-Huitzilopochtli, and portrayed him as old and
The wise men among the Aztecs, the philosophers and
the poets, nevertheless, retained the old understanding of
Quetzalcoatl, and fearlessly tried to further their knowl-
108
edge of man, the world, and divinity. The neighbors of
the Aztecs, also, were under no illusions regarding the
substitution of Huitzilopochtli for Quetzalcoatl, and the
search for ultimate truth continued not only among the
Aztec philosophers, but in such places as Huexotzinco and
Texcoco, tinder Tecayehuatzin and Nezahualcoyotl.
Padden, Hummingbird. p. 64. Zelia Nuttall
writes, "I can produce ample evidence to prove that [Mocte-
zuma] was the living personification of Huitzilopochtli.
... He was not the first ruler who had filled this
exalted role, for it is recorded that Axayacatl . . . had
represented, in life, 'our god Huitzilopochtli1" (The
Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations.
Archaeological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody
Museum, Vol. II [Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum of
American Archaeology and Ethnology, 1901], p. 71 [herein
after referred to as Fundamental Principles], citing Fray
Diego de Duran, Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espana v
Islas de Tierra Firme. Voli I, chap. xxxix).
•^^Psicoanalisis. pp. 53-54.
"^^Leon-Portilla, Los antiguos mexicanos, p. 124;
Soustelle, Daily Life, pp. 171-172.
■^^Leon-Port ilia, Los antiguous mexicanos.
pp. 116-146.
249
In spite of the fact that education in the calmecac
was in the pure tradition of Quetzalcoatl and under his
110
aegis, the whole concept of what Quetzalcoatl really-
represented seems to have become grotesquely distorted in
the Aztec liturgical system, presumably to the hopeless
confusion of the people. The high priest in charge of the
worship of Huitzilopochtli was called quetzalcoatl totec
111
tlamacazaui. "the plumed serpent, priest of our Lord."
"The priest who wielded the blade in human slaughter" was
^ 112
called Topiltzin, according to Padden.
Montezuma, the priesthood, the society at large,
were utterly dependent upon Quetzalcoatl cult for
whatever qualities of human compassion and spiritu
ality they knew in their daily lives, and one who
reads Sahagun knows how much there really was.
Theoretically, the priesthood cherished Quetzal-
coatl's sublime ethic and tirelessly extolled the
virtues of peace, mercy, and compassion, even though
in practice they were seldom permitted to display
them. And so they piously mouthed Quetzalcoatl1s
litanies as they wrenched out human hearts; they
taught their young the humble virtues, but as adults,
forbade their practice. It was as though the shadow
of Tlacaellel forever darkened the human threshold.
In sum, Huitzilopochtli and Quetzalcoatl were in
irreconcilable opposition to each other. If Quetzalcoatl
seemed to be returning in 1519 (the year Cje Acatl, exactly
110
Soustelle, Daily Life. pp. 171-172.
Ill
Ibid-, P- 52.
11?
Padden, Hummingbird. p. 77.
113Ibid.. p. 112.
250
1 1 /
when the tradition had said he would return1 .), it was to
dethrone the Hummingbird, Huitzilopochtli, and to resume
115
his rightful role in Mexico.
This irreconcilable antagonism between Huitzilo
pochtli and Quetzalcoatl explains my objection to Law
rence's use of "Huitzilopochtli" as "Quetzalcoatl's" right-
116
hand man. Even though one might interpret Lawrence's
Huitzilopochtli to represent the daimonic in its construc
tive and destructive aspects, as Spilka's observation
* 117
suggests, while Quetzalcoatl represents eros, the fact
always remains that in choosing the name "Huitzilopochtli"
for Cipriano, Lawrence seriously mars the conceptual and
artistic integrity of his otherwise brilliant "return of
1 i /
Caso, People of the Sun. p. 25; Saenz, Quetzal
coatl , p. 15 .
Padden, Hummingbird. pp. 112-113.
116
Laurette Sejourne has attempted an ambitious and
suggestive reconciliation of Huitzilopochtli and Quetzal
coatl (Pensamiento. pp. 172-176), which, while possibly
quite valid on a conceptual plane, does not fit the bloody
Aztec reality. The Fifth Sun, Sun of Movement, signifies
the movement. the dynamism, of the struggle to unify matter
and spirit. (See supra, p. 219.) Clark, too, tries to
harmonize Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli (Dark Night, pp.
121-123).
117
Of Lady Chatterlev's Lover. Sagar observes, "You
cannot have a real man and a real woman in a real wood copu
lating with symbolic genitals" (Art, p. 197). In the same
vein I would say that even though Cipriano and Ramon might
represent the daimonic and eros respectively, you cannot
have them symbolically stabbing real people to death in a
liturgy and dipping their fists in the blood (416-418).
251
Quetzalcoatl.
Lawrence’s most insistent themes in The Plumed
Serpent are those of fusion and balance, and the inviola
bility of the innermost core of the individual, as opposed
to victimizing, "ravishing,” and sado-masochism. One of
the greatest artistic achievements of the novel is his use
of the so-called "objective correlatives" of the plumed
serpent and the Morning Star. Even twilight becomes a
symbol of this balance and fusion, and the body of a bird
poised between the two wings of day and night (101). "The
star between the two wings of power: that alone was
divinity in a man, and final manhood" (45 9). The secret of
life and being is to be found in the struggle toward fusion
and balance. Huitzilopochtli, however, can only symbolize
Aztec death, violent hegemony, the mystique of the macho,
violation, victimizing, ravishing.
Did Lawrence know that the Aztecs and Quetzalcoatl
were in opposition? There are several passages in the
novel that suggest that he did.
1 1 f t
Zelia Nuttall, whose Fundamental Principles
Lawrence had read (Clark, Dark Nieht. p. 28), seems to
confuse Xochipilli and Huitzilopochtli, and Coatlicue and
Huitzilopochtli (Fundamental Principles, pp. 71, 265-266).
Her note on page 71 to the effect that "only the culture-
hero Quetzalcoatl and the bird-god Huitzilopochtli are
represented as seated on litters" may well have given
Lawrence the idea that it would be valid to use the name
Huitzilopochtli for Cipriano. The figure she was referring
to (Codex Magliabecchiano 23) is now taken to be Xochipilli.
(See Caso, People of the Sun, p. 49.)
252
But men forgot me. Their bones were moist,
their hearts weak. When the snake of their body-
lifted its head, they said: This is the tame snake
that does as we wish. And when they could not
bear the fire of the sun, they said: The sun is
angry. He wants to drink us up. Let us give him
blood of victims.
And so it was, the dark branches of shade were
gone from heaven, and Quetzalcoatl mourned and
grew old, holding his hand before his face, to hide
his face from men.
He mourned and said: Let me go home. I am old,
I am almost bone. Bone triumphs in me, my heart is
a dry gourd. I am weary in Mexico.
So he cried to the Master-Sun, the dark one, of
the unuttered name: I am withering white like a
perishing gourd-vine. I am turning to bone. I am
denied of these Mexicans. I am waste and weary and
old. Take me away (135).
Quetzalcoatl! Who knows what he meant to the
dead Aztecs, and to the older Indians, who knew him
before the Aztecs raised their deity to heights of
horror and vindictiveness? (61)
On the other hand, speaking of the "pyramid" of Quetzal
coatl at Teotihuacan, where in actuality the religion of
Quetzalcoatl existed in its purest, most classical form,
he says:
The ponderous pyramids of San Juan Teotihuacan,
the House of Quetzalcoatl wreathed with the snake of
all snakes, his huge fangs white and pure to-day as
in the lost centuries when his makers were alive.
He had not died. He is not so dead as the Spanish
churches, this all-enwreathing dragon of the horror
of Mexico (85).
This association of the Quetzalcoatl of Teotihuacan with
horror is an extremely unfortunate flaw, marring Lawrence's
otherwise extraordinarily well-done contrast of the down-
dragging, heavy, unredeemed serpent of Mexico with the
feathered serpent who has achieved the life-giving fusion.
253
Ramon's miracle ..s precisely to make feathers grow on the
down-dragging serpent of the horror of Mexico.
Vivas asks, "Could the old gods be revived without
bringing back the old rivers of blood, the death madness
Cortez encountered in the wonderful city on the lake?"^^
The answer, contrary to Vivas' implication, must be
affirmative. Lawrence projects the return at last of
Quetzalcoatl, life-giver, Christ-figure in the best sense,
to banish the rule of Huitzilopochtli, god of the "rivers
of blood," god of self-aggrandizement at the expense of
others. The artistic tragedy is that he uses the wrong
name for Cipriano. But his idea is sound: once Quetzal
coatl has restored the connection of Mexicans with the life
forces of the cosmos, once they love themselves enough to
love others, Christ may finally return to Mexico, rejuve
nated, renewed (136).^®
IT Q
Failure and Triumph, p. 78.
120
In 1969, the Bishop of Chiapas (now of Zamora,
Michoacan) told the assembled bishops of Latin America in
Bogota that Mexico has been catechized. but never evangel
ized (personal communication from Father Wallace Daley, of
Morelia, Michoacan). The function of pre-evangelization is
to prepare people psychologically for understanding and
responding to the Christian message (Johannus Hofinger,
S.J., and Theodore C. Stone, Pastoral Catechetics [New
York: Herder and Herder, 1964], p. 148). Is The Plumed
Serpent the novel of the long-delayed pre-evangelization of
Mexico?
CHAPTER V
EPITALAMIO DEL PRIETO TRINIDAD:
THE DEFLATION OF MACHISMO
There was a storm which had not yet dissolved
into rain. [Dario] was in an open patio of the
house, and suddenly he saw in the center of it a
toad that was staring at him with its round eyes.
Dario stared at it too, and just then there was a
flash of lightning, and from the toad's belly a
balloon of light emerged as strong as a magnesium
flash. When it disappeared, for several minutes
he could see a small circle of light over the
toad. By the time it finally became invisible,
the animal had gone.1
Ramon J. Sender, Spaniard in exile as a result of
the Civil War, lived in Mexico from 1939 until 1942, and
published Epitalamio del Prieto Trinidad there in 1942. As
he expressly states in Conversaciones con R. J. Sender, he
conceived the novel in response to his obsessive need to
Epitalamio del Prieto Trinidad (Barcelona:
Ediciones Destino, 1966), p. 174. (Hereinafter referred to
as Epitalamio.) Future references to this edition will be
given parenthetically in the text. All translations will
be mine, since occasionally the English translation by
Eleanor Clark (excellent on the whole) misses the meaning
of the original or uses a turn of speech which does not
favor the emergence of the machismo pattern, and it seems
preferable to make all translations mine rather than to
alternate between the two. When a choice had to be made
between stylistic and conceptual values, I have chosen to
retain the thought of the original insofar as possible. It
should be kept in mind that my translations are from the
1966 edition of Epitalamio and Clark's are from the 1943
edition. There are slight differences between the two.
254
255
’ ’ punish" the machos he saw so constantly in "the American
2
city in which [he] was living."
Barbarians dressed in a half-military, half-
civilian style; primitive types, chewing on a cigar,
looking over their shoulder and wishing in a back
ward way that they could attack someone, anyone.
And these people would get drunk in the bars.
Sometimes they would pull a revolver and fire at
the ceiling, at the floor, or even at some random
human being.^
Oddly enough, the critics and reviewers have not seemed to
perceive that the theme of Epitalamio is machismo, even
though this theme is clearly apparent, at least in the
Spanish original, literally from the first sentence of the
4
novel to the last.
The novel is laid in Mexico, although Sender, in
order not to offend or hurt the feelings of the Mexicans,
inserts false clues to imply that it really takes place in
an unnamed Central American country just to the south of
Mexico, presumably Guatemala.3 Internal evidence, however,
TYIarcelino C. Penuelas, Conversaciones con R. J.
Sender (Madrid: Editorial Magisterio Espahol, S.A.,
1970), p. 210. (Hereinafter referred to as Conversaciones. )
3Ibid.
^1 will comment on the criticism later. See infra,
pp. 327 ff.
3Sender, in a personal conversation with me (May
15, 1968), confirmed that he was writing about Mexico.
Although in Conversaciones he says that he had the Islas
Marias (in the Pacific, off the coast of Nayarit) in mind,
in the novel the island is located in the Caribbean. When
Penuelas asks him why he does not identify the setting as
Mexico in the novel, Sender responds, "Because they were
very good to the [exiled] Spaniards, and are so terribly
256
£
suggestively links Epitalamio with Mexico.
The plot is simple. Trinidad, now forty years old,
is the director of a penal colony on an island off the
mainland. He goes to the capital to marry his eighteen-
year-old fiancee of two years, Nina Lucha. They return to
the island the evening of the wedding. Upset by the lewd
tone of the welcome given the bride and groom at the pier,
Trinidad shoots and kills two convicts. Lucha, indignant
over the shockingly unexpected values that she finds in
Trinidad and indignant with herself, decides not to open
the door of the bedroom for Trinidad. He is shot outside
the locked door, presumably in revenge for his slaying of
the convicts, and dies the next day. While the motley
population of the island is offering its "condolences" to
the virgin widow, Trinidad's corpse is stolen. The corpse
is made to preside over a wild celebration in a forest
clearing, in which Careto ("Spotty"), an ex-Jew turned
"Aryan," arouses the convicts to lust for the prize of the
virgin, and the factions of Seisdedos ("Sixfingers") and
the Cuate ("Twin" or "Pal") start feuding for control of
sensitive. We Spaniards all love Mexico" (Conversaciones.
p. 141).
6
To give only a few examples, the convicts drink
pulque. a drink of Aztec origin; the people of humble
origin constantly use mero and merito (a marked "Mexican-
ism"); and death is referred to as "la chingada." one of
the commonest Mexican terms for death. (Lope Blanch,
Vocabulario mexicano relativo a la muerte. p. 23.) See
infra. ~ p ~ . 327 .
257
the island and possession of the Nina. Meanwhile, Dario,
the school teacher, has sent her off in the care of a lame
convict named Rengo ("Gimpy") to hide in a grotto on the
coast. Eventually the Indians take her to their village on
the southern end of the island, where they want her cooper
ation in persuading the forces of nature to make the corn
grow and the rain come. Seisdedos finds her there and
takes her back to headquarters to be his own, but the Cuate
manages to get her from him, and Zurdo ("Lefty") gets her
from the Cuate. The convicts trap Zurdo and Lucha in a
forest fire which they have set, and Dario rescues her with
the help of the Indians (this is his first contact with her
since he sent her off with Rengo). The "ghost" of Trinidad
which has been a mysterious and troublesome presence
(mostly just a disturbing buzzing noise) on the island
since the day after the fiesta in the clearing, turns out
to be his skin, inflated by the Indians in the form of a
balloon. It is deflated by a shot. The brother of one of
the convicts slain by Trinidad at the pier dances at that
same place in a farewell for Lucha and Dario, using the
skin of Trinidad's head as a mask. Dario and Lucha, head
ing for the mainland on the launch, turn around and return
to the island, knowing they must stay and protect the con
victs from sure attempts at punishment by the government.
The Nina sees on the ground a piece of what looks like a
limp balloon with eyebrows and hair, and starts to smooth
258
it out with the toe of her shoe, saying, "What is this?"
The first three chapters of Epitalamio. covering
the action through the theft of Trinidad’s body, are in the
form of fairly straightforward narration. From then on,
the novel becomes somewhat surrealistic and symbolic, with
details and complications that have struck several critics
as superfluous. There is evidence in the novel, however,
to indicate that while the first part establishes the basic
tension of the plot and also describes the macho Trinidad
in his phenomenological behavior, the second part analyzes
some of the unconscious components and real meaning of his
machismo. Sender does this through the cases of individual
convicts and through several more obvious artistic devices
for revealing unconscious material. My plan, then, is
first to present Sender's picture of how Trinidad behaves,
and then to present and interpret the explanatory material
of the more difficult second part. The double meaning of
the Nina will be discussed also. While heretofore she has
been taken only as a symbol, I will attempt to show that
she is also a very real Mexican woman who undergoes a
transformation, a maturing, in the course of the novel.
Very little information is given regarding
Trinidad’s childhood. It may be assumed that he is a
mestizo (the Indians call him "the white father" and the
mestizos call him "dark Trinidad" [223]), of lower-class
origins. He reminds his boss, the Federal Director of
259
Prisons, that while the latter came from a good family, he
himself was only a "tirao" (or "pelado"), a person so low
on the social ladder as to be insignificant, contemptible.
"But I’ve come up by my own efforts, and I don't need help
from anybody" (15-16). He is hardly a silk purse, however;
he keeps his hat on when he approaches his director's
secretaries in the outer office in the capital (11), and
throws his cigarette butt on the rug in the director's
inner office (17). Not that Trinidad would want to be a
silk purse. His idea of masculinity is to be the opposite
of the well-groomed modern men that he sees on all sides in
the big city, for whom he has only contempt.
While he knows how to read and write, he is not
particularly intelligent (he has "torpid thought processes"
[33]), and is lacking in taste and culture, as could be
expected. His basic value is the power of macho: in fact,
his self-image is in terms of his machismo. Seeing that
people yield the right-of-way to him as he strides along,
he thinks, "That's what Nina Lucha needs: a man like me.
A macho" (18). Even on foot in the big city, he carries
his rebenque (a heavy whip), a marvelous symbol of domina
tion, aggression, and punishment, and habitually strikes
himself on the boots and shoulders with it when he is
nervous, excited, or trying to think.^ As he walks along
^Striking one's boots with a rebenque or chicote
is a habit of fictional Mexican machos, if not of real
260
the streets of the capital, he wishes someone would push
him so he can show who's who (19). He can hardly endure
the indifference toward him that he sees in the eyes of the
city men, and wants to give it to them with his heavy whip
(9). He does receive admiration, but is not at all
discriminating about the source. He puffs up like a pigeon
when the shoeshine man looks at him with adulation after he
tells the Director that he would be incapable of living on
the island. "That life is for real men" (16). He is so
pleased that the man calls him "chief" and the Director
only "boss" that he agrees to let him shine his shoes
during his interview with the Director (15). It would seem
that only people of the lower strata of society admire
Trinidad for his machismo. After he dies, some of the
people on the island, men and women, admit that he was "a
real he-man" (96, 106).^
ones. See, for example, Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo (Mexico:
Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1955), p. 39. It should not be
overlooked that the whip can be a phallic symbol. In view
of Sender's repeated association of the pistol with the
phallus (65, 137, 248), I believe it is legitimate to
assume the same of the rebenque as used by Trinidad and
Seisdedos.
O
"--Como macho, un puro bragao." Braga(d)o. from
bragas, trousers, means "brave, bold, resolute" in Mexico
(Santamaria, Diccionario de meiicanismos, p. 150). It has
a subliminal sexual content in Spanish just as inevitably
as trousers do, an implication which is missed in English.
(I shall give the original Spanish only when there could be
a question about its interpretation, when meaning is lost
in translation, or when it has poetic value.)
261
Trinidad's principal equipment for handling inter
personal difficulties is aggression. His mystique is based
on the machista alternatives of "violate or be violated"
Q
(chingar o ser chingado) . He is very conscious of whether
he has to yield the right-of-way or not (9, 10). He is
sensitive to the fact that he has to wait in the outer
office, and that the director seemingly is about to shake
his hand but reaches instead to the phone, thus making
Trinidad feel ridiculous. That Trinidad takes these inci
dents as "chingadas" is clear: '"He really knows how to do
things,1 he thought, casting his bilious glance on a
letter-opener in the form of a little dagger with a gold
handle" (12).
Trinidad simply is not in a position to win the
series of exchanges with his boss, even though he does try
to intimidate him, thinking he has found a weak streak in
him when the slapping noise of the shoeshine makes the
Director nervous (15). His insistence that he needs
nobody's help comes after his useless attempt to manipulate
the Director into protecting him in the matter of an
unsavory incident on the island. Counting on the fact that
he and the Director were childhood friends, he tries to use
"pull." He and the shoeshine man are both using essen
tially the same method, that of "patronage," to get what
^See Octavio Paz, Labyrinth, "The Sons of La
Malinche," pp. 73-87, and supra, pp. 63-65.
262
they want from someone who is stronger."^
His aggression is unleashed as he nears the island,
where appearances no longer matter (41). When a naked
fisherman swims to the launch and tries to congratulate
him, Trinidad seizes a verga de buey and flogs the man in
the face with it (34)."^ He bloodies a convict's nose and
promises that the organizers of the welcome at the dock
will be strung up by their feet for an hour before they go
to their roadwork the next day (38). After he shoots the
two men, he fires at the feet of the fleeing crowd,
"screaming blasphemies like a crazy person," and says to
Hina Lucha, "i'll never forgive them for this shock they've
given you."
She tried to say something, but the words stuck
in her throat. Pointing, she said:
"Those men ..."
Trinidad turned around, although he had already
seen them, and, shrugging his shoulders, took her
by the arm:
"One's a rumba dancer. He's already kicked
off" (38) .
Concern for other human beings is obviously not one of
Trinidad's values. He is genuinely puzzled that later
Lucha cannot get the dead men off her mind, that it
10
Supra, p. 127; see Fromm and Maccoby, Social
Character, pp. 110-111, for a description of the "patronage
system" as it functions in Mexico.
11
A verga is the penis of a mammalian. Trinidad
was using a vergaio. or pizzle, which is ordinarily the
pizzle (penis) of a bull used as a whip. That this one
should be from an ox, a castrated bull, suggests irony on
Sender's part.
263
troubles her that the bodies are still lying on the ground
outside headquarters (47). Neither does he have any faith
in the possibility of good in the convicts, or in anybody,
actually, except himself and the Nina, who tells him that
people are basically good (26). "Life isn't the way you
think it is," he tells her. "People are always waiting for
a chance to get you" (26). Whereas the Director believes
in trying to rehabilitate the convicts through education
and good moral example, Trinidad is simply amused by the
idea that those men could be saved (14). It is of course
ironic that Trinidad, who unconcernedly murders in response
to lewdness, should know that, deep down, he himself is
very good. "The only trouble is," he thinks, "that it
isn't easy to get that far down" (26). He tries to amuse
the Nina by making fun of the physical appearance of Zurdo
("Lefty"), and by seizing Rengo ("Gimpy") by the ear (44).
Trinidad is unscrupulous in anything that does not
concern the "honor" of his Nina. Needing some cash, he
shakes down the old mulata who sells the marihuana that
Rengo grows on the island (19). He gives Lucha's aunt some
flowers that are being delivered as he arrives, pretending
that they are from him (20-21). He lies about the price
of a bracelet he gives her (22). Above all, he is guilty,
and knows it, in the matter of the incident for which he
expects his boss to protect him. A plane had landed on
the island for no apparent reason, and Trinidad had reached
264
the spot in time to see the pilot trying to get a postal
sack out of the plane. The passengers were dead (shot),
and the plane was burning, even though there were no signs
of damage due to the landing. When the pilot reached for
his pistol, Trinidad beat him to the draw, and removed
from his dead body a bank envelope containing 120,000
pesos. Wondering whether to turn the money over to the
authorities or not, he made up his mind when he thought of
the Nina, and buried the money at the foot of a tree (29-
30). What Trinidad never finds out is that the idiot
Cinturita ("Pimp") had seen him do it and dug the money up.
Trinidad dreams of retiring to the mainland with Lucha the
next year and being a canary-raising, newspaper-reading
potentate with a car in the garage, a garden with a
mannikin-qui-pisse fountain, and terraces facing the
setting sun (30).
Trinidad, pleased by the religious impulses of
women (20) , shows no external signs of recognizing any need
12
to have the humility of truth as he lies dying. Knowing
himself to be mortally wounded, he grunts that God is
punishing him, even though he is gente decente (that is, he
is "respectable," "decent," no longer a member of the lower
■^There is a subtle implication in the 1966 edition
that in his own way Trinidad gets ready for death: "The
cool morning had cleaned the nocturnal phantasms from
Trinidad’s brain. It was getting him ready to die" (60).
265
class) and does not have a criminal record like the rhumba-
dancer, or Rengo or the Pocho Margarito ("Margarito the
Yank"13) (58) .
Trinidad is indiscriminate in his sexual appe-
1 /
tites. He loves the island the way he loves "a bad
woman" (11). The hysterical behavior of the women at the
fiesta in the forest makes it seem that all the women had
"passed through his arms" (107). He has at least one
illegitimate son on the island, and others who have died
(65-66). He imagines the old mulata in the city dancing to
a conga in the blue silk chemise she is selling, and the
mental sight makes him dizzy (19). Even Trinidad's selec
tion of the Nina Lucha to be his wife is not due to any
discrimination and particular love for her as a person.
The outer office smelled of cigarette smoke.
The typists were smoking. He had sat down, and
was striking the boot resting on his other knee
with the whip. One of the typists was really
O.K. He could marry her with no more reasons^than
the ones he had to marry his fiancee. But Nina
Lucha was more refined. She made a terrific first
impression. And she didn't smoke (11).
13
A pocho is a person of Spanish-speaking ancestry
who is born in the United States. Margarito loves to use
his English, probably as a status symbol. This touch is
lost in Clark s translation, which drops that part of his
name and translates it as "guttersnipe (Ramon J. Sender,
Dark Wedding. trans. by Eleanor Clark [Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc., 1943], p. 27). It is not an
important omission.
14
Supra, p. 24.
266
Trinidad is extremely protective of the purity of
the Nina, to the extreme of killing because men are coarse
in her presence. And yet, he himself speaks very crudely
in front of her and to her (47-48). He forbade her to go
to the movies shortly after they met, because she noticed
that the male lead's nostrils opened in the love scenes
(25). He also forbade her to swim (283). He is ridicu
lously jealous, even of her domestic relationship with her
uncle; it upsets him that Lucha should know when the uncle
is dressing (23). He hates the old man who used to hold
her on his knees when she was little, because he relates it
to a nude baby-picture of her in the family album (24-25).
(Even though he had become livid over the nudity of the
baby-picture, he says to the servants assigned to her on
the island, "This is my wife [senora]. She was born in
good diapers and is used to nice ways of doing things"
[43].) So jealous is Trinidad that he sulks because she
had promised she would call no one "Sweetheart" but him,
and he heard her calling the cat "Sweetheart" when she
picked it up'. (28) He does not allow her to shake hands
with the boatman (32). Chivalrous as he thinks he is
regarding the Nina, he changes his mind about giving her
his jacket to sit on in the launch, and asks the boatman to
give her his (33).
Trinidad's failure to accord the Nina the courtesy
that he wants others to show toward her indicates not only
267
his own social poverty but the artificiality of his exag-
15
gerated double standard regarding women. Most basically,
however, it indicates that Trinidad unknowingly is moti
vated by self-concern rather than by concern for her. In
other words, Trinidad’s "love" for her is narcissistic. As
Sender says in Conversaciones, when he realized he had to
punish "one of these apocalyptic beasts," he conceived the
idea of putting him "in some conditions which would be
contrary to those of his life. For example, love. I will
marry him to a little virgin, in love with her in his own
16
way." Trinidad is using her as a mirror.
His idea of marriage is possession. It is more
than a conventional figure of speech when he writes to the
Nina, "The cage is ready. Nothing's missing but the bird"
(10). When Lucha protests the killings, he says, "You're
my wife and I'm your husband. You've got to approve of
everything I do, especially on a night like this. Or have
I gotten myself married to a two-bit judge?" (48) He is
trying to joke about the judge, but not about the approval.
In fact, it occurs to Trinidad on the plane going to the
coast that husband and wife are not two, but one (31).
15
This is an illustration, it seems to me, of what
Maria Elvira Bermudez meant when she speculated that "the
importance of honor and the exalted function of the woman
. . . are imposed concepts, not spontaneously elaborated by
the people." (Supra, p. 20.)
16
Penuelas, Conversaciones, p. 110.
268
Trinidad tries to shoot Lucha at the last moment, because
he needs to take her with him. (But Lucha has moved the
17
gun from under his pillow, and he dies alone [61].)
It is hinted that Trinidad's concern regarding
himself is that he not be violated, that he not have to
open himself, reveal himself. His idea that man and wife
are one follows directly upon his unwillingness to identify
himself with the sense of camaraderie which the danger of
the flight gives the other passengers (31), thus suggesting
that his concern for her integrity is really for his own.
He is painfully upset by the congratulations and laughter
of well-wishers and by the way people in the street smile
as they look at the newlyweds' car; in fact, he is enraged
that his excitement and innermost desires should be made a
matter of public rejoicing and celebration (27-28).
Trinidad has reproached Lucha for being "too open
in her personality" (26); he is offended when a neighbor
woman senses his jealousy of their attentions to Lucha, and
says to him, "Don't worry, we'll give her back to you whole
fenterita. which suggests virginity]," and he "encloses
^ Supra. p. 49. That Trinidad dies alone unwill
ingly is emphasized at the time of his death and later
(160-161). Carlos Fuentes has also used the idea of the
macho who is not willing to die alone. In La region mas
transparente. Gervasio Pola, a self-important *'revolu-
tionary" who stupidly got himself captured by the
Huertistas, prefers to betray his three companions who
would have otherwise escaped, rather than die^alone. All
four are shot ([Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1958],
pp. 68-81).
269
himself further in his silence" (25) . Trinidad has only
contempt for people who talk a lot (drunks, idiots, and
politicians'.) (14). Although in the airplane he does not
want the Nina to look at him head-on (31) , in the launch he
does manage to sit facing her, but finds it very difficult,
and thinks it will be different after the first night (33).
(This anxiety is due to more than Trinidad's hermeticism.
They are really strangers, since they have seen each other
only three times since they met, and never in the capital
[10]. That is, they have met outside their own milieu,
under artificial circumstances. His letters would tell
about window screens and floggings ["it pained him to have
to do it" (10)]. All that is known of her letters is that
they were perfumed [10].)
Trinidad's fierce mask relaxes as he dozes before
his death: his expression becomes gentler (50). He is
gentle in his appreciation of her nursing care (58) . In
his eyes, however, Lucha sees "a menace underneath the
tenderness" (5 9). He has a great need to fondle her and to
be loved by her, even though he perceives that she is
extremely repulsed by the "blood and hair" (58) , and he
18
insists on his rights as her husband to the very end.
18
Poor Trinidad cannot exercise the marital right
he most wants to, however. The bullet entered at the back
above the kidneys, and emerged lower in front, just above
the sex organ. As the drunken doctor (a convict) says
"delicately" to Lucha, "The circumstances of having been
270
With his last action he tries to protect his own property
so he cannot be violated through it after death. He dies
wrapped up in himself. (If poor Trinidad only knew how he
will be violated, how even his blood and flesh and nerves
will be exposed! Hours after the mockery at the fiesta is
over, Careto finds the flayed body "open to the shadows.
The wind went through his blood, his naked blood" [210].
"Trinidad’s wide mouth would eat itself, at the bottom of
the grave" [214].)
Although Trinidad dies early in the novel, the rest
of Epitalamio is full of his presence, not only through
such devices as the corpse's presiding over its own
"wedding" celebration in the clearing, the odor of the
putrescent flayed body later penetrating the night, and the
marvelous one of the "balloon" whose hand keeps thumping
its belly (251), but also through the device of showing
Trinidad's inner dynamism (or the underlying components of
machismo) through the lives of the individual convicts. It
is as if Trinidad (or machismo) were an orange, and the
convicts the segments of his unconscious or unrecognized
psychological and social make-up. This device is quite
clearly announced in the chapter which covers the period of
time between Trinidad's death and the theft of his body.
As the convicts shuffle grotesquely by, slobbering and
wounded in that spot and on that night complicated matters,
because his lower abdomen was congested with blood" (52).
271
gesticulating ineffectually in their pitiful attempts to do
the right thing, the Nina realizes that each man impresses
her with one particular characteristic or nuance, and each
19
nuance is different from the other (86) . And shortly
afterwards, "the Nina thought that in the convicts’ eyes
she saw only expressions that reminded her of expressions
of Trinidad which she already knew. Each one was like a
on
part of the look in Trinidad's eyes" (87). It can be
assumed, then, that what is said of the convicts can be
said of Trinidad. Furthermore, Sender will use the con
victs to represent man's unconscious, including Trinidad's.
This is made explicit by the imagery which accompanies the
two sentences just referred to.
Each man gave her one nuance, and every nuance
was different. But all of them had their source in
a base hope or an aggressive desperation. Some
reminded her of the howls that rise from the bottom
of ravines in bad dreams. Others, the senseless joy
of young animals that can bite and do damage without
any responsibility. "It seems," she said to her
self, "as if all of them have terrible dreams and
retain the imprint of their dreams all day" (86) .21
19
Cada hombre le daba un matiz y siempre eran
distintos." Clark's translation, "Every face left its own
distinct impression" (Dark Wedding, p. 80), seems not to
convey Sender's full meaning.
20
"La Nina pensaba que en la mirada de los presidia
rios no habia visto sino expresiones que le recordaban
otras ya conocidas de Trinidad. Cada una era como una
parte de la mirada de Trinidad."
21
"Cada hombre le daba un matiz y siempre eran
distintos. Pero siempre nacian de una esperanza sucia o de
una desesperacion agresiva. Unos le recordaban los
alaridos que llegan del fondo de los barrancos en los malos
272
The unconscious is not only symbolized by the ravines, but
by the dreams themselves, which are one of the mechanisms
of the unconscious for making its content known to the con
scious mind. This image of the unconscious is immediately
reinforced by another similar one: "Each [expression] was
like a part of the look in Trinidad's eyes. The music con
tinued. The clay of the flute sounded cool, as if it were
22
playing at the bottom of a cistern" (87) . The cistern is
a clear reference to the unconscious, as might be the clay
of the flute, while the music seems to symbolize communica-
23
tion of the unconscious. To mention but one more of the
many such images that Sender provides: "All those people,
earth on earth, let the mystery of the night matting over
suenos. Otros, la alegria sin sentido de los animales
jovenes que pueden morder y hacer daho sin responsabilidad.
--Parece--se dijo-- que todos suenan cosas terribles y
conservan durante el dia la huella de lo que han sohado."
22
"Cada una era como una parte de la mirada de
Trinidad. Seguia la musica. El barro de la flauta sonaba
fresco, como si silbara en el fondo de un aljibe."
23
Cirlot points out that the flute is "phallic and
masculine in shape and feminine in its shrill pitch and
light, silvery (and therefore lunar) tone" (213). This
image can be taken in connection with other feminine mean
ings of machismo which Sender touches on (infra, pp. 289-
293). Here Sender uses a technique which I would like to
call "juxtaposition": that of placing two apparently
unrelated ideas in immediate contact, to form a seeming
non sequitur which forces the attention of a thoughtful
reader. An example which is more striking than the juxta
position of the expression in Trinidad's and the convicts'
eyes and the music of the flute is the following:
"Cinturita ('Pimp') used to tell stories in which there was
always a beautiful woman who kept him. But now he didn't
take his eyes off Trinidad" (108).
273
A /
the forest pass through them without resistance" (108).
It would seem, however, that while the convicts
individually portray aspects of Trinidad's inner condition
and represent the unconscious, they also, as a group,
represent the common condition of mankind, and as such,
they stumble onto a solution to the problem of life which
Trinidad fails to find. I shall present these psycholog
ical and allegorical meanings in brief before dealing with
some of the individual convicts who more specifically
represent Trinidad.
The most important thing about the convicts in
general is that, regardless of how grotesquely distorted
their ideas and strivings may be, they all yearn toward the
25 ~
Ideal, and they all wish to love and be loved. The Nina,
among her several conceptual roles in the novel, represents
Love and their ideal. In other words, love is. their
2 A
"Toda aquella gente, sin resistencia, tierra en
la tierra, dejaba pasar a traves de si misma el misterio de
la noche, que se apelmazaba encima del bosque." "Sin
resistencia," placed as it is, can refer both to their
inability to confront social pressure in a healthy way and
to their lack of resistance to the mystery of the night, or
to the forces of the unconscious. In this one sentence can
be found the lack of restraint of the superego, and the
symbolization of the unconscious in earth, night, and the
forest. It goes without saying that the last three are
feminine symbols, also. (See Cirlot, Symbols, passim.)
25
Careto ("Spotty") was the only convict who did
not attend the ceremony of condolences (90), so it may be
assumed that he is a special case, to be interpreted
differently in regard to Trinidad and machismo.
274
2 6
ideal. "The dream and the hope of [winning] Nina Lucha
27
dominated and polarized the struggle" (121). As Dario
reflects, "There was nothing in the world but love. All
passions--hate, rancor, envy, ill will--were only 'forms of
love.' The sentry's knife in his poor wife's throat was
28
also a sad form of love" (190). So strong is this yearn
ing toward the ideal that even after they have been
severely clubbed because of their desire to possess the
Nina sexually, they still have hopes of attaining to her.
(One repulsively deformed, anonymous convict says, "Here's
the way I see her, like a little bird on the tallest twig
of a tree with me" [243].)^
As the Nina perceives while receiving their condo
lences, the expressions in some of their eyes rise from a
"base hope" (86). In fact, these men are on the penal
island precisely because of frustrated hope. Dario
reflects:
26
Sender's Spanish-speaking readers know that
"Lucha" is the Nina's nickname. Her real name is Maria de
la Luz, for Our Lady of Light. "Lucha," then, constantly
implies "light" in the novel. Lucha also means "struggle."
27 ^
"La ilusion y la esperanza de la Nina Lucha
presidia y polarizaba la contienda."
28
"Nada habia en el mundo mas que el amor. Todas
las pasiones, el odio, el rencor, la envidia, la malqueren-
cia, no eran sino 'formas del amor.' El cuchillo del
centinela en la garganta de su pobre mujer era tambien una
triste forma del amor."
29 -
"Asi me la represento yo . . . como una pajarita
conmigo, en la ramita mas alta de un arbol."
275
To me, the woman that one possesses is not an
ideal which is attained to, but the miraculous work
of that ideal in process which is the human species.
When a man is convinced that this miracle is denied
him, he gets a feeling of failure that is worse
than death itself. And in that case, what is one
crime or a hundred to him? (178)30
Some men respond to this pervasive sense of failure by
tenaciously clinging to hope, but the Nina perceives
"aggressive desperation" in the eyes of others (86). The
scene is characterized by "sweat, eyes made wild by sexual
31
hunger and desperation" (78).
The convicts have a deep need for self-esteem,
which manifests itself partly, of course, in their need for
power, exacerbated by the death of Trinidad (93). But this
need for self-esteem is evident in less destructive ways,
too. As Dario tells Lucha, the convicts all want to give
her their condolences because by fulfilling their social
duty like the city bourgeoisie, they will feel "more
decent" (75). Paradoxically enough, however, their partic
ipation in the incongruous ceremony is more than "formal":
Everyone left something there: a look fastened
to her throat like a snake, the echo of a last
gargled word, a gesture which tried to achieve a
grotesque gentility. They all left something, and
30 *
"Para mi, la mujer que se posee no es un ideal
que se realiza, sino el trabajo milagroso de ese ideal en
marcha que es nuestra especie. El hombre, cuando se con-
vence de que ese milagro se lo niegan, recibe una sensacion
de fracaso peor que la misma muerte. AQue es para el, en
ese caso, un crimen o cien?"
31
"Sudor, ojos alucinados por el hambre viril y la
desesperacion."
276
when they went away, it seemed as if a pint of blood
had been taken from them (80).32
These men, superficially ugly toads, respond to the purity
of love. They give what they have, even if it is only the
tribute of beings who understand no more than the animal
aspect of love. At the end of the novel they also give
Lucha what they have: the thousand-peso bills from the
airplane, which have ended up in their hands, and which
probably represent to the convicts their only chance to be
more respectable, to have more self-esteem. After all,
Eminencias is the more respectable of the two saloon
keepers because he is the richer (85) . The convicts like
the thought that they are giving the Nina more than a
little piece of paper printed in pretty colors (296). They
all smile with pride as they watch her leave (297-298).
They have derived self-esteem from their ability to give.
They have the power to love, and feel themselves to be
worth receiving love. Far more wretched in their condition
than the self-righteous Trinidad, these men, by their gift
of self and their willingness to let Lucha go for the sake
of her own happiness, find to their surprise that Love
returns to them, that they have the possibility of lasting
contact with their ideal. And herein lies the tremendous
32 -
"Todos dejaban alii algo: la mirada prendida en
su garganta como una serpiente, el eco de una ultima
palabra espasmodica, el gesto que queria elevarse a una
gentileza grotesca. Todos dejaban algo y cuando volvian
parecia que les habxan quitado medio litro de sangre."
277
irony of Epitalamio*s ending. Trinidad, the great macho.
33
the muv hombre. the padre lobo (the -wolf father) , killed
because of his sterile concern for values of chivalry which
are not really part of his essential values, so much so
that he cannot even give her his jacket to sit on; Trinidad,
who prefers to kill her rather than to die alone, who
insists that this repulsed young girl look at him and
fondle him in his bloody condition--Trinidad loses her and
is reduced to a deflated bit of skin on the end of her
shoe, while the men he thinks unworthy of trying to "save,"
who in their weakness and misery have committed heinous
crimes, are allowed to retain her on the island. It is
easy to see, of course, that the island represents the
world and the convicts, mankind.
Two would-be "big aggressors" stand out among the
convicts, vying for control after Trinidad's death:
Seisdedos ("Sixfingers") and the Cuate ("Twin" or "Pal").
A third, Zurdo ("Lefty"), wants power and importance, but
is incapable of openly fighting for them.
Seisdedos, who effectively seizes power and main
tains it during most of the novel, is a rather pathetic
figure, a victim of his sense of honor. He had been put in
jail first because of political intrigues in his village.
After his release, his brother gave him enough money to get
33See infra, pp. 287-289.
278
started on some land, and Seisdedos worked hard, confident
that he was going to be able to rehabilitate himself. But
his political enemies ruined his brother, who then com
mitted suicide. When he heard the news, Seisdedos said
with typical Mexican understatement, "I’ve got to give him
a proper burial" (78). The "proper burial" consisted of
killing eight of the men who had ruined his brother and
wounding ten more. They had come to the funeral because
"they were decent people who were careful of appearances"
(78). The Tommy-gun was taken from him before he could
finish off the wounded men.
Here Seisdedos' story should be interrupted to call
attention to Sender's consistent attack in Epitalamio on
the hypocrisy of the so-called "gente decente," an hypoc
risy which Trinidad shares, and a class with which he
identifies. The lighthouse keeper (an ironic touch in
itself) and the old nun, Madre Leonor, both exemplify
middle-class hypocrisy, as well as certain sterile and
35
hypocritical values of the Church. Bocachula ("Pretty
Mouth") retorts to a convict who claims that the Nina had
especially favored him at the condolence ceremony, "She
didn't say that to you. And if she had said it, it
"Era gente fina que guardaba las apariencias
"^For an analysis of Sender's clerical and reli
gious attitudes, see Rafael Sandoval Perez, "El pensamiento
religioso de Ramon J. Sender" (unpublished Ph.D. disserta
tion, University of Southern California, 1968).
279
wouldn’t have been worth anything, because the world of
decent people isn't like ours. In the decent world you've
36
got to pretend" (96). The convicts have been so "put
down" by the gente decente (the term itself is a "put-
down," of course) that they aspire to that standing as a
way of achieving self-esteem, as was said earlier, but,
unlike Trinidad, they really know the standing is beyond
their grasp. On another level, the gente decente can be
seen as man's manipulating conscious self, and the convicts
as the unconscious, which can be repressed but which does
not manipulate.
As Sender says, Seisdedos was not intelligent
enough to humiliate his enemies with a sense of superiority,
so he had to kill them (78). Something about this man with
a human eye and a shark's eye, with a vegetable-like double
thumb and the appearance of a rock cliff reminds the Nina
of Trinidad (78). Pe is like Trinidad in his unintelligent
equation of manliness with brute force, with promiscuous
sexuality, and with an artificial attitude of chivalry
toward the "good" woman. Although he says openly at the
condolence ceremony that Trinidad behaved wrong toward the
rumba dancer (77), Seisdedos himself tramples a convict
with his horse when the man repeats one of the suggestive
■^"Ella no te ha dicho a ti eso. Y si te lo
hubiera dicho no tendrfa valor porque la vida decente no es
como la nuestra. En la vida decente hay que fingir."
280
songs in front of the Nina (236), and has the men clubbed
who have drawn tickets for their turn with her. (One man
with a broken leg drags himself away on his back, like a
crab [265].) That is, Seisdedos repeats Trinidad's
violence, not because he is intrinsically chivalrous, but
because he wants the Nina for himself by right of superior
force. As he says to the mother of his children, "It is
written. It is written. I'm the hawk and she's the dove.
It is written" (199) And, like Trinidad and all "big
aggressors," Seisdedos needs a bodyguard. Even in the
cemetery long ago, the display of courage that he is so
proud of was accomplished against unarmed, unsuspecting
men. But Seisdedos, like Trinidad, is capable of tender
ness. The good in him has not been completely stifled by
frustration. (As he tells the Nina, "I've never been able
to do things, good or bad, that I wanted to do" [244].)
While he is trying to persuade the Nina to let him possess
her, she sees "three fallen stars" outside the window, and
asks what they are. He describes the glowworms as "tiny
animals with their little bellies lit up" (248) . ^ It is
clear that her laughter in the midst of her fear is because
she identifies the glowworms with Seisdedos. He puts his
37 -
"--Esta escrito. . . . Esta escrito. Yo soy el
gavilan y ella la paloma. Esta escrito."
38 ^
"Animalitos pequehos con la barriguita encendida."
281
on
hand on his hip (the Nina thinks, "Beside his pistol" ),
and says, "I'm muv macho" (248). He repeatedly asks her if
she likes him, and, absorbed in a trance-like fusion of
glowworms and Seisdedos, she says, "Oh, yes'." Her affirma
tion of him is the catalyst of his progressive transforma
tion. Beside himself with joy, he goes out to get her some
glowworms, saying, "I'm going to make you a little bride's
diadem" (248). Ironically enough, the Nina is saved from
violation upon his return by Seisdedos' annoyance over the
buzzing outside of the "ghost" of Trinidad. By the time he
comes back from trying to do something about it, the Nina
is leading a crowded prayer service for the repose of
Trinidad's soul, and in the course of the service, Seisdedos
is shot. He becomes very depressed, and likes being in bed
with his wounds. He seems to undergo "conversion" as he
emerges from the depression, and in the end he admires the
superior courage and moral force of Dario (289-290). It is
he who organizes the collection for Dario and the Nina
(295). Seisdedos, then, acting like Trinidad from frustra
tion of his deepest desires, realizes unlike Trinidad that
39
The pistol is unquestionably a phallic symbol
here, as it always is in relation to Trinidad. There are
too many allusions to this meaning to cite here. It is a
phallic symbol as clearly as the closed door is a symbol of
the Nina's virginity. As if there were any doubt that
Seisdedos is a replica of Trinidad's macho mystique of
aggressive power and sex, Sender has Seisdedos strike his
own belly gently to show the Nina what the ghost is doing
(251).
282
there is a greater strength than that of machismo. and
capitulates to it.
The Cuate (’'Pal” or "Twin”) is a big man in his
fifties, who has "known the Nina for thirty-eight years"
(151). Thirty-eight years before, the Cuate had entered
the Revolution, not as a revolutionary but as a bandit
(80). He hanged people not with rope but with wire, so
that they would not have to be taken down afterwards (81).
He raped a twelve-year-old girl, and then, ashamed of
himself, he swung her around by the ankles and smashed her
head against a tree (82).
He thought often of the girl that he had raped
and killed, and with his repentance she had become
something like an ideal of purity to him. He would
have liked to have found her all over again, in
order to rape her again. But now he wouldn t have
killed her. When the Cuate realized this differ
ence, he thought of himself as an exemplary person
(83) AO
Satisfied with his own goodness, like Trinidad, he is fool
ing himself. The Cuate takes "furious joy" in the fact of
the forest fire in which the Nina is trapped. "I didn’t do
it, I didn't do it!" he protests, failing to see that by
reason of his joy and his leadership in the "war" raging
"Muchas veces pensaba en la nina que violo y mato,
y con el arrepentimiento le habia quedado como un ideal de
pureza. Le hubiera gustado volver a hallarla para violarla
de nuevo. Pero ahora no la hubiera matado. Cuando el
Cuate se daba cuenta de esa diferencia se consideraba ya un
hombre ejemplar." It is worth noting that the Spanish
expression "volver a hallarla" can imply return as well as
the mere repetition of an act. The psycho-mythical implica
tions of his wish seem very rich.
283
over the Nina, he is as responsible for the destruction as
if he had lit the first match (273). In this lack of
responsibility he resembles Trinidad, who assumes no
responsibility for having taken the money. ("I didn't
steal. . . . All I did was change from one hand to another
the money someone else had stolen" [30].) That the Cuate
is glad that the Nina will probably be destroyed in the
flames would seem to show that he still tries to rid him
self of guilt as he did before, this time by destroying the
symbolical reminder of his guilt.^
The Cuate has a deep need to be recognized as
having the power of the macho. "He was radiant with his
belt loaded with lead and his enormous pistol" (150). In
the Cuate's case, the pistol and violence seem to be surro
gates of sexual power which is either lost or no longer
valued. "'Are you forgetting that a chief can do what he
wants? Club people, kill, take what belongs to someone
else. . . . Especially,' he said, weakly and incongruently,
'since I don't want the Nina for myself" (193).^ "When he
A feeling of guilt is essentially a sense of
being cut off, isolated. As Erich Fromm points out,
"Destructiveness ... is rooted in the unbearableness of
individual powerlessness and isolation. I can escape the
feeling of my own powerlessness in comparison with the
world outside of myself by destroying it" (Escape from
Freedom, p. 202).
"AUsted olvida que un jefe puede hacer lo que
quiere? Apalear, matar, tomar lo de otro. . . . Maxime
--dijo incongruente y debil-- que yo no quiero la Nina para
mi." One may be sure that when in Epitalamio Sender calls
284
said, 'not for myself,1 there was ... a strange melan
choly, a sad sexual melancholy in his voice" (192). Even
though Dario is a prisoner, when the Cuate realizes that
she is looking at him, he becomes violent again (192). He
sticks out his chest like an old rooster, feeling young
43
again in violence, his element (192-193). So primitive
is the Cuate that he suggests in the clearing that after
the widow has chosen the man she wants, anyone can then
fight that man, the winner getting the Nina unless someone
else then tries to fight him for her (115). Dario "watched
the clumsy movements of the Cuate, in which there was a
peasant stiffness.^ He kept seeing him in an attitude of
rape, with his roll of wire hanging from his arm" (194).
a seeming non sequitur "incongruent," he is up to his
"trick" of juxtaposition.
4 3
The rooster, it should be remembered, is a symbol
of the macho. (Supra. p. 163, n. 38. See Aramoni,
Psicoanalisis, pp. 214-216. "The rooster has attributes of
vanity and egoism, of cruelty and aggression, of polygamy,
[of] . . . great indiscriminate sexual potency, with no
trace of the dove's fidelity. . . . Incidentally, the
rooster also sings" [Aramoni, op. cit. . p. 216].)
^"Veia los movimientos torpes del Cuate, en los
que habia una rigidez campesina. Lo veia siempre en la
actitud de violar y con su rollo de alambre colgado del
brazo." The phrase "rigidez campesina" should not be over
looked. I associate this "peasant" or "rural" stiffness
with the primitiveness which Sender emphasizes in Huerito
Calzon ("Empty Britches"), in contrast with the urban
progressiveness portrayed at the opening of the novel.
Machismo is a primitive, torpid response to life, as the
Cuate*s movements are "torpes." Dario waits with pleasure
for one of Seisdedos' bullets to open the Cuate's head
(194).
285
This image synthesizes the Cuate*s primitive mystique of
violation, chingar o ser chingado. That he cannot tolerate
the second alternative is shown in the incident in which he
had clubbed and decapitated a man (probably the father of
the girl he raped and killed) who had served him iguana as
the only thing he had when the Cuate demanded food of him.
Since the Cuate thought it was chicken and ate it with
enjoyment, he could not endure the humiliation when he
learned what it was ( 8 0 - 8 1 ) Dario senses that the Cuate
finds his old age to be alien and senseless, since he has
not "earned it" (192). His response to the surprise of the
iguana and to the impotency or lost zest of old age, that
is, to the areas of life which he cannot control, is rage
and violence. The destructive sterility of his childish,
irresponsible machismo is symbolized by his physical
impotence and the roll of wire, which simply winds upon
itself, as Trinidad's mouth will eat only itself in the
grave.
Zurdo ("Lefty"), tall, thin, unkempt, with a
cynical look, would like to be as important as Seisdedos
and the Cuate, but he cannot take the initiative. Desperate
45
It is interesting that Sender uses the phrase
"Vete a la chingada" in the course of the iguana episode
(81). His meanings are built too carefully to let me think
that its use here is gratuitous. It might be significant
that cuates is a slang expression for "testicles" in
Mexican Spanish (A. Jimenez, Picardia mexicana [13th ed.;
Mexico: B. Costa-Amic, Editor, 1967], p. 197).
286
for importance, he tells a convict he is "Mister" Zurdo
(45). He tries to find importance by attaching himself to
whoever he thinks is the strongest, changing sides without
hesitation. He speaks servilely and humbly toward the man
in power, and very authoritatively toward those below him
(99). Like the poor idiot Cinturita, he boasts, "There's
no one like me. My mamacita bore me and then broke the
mold. My match doesn't exist and never will" (126).^ He
protests that he is nobody's bodyguard at the very moment
that he offers to be Dario's (126).^ "Blind and stupid"
(182), Zurdo becomes the pawn of Careto, and issues the
convicts numbers for their turn to violate her. So unable
to act "on his own" is he that he needs to ask Careto if he
may violate her also (184). As he wades onto the beach
after escaping from the forest fire by water (leaving the
Nina to her fate), Careto knifes him in the stomach and
kills him, presumably to keep him from telling that the
four thousand-peso bills the Zurdo was holding between his
teeth are from him (278). The convicts rip Zurdo's clothes
kf\
"No hay otro como yo. Mi madre me pario y rompio
el molde. No hay ni habra otro." This is a stereotypical
Mexican boast.
/ *7
Zurdo is an example of the type of macho called
the pistolero or guardaespaldas (literally, "back-guarder,"
bodyguard) who, says Moreleon, "bases his courage on a '45'
and chiefly on the influential patron who guarantees the
impunity of his acts" ("Algunas formas del valor y de la
cobardia en el mexicano," p. 172). Zurdo carries to an
extreme the reliance on the "patronage system" already
noted in Trinidad (supra, p. 261).
287
to shreds in search of more money (280). In spite of
Dario's order that it be removed, his body is still lying
on the beach naked and unburied at the end of the novel
(287). He has sold out his humanity and will lie there
like an animal.
Trinidad is repeatedly represented as the primal
father, and Seisdedos, the Cuate, Zurdo, and most of the
convicts are portrayed as primitives who are still moti
vated (no matter what their effective capacity for action
might be) by the great early need to kill and devour the
48
father. In the clearing, the primitive little Huerito
Calzon ("Empty Britches") calls Trinidad "a wolf, like my
father" (107); Careto picks up this idea and chants, "The
wolf father died. . . . The assassin wolf father died . . .
killed by you, his sons and rivals. . . . The wolf died, he
49
died" (114-115). Afterwards Careto comes upon Trinidad's
flayed, putrescent body, which is being eaten by dogs.
"The dogs were eating up the macho, the father of the clan,
See Rieff, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist, pp.
211-230, for an exposition and analysis of Freud’s thought
regarding the killing of the primal father. For some of
Freud's own writing on the subject, see his Totem and
Taboo: Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages
and Neurotics, trans. and with an Introd. by A. A. Brill
(New York: Vintage Books, 1918), pp. 172-207, especially.
^"Murio el lobo padre.... El lobo paaaaadre
asesino . . . Murio. . . . Por vosotros, sus hijos y sus
rivales. . . . Murio el looobo, murio."
288
the fornicating wolf father" ( 2 1 0 ) The dogs serve not
only as symbols of the convicts* deepest aggressive urges,
but as symbols of the convicts themselves as sons of the
primal father. '"A dog, the chief was1 .' 'What do you
mean, a dog'. A little wolf'.' 'A wolf! After stating
earlier that "they all had a need for power, a need which
was exacerbated now with the death of the chief" (93),
Sender repeats the idea exactly: "The odor of the dead man
awoke in the dogs and in the little predatory night crea-
c o
tures their energy of aggression also" (213). Trinidad,
then, the big macho, kills two "sons" in order to keep the
sons away from his bride, and then is killed in turn by the
sons. Sibling rivalry breaks out for the prize of the
father's bride. That Sender intends the myth to represent
unconscious forces is made explicit in Conversaciones:
Our truth is told better in dreams than in our
waking lives, because it is the unconscious speak
ing. . . . That is, every single one of us contains
the whole history of creation, creation in its
mineral, then organic, vegetable, animal aspect.
We have vegetable life in our lungs and mineral
life in our bones. The entire history of creation
passes through our body. ... We have calcium
dreams, vegetable dreams, inchoate dreams of fish
at the bottom of the sea. Sometimes we dream that
~^"A1 macho, al padre del clan, al lobo padre
fornicador, se lo comxan los perros."
lUn^perro, era el jefe!
IQue perro! Un lobito.
lUn lobo!"
5 2
"El olor del muerto despertaba en los perros y en
las alimanas de la noche su energxa de agresion tambien."
289
we’re killing our father, maybe as we tried to do
thirty thousand years ago, when our father condemned
us to castration in order to secure for himself the
enjoyment of his three hundred wives, according to
the history of primitive peoples. And the uncon
scious and subconscious preserve all those past
mysteries. They are alive, whether we want them to
be or not, in our reactions, always latent in our
instinctive reflexes, from childhood to old-age.53
If Seisdedos, the Cuate, and a few others are
"dogs," some of the convicts are the alimahas, the smaller
would-be predators. For example, old Oropendola ("Oriole")
and his son Roto ("Dandy"), victims of their need to con
form to the primal-father myth, embody a satire of the
Mexican double standard regarding woman.Oropendola
spends his life wondering why he ever kept his date with
"that woman" the night Roto was conceived. His only answer
is that it was inevitable, that he was in the grip of
sexual passion (101). Although Oropendola always refers to
her as "that woman" (since his relation to her was genital),
he becomes upset if his son uses the same term, because she
53
Penuelas, Conversaciones. p. 144.
~^A roto, in Mexican Spanish, is a petimetre, an
effeminate dude or fop who is too concerned about his
personal appearance. It must be kept in mind, however,
that the basic meaning of roto is "broken," "torn." It is
tempting to associate the father’s nickname with the
testicle-like nest of the oriole. An empty nest? "Oropen
dola" is also a Mexican name for the zanate, a black bird
which is so voracious that it opens the craxvs of young
chickens to eat the grain they contain,(Santamaria,
Diccionario de meiicanismos. p. 1143). Cela lists pendola
(pendulum) as a formal metaphor for testicles (Camilo Jose
Cela, Diccionario Secreto. I [Madrid: Ediciones Alfaguara,
S.A., 1969], p. 205).
290
was his mother.
"Speaking of your mother you say that woman?"
"But you killed her" (101).
"Weren't you [Roto] giving your condolences to
the disconsolate widow with the decent people this
morning? You [Darxo] see what little use he makes
of good example. Now he's saying that woman when
he's referring to his mamacita."
"But you killed her,1 ' repeated the son.
"Who'd I kill?"
"My madre."
The old man socked him on the back of the neck,
behind the teacher, who was walking between them.
"Say my sehora mama. Say it right now'."
Scorned by the others, old Oropendola needs absolute author
ity over his son (97). However, he despises his son for
not having killed him, the way a macho should. Roto says,
"Everyone killed his father and came here. And I didn't
kill him. And he hits me because I didn't kill him" (237).
Although Roto cannot kill his father, he did kill
his mother. When he tries to give his money to Nina,
55
"iHablando de tu madre dices aquella mujer?
--Pues tu la mataste."
"--iNo has estado esta mahana con la gente decente
a dar el pesame a la desconsolada viuda? Y ya ve usted de
que le sirven las buenas costumbres. Ahora habla de
aquella mujer cuando se refiere a su mamacita.
--Pues tu la mataste --repetxa el hijo.
--iA quien?
--A mi madre.
El viejo le dio un pescozon en la nuca por detras
del maestro, que marchaba entre los dos:
--IDi mi sehora mama'. IDilo de una vez!"
The depreciatory meaning of madre and its popular
acceptance on deep psychic levels are conveyed when
Seisdedos threatens shortly after this scene, '" . . .I'll
give it to him in the merita madre.' Almost no one knew
what the threat was about, but they happily approved"
(104).
291
the Poblana (woman from Puebla, Mexico) tells her not to
take it, because he killed his mother, and whoever does
that brings bad luck (297).
"I didn't do it, my father did it."
"You're lying."
"She forgave me. Her blood spurted onto my
chest and I was sorry for what I had done, and I
tried to help her, but she said to me, 'Be careful,
you're wearing your new suit and you're getting
spots on it.' That's what she said to me" (297).
When the Congo ("Fish" or "Banana") tries to pass Roto's
money on to the Nina, Roto says, "I'm the one who's giving
it to her. Mel You want to look good giving it to her
yourself" (296). Although he makes this effort to assert
his identity, there are too many people between him and the
Nina, and he apparently cannot reach her (297). An emascu-
♦
lated victim of the cultural need for male superiority, he
57 ^
cannot give in love. Sender's parable seems to be saying
that the Mexican male believes he must "kill" his mother
C / !
"--Yo no fui, sino mi padre.
--Fuiste tu.
--Pero me lo mando mi padre. A mi me perdono
mi mamacita.
--Mientes.
--Me perdono. La sangre me brinco al pecho y yo
me arrepenti, y quise ayudarle, pero ella me dijo: '--Ten
cuidado, que llevas el traje nuevo y te estas manchando.'
Eso me dijo" (297).
57 -
Unwanted by Oropendola, Roto apparently kills his
mother in a vain effort to win his approval and to tran
scend his primary maternal identification by incorporating
his first identification with the "all-powerful" father.
However, he can only incorporate the model he has, and is
left with this internalization of his weak father and the
strong maternal identification also, complicated by a
repressed sense of guilt. See supra. pp. 42-44.
292
symbolically, that is, eradicate that aspect of her pres
ence in him which keeps him from attaining to the social
prototype of the "primal male." In other words, rather
than synthesizing his natural feminine, maternal experi
ences and functions, he suppresses them, he "exclude[s]
from his ego identity all that which characterizes the evil
CO
image of the lesser sex, the castrate." However, if he
has for his model only an empty "shell of mannishness9
Oropendola, he ends up with nothing, he is broken, "roto."
The son is quite right: he is in fact "bound to his father
as if to a law of fate" (97). What Roto may not know is
that his feminine qualities are as permanently (but
ineffectively) on him as his mother's bloodstains were on
his new suit.
As has been said, all the convicts filing by at the
condolence ceremony, including Roto, have in their eyes an
expression which is a partial one of Trinidad's. But Roto
is not the only effeminate man there. Another is Motivosa
60
("Nosy-Posy" ), an open homosexual, soft and rounded, as
undifferentiated as a caterpillar. "'He's not like other
men,' Madre Leonor whispered to the Nina" (85). There are
several later references to his homosexuality, including
"^Erikson, Identity. p. 59.
59Ibid.
60
Clark's felicitous name for him.
293
his boasting that Seisdedos obeys him by letting him wash
his clothes and take off his boots for him (220) . Sender
makes it quite clear in Enitalamio that the macho. in spite
of his desperate efforts to be hypermasculine, has undesir
able "feminine'1 qualities about him. Dario reflects, for
example, of the "big aggressors," when they pretend not to
see him, "'Power, power. As soon as they have a pistol at
their waist, the first thing they learn is a subtle,
feminine contempt'" (99).^ The power comes from the
pistol instead of from any basis of real personal strength.
The pistol leaves the inner weakness free to reveal itself
in weaponry supposedly characteristic of women. Trinidad
himself is either childish or "feminine" in the way he
sulks at the home of Lucha's uncle and aunt, and in regard
to the cat; he is susceptible to the flattery of the shoe-
shine man; and he seeks the protection of his boss. None
of these behaviors can be considered proper to the real
6 2
masculine strength which a macho presumes to have.
61
"El poder, el poder --se dijo--. En cuanto
tienen una pistola al cinto lo primero que aprenden es un
desprecio sutil y femenino."
^Gonzalez Pineda has written that the increasing
open homosexuality in Mexico is the "logical evolution of
the pathology in recent decades of intense latent homosexu
ality in machismo" (Destruetividad. p. 166). Antonio
Alatorre finds curious the fact that "cuilon" (male prosti
tute) is one of the few words of Nahuatl origin to survive
which does not refer to a material, concrete object.
Furthermore, he has counted forty-three words for homosexu
als in Mexican Spanish, and is sure there are more than
that. He believes that these two linguistic phenomena
294
The doctor, supposedly a convict because he killed
his mistress and then "profaned" her corpse (66), is like
Trinidad in that he does not recognize that he shares the
human condition. He calls the other convicts his "contem
poraries" ; all he will admit having in common with them is
the period of time in which they live1 . Trinidad, too,
cannot believe that he is like Rengo and the others. The
well-dressed, "civilized" doctor, embarrassed by the
ridiculous appearance of his ill-clipped dog Barbitas
("Whiskers") when he is attempting to impress the Nina,
keeps trying to rid himself of Barbitas, to disclaim him,
to give him the slip. But Barbitas can never believe that
his master really means his kicks, and continues in his
tenacious adherence and affection. Now, as I have already
said, the dogs in the forest, besides representing the
convicts, symbolize man's deepest unconscious urges.
Barbitas was there with the others. Barbitas, then, can be
taken to represent in the doctor those forces which he
dislikes in himself so much that he cannot acknowledge
their existence in him. He has to project them onto
Barbitas. After all, it was he who clipped the dog so
badly! Finally, having heard that the Nina has been found
point to an obsession with homosexuality among Mexican men
("El idioma de los mexicanos," p. 13). It is possible that
their preoccupation with the object of violation is a
projection of their own fear of homosexuality within them
selves. See supra, pp. 76, 32 (n. 109).
295
and is back at headquarters, the doctor tries to drown
Barbitas in the ocean, but Barbitas manages to save himself
z : o
and sorrowfully eludes the doctor's efforts to catch him.
Sender's extraordinary capacity for economy in parable is
shown when the doctor reaches headquarters: "He asked for
the Nina and she was not there" (155). (We must love our
real self before we can truly love others.) The doctor
spends the rest of the novel trying to catch Barbitas, say
ing, "Barbitas, I'm your master. Don't run away, Barbitas.
I managed to give up my mistress and my smoking, but I
can't get along without you. Come here, Barbitas, I can
explain" (264). He does catch him, and no longer feels
humiliated by the dog's companionship (285). However, he
continues his trick of scorning in others the qualities he
refuses to acknowledge in himself. Even though he himself
was thoroughly drunk when he examined Trinidad after the
shooting, he sees Careto naked and insane in the "brig,"
and thinks, "You can tell a gentleman from one who isn't by
the way he knows how to drink. He is shaming all of us
with his indecent behavior. He is the worst of my contem
poraries" (285). It is the doctor's lack of self-knowledge
which the Nina has seen in the eyes of Trinidad.
z : o
While Clark's translation makes the perro de
aguas a "mongrel," the doctor would seem to have forgotten
that a perro de aguas is a Spanish breed which is "very
intelligent and is distinguished by its ability to swim"
(Diccionario de la Academia. 1970, p. 1011).
296
Pito el Yute ("Whistler the Indian"is a little
alimana who is given more space in the novel than some of
the other minor aggressors. He first appears in the guise
of a skeleton while the Nina and Trinidad are walking from
the dock to headquarters, leaving the two bodies behind
them. (The dancers with whom the muertecita [cute little
death] was to perform had not had a chance to dance.) Pito
wants to approach the bodies, but he is afraid of Trinidad,
who stops to look at him and laughs, genuinely amused.
"’Look at him dressed up like a muertecita1 .1 In that tran
quility of Trinidad were roving the phantasms of crime"
(41). ^ The message of this vignette would seem to be that
even death is afraid of the macho. which is exactly the
^result that the macho needs to achieve with his disregard
for the value of human life and his ability to look at
death not only fearlessly, but with amusement. When death
is reduced to a muertecita. life too loses value, is
threatened. And in fact, just before Pito appears,
Trinidad’s calmness seems to the Nina to be a menace (40).
But Pito appears later in the novel in a more
complex way. Now he is wearing his costume because they
64
Pito can also mean an insignificant trifle.
65 +
"--IMfralo vestido de muertecita1 . En aquella
calma de Trinidad iban y venian los fantasmas del crimen."
Clark’s translation is superb: "The specters of crime
flitted through Trinidad's nonchalance" (Dark Wedding,
p. 34).
297
were going to "inaugurate the rule of Seisdedos" the night
before, although events made them change their mind, and he
is happy keeping it on (259, 270). His role in the dance
forces him to jump back and forth between Indians and
Spaniards, vacillating between them. "And cute little
death would dance without ever making up his mind, because
that’s how the dance was" (259-260). It is tempting to see
in this image a reference to the lack of a sense of iden
tity suffered by the mestizo, caught between Indian and
Spaniard.^ Pito's name is not his own. He was caught by
the police while carrying a sack containing the head of a
man he had killed, hoping thus to make it harder to iden
tify the victim. The police were confused by the fact that
Pito gave the victim’s name, Pito el Yute, as his own. The
name stuck. Happy in his powerful disguise, and even
66
Supra, pp. 77-81. Pito's indecisive dance is
reminiscent of a passage from Fray Diego de Duran quoted by
Emilio Uranga as the epigraph of Analisis (p. 8), and in
his article, "Optimismo y pesimismo del mexicano" (Historia
Mexicana, I [January-March, 1952], 397). When Duran (in the
sixteenth century) scolded an Indian for having earned a
great deal of money at enormous physical cost and then
spending it all at one stroke by inviting the whole town to
a wedding celebration, the Indian replied, "Father, don’t
be surprised or upset, because we are still nepantla
("inbetween"). Caught between two faiths, they were still
"in the middle, neutral." Pito, too, is nepantla.
^Pito's father was jailed for stealing the head of
a poet named Ruben (implicitly Ruben Dario's1 .) and gouging
around in it to try to find the treasure everyone said it
contained. But Pito knows the difference between figura
tive language and fact, so he never would have made his
father's mistake. His mistake was not to have cut a piece
of flesh from his victim and eaten it raw, an act guaranteed
298
wearing a name not his own, Pito personifies the macho's
frantic attempts to persuade others of an inner sureness
which he does not himself really feel. When Trinidad,
after his humiliating session in the director's office,
wants a chance to show someone on the street just what he
is made of, he really wants a chance to prove it to him
self. Just as Pito tries to identify himself with the
power of death, Trinidad tries to gain strength by clothing
68
himself in an exaggerated nationalism. (Besides his
scorn for the dapper "foreign-looking" Mexicans [9], the
key image of this trait is that of his admiration for the
parrot that can sing the national anthem [9-10].)
Actually, Pito is so weak that he has to try to
relate to birds instead of people.
But if he came to love them, he needed to have
them tell him they could feel him. There were
feelings for him inside them, and he couldn't find
out what they were. Only by killing the bird
slowly could he manage to see something in it:
its terror as it died, its pain. A tiny pain, but
very deep (261) .
Pito is desperately alone. As if this image were not clear
enough, Sender says it explicitly: "Loneliness was heavy
in his bones, his own and those of the skeleton he was
wearing" (265). Possibly Pito's loneliness is what the
to keep the police from picking up the trail (264). That
he and his father both were jailed for having a head in a
sack underscores the fatal chain of cause and effect
apparent also in the case of Oropendola and Roto.
68
See Ramirez, Motivaciones. p. 71.
299
Nina sees in Trinidad's eyes. Both men vainly seek to
assuage their vital solitude through the symbiosis of
sadism, Pito simple-mindedly through birds, and Trinidad
through narcissistic power, sex, and marriage ("husband and
wife are one, not two"). But Trinidad dies alone. His
death is like his life.
Actually, Trinidad too is a "pito." an insignifi
cant trifle. After her stay with the Indians, back again
in headquarters, the Nina has the impression that if she
goes too close to the dressing table, she will step on a
tiny little eight-inch man dressed in his wedding clothes
(243). It is extremely suggestive that in this passage
Sender repeats his previous identification of Trinidad with
a cloud in the shape of Norway. He seems to be saying that
Trinidad is only as big as his sex organ (for which pito.
incidentally, is a euphemism, in Mexico if not elsewhere).
The "ghost," Trinidad's inflated skin, is still outside,
banging on its belly. The macho violento (118), the
"jealous father" (118), "the impatient [sucking] spider
with the tip of his belly erect" (215) becomes an eight-
inch object that arouses mere "friendly curiosity" (243) on
the part of the Nina. Sender's punishment grinds exceeding
fine'.
The Congo ("Fish" or "Banana") once refused to
participate in a murder, and the conspirators cut off his
ears and made him eat them. Since then he has said "yes"
300
to everything, and has kept his mutilated head muffled in
the dirty, tattered remains of an old sarape. He finds
life to be as "fresh and pretty as a lovely young girl who
is looking for a boy friend" (97). The Congo's problem is
his weakness caused by the trauma. His sarape is his
defense, his tragically inadequate means of simulating
adequacy. His inner and outer mutilation is a figure of
the inner weakness of Trinidad, which the latter keeps
covered with the dirty, tattered old sarape of machista
behavior.
Escupita ("Spitball") uses more primitive, totemis-
tic methods of gaining strength. He needs both to gain
some of Trinidad's power and to achieve satisfaction for
his brother's death. He does both by dancing in the skin
of Trinidad's head, on the very spot where his brother,
Lepero Gomez ("Scummy," with the meaning of worthlessness)
was slain.
I'm not Escupita
because I'm Trinidad . . .
I'm the big cheese himself,
come to dance for you (298-299).
Machismo is the primitive skin used by Trinidad to gain
primitive strength.
Cinturita ("Pimp"), the idiot, who desperately
No soy el Escupita
porque soy Trinidad. . . .
que soy el mero jefe
que les viene a rumbiar.
301
needs to be a macho and is on the island because, reared in
a brothel, he tried to achieve masculinity through "that
strange glory of dagger and revolver" (76), now tries to
gain sexual affirmation through his money, obsessively pro
claiming his bragueta de caballero. his nobleman's trouser-
fly.^ The grotesquely exaggerated, almost surrealistic
image of Cinturita with thousand-peso bills emerging from
his fly (110) is a devastating commentary on Trinidad's
genital attempts to affirm the value of his manhood.
Chapopote ("Tar), like Seisdedos, is a victim of
his felt need to live up to the code of male honor which he
inherited as one of the "givens" of his state in life.
He killed his wife. And he killed her because
she had offended his mistress. He had committed no
other crime before that. His wife was "a saint"
and his mistress was a prostitute. That was true,
and nobody would deny it. But his wife said it to
him on the street--they were separated and had
bumped into each other by chance--and Chapopote
became indignant. The discussion was getting
tangled, and became so involved that when his wife
said. "You had to fall in with that bitch because
that s all you're good for, you're a man just so
they can rob you and fool you," when she said that
to him, Chapopote had to prove to her that it
wasn't so. And he killed her on the spot. . . .
Seeing him part of the chase in pursuit of the
Nina, Dario only had an impression of something
stupid and picturesque (152).
The Spanish "hidalgo de bragueta" was a man who
achieved the right of hidalguia by siring seven consecutive
sons in legitimate matrimony (Diccionario de la Academia.
1970, p. 705). It is easy to perceive the connotation of
potency in bragueta which is lost in translation. Cela, in
his Diccionario secreto. I (p. 136), lists "de bragueta" as
meaning "having large testicles," or "of very potent
testicles."
302
Machos must struggle for self-esteem within the mental and
emotional strait jacket of an inherited code which can
slowly change (Seisdedos) if a manly alternative (Dario) is
convincingly demonstrated.
Rengo ("Gimpy") is the only prisoner at the condo
lence ceremony who does not file past the Nina, because he
is standing on the steps as part of the official "receiving
line"; consequently it may be assumed that he is excluded
from the category of those who compose Trinidad's condi
tion. In fact, he is in contrast to Trinidad. Rengo,
after all, who has the "long face of a Gothic Christ" (44),
is the only person in the novel who tastes the Nina's blood
and is granted the sight of the Nina nude (228) .
Rengo has been lamed precisely because he is a
poet. He likes the "reverse side of things" (130). He
sees things that other men do not see. For example, once
he saw a tiny little naked lady in the head of a fish, and
when he sees the Nina tumbled by the waves on the beach, he
realizes that she is the lady he had seen (229). He can
respond to her thoughts without her articulating them (127,
129). He has a rich gift of fantasy, and a tendency to
"lie" about the dividing line between fact and fiction, or
perhaps between the "world's" facts and his facts. At any
rate, he said once that he knew where the treasures hidden
303
71
on the island were, and they beat him terribly (around
the genitals?) to make him tell where,
"but i'. was a lie, and that lie cost him a leg.
From that time on he's limped, the dirty goat."
The Nina looked at [Trinidad], surprised by
that way of speaking (41).72
Rengo believes in God, unlike the other prisoners (129),
and in his simple way speaks to the Nina about God more
convincingly than any nun had in the Nina's whole parochial
education (130). Unlike Trinidad, Rengo is essentially
humble. He knows he is a fool (110). He is honest with
the Nina, so honest that she cannot believe him (132, 157).
He shares himself with her, telling her everything about
himself except the origin of his lameness, and he wants to
tell her that, but is afraid of losing her if he tells
(132, 298). He pretends not to be hungry, so that she can
have what little food there is (159). He tries to
^"All forms of treasure are always symbolic of the
riches of the spirit and the mind" (Cirlot, Symbols,
p. 310).
72
Again, juxtaposition suggests the contrast
between Rengo and Trinidad. Cabron is an insult with a
wide range of meanings, all of them with sexual undertones.
A cabron is a male goat, literally; by extension it can
connote foulness, filth, moral degradation, general
wretchedness, and so on. "Su Majestad el Sehor Cabron" is
the devil. (See Ramon J. Sender, Emen hetan [Mexico:
Costa Amic, 1958], pp. 154, 156, and passim.) Rengo's joy
over the brutal punishment of the men who want to violate
the Nina may well be motivated by his own impotence due to
the beating which lamed him. Renco (rengo) can mean "lame
due to injury of the hips," and can also refer to the
condition of having only one testicle (Diccionario de la
Academia. 1970, p. 1130).
304
entertain her, to take her mind off her situation, and he
is willing to use his own deformities (his abnormally large
head and bulging chest) to make her laugh, until he sees
that they frighten her (141-142). He is repeatedly identi
fied with a big green crab in the grotto to which he takes
the Nina. When he accidentally sees her nude in the moon
light on the beach, "his love was like that of a crab, like
that of the giant crab in the grotto" (229). Rengo knows
that the Nina is beyond him, that is; he must love her
without possessing her. He cannot even approach her at the
end because of the other people (299). His "consolation
prize" is the bridal chemise which Trinidad yearned to
touch as he lay dying (58), and which Rengo "steals"
shortly after Trinidad's death (88, 132). He will carry it
as a shapeless clot of silk under his shirt even after the
novel ends (299).
Rengo, then, is clearly a jester, who has the
traditional symbolic meaning of an inverted king, a sacri-
73
ficial victim. His maiming and his pathetic destiny are
the price he must pay for his gift of prophecy and poetry.^
Careto ("Spotty"), named for the spot on his fore-
75
head, keeps scratching the half-healed sores on his open
^Cirlot, Symbols, pp. 1-2, 155.
^See Epitalamio. p. 109, for the vignette of Rengo
and the drunk.
^An equine or bovine animal that has a white spot
on its forehead is called "careto" in Nicaragua and
305
chest (63). The real sickness is deeper than the sores,
however. He has been in an insane asylum during his life
(171), and ends up raving mad in the little jail underneath
the headquarters steps. When a young adolescent he drowned
the boy he loved, Karl, and he has spent his life trying to
suppress his sense of guilt. He fled Germany as a Jew, and
fought as a Nazi for Franco in Spain (143). He is an
"Aryan" now, and is on the island because he suggested a
crime which others carried out, and even though they
managed to implicate him by anonymous letters, he chose not
to drag them into the case. He smiles when he realizes
that he feels guilty, and he continues to reject any
conscious sense of responsibility (148, 171). Careto's
memories are frequently revived by the discharge of waste
water from Eminencia's drain pipe, a sound which reminds
Careto of the noise made by cows when they urinate (90,
143) .
In fact, everything about Careto is anti-
evolutionary and death-oriented. Whereas Dario understands
that matter irradiates energy and is consequently active,
animated flux, thought, spirit, and that therefore the most
realistic thing in the world is idealism (179), Careto
Guatemala (Max Leopold Wagner, "El sufijo -eco," p. 107).
Details in the novel could lead one to think Careto*s is
the mark of Cain. It is interesting that of all the nick
names used in Epitalamio (practically all of which refer to
undesirable personality traits or defects of appearance),
only Careto1s name refers to an animal (infra, n. 80).
306
believes that all force is simply a function of the volume
and weight of matter. This force or energy is aggression,
and is manifested in man as selfishness (166). Money, too,
7 f \
is power (147). Careto’s impulses toward conspiracy are
not in pursuit of any ideal; ideals are the weapon of the
weak (185). He will achieve his ends by manipulating such
expendable "clots of blood" as the idiot Cinturita, whom he
drowns in order to get the money from the plane incident,
and primitive little Huerito Calzon (144), just as the
Nazis use empty toothpaste tubes and bones in their plans
of aggression (145). He tries to gain the following of the
convicts by calling himself a castron. a gelding, above the
passions of man and woman, not involved in the convicts'
sex rivalry over the Nina (115). His is the path of the
macho castron of the Germanic clan (143) Careto tells
himself that he is compelled by an atavism, that the only
difference between what he and Seisdedos did in the clear
ing is that the latter was trying to push the convicts
toward a pathless future Utopia, and he, Careto, was trying
to push them back to the sure animality of their origin
“ ^Sender introduces an image of gold which is
buried and guarded, presumably as a parallel and contrast
to the Nina, "buried" in the grotto and guarded by Rengo
(146). In a more obvious parallel, Careto hugs the money
to his chest just as feverishly as Rengo hugs Lucha’s
chemise (259).
77
It should be remembered that Epitalamio was
published during the Second World War.
307
(143). This throw-back is symbolized by his plucking the
feathers from live birds and giving them to his mottled
snake Ruana to crush and eat (91-92), birds captured for
him by savage little Huerito Calzon, who is too primitive
to survive (289)
Careto’s thirst for power is aroused by the sight
of Trinidad's corpse presiding over the party and its power
of attraction for the would-be big aggressors and the
convicts (143). He is "answering the sinister call," the
call of death, the only "ideal" he recognizes (209). His
identification with death is most clear when, forced by
Dario, he buries Trinidad's putrescent body:
Trinidad's head--the phosphorous was decompos-
ing--began to irradiate a blue halo. Occasionally
this fluorescence would illuminate Careto*s face.
And in the blue light his face seemed to be that
of a dead man also. One dead man was burying
another (214).79
78
Birds, Careto reflects, are easier to identify
with, since they walk the way man does (92). Ruana seems
to be symbolic of "the primordial--the most primitive
strata of life," "of energy itself--of force pure and
simple," and of "subversion of the spirit" (Cirlot,
Symbols. pp. 273, 272, 275) . It is interesting that the
adjective ruano, besides denoting a roan or mottled horse,
can refer to something which is in the form of a wheel.
Careto especially remembers the red-rimmed wheels of Karl's
bicycle. These circular symbols, with the Cuate's roll of
barbed wire, seem to communicate sterility, an eternal
returning upon oneself, the opposite of love.
79 - ^
"La cabeza de Trinidad--el fosforo se descomponia
--comenzaba a irradiar un halo azul. A veces esa fluores-
cencia iluminaba el rostro del Careto. Y a la luz azul
aquel rostro parecia tambien el de un muerto. Un muerto
enterraba al otro."
308
Careto obviously functions in Epitalamio as more
than an element of tension in the plot. Besides represent-
80
ing the opposite of the power of love and life, he repre
sents the unscrupulous force to which the macho can be
prey. As Ramirez says, M0ne can lead the Mexican man
81
anywhere by means of his need to 'be muy macho. '1 1 The
crazed Careto shouts, "Kneel down and learn to adore the
gelding, the one who leads violent men. The one who spills
the blood of the machos violentos" (285) . The difference
between Careto and Trinidad is that while Trinidad's
atavistic machismo is destructive and anti-life, Trinidad
80
It is very easy to assume that Careto represents
evil. Several times Sender clearly invites the reader to
associate Careto with the forces of the devil, in this
passage, for example, which contains several apparent non
sequiturs? warning signals by now to the thoughtful reader:
1 I have a pact with Careto,' said Cinturita.
'A gentleman's pact.'
'Careto's got class. Too bad he's a refugee,
because that spoils him.'
'He used to call the Holy Father by his first name
in his country. And I have a pact with him. I have to
take him sixty thousand pesos early tomorrow morning'"
(125).
The spot on a careto is very close to the horns'. Sender
says: "We writers of today have a self-imposed obligation:
the definition of evil. Sometimes it is in our will, other
times in our reasoning, and it always manifests itself
through violence. I don't define evil, but I expose vio
lence so that the reader can define it. In this way, the
definition is more convincing" (Penuelas, Conversaciones.
p. 208). So that, even though Careto is portrayed as
incarnating evil, the reader is left to decide why he does.
King believes it is because he has "lost his will towards
the ideal" (Charles L. King, "Sender: Aragonese in New
Mexico," Modern Language Journal. XXXVI [May, 1952], 244).
81
Motivaciones. p. 99.
309
is sincere in believing that he really loves, and he gives
his whole person to the pursuit of his false love. As
Careto says to Trinidad's decomposing body:
Your sights were too low, Trinidad, but that
wasn't bad. What was wrong was that your whole
being was in your gaze. And the secret lies in
looking down from on top, without putting any
thing of your own into it (210).82
Like Seisdedos, of whom it is said, "In that fellow every
thing was hurried and inflamed. ... He attacked like a
bull and maybe he would break his head against the wall"
O O
(196), Trinidad is like a bull. Anyone who wishes to
manipulate him or his kind with a red cloth can do so.
Careto, after all, is the one ultimately responsible for
the Nina's being trapped in the circle of fire set by the
foolish Licenciado. Dario wonders as the flames roar,
"'How many resources can Nature have left [against the
Nina]?' Because the Licenciado and the others who were
ranging around with torches did not know what they were
doing. They were blind forces" (272).^
8 2
"--Mirabas demasiado bajo, Trinidad, y lo malo no
era eso, sino que se te iba todo tu ser detras de la
mirada. Y el secreto esta en mirar abajo desde arriba, sin
que nada se nos vaya detras."
83
"En aquel tipo todo era apresurado, encendido.
. . . Atacaba como un toro y podia quiza romperse la testa
contra el muro." It is worth noting that encendido is the
same word used of the glowworms’ bellies.
84 ^ ^
"'ACuantos recursos le quedaran todavia a la
naturaleza?' Porque el Licenciado, como los c|ue iban y
venian con las antorchas no sabian lo que hacxan, eran
fuerzas ciegas." Rollo May points out that when the
310
The eighteen-year-old Nina is both a maturing
person (even though portrayed "impersonally") and a symbol.
She has been reared in a protective atmosphere by her aunt
and uncle, sheltered from any awareness of the animal
aspect of love. So "modest" is she that when she realizes
that the canary in the bedroom has seen her changing her
blouse one day, she almost faints (225) . The director
knows that she must have a "childish innocence" in order
not to see what she is marrying (16), and Dario realizes
that her world "was the green paradise of childish loves"
(215). She has been taught that she exists for her husband
(her senor esposo), and that she will smoke only if he
gives her permission to (160, 135). And indeed, Lucha
looks at Trinidad in the plane as if he were her father
(31), and she is genuinely remorseful about having called
the cat "Sweetheart."
It would be a mistake, however, to think that
Lucha's childish innocence is a sign of weakness or fatuity.
While her orphanhood has given her a genuine humility of
heart, she has no timidity whatsoever (21). Lucha, rather
than taking insult from the coarseness of the welcoming
dances and songs, perceives that the men have been dancing
in their own way; she sees the person underneath the
daimonic regresses to what it originally was--a blind,
unconscious push unintegrated with consciousness, "we . . .
become not only nature's tools but her blind tools" (Love
and Will, p. 159) .
311
appearance (46). Although she had forced herself to behave
as Trinidad wanted her to after he flogged the swimmer in
the face, she dares defy his will by refusing to enter
headquarters until he orders help for the shot men, one of
whom might still be alive (42). She now fears the blood of
the marriage night (41-42), but locks the door motivated
not by fear but by moral indignation (48).
After Trinidad is shot, she feels revulsion, fear,
and guilt. The conscience which has been developed in her
all her life tells her that she should let Trinidad take
her with him, but a deeper conscience tells her it is wrong
to be willing to die so young (59). Lucha's on-going
struggle (how appropriate her name is!) is clearly between
what Erich Fromm calls "the authoritarian conscience" (the
crippling conscience developed by dependence on irrational
authority) and "the humanistic conscience" ("the reaction
of our total personality to its proper functioning or
dysfunctioning," "the voice of our loving care for our-
85
selves"). Her authoritarian conscience is closely linked
85
Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology
of Ethics (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc.,
1947), pp. 155, 162-163. It might be appropriate to
discuss at this point the symbolic meaning of Eminencia's
leprous wife, who would from time to time stick her hand
out the upper window facing Careto's shack and release bits
of white paper to float upwards on the wind (91). Careto
needs to avoid being seen by "Mrs. Eminencias," and is
careful to "violate Cinturita on the other side of his
shack. It seems reasonable to interpret her as represent
ing Careto's atrophied, leprous conscience. Flashes of
truth ("bits of white paper") do occasionally come to him,
312
with her fear of sex and her shrinking from the "blood and
hairs," the violent animal aspect of man, while her emerg
ing humanistic conscience is linked with an increasing
acceptance of her own body, with a realization that she has
value and power in herself instead of being merely an
instrument of man, and with a new understanding and accept
ance of life as it is, of the "monster" in herself and in
others. Throughout her struggle, her aunt's nervous
whistle, Trinidad, and multiple phallic symbols (his feet
in his huge shoes, his pistol, the cloud in the shape of
Norway) will represent the call of her authoritarian
conscience (she did not obey her lawful husband). The
struggle is often represented by her surprise over certain
"new" thoughts, shocking in terms of her upbringing, and
her gradually diminishing movements to repress them (66,
67, 128, 221). Her essential health and acceptance of
herself is shown when, after Trinidad's death, she feels a
great tenderness toward herself. "She loved herself, she
but he is careful to dismiss them. Fromm says, "Since [the
function of the humanistic conscience] is to be the
guardian of man's true self-interest, it is alive to the
extent to which a person has not lost himself entirely and
become the prey of his own indifference and destructive
ness. Its relation to one's own productiveness is one of
interaction. The more productively one lives, the stronger
is one's conscience, and, in turn, the more it furthers
one's productiveness. The less productively one lives, the
weaker becomes one's conscience; the paradoxical--and
tragic--situation of man is that his conscience is weakest
when he needs it most" (Man for Himself, p. 164).
313
was sorry for herself, she loved herself as if she were
another separate person" (62). Thus affirming herself, she
can listen to her inner voice of loving care for herself.
One of the first indications that her repressed
unconscious (seat of the humanistic conscience) is becoming
free occurs when she makes a joke out on the edge of the
cliffs with Rengo, even though she suddenly remembers her
Of.
"guilt" again (133). Once inside the grotto, which rep
resents not only her own unconscious but the symbolic womb
from which she will be born to a new life of sure maturity,
she and Rengo cross over a narrow abyss and she dares smoke
one of Rengo's marihuana cigarettes. From the abyss there
emerges a huge crab, which finally falls on its back and
waves its claws in the air, vainly seeking a prey (136).
Here the crab is a clear figure of the wounded Trinidad,
lying on his back and groping to caress Lucha. As they
leave the cave, she hears Trinidad's voice in her ears
again, and thinks again of the pistol (137). Rengo goes
for food, and the Nina takes a nap in the sun, having a
8 6
Douglas, accepting Freud's analysis of the
dynamics of humor, says that the joke gives our conscious
monitoring system a holiday. "For a moment the unconscious
is allowed to bubble up without restraint, hence the sense
of enjoyment and freedom" (Mary Douglas, "The Social
Control of Cognition: Some Factors in Joke Perception,"
Man. Ill [new series] [September, 1968], 364). "The joke
merely affords opportunity for realising that an accepted
pattern has no necessity" (ibid., p. 365; italics mine).
314
87
dream which she later remembers perfectly. She dreams
she is in the grotto again, and that the deep crack or
abyss now has the flames of hell in it (her unconscious,
with its dangerous urges which she has been taught will
endanger her salvation). Dario is with her, shaved and
wearing a very white shirt, whereas she is badly dressed
(she is dissatisfied with her present identity; she must
become like Dario, who, as a symbol in the dream, repre
sents her new conscience, her new loving care of herself).
She tells Dario that all of nature is within us, and we
matter very, very much to that nature inside us (138).
Trinidad, naked, blood and hairs, is rising and falling
like a floating doll on the fire (her authoritarian
conscience, symbolized by Trinidad, is only a little doll).
They leave the cave and the boats on the subterranean ocean
are black, wearing mourning for a baby whale that died (her
8 8
authoritarian conscience again) (138). The crab now
seems cute, but she cannot stand its woodenness. "The
o y
Lucha thus escapes the tragedy mentioned by
Fromm, "that when we do hear our [humanistic] conscience
speak in sleep we cannot act, and that, when able to act,
we forget what we knew in our dream" (Man for Himself.
p. 168) .
88
Sender makes the association between Trinidad and
the whale clear:
'"Why are the boats black?'
Dario laughed at his own joke:
'They're wearing mourning for a little baby whale
that died.'
Oh'. She thought he was going to say because
Trinidad had died" (138).
315
worst thing she could imagine in life was not one man
killing another, but a block of wood that would suddenly
start to walk or eat" (138). While the real crab reminded
her of Trinidad, the dream crab is her own inauthenticity.
She must become real, abandoning the artificiality in which
she was reared. Dario manages to get his hands on her
heart, and although she is suffocating, he will not let her
go unless she tells him it is a pleasant time (this symbol
is suggested to her unconscious by his having asked her the
time during the condolence ceremony and her wanting to
please him by making it the time he wished it to be [85].
He puts his jacket (himself) on her, and she shudders under
the coarse material. He kisses her and tells her that her
mouth tastes not of ashes, as it would if they were dream
ing, but of the wild plums of the highest mountains (she is
of exquisite worth) (139). They hear something slip and
fall. Dario shoots, and Rengo appears with two holes in
his head that let the light shine through (she will pass
o g
into a new stage of life). She sees the crab moving its
clumsy paws among tender young laurels (which represent
"[her] progressive identification with the motives and aims
of [her] victory" and the fecundity of her tender new
maturity9^). "Say you haven't seen it!" says Dario (she is
^9Cirlot, Symbols. pp. 142-143.
90Ibid., p. 173.
316
not to be pulled back into her former state). They jump to
the other side of the abyss (her new condition of humanis
tic maturity), the crab flees, and just before they reach
the narrow passageway (the last trial, the vagina from
which she will be finally born, a proleptic symbol of the
narrow passage she traverses with Dario through the forest
fire), Dario says to her, "When you are a real woman, I
will also be a real man" (140). Her meaning does not
depend on the man, but is prior to his meaning. She must
become authentic, that is, "self-authorizing." And as they
leave the grotto, she wakes up, and finds herself alone.
She is extremely tired and has left her mirror at head
quarters (140). This is the exhaustion which follows upon
her successful struggle for new life, for a new ego organi
zation. She is alone because she has achieved mature
separation and no longer needs to find affirmation in the
mirror of the conventional expectations of society. And
Rengo appears with food, ending the fasting attendant upon
spiritual struggle.
After her emergence from the grotto, the Nina sim
ply becomes stronger in her new orientation, the signifi
cance of which gradually becomes clear for her and the
reader. She begins to live the answers to her earlier
question, "What is love like?" which she was forced to ask
herself when her fear of Trinidad's corpse made her doubt
her feeling toward him, even though she felt a great
317
tenderness toward him (61).
For the sake of the Indians, she forces herself to
overcome her modesty and enter the ocean nude, and she is
rewarded by a new self-confidence and glad awareness of her
intrinsic worth (233); and she is glad to be pretty (239),
and is no longer frightened by nudity (245). Even though
she knows the Indians are unable to protect her, she can
look around fearlessly, "hoping to see and feel unexpected
things" (218).^ Terrible things no longer frighten her;
they simply make her wonder (251). She finds something of
the monster within herself (she is flattered by "Mrs.
Seisdedos"1 threats) and is able to say, "Perhaps every man
and woman is a monster once in a while and it doesn't
matter" (240). Even though she accepts the fact that there
are monsters in life and that the first task in life is not
to be devoured by them (299), she knows that everyone can
find a safe little path between the monsters (301). This
is the way life is (301). Earlier she realizes that she
must learn not to be afraid of the monsters, and that she
can put her hand on everyone1s shoulder (223; italics
mine). Paradoxically, this fearlessness and willingness to
touch the monsters, this tenderness toward them, constitutes
^"Y sin miedo miraba a su alrededor, esperando ver
y sentir cosas inesperadas."
318
q o
the "safe little path." Love is. the path, the way.
Probably the most pregnant vignette of the entire novel
occurs just as the Nina emerges from the forest fire. The
man who holds the current high number from the lottery
rushes up to her, eager to possess her on the spot.
"Number Three came up to her impatiently: 'Mrs. . . .
Miss ... 1 Rengo stuck out his foot and Number Three fell
like a frog. 'Oh'. ' she said, wanting to help him" (284).^
Love is always ready to trust, to hope, to give of itself.
The Nina does not look for the monstrous in man, and she
92 ~
Sender says of the Nina, "All those who surround
this young girl hope first, of course, for the pleasure of
possessing her, but implicit in that love there is a
respect which some people won't understand, but which is
true, and that respect, in spite of everything, saves her.
And that last reserve of the grossest and most absolutely
intolerable humanity, that last reserve in which there
beats a respect for purity and beauty is true and is
enough, even when those last human depths don't even have
the elementary geometry needed in billiards [infra, n. 95].
That thought can keep us from Kafka's despair7 1 (Pe hue las ,
Conversaciones. p. 137).
This capacity of man to respond to love can be
symbolized by the motif of the nightbird's song, repeated
some fourteen times in the course of the novel. If the
dark, matting, hot night represents the unconscious, then
the song, sweet, sensual, damp, luminous, tenacious, repre
sents that divine core of life in every man. If the dark
night represents this world of monsters, the green and
luminous bird is the ever-present possibility of the
miracle. If the night is the island, bird and song are the
Nina. All these meanings are the same, of course.
93
"Se acerco el numero 3, impaciente:
--Senora . . . senorita . . .
El Rengo le puso la zancadilla y el numero 3 cayo
como una rana. ' — t Oh1' dijo ella, queriendo
auxiliarlo."
319
94
does not respond to it in kind. This image is the reply
to Pito el Yute's earlier question, "Is this love?" when an
owl decapitates a lizard and a butterfly decapitates
another butterfly it has been chasing and rolling with
(262). Animals, spiders, and atavistic men ("natural
forces") decapitate, they negate man's higher powers, they
lack that "minimum of geometry" which permits man to con-
95
trol the chaos of the unconscious. True men--heroes and
poets--put their hands on men's shoulders, they break the
fatal chain of cause and effect, they reinstate the possi
bility of trust (50, 195), they insert the "miracle.
94
Another of the meanings of this image might be
that monsters are lovable. Every monster has its own
beauty, and every monster has that ultimate capacity to
respond to love.
95
Sender says in Conversaciones that man s tendency
to geometry is what saves us from being destroyed by the
orgiastic predominance of our unconscious. "That is, life
is a game in which instincts and the unconscious have the
strongest role. But let's not forget that we have a brain
that knows how to put three billiard balls on a table [and
make them obey a plan]. Well, that minimal geometry which
is in every one of man's intentions lets us dominate the
chaos of the senses, especially those given over to the
unconscious" (Pehuelas, Conversaciones. pp. 135-136).
96
Sender has already contrasted poet and decapita-
tor in his vignette of Pito's father (supra, p. 297, n. 67).
It should be noted also that the poet Ruben s name is
completed by Dario's. It was Ruben Dario who wrote the
sonnet which could well be addressed to Lucha as she dares
break out of her traditional mimetism and becomes an inde
pendent woman, lovely in her sure knowledge of her personal
worth. The sonnet begins:
Ama tu ritmo y ritma tus acciones
bajo su ley, asi como tus versos;
320
The ugly toad emits its light in response to the lightning.
The Nina, love, is the lightning, the "true miracle" (258).
Mature woman and symbol coincide in Lucha, Maria de la Luz,
"Our Lady of Light." True love is fecund. By hoping,
trusting, and giving of itself, it calls forth life from
others. It is this purity of faith which constitutes
fruitful virginity, which confers upon it "solid rights, of
divine extraction" (23).^
Sender himself says that Dario is the least inter
esting, because he is good. Like any good citizen, he
98
becomes lost in anonymity. He is the productive man.
Careto thinks, "It's curious to find a normal man here who
has found a reason for happiness in work" (70). He is the
anti-macho, the man who knows that while strength is not
aggression (214), violence must occasionally be used if
necessary for a higher harmony (although proper discernment
of the issues is difficult) (290). Dario ignores the
eres un universo de universos
y tu alma una fuente de canciones.
(Ruben Dario, Cuentos v noesias. ed. Carlos Garcia Prada
[Madrid: Ediciones Iberoamericanas, S.A., 1961], p. 151.)
97
On different occasions, Sender has told me that
the Nina is variously the purity of the Virgin Mary and
pure love. They are the same thing. Sender says in
Proverbio de la muerte (now La esfera), "The only just
thing is what is fecund, and there is nothing more fecund
than the will to faith" (cited in Manuel Bejar, "La perso-
nalidad en la novela de Ramon J. Sender" [unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Utah, 1970], p. 161). The Nina
and Dario both have this will.
no ^
Pehuelas, Conversaciones, p. 136.
321
artificial formalities of the "gente decente." a fact which
annoys Madre Leonor very much (75) . To the false "digni-
dad" of the gente decente Dario opposes ' ’real human dignity.
Sad dignity. 'The only dignity which is allowed us con
sists in having managed to look squarely at a truth.
A truth which is unworthy of us"' (299-300).
But man must do more than have the courage to see
99
the truth. He must respond to it. He must perform the
hero-act. Dario knows that the Nina is not an ideal which
one possesses and destroys (as the Cuate and Pito do, and
as Trinidad wished to do), but which one conquers and
becomes integral with, an ideal to be "coupled to the very
rhythm of our own ideal being" (178). Just as the Nina has
to enter the fearful grotto and be reborn into maturity,
Dario must penetrate to the center of the "abstract nucleus"
of the ideal, to where the Nina is, instead of waiting to
be carried along by the unfolding of the ideal (177). He
99
The Nina, too, as part of her developing matur
ity, learns to look squarely at the truth. At first she
shrank from looking at the wounded Trinidad, because if she
looked she would have to see (50). At the end she is able
to relax in the arms of Seisdedos, who is bleeding from his
razor cuts, and even while rejecting his advances, she can
speak to him familiarly, as if she had known him all his
life (247). The most subtle announcement of her new
ability to see the truth is the fact that twice on the boat
at the end she sees that Dario's nostrils are trembling (as
did the movie gallant's, a sight forbidden by Trinidad)
(300, 301). She is able to accept this as a normal part of
life. His nostrils open the first time as he tells her
that the sea smells good, and she realizes that indeed, a
dense, fragrant aroma is reaching her. Throughout the
novel, the sea has symbolized the unconscious.
322
does it literally by penetrating the forest fire and bring
ing Lucha out by force (283) through a narrow passage which
is a symbolic parallel of the exit from the grotto and the
narrow path between the monsters. Dario, "Lord of the
Dawn,"^^ accomplishes the hero-quest, and by turning back
to the island instead of continuing to the mainland, by
taking the Nina back to the otherwise doomed convicts, he
achieves the most difficult aspect of the hero-task, the
return to the world with his "life-transmuting trophy.
Campbell states, "The modern hero-deed must be that of
questing to bring to light again the lost Atlantis of the
102 « •
co-ordinated soul," and this is precisely what Dario has
done. Dario represents man's ability to control his own
103
animal forces (Plato's horses) in the interests of life,
the "unfolding ideal," the "ideal on the march" (176); he
represents creativity and evolution ("the great task [is]
to invent states of consciousness for which there [are] no
words yet" [176]) as opposed to the destructive atavism of
Careto.
The macho, then, is animal force in the service of
regression (272) instead of in the service of the ideal
■^^Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, Quetzalcoatl? (Supra,
p. 218.)
1 01
Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, p. 193.
1Q2Ibid.. p. 388.
103
Supra, p. 133.
323
(177). But the macho can change the allegiance of his
"elemental forces." Seisdedos, who is first presented as
one who enjoys "the satanic happiness of the man who has
killed all his enemies" (79) becomes the man who initiates
the collection for the Nina. Trinidad, however, who is
"not only a disgrace but a constant danger" (212), dies, as
the Nina finally realizes, "because he should die" (245;
italics mine) . Something is, dying on the island (232) :
machismo. It is only a bit of skin on the tip of love's
shoe as the novel ends.
"What I am trying to say [in Epitalamiolsays
Sender, "among a few other less important things, is that
beauty and purity are a force in themselves which under
certain conditions can be superior to the animality of the
unbridled macho. Otherwise humanity would be a herd of
pigs."^^ (His vague phrase, "under certain conditions,"
might refer to the conditions prevailing in Epitalamio.)
"Epitalamio is a torrent of brutality which,
like everything I write, has a basis of more or less
legitimized hope. That is, I believe in the last
analysis in the goodness or the positive attitude of
man in the worst moments of life. Because I've seen
on countless occasions, in the war in Africa, during
the [Spanish] civil war, the vilest, most miserable
people, cornered by their own misery and attempting
destructive solutions--these people have always had
some noble resource, some possibility of showing a
generous part of themselves. Always. That's why I
can never accept a cynical position. I prefer
instead to react in favor of the religious dimen
sion. Of my understanding of what is religious,
■^^Penuelas, Conversaciones. p. 138.
324
of course.”
"You are an optimist."
"No. If what I am saying weren't true, humanity
would have finished itself off centuries ago."105
"Epitalamio." says Sender, "is the orgiastic pre
dominance of the unconscious," a predominance which does
not destroy us, thanks to the tendency toward "geometry" in
106
every man.
Sender uses extremely effective means for plunging
the reader into the realm of the unconscious. The most
obvious technique is an all-pervading use of symbols. The
detailed symbolism of the novel is set within a massive
frame of symbolism of the unconscious: the ocean, the
forest, and the night. The convicts themselves represent
the unconscious, since they act untrammeled by conscious
control. Even Trinidad's flayed body represents him in his
essential primitive condition, without the epidermis of his
107
more "civilized" persona. The dogs, the grotto, the
clearing in the forest, nudity, aggression against the
light in the tower, the grave, tangled roots, drums, colors
--these and more are symbols of the unconscious and its
forces. Sender gives play to the unconscious through
105Ibid., pp. 146-147.
~^^Ibid.. p. 135. See supra. n. 95.
■^^Sender says of Saila in La esfera. "He has lost
his exterior, epidermic personality, that is, he has lost
his 'persona.' All he has left is his gangliar humanity,
his primitive, elemental humanity" (Penuelas, Conversa
ciones . p. 145).
325
dream, fantasy, orgy, ritual, dance, song, mask, incanta
tion, superstition, free association, drunkenness, child
hood memories and fears, the symbolism of spatial relation
ships, totem, taboo, and idiocy. His imagery materializes
the abstract, and blends dream and waking experience, often
giving a hallucinatory effect. In view of the all-
impregnating symbolism of sea, forest, night, island,
convicts, every image yields values beyond its obvious
function of establishing mood, setting, or action. The
following are examples of his technique:
Around the dead man the air opened in yellow
beams and dull sounds from the interior arrived on
the shadows, against the wind (213).108
The Nina saw [Seisdedos] become lost [in the
darkness] and then reappear with the stars in the
palms of his hands and his chest and face lit up
by a spectral green. He was almost beautiful,
with the green light in his hands and the luminous
bird--also green--in the woods. But Cinturita's
look was scratching at her knee (249).109
It should be remembered that the episode of the cucuyos
marks the turning point for Seisdedos, so that the imagery
of becoming lost in darkness and reappearing with light is
not gratuitous. As the bird in the woods is not visible,
108 *
"Alrededor del muerto el aire se abria en
fanales amarillos y a favor de las sombras llegaban, contra
la brisa, rumores del interior."
■^^"La Nina lo vio perderse y volver a aparecer
luego con las estrellas en las palmas de la mano y su pecho
y su cara iluminados de un verde espectral. Era casi
hermoso, con la luz verde en las manos y el pajaro luminoso
--verde tambien-- en el bosque. Pero la mirada del
Cinturita le aranaba en la rodilla."
326
its connection with his beauty is both highly meaningful
and somewhat surrealistic. Since the association with the
nightbird has been in terms of its song up to this point,
the effect is that of synesthesia. The image of Cinturita
is even more effective than it was when first used at the
condolence scene, first because of its startling juxtapo
sition with the luminosity of Seisdedo's new life (green),
and second because Cinturita is now dead. Seisdedo’s
concern with sex is still that of the idiot's, even though
he is going to be less destructive in the future, thanks to
the affirmation which the Nina has given him.
While the novel is saturated with the sexual
preoccupation of the convicts, Sender's allusions are some
times lost or attenuated in the English, as has already
been suggested. For example, "Tira Pepe" is the only tune
that Escupita can render on the accordion.The English
version, "Shoot Pepe," turns the subject into the object.
Even a comma in the middle of it would help the English
come closer to the value of the original. "Anda a
decirselo cara a cara si tienes lo que tienen los hombres"
(121) becomes "Go tell him so to his face if you're a
111
man." The loss of the genital implication of the
Spanish, while seemingly trivial, contributes to a general
HOTirar can mean "to copulate."
1] 1
Clark, Dark Wedding, p. 117.
327
erosion of the details selected by Sender to establish the
machista tone. The word macho itself, with its constant
sexual implication in the Spanish, disappears, as does the
pattern of chingar. "Un fantasma chingon" becomes "a
stinking ghost," and "la chingada" simply evaporates, as
she probably must. Sometimes, however, the meaning of the
idiom formed with JLa chingada is missed: "Nos va a llevar
a todos la chingada" (237) ("We're all going to die")
112
becomes "She's going to give us all a piece." The whole
network of subliminal associations with machismo which
Sender forms with such expressions as ningunear, te
descuerno. hiios de la mala madre, pendeio. and mentada is
lost, as well as the Mexican flavor imparted by such words
as chambita. merito. tantito. pocho. echar al plato.
(gente) decente, mestizaie. azotar. peladito. lepero.
leperada. muertecita. guaiolote. zopilote, elote. la bola,
Cinturita. and Cuate. This flavor is essential to Epitala
mio . establishing the cultural matrix of the "barbarian"
who is being punished.
It is understandable, then, that even if they were
somewhat aware of the existence of machismo, the reviewers
of Dark Wedding would not perceive that the novel is
centrally concerned with machismo. Kazin, whose review is
on the whole both sensitive and appreciative, misses the
112Ibid.. p. 237.
328
whole point of the punishing deflation of the macho, as is
seen by this curious sentence: "When the Nina sees the
mask of a human face in the sand, she cries: 'What is it?'
That is the real substance of the story, the search for the
113
human identity. ..." "What Sender seems to be saying
. . . is that it is not the capacity for evil that is so
great in man, but his capacity for masquerade."^4
Trilling takes all the convicts to be insane, and their
115
perversion of love to be the source of evil. Schorer's
statement that the convicts are condemned for "absurd and
trivial crimes" (practically all of them are there for
murder), makes one wonder whether he read the novel atten
tively and what the value of his critical judgment in this
1 1 fi
case might be. The interpretations of Redman, Soskin,
and Gorman seem justified by the text of the novel, as far
117
as those interpretations go.
113
Alfred Kazin, "The Beast in the Jungle," review
of Dark Wedding. New Republic. CVIII (April 5, 1943), 451.
114Ibid.. p. 452.
■^^Lionel Trilling, "The Lower Depths," review of
Dark Wedding. Nation. CLVI (April 24, 1943), 603, 604.
116
Mark Schorer, review of Dark Wedding in Yale
Review, XXXII (Summer, 1943), vi.
117
Ben Ray Redman, "Ramon Sender's World," review
of Dark Wedding. Saturday Review of Literature. XXVI (May
15, 1943), 13;William Soskin, "A Spanish Symbol of
Virginity," review of Dark Wedding. New York Herald Tribune
Weekly Book Review. March 28, 1943, p. 4; Herbert Gorman,
"Caribbean Revolt," review of Dark Wedding, New York Times
Book Review. March 28, 1943, pp. 10, 12.
329
Critics and reviewers of Epitalamio also seem
either not to have found Sender's specific emphasis on
machismo, or have thought it not worth mentioning. Mainer
takes Epitalamio to be "a parable, doubtless, of a society
118
in which crime and self-defense are the only laws."
This characterization of the convicts seems to overlook
their intense aggression manifested in situations that have
nothing to do with physical self-defense. Nora's charac
terization of Huerito and Rengo as "pure innocence" is a
119
misleading oversimplification. (For example, Rengo s
eyes have a "satanic look" which dissolves into "a shadow
of honey" when the Nina looks at him (135), and Huerito
Calzon trusts Careto and insults Dario (73) . Tovar
believes that Trinidad is a mulato and states that blacks
are on the island. I find no textual basis for either
idea, unless one can assume that the Cuban is black because
his favorite song is "Thick-lipped Black" (104). While
Tovar recognizes that the machos of the island dispute the
possession of the Nina, he makes no mention of any message
120
of the book. Bejar says quite frankly that the meaning
118 ^ - •
Jose-Carlos Mainer, "La culpa y su expiacion:
dos imagenes en las novelas de Ramon Sender," Papeles de
Son Armadans. LIV (August, 1969), 129.
119 ~
Eugenio G. de Nora, La novela espanola contem-
poranea (1927-1960). Vol. II (Madrid: Editorial Gredos,
1962), p. 43.
120 ,
Antonio Tovar, "Dos capitulos para un retrato
literario de Sender," Cuadernos del Idioma (Buenos Aires),
I (April, 1966), 19, 20.
330
121
of the novel escapes him. King calls Rengo a "halfwit"
and believes that Sender is saying that Careto is not
122
responsible for his actions. (I have tried to say the
opposite, finding that Sender has him deliberately reject
ing flashes of truth, constantly rationalizing, smiling at
his sense of guilt, and trying to erase the guilt of one
murder by committing another of the same type (171). He is
responsible for his rejection of responsibility.) King
finds such a weight of pessimism in the novel that the
"happy outcome" is unjustifiable unless "Dario's outward
success merely symbolizes the inner reward which comes to
1 OQ
the man who gives his all for an idea." He finds "hope
lessness . . . inherent in [Sender's] philosophical
position," but refers to his "faith in the essential good-
1 t y /
ness of reality." In my opinion, King's second finding
negates the first. The message of Epitalamio is intensely
optimistic precisely because it deals with the essential
kernel of good in every man, because there _is a path
between the "monsters," there are stars, there are toads
which emit luminescent halos (174), there .is a nightbird
121
Manuel Bejar, "La personalidad en la novela de
Ramon J. Sender," p. 359.
ip?
Charles L. King, "An Exposition of the Synthetic
Philosophy of Ramon J. Sender" (unpublished Ph.D. disserta
tion, University of Southern California, 1953), pp. 180-181.
123Ibid.. p. 185.
124Ibid.
331
with a liquid, mint-flavored song in the midst of the
darkness.
On the basis of these examples of questionable
readings or partially incorrect interpretations, one might
be wary of evaluations of the aesthetic value of Epitala
mio . These range from enthusiastic ("This novel holds its
own in comparison with the best novels of tropical
125
America" ) to one which is frankly deprecatory. I quote
the latter in its entirety, hoping thereby to end this
discussion of Epitalamio much as the novel itself ends.
An interesting story of beauty not too dis
tressed among the crazed Calibans of a penal colony
on a Caribbean island. The virgin widow of the
convicts' murdered keeper becomes the object of a
violent rivalry among them. With the aid of a
loony marijuana peddler, a young school teacher
spirits her away to a grotto, and their love idyll
is interwoven with a growing nightmare of super
stition, lust, obscenity, and murder. Innocence
and young love triumph. The whole thing is
sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, which
seems to suggest that this, maybe, is life.126
The phrase "love idyll," utterly contrary to the facts of
the novel, betrays a reading that cannot even be called
superficial. Epitalamio is fascinatingly rich, dense,
tender, wise, integral in meaning and construction. Far
from being "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,"
125 -
Tovar, "Dos capitulos para un retrato literario
de Sender," p. 20.
126
Unsigned review of Dark Wedding in "Briefly
Noted Fiction," New Yorker. March 27, 1943, p. 63.
332
it has thought and creativity at its very essence, bursting
from every image, with symbolic meanings layered even in
individual words. Like the toad, it may seem ugly to the
eyes of some beholders, but it leaves a circle of light
behind after it disappears.
CHAPTER VI
LA MUERTE DE ARTEMIO CRUZ; NO EXIT
I don't know where to head, how to move. . . .
I don't know what direction to look in, I don't
want to get up any more because I don't know where
to go toward. . . . (222)
Although Carlos Fuentes published La muerte de
Artemio Cruz in 1962,^ the concern of the novel with
machismo has so far not been discussed. To be sure, atten
tion has been called to the magnificent "litany of la
chingada," inspired by Octavio Paz's "The Sons of Malinche"
in his Labyrinth of Solitude, but the relationship of this
passage to the deeper meaning of the novel and the mythical
pattern in which Fuentes' discussion of machismo is set
have yet to be explored.
As has been pointed out by Jose Emilio Pacheco, the
Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica. (Hereinafter
referred to as Artemio Cruz.) All quotations will be from
the first edition, with page numbers indicated parenthet
ically in the body of the text. The translations will be
mine. The English translation (The Death of Artemio Cruz,
trans. by Sam Hileman [New York: Farrar, Straus & Co.,
1964]) is unusable for my purposes, for reasons which I
will show in the course of the chapter. Page numbers of
the Hileman translation will be given parenthetically after
each citation from it. I shall include the Spanish orig
inals only when something is lost in the English, when I am
criticizing the Hileman version, when the meaning is
ambiguous, or when the original has lyrical value.
333
334
lyric and structural complexity of Artemio Cruz "demand of
the reader a constant attention and an effort to follow all
the clues which are given in the brilliant flood of images
2
and rhythms which constitute Fuentes1 style." Although
some of the most important of these clues are set in the
plot, it would seem that they have not always been found.
I will start my analysis of Artemio Cruz by giving the plot
in some detail.
Born in 1889 in a Negro hut in the jungles of
Veracruz, Artemio Cruz is the son of a mulata, Isabel Cruz,
by Atanasio Menchaca, whose family was given Cocuya, a vast
estate appropriated from the Indians by Santa Anna and made
even larger by successive foreclosures on small indebted
landholders of the area. Atanasio was killed before
Artemio was born, and Isabel was beaten off the estate with
clubs while she was still trying to pass the afterbirth
3
(286, 315). Artemio is reared by his mother’s brother
^Jose Emilio Pacheco and Carlos Valdes, "Dos
opiniones sobre La muerte de Artemio Cruz." Revista de la
Universidad de Mexico, XVI (August, 1962), 19. (Herein
after referred to as "Dos opiniones.")
3
Gonzalez Echevarria asserts that Isabel Cruz was
on the point of delivering a twin when she was killed by
Atanasio (Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, "La muerte de
Artemio Cruz y Unamuno una fuente de Fuentes" sic 1,
Cuadernos Americanos, CLXXVII [July-August, 1971], 204.
Hereinafter referred to as "Unamuno una fuente"). He seems
to have overlooked "Si, el amo Atanasio murio muy a tiempo;
el hubiera mandado matar al niho; Lunero lo salvo" (285);
and "corrieron a palos a su hermana Isabel Cruz" (286) .
That her contractions after Artemio's birth were due to a
twin strikes me as highly dubious.
335
Lunero. At the age of thirteen, Artemio kills Pedro
Menchaca, Atanasio1s brother, thinking he is the
enganchador^ come to take Lunero away. Lunero is shot as
he approaches the spot high on the escarpment of the
eastern Sierra where he is to meet Artemio with a mule,
and Artemio goes into his new life on the other side of the
mountains completely alone (314).
In Mexico City a teacher, Sebastian, takes Artemio
into his home and teaches him to read and write, teaches
him the blacksmith's trade, and teaches him an anti
clerical, humanistic ethic, "those elemental things a man
must base his life on in order to be free" (125)
Sebastian sends Artemio north to the Revolution in 1910,
when Artemio is twenty-one (70) . It is important to note
that he goes at Sebastian's request, in order not to let
his mentor down (70).
After fighting well in Sonora and Sinaloa, he
abandons his men in a battle and fails to aid a soldier
whose life he might have saved, because he has gone "soft,"
dreaming of Regina, his eighteen-year-old sweetheart who
has followed him generously and faithfully ever since he
^The man who would arrange the entry of a worker
into virtual slavery.
^"Esas cosas elementales de las cuales debe
partirse para ser un hombre libre"--not, as the Hileman
translation would have it, "those elemental principles that
you must abandon to become a free man" (118). (See infra,
358-359; 353, n. 26.
336
raped her one day in a Sinaloan town (82-83). While
Artemio is abandoning himself to his love for her, Regina
is hanged by the huertistas. His fury over his loss
enables him to pick up the thread of combat again.
In 1915, while he is commanding a detachment of
carrancistas sent out to discover the whereabouts of
retreating villistas in the mountain fastnesses of Durango
and Chihuahua, his men are defeated and he is captured by
Colonel Zagal and taken to Perales, on the edge of the
Chihuahuan desert, where Zagal offers to spare his life in
exchange for information regarding the troops which are
only awaiting word from Artemio in order to attack the
villistas. Artemio refuses, and is put in the military
jail, where he finds Tobias, his Yaqui Indian friend who
had tried to help him escape on the way to Perales, and a
civilian emissary from Carranza, Gonzalo Bernal, who
realizes already that the Revolution will fail because of
the combination of corruption and lack of true revolution
ary spirit among some of its leaders, fear on the part of
the intelligentsia, and the ignorance and the violence of
those leaders who do seek radical social change (194-195).
Artemio gives Zagal false information, and watches the
execution of Tobias and Bernal. He then treacherously
kills Zagal, who has trusted him in a man-to-man combat
originally suggested by Artemio when Zagal was first
bargaining for information.
337
Artemio is discharged from the army as a colonel,
and goes to Puebla in 1919, where he learns that Bernal's
proud old aristocratic father, Don Gamaliel, is at the
point of financial ruin because of the post-revolutionary
intransigence of both his peasant labor force and his
debtors. Artemio informs Gamaliel through the priest,
Remigio Paez, that he intends to lend money to the peasants
at a much lower interest rate than Gamaliel's, thus com
pleting the latter's ruin, but that he also offers to
collect Gamaliel's debts for him, giving him only one-
fourth of what he collects. Gamaliel's daughter Catalina,
with whom Artemio fell in love when he first saw her on a
Puebla street, is part of the bargain. Catalina realizes
that Artemio must have betrayed Gonzalo in some way in
order to emerge alive from their common jail, and during
their early marriage she is torn between a spirit of
revenge as daughter and sister of the men Artemio has
violated, and sexual love for this tall, masterful, green-
eyed adventurer. Their marriage fails in Puebla, and they
will not only sleep in separate rooms for the rest of their
marriage, but live in complete inner aloneness in relation
to each other as well.
Artemio takes over Gamaliel's estate, exploits the
peasants, ruins his aristocratic neighbors, becomes a
Congressman, and abandons Obregon in 1927 when he is led to
understand that Obregon will lose the power struggle. In
338
exchange for his shift of allegiance he receives a large
block of "development property" on the outskirts of Mexico
City. By unscrupulous, selfish means he becomes one of the
biggest capitalists of Mexico, the antithesis of everything
represented by the aspirations of the Revolution and the
programs of Lazaro Cardenas (16).
By 1934 Artemio (now forty-five) has traveled to
Europe and the United States and has acquired some degree
of musical and artistic taste, thanks to his love for
Laura, a highly cultured, sensitive woman of thirty-five
whose understanding of life’s meaning finds resonance in
the works of such men as Calderon, Quevedo, Manrique,
Montaigne. Laura, finally divorced from her husband for
the sake of preserving herself as a person, asks Artemio to
make up his mind. He is not ready for the renunciations
and growth that marriage with her would entail, and he
chooses to stay where he is.
Artemio had removed his and Catalina’s son Lorenzo
from her possessive and smothering influence, taking him to
Cocuya, which he had bought and reconstructed for Lorenzo,
so that he could become a man through responsibility and
contact with the natural life of the hacienda. But in
1939, Lorenzo dies in Spain as he and his Republican
friends are escaping to France after the sure defeat of
their cause.
In 1947 (he is now fifty-eight) Artemio hires
339
Lilia, a young woman whose necessity forces her to sell
herself, for a weekend of nocturnal pleasure in Acapulco,
where he realizes for the first time that he is old and
unattractive. Knowing that she gets no pleasure from her
services to him, and that her young body now fills him with
a kind of "malevolent austerity" (154), he nevertheless
persists in using her, not as a person, but as a possession.
By 1955 Catalina is living in Lomas and Artemio is
living with Lilia in a palatial rebuilt monastery in
Coyoacan, finding his identity in the enormously luxurious
and expensive antique furniture and obiets d1 art with
which he has furnished it. He has only contempt for
Catalina and their daughter Teresa, who do not have his
aesthetic and sensual tastes, who do not know what the
wealth he has given them can be used for.^ He dies of a
mesentery infarct in 1959, at the age of seventy-one.
La muerte de Artemio Cruz can be read on several
different levels. One of the most apparent of these is
Fuentes' commentary on the failure of the Revolution of
1910.^ Underlying his social and economic commentary,
Artemio1s values and his sybaritic New Year's Eve
party are a devastating image of the end result of the 1910
Revolution.
y
See Dagoberto Fuentes, "La desilusion de la Revo
lution Mexicana de 1910, vista en la obra de Carlos
Fuentes" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Southern California, 1971 [hereinafter referred to as
"Desilusion"]); and Roberto Fernandez Retamar, "Carlos
Fuentes y la otra novela de la Revolucion Mexicana," Casa
340
however, can be found a discussion of the human task, of
the problem of human freedom, of what it means to be a man,
a discussion which is laid out in a basic pattern of myth.
Fuentes' treatment of machismo in Artemio Cruz can best be
approached, then, by dealing first with his mythic pattern
and his consequent interpretation of the human task.
An island theme runs throughout the second half of
the novel. Near the end of it (which is really the begin
ning of Artemio's life), the enganchador tells Lunero that
if he tries to flee inland, he will be handed over by
envious peons. As the mulatto stands the next day and
stares at the river current, his "thirty-three years of
cinnamon flesh and pink palms taste [very] tall" to Artemio
(302). Lunero's eyes seem "painted white, not by age,
which thus clarifies the gaze of the race, but by nostal
gia, which is another age, older, behind" (302). Beyond
the first frontier of the sea,
farther on, the world of the islands began, and
after that you came to the Continent where someone
like him could get lost in the jungle and say he
had returned. Behind him were the sierra, the
Indians, the plateau. He refused to look behind.
He breathed deeply and looked toward the sea as if
toward a magic region of freedom and fulfillment
(302) .
de las Americas (Havana), Ano IV, No. 26 (October-November,
1964), pp. 123-128. Attention should be called to the
superb Carlos Fuentes bibliography given in D. Fuentes,
"Desilusion," pp. 277-293.
341
The boy suddenly frees himself from the reserve maintained
by the two in their intimacy, and he runs toward Lunero to
embrace him for the first and last time. This Christ-like
figure (who dies at the age of thirty-three on the mountain
as he attempts to help Artemio escape after the latter has
killed Pedro Menchaca) will henceforth be linked on very
deep levels of Artemio's psyche with the idea of para
disiacal islands. To be sure, these islands are real, the
Antilles, where Lunero's father had lived before being
brought to Veracruz by the wealthy Cuban family for whom he
worked (286) . But as soon as the islands are misted over
with nostalgia, they become mythical. And indeed, as
Artemio waits for Lunero on the mountain, he feels the
impinging light of the stars intimately merged with indi
vidual scents of the jungle fruits and flowers, and he sees
the light-scents "clearly recede, farther and farther into
the background, in a dizzying ebbing of the frozen islands
. . . farther and farther from the first opening and the
O
first explosion" (310). The latter phrases allude both to
Artemio's birth and first cry, and to the opening of his
8 ^
"Las veras claramente retroceder, cada vez mas al
fondo, en un reflujo mareante de las islas heladas . . .
cada vez mas lejos de la primera apertura y del primer
estallido . . ." The Hileman version misses the literal
meaning of the passage and hence the idea that the islands,
light, and the fragrances of his youth are receding
together: "You will clearly see how the light recedes
dizzily farther and farther from the frozen islands, and
farther and farther from the first opening and the first
explosion" (300).
i
342
closed paradise with Lunero and the explosion of the gun.
The "frozen islands" ("frozen" is a clear clue to their
mythic character, since islands cannot be frozen in the
Caribbean1 .) are both the paradise man leaves when he is
born and the lost "Eden" of his origins that he yearns for.
The islands are inseparably linked in Artemio's mind with
his idyllic life with Lunero, which resembles the descrip
tion given by Alfonso Reyes of the "Islas Afortunadas" of
Ronsard: a place where one can live "without any more work
than that of reaching out one's hand to pick up the free
gifts of the earth.Origin and destiny merge in the
image of the islands, just as Eden and Utopia merge. The
Blessed Islands and Ultima Thule are to the west and north,
respectively, but Lunero's and Artemio's are the islands of
the dawn (208, 225). They are all in the same place,
really:
Thule has also been called the "white island"
--identical with the "white mountain"--or the symbol
for the world, as well as with the Blessed Islands
of Western tradition. Guenon has . . . mentioned
that whiteness, in relation to topographical
features, is always an allusion to these paradisiac
isles which man has lost and to which he returns
again and again in his legends and folktales.
One might remember here that Lunero's eyelids are white in
his moment of nostalgia for the islands and the Continent.
^"No hay tal lugar," in Obras Completas de Alfonso
Reyes., Vol. XI (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1960),
p. 384.
■^Cirlot, Symbols. p. 323.
343
Fuentes' expression, enigmatic at the beginning of
the novel, "cleavage of your memory, which separates the
two halves; solder of life, which joins them again, dis
solves them, pursues them, finds them: the fruit has two
halves: today they will become one again: you will
remember the half you left behind: destiny will find you"
(17), is later seen to refer to the paradise of origin and
destiny, which man forgets when he is born.^
Over and over and over as he lies dying, Artemio
says and thinks, "I waited for him with joy that morning.
We crossed the river on horseback" (12 ff.). The reader
finally is given the chance to see that the river (the same
one Lunero stood at) has taken on the symbolism of the
ocean in relation to the islands: "As you cross the river,
on the other bank you and he will distinguish a specter of
of land rising over the misty fermentation of the morning"
12
(167). Artemio has momentarily glimpsed and touched the
11
"Tajo de tu memoria, que separa las dos mitades;
soldadura de la vida, que vuelve a unirlas, disolverlas,
perseguirlas, encontrarlas: la fruta tiene dos mitades:
hoy volveran a unirse: recordaras la mitad que dejaste
atras: el destino te encontrara." The Hileman version,
"the cutting edge of memory that separates the two halves"
(12) confuses the consistency and continuity of Fuentes*
larger image. Fuentes has the memory split, while the
translation has it doing the splitting. Alfonso Reyes
points out that in Samuel Butler's Utopian Erewhon. the
foetuses that dare to be born "drink the potion that com
pletely obliterates their memory, and thus enter the night
mare of the world" (cited in "No hay tal lugar," p. 377).
^"Al cruzar el rio, tu y el distinguiran en la
344
13
Utopian mountain-island. The correspondence of "other
bank or side" (a repeated motif in Artemio Cruz) and
"islands of the dawn" is made explicit in a passage in
which Fuentes treats man's journey upward out of the ocean
of his origin: "With . . . his five fingers fixed on the
other shore, on solid land, on the islands of the dawn"
(208). His phrase in the same passage, "You will sweat
like a horse" evokes the companionship of Artemio and
Lorenzo on the sweating horses that morning at Cocuya when
they crossed the river (208).
Fuentes likens man's life (individual and collec
tive) to a labyrinth: we enter it from paradise and, if we
can find our way out, we exit from it into paradise. And
in that labyrinth man has a thread, an halo, put into it by
the basic patterns of cosmic motion.^ As Artemio stands
otra ribera un espectro de tierra levantado sobre la
fermentacion brumosa de la manana."
13
"The equation of island with mountain is
explained by [Guenon] by the fact that both express ideas
of stability, superiority and of refuge from prevailing
mediocrity. The island, rising unscathed in the midst of
the swirling ocean [notice the correspondence between
"swirling" and Fuentes' "fermentacion." which also gives a
note of unreality] . . . corresponds to the biological
symbol of the mountain, as the 'mount of salvation' which
towers above the transient 'stream of forms'" (Cirlot,
Symbols. p. 324).
-i t
"Pythagorean thought," says Cirlot, "imparted a
fresh impulse to astral theology: the 'islands of the
Blessed' and all mythic geography came to be projected onto
celestial planes--the sun, the moon, the Milky Way. . . .
The lunar condition, then, is equivalent to the human
condition" (Symbols. p. 205). It is no accident that
345
high above the jungle waiting for Lunero, he has his first
vision of the horizontal sweep of earth and the vertical
reaches of the heavens. And here Fuentes gives his most
basic key to the meaning of another motif, which is
repeated too insistently to be irrelevant: girar, to
wheel, to girate, to spin.
Earth will girate in its even pace around its
own axis and the sun, master-teacher . . . Earth and
the moon will girate around themselves and each
other, and both around their common center of
gravity . . . The whole court of the sun will move
within its white belt and the swift stream of liquid
powder will move facing the conglomerates beyond,
around this clear vault of the tropical night, in
the ceaseless dance of entwined fingers, in the
directionless and limitless dialogue of the universe
(309; italics mine).
That is, the conducting hilo received on the mountain of
origin consists of maintaining a balance of revolving on
one's own personal axis while preserving the relationship
to those circling around one and to that common center of
gravity around which both are moving. That this
Artemio's uncle has the very uncommon name of Lunero. It
is one more clue to help the reader find the deeper pattern
of meaning in the novel.
■^"Girara la tierra en su carrera uniforme sobre un
eje propio y un sol maestro . . . giraran la tierra y la
luna alrededor de si mismas y del cuerpo opuesto y ambas
alrededor del campo comun de su peso . . . Se movera toda
la corte del sol dentro de su cinturon bianco y el reguero
de polvora liquida se movera frente a los conglomerados
externos, en torno de esta boveda clara de la noche tropi
cal, en la danza perpetua de dedos entrelazados, en el
dialogo sin direccion y fronteras del universo." It is not
"interlaced toes," as the Hileman version would have it'.
(300) (See n. 75, infra.)
346
interpretation is not gratuitous is borne out by a passage
early in the novel, when Artemio, indulging his passion for
Regina, loses his orientation in the battle:
He spun around [literally, "upon himself"1,
raising his hands to his head. He didn't under-
stand. It was necessary to have but one point of
departure and a clear mission, and never lose that
golden thread: only in this way could one under
stand what was happening. One minute of distrac
tion was enough to turn the whole chess of war
into an irrational, incomprehensible game. composed
of fragmentary, abrupt, and meaningless movements
(76-77; italics mine).16
The passage is an image of the larger game of Artemio's
whole life as well as of his particular disorientation of
the moment. As the young Artemio stands on the mountain,
dance and game are linked in a sentence prophetic of the
sterility of his future life:
And you will wait for a mulatto and a mule to
cross the mountain and begin to live, to fill up
time, to execute the steps and gestures of a
macabre game in which life will advance at the same
time that life dies; of an insane dance in which
time will devour time and no one will be able to
hold back, alive, the irreversible course of dis
appearance (313) .
The last three passages quoted are significantly linked
* 17
with his former teacher Sebastian ("un sol maestro"), who
16
"Giro sobre si mismo, llevandose las manos a la
cabeza. No entendxa. Era preciso partir de un lugar, con
una mision clara, y jamas perder ese hilo dorado: solo de
esa manera era posible comprender lo que sucedxa. Bastarxa
un minuto de distraccion para que todo el ajedrez de la
guerra se convirtiera en un juego irracional, incompren-
sible, hecho de movimientos jironados, abruptos, carerites
de sentido."
17
"A controlling^sun" (299) in the Hileman version.
The reference to Sebastxan is lost. Even if it were not,
347
gave Artemio his punto de partir. his point of departure:
"those elemental things a man must base his life on (de las
cuales debe partirse) in order to be free" (125). When
that basis of action, that point of departure, is lost, man
loses his step in the game of hi-s life, in his cosmic
dance.
The mountain and labyrinth motifs are clear in the
section concerning Perales. Artemio hopes to find what he
is pursuing "in some almost impassable section (vericueto)
of the mountain, following the most difficult trail" (170).
He is literally in a labyrinth when he tries to escape in
the dark tunnels of the mine. He falls into Zagal's hands
again because he neither sees nor hears (182). Gonzalo and
Tobias offer him a thread in the jail, the calabozo. but he
rejects it, and when Gonzalo and Tobias are shot, it is too
dark for Artemio to see the silhouette of the mountains
(199) .
The section dealing with Laura is most explicit in
its repetition of the girar and hilo motifs. Artemio spins
his drink to mix it, he spins the globe of the heavens, the
needle of the phonograph spins on silence, he and Laura
slowly whirl as they dance in New York (210-215). Laura
follows the red and green lines on the map of Paris with
the figure would be meaningless in view of the Hileman
version's mistranslation of partirse. (Supra, p. 335,
n. 5.)
348
her finger as they drive through it. She is indicating the
way (217). And, even though they have agreed that it is
less dangerous to open doors than to shut them, Artemio
chooses not to risk the life Laura is offering him. "He
looked back [a thing Lunero did not wsnt to do]. ... He
left. He carefully shut the door" (219, , the door that
offers him an exit to his labyrinth.
A few years later, in Veracruz, he and Lorenzo ride
together on labyrinthine paths. "The knotted roots of the
trees will break the scab of earth; wild and twisted, they
will appear all along the path opened by the machete.
A path which will soon become tangled over again in vines"
(168). On the beach that day, Artemio wants to tell
Lorenzo that he had taken him to Cocuya in the first place
so that he could "find the ends of the thread that
[Artemio] broke, tie [his] life together again, complete
1 8
[his] other destiny" (242). Lorenzo seems to understand
even though Artemio does not dare articulate his yearning,
and says that he has booked passage on a ship to Spain
(227). "Wouldn't you do the same thing, Dad? You didn't
stay in your own home. . . . It's as if I were living your
life all over again, do you know what I mean? . . . And now
there's that frontier. I think it's the last frontier
left" (228).
18 *
"A encontrar los cabos del hilo que vo rompi, a
reanudar mi vida, a completar mi otro destino."
349
The climax of the mythical theme of islands/
mountain-labyrinth/thread occurs in Spain. Lorenzo and
his friend Miguel have met three girls, Dolores, Maria, and
Nuri, who have fought for the Republican cause also, and
they try to walk toward the French border together. They
must cross a bridge that goes over a swift, foaming, white
river, but the bridge is very possibly mined. Dolores
takes Lorenzo's hand.
Dolores, Dolores' hot hand, the five fingers
which she just took from her armpit, took the five
fingers of the young man, and he understood. She
sought his eyes and he, also for the first time,
saw her eyes. She blinked, and he saw they were
green, the same as the ocean near our country.19
. . . They walked, she and he, hand in hand, and
stepped onto the bridge. . . . The bridge got
longer, it seemed to be crossing an ocean instead
of this turbulent river.
"My heart was pounding fast. She must have felt
my heartbeat in my hand, because she lifted it and
put it on her breast and I could feel the strength
of her heart there. ..."
Then they fearlessly walked side by side and the
bridge got shorter (235-236).
The allusion to the green ocean (that Lunero dreamed of)
and the suggestion that the river is an ocean imply that
the bridge symbolizes the safe-conduct to the islands
(mountain), just as the hilo does. This implication is
confirmed in the paragraph immediately following the above
19
The phrase "nuestra tierra" is the only marring
intrusion of the author in the novel, the crack in the
integrity of the novelistic world. It may simply be that
the quotation marks were omitted that would make this
phrase an excerpt from Lorenzo's last letter home, as other
passages are.
350
excerpt:
On the other side of the river, there loomed up
what they had not seen. A great, bare elm tree,
huge, beautiful, white. It was covered not by snow
but by a brilliant ice. It was shining like a
jewel in the night, so white it was. He felt the
weight of the gun on his shoulder, the weight of his
legs, his leaden feet on the wood of the bridge: so
ethereal, so luminous and white the elm tree seemed
that was waiting for them. He squeezed Dolores'
fingers. The frozen wind was blinding them (236).
The word describing the wind, helado, is the same adjective
that will be used of the islands that recede with the light
and the jungle fragrances as young Artemio stands on the
20
mountain in Veracruz. When Lorenzo and Dolores reach the
other side. they do not look back, but run toward the elm
and embrace its "naked, white, icy trunk, they shook it
while those pearls of cold fell on their heads, they
touched each other's hands as they embraced it, and they
tore themselves away from their tree to embrace each other,
21
Dolores and he . . ." (236). The white, jeweled, lumi
nous elm, covered with ice (hielo, the root word of helado.
20
This correspondence might be missed by the
English reader; "frozen" is used for the islands (300), and
"icy" for the wind (227), understandably enough. It is
worth noting, too, the only seeming incongruity that
Catalina's hand is helada as she offers tender affection to
the dying Artemio (11). "I hold her. I take her frozen „-
hand. But he only momentarily touches the island again,
as he cannot sustain his acceptance of her. (See infra,
p. 375.)
21
"Abrazaron el tronco desnudo, bianco y cubierto
de hielo, lo mecieron mientras esas perlas de frio caian
sobre sus cabezas, se tocaron las manos abrazandolo y se
separaron violentamente de su arbol para abrazarse Dolores
<*” ! I I
y el, . • .
351
frozen), not only functions as one more link in the identi-
22
fication of island and mountain, but is the symbolic
equivalent of the "common center of gravity" around which
earth and moon revolve as, spinning on their own axes, they
also revolve around each other. As they embrace the naked
trunk of the elm, their hands touch and only then, after
they have embraced their common center of gravity, do they
embrace each other, in the dance of intertwined fingers
begun on the other side of the river.
Now, the elm does not appear frequently in Spanish
literature, so the reader might well wonder why Fuentes
chooses it as the last piece in the puzzle he so carefully
and subtly develops in the various layers of his book.
I believe one answer may be found in a sentence by Octavio
23
Paz: "Man is the elm that always gives incredible pears."
Man is the elm. Other men must be the common center of two
lovers' gravity. The two young people risk their lives
for the sake of Miguel, Maria, and Nuri. Life and liberty
lie on the other side of the mountain for these young
people just as it did for Artemio long ago on the mountain
22
Cirlot mentions the huge tree on the island
visited by St. Brendan, and the fact that Hindu doctrine
"tells of 'an essential island' . . . whose banks are made
of pulverized gems" (Symbols, pp. 152-153). Artemio's
unconscious says to him, "Lorenzo on that mountain without
you?" (170; italics mine).
23
Las peras del olmo (Barcelona: Editorial Seix
Barral, S.A., 1971), p. 7. The first edition was published
in 1957.
352
in Veracruz. Lorenzo dies, tragically close to life and
freedom, because he tries to shoot down a strafing plane
with his jammed old rifle, so that others will not be
killed, so that the humanism which the Republicans stand
for can continue on the other side of the border.
Another facet of the elm1 s meaning might be found
at the end of Antonio Machado's poem, "A un olmo seco" ("To
a Dry Elm"):
Mi corazon espera
tambien, hacia la luz y hacia la vida,
otro milagro de la p r i m a v e r a . 2 4
Artemio waits that night on the mountain, bathed in the
light of the stars, with his heart "open to life" (314).
Given the thread first by Lunero, then by Sebastian and
others, he keeps losing it. He forgets that spring can
only come after winter, that humility (that strange death
which man is so reluctant to accept) is the prerequisite of
life, that sometimes man must literally die for the sake of
life. Lorenzo gives up his life even though he loves
Dolores as much as Artemio loved Regina, even though his
life lies before him on the other side of his mountain as
attractively as Artemio's did. But Lorenzo finds the
0 /
"My heart is waiting, too, [turned] toward light
and toward life, for another miracle of spring" ("Campos de
Castilla," in Antonio Machado, Poesias [Buenos Aires:
Editorial Losada, S.A., 1943], p. 133). While Machado's
poem expresses hope in the midst of his desolation and
bereavement after his young wife's death, its essential
message, of course, is that of resurrection.
353
island that men have dreamed of for centuries,
an island that now appears, now disappears, a magic
creation that [keeps] man in expectant suspense.
One only [reaches] it by the fearful route of ship
wreck. To attain to it, one must make up one’s
mind to die.25
"For you," says Artemio’s unconscious, referring to that
night on the mountain, "the galaxies will radiate light and
the sun will consume itself ... So that you may love and
live and be ... So that you may find the secret and die
without being able to communicate it, because you will only
possess it when your eyes close forever" (313). Artemio's
tragedy is that even though his son did communicate the way
to him through his posthumous letter, he cannot remember
the sound of Lorenzo’s voice, his odor, the color of his
skin (243): that is, he cannot grasp the thread that
2 6
Lorenzo tied together for him. This tragedy is strik
ingly but subtly expressed in two related images. High on
^Alfonso Reyes, "No hay tal lugar," p. 381.
26
In fact, Artemio denies in the end that there are
islands. He says, "Don't cross the ocean, there are no
islands, it isn t true, I deceived you . . . with the
teacher . . . Esteban? . . . Sebastian? ... I can't
remember ... he taught me so much . . ." (271). That
Utopian islands are linked with Sebastian in this passage
is Fuentes’ way of suggesting that Sebastian is to be
associated with such humanists as More and Campanella.
(See Reyes? "No hay tal lugar," pp. 362-369; Carlos Fuentes,
Tiempo mexicano. pp. 27-32; and infra, p. 382, n. 65). In
Tiempo mexicano. Fuentes calls the Utopian city of
Campanella and More "an authentic community which dissolves
opposites" (31). It is highly significant that he uses the
name Campanela (not usual in Spanish) in Artemio Cruz. once
in the seemingly innocent sentence, "Campanela's outside"
(166). Indeed, Utopia does remain outside of Artemio's
labyrinth.
354
the mountain, young Artemio sees a buzzard (zopilote)
wheeling, "tied to the attraction of the deepest bend of
that river in Veracruz, and, after resting on the immobil
ity of a crag, swift to lift its flight which will inter
rupt in dark rhythms the even insistence of the stars"
27
(310). The zopilote. of course, is Artemio, tied to the
deep, fundamental truths he learned from Lunero on that
river bank, now ready to resume his flight after resting on
the mountain. But when he is fifty-eight, at Acapulco with
Lilia, the ventilator in his hotel room "girated like a
captured buzzard" (161; italics mine). Artemio is
28
trapped. One of his insistent preoccupations as he lies
dying is that they open the window (11 ff.). He thinks
well along in the fatal progress of the infarct, "I don’t
know where to head ... I don’t know what direction to
look in ... I don't know where to go toward" (222). He
cannot find the exit to his labyrinth.
27
"Ese zopilote que vuela atado a la atraccion del
mas hondo recodo del rfo veracruzano y que despues se
posara en la inmovilidad de un penasco, pronto a levantar
el vuelo que cortara, en ondas oscuras, la pareja insis-
tencia de las estrellas."
28
The Hileman version omits the second flight of
the buzzard after resting on the crag and omits the word
"atraccion." which serves in the original as a reinforce
ment of the image of one's wheeling around the common
center of gravity. Worse, "El ventilador giraba como un
zopilote capturado" becomes ^he air-conditioning whirred
around him" (154). The second image of the zopilote is
lost completely, thus rendering even less functional what
is left of the first image.
355
Consonant with the deeper question of human freedom
expressed through the labyrinth motif, there is a strong
theme of choice in Artemio Cruz, which I will discuss after
a brief examination of the idea of freedom. Toward the end
29
of the long passage in which Artemio's unconscious traces
the evolution of the race, it says to him, speaking now of
him specifically:
You will decide, you will choose one of the
paths, you will sacrifice the others: you will
sacrifice yourself on choosing, you will cease
being all the other men you could have been, you
will want other men--another--to fulfill in your
stead the life you mutilated on choosing: on
choosing yes, on choosing no, on permitting that
not your wish, identical with your freedom, should
show you the way through a labyrinth, but rather
your self-interest, your fear, your pride (209).30
29
The voice which calls Artemio "tu" and speaks in
the future tense has been defined by Fuentes himself as
Artemio's "subconscientehis unconscious (Emmanuel
Carballo, Diecinueve protagonistas de la literatura mexi-
cana del siglo. XX [Mexico: Empresas Editoriales, S.A.,
1965], pp. 440-441 [hereinafter referred to as Protagon-
istas1. cited in Dagoberto Fuentes, "Desilusion," p. 191).
Since the humanistic conscience, according to Fromm,
resides in the unconscious, I think it legitimate to sup
pose that this is the precise element of his unconscious
which is speaking to Artemio. (See supra, pp. 311-312.)
As Fromm says, "The less productively one lives, the weaker
becomes one's [humanistic] conscience" (Man for Himself,
p. 164). And indeed, at one point, Artemio's unconscious
says to him, "You tire me out, you defeat me; you oblige me
to go down to that hell with you. . . . You overcome me
with la chingada" (147).
30
"Decidiras, escogeras uno de los caminos, sacri-
ficaras los demas: te sacrificaras al escoger, dejaras de
ser todos los otros hombres que pudiste haber sido, querras
que otros hombres--otro--cumpla por ti la vida que muti-
laste al elegir: al elegir si, al elegir no, al permitir
que no tu deseo. identico a tu libertad. te senalara un
laberinto sino tu interes. tu miedo, tu orgullo" (italics
356
Fuentes' statement that man's wish is identical with his
freedom might be interpreted in relation to some observa
tions on freedom made by Ocatvio Paz:
Freedom is the very condition of our being and
the source of all our works. Inseparable from man,
Its being is merged with our own. . . . Freedom is
that possibility of being which is given us by the
very fact of being men. But it is a concrete and
unrepeatable possibility. Freedom is a creation and
a conquest. Creation and conquest: not of this or
of that, and least of all of our fellow human beings,
but of ourselves. The exercise of freedom is always
a conquest of the unknown territories of our being.
Whereas the man who exercises power over his fellow
men wants to appropriate the being of others for
himself, thus being more, the really free man wants
more being.31
Almost as if in response to this passage by Paz, Artemio's
unconscious tells him as he lies near death:
Perhaps [Catalina's] hand is speaking to you or
an excessive freedom which destroys freedom. The
freedom that raises an endless tower doesn't reach
heaven, but splits open an abyss, breaks the earth:
you will name it: separation: you will refuse to
give yourself: pride: you will survive, Artemio
Cruz: you will survive because you will expose
yourself: you will expose yourself to the risk of
freedom: you will overcome risk, and, without
enemies, you will become your own enemy in order to
continue the battle of pride: with everyone else
conquered, your only remaining task will be to
conquer yourself (92) .
mine). The Hileman version translates the italicized lines
as "lay saying yes and when you said no, when you decided it
was not your desire, which is one with your freedom, that
would be infinitely ramified, but rather your self-interest,
your fear, your pride" (201), thus missing not only the
artistic value of the labyrinth motif, but the larger con
text of meaning which it provides.
31
Las peras del olmo. p. 221.
357
Indeed, Lorenzo had written to his father from Spain that
the hardest thing of all, harder even than knowing the
technique of warfare, is knowing how to win the toughest
victory, the victory over oneself, over one's habits and
comfort (238). That Artemio did not thus manage to create
himself by conquering the "unknown territories of his
being" is expressed by something his unconscious tells him
at the beginning of his fatal infarct: "You will try to
imagine yourself. Like an empty, wrinkled, goatskin wine
bag" (14).32
Freedom, says Paz, is a concrete and unrepeatable
possibility of being. The possibility is either actualized
or not actualized according to man's choices. Artemio
"sacrificed" himself with his choices, his unconscious
tells him, by not daring to follow his "wish," which might
be taken as man's deepest desire to live, to increase his
being, to attend to his most essential welfare as defined
for him by his humanistic conscience, the voice of man's
loving care for himself, as Fromm calls it. An examination
of Artemio's successive choices will bring out several more
themes, all of them related to machismo and conceptually
linked to the all-encompassing artistic theme of the
32 . »
"Y tu querras imaginarte a ti mismo. Como un
odre vacio y arrugado." The Hileman version confuses
Fuentes' image by translating it, "And you will become the
images of your imagination, like an empty wrinkled wine
skin" (9) .
358
labyrinth: hermeticism, solitude, alienation, inability or
refusal to see, the Spanish cultural heritage, masks,
violation (the chingada), inability to risk, the "easy"
versus the "difficult" route, and death.
Somewhere in his life, says Artemio's unconscious
to him, he secretly vowed (chose) not to recognize his
debts (122). It is significant that the one memory which
he has repressed so thoroughly that his unconscious will
not return it to him (125) is that of his debt to Sebastian.
Sebastian, after all, had taught him how to be free (125),
by teaching him the age-old humanistic principles that
permit man to "create his own rules" (125), to love and do
33
what one wills. Sebastian's teachings were life-directed,
Q /
as is implied by the unusual phrase "un sol maestro" and
the fact that the voice of Artemio's best interest, his
humanistic conscience, recalls, "What a man he was, what a
35
man he was" (247). To be sure, all Artemio seems to
recall of these teachings at the age of twenty-four, when
he is about to violate them seriously by leaving the
^See May, Love and Will, p. 216.
34
Supra, pp. 345-347
3 5 ^
"Como era, como era." The Hileman version, los
ing the semantic value of the written accents, reads, "As
he was, as he was" (238). Since "sol maestro" was trans
lated "a controlling sun" (300), Sebastian'sfunction in
the novel is lost. Careful attention can expose his func
tion in the Spanish original, but no amount of attention
can evoke it from the English. See supra, p. 346, n. 17.
359
36
wounded soldier to die, is their anti-clerical aspect.
I think it safe to assume, however, that Sebastian taught
Artemio "the liberal and revolutionary ideological heri
tage" which Fuentes speaks of in his Tiempo mexicano as he
eulogizes those contemporary teachers who regard their
task as a humanizing one, and manage little by little to
form among their students a small vanguard of courageous,
enlightened men who "do not fear to define the real prob-
37
lems of the country and to demand their solution."
Q /
In an ironically ambiguous sentence, before he
leaves Regina to go into battle, he thinks, "And how could
he let Maestro Sebastian down, who had taught him the three
things he knew how to do: read, write, and hate priests"
(70). ("Y como le iba a fallar al maestro Sebastian, que
le habia ensehado las tres cosas que sabxa: leer, escribir
y odiar a los curas.") The absence of question marks per
mits a proleptic reading, "And how he was going to let
Maestro Sebastian down." As a matter of fact, recalling
what he has done, Artemio feels shame for the first time in
his life as he re-enters the village that afternoon (79).
37
Pp. 80-82. I realize that my interpretation of
the meaning of Sebastian appears at odds with what Fuentes
himself seems to say in the interview with Carballo in
Protagonistas: "[Artemio] comes to Mexico City (here an
incident happens to him with a certain teacher, Sebastian,
an incident which fills him with pain and shame); he
participates in the Revolution. ..." ("Llega a la ciudad
de Mexico [aqui le ocurre un incidente con un tal_maestro
Sebastian, incidente que le llena de dolor y verguenza];
participa en la Revolucion. . . .") (Cited by D. Fuentes
in "Desilusion," p. 192.) Since no such "incident" can be
inferred from the text of the novel, I must assume either
that Carballo himself inserted the parenthetical remark,
the language of which is not typical of the style of Fuentes
in the rest of the interview (and there is no reason for
Fuentes to use parentheses in an interview, parentheses
which do not form part of his style in general), or that
the "incident" consisted of Artemio1s whole association
with the elderly teacher. His failure to live up to it
causes him such "dolor y; verguenza" that he represses the
360
Sebastian's instruction did not really "take," however. As
Artemio himself thinks, "Even though he was twenty-one, he
was only a kid" (70). He goes to the Revolution, it will
be recalled, not because the situation of Mexico calls him
to it, but because he does not want to let his benefactor
down (70). It can be seen from his conversation with
Gonzalo in the Perales jail that he does not understand the
deep issues of the struggle. Rather, he says, in words
that can later be his own accusers. "Why, that's all the
revolution is: loyalty to the leaders" (194). Initially
tied to the experience with Lunero by the river in Vera
cruz, the zopilote rests on the immovability of the rock
(Sebastian), before taking flight again, this time to
interrupt the even insistence of the stars with his dark
38
rhythms. The zopilote becomes trapped, like the ventila
tor at Acapulco, precisely because Sebastian's teachings do
not influence his choices. When he refuses to acknowledge
his debts, he is failing to maintain the balance of the
"dance of entwined fingers" (309) set before him by the sol
maestro. the example set before him that night as he rested
memory of Sebastian's teachings in order to avoid these
feelings. True though the shame, pain, and repression are,
I reiterate my assumption that Fuentes himself did not use
the term "incidente."
38
Supra, p. 354. The Hileman translation of this
important image has the buzzard motionless rather than the
crag, and, as has been said, does not mention the second
flight at all; rather, it is the first flight that will
"cut the even insistence of the stars" (300-301).
361
on the rock on the mountain, while the heavenly spheres
spun on their own axes and yet revolved ceaselessly around
each other and around their mutual center of gravity, the
man-centered, humanistic, life-giving truths represented by
Sebastian.
Three years after Artemio leaves Sebastian, on the
day that he loses the "golden thread" of "battle presence,"
when the wounded soldier appeals to him for help Artemio
first takes a drink himself from his canteen and then puts
some into the mouth of the now unconscious soldier. He
loosens the man's belt and turns his back on him. He walks
deeper into the woods (the labyrinth), touching himself,
39
feeling himself as he goes. He washes himself in a
spring and tries to see himself in it. The body he sees is
not his. It belongs rather to Regina. He must save it for
her. "They no longer were living alone and isolated: they
had managed to break the walls of separation. Now they
were two and only one, forever" (76). Artemio thinks that
he has overcome the separation which he felt so strongly
when he realized he might lose lunero (286), he thinks that
he has regained his lost Eden in Regina.^ The imagery is
39
The Hileman version changes "touching himself
. . . always touching himself" ("palpandose . . . siempre
palpandose") to "he had to feel his way" (70).
40
Regina is consistently referred to in terms of
"dark" and "black," suggesting among other possibilities
that she was a mulata like Lunero (Artemio himself is at
most one-quarter black), or that she represents the dark
362
clear, however: his love is narcissistic. Regina's is
not. She risks herself constantly, not simply to follow
him in the war, but to take initiative, to anticipate his
arrival in towns and villages and have a place ready for
them. She invents a pretty fiction of how they met, so
that he will not feel guilt about the real facts of their
meeting (82). Regina's is the love of the woman ready to
risk everything for her love, the woman counted by Octavio
Paz among the kinds of people who refuse to be instruments,
who exercise freedom, "that unpredictable element, that
always secret, unknown nucleus which constitutes the
humanity of every person.Artemio is perfectly willing
/ 2
to let her take these risks.
Fuentes uses the same word of Regina that he uses
of the crag the zopilote rested on: "He remembered her
feminine principle, Yin, Artemio's possibility for the
elimination of dualism and separation. The mulata theory
wavers in face of the fact that an illustration of her done
by Fuentes himself for "Dos opiniones" shows Artemio as
being quite dark and Regina as light (Pacheco, "Dos
opiniones," p. 19).
41
Las peras del olmo. p. 223.
/ 0
Aniceto Aramoni discusses at some length the pos
sible explanations of what he believes is a phenomenon
unique among modern nations, that the Mexican man allowed
his woman to accompany him in the Revolution, not as a
soldier, as has happened in other countries, but as a con
venience. No matter what the complexities of the matter
might be, he says, underlying all the causes are probably
the profound lack of value placed by the men on the lives
of their women and children, narcissism on the part of the
men, and masochism on the part of the women (Psicoanalisis.
pp. 231-242).
363
nude, standing, young and firm in her immobility. but
undulating and soft as soon as she would walk" (64; italics
mine). The generosity and self-sacrifice of Regina offered
Artemio the same punto de partir. the same departure point,
/ Q
that Sebastian offered him.
Now, Artemio's choices in the woods that day can
hardly be called choices, as he is in a genuine state of
confusion most of the day, but it is here that he receives
the saber-scar on his forehead, the mark of Cain (77).44
The soldier whom he allows to die looks so much like
Artemio that if he had green eyes, he would be Artemio
(75). That is, Artemio's narcissistic act kills something
in him too: one of his concrete, unrepeatable possibili
ties of creating himself. And, since his love is
narcissistic, far from "breaking down the wall of
separation," it starts the slow process of raising the wall
higher.
In fact, the Perales episode opens with strong
images of Artemio apart from his men, and introduces the
^3
That with Regina Artemio temporarily does touch
the mountain, can find the way out of his labyrinth, is
made evident in two images, neither of them artistically
or conceptually gratuitous: "Her hand descended to the
man's organ and his to the hard, almost hairless mons
(monte) of this young girl" (64); "She went over to the
window and opened it" (68).
44Infra, p. 373.
r
364
motif of the mascara. the mask, a means of isolation.^
Fuentes says of Artemio, ’ ’ The dust-covered mask remained
46
fixed and awake" (171). Artemio is by now a macho who
believes that he must not open himself, he must not
raiarse. Consequently, when Gonzalo follows his self-
revelations in the Perales jail by asking Artemio precisely
the question the latter has asked of him, "Why don't you
switch to Villa's side," Artemio suddenly moves away from
Bernal and replies:
A man doesn't talk like that. . . . You want me
to give it to you straight? Well, people who open
up without anyone asking them to, and especially at
the hour of death, shit on my balls. Shut up,
lawyer, and say anything you want inside yourself, ^7
but let me die like a man, without opening up" ^197). ^
The theme of the mascara has been prominent in
the literature of the Mexican search for identity since
Ramos' Perfil del hombre y la cultura en Mexico in 1934.
See, for example, Octavio Paz, "Mexican Masks" in Laby
rinth: and Carlos Fuentes, "Mascaras y rostros, clasicos y
romanticos" in Tiempo mexicano.
I l f \
"La mascara tehida de polvo permanecio fija y
despierta." The Hileman version, "He waited, a mask of
dust, awake and motionless" (164), suggests that the mask
was composed of dust, that if the dust were not there, the
mask would not be either. On the contrary, Artemio is now
characterized by his fixed mask, which happens now to have
dust on it.
^"--Asi no se habla. . . . AQue? ATe hablo
derecho? Pues me cagan los cojones los que se abren sin
que nadie les pida razon y mas a la hora de la muerte.
Quedese callado, mi licenciado, y digase para sus auentros
lo que quiera, pero a mi dejeme morir sin que me raje."
It is interesting that in his effort to withdraw from the
threatening intimacy, Artemio changes from "tu" to "usted"
in the middle of his reply. The Hileman version: "You
don't talk right. . . . You want me to speak up? All
right: it gripes my ass to have to listen to true
365
That Artemio is protecting his hermeticism as a macho
instead of his loyalty to Carranza, as the English version
suggests, is made clear by Bernal's reply: "Listen, little
macho, we're three men condemned to die. The Yaqui told us
the story of his life . . ." (196)
Artemio's original reply to him has made Gonzalo
realize that Artemio is governed by the macho mystique, and
that he has revealed himself to a person who is not
disposed to human dialogue. This is why his "oye, machito"
response is said in an angry, metallic, unnatural voice.
"And the anger was against himself, because he had let
himself be drawn into confidences and relaxed conversation,
he had opened himself to a man who did not deserve trust"
49
(197). In his anger, Gonzalo seems to start taunting
Artemio, trying to force him to reveal himself. Artemio
tries to smash him against the wall; "his closed fists
confessions I haven't asked to hear, especially when I'm
trying to prepare myself for a firing squad. Just keep
quiet, Licenciado, say anything you want but say it to
yourself, not to me. I'm not going to double-cross anyone"
(188) .
48
"--Oye, machito, somos tres hombres condenados.
El yaqui nos conto su vida . . ." The Hileman version
omits "machito" completely (188).
49ny rabj[a era contra si mismo, porcjue el se
habia dejado llevar a la confidencia y a la platica, se
habia abierto a un hombre que no merecia confianza." The
passage is ambiguous. Since it follows, however, directly
upon Gonzalo's metallic "oye, machito" reply, and since
Artemio has been severely laconic and impersonal in the
conversation up to that point, it seems impossible for him
to be the one who has been led into "confidences."
366
. . . violated him" (198); and when Gonzalo persists,
asking, "What would our lives be like if they hadn't killed
us before we're thirty years old," he finally does say
something personal: "Everything's going to be the same,
and you know it. The sun will come up, kids will keep on
being born, even though you and I will be plenty dead, and
you know it" (198). Since their death will make no differ
ence, Artemio decides to give false information to Zagal
and save his life.^^
Gonzalo, however, who has said of his father, "He
never understood that there are duties which have to be
fulfilled even though you know ahead of time that you're
headed for failure" (196), and Tobias, who has a face and
whose face Artemio has seen (187), die together as Artemio
watches. Bernal reaches out his hand to touch the Yaqui's
shoulder. The petroleum lamps illuminate Tobias' shattered
face (199). Two men choose authentically and one man
chooses expediently.
The facts of what Artemio did lie somewhere
between the interpretation of Sommers, who says, "there is
a decision to avoid a firing squad by revealing information
about troop movements" ,(Joseph Sommers, After the Storm:
Landmarks of the Modern Mexican Novel [Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1968], p. 155), and that of
D. Fuentes, who says, "Artemio is saved, because when he
was about to be shot by the firing squad, Carranza's forces
arrive and he is saved from death." ("Artemio se salva ya
que cuando iba a pasar al paredon llegan las fuerzas de
Carranza y es salvado de la muerte" ["Desilusion," p.
196].) Carranza's men did arrive, but their arrival had
nothing to do with why Artemio did not die at the hands of
that firing squad.
367
Combat between the mask and the face. Combat
between the classical men (Iturrigaray, Iturbide,
Miramon, Diaz, Carranza) who ask themselves, "Is
this efficacious, is it good for me?" and the
romantics (Hidalgo, Morelos, Juarez, Zapata,
Cardenas) who affirm, "This is good and it is
human."51
After Artemio kills Zagal and kneels to shut his eyes,
He stood up quickly and breathed an air in which
he wanted to find, thank, name his life and his
freedom. But he was alone. He had no witnesses.
He had no companions. A dull cry broke from his
throat, muffled by the even machine-gunning in the
distance.
"I'-m free; I'm free."
He put his fists together over his stomach, and
his face twisted in pain (201-202; italics mine).
Zagal, just before Artemio shoots him, moves his hand in a
gesture of friendship (201). But Artemio cannot clasp the
hand of another person; he cannot even clasp his own hands,
now fists. The closed fists that were violating Gonzalo
52
really violated Artemio, and the real Artemio, whose
freedom has been even more restricted by these deliberate
choices of the masked macho, is slowly, painfully being
alienated from himself, is slowly, painfully dying. His
alienation is complete by the time of his fatal illness.
He tries to remember his own face as it is reflected in
51C. Fuentes, Tiempo mexicano, p. 66.
52 ~
The Hileman version translates "punos cerrados"
(198) as "the hands that held him" (189), and the second
'junto los punos" (202) as "he clasped his hands" (193).
A puno. by definition, is closed and cannot clasp. Later,
Artemio will tell Catalina that every man needs witnesses
if he is to be able to live his life (110). Until he can
ask forgiveness for having killed his witnesses, however,
he can have no new ones.
368
the mosaic mirrors of his daughter's purse: "It was a face
broken into asymmetrical pieces of glass, with the eye very
near the ear and very far from its mate, with the grimacing
mouth distributed among three circulating mirrors" (10).
Octavio Paz has said that "it is impossible not to
notice the resemblance between the figure of the macho and
that of the Spanish conquistador. This is the model--more
mythical than real--that determines the images the Mexican
53
people form of men in power." In a striking passage
spoken by Artemio's unconscious just before the objective
narration of Artemio's violation of the Bernales in Puebla,
Fuentes seems to be saying that the model, mythical though
it may be, is a determining part of Artemio's heritage.
You will have created the night with your closed
eyes and from the horizon of that ocean of ink there
will sail toward you a stone ship on which the noon
day sun, hot and sleepy, will shine in vain: thick,
blackened walls, raised to defend the Church from
the attacks of Indians and, also, to join the reli
gious conquest to the military conquest. Toward
your closed eyes, with a growing noise of their
fifes and drums, will march the rough, Isabeline.
Spanish troops, and under the sun, you will traverse
the wide plaza with the stone cross in the center.
. . . You will walk through the nave, toward the
conquest of your new world . . . the stone faces
behind the pink, kindly, ingenuous, but impassive,
dead masks: create the night, fill the black sails
with wind, shut your eyes, Artemio Cruz (35-36;
italics mine).
Queen Isabel of Spain died in 1504, so that the use of
isabelina cannot be literal in this reference to 1519, at
^ ^Labyrinth, p. 82.
369
the earliest. Its conjunction with cruz must be an allu
sion to a later image: when Artemio is born, he is "tied
to Cruz Isabel, Isabel Cruz" (314; italics mine). Artemio
is tied to his Spanish, Isabeline heritage, that blend of
the violating power of the conquistador and the masks and
power of the Church. With his eyes closed to the pain of
Mexico's downtrodden people and to the example of Lunero,
Sebastian, Regina, and Gonzalo, far from creating himself,
Artemio is creating death.
He was amused by the irony of its being he who
was returning to Puebla, and not Bernal, who had
been shot. It was, in a certain sense, a masquer
ade, a substitution, a joke that could be played
with great seriousness; but it was also a certifi
cate of life, of his capacity to survive and
strengthen his own destiny by means of the destiny
of others (43).
Artemio pays Gamaliel in his own coin, actually. Notified
in advance by the priest, Paez, that Artemio is threatening
to ruin him, the aristocratic Gamaliel keeps his mask on.
Neither man says a word regarding the matter during the
first visit of Artemio to the Bernal estate, but during the
visit, as Gamaliel takes the list of his debtors from his
desk, he thinks, regarding the utter impassivity of this man
with the saber-scar on his forehead:
It was better. They would understand each other
well by going this route; perhaps it wouldn't be
necessary to mention such unpleasant matters; perhaps
everything could resolve itself by more elegant
roads. The young officer has quickly understood the
style of power, Don Gamaliel repeated to himself, and
this sense of inheritance made the bitter changes
easier which reality was forcing him to (51).
370
Gamaliel, whose pride will not let him accede to the
legitimate demands of those for whom the Revolution was
fought, is forced to hand over to a violator the posses
sions he acquired and maintained through violation.
Hapless country . . . which with every genera
tion has to destroy the old possessors and substi
tute them with new masters, as rapacious and
ambitious as the former ones. The old man imagined
himself as the final product of a peculiarly criollo
culture: that of enlightened despots. He took
pleasure in thinking of himself as a father, hard
at times, but a good provider after all, and always
the custodian of a tradition of good taste, courtesy,
culture (50).
That Fuentes intends irony in Gamaliel's thinking of him
self as a father may be inferred from the fact that
Artemio's criolla grandmother, Ludivinia, thinks, "[Atana-
sio's] son was born in a Negro hut--as he ought to be born,
at the bottom, to prove again the father's force" (299).
The difference between Gamaliel and Artemio will be that
the latter does not ally himself with the Church as
Gamaliel did, and that Artemio does not possess Gamaliel's
culture. Artemio, engendered in violation by a Menchaca
and driven from Eden because of the enganchador, is
fatally, atavistically repeating the "Isabeline" curse of
violation, in patterns learned almost from the air he
breathes.
Catalina must be understood if Artemio is to be
seen in his very human complexity. Up to this point in the
discussion, his shadow side has been emphasized. But, as
his unconscious says to him:
371
Who isn't capable, at any given moment of his
life--like you--of embodying good and bad at the
same time, of letting himself be led at the same
time by two mysterious threads of different colors,
which leave the same ball only to meet again
between your own fingers after all? (33)
Even though Artemio fell in love with Catalina when he
first saw her on that Puebla street, she knows very well
that she is merchandise, part of the bargain struck by
Artemio and her father (39, 50). Catalina, a Mexican woman
trapped in the dependency imposed upon her by her social
class and her times, has spent three years struggling to
forgive Gonzalo for having died, instead of living to
protect her as she thinks a big brother should. She can
avenge her brother's death, she reasons,
only by embracing this man, embracing him but deny
ing him the tenderness which he would like to find
in her. Killing him in life, distilling bitterness
until she poisoned him. . . . And in this way she
and her father would also be avenged of their aban
donment by Gonzalo, of his idiotic idealism: hand
ing the twenty-year-old girl over--why did thinking
of herself, of her youth, force tears of compassion?
--to the man who accompanied Gonzalo during those
last hours which she could not remember rejecting
her own self-pity and turning her pity toward her
dead brother, but rather, hours which she could not
remember without a sob of fury, without contracting
her face: if no one explained the truth to her,
she would cling to what she thought was the
truth (53) .54
"Solo podia vengarse esa muerte . . . abrazando a
este hombre, abrazandolo pero negando la ternura que el
quisiera encontrar en ella. Matandolo en vida, destilando
la amargura hasta envenenarlo. . . . Y asi se vengarian
tambien ella y su padre del abandono de Gonzalo, de su
idealismo idiota: entregando a la muchacha de veinte anos
--Apor que le arrancaba lagrimas de compasion pensar en si
misma, en su juventud?--al hombre que acompano a Gonzalo
372
Catalina realizes that she loves Artemio sexually
and that she can have a life of happiness with him. She
knows that at night Artemio surrenders himself to her in a
genuine passion that avidly seeks to be corresponded, that
he has shown candor in his relationship with her (101).
She asks herself if she has the right to deny herself a
happy life (101). She knows that she should look forward,
not backward, that she should not let something outside
herself control her decision as to whether to let her
nocturnal passion or her daytime silence and rejection of
him prevail (sometimes she goes for months without speaking
to him). However, Catalina had said to her father when he
teld her that the sexual passion in Artemio's eyes was
natural, that she had gone out of the house very little
(and consequently, it is implied, knew little about life as
it is), "I shall never go out'." (51) Catalina cannot leave
"her father's house." She is tied, that is, to her psycho
logical formation just as much as Artemio is to his. But
durante esas ultimas horas que ella no podia recordar
rechazando la compasion de si misma, volcandola hacia el
hermano muerto sin un sollozo de furia, sin una contraccion
del rostro: si nadie le explicaba la verdad, ella se
aferraria a lo que creia ser la verdad." Her inability to
pity Gonzalo rather than herself, a key point in under
standing Catalina, is not only lost but reversed in the
Hileman translation of this passage, adequate except for
the following meaningless section: . .to the man who
had shared Gonzalo's last hours, hours she could not think
of without rejecting self-pity; by whirling her toward her
dead brother without the softest whimper of fury or even
the least movement of her face . . ." (48).
373
she is honest with herself:
She managed to tell herself honestly that he,
his life, his drive . . . were an invitation to
adventure, to throw oneself headlong into an
unknown future, in which one's behavior would not
be sanctioned by the customary canons. He invented
everything and created it from the ground up, as
if nothing had ever happened before. Adam without
a father, Moses without the Commandments. Life
wasn't like this, the world as ordered by Don
Gamaliel wasn't like this (103).
This inability of Catalina to decide, and to decide in
favor of risk and of pardon, is in strong contrast to
Regina, who had said to Artemio, "When I first saw you
. . . I told myself that I had to make up my mind then and
there, that if I lost you then, I would be ruining my
entire life" (69)
Artemio tries to communicate with his women in
silence (64), but this time it is not enough. Catalina has
every reason to suspect that Gonzalo died because of some
dishonorable action of Artemio. Artemio fears the word
that must never come from her lips: Cain.
"En cuanto te vi . . .me dije que en ese mismo
momento tenia que decidirme. Que si tu pasabas de largo,
perderia toda mi vida." "When I first saw you" is Regina's
way of protecting Artemio's sense of integrity (supra,
p. 362). She was a virgin, and resisted him as he raped
her in the barracks, but she was honest in accepting the
pleasure she felt midway through the violation, in admit
ting that she had been afraid of such happiness (83). The
Hileman version loses this contrast by omitting Regina's
conscious effort of will in making the decision. by making
it seem as if all she did was realize that the decision had
happened without her even knowing it: "I told myself that
in that very moment I had made a decision" (64).
374
That terrible word must never, ever pass the
lips of the woman who, although hope of love might
be lost, would nevertheless be his witness--mute
and suspicious--during the years to come. . . .
Only one act, perhaps, could undo this knot of
separation and resentment. Only some words, spoken
now or never. If she accepted them, they could
forget and begin again. . . .
"Yes? I'm alive and at your side, because I let
others die for me. I can tell you about those who
died because I washed my hands and shrugged my
shoulders. Accept me like this, with my guilt, and
look on me as a man who needs. Don't hate me.
Have mercy on me, dear Catalina. Because I love
you. Weigh my guilt on one side and my love on the
other, and you'll see that my love is greater"
(114) .
But Artemio does not dare speak. He needs to have her
demand the truth from him, and Catalina does not do it. He
knows that "[his] cowardice was putting even more distance
between them and made him, too, responsible for the failure
of their love" (114). She does not help him share his
guilt so that they can cleanse each other of it (114). He
decides he cannot do it alone, and she decides she is
strong enough to accept the inevitable without a struggle.
He forces a young servant girl to sleep with him from then
on, and Catalina waits in vain for him to come to their
bed (116).
This last attempt to be honest with each other
fails because of weakness on the part of both: neither one
is able to break the shackles of pride. Later, when a word
from Catalina could save the life of Paez, "that man with
the green eyes was begging: he was begging her to beg, to
dare to beg, to risk the yes or the no of the toss, and she
375
could not respond; she could no longer answer" (135).
Catalina's past choices have paralyzed her ability to
choose now, and above all, to choose in favor of risk or
adventure. Years later, as Artemio lies dying, he mentally
tells her, "Be true to what you always pretended; be true
to the end" (28). Be true to your mask, that is. The mask
has conquered Artemio. Catalina, however, "with a fear
that is grateful that tenderness has finally conquered it"
(91),^^ caresses him. He thinks:
Your caress obliges me to see you and I don't
know, I don't understand why, seated at my side, you
finally share this memory with me [that they loved
each other], this time with no reproaches in your
eyes. Pride. Pride saved us. Pride killed us
(204).57
The theme of "easy and difficult" recurs throughout
the novel. In that last argument in Puebla, Artemio
tells Catalina that hate is easy and love is difficult.
Love requires more, must be cultivated (113). Catalina
chooses the easier way: to let herself be victimized so
that she can "get even" (113). Several years before,
5 6
"Con un temor agradecido, al cabo, de que la
ternura lo venza." The Hileman version muddies it by mak
ing tenderness grateful instead of the fear: "Caressing
you with a fear that tenderness has gratefully overcome
(85).
Several commentators of Artemio Cruz have stated
that Catalina never managed to love Artemio. (See, for
example, D. Fuentes, "Desilusion," p. 196, and Sommers,
After the Storm, p. 155.) But Artemio thinks, "Ah, you
loved me? Why didn't we tell each other so? I loved you"
(204). If Catalina had not loved Artemio, resentment would
have carried the day (and the night too!) without any
struggle at all.
376
searching for Villa's scattered troops, Artemio thinks
to find them by following the most difficult mountain
route. Later, captured, he realizes that the route Zegal
is taking him along is "the most difficult one, apparently.
The simplest for someone who, like Zagal, had accompanied
Pancho Villa ever since the first persecutions and had been
going through these sierras for twenty years, taking note
of their hiding places, trails, canyons, short cuts" (175).
The supposedly most difficult route is the one that in the
long run leads most easily through the labyrinth. and the
supposedly "easy" way leads to no exit. Love and authen
ticity are difficult; suspicion, resentment, hatred and
masks are easy; but real love leads one safely through the
vericuetos. the almost impassable stretches, of the laby
rinth.
Three years later, Artemio chooses the easy route
in a crucial episode. The machine of the president in
power (Calles) is seeking the adhesion of men loyal to
Obregon. The fat man (a police official) who must persuade
Artemio forces him into a machista contest of "Russian
roulette" with Artemio's own revolver, removed from his
bedroom without his knowing it. The fat man puts the
pistol to his head and wins; Artemio does not have the
courage to refuse to play, and just as he presses the
trigger, the fat man deflects the gun, saving Artemio's
life. Why play dangerous games, the fat man says, when
377
everything can be settled so easily? "So easily," thinks
Artemio. "It's time things were arranged easily. Will I
never live in peace?" (129)
In a question heavy with figurative meaning,
Artemio asks, "Where are we?"
He hadn't come; they had taken him there; and
although they were in the center of the city, the
driver got him dizzy, turning to left and right,
converting that Spanish rectangular design into
a labyrinth of imperceptible suctions. All this
was imperceptible . . . (129; italics mine).58
Artemio, by imperceptible suctions, by repeated choices of
seemingly little import, has so restricted his real ability
to choose that when the fat man puts it to him baldly,
"Always choose your friends from among the big screwers,
because if you're with them, there's no one who will screw
you" (129), he is able to toast to it.^ No longer the
machito who told Gonzalo in Perales that the Revolution is
loyalty to the leaders (194) and that his leader is Alvaro
Obregon (196), Artemio has, by successive betrayals of the
5 8
"No llego; lo trajeron; y aunque estaban en el
centro de la ciudad, el chofer lo mareo, se desvio a la
izquierda, se desvio a la derecha, convirtio esa traza
espanola, de rectangulos, en un laberinto de succiones
imperceptibles. Todo esto era imperceptible. ..." The
Hileman version eliminates the all-important idea of the
imperceptibility of how Artemio has reached his present
choice: rr! ! . the driver had bewildered him, right, left,
right, had changed the simple Spanish rectangular system of
streets into a labyrinth. It was all bewildering ..."
( 122) .
5 9
"Escoge siempre a tus amigos entre los grandes
chingones, porque con ellos no hay quien te chingue a ti."
378
peasants, become a gran chingon who receives a gift of
real estate in exchange for abandoning Obregon. In an
extremely subtle touch of irony, when Artemio left the fat
man another man at the street exit pointed out to him that
"the Avenida 16 de Septiembre was over on that side" (130) ,
using for "that" the word which shows distance in space
and concept. That is, by his "turncoat" choice, Artemio
has not simply changed from the side of Obregon, but from
the side of Hidalgo and Morelos, the heroes of the War of
Independence, and implicitly, from the "romantic" side to
the "classical" side of expediency and self-interest.^
As he drives toward the Zocalo to pledge loyalty to
Calles, he is blinded by a reflection on the windshield.
"He raises his hand to his eyelids: he had always chosen
well, the gran chingon. the rising caudillo instead of the
waning one" (137). Artemio again fails to see. He is
"made dizzy by the faces, the gestures, the penis-fingers
61
of the streets, between two swings of the pendulum" (137).
The all-pervading inherited mystique of chingar o
ser chingado. the "dedos-pingas" of the streets, has sucked
Artemio in, once and for all, just'as it has sucked in his
old revolutionary companions. When turncoat Artemio is
60Supra, p. 367.
61"Mareado por los rostros, los gestos, los dedos-
pingas de las calles, entre dos oscilaciones del pendulo."
379
trying to win them to the new side, his former general,
Jimenez, says, "I say we should be one thing or the other,
like machos. with one man or the other" (131), instead of
playing the hypocritical game of yes and no at the same
time. But after a typically machista conversation composed
of mutually intelligible metaphors and veiled dueling, with
nothing that could be compromising said clearly, Jimenez
capitulates, wanting nothing done, however, that would
cause them to lose their "honor" (132).^
The real machos. the real men, Fuentes is saying,
are the ones ridiculed by the fat man, the ones who, not so
"smart" as Artemio, "would get the idea that they were muy
machos and then rise up in arms, when it was so very easy
to change places as if you didn't really want to and wake
up on the right side" (129). The real machos are the ones
who recurringly pass through Artemio's mind as he lies
dying: "They came back. They didn't accept defeat" (277);
the ones acknowledged by Ludivinia:
f \ 9
There is a connection between "The Spanish rect
angular design" (129) and Jimenez' concept of honor.
Between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries, the
idea of "honor" in Spain had gradually changed from "an
ideal and objective notion" having to do with one's
interior worth, toward that of reputation, what others said
of one. See Castro, De la edad conflictiva. pp. 66-69; and
Gustavo Correa, "El doble aspecto de la honra en el teatro
del siglo XVII," Hispanic Review. XXVI (April, 1958), 99-
107, and "El doble aspecto de la honra en Peribahez y el
Comendador de Ocana." Hispanic Review. XXVI (July, 1958),
188-199.
380
the enemies we had shot so we could keep on being
the masters; . . . the enemies whose tongues and
hands your father had cut off so he could keep on
being the master; . . . the enemies whose lands
your father seized so he could begin to be the
master came back victorious one day . . . and took
what wasn't ours, what we held by our force and
not by our right (298-299).
The real machos. says Fuentes through the mouth of Zagal in
Perales, are the ones who have lost the second phase of the
Revolution, the Carranza-Villa and the Carranza-Zapata
struggle:
Our people are like lizards; they take on the
color of the earth, they go back into the huts they
came out of, they dress like peons again and go
back to waiting for the time to keep on fighting,
even though they may wait a hundred years (185).
These are men like the contemporary martyr Ruben Jaramillo,
63
described so movingly by Fuentes in Tiempo mexicano.
Artemio complains that he cannot choose, that he
has not asked for either of the two opposing codes of
morality which confront him: the Church, in the person of
Paez, whom Catalina has hidden in the basement at the
beginning of the official persecution of the Church, and
the morality of the gran chingon (122, 124). But on his
deathbed, Artemio admits that he risked his hide in a
battle which he chose not to understand because it was not
convenient for him to understand it (205). Artemio1s
inability to choose, his forgetfulness, his being taken to
the interview with the fat man, are stained with
63Pp. 104-122.
381
existential bad faith. Forgetting that Sebastian has
offered him a third way, forgetting that Lunero has taught
him to distinguish and savor the life-giving jungle fruits,
Artemio savors the choice he has in fact made, as he drives
to his interview with the president; he savors "the word,"
chinear (137).^ This "word" is essentially the same as
the "word" that was never to pass Catalina's lips: Cain.
The long and brilliant litany of "the word" spoken to
Artemio by his unconscious has as its main burden the idea
that the chingada. the mystique of the macho, is regres
sive, thus tying in with the careful imagery of "forward
and backward" that Fuentes has developed in the rest of the
nove1.
. . . You put your balls out front with the
chingada: you don't open up with the chingada: you
suck on the udder of the chingada:
where are you going with the chingada?
oh mystery, oh deceit, oh nostalgia: you think
that with it you can return to your origins: to
what origins? No, you: nobody wants to return to
the deceitful golden age, to our sinister origins,
to the grunting of beasts, to the struggle for bear
meat, for a cave and flint, to sacrifice and mad
ness, to the nameless terror of the sun, fear of
storms, fear of eclipses, fear of fire, fear of
masks, terror of idols, fear of puberty, fear of
water, fear of hunger, fear of abandonment, cosmic
Because Artemio defends his choices on a con
scious level even on his deathbed, Sommers' statement that
"Artemio Cruz bitterly takes stock of [la chingada's1
negative presence in his own life and the lives around him"
(After the Storm, p. 161) is somewhat misleading. Whether
his conscious is able to respond to the appeal of his
unconscious is left in doubt to the very end.
382
terror: chingada. pyramid of negations, teocalli
[temple] of fright
oh mystery, oh deceit, oh mirage: you believe
that with it you will walk forward, you will affirm
yourself: to what future? no, you: nobody wants
to walk with the burden of curses, of suspicion, of
frustration, of resentment, of hatred, of envy, of
rancor, of contempt, of insecurity, of misery, of
abuse, of insult, of intimidation, of false pride,
of machismo. of the corruption of your screwed
chingada:
leave it by the side of the road, kill it with
weapons that don't belong to it: let's kill it:
let s kill that word that separates us, turns us
to stone, rots us with its double poison of idol
and cross: let it not be our response or our fate
. . . (145-146).
Lunero did not look back toward the sierra, the Indians
(the Indians in the little village near Cocuya never spoke
to young Artemio [286]), and the meseta. the central
plateau (302), a plateau already identified with dissimula-
r
tion (263); Lunero faced the sea. But when Artemio first
In a sense, of course, Lunero's "facing the sea"
refers to more than the island/Utopia symbolism. Lunero is
facing outward rather than inward. Finding the islands can
only be done by facing outward toward others. The inward
orientation of the macho Artemio, represented in the novel
by a consistent imagery of mirrors, must change if Mexico
is ever to progress toward the communitarianism Fuentes is
pressing toward. A paragraph in Tiempo mexicano synthe
sizes the deeper social and philosophical meaning of the
motifs of Artemio Cruz: "The transference to Mexico of
. . . medieval organicism as the sanction of imperial
legitimacy coincides with the modern revolt of critical
individualism on the one hand and collective utopianism on
the other. The first has its Roman and Hispanic roots in
stoicism and Epicureanism: it represents the decision to
save the person and his values in face of the impossibility
of transforming the world which surrounds him, and it is
the origin of a constant attitude of the Latin American
elite. The second has its roots in the medieval anti-
Augustinian heresy of Pelagius: dogma and life are only
reconcilable by means of human liberty, the direct agent of
divine grace. This proposition reopens the political
383
rapes Regina, he does it "in silence . . . far from the sea,
facing the spiny, dry sierra" (83). Fuentes speaks of the
"languid hand of dry, changeless, sad Mexico, of the
cloister of stone and dust enclosed on the central plateau
(altinlano)" (278).^ Silence, lack of communication,
dissimulation, the mascara, fear of the other, fear of
risk, the chingada. violation: all these characteristics
of the meseta and of machismo are regressive, sterile, and
67
deathlike, Fuentes says.
possibility in the Christian community: it poses again the
theme of the city, of the organization of the polis, the
place where the divine plan and the human plan are recon
ciled. U Topos: There is no such place, says Thomas More,
and his denial is an aspiration: his Utopia is above all a
desire and America, before it exists, is desire. There is
no such place and there j_s such a place: this is precisely
the most secret and profound root of Hispanic American
culture" (pp. 28-29). See also Santiago Ramirez* sugges
tive essay, "El mexicano frente al mar" (Motivaciones, pp.
167-174), which concludes, "We shall abandon our central
ism, our introversion, our lack of confidence, our secretive
living, when expansion, joy, and contact with others are
exactly that: expansion and joy. When our 'middle class
does not live in suspicion between the timid silence of the
Indian and the arrogant silence of the criollo.' the
Mexican will be able to face the sea" (p. 174). (Ramirez
is quoting Jose Vasconcelos* Ulises Criollo.)
^Santiago Ramirez says, "Perhaps the altiplano is
where Mexican culture traits are seen most acutely, since
the clash and meeting [of the two cultures] were most
violent there. Furthermore, aridity, erosion, the diffi
culty of making a living and other conditions make the
patterns to which we refer more intense" (Motivaciones.
p. 80).
/* — j
Catalina's inability to choose and risk was
regressive also. As she was thinking that she had only
wanted a tranquil life, in which others would do her choos
ing for her, that she was not born in order to make
choices, her carriage had just gotten out of control, she
384
The other word which Artemio cannot endure is one
which occurs to him at Acapulco with Lilia, the objective
account of which follows directly upon the litany of the
chingada: the word is "everybody." Young Lilia is swimming
with her new acquaintance Xavier while Artemio waits on the
yacht.
The round, open laughs reached him. He had
never heard her laugh like that. As if she had
just been born, as if there were not behind her,
always behind, stone placques of history and
histories, sacks of shame, deeds committed by her,
by him.
By everybody. That was the intolerable word.
Committed by everybody. His sour grimace could not
contain that word which insisted on coming out.
Which broke all the springs of power and guilt, of
the singular control of others, of someone, of a
girl in his power, bought by him, broke them to
make them enter a wide world of acts in common,
similar destinies, experience with no labels of
exclusive possession. Then, that woman hadn’t
been marked forever? Wouldn’t she be forever a
woman possessed occasionally by him? Wouldn’t that
be her definition and her fate: to be what she was
because at one given moment she was his? Could
Lilia love as if he had never existed? (158)
Xavier's trust in her has made possible Lilia's innocent
play and open laughter; it has cleansed from her eyes the
history (which Artemio savors) of her "middle class
marriage, with the usual no-good fellow, the rnachito, the
punisher, the poor devil; divorce and prostitution" (159).
The chingada can be broken. Humbly accepting one's
had done serious damage to a group of peasants on pilgrim
age, and she sped back [to the estate] ("Corrio de
regreso") (108). Lorenzo and Dolores, however, do not look
back (236) .
385
participation in the human condition, humbly begging for
giveness of others of the same condition can cleanse, can
make things new. The tide does erase one's footprints, can
make "every new step the only, ephemeral testimony of
itself" (160). "The sun was at eye level" (160). Sebas
tian1 s teachings are again within reach, visible if
Artemio wishes to see them. Artemio comes oh, so close
again to learning from what he himself had wanted to tell
Catalina: "Together they could cleanse each other from the
guilt which, in order for him to be redeemed, this man
wanted to share" (114).
Fuentes is saying that open togetherness, the
opposite of hermetic machismo. is the only way the Mexican
can wash himself of the chingada (146), the way he can kill
it with weapons that are not its own (146). Artemio
planted his own fruit trees in Puebla, but he built his own
fence, too (115), and his unconscious tells him that the
odor of his enclosed garden mingles with his refusal to
remember his debt to Sebastian (122).
Long ago, on that mountain side in Veracruz, he saw
the light of a star that had already died.
And you will only know that it was dead while
you were looking at it, on that future night when
the light stops reaching your eyes.... The light
that really was emitted in the now of the star,
when your eyes were contemplating the ancient light
and thought to baptize it with your gaze. . . .
That which will be alive in your senses [this is a
reference to the motif of savoring 1 is dead in its
origin (312).
386
That dead star whose light Artemio saw is the chingada.
Functional in the cave days, it is now dead. Its specious
light does not issue from a living source. Machismo.
hermetic, isolated, lonely, a life-style of violation, is a
regressive, backward-looking attempt to return to the
impossible paradise of the mother's breast ("la. ubre de la
chingada" [145]). Men can only push forward, Fuentes says,
try to ascend, take the harder route together through the
labyrinthine vericuetos of the mountains. Zagal sums up
the message of Artemio Cruz when he says to his men as they
start up again in the sierra after taking Artemio prisoner,
"Todos juntos vemos mejor que yo solito" ("We can see
better all together than I can by myself") (176). One must
see, in a labyrinth if one is to find the exit. And Lorenzo
offers his father the way out of his labyrinth when he
tells him in his last letter that he and Dolores know how
to laugh together. Artemio had seen the magic mountain
looming above the mist when he laughed and wrestled with
his son in Veracruz that day, but the heritage of the
chingada was too strong for him. He crossed the river on
horseback, but he returned to the other side again. When
Lilia laughs her round, open laughter, Artemio feels rigid,
as if he were covered from head to foot with white starch
(158). His mask has become a shroud.
And indeed, the theme of death is a recurring one
in Artemio Cruz, quite independently of the fact that the
387
novel is cast around the present tense of his last mortal
sickness. Artemio has been dying ever since he turned his
back on the wounded soldier. His "familiar pain," the pain
prolonged until it seems normal (223), is a figure of the
deeper, lifelong, mortal pain of his narcissistic machismo.
Artemio’s and Catalina's choices are essentially death-
oriented. Catalina's pride in Puebla, for example, forces
her to be "motionless and mute" (99). This image is juxta
posed with that of her father's death; she realizes that
death "is this motionlessness so close to one, this hand
that doesn't move" (99). Catalina does not see, however,
that her own immobility and inability to choose in favor of
risk are also death. Artemio descends from the room in
which he and the fat man have played Russian roulette
through a "stinking, dark stairwell; he [knocks] over a
garbage can and everything [smells] of rotten oranges, of
wet newspapers" (130). The strongest images of death occur
during Artemio's New Year's Eve party when he is almost
sixty-eight, a party which is the material expression of
the macabre dance mentioned by his unconscious in relation
68
to his life after leaving the mountain in Veracruz (313).
68
Supra. p. 346. Artemio's unconscious, just
before the objective account of the Coyoacan New Year's Eve
party, tries to remind him of things he had heard Laura say
regarding death. For example, "Be a man; fear death out
side of danger, not in danger" (249) ("que se hombre: teme
a la muerte fuera del peligro. no en el peligro") ; the
Hileman version renders this, "which says I know man: he
fears not danger but death without danger" (240). Another
388
Artemio's thoughts are now satanic; he is able to hear "the
hidden racing of the immense rats--black fangs, sharp
snouts--which [populate] the attic and foundations of this
Jeronomite convent" and which are possibly waiting to
inject them all with feverish disease (262) . The guests
would have to "sprinkle their bodies with vinegar . . .
frighten away the green, buzzing flies . . . while he made
them dance, live, drink" (262). The flies are green, and
Artemio's green eyes are now "oiillos verdes" (260),
suggesting that the green of life has changed to the green
of death. There are images of defecation; the orgy has all
been foreseen, planned in advance; the excitement has been
programmed (263). After a dissolute, lascivious entertain
ment, "the voices returned to their low, singing tones
. . . to the dissimulation of the Mexican plateau" (263).
In regard to dissimulation, his unconscious tells him,
early in the fatal illness:
quotation of Laura's, from Gongora's sonnet, "Menos
solicito veloz saeta," "111 will your hours forgive you,
the hours that are wearing away your days" (249) ("mal te
perdonaran a _ti las horas; las horas que limando estan los
dias"): Hileman translates this, "Which says that your
hours will forgive you evil, the hours that are pitiless
are your days" (240). Jorge Manrique's "for man to wish
to live when God wishes him to die [is madness] (249)
("que querer hombre vivir cuando Dios quiere que muera" [es
locura] becomes "which says that man decides to live when
God commands him to die" (240). The English reader can
neither realize that Laura had quoted all these famous
lines to him, nor make any sense of the long paragraph,
which in English gives an impression of delirium.
Artemio's unconscious is never inconsequent.
389
You will die? It won’t be the first time. You
will have lived so much dead life, so many moments
of mere sham fgesticulacionl. When Catalina will
put her ear to the door which separates you and
listens to your movements; when you, on the other
side of the door, move without knowing that you are
being listened to, without knowing that someone is
living in dependence on the noises and silences of
your life behind the door, who can live in that
separation? When both know that just one word
would be enough, and you are silent nonetheless,
who can live in that silence? (34)
Separation, silence, the mask that constitutes a dividing
door, inauthenticity, a rigidity which prevents sponta
neity, are all simply a living death, Fuentes is saying.
Man is his own labyrinth. If he smothers to death inside
it, it is because he himself does not open the windows,
does not open the door.
The structure of Artemio Cruz has been both criti
cized and praised. Harss, for example, is harshly critical
of the use of Artemio’s unconscious:
To overlap different periods in time, he uses
. . . a curiously incongruous device consisting in
a kind of voice of conscience that addresses the
protagonist in the second person and the future
tense, a disembodied accusative that tortures the
syntax and disrupts the action. ... In Artemio
Cruz. many otherwise dense and subtle pages are
loaded down with a mechanical dead weight that
seems expert but superficial.69
Sommers is less condemnatory:
While the passages narrated in second-person
singular, in the future tense, function with
profound effect when they add the dimension of
69
Luis Harss, "Carlos Fuentes, Mexico's Metropoli
tan Eye," New Mexico Quarterly. XXXVI (Spring, 1966), 48.
390
philosophical speculation, there are other times
when the author was, in effect, locked in by his
system of alternating points of view. Even though
he may have wished to develop a sequence for
primarily narrative reasons, it became necessary,
at given points, because of the first-second-third
pattern, to write this sequence in second-person
singular and future tense. In general, the orig
inality of this pattern, which is unlike that of
any other contemporary modern novel, is striking
and effective. But these qualities are achieved
at the cost of imposing a sense of rigidity of
the novel's structure.70
Brushwood, however, believes that "the changing narrative
viewpoint is extremely effective, providing a clarity that
could not have been accomplished any other way."7^ He goes
on to say, "I doubt that there is anywhere in fiction a
character whose wholeness -is more apparent than in the case
of Artemio Cruz."72
Gonzalez Echevarria is correct, I believe, when he
calls the fragmentation of the protagonist's self a tech-
73
nique "badly understood" by some critics. Even Carlos
Valdes, in an otherwise unfavorable review, praises
Fuentes' "great technical ability to make the narration
constantly return to the past, his constant shift of
^ After the Storm, p. 163.
71
John S. Brushwood, Mexico in Its Novel:
A Nation's Search for Identity. Pan American Paperbacks
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966), p. 40.
72Ibid.
7 3
"Unamuno una fuente," p. 203.
391
temporal and spatial planes.
This shift of temporal and spatial planes, accom
plished in large part by the device criticized by Harss,
confers conceptual and artistic value to the novel, value
which might not be apparent to someone who has missed the
great central motif of giration in Artemio Cruz.^ One of
the most brilliant accomplishments of the book is that its
giration motif is echoed by its structure, which is as
spiral as that of the pre-Columbian concept of space-time.
Fuentes says in Tiempo mexicano. in words which could
equally well be spoken of Artemio Cruz:
The sense of ancient Mexican art consists
precisely in giving form to an all-encompassing
time and space, in which there fits not only the
implacable circle of the preservation of the
cosmos, but the circularity of a perpetual return
to origins and the circulation of all the mysteries
which rationalization cannot measure. Ultimately,
then, our ancient art creates a sign of openness:
the signifier does not exhaust the signified. The
form is more ample and resistant than any of the
Pacheco and Valdes, "Dos opiniones," p. 20.
Valdes objects to what he considers to be the falsity of
the conversational style and Fuentes' lack of sympathy for
his characters, objections which are not pertinent to the
aspects of the novel under consideration here. Robert
Mead, it might be n&ted, finds the characters "entirely
credible" (Robert G. Mead, Jr., "Carlos Fuentes, Mexico's
Angry Novelist," Books Abroad. XXXVIII [Autumn, 1964], 381.
^Supra, pp. 344 ff. Forms of the words girar and
circular appear at least twenty-nine times in the novel.
One of the most subtle uses occurs when Artemio tells him
self his illness is merely "bad circulation" (10). Indeed
it is. For years he has been dying of "bad circulation" in
the human dance of interlaced fingers (supra. pp. 345-346).
392
contents which may be attributed to it; and it is
precisely this formal quality which assures the
survival and multiplicity of its contents.76
Gonzalez Echevarria has suggested that the mythic sub
stratum of Artemio Cruz has yet to be explored.77 I would
hope that these observations of mine provide a beginning
for a study which should include, as Gonzalez points out,
the theme of "doubles" so prominent in the novel. Careful
and repeated readings will yield as many meanings for La
muerte de Artemio Cruz as Fuentes ascribes to the complex
at Uxmal, to an Olmec figurine, or to a Zapotec relief:
"historical, social, religious, psychological, aesthetic,
symbolic, physical and metaphysical, real and suprareal.1,78
76P. 18.
77"Unamuno una fuente," pp. 204-205.
78Ibid.
CONCLUSIONS
The three novelists treated in this dissertation
have written novels dealing with the problem of masculinity
in Mexico. Their specific message regarding machismo and
the artistic integrity of these novels, however, have not
been perceived by the critics. I have attempted, there
fore, to expose their content in regard to machismo and
thus to clarify their fuller structure and symbolism. In
order to do this, I found it necessary to present two
preliminary chapters synthesizing what Mexican social
thinkers have been writing since 1934 about machismo and
its familial, historical, and social causes. Machismo can
be defined as a narcissistic and destructive attempt to
seek and prove "hypermanliness" and superiority, due to a
radical doubt regarding one's masculinity and to a profound
lack of self-esteem. The macho's understanding of the male
role forces him to be invulnerable and hermetic; his
hermeticism and his destructive attempts to assert his
masculinity intensify his loneliness and lack of related
ness. The macho's hermeticism would seem to keep him from
fulfilling what the psychoanalyst Rollo May terms the most
powerful need of human beings: the need for relationship,
intimacy, acceptance, and affirmation. The Mexican writers
393
394
cited have described the Mexican social milieu as a diffi
cult climate in which to risk openness and authenticity.
Not the least difficult aspect of this climate is the so-
called Mexican "scorn of death," a mystique which contrib
utes, with other psychological and social factors, all
intertwined with machismo, to the fact of Mexico's high
homicide rate. A Mexican criminologist has characterized
Mexicans, killing each other "without compunction," as
suffering from the "complex of Coatlicue," and joins with
others in remarking on the relative acceptance of homicide
in Mexico. The violence and sexual promiscuity of machismo
are on the whole accepted as normal and unavoidable aspects
of the culture.
Building on the material presented in the two
chapters concerned with machismo. I have made clear for the
first time, I believe, the meaning and value of D. H.
Lawrence's proposed program for Mexico, thus "restoring"
the balance which critics have thought lacking in The
Plumed Serpent. On the basis of the central concern with
machismo in Epitalamio del Prieto Trinidad. I have revealed
the coherence and deeper meaning of the second section of
Sender's novel, previously taken to be chaotic. And for
the first time, I have shown that Fuentes structured La
muerte de Artemio Cruz on a carefully-built, dense pattern
of myth, articulating in terms of this myth his message
regarding the sterility of machismo: that Sebastian, far
395
from being the incidental figure which criticism has taken
him to be, is the central model of Fuentes' alternative to
the machista mystique of hermeticism and violation, the
representative of the Renaissance humanist tradition; and
that the English translation loses the great underlying
patterns which give the novel its exceptional aesthetic
and conceptual value.
D. H. Lawrence, writing The Plumed Serpent in 1925,
nine years before the publication of Ramos' Profile,
characterized the macho without using the word itself, in
terms remarkably similar to those which would emerge in the
Mexican "search for identity" some twenty-five years later.
Mexico, he said, is a country divided into victims and
victimizers, set in an ambiance of negation and death.
Mexican men have lost their manhood and are sunk in apathy,
unable to win their identity and possess their own integ
rity. Both men and women are incomplete, and the white man
of Mexico is effeminate, for all his attempts at aggressive
masculinity. Life and an involvement with the present are
withheld. Lacking a sense of identification with the rest
of creation and trapped in an isolating hermeticism, the
people do not give of themselves. Lawrence sensed malevo
lence and evil in the Mexico of 1925. Ravishing or victim
izing others is evil, a "lapsing back to old life modes
that have been surpassed in us." The complex of negation,
apathy, incompleteness, victimizing, and death has been
396
caused by land and climate, by the static and sadistic
Spanish and Aztec inheritance, by the frustrations of
Mexican history, and by the spirit of Catholicism, which
over the centuries has cut Mexicans off from the life-
giving forces of the universe and kept them from achieving
an integration of their own daimonic forces, a fusion of
consciousness and the deep wells of the unconscious.
Lawrence's solution was to speak again, through a charis
matic leader who has conquered himself, the word that can
connect Mexicans to the universe within their souls:
Quetzalcoatl. On the basis of a restoration of the finest
dynamism of the pre-Columbian religious heritage, he
projected a Mexico in which life, energy, self-esteem,
openness, laughter, and gentleness are restored, a Mexico
in which people can change. Women can become women because
men have become men.
In Epitalamio del Prieto Trinidad (1941), Ramon
Sender anticipated to an astonishing extent much of what
Octavio Paz was to say eight years later in his penetrating
essays on the Mexican mystique. Using freely the terms
macho, la chingada. chingon, and a host of genital allu
sions, Sender defined the macho as an empty, little man
whose self-image is based on his capacity for aggression
and indiscriminate genitality. The macho. said Sender, is
unintelligent; he has a narcissistic concern for self and
lacks any sense of sharing in the human condition. He
bases his actions on an artificial, inherited code of
chivalry and has a double standard regarding women. Good
and bad women, however, are both merely property to him.
The macho's dependence on the patronage system and his lack
of real personal strength are actually feminizing, as is
his attempt to eliminate his own feminine psychological
components. His hermeticism, his mask, his violence, and
his sado-masochistic behavior serve as attempts to conceal
his inner sense of nothingness and impotence and as ill-
directed attempts to transcend his loneliness and
alienation. Machismo is regressive, according to Sender.
The macho's values are those of the "primal male": each
man must kill his father and possess his women undisturbed.
The macho is ruled by an atavistic mystique of totem and
taboo rather than by man's unique capacity to become
integral with an evolutionary ideal, with the force of real
love. The chingar o ser chingado mystique can be broken by
the insertion of loving trust in the kernel of good in
every man; trust, that is, in every man's possibility of
responding to affirmation of him by another person. Each
man must have, not the false and hypocritical dignity of
the "gente decente," but the only real dignity allowed to
man, that of looking at a truth squarely, even though that
truth might not be worthy of one. Man must have the
courage and self-control to perform the hero-deed: to
become integral with truth and return with it to the world
398
of his fellow human beings.
Carlos Fuentes published La muerte de Artemio Cruz
in 1962, twelve years after the publication of El laberinto
de la soledad. three years after the publication of
Ramirez's Motivaciones and one year after that of Gonzalez
Pineda's Destructividad and Aramoni's Psicoanalisis. In
other words, he was in a position to synthesize in fiction
the insights of the men and women who in the previous
decade had analyzed the dynamic content of machismo and its
destructive effects. Machismo. Fuentes said, with its
mystique of chingar o ser chingado, is a pattern inherited
from the conquerors and the landholding criollos. The
inevitable hermeticism and dissimulation of this mystique
are intensified by the heritage of the defeated Indians.
A series of imperceptible choices in favor of narcissism
instead of self-sacrifice for others, choices in which
there is bad faith because on deep levels man knows these
choices are wrong, lead just as imperceptibly to alienation
and self-diminishment. The macho mystique is regressive
and death-oriented: Artemio Cruz started to die when he
turned his back on a fellow-soldier and began feeling
himself as he walked toward a spring in which to contem
plate his image. The mystique of violation, the chingada.
is supposedly the "easy" way, but it leads to failure in
life's labyrinth. The chingada can only be defeated by
weapons which are not hers: by open togetherness, by
399
humbly accepting one's participation in the human condition
and begging redemptive forgiveness of one another. This is
the harder way, that can lead to genuine personal freedom
and self-possession, and to the possibility, at least, of
a Utopia among men.
It is important to note that all three novelists
characterize machismo as being death-oriented and regres
sive. All three emphasize the suicidal effects of hermeti
cism and dissimulation, the opposites of openness and
authenticity. Interestingly enough, all three mention
spontaneous, open laughter and ability to risk the
unexpected as signs of genuine -personal integration and
social health. All three emphasize the necessity of hard
struggle in the task of personal integration. All three
relate the condition of women to machismo: Lawrence
believes that women cannot develop themselves as complete
persons until men regain their full manhood; Sender
believes that women must first be authentic if men are to
achieve authenticity; Fuentes makes man's humility and
openness dependent on woman's having achieved them first.
All three novelists treat the role of the mother in
preventing the son from achieving genuine autonomy;
Lawrence and Fuentes portray her attempt to possess the son
by "playing the martyr," while Sender portrays the ; mother
as a generous victim of ridiculous male attitudes toward
women, attitudes which eventually victimize the male.
400
All three authors wrote their novels in order to
say that death-oriented, regressive machismo must be
defeated. Lawrence1s novel is a symbolic attempt to put an
end to the "death-rattles" which he perceived to character
ize Mexico; Sender has Trinidad, "a constant danger," die
because "he should die"; and Fuentes attributes the failure
of the Revolution to the selfishness implicit in the
chingar o ser chingado mystique. All three men, by
diagnosing and prescribing, have lovingly tried to contrib
ute toward eliminating the "familiar pain" which was such a
deadly but accepted part of Mexican social life when they
wrote their novels.
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401
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Dissertations
Bejar, Manuel. "La personalidad en la novela de Ramon J.
Sender." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Univer
sity of Utah, 1970.
Fuentes, Dagoberto. "La desilusion de la Revolucion
Mexicana de 1910, vista en la obra de Carlos
Fuentes." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Southern California, 1971.
King, Charles L. "An Exposition of the Synthetic Philos
ophy of Ramon J. Sender." Unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Southern California,
1953.
Madsen, William. "Christo-Paganism: A Study of Mexican
Religious Syncretism." Unpublished Ph.D. disser
tation, University of California at Berkeley, 1955.
Sandoval Perez, Rafael. "El pensamiento religioso de Ramon
J. Sender." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Southern California, 1968.
Schwartz, Lola Romanucci. "Morality, Conflict and Violence
in a Mexican Mestizo Village." Unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, Indiana University, 1963.

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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

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Asset Metadata

Creator Barber, Janet (author)

Core Title Mexican "Machismo" In Novels By Lawrence, Sender, And Fuentes

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Spanish

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Literature, Modern,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor McMahon, Dorothy Elizabeth (committee chair), Curtis, Robert E. (committee member), Larue, Gerald A. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-762017

Unique identifier UC11363057

Identifier 7300717.pdf (filename),usctheses-c18-762017 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 7300717

Dmrecord 762017

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Barber, Janet

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA