was the mexican revolution a revolt of nature

8/8/2019 Was the Mexican Revolution a Revolt of Nature

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MARK n. ANDRRSON

Was the Mexican Revolutiona Revolt of Nature?

Agustin Yanez's Ecological PerspectiveIn the scathing critique of rationality found in the Dialectic of

Enlightenment (1947) , Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno tracethe Enlightenment project of the systematization of knowledge to theWestern goal of total mastery over nature. According to these philoso-phers, the Enlightenment will to universality required the subordina-tion of both inner and outer nature; that is, mastery over basic humaninstinct as well as the environment and other people. The individual'sdomination over instinct, which Horkheimer and Adorno associate withFreud's pleasure principle, becomes a collective social labor through theshared discourse of rationality. At the same time, the collective, oftenmanipulated by the ruling class, imposes itself over individual instinctthrough social mores and direct repression, while it dominates externalnature through systematic, industrialized labor. However, Horkheimerand Adorno believe that the systematized repression of instinctual needsand the loss of equilibrium with the natural world lead eventually to a"revolt of nature" that works to erase the autocratic subject responsiblefor the repression.

Published in the same year as Horkh eim er and A dorno's treatise,Mexican author and politician Agustin Yanez's Alfilo del agua (1947)proposes a similar model for reading the Mexican Revolution. Yanez'snovel depicts a "typical" Mexican pueblo on the eve of the 1910 armedrebellion. The novel closely mirrors ethnographic discourse, focusingnot on any one individual but rather on the interrelations betweendifferent sectors of the society as well as cultural characteristics of thevillage as a whole.' Yanez concerns himself particularly with the psycho-


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448 Mark D . Andersonwriting during breaks between political assignments, Yanez generated avision of pre-revolutionary Mexico that presented the backwardness ofrural life in sharp opposition to the rapid modernization being carriedou t by his political party, the PR M (Partido de la Revolucion M exicana,which became the PRI after 1946), under Presidents Manuel AvilaCamacho and Miguel Aleman during the 1940s, the early years of theeconomic boom known as the "Mexican Miracle."^

Although the town that Yanez represents in his novel appearsto be pre-modern in that it does not participate in the industrializedeconomy described by Horkheimer and Adorno, and it remains funda-mentally isolated from the technological and political advances of theoutside world, there exist important points of connection between thetwo works. Specifically, one finds fundamental similarities in the exami-nation of systems of psychological and ecological oppression that leadto the revolt of nature, even when the contexts of the works are distantgeographically and culturally: Horkheimer and Adorno focus on the riseof Nazi Ge rm any w hile Yanez studies pre-Revolution M exico. T ho ug hYanez could not have read these German philosophers' treatise before hewrote Alfilo del agua , since the two works appeared nearly simultane-ously, his novel develops a parallel or alternate philosophy of the revoltof nature, using this concept as an explanation for the violence of theMexican Revolution's uprising with distinctly political ends in mind.

In Alfilo del agua, Yafiez studies the social relations of the pre-Revo lutionary^wf^/o in great detail, empha sizing the psychological a ndsexual repression of the Catholic Church as a root cause of the Revolu-tion rather than agrarian conflict or social inequality, which are nor-mally cited as key factors.^ Furthermore, the theme of environmentaldegradation caused by human exploitation appears both in the descrip-tions of the landscape and through the metaphor of social desertifica-tion. Both inner and outer nature are subordinated to the rigid logic of"collective" social values administered by the Church. The continuedrepression of instinctual demands, the environment, and other peopleeventually lead to this "revolt of nature," which, in this novel, becomesthe prime motivating factor of the Revolution.

Alfilo del agua's relocation of the 1910 armed revolt into the


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Was the Mex ican Revo lution a Revolt of Nature? 44 9of the Mexican Revolution in order to highlight the achievements of hisparty in terms of l imiting the power of the Catholic Church and theother members of what he calls in his prologue to the novel the "anti-guo regimen," or the pre-Revolution oligarchy, while downplaying theRevolutionary government's failure to generate social justice and landreform on the scale that it had promised.

Several critics have remarked on Alfilo delagua's incursion intothe psychological causality of the Mexican Revolution. Many of its firstreaders noted a process of essentialization or epitomization in which Alfilo del agua functioned as a microcosm of the Mexican nation. Semi-nal com m enta tors such as Jo hn Brush wo od ("Arquitectura"), JulietaC am pos , M ichael J. Douderoff, Elaine H ad da d, Seymour M en ton ,and Carlos Monsivais ("Pueblo") associated the collective psychologythat Yanez develops of a small town in Jalisco with the Mexican nation'spsychological or spiritual essence.^ Some went so far as to label Alfilodelagua's town the "corazon del pais" (Lopez Colome 385), or even theessence of the "alma americana" (Cardiel Reyes 301).

More recent readers have drawn on allegorical interpretations,while continuing to focus on the novel's position in the formation ofthe national subject. Rosario Castellanos and Ramona Lagos B. alludeto an allegory of desire in which the townspeople's sexual repressionsymbolizes frustrated projects of national union, while Antonio Mar-quet and Kemy Oyarzun both find a Lacanian allegory in the motif ofparricide. D idier Jaen views the relationship between the adolescent bellringer, Gabriel, and the exotic outsider widow, Victoria, as a syntheticresolution of opposing nineteenth-century tendencies to follow eitherautochthonous or foreign cultural models. Likewise, Danny Andersonsees the novel as an attempt to heal through essentialization the schizo-phrenic "rift" in the Mexican national subject diagnosed by humanistssuch as Octavio Paz and Samuel Ramos in order to create "a spiritual-ized version of the 'national subject' as the ideal citizen of the future"(46). Carol Clark D'Lugo arrives at similar conclusions upon studyingthe effects of the novel's fragmentation on the reader. Following thesubversive role of reading in the novel, she concludes that the novelwas designed to awaken the extratextual reader's critical capacities in a


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450 Mark D. AndersonMonsivais has ca[\&A Alfilo del agua a "programmatic book" ("Pueblo"369) , in that it provides unqualified support for the Revolutionarygovernment's politics; a strong declaration that finds backing in thestudies of Christopher Harris, Brushwood ("Agustin Yanez"), and Ro-dr ic Camp.

Most of these readings complement each other, focusing onthe formation of a unified national consciousness. Without a doubt,these interpretations of the novel coincide perfectly with Yanez's ownpolitical writing: in essays such as El contenido social de Li literatura ibe-roamericana (1944) and Conciencia de la R evolucion (1964) he makesclear his belief that literature's most important function is to vocalizeand crystallize this post-Revolution national consciousness. However,one aspect seems to be missing from this wide panorama of criticalperspectives: Yanez's stated interest in the ecological component of hiscollective, "nationa l" psychology.

Critics frequently use the metaphor of a "textual economy"to describe novels; however, in the case oiAlfilo del agua , ecology is amore apt symbol for the description of nested systems within the text,not all of which depend on material transactions as a mode of interrela-tion. The novel deemphasizes individual and class differences in favorof a holistic, ethnog raph ic ap proach to represen tation. This leveling ofclass distinctions characterizes the text from the very beginn ing, as thisquote taken from the introductory "Acto preparatorio" shows: "los ricosmiserables y estoicos, estoicos los pobres, igualan un parejo vivir" (12).In this passage, as in others throughout the novel, Yanez minimizeseconomic inequalities in favor of a collective psychological essencecharacterized by stoicism. In fact, economic disparities constitute onlyone of many manifestations of an essential system of relations that issymbolized by metaphors of sterility and drought.

In Alfilo del agua , a pro m inen t factor in the construction of thepsychological essence of the pueblo is the relationship between charac-ters and their en viro nm en t, as well as the effects the en viro nm en t hason the social dynamic. Likewise, the use of multiple, partial points ofview and simultaneity of action removes the stress from individual char-acters and places it on the system of relationships that emerges in the


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Was the Mex ican Revolution a Revolt of Nature? 45 1nature. Yanez's ecology envelops all aspects of life in the region wherethe novel takes place, Los Altos de Jalisco; not only biological re lation-ships but also the interconnections between the collective consciousnessand the environment .

Yafiez's novel represents a co-penetration of the landscape withits inhabitants in such a way that the identities of the characters be-come fundamentally linked to their environment, while the landscapeis frequently defined in hu m an te rm s. T he env ironm ent determ inesthe human's worldview, and nature is represented almost exclusivelythrough its relationship to humans, having little autonomy of its own.Yanez depicts nature primarily as a function of humans: as in theromantic novel's pathetic fallacy, changes in the natural world reflecthuman emotions and, like the earlier Spanish-American regional novelsstudied by Carlos Alonso, humans subordinate nature through work. ' 'Yet at the same time, nature is God's tool, apparently beyond the reachof human machination, and the human population's psychology andphysiology depend on the environment that molds them.^ In this man-ner, Yanez represents the concept of ecosystem as defined by Cohen;natural habitat, animal species, humans, and their institutions all formone complex system of coexistence (3).

The images of drought that saturate Al filo del agua are notmere decoration; the desertification of Los Altos de Jalisco, as in m an yother parts of Mexico, is a legacy of the ecological disaster initiated bythe S panish C onq ues t. Alfred Crosby has show n tha t a large degree ofthe Europeans' success in conquering non-European lands was due totheir ability to "europeanize" temperate regions of the world; Europeanconquerors traveled with a "portmanteau biota," or simplified Europeanbiosystem including plants, cattle, and pathogens, that allowed themto transform foreign environments into replicas of Europe. In the caseof Mexico, this transformation was both intentional and accidental.Diseases such as smallpox and typhoid fever eradicated up to ninetypercent of the native population, not only enabling Cortes to conquerTenochtitian with relative ease, but also leaving former indigenous ag-ricultural lands open to pastoral uses by the Spaniards, who, unwillingto adopt indigenous foodstuffs, introduced their European livestock


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Was the Mexican Revolution a Revolt of Nature? 45 3brillantes al sol. Aridos lomeri'os por paisaje, cuyas lineas escuetas vansuperponiendo iguales horizontes. Lomeri'os. Lomeri'os" (4). The village,its inhabitants and its surroundings form one desiccated ecosystem thatextends off into the distance, a repetitive silhouette reproduced like thelines of a topographical m ap in the ech o of "lomeri'os." As the narratorsums up, "Uno y mismo el paisaje y las almas" (12). '

While humans in Alfib del agua are infiuenced by their naturalsurroundings, they control their environment as a collective experience.A great part of this collective experience involves survival: the daily ac-tivity of w orking the lan d th at is required for th e con tinue d existence ofa society based on agriculture and cattle ranching. Land is the currencyof the society, valued because of its potential to be exploited by humanactivity. It is the base unit, the collateral offered for loans, the measureof power and wealth. Money itself has less value, due to its scarcity.Land and its products are the common currency; this is why the me-dieros, share croppers who traditionally received half of the harvest inpayment, and the peones, or hired hands, are normally paid with cornrather than hard cash. Working the land is the focal point of daily lifefor the pueblo, an activity that defines the psychology and physiologyof its inhabitants:

Caras de ayuno y manos de abstinencia. Caras sin afeites. Labios consu-midos. Palidos cutis. Mas los varones tostados, consumidos por el sol.Manos rudas, de las mujeres, que sacan agua de los pozos; de los varo-nes, que trabajan la tierra, lazan reses, atan el rastrojo, desgranan maiz,acarrean piedras para las cercas, manejan caballos, cabestrean novillos,ordenan, hacen adobes, acarrean agua, pastura, granos. (14)

But in the harsh environment the characters live in, working the landis not solely an economic activity but a vital one as well: survival is atstake. Therefore the dom ina tion of outer nature becomes a social task,a shared enterprise carried out at the individual level.

As external nature includes other humans outside socially de-fined perimeters, the task of do m ina tion is extended to include all thosewho do not participate in or fit into the system of norms sanctioned bythe society. As Yanez stated in an interview with Carballo, regarding his


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454 Mark D . Andersonand tactics of intimidation employed by the priest, Don Dionisio, area method of reestablishing control over sheep that have strayed fromthe fold. Those who are not rehabilitated are ostracized from the societyand disassociated from the land, as in the case of the nortenos, migrantworkers who have returned from the United States with revolutionaryideas. The nortefios are figuratively exiled or desterrados by the town'scollective voice with judgments such as the following: "ya no se hallan agusto en su tierra"; they are accused of "sembrar la duda" and "hacer quese pierda el amo r a la tierra" {Alfilo 151). The psychological dominationof individual instinct and social difference is thus inextricably boundup with physical and discursive control over the land.

The concept of roots occupies a central position with respectto the collective experience of the land. In Al filo del agua, the landforms an integral part of both individual and collective identities, andis instrume ntal in the construction of a worldview. One juncture wherethis connection comes to light is when Don Alfredo Perez is forced tomove to Guadalajara in order to care for his mentally ill son. "Se mehaci'a imposible nomas pensar que algiin di'a pudiera desprenderme de latierra," he remarks to the priest (325). His identity is inseparable fromthe land, and his homeland has molded his worldview. For this reason,he describes Guadalajara as "un mundo al reves" (325-26). Urban Gua-dalajara represents the opposite of everything that Wispueblo is, of w hathe himself is. A switch in social roles highlights this inversion: a p ro m i-nent citizen in the village, Don Alfredo is forced to work as a grocer'sassistant in the city. He compares leaving his land to the mutilation ofhis body, so tied to the land is his organism: "Pero no hubo remedio:comence a tratar lo del traspaso, la venta de las tierritas, el cobro dedeud as, el ver a este y al otro , el tener qu e repetir a todos la triste h isto -ria; cada cosa que se arreglaba era com o si me fiieran co rtand o aqui unamano, luego un brazo, luego una pierna" (326). The symbolism of thesemutilations and subsequent inversion of social roles that Don Alfredoundergoes invokes the emotional and material trauma the land-owningclass suffered during the Revolution, but the changes are also necessaryfor the well-being of the child in both the literal and allegorical senses:his son can only recover from his mental illness in the city, with the


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Was the M exican Revolution a Revolt of Nature? 45 5(which would be memorialized in culture) for the modern, urbanizedworld of the "Mexican Miracle," the cure-all for the psychological illsresponsible for the Revolution.

Place also forms the setting for communal identity, an imagi-nary construction of its inhabitants that is mediated by local oral histo-rian Lucas Maci'as and the clergy through rites, tradition, and memory.Through the stories of Maci'as, the landscape becomes a discursiveterrain, a mechanism for collective memory. The pueblo's geographicspace constitutes a self-contained system of history; Maci'as always as-signs events that occur outside the puebb a correspondence with localhistory. News that falls outside o( the pueblo's immediate space with noparallels to local happenings is relegated to geographic limbo until it af-fects the residents directly. This is why the villagers read the beginningsof the Revolution "como si se tratara de un hecho acaecido en China,en Turqui'a" (375). The Revolution destroys the molds of the pueblo'scollective experience, which is the reason it causes such fear amongthe villagers. When disasters have occurred in the past, a precedentwas always established within local history, restoring order. Not so thistime: the local history dies with Lucas Maci'as the day the Maderistastake Moyahua.

The clergy serves a similar function in the mediation of land-scape; through the inculcation of religious imagery, Luis Gonzaga readsthe hills surrounding the pueblo as Galvary and imagines himself tobe Ghrist crucified. And as in the case of Lucas Maci'as, the two mostprominent members of the clergy suffer symbolic deaths at the outsetof the Revolution: Don Dionisio faints, falling unconscious to the pave-ment (386), while Padre Islas has an epileptic seizure that leaves himparalyzed (34 3). W ith the m ediators responsible for its strict geographicdemarcation removed, the landscape is left blank for the possibility ofthe writing of a new history in a wider context.

I have shown how Alfilo del agua develops relationships be-tween physical and discursive domination over external nature as col-lective social labor and a unified, group psychology based on an arid,desertif ied environment and the mediation of the Catholic Church;it only remains to discuss in greater detail the mechanisms of control


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456 Mark D. Andersonself-control mediated by the Church. However, as the novel progresses,the increasing pressures from both within and without force the Churchand the townspeople to take more and more drastic measures in theirow n repression, whic h eventually lead to the explosive events th at fore-shadow the coming of the R evolution.

The dryness of the river, described in the "Acto preparato-rio" and emphasized throughout the novel, marks a significance thatreaches beyond mere description of the desertification of the region (4).Through inversion, it establishes the beginning of the time-honoredmetaphor life/water, which in Al filo del agua is also associated withfem inine desire. '" T h e affiliation of fem inine sensuality w ith w atercontinues in the next paragraph of the "Acto preparatorio": "Mujeresenlutadas, madrugadoras, riegan limpieza desde secretos pozos" (4).The contradictory composition of this image evokes the complicity ofthe women in the repression of their own desire, as the water they drawfrom "secretos pozos" is channeled toward an activity that symbolizes,in turn, the repression of exterior nature. As O'Neill points out, thepueblo's obsession with cleanliness corresponds to its unhealthy climeof spiritual hygiene (237). Although the women's "secret wells" evokeinner sensuality, their sco uring of the town's sidewalks concurs w ith thepriest's labor of spiritual cleansing. The physical act of cleaning combatsthe invading forces of exterior nature, the dust and deterioration, whilethe priest, aided by his ministers and the religious associations, wageswar against outside influences in order to repress the inner or instinctualnature of his congregation that attempts to burst forth during moonlitnigh ts. Yafiez links these hid de n desires directly to anim al in stinct, ofi:endescribing them using animal metaphors:

En las noches de luna escapan miedos y deseos, a la carrera; puedenoi'rse sus pasos, el vuelo fatigoso y violento, al ras de la calle, sobrelas paredes, arriba de las azoteas. Camisa de fuerza batida por el aire,contorsionados los puiios y las faldas, golpeando las casas y el silencioen vuelos de pajaro ciego, negro, con alas de vampiro, de tecolote ogavilan; con alas de paloma, si de paloma torpe, recien escapada, queluego volvera, barrotes adentro. (7)


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Was the Mexican Revolution a Revolt of Nature? 457vampires, owls, and birds of prey. Yet at the same time it is a dove,international symbol of peace that flies on clumsy wings towards free-do m . T he em blem is com pelling; the liberation of desire leads to innerpeace. But the dove fears freedom and will soon return to its cage. Theviolence of its outbreak is unequal to the degree of its repression.

This passage begins a series of images of entrapment and en-closure that, along with the images of dryness and sterility, illustratesrepression and its consequences. The caging of animal instinct is animage that recurs time and again in the text, reaching its culminationin the Ejereicios de E ncierro. The "enclosure" alluded to in the nameof the spiritual exercises is not only that of its participants within thewalls of the Casa de los Ejercicios, it is also the repression of instinctualdesire within them. In particular, the village must contain male desire,associated with wolves and coyotes, before it wreaks havoc on the socialorder (10).

For Horkhe ime r and Adorn o, control over outer nature, whichincludes the dom ination of other hum ans as well as no n-h um an nature,has always begun with the repression of instinctual urges that are theexpression of inner nature: "in class history, the enmity of self to sac-rifice implied a sacrifice of self, inasmuch as it was paid for by a denialof nature in man for the sake of domination over non-human natureand other men" (54). To a certain degree, the domination over innernature is itself natu ral, thus the aw kward w ording . T he "enm ity of selfto sacrifice" conforms the base instinct, the ego which demands thatits needs be fulfilled. Yet this base instinct sacrifices or represses itselfin order to gain control over outer nature so that it may fulfill its owninstinctual demands to a more complete degree. It is in this sense thatLeiss has criticized Descartes's "transcendental subjectivity," writing thatthe "entire universe becomes the tool of the ego, although the ego hasno substance of meaning except in its own boundless activity" (59). Theego ceaselessly works to expand its domination, which in turn requiresgreater repression of its own base instinct. Eventually, this conflictreaches a breaking p oin t in w hich instinctual desire overcomes the ego'srepression and rebels, thus the "revolt of nature."

Clearly, Horkheimer and Adorno's model of the revolt of nature


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458 Mark D. Andersonagriculture is simply too great. However, read alongside Horkheimerand Adorno's treatise, Al filo del agua offers an alternate perspectiveof the revolt of nature that merits closer examination. In Al filo delagua, Yanez addresses indirectly complicated problems of develop-ment that pertain specifically to the so-called "Third World," an issuenot adequately addressed by Horkheimer and Adorno in the Dialecticof E nlightenment. In his novel as well as his political writings, Yafiezoutlines a dialectic of modernity that simultaneously challenges andcomplements Horkheimer and Adorno's dialectic of Enlightenment.Once again, the context is of utmost importance.

Yanez's "underdeveloped" village must not be seen simply aspremodern, but also as a symbol of the miscarriage of the Porfirio Diazgovernment's positivist development projects. The town's general pov-erty and total lack of communications are not only metaphorical; theycontribute to the demonization of Porfirio Diaz as the guilty party inMexico's failure to attain modernity, corruption having led him astray.This is why the consecutive representatives of Diaz's government inAlfilo del aguds, village, Don Roman Capistrano and Don HeliodoroFernandez, are represented as corruptly innocuous, failing to instituteeven the most minor of modernizing reforms. At the least, Horkheimer,Adorno, and Yafiez share the criticism of positivist thought and thebelief that positivism contributed to the formation of totalitarian gov-ernments: Hitler in Germany and Porfirio Diaz in Mexico. '^ However,their perspectives diverge at that point. Horkheimer and Adorno arguethat over-modernization led to irrationality, the Enlightenment's goal ofindividual liberation throu gh material dom ination of nature having ledparadoxically to the destruction of the critical capacities of individualthought. For Yafiez, on t:he other hand, feudal social and religious struc-tures inhibited the expression of individual thought through equallyeffective methods of mind control, a situation that could only be rem-edied through the modernizing influence of the Mexican Revolution.

On the surface, Yafiez's perspective may appear to navigatedangerously near to the early stages of Enlightenment thought thatHorkheimer and Adorno crit icize. However, there is much more atwork here and, as much as Al filo del agua's village may resemble a


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Was the Mex ican Revo lution a Revolt of Nature? 45 9primarily as a tool of liberation that would free the individual fromrepressive social control and the nation from the imposition of foreignmodels (i.e., positivism). His 1909 village therefore represents simulta-neously positivism's miscarriage of modernization and the justificationfor the modernizing and liberating projects of the Revolutionary gov-ernment following the resolution of the armed conflict.

In any case, Yafiez's novel shows that the horrors and alienationcaused by exclusion from modernity can rival those of the suppressionof the individual in the highly industrialized society described by Hork-heimer and Adorno. Yafiez's village reveals that the failure to modernizedoes no t guaran tee individu al liberties or spiritual fulfillment any m orethan industrialization necessarily removes them. The allegories of read-ing in Yafiez's novel and political writings divulge the belief that theindividual can only escape totalitarian psychological and material re-pression through humanist education, a perspective not greatly diflerentfrom that of Hork heim er and Ad orno . Indeed, m ode rnity for Yafiez, asfor Horkheimer and Adorno, does not only signify material progress inthe human domination of nature; intellectual considerations are equallyimportant. However, while Horkheimer and Adorno consider that theprevalence of science and mass media has led to total conformity, thesuppression of authentic thought, and the rise of totalitarian govern-ments, Yafiez believes that the intellectual liberation of the individualcan be reconciled with modernity. While his ideas regarding educationand nationalism clearly tie into Enlightenment thought, they also re-ject mindless positivism in favor of the liberation of the individual in anational context. He hopes to reach a middle ground in which devel-opment and industrialization are moderated by a liberating educationtha t teaches on e, like the allegories of reading in th e novel, to q uestion ,not to conform.

Returning to the social setting oi Alfilo del agua, it is clear howcertain agents have imbedded strict mechanisms of social control in theconsciousness of the pueblo. As in Horkhe imer and Adorno's nightmar-ish Germany, the Mexican pueblo controls its own instinctual nature inorder to maintain the social order of what the author, with clear refer-ence to his position as an ideologue of the institutionalized Revolution,


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460 Mark D . Andersonliberating social change. As the novel's title suggests, the storm lies justover the horizon and its fury will bring both destruction and renewal,end ing the d rou ght and delivering social and spiritual rejuvenation.

The novel's action ends in 1910 with the arrival of some Ma-derista troops in the village. Only a few separate (although symbolic)incidents and an open ending allude to the disorder the Revolution willwreak on the traditional lives of the inhabitants of the village. Thereare no clear connections established between social injustice or agrar-ian conflict and the impending violence; the Revolution comes fromwithout, in the form of the troops of the bola, and from within, in therebellion of desire against its repression, symbolized by the escape ofM aria, the priest's niece, w ith th e captain of the revolutionary troops.

Researchers of Mexican ecological history such as Leonardo,Melville, and Ortiz Monasterio's group have shown that many of thesocial and agrarian problems that have plagued Mexico and, accordingto most historians, led to the Revolution, are directly related to envi-ronmental issues that have been centuries in developing. In fact, oneobserver estimates that fully one third of Mexico's farmland has beenaffected by severe erosion over the centuries (Simon 36); with suchnum bers it is no t difficult to imagine how com petition over the rem ain-ing arable land could kindle conflict. Therefore, Yafiez's ecological viewof the Mexican Revolution as a revolt of nature clearly has some roots inthe historical realities of land (m is)man agem ent practices. However, hisgoal is not the conservation or restoration of either the environment orthe past; unlike Horkheimer and Adorno's critique, his political projectlooks forward to modernity.

Yafiez conceived oi Alfilo del agua more as a prehistory of theinstitutionalized Mexican Revolution and its project of moderniza-tion than a history of the armed conflict. It provides a flctionalizedethnography of a traditional Mexican town before the Revolution withthe goal of comparing and contrasting the pre-Revolution situation ofrepression with the freedom and changes wrought by the Revolutionarygovernment of which he formed part. He makes this contrastive projectexplicit in an article written in I9 6 0 , on the occasion of the fiftiieth an -niversary of the Mexican Revolution, declaring that:


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Was the Mexican Revolution a Revolt of Nature? 461bien, con rapidez, en raz6n directa del cumplimiento efectivo, continuode los principios revolucionarios; los tropiezos son siempre atribuibles adesviaciones de estos principios. {Conciencia 6566)

He then proceeds to enumerate the modernizing achievements of hisparty:Las realizaciones sobresalientes son [. . .] el redescubrimiento de laautenticidad nacional, [. . .] la creacion del sistema de educaci6nrural, las campatias contra el analfabetismo, el poderoso impul-so dado a la ensenanza tecnica, la multiplicacion de recursos paraponer la ensenanza universitaria al alcance del mayor niimero,el fomento del arte y la investigacidn cientifica, la ereccion decentros de cultura superior y la perseverante tarea de difusi6ncultural [. . .] la reivindicacion de la riqueza nacional y de losinstrum entos para su explotacidnla tierra, el subsuelo, la eleccricidad,los ferrocarriles, [. . .] la industrializaci6n, [. . .] el progreso en materiade comunicaciones, irrigaci6n, salubridad, seguridad social, garanti'as altrabajo, credito, desenvolvimientos regionales, urbanismo, servicios yobras piiblicas [...]. (66-67)

It is no coincidence that land reform flnds no place on the list, while ed-ucational reforms (education had been largely Catholic or non-existentbefore the Revolution) and modernization flgure prominently. In thiscontext, it becomes clear that Yafiez envisioned Alfib del agua as partof his own and the Revolutionary government's larger pedagogical proj-ect of the creation of a uniform (yet liberated) national consciousnessthrough a shared historical and cultural background.'^

Yafiez participated in this project both as a creator of nationalculture and as an educator. Indeed, Danny Anderson has linked Alfilodel agua to this goal, stating that Yafiez's political project required thesubstitution oi Alfilo del agua's pre-Revolution essence, based on repres-sion, with a new national essence grown out of the Revolution and itsvalues (48). Yafiez himself made explicit this fusion of his political andcultural interests, declaring that the patriotic duty of the artist was to"forjar y orien tar el espiritu nacional y elevarlo a pianos de universalidaden la med ida de su poder creador" {Conciencia 5152). Perhaps for thisreason, his novel conveniently avoids the complicated political situa-


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462 Mark D . AndersonUnder the leadership of Vasconcelos and other educators, in-

cluding Yafiez, the oflficial party's educational project limited effectivelythe psychological control of the Catholic Church and its repression ofthe ego or inner nature, which Alfilo del agua associates with the causesof the armed uprising at the beginning of the Mexican Revolution.Yafiez's political philosophy implies that the revolt of nature embodiedin the Revolution provided an adjustment, liberating the mestizo egofrom its colonial chains in order to find its authentic, essential self Butas critics past and present have noted, the Revolution did not lead to theliberation it promised; many of the systems of repression were repeatedunder the Revolutionary government, not least among them the im-position of the homogenizing "national authenticity" or consciousnesspromoted by Yafiez and his colleagues in their educational policies.' '*Likewise, the environmental problems that led to the desertification ofLos Altos de Jalisco and were partly responsible for its rural culture ofpoverty were never addressed adequately. In fact, they actually worsenedconsiderably with the programs of modernization and industrialization,as Joel Simon details in Endangered Mexico. In summary, the repressionof inner nature found its continuation through nationalist mechanismsrather than the Catholic Church, while the repression of outer naturehas not only persevered unabated, but has actually increased substan-tially.

The conditions in Mexico following the Revolution and the"Mexican Miracle" would seem to conform even to a greater degree tothose described by Horkh eim er and Ado rno in The Dialectic ofiEnlight-enment than they did before 1910. Mexico in recent years has movedbeyond nationalistic programs of inclusion through socialized educa-tion and economic measures towards globalized industry and neoliberaleconomic policies, which, in the end, are not that distant from those oftheir liberal predecessors in the nineteenth century epitomized by Por-firio Di'az's governm ent. M ore and m ore M exicans are relegated to w hatManuel Castells has called "the Fourth World," that limbo of exclusionfrom participation in the global economy whose denizens have neitherthe specialized training to produce saleable goods in either the indus-trial or the agricultural sectors nor the buying power to consume those


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Was the Mexican Revolution a Revolt of Nature? 463to compete with industrialized agriculture and NAFTA's duty free im-ports, particularly considering environmental factors such as erosion,the exhaustion of nutrients in the soil, and the high cost of irrigationprojects, fertilizers, and genetically modified seeds.'^ The United Stateshas provided, often unwillingly, an escape valve for such people; theirunskilled labor, while rhetorically rejected, forms an integral part of theeconomy here. But as the US works to close down the border with acurtain of paperwork, lights, rusted iron, concrete, and rifles, that routemay soon be sealed. With Mexico's environment in its most degradedstate yet, a diminishing outlook for social change, and the only outletfor discontent being shut down, could another "revolt of nature" be inthe works?

UNIVERSITY OF N O RT H T E X A S

NOTES' As Floyd Merrell remarks, while some individual psychologies are studied in depth,they are always related to the whole and take on archetypal characteristics (63). In-dividual characteristics thus come to form part of a collective cultural psychology,a procedure typical of ethnography. It is no coincidence that Yanez published anethnographic study of his hometown in Jalisco, Yahualica, a year before Al filo delagua. The descriptions of Yahualica clearly prefigure ethnographic passages in Alfilodel agua, particularly those of the "Acto preparatorio" that introduces the work andorchestrates a critical reading of it as an ethnography. Yanez dedicated much of his life to political service within his party, occupying a greatnum ber of political and cultural positions from the 1930s until his death in 1980. Hewas deeply involved in the Revolutionary Party's program of the institutionalization of"revolutionary" values and national consciousness through civic education, holdingpositions such as the D irector of Primary Education in the State of Nayarit (193031),Professor of the UNAM (19 42 -53 , 19 59-62 ), Governor of Jalisco (1 953 -59), andMinister of Public Education under Diaz Ordaz (1964 -70), am ong others. He was alsoelected Director of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua (197380). His unflagging

adherence to his party and particularly his silence during the Massacre of Tlatelolco,which occurred while he was Minister of Public Education in 1968, has led to fierce


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464 Mark D . Anderson' T he re are nearly innu m erable studies emphasizing agrarian conflict as the central causefor the Revolution, among them Mexican historian Jesiis Silva Herzog's influential es-say Trayectoria ideologica de la Revoiucion M exicana, which highlights the references toagrarian reforms in the ma ny do cum ents and m anifestos of the Re volution. Likewise,Enrique Florescano describes his book Origen y desarrollo de los problemas agrarios deMexico as a stud y of the colonial inequalities of land d istrib utio n t hat w oul d eventuallylead to several uprisings during the nine teen th century an d culm inate in the M exicanRevolution (11).' ' C am po s describes Yanez's style as a "realismo de las esencias" (1 44 ), a "realismo quetrasciende al objeto, que p reten de d escubrirle u n significadeo mas alia de las aparienciasmateriales, un alma" (161), while M onsivais ci^s Alfilo delagua's village a " com unida darqueti'pica" ("Pueblo" 370). Likewise, Menton states tha.t Alfilo del agua representsa "smtesis de su pai's" (151).' J. Baird Callicot has affirmed that "the ontological primacy of objects and the on-tological subordination of relationships, characteristic of classical Western science,is, in fact, reversed in ecology" (111). Indeed, Carol Clark D'Lugo relates Alfilo delagua's fragmentation to the activation of the reader with the effect of subverting thissubject/object polarization {"Alfilo" 860) .

'' See Carlos A lonso's b oo k The Spanish Am erican Regional Novel'm which he demon-strates that in several regional novels, humans' relation to their environment is definedthrough labor.^ Ne ar the end of the novel, thc pueblo sees drought as divine punishment for DamianLimon's crime of assassinating the vivacious Micaela: "Las cosechas fueron malas. Elcielo ceb6 su castigo sobre aquella region que habi'a dado luz a un criminal comoDamian de cuya maldad hablaban hasta los periodicos. Pocas lluvias. Aguda sequi'aque des de agosto se sigui6 a septie m bre [. . . ] " (314 ).^ See the intro duc tion to Elinor C . K. Melville's A Plague of Sheep, in which she providesa detailed account of the alterations of the Mexican high plateau environment due tothe introduction of European species and land management practices.' In an interview with Em m anue l C arballo, regarding his novel Las tierrasfiacas (1962) ,Yanez demonstrates his interest in environmental effects on the psychology and life-style of the region's inh ab itan ts: "de tie m po atras queri'a consagrar un a novela a la vidacampesina, en la que apareciesen la pequefia propiedad como regimen econ6mico, elaislamiento, las tierras aridas que determinan niveles de vida y de caracter muy espe-ciales" ("Conversaciones" 2). Th is q uote high lights the tension between regionalism


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Was the M exican Revolution a Revolt of Nature? 465'" This connection has been made by Teresa S. Ventrell Longo, who also notes thatmale desire is associated with fire in the novel (91).' ' When love is invoked in the text, it is most often parental, such as that of Don D ioni-sio for his nieces. However, even this parental love is denied any emotional expression:it is suppressed by the same mechanisms of repression as animal sexual desires.' This comparison may appear somewhat unequal; however, one must consider thatwhile not as infamous as Hitler, Porfirio Diaz was responsible for atrocities such asordering the relocation, enslavement, and even eradication of indigenous groups likethe Yaqui of Sonora.' ' For background on this project of the construction of national consciousness throughcivic education and the creation of a shared, national culture, see Michael NelsonMiller's Red, White, and Green: The Ma turing ofMexicanidad, 1940-1946.' Even as ideologues such as Yanez trumpeted the trium phs of the institutionalizedRevolution, critics like Silva Herzog questioned the direction the official party wastaking in articles such as "La Revoiucion Mexicana en crisis," published in 1943." See chapter two of Castell's End of Millenium, entitled "The Rise of the FourthWorld: Informational Capitalism, Poverty, and Social Exclusion."'^ See the second chapter of Joel Simon's Endangered Mexico, entitled "Crisis in ElCampo."

WORKS CITEDAlonso, Carlos. The Spanish American Regional Novel: Modernity and Autochthony.Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.Anderson, Danny J. "Reading, Social Control, and the Mexican Soul in Alfilo del

agua." Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 11 (1995): 45-53.Azuela, Arturo, ed. Introdu ction. Alfilo del agua: edicion critica. By Agusti'n Yanez.1947. Nanterre: Signatarios Acuerdo Archivos ALLCA XX, U Paris X,

1996.Brushwood, John. "Agusti'n Yanez: Creativity and Civic Responsibility." Topic 20(1970): 44-5 2.. "La arquitectura de las novelas de Agustin Yafiez." Giacoman 95 -1 16 .Callicot, J. Baird. "The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic." Environmental


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466 Mark D . AndersonCa mp os, Jul ieta . La imagen en el espejo. Mexico: U Nacional Autonoma de Mexico,

1965.Cardiel Reyes, Raiil. "El ser de America en Agusti'n Yanez." Eilosofiay Letras 38

(1950) : 3 0 1 - 2 1 .Castellanos, Rosario. "Alfilo del agua de Agustin Yafiez: una trinidad femenina." Nivel

99 (1971): 2 .Castells, Manuel. End of Millenium. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. Vol. 3 of The Informa-

tion Age: Economy, Society and Culture. 3 vols. 19 98 -99 .Cohen, Yehudi A., ed. Man in Adaptation. Vol. 2. Chicago: Aldine, 1969.Crosby, Alfred. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansio n of Europ e, 900-1900.

2nd ed . Cam br idge: Cam br idge UP, 20 04 .D'Lugo, Carol Clark. "Alfilo del agua: Addressing Readership in Mexican Fiction."

Hispania 7 4 ( 1 9 9 1 ) : 8 6 0- 6 7 .. The Eragmented Novel in Mexico: T he Politics ofEorm. Au stin: U of Texas P,

1997.Douderoff, Michael J. "Tensions andT riangles m Alfilo del agua." Hispania 57 (1974):

1 -12 .Florescano, Enriq ue. Origeny desarrolb de bsproblemas agrarios en Mexico (1500-1821).

Mexico: Era, 1971.Giacoman, Helmy F, ed. Hom enaje a Agustin Yanez: Variaciones interpretativas en torno

asu obra. Madrid: Ibarra, 1973.Haddad, Elaine. "The Structure oi Alfilo del agua." Hispania A l ( 19 6 4) : 5 2 2 - 2 9 .Harris, Christopher. "Agusti'n Yafiez's International Image: Murders, Mysteries, and

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M unicipio de Jalostitlan, Jalisco." Economia y sociedad en los Altos de Jalisco.Mexico : Nueva Imagen , 1978 . 29-132 .

Lopez Colome, Pura. "Permanencia en ascuas: sobre la modernidad de Al filo delagua." Azuela. 383-91.

M arquet, A nton io. "Yanez y el Acto prepa ratorio. '" Palabra critica: estudios en homenajeaJoseAmescua. Ed. Serafin G onzalez. M exico: Fon do de C ultur a E conom ica,1997 . 3 4 6 - 5 3 .


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Was the M exican Revolution a Revolt of Nature?Merrell, Floyd. "Structure and Restructuration in Alfilo del agua." Chasqui 17.1

(1988): 51-60.Miller, Michael Nelson. Red, White, and Green: The M aturing ofMexicanidad,1940-1946. El Paso: Texas Western P, 1998.

Monsivais, Carlos. "Agusti'n Yafiez: 19 04 -198 0." La cultura en Mexico 20 Feb. 1980:xi.. "'Pueblo de mujeres enlutadas': el programa descriptivo en Alfilo del agua."Azuela 369-82.

O'Neill, Samuel J., Jr. "El espacio en Alfilo del agua." Giacoman 23 3-50 .Or tiz M onasterio, Fernando , Isabel Fernandez Tijero, Alicia Castillo, Jose Ortiz M o-nasterio, and Alfonso Bulle Goyri. Tierra profanada: historia ambiental deMexico. Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, 1987.Oyarzun, Kemy. "Parricidio a la letra: Alfilo del agua." Texto critico 12.3435 (1986):65-80.Silva Herzog, Jesus. "La revoiucion mexicana en crisis." Cuadernos americanos 11(1943): 32- 55 .. Trayectoria ideologica de la Revoiucion Mexicana, 19101917, y otros ensMexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1984.Simon, Joel. Endangered Mexico: An Environment on the Edge. San Francisco: SierraClub, 1997.Ventrell Longo, Teresa S. "Renewing the Creation of M yth: An Analysis of Rhythmand Image in the Acto preparatorio' of Yafiez's Alfilo del agua." Confiuencia4.1 (1988): 89 -95 .Yanez, Agustin. "Agustin Yafiez." Interview with Emmanuel Carballo. Giacoman13-62.

. Alfilo del agua. Ed. and pref. Antonio Castro Leal. Mexico: Porrua, 1973.. Conciencia de la Revoiucion. Mexico: Justicia Social, 1964.. El contenido social de la literatura iberoamericana. Spec, book issue oijornada14 (1944).. "Conversaciones con Agusti'n Yafiez." Interview with Emmanuel Carballo.La cultura en Mexico 37 (1962): 1-3.. Yahualica: etopeya. Mexico: Camara de D iputados, 1946.


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