Gender, Nation and the Formation of the Twentieth-century Mexican Literary Canon

Sarah E. L. Bowskill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351192811
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

"The post-revolutionary Mexican literary canon was formed by cultural and political elites who sought to identify and reward those novels which would best represent the new nation. Reviewers found what they were looking for in Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes's El indio (1935) for example, but not in Consuelo Delgados's Yo tambien, Adelita (1936). This groundbreaking study provides a fresh perspective on canon formation by uncovering the circumstances and readings which produced a male-dominated Mexican literary canon."

CHAPTER 1
Setting the Standard: El indio and the Premio Nacional de Literatura

In the mid-1930s the Mexican State set out to define ‘Mexican literature’ and form a national canon which would reflect and reinforce its nation-building agenda. To this end, in 1934 the interim government of Abelardo L. Rodríguez (1932–34) established a national prize for literature, the Premio Nacional de Literatura.¹ The competition was organized by the Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP) through the Departamento de Bellas Artes and was judged by some of the most prominent figures on the Mexican literary scene: the journalist and critic José de J. Núñez Domínguez, Julio Jiménez Rueda, the author of several histories of Mexican literature, and the successful novelist Mauricio Magdaleno. In July 1935, a full-page announcement in the newspaper El Universal Gráfico invited Mexican nationals to enter the competition by submitting a work of published or unpublished prose or poetry.² The competition offered significant rewards to both the State and the prize-winner: the winner gained public recognition and the considerable sum of $2000 pesos prize money, while the State gained the authority to consecrate cultural products in keeping with its own agenda.

The State required a national literature which would consolidate post-revolutionary nationhood and promote its values. Article four of the decree which created the Premio Nacional de Literatura stated:

Se adoptará el criterio más amplio para valorizar el mérito de cada obra, prefiriénd ose aquellas henchidas de mayor sentido social, y de un espíritu moderno, tanto por los problemas en que se inspire, como por la técnica con que los realice.³

[The broadest possible criteria will be adopted to evaluate the merit of each work, with preference for those works which demonstrate the greatest social awareness, and a modern spirit in the problems which inspire them and in the technique employed.]

Thus, the State decided that Mexican literature should have a social purpose and be modern in terms of subject matter, style and form. It was against this standard that twentieth-century Mexican literature would be measured, firstly by the judges of the Premio Nacional de Literatura and subsequently by the many reviewers and critics who adopted these criteria as their own. In so doing, reviewers acted as agents of legitimation for both the texts and the State’s nation-building project. The result is a literary canon which consists of novels which were interpreted as addressing issues of national importance and, consequently, contributed to the creation of the post-revolutionary nation.

The decree may have provided a new model for literary production and criticism or it may have formally established pre-existing preferences and trends in literary criticism. Certainly, a similar preference for socially relevant, nation-building literature was evident in the post-independence period.⁴ Either way, not everyone endorsed this approach to literature. Gonzalo de la Porra, writing in the newspaper El Universal in 1936, complained that writers deliberately pandered to the prize’s criteria and judges were too bound by them.⁵ Both judges and entrants, he wrote, were ‘amalgamados en el contubernio del oportunismo político’ (3) [mixed up in the conspiracy of political opportunism]. De la Porra also objected to the importance the Premio Nacional de Literatura attached to a novel’s content claiming that ‘todo lo subordinamos a la política y a las ideas en boga’ (3) [we subordinate everything to politics and the ideas in vogue]. According to de la Porra, the prizes were not awarded to the best novel or poem, but to those which supported the government’s position.

However valid de la Porra’s objections may be, the State was successful in its project of nation-building through literature as can be seen from the selection and critical reception of the first winner of the Premio Nacional de Literatura, El indio by Gregorio López y Fuentes. Thus distinguished, El indio was well placed to be incorporated into the nascent post-revolutionary canon and Gregorio López y Fuentes’ position was quickly consolidated by his inclusion in histories, dictionaries and encyclopaedias of Mexican literature, where he continues to feature to this day.⁶

When they evaluated the novel the judges and reviewers employed similar terms to those used in the decree that created the award. John Englekirk quoted the judges as saying that El indio ‘suma “a su valor estético, un sentido humano y una tendencia social acordes con el espíritu mexicano moderno”’ [combines ‘aesthetic value, human feeling and a social awareness that is in keeping with the modern Mexican spirit’].⁷ A similar vocabulary was used by Celestino Herrera Frimont in El Nacional, where he described El indio as an ‘obra artística y de tendencia social mexicana’ [a Mexican work of artistic merit possessing social awareness].⁸ The fact that reviewers referred to the conditions of the prize underlines the importance they attached to them.

There was a clear consensus amongst the judges and reviewers in the national press that El indio combined aesthetic value with social purpose in its representation of Mexico’s indigenous population.⁹ For reviewers, the appeal of El indio lay in its subject matter, and they agreed that El indio was about one or more than one of the following: the indigenous way of life, the hardship suffered by Mexico’s indigenous communities and the relationship between the indigenous and white / mestizo community. However, they could not agree as to whether the novel proposed a course of action or simply highlighted the problems faced by the indigenous population and those who aimed to help them. Nonetheless, a concerned exposition of the situation was sufficient to assure the novel a positive reception.

El indio’s contribution to contemporary debate about how to integrate Mexico’s indigenous communities was considered so significant that reviewers elevated the novel out of the realm of fiction and into that of fact. For them, the novel was more than a work of fiction; it was an anthropological, sociological and historical document. In El Universal, Salomón de la Selva stated that El indio was ‘un volumen indispensable para todos los estudiosos de la sociología o de la política o de la historia, así como de la literatura de Hispano América’ (3) [an indispensable text for all students of sociology, politics and history as well as students of Spanish American literature]. Furthermore, Ernesto Higuera (151), Salvador Cordero (2), A. Pereira Alves (4), and an anonymous reviewer in the Revista de México de Cultura (7 August 1955, 9) all commented on the accuracy of the novel’s portrayal of indigenous communities. At a time when the State was promoting anthropological study as a way of creating a more unified mestizo nation, it seems that reviewers envisaged El indio as fulfilling a similar role. A novel which was interpreted as addressing such pressing social issues and contributing to nation-building projects could not help but become canonical.

Reviewers also compared El indio to Mexican art as a way of praising López y Fuentes’ novel and its achievement as socially committed literature. De la Selva compared El indio to Mexican art and claimed that the novel would put Mexican literature on an equal footing with Mexican painting making the country a leader in both fields (3). De la Selva’s comments highlight the value reviewers placed on international recognition, and the comparison to art is flattering to the novel. Mauricio Magdaleno similarly wrote that the novel was ‘hondo y ancho y soberbio [...] como un lienzo mural’ (1) [profound, broad and magnificent [...] like a mural]. As we shall see in later chapters, reviewers of La región más transparente and El desfile del amor also compared these novels to murals; an analogy which associates these canonical novels with the canonical tradition of didactic, socially aware, public art in Mexico.

The criteria for awarding the Premio Nacional de Literatura stated that, in addition to having social value, the winning entry should be modern in subject matter, style and form.¹⁰ El indio’s first critics agreed on both counts; as well as praising the contemporary relevance of the novel’s message about the plight of the indigenous communities, they appreciated its simple and effective style. De la Selva wrote that the style was ‘vívido y sencillo. Es directo. Clásico puro’ (3) [vivid and straightforward. It is direct. Purely classical]. Like De la Selva, Jacobo Dalevuelta praised López y Fuentes’ minimalist style saying: ‘No hay un renglón de más ni una línea de menos’ (June 1935, 3) [There is neither one line too many nor one line too few].¹¹ For Dalevuelta, this style resulted in a ‘lectura fácil’ [easy reading] which ‘mantiene constante y vivo el interés’ (June 1935, 3) [keeps one’s interest constant and alive]. Dalevuelta’s comments are particularly interesting when compared to remarks about style in reviews of La región más transparente and Arráncame la vida.¹² The style of La región más transparente and other boom novels was acclaimed by critics because of its complexity while that of Arráncame la vida was criticized for being too easy to read. In contrast, the simple, easy to read style of El indio was considered a positive attribute. The changing attitudes towards style demonstrate that a canonical aesthetic which is universal and unchanging does not exist. Nonetheless, the criteria for judging the Premio Nacional de Literatura and the reviewers’ comments about El indio suggest that a novel was often credited with being well written in order to explain or justify canonical status which was awarded primarily on the grounds of content.

Undoubtedly, winning the Premio Nacional de Literatura facilitated López y Fuentes’ entry into the canon but other factors also worked to the advantage of El indio, including the author’s status in the literary community. When El indio was published, López y Fuentes had already been included in Julio Jiménez Rueda’s Historia de la literatura mexicana as the author of poetry, short stories and three novels: Campamento (1931), Tierra (1933), and Mi General (1934) (Rueda 1934, 247). According to Celestino Herrera Frimont, when Mi General was published López y Fuentes was already considered to be ‘uno de los grandes autores de Ibero-América’ (3) [one of the major authors of Latin America]. As well as being an established author, López y Fuentes was a long-standing journalist for the daily newspaper El Universal. His earlier work revealed a keen interest in social issues and his reputation in this area probably encouraged reviewers to highlight the social message of El indio.

El indio also benefited from being published and well marketed by the reputable Ediciones Botas. As Bourdieu has noted, a publisher recommends the books and authors they publish and the more consecrated publishers provide stronger consecration (76–77). Ediciones Botas had its own bookshop, the Librería Andrés Botas, and a magazine, Letras Publicación Literaria y Bibliográfica, in which it promoted its publications. Letras primarily consisted of lists of books and El indio was included several times and featured in a larger advertisement in the June 1935 edition.¹³ In addition to appearing in Letras, on four occasions extracts of El indio were printed in a regular column in El Universal Gráfico called ‘Enciclopedia Mínima’.¹⁴ El indio cost $2 pesos and such prohibitive pricing meant that extracts in a newspaper allowed parts of the novel to reach a much wider audience than would otherwise have been the case. Featuring in ‘Enciclopedia Mínima’ may have conferred prestige on the novel and, since it was unusual for one text to feature more than twice, the fact that El indio appeared four times may indicate its popularity, or the desire of the column’s author, F. González Guerrero, or the newspaper’s editor to promote the novel.

Success abroad, or the potential to be recognized outside Mexico, also influenced whether a novel became canonical, as the State and the custodians of literary knowledge wanted to establish a unique national literature which would show the world that Mexico was a ‘civilized’ and independent nation. Reviewers proudly announced that an edition of the novel was forthcoming in Chile and an English translation by Anita Brenner, with illustrations by Diego Rivera, was under way.¹⁵ They also insisted that El indio deserved a place alongside the ‘classics’ of Latin American literature and in the continent-wide canonical tradition of indigenista literature (De la Selva, 3; Salazar Mallén, 3; Englekirk, ‘El indio’, 8). Thus, El indio was praised because it served a national and international purpose.

We cannot know whether the reviewers adopted the criteria established for the Premio Nacional de Literatura as their own or whether the judges took into account reviewer opinion when making their decision. We do, however, know that in postrevolutionary Mexico the custodians of literary knowledge adopted an interpretive strategy which prioritized social value and national significance, both of which they associated with the public sphere, and it was against this standard that canonical literature would be measured for the remainder of the twentieth century. Reviewers identified both of these qualities in El indio which they interpreted as addressi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Setting the Standard: El indio and the Premio Nacional de Literatura
• 2 Yo también, Adelita: An Unheard Call for Women's Suffrage
• 3 La región más transparente: Right Place, Right Time
• 4 La ciudad y el viento: A Gendered Alternative to Official Nationalism
• 5 The Exceptional Case of El desfile del amor
• 6 From Romance to Adultery: Reinterpreting Arráncame la vida
• Conclusion: Towards a Twenty-First-Century Literary Canon
• Appendix: Plot Summaries
• Bibliography
• Index