Injustice and political corruption in the novels of Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes

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INJUSTICE AND POLITICAL COPHUPTION IN THE NOVELS OF GREGORIO LOPEZ Y FUENTES

Chairman of the Graduate Council

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INJUSTICE AND POLITICAL COERUPTION IN THE NOVELS OF GREGORIO LOPEZ T FUENTES

A Thesis Presented to . the Faculty or the Graduate School or Texas Western College or the University or Texas

In Partial Fuirillment or the Requirements ror the Degree Master of Arts

by MontezjChappelle August, 1950

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X

TABLE OF CONTENTS/ j

PREFACE

.7

..

-iii

INTRODUCTION a.

Biography ofLopez

h.

Hovels ofLopez y Fnentes

CHAPTER I

INJUSTICE

y F n e n t e s ...............

1

...............

5

- - - - ...................

21

♦

a.

Racial.... .................................

25

v

b.

E c o n o m i c ..................................

4-0

c.

Military

50

d.

P o l i t i c a l ....................

53

e.

R e l i g i o n s ................................

58

CHAPTER II

.........................

POLITICAL C O R R U P T I O N

CONCLUSIONS BIBLIOGRAPHY

.

.................. .

..........................

6A 80

- -

V I T A ..............................

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85 87

PREFACE Tiie purpose of this thesis is to examine and determine the degree to •which, injustice and politi­ cal corruption are presented by Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes in his novel as evils of contemporary Mexi­ can life.

In Chapter I injustice will be cate­

gorized as racial, economic, military, political, and religious.

In Chapter II political corruption

•will be discussed. The primary sources of this thesis are nine novels and a volume of short stories by the youngest of three outstanding Revolutionary writers of Mexico, Gregorio L"^ on El Mamey, his fatherTs hacienda near the town of Zontecomatlan, in the Huasteea region of the state of Veracruz.

Eis family had lived in this tropical re­

gion for generations and his home had been the stop­ ping place of the muleteers who travelled the region with their merchandise.

From them he garnered hun­

dreds of tales', pithy refranes. and an insight into the character of the rural population - muleteers, cowhands, bandits, judges, Indians, and the submerged masses. At an early age he began to write poetry worthy of pub­ lication and to collect corridos. thoseballads of con­ temporary happenings which embody in crude, racy poetry

I ¥hoTs Nho in Latin America. Part I, Mexico, Edited by Ronald Hilton, Stanford University Press, Stanford University California, 1946, p. 66.

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and song the popular history of the Revolution, some of them becoming the marching songs of the day Villa*s Adelita, Carranza*s La Cucaracha. and Zapata*s 2

‘

Valentina.

...

¥ith the children of neighboring hacendados he attended school at Zontecomatlan until he was eleven, and later at the chief city of the canton, Chicontepec.

Ee -would return for week-end 'visits

with his parents, his brothers and sisters, and an aunt.

Ee loved the outdoor life and the luxurious

paisa.ie of the Euastecas, and wanted to become' a rancher or a writer.

Eis father, despite the son* s

pleadings, sent him to Mexico City to finish his education and to become a teacher. Ee entered the Escuela Normal Primaria and at the age of fifteen he and some of his equally precocious classmates collaborated in the"publica­ tion of Eosotros, a nRevista de Arte y Educacic^n,** 3 which was published from December 1912 until 191-42

John E. Englekirk, Introduction to Los de Aba .jo. Mariano Azuela, Crofts and Company, New York, 1939* pp xl-xlii. 3 Richard Eughes Armitage, An Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, The Problems of Modern Mexico in the Novels of Gregorio I»6pez x Fuentes, Ohio State University* 1945* p. 34

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Rafael Heliodoro Valle, for a time professor of history at the National University of Mexico, was one of the yonng collaborators, and the somewhat older Martin Lnis Guzman was sometimes a contributor, before he had to flee from the Huerta forces.

Lc^pez y Puentes, between

1921 and 1923, also wrote articles for El Maestro. Revis ta de Culture Nacional, a periodical devoted to - /,

the essays and poetry of young intellectuals.^

In

1914-j while still in his teens, he wrote and published his first work, La Siringa de Cristal, a collection of love and nature poems notable for the nostalgia which he shows, as he does successively in all of his writings, for the simple outdoor life of his natria chica. When Carranza began his march on the capital to oust Victoriano Huerta from the presidency of Mexico, Lc£pez y Fuentes left the embattled city to seek peace in his beloved tierra caliente, only to find on returning to the hacienda that he had to take part in the fruitless defense of Veracruz against the American Expeditionary Forces sent by President "Wilson to prevent the landing of a German ship with guns and munitions for Huerta.

Until 1923 he lived here on his

JL

Ibid., p. 35-

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‘

k.

father’s estate, taking occasional trips to the capital and otlier cities on business. In 1922 he arranged for the publication of lois second book of verse, Claros de Selva, and bis first attempt at- tbe novel, El Vagabundo. In I92I1, be went to Mexico City to live, taking with, bim bis second sbort novel, El Alma del Poblacbo. Dur­ ing bis sojourn on tbe rancb be bad taugbt for a time among tbe Indians in tbe rural schools, and for a time in Mexico City be was professor of literature in tbe Normal School, but when tbe opportunity arose be took a more congenial position as a reporter on tbe staff of tbe evening tabloid, El Universal Grafico.

Ee soon

tired of back writing and suggested that tbe editor in chief give bim space to publish a column called "La Novela Diaria de la Vida Real." The editor agreed and tbe column proved very popular.p

During 1923 and 19211-

Lop ez y Fuentes published a story almost every day, taking sensational daily news and shaping it into fiction, under tbe pen name of Tulio F. Peseenz.

This

experiment undoubtedly proved very valuable to bim latox- as a novelist, facilitating bis concise, economic style and bis humanitarian approach to tbe stark real5

Ernest R. Moore, Novelists of tbe Mexican Revolution: Gregorio Lopez 21 Fuentes, Mexican Life, Volume XVI, No. 11, November 1, I9 I1Q , p. 23.

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ism he portrays.

Since then he has risen to the

position of editor in chief of El Universal Grafico. He is married and the father of- two sons now in their early twenties.

Ee has published two volumes of

.poetry, La Siringa de Cristal. and Claros de Selva: a book of short stories suitable for school use, Cuentos Camnesinos. in addition to the some four hundred stories mentioned above; a fifth grade reader called Cartas de Ninos; and eleven hovels. -—

In 1935*

for El Indio, considered his masterpiece, he received the first national prize ever to be presented for Mexican literature.

In 1941, for Los Peregrinos

Inmovriles. he received second prize, first place going to Miguel Angel Melendez for Havar.^ novel, Entresuelo. appeared in 1943-

His latest

How in his prime,

actively and successfully engaged in two fields of endeavor, his past record is worthy of study and his future is most promising. Hovels Campamento (1931) takes place in a single night with the arrival of revolutionary soldiers at a little 6 Armitage, on. pit-, p. 42. 7 Ibid., p. 68 .

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rancher j . a which they completely upset- with- their thefts, ribald jokes, quarrels, drinking, and general roistering.

The soldiers and strangers 3*0in in talk­

ing away the night around their bonfires.

They tell

■why they joined the revolutionary hordes, out of love of freedom or adventure, to escape from the local police, to avenge lost property or a wife, to avoid the woes of those who do not take sides yet have to defend themselves against both.

They tell of robbing,

killing, and coming close to death; they tell of a small town garrisoned by federal troops who became poisoned from eating’pigs that had devoured human flesh.

A number of incidents take place during the

night:

a young boyTs foot is amputated without

anaesthesia: an Indian guide dies from having been driven without mercy before a generalTs horse from sun up to sun down; a mother continuously searches all night for her young son, fearing that if he joins the revolutionaries he will disappear as has her older son; a young widow gives herself promiscuously to first one soldier, then another, on the promise that she will be taken with them, only to be left next morning a prey to the gossip of her neighbors.

A

.. 7 Ibid., p. 68.

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7

group of federal troops sends emisarries to arrange for surrender.

They join the revolutionaries without

enmity, without resentment, recognizing many of their former associates in the federal army.

In the group

of surrendering troops is a young lieutenant, recog­ nized immediately by a revolutionary officer.

The

young lieutenant had last seen his major dead with a shot between his eyes.

This major, now advanced to

colonel, confesses that he had changed clothes with one of the revolutionary soldiers and gone over to their side.

At the end of the story the young lieuten­

ant, after witnessing the colonelTs cruelty in making wounded and exhausted soldiers cross the swollen river in the face of certain death - among them the recent amputee - sees him again with a shot between his eyes, this time placed there by the lieutenant himself, who swims away to safety. Tierra:

The revolution is winning.

La Revolucion Agraria en Mexico (1933)

is divided chronologically into ten chapters, each devoted to events in ZapataTs agrarian movement from its beginning in Morelos in 1910 to the division of land in 1920.

The problem, the rights of the people

to the land they cultivate, is posed in the first chapter.

Each subsequent chapter traces the agrarian

revolution as it affects year by year the inhabitants

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of a little town in Morelos who see the revolution through the person of Antonio Hernandez, a poor peasant. Antonio loves Maria Petra, hut’the rich hacendadoTs son •wants to marry her, so Antonio must submit to his ~patronTs •wishes.

Like all the poor, he can do nothing against

the two supreme rulers of their community, the hacendado and the priest.

The latter uses all his spiritual powers

to add to his income, he marries and baptizes dozens of the faithful at a time, and demands material sacrifices in the name of religion.

He fraternizes with the rich

hacendado who accumulates a fortune by offering slave wages, using the tienda de rava (company store) to visit the debts of the fathers upon their children for generation after generation. what he can for these people.

Smiliano Zapata does

He forms an army of

peasants who for years spend half of their time culti­ vating their land and the other half fighting against land owners and against Madero, Huerta, and Carranza for the return of the land to the common people.

Often

they returned home to find their crops destroyed and their huts burned to the ground by the federals.

Antonio

is killed, but his death adds new recruits for his cause. In 1919, Guajardo, acting upon Carranza* s orders, ambushes and assassinates Zapata, but the cry for land does not cease.

"Zapata deja de ser un general para convertirse

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9 en m a bandera.”

Carranza in the end has to. cede

the land to the people; the hacendados flee to Europe •while the peasants receive land to form e.iidos (agra­ rian cooperatives).

Zapata becomes a myth and the old

peasants swear that should "their lands be endangered again he will ride through the valleys of Morelos and drive out their enemies,

Everyone knows where he is

buried, but no one believes that he is dead. In Mi General (193-4) > told in the first person, the protagonist, once a rancher, then a cattle buyer, Joins the revolution for lack of anything better to do.

From a band of cowhands, thieves, and bandits he

builds an army of fierce revolutionaries.

Ee becomes

a general, goes to Mexico City, and there enters politics.

First as a deputy, then as the leader of a

political party he enjoys wide fame. .Eis group fails in a move to gain power, and he flees to safe territory.

Later he returns to the metropolis to rebuild

his party.

Ho one befriends him, he lives in the lower

class districts, becomes a gambler, a salesman, and a pistolero.

One day, discouraged, he pathetically

returns to his land, never to return to his military or political career. 8 ' Tierra, p. 88

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10 El Indio (1935)* the novel which von the national prize for literature in Mexico and inter­ national fame in translation, is a panoramic viev of the mistreatment and exploitation of the Indian by the white man, culminating in vary distrust on the part of the Indian.

Three determined whites arrive

at a nameless Indian village on the pretext of sell- • ing trinkets and merchandise.

They ostensibly inquire

about medicinal herbs which they hope to find in the surround ing mountains.

Disappointed when they are

paid by the village women in ordinary coins, not the hoped-for gold dust, they get bolder and ask about gold in the mountains.

The impassive Indians know

nothing, but when a paper is produced signed by the •presidente hmmiciual. giving the whites permission to prospect the region, they fearfully decide to give the men a guide into the mountains, as the ignorant Indians know from past experience that a white paper order ha-s always meant trouble for them.

The young

guide, a most outstanding specimen of health, courage, and strength in the tribe, leads them on a fruitless search, and in an effort to make him reveal a non­ existent secret they tie his hands behind him and hang him to a tree, letting him down at intervals to question him again.

‘When they have lowered him and

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11 are discussing what to do he suddenly leaps over a cliff -with his hands still tied behind him, and they see no more of him.

They hastily return to the

rancher^a, pack up their belongings and leave, telling the Indians that the boy 'will be along home.

Later

another youth, while baiting a badger trap, finds the guide so badly injured that he never fully recovers. Ironically the Indians make use of the ambush learned from the whites, and when, larcking guns themselves, they are fired upon by the three men, they begin to roll huge boulders down the side of the mountain and kill one of the men.

Fearing reprisal, they flee into

the mountains, to return only when the whites promise immunity in return for their much needed labor in cane fields and as domestics. Plans for the young guideTs marriage had been made for some time, but when he becomes a cripple, the young man of the forest who had found him and saved his life wants the girl.

The council of old men decide

that she should marry the one who can provide for a family.

As the cripple watches his betrothed marry-

another, a feeling of frustation and sadness, not only in the lives of individuals, but of the race itself permeates the story,, and one misfortune after another befalls the Indianis at the. mercy of the coyotes, the

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12 ■whites.

The young husband is killed by wild peccaries;

the crippleTs father is drowned; many die of small­ pox; politicians force the Indians to build a road and a school with no pay for their services; the priest exacts a pilgrimage to atone for their sins which brought on the small-pox epidemic, so he tells them; they are in slavery for two daysT work each week, with­ out pay, in the fields of the hacendados; and the story ends with broken promises .of the white leaders and complete' distrust by the Indians.

Dramatically and

forcefully told, the story is- a veritable Indian epic. Arrieros (1937) is a rosary of tales told to the author by El Refranero, a sage old muleteer typical of all the genre, as they travel about the Huasteca country which Lopez y Fuentes knew and loved deeply.

Autobiographical throughout, though episodic

as are most of his other stories, it is held together by the personality of Refranero.

El Mamey, the author* s

hacienda, his father, his brothers, the heartless oust­ ing of his father from his land, the valiant efforts of both his father and mother to survive on a small finca, all are treated here with feeling, mingled with love and pride. The story opens with the author1s answer to a letter which he has received from El Refranero bemoaning

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the Tact that the roads and railroads have changed everything for the muleteers, that the mules are now used only to carry water from the well and wood from the mountain, while the muleteer remains at home rais­ ing chickens.

RefraneroTs letter produces a nostalgia

in the author that makes him return in spirit to the Huastecas and retrace his steps over the old trails. The novel thus continues with the author participating as he rides the-mountain and valley trails, fords rivers, rounds up cattle, and sleeps at wayside inns with the muleteers, yet looks back upon all that has happened as he sees it from a distance in time and space.

Each racy story* each refran. each bit of

history and folklore, each ironical reference to in­ justices and exploitation show complete understanding and love for his natria chica.

The episodic novel is

climaxed dramatically with Refranero in the limelight telling of the wrong done to his friend, and the denoue­ ment is the conclusion to the author1s letter in which he apologizes for being too brief in his reminiscenses. Huasteca (1939) shows what happens during an oil boom.

Ruthless ambition, greed, vice, and degrada­

tion mingle with the excitement of some and the in­ difference of others who refused to be moved off their land.

The principal characters are Mieaela and Guillermo,

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14 brother and sister, represented as childhood friends of the author as narrator.

Their great-grandfather

had always urged that they keep the land intact, but their aged father leases it to foreign oil companies. Sudden riches change their lives.

Mieaela buys herself

a husband, an adventurer addicted to gambling -with her money.

Her request for a cash settlement of the estate

hastens her father1s death of a broken heart.

She and

Guillermo are estranged, quarrelling over their money. After she has sold her share of the hacienda, Harry, her husband is ambushed and shot by an unknown assail­ ant as he is fleeing with her money. mo, although the judge exonerates him.

She blames Guiller­ ¥hen labor

troubles between the workers and the oil companies shut down the wells, Guillermo, deprived of "royalties, sells his half of the estate to the former overseer, Apolonio. Finally Guillermo and Mieaela are together in a garret apartment in abject poverty, he unable to sleep tran­ quilly because Mieaela awakens him each night, half crazed over Harry1s death, trying to plunge a dagger into his heart.

¥hen the news of expropriation comes,

Guillermo sends for the author, bemoans his mistakes, and cries regretfully, n¥hy did I sell?” Lopez y Fuentes, however, more than with plot, is intrigued with the problem of Mexicors national

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15 economy, with the Porfirio Diaz sell-out to foreign interests, the fight for the subsoil, the growth of labor unions, political corruption, and the rights of the Constitution of 1917, including free elections, division of the land, and social reform.

Many chap­

ters in the novel appear more as editorials from his newspaper, than as structural elements of his story. • Cuentos Campesinos de Mexico (194-0) is com­ posed of thirty-one' short stories about rural life in Mexico.

One of them, ”Tierra de Temporal” is

taken from Campamento: ”E1 Consejo” and ”31 Tiempo Ancho” appeared first in Arrieros; ”31 Pozo Agotado” came from Huasteca, and ”31 Amigo de las Culebras” came from 31 Indio.

¥hen the collection appeared as

the initial volume in the Collecion de Autores Mexicanos the editor commented, ”Este volumen . . . del que es autor Gregorio Lopez y fuentes, acaso pueda ser destinado por la Secretaria de Educaeion Publica como libro de lectura en las escuelas rurales, lo mismo para ninos que para adultos del campo, en atencion a su ambient e y al con junto de temas.”9 Twenty-three of the stories, incidentally, were 9 : Hota de los editores, Cuentos Campesinos de Mexico, Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes, Editorial TCimaT, Mexico, D. F. , 194-0* P- 1.

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16 adapted with, illustrations Tor school use.

Though short

and Tilled with folklore and costumbrismo, they also are satirical in pointing out the troubles and needs of Mexi­ co. Acomodaticio: Hovela de un Politico de Convicciones (19m-3) is an expose of what takes place when a political candidate wishes to succeed regardless of the methods he uses.

A triumvirate composed of the licenciado, Antonio

Gonzalez, who acquires the middle name of ’’Acomodaticio'1 because of the excessively facile way in which he accomo­ dates himself to any contingency, Ex-General Donanciano Martinez, and Horacio Gamboa, clerk, organize a political party supposedly for the revindication of workers, but in reality to promote the licenciado.

The former general,

in his stupidity, thinks that he will be the party’s candidate, but the lawyer and Gamboa go to the constit­ uents, pledge their support to a candidate with more ample funds, and the general, out of work,, becomes a pistolero.

T/Vhen the party wins the elections, Acomodaticio

and Salvador Moreno, leader of the pepenadores1 union (labor union), bask in luxury.

The general*s daughter,

Lucia, who has worked without salary for the party, having lost her sweetheart, Pepe Lopez, by a stray bullet, becomes the mistress of Manuel Galvez, and the disillusioned general is last seen watching the

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17 triumphant entrance of tlie presidential candidate into tiie city, with Acomodaticio and Gamboa parading by bis side. Cartas de Ninos, cuarta edicion (1947) is a fifth grade reader.

Pedro Morelos and his sister, Maria,

■whose mother is dead, have to leave school and accompany their father on a business trip.

Pedro writes to Jose

Galeana, who in turn answers with all the school news which takes place while Pepe and Maria are gone.

There

are fifty-three of these letters, teaching history, geo­ graphy, science, and legends. In 194-1, Lopez y Fuentes again entered the nation­ al competition for literature with the novel published later as Los Peregrinos Inmoviles (1944)the novel was called A Los Cuatro Vientos.

At that time It was sched­

uled to be published as Nosotros los Mestizos. but was re-vamped again because of racial trouble along the border in the United States.

Not wishing his novel to

re-open the Issue in Mexico, the author changed the title In deference to our Good Neighbor Policy.^ Like El Indio, It Is an Indian epic -in prose. It deals with hardships suffered by the Indians at the hands of the white?and the resulting peregrinations. The novel begins and ends in an Indian village high 10

Hichard Hughes Armitage, on cit., p. 68.

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18

on a bluff overlooking a river, but tbe pilgrimages «

•which explain the symbolic title, are told in 7the recollections of their sage, Marcos.

Part I,” SI

Corazon del Mundo" gives the setting and launches the story of the peregrinations -which are told by Marcos to the census taker.

Part II," Harz”, is a

record of the tribe*s search for a home ■where they can raise corn, the daily necessity for sustenance, and live without molestation by their enemies.

The

elements of nature seem always to be against them, as floods, storms, and malaria take their toll. Many of the tribe stay behind and form fractional tribes.

Just as they think they are going to have a

good crop, it is destroyed by a flood.

They move

from one "location -vhen whites exact a tax from them. They suffer so many hardships that they finally de­ cide that they are at fault in not having a god.

They

thereupon make one and carry it over mountain precipices and across swollen streams until it becomes so heavy that the maker and bearer of. the god plunges headlong over a cliff to his death, taking the god with him. Finally they come to a group of white men who are mining.

In their childishness, and because they need

food, they agree to work for the miners.

They are

lowered into the mine each day and do not suspect

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19 their plight "until their -women he gin to catch an itch from the miners, and until some off-colored children are horn.

¥hen their language also is

heing supplanted by that of their masters, they, decide to leave.

¥hen the miners get drunk, the

Indians set fire to the village and hegin .another pilgrimage.

It is many.months until they find a

medicinal herh which relieves them of their scratch­ ing.

when they settle on a steep precipice over­

looking a river, ithihgss have not changed because they have not changed, they are still the inmoviles in manners and attitudes, though they have wandered I i |

over a good deal of Mexico.

They are still trying

to overcome nla serpiente de odion which keeps them

E

|

from living peacefully.

A feud between villages and

a family feud within the village have not lessened in intensity, and both break out again during a wedding fiesta.

Like El Indio, the novel is rich

in descriptions of Indian beliefs and traditions. Entresuelo (194-3), the most recent of the novels of Gregorio Lopez y Puentes, is the story of a middle class family in Mexico City: father, Diego, mother,. Felicitas, son, Manuel, and daughter, Rosa­ linda, who, because of the illness of the father, descend from a fairly well-to-do state into one of

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20

abject poverty.

The entresuelo is the middle floor

of a building -where they live.

The upper floor is

the home of a wealthy family, los de arriba, toward -which Rosalinda, the daughter, looks and. dreams since she loves the son of this family

On the lower floor

is a store operated by a low class woman, whose daughter, Mieaela, is loved by Manuel, who .looks para aba.io from the mezzanine.

The wealthy youth seduces Mieaela and

his parents send him to Eurqoe. to escape responsibility and scandal.

Rosalinda then marries the moronic nephew

of a rich woman and takes herself completely out of. the lives of her parents; Manuel, in his grief, goes to the United States, and his parents never hear from him again.

Clotilde, the sister of Felicitas, after

years of grieving for a lost love, removes herself from the scene; Diego Doblado dies and Felacitas, alone, is forced to move para aba.io.

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CHAPTER I RACIAL INJUSTICE The novelists of the Mexican Revolution, of the armed conflict itself, beginning in 1910, and of the reconstruction period ■which followed, are a group' of writers extremely conscious of the social ills of their country-

Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes, in nine

novels and a collection of short stories, has shown himself to be deeply concerned with the sufferings of his countrymen. To understand the situation in Mexico today as portrayed in the novels of Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes, it is necessary to know the historical background which has brought about present-day con­ ditions, and to understand the inherent desires motivating the actions of the people themselves. Porfirio Diaz, with the exception of a brief inter­ lude of four years, was president of Mexico from 1376 to 1910.

These thirty years were a bonanza for the

rich land owners and foreign capitalists, favored by Diaz and given bountifully of the public domain and of the communal lands which for generations had be­ longed to the Indian villages-

This policy made the

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22

rich richer and the poor poorer.^1

Lopez y Fuentes

■writes of conditions resulting from the evils of the dictatorship in Tierra„ El Indio and Huasteca. In 1910 Francisco I. Madero, a wealthy land­ owner himself, but in deep sympathy with the Mexican people, opposed Diaz in the presidential election. Diaz was reelected and Madero was imprisoned.

Upon

his release, however, he organized a successful revolution and Diaz*fled to Paris.

Madero was de­

clared president In June, 1911, but, vacillating between his sympathy for his own class and for the peons to whom he had promised land and freedom, he was too weak to hold either group.

Emiliano Zapata, who

had helped Madero against Diaz, now turned against him, the old military group murdered him, and Vietoriano Huerta was made provisional president July 9, 1914* Zapata with his Plan de Ayala was agitating in Morelos and Guerrero for agrarian reform, the return of the land to the people.

Eere the Almazan brothers,

medical students of a ranchero family, led a group of farm boys Into battle, and in Michoacan young Lazaro Cardenas opened the jail and released its single

_ Ernest Herman Hespelt, Introduction to El Indio, Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes, ¥. ¥. Norton and Company, Inc., New York, p. 13.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

23 prisoner to fight in guerrilla warfare.

12

Venustiano

Carranza, of Coahuila, controlled the northeast corner of Mexico, the gun-running section strategically near the railroads to the capital and the oil fields.

Ee

was a ranchero -who had been senator under Diaz and who wanted to bring back a strong middle class.

To

the northwest, in Chihuahua and Durango, was Paneho Villa, former cattle rustler and pack driver, and bandit leader of armed outlaw gangs.

Alvaro 0breg