ON THE ROAD LITERATURE: READING MATERIAL FOR THIS TRIP TO CHILE

As many of you who have been following my South America travel blog for some time know, I usually dedicate one blog post on each trip to the reading materials I´ve brought along with me.  Since late last year I have been busy writing essays and doing translations of materials relating to the Mexican Revolution - which of course is one of the most significant events in Latin American history (one only needs to check out the link I have on this blog to the Mexican Revolution study group which I run to learn more), so I decided to bring along a trio of books that deal directly with this epic historical event, which also happens to be in the midst of its own ´Centennial´(1910-1920).  For the sake of improving my own Spanish abilities, all of these books were written in Español...

Alejandro Rosas: Charlas de Cafe Con Felipe Angeles (2009)
Published in 2009 with the intent of being one of a series of books commemorating Mexico´s Independence Bicentennial as well as the Revolution´s Centennial, this surprising little book also manages to illuminate the life of one of the most enigmatic and least-understood major characters of the Mexican Revolution, General Felipe Angeles.  And just in case you didn´t know it, I myself have been working on and off on researching the life of General Angeles for about a dozen years now, so I feel that I am qualified, to some degree, to review this book.

The outline of Felipe Angeles´ story is unique in the annals of the Mexican Revolution, having started out as a career officer in the Mexican federal army of Porfirio Diaz and then with the coming of the revolution, becoming the trusted friend of  revolutionary President Francisco I.Madero and eventually Pancho Villa´s most trusted advisor, tactician and artillery commander.  Then, after suffering serious reverses on the battlefield, Angeles found himself in exile in the United States, remaining an exile there for over three years before making his final quixotic return to Mexico in a futile attempt to salvage the mess that his country had turned into only to be executed by firing squad after a sham trial on November 26, 1919.

Rojas has constructed his book as if it really is a series of conversations held with the near-mythical Mexican General, or at least with his soul.  The concept may sound a bit absurd, but Rojas has pulled it off regardless, displaying a deep understanding of the major events (while utilizing many bits of minutiae as well) in the life of Felipe Angeles.  I personally felt that he had captured the essence of the General´s ultimate philosophy as it had evolved through the smoke and fire of the revolution and on to his final trial and execution.  If one is rating the book, it should earn five stars.

Paco Ignacio Taibo II: Temporada de Zopilotes (2009)
One of the most prolific of contemporary Mexican writers working today, Paco Ignacio Taibo II surprised everybody with an eye towards the historiography of the Mexican Revolution back in 2006 when he published his monumental biography of Pancho Villa - a book which nobody had expected, especially since the late, great historian Friedrich Katz had published only a few years before what many felt would be the final word on Pancho Villa for at least a generation with his Life and Times of Pancho Villa.


Many have judged Taibo to be a mere writer of fiction, but he actually cut his teeth on an acclaimed biography of Che Guevara and shortly later, a political novel commissioned by Subcomandte Marcos in 2005 entitled Muertos Incomodos.

This new work is a worthy addition to his list of acclaimed works as it is perhaps the best narritive history of Mexico´s Decena Tragica, or "tragic ten days" when the relatively new and truly democratically elected government of Francisco I. Madero was rudely overturned in a coup détat with culminated in the assassinations of both President Madero and Vice President Jose Maria Pino Suarez, leaving the presidency of Mexico in the hands of the traitor General Victoriano Huerta.

The book flows along like an espionage thriller, which, in a sense, it is, albeit as a horribly true story.  Taibo has studied his material well, and he has woven the resulting piece into a gripping history which needs to be read by anybody with an eye toward understanding the crux of the Mexican Revolution.

Alberto Calzadiaz Barrera: Gral. Martin Lopez: Grandioso Dorado de Pancho Villa (1968)
Okay, so this is the book I´m currently reading.  Unlike the other two above, this one is not a contemporary effort, but rather, a book written by one of the primary original historians of the Mexican Revolution, and a man who was alive to witness the event first-hand.  Calzadiaz Barrera is best known for his multi-volume Hechos Reales de la Revolucion, whose three main volumes chronicle the birth, the success and glory, and finally the agony and defeat of Villa´s fabled Division del Norte, the rebel army which made him famous and vice versa.

This effort is a corollary to those other books in thew sense that it is a biography of the young Martin Lopez, who was only a teenager when he signed up with Villa´s band in 1911 to help fight for the cause of Francisco I. Madero, and who stayed with his chief through thick and thin until he ultimately was mortally wounded in a skirmish in the closing years of the armed struggle in 1919.  Lopez was, of course, one of Villa´s favorites, and he treated him like a true son.  Right now I am only up to the point where Villais fighting alongside Victoriano Huerta against the anti-Madero revolt of Pascual Orozco, so I´ve gor a lot of territory to cover between now and when  I get home in a few days.  Regardless, one of the most interesting things about the book are the first-person accounts of revolutionary veterans Calzadiaz Barrera uses throughout.  It is an oldie but a goodie...