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Two Crimes by Jorge Ibarguengoitia. Boston. 1984. David Godine. 0879235209. Translated from the Spanish by Asa Zatz. 201 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Teresa Fasolino. Jacket calligraphy by Richard Lipton. Author photograph by Jerry Bauer.
DESCRIPTION - ‘The story I am going to tell begins on a night the police violated the Constitution . . . ‘ From this opening sentence, it is clear we are in Ibarguengoitia country, a world of seduction, repression, deception, and, surprisingly, humor. Marcos, a Mexico City radical, is on the run, escaping the anti-terrorist net. He heads for the provincial town of Muerdago and the home of his rich invalid uncle, Ramon Tarragona. To the intense suspicion of his cousins, all of whom are counting on the riches the old man's death will bring, Marcos is welcomed with open arms by Ramon. And there are other arms in the household even more welcoming. So begins a game of bluff and counter-bluff in which nothing is ever what it seems, a dangerous game in which the two crimes the title leads us to expect become more inevitable with each move. TWO CRIMES is a thriller, and an exciting one, but it is more than that as well: a novel of greed and passion, told with the dark, laconic irony that marks this most original of writers. ‘A writer of genuine, exciting originality. - SALMAN RUSHDIE, author of SHAME and MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN.
In paperback:
Two Crimes by Jorge Ibarguengoitia. New York. 1985. Avon/Bard. 0380896168. Translated from the Spanish by Asa Zatz. 197 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - ‘LIFE HAS HANDED ME A SCREWING' - So young radical Marcos Gonzalez, alias El Negro, often lamented. Plus he was fast learning that one thing could get him in deeper trouble than his politics. Women. Politics had made him a fugitive, running for his life from the Mexico City police to the home of a rich uncle in a provincial town. But three women-each with irresistible charms - would trap him in a dangerous game of greed and passion, bluff and counterbluff, where nothing was as it seemed. except murder. ‘A clever, fast-clipped, extraordinarily subtle novel of intrigue and murder. . . and an unsettling account of political repression and revolution, whose mirror image is reflected in the deadly love and power struggles of a single doomed family.' - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY. . . ‘As in DEAD GIRLS, Ibarguengoitia has once again managed to transmit the particular flavor of provincial Mexico's brand of sanity.' - SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Ibargüengoitia Antillon (Guanajuato, Mexico, January 22, 1928 - Madrid, November 27, 1983), was a Mexican novelist and playwright who achieved great popular (though not always critical) success with his satires, three of which have appeared in English: Las Muertas (The Dead Girls), Dos Crimenes (Two Crimes), and Los Relámpagos de Agosto (The Lightning of August). His plays include Susana y los Jovenes and Ante varias esfinges, both dating from the 1950s. In 1955, Ibarguengoitia received a Rockefeller grant to study in New York City; five years later he received the Mexico City literary award. Often, in his fiction, he took real-life scandals and subjected them to whimsical, sardonic treatment. Thus, Los Relámpagos de Agosto (1964) uses cartoonish mayhem to debunk the Mexican Revolution's heroic myths; improbably it won for its author the Premio Casa de las AmEricas, despite or because of the consternation which its flippancy caused. For Las Muertas (1977) he turned to the most outrageous criminals of his native state: the brothel-keepers Delfina & María de Jesús González, whose decade-long careers as serial killers emerged in 1964. Ibarguengoitia himself met a tragic end, on what became one of the blackest days in Latin American artistic history: having visited Paris, he perished (along with Peruvian poet Manuel Scorza, Uruguayan critic Angel Rama, Argentinian academic Martha Traba, and 176 others) in the Madrid air disaster of November 1983. La ley de Herodes (1967) is a collection of short stories, most of which are clearly based on details from his own life. He describes, among many other events, the misadventures of getting a mortgage in Mexico and his experiences at Columbia University's International House. Like his novels, these stories combine farce, sexual peccadilloes, and humor. ‘Las Ruinas que Ves' is a farce based on realistic details of academic life that are still visible in early 21st century Guanajuato: the clanging of church bells disconcerting a speaker, cutting the ribbon at museum openings, the set of cultural movers and shakers who have known each other since kindergarten. ‘Maten al Leon' although set on an imaginary island is another novel mirroring Guanajuato (or perhaps Mexican) society; its details are comic but the end is dark. Ibarguengoitia was also known for his weekly columns in the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior which have been collected in a half dozen paperback volumes. His novels are also available in paperback. The writer has been quoted as saying he never meant to make anyone laugh, that he thought laughter was useless and a pointless waste of time. He is buried in Antillon Park in Guanajuato where a talavera plaque marks his remains. In translation, it says simply, ‘Here lies Jorge Ibarguengoitia in the park of his great-grandfather who fought against the French.'
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The Murderbot Novels by Martha Wells:
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All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries. New York. 2017. Tor Publishing Group. 9780765397539. 153 pages. paperback. Jacket art by Jaime Jones. Jacket design by Christine Foltzer.
DESCRIPTION - A murderous android discovers itself in All Systems Red, a tense science fiction adventure by Martha Wells that interrogates the roots of consciousness through Artificial Intelligence. “As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure.” In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern. On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid―a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.
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Artificial Condition: The Murderbot Diaries. New York. 2018. Tor Publishing Group. 9781250186928. 159 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Jaime Jones. Jacket design by Christine Foltzer.
DESCRIPTION - It has a dark past―one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot”. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more. Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue. What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks…
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Rogue Protocol: The Murderbot Diaries. New York. 2018. Tor Publishing Group. 9781250191786. 159 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Jaime Jones. Jacket design by Christine Foltzer.
DESCRIPTION - Starring a human-like android who keeps getting sucked back into adventure after adventure, though it just wants to be left alone, away from humanity and small talk. Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas? Sci-fi’s favorite antisocial A.I. is back on a mission. The case against the too-big-to-fail GrayCris Corporation is floundering, and more importantly, authorities are beginning to ask more questions about where Dr. Mensah's SecUnit is. And Murderbot would rather those questions went away. For good. "I love Murderbot!"--New York Times bestselling author Ann Leckie.
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Exit Strategy: The Murderbot Diaries. New York. 2018. Tor Publishing Group. 9781250191854. 172 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Jaime Jones. Jacket design by Christine Foltzer.
DESCRIPTION - Murderbot wasn’t programmed to care. So, its decision to help the only human who ever showed it respect must be a system glitch, right? Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah―its former owner (protector? friend?)―submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit. But who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue? And what will become of it when it’s caught?
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Network Effect: A Murderbot Novel. New York. 2020. Tor Publishing Group. 9781250229861. 351 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Jaime Jones. Jacket design by Christine Foltzer.
DESCRIPTION - You know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you're a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction? Congratulations, you're Murderbot. Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century. ‘I’m usually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are.’ When Murderbot's human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action. Drastic action it is, then.
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Fugitive Telemetry: The Murderbot Diaries. New York. 2021. Tor Publishing Group. 9781250765376. 168 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Jaime Jones. Jacket design by Christine Foltzer.
DESCRIPTION - The security droid with a heart (though it wouldn't admit it!) is back in Fugitive Telemetry! Having captured the hearts of readers across the globe (Annalee Newitz says it's "one of the most humane portraits of a nonhuman I've ever read") Murderbot has also established Martha Wells as one of the great SF writers of today. No, I didn't kill the dead human. If I had, I wouldn't dump the body in the station mall. When Murderbot discovers a dead body on Preservation Station, it knows it is going to have to assist station security to determine who the body is (was), how they were killed (that should be relatively straightforward, at least), and why (because apparently that matters to a lot of people―who knew?) Yes, the unthinkable is about to happen: Murderbot must voluntarily speak to humans! Again!
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System Collapse: The Murderbot Diaries. New York. 2023. Tor Publishing Group. 9781250826978. 245 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Jaime Jones. Jacket design by Christine Foltzer.
DESCRIPTION - Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize. But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!
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If you have not seen it, Murderbot on Apple TV is definitely worth watching!
Martha Wells (born September 1, 1964) is an American writer of speculative fiction. She has published a number of science fiction and fantasy novels, young adult novels, media tie-ins, short stories, and nonfiction essays on SF/F subjects; her novels have been translated into twelve languages. Wells is praised for the complex, realistically detailed societies she creates; this is often credited to her academic background in anthropology. She has won four Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards and three Locus Awards for her science fiction series The Murderbot Diaries. Wells is also known for her fantasy series Ile-Rien and The Books of the Raksura.
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Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship by Dana A. Williams. New York. 2025. Amistad. 9780063011977. 355 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Jack Mitchell. Jacket design by Sarah Kellogg.
DESCRIPTION - An insightful exploration that unveils the lesser-known dimensions of this legendary writer and her legacy, revealing the cultural icon’s profound impact as a visionary editor who helped define an important period in American publishing and literature. A multifaceted genius, Toni Morrison transcended her role as an author, helping to shape an important period in American publishing and literature as an editor at one of the nation’s most prestigious publishing houses. While Toni Morrison's literary achievements are widely celebrated, her editorial work is little known. Drawing on extensive research and firsthand accounts, this comprehensive study discusses Morrison's remarkable journey from her early days at Random House to her emergence as one of its most important editors. During her tenure in editorial, Morrison refashioned the literary landscape, working with important authors, including Toni Cade Bambara, Leon Forrest, and Lucille Clifton, and empowering cultural icons such as Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali to tell their stories on their own terms. Toni Morrison herself had great enthusiasm about Dana Williams's work on this story, generously sharing memories and thoughts with the author over the years, even giving her the book's title. From the manuscripts she molded, the authors she nurtured, and the readers she inspired, Toni at Random demonstrates how Toni Morrison has influenced American culture beyond the individual titles or authors she published. Morrison’s contribution as an editor transformed the broader literary landscape and deepened the cultural conversation. With unparalleled insight and sensitivity, Toni at Random charts this editorial odyssey.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Dana A. Williams is Professor of African American literature and Dean of the Graduate School at Howard University. She is former president of the College Language Association and the Modern Languages Association, and is the author of In the Light of Likeness—Transformed: The Literary Art of Leon Forrest. She is also the editor of several books. Her work has been published in prestigious journals, including PMLA, CLA Journal, African American Review, Early American Literature, American Literary History, and the Langston Hughes Review. Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She co-directs the Center for Medical Humanities and Health Justice, a Mellon Foundation-funded collaboration between Howard and Georgetown universities. Williams lives in Maryland.
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Brother Man by Roger Mais. London. 1954. Jonathan Cape. 191 pages. hardcover. Jacket design from a painting by Roger Mais.
DESCRIPTION - In BROTHER MAN Roger Mais returns to Jamaica, the scene of his first novel, THE HILLS WERE JOYFUL TOGETHER, to tell a story which, simple in outline, is charged with emotional power that can hardly fail to move the least susceptible of readers. It is a story many times repeated in the world's history and not yet at the end of its run. Brother Man, a cobbler by trade and a member of a sect called the Taferites, tries to live according to New Testament precepts. His neighbours in a poor street tolerate his eccentricities as long as they can trade upon them, and he succeeds in winning their respect and affection. Against his wholly beneficent influence is ranged that of Brother Ambo, an obeah man. It is a plain conflict between Good and Evil. The tribulations which Brother Man is called upon to endure involve unpleasant characters and violent incidents: life in a Jamaican slum is as ugly as slum life in any part of the world. Roger Mais has provided his own illustrations to the book. They beautifully reinforce the story.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Roger Mais (11 August 1905 - 21 June 1955) was a Jamaican journalist, novelist, poet, and playwright. He was born to a middle-class family in Kingston, Jamaica. By 1951, he had won ten first prizes in West Indian literary competitions. His integral role in the development of political and cultural nationalism is evidenced in his being awarded the high honour of the Order of Jamaica in 1978.Roger Mais was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and was educated at Calabar High School. He worked at various times as a photographer, insurance salesman, and journalist, launching his journalistic career as a contributor to the weekly newspaper Public Opinion from 1939 to 1952, which was associated with the People's National Party. He also wrote several plays, reviews, and short stories for the newspaper Focus and the Jamaica Daily Gleaner, concerning his articles with social injustice and inequality. He used this approach to reach his local audience and to primarily push for a national identity and anti-colonialism. Mais published more than a hundred short stories, most being found in Public Opinion and Focus. Other stories are collected in Face and Other Stories and And Most of All Man, published in the 1940s. Mais's play, George William Gordon, was also published in the 1940s, focusing on the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865. It played an important role in the rehabilitation of the eponymous character, who was in conventional colonial history described as a rebel and traitor, but who would be proclaimed, on the centenary of the rebellion, a national hero. In 1944, Mais wrote the anti-British satirical tirade ‘Now We Know,' criticizing British colonial rule. It resulted in his incarceration of six months in the Spanish Town Penitentiary. This period of imprisonment was instrumental in the development of his first novel, The Hills Were Joyful Together (1953), a work about working-class life in the Kingston of the 1940s. ‘Why I Love and Leave Jamaica', an article written in 1950, also stirred many emotions. It labelled the bourgeoisie and the ‘philistines' as shallow and criticized their impacting role on art and culture. In addition, Mais's wrote more than thirty stage and radio plays. The plays Masks and Paper Hats and Hurricane were performed in 1943, Atlanta in Calydon in 1950; The Potter's Field was published in Public Opinion (1950) and The First Sacrifice in Focus (1956). Mais left for England in 1952. He lived in London, then in Paris, and for a time in the south of France. He took an alias, Kingsley Croft, and showcased an art exhibition in Paris. His artwork also appeared on the covers of his novels. In 1953, his novel The Hills Were Joyful Together was published by Jonathan Cape in London. Soon afterwards, Brother Man (1954) was published, a sympathetic exploration of the emergent Rastafari movement. Then the following year, Black Lightning was published. While Mais's first two novels had urban settings, Black Lightning (1955) centred on an artist living in the countryside. In 1955 Mais was forced to return to Jamaica after falling ill with cancer; he died that same year in Kingston at the age of 50. His short stories were collected in a volume entitled Listen, The Wind, thirty-two years after his death. Mais's novels have been republished posthumously several times, an indication of his continuing importance to Caribbean literary history.
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Complete Writings by Phillis Wheatley. New York. 2001. Penguin Books. Edited & With An Introduction and Notes By Vincent Carretta. 9780140424300, 224 pages. Cover art - engraving of Phillis Wheatley, reproduced from 'Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral', London.
DESCRIPTION - Destined to become the first published woman of African descent, Phillis Wheatley was born around 1753. She was taken by the slave ship PHILLIS to Boston in 1761 and bought by John and Susanna Wheatley. The Wheatleys provided her with an education that was unusual for a woman of the time and astonishing for a slave. Phillis published her first poem in 1767, around the age of fourteen, and won much public attention and considerable international fam before she was twenty years old. ‘Vincent Carretta’s edition of the works of Phillis Wheatley is the definitive collection of her work. Expertly edited, it is a masterpiece of textual scholarship. ’ – Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753 – December 5, 1784) was both the second published African-American poet and first published African-American woman. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven and transported to North America. She was purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston, who taught her to read and write, and encouraged her poetry when they saw her talent. The publication of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) brought her fame both in England and the American colonies; figures such as George Washington praised her work. During Wheatley's visit to England with her master's son, the African-American poet Jupiter Hammon praised her work in his own poem. Wheatley was emancipated after the death of her master John Wheatley. She married soon after. Two of her children died as infants. After her husband was imprisoned for debt in 1784, Wheatley fell into poverty and died of illness, quickly followed by the death of her surviving infant son.
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Petals of Blood by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. New York. 1978. Dutton. 0525178287. 347 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Mark Rubin.
DESCRIPTION - Petals of blood appear on flowers sent up from land that has been paved over in the false name of progress and governed by greedy politicians and inept bureaucrats. Such a land is the Kenya of Ngugi's striking novel. In a small boom town in a rural district of this newly independent nation, three African directors of a foreign-owned brewery are killed and four suspects are taken into custody: Munira, who has come to llmorog as a schoolteacher and become the headmaster; Wanja, the lovely and wise barmaid, who has left the city, where she was forced to be a prostitute; Karega, who has turned from rebellion to organizing workers; Abdulla, the former Mau Mau guerrilla crippled in the struggle for Kenya's freedom from colonial power, who now makes a miserable living as a shopkeeper. As the investigation into the startling triple murder proceeds, the intertwined stories of the four suspects unfold and a devastating picture of modern-day Kenya emerges. it is a picture of exploitation and frustration in a land where the people feel their leaders have failed them time after time.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o has taught at Amherst College, Yale University, and New York University. He is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, and is director of the university's International Center for Writing and Translation. His books include PETALS OF BLOOD, for which he was imprisoned by the Kenyan government in 1977. He lives in Irvine, California.
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Madwomen: The Locas Mujeres Poems of Gabriela Mistral by Gabriela Mistral. Chicago. 2007. University Of Chicago Press. Translated From The Spanish & Edited By Randall Couch. 168 pages. Jacket illustration - Giuliano Bugiardini, 'Sua cuique persona,' portrait cover with mask and grotesques, ca. 1516. 9780226531908. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - A schoolteacher whose poetry catapulted her to early fame in her native Chile and an international diplomat whose boundary-defying sexuality still challenges scholars, Gabriela Mistral is one of the most important and enigmatic figures in Latin American literature of the last century. The LOCAS MUJERES poems collected here are among Mistral's most complex and compelling, exploring facets of the self in extremis--poems marked by the wound of blazing catastrophe and its aftermath of mourning. From disquieting humor to balladlike lyricism to folkloric wisdom, these pieces enact a tragic sense of life, depicting 'madwomen' who are anything but mad. Strong and intensely human, Mistral's poetic women confront impossible situations to which no sane response exists. This groundbreaking collection presents poems from Mistral's final published volume as well as new editions of posthumous work, featuring the first English-language appearance of many essential poems. MADWOMEN promises to reveal a profound poet to a new generation of Anglophone readers while reacquainting Spanish readers with a stranger, more complicated 'madwoman' than most have ever known.
Gabriela Mistral (7 April 1889 – 10 January 1957) was the pseudonym of Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, a Chilean poet-diplomat, educator and feminist. She was the first Latin American (and, so far, the only Latin American woman) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which she did in 1945 'for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world'. Some central themes in her poems are nature, betrayal, love, a mother's love, sorrow and recovery, travel, and Latin American identity as formed from a mixture of Native American and European influences. Her portrait also appears on the 5,000 Chilean peso bank note.
Randall Couch is adjunct professor of English at Arcadia University and an administrator at the University of Pennsylvania. He received Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowships in poetry in 2000 and 2008.
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Another Way To Be: Selected Works of Rosario Castellanos by Rosario Castellanos. Athens. 1990. University of Georgia Press. Translated From The Spanish & Edited Myralyn F. Allgood. Foreword By Edward D. Terry. 146 pages. Cover photograph courtesy of Oscar Bonifaz. 0820312401.
DESCRIPTION - ANOTHER WAY TO BE is a multifaceted selection of the writings of Rosario Castellanos, one of Mexico's most distinguished literary personalities. Poet, novelist, journalist, philosopher, and diplomat, Castellanos was a woman whose life and art reflected her commitment to the problems and promise of her native land. The daughter of a wealthy landowner who had married a seamstress from a lower class, she saw during her childhood the clash of cultures and social classes in tradition-bound communities where women were condemned to lives of submission and Indians were regarded as nothing more than chattel. From these experiences she came to see the world as a place where races and individuals are caught up in an ongoing struggle for justice and dignity, for 'another way to be human and free. ' In her work she focuses a penetrating light on interpersonal and interracial conflicts, denouncing the pervasive injustice as she created a literature that she hoped would be a catalyst for change. ANOTHER WAY TO BE opens with selections from her poetry, presented both in Spanish and in English translation. In such poems as 'Wailing Wall' and the previously unpublished 'Ritual Bath in the Grijalva,' there are echoes of Chilean Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral, whom she greatly admired. Poems like 'Indian Mother' and 'The Indian's Prayer' express empathy and compassion for the native of Chiapas. Selections from Castellano's prize-winning fiction reflect her concern with the hostility and prejudice that cripple human relationships and her refusal to depict women and Indians as stereotypes. This collection closes with a group of essays, the product of the latter phase of Castellanos's creative evolution. Written with keen insight and satirical humor, these essays - like her other writing - reflect her training in philosophy, her intellectual debt to Simone Weil and Simone de Beauvoir, and the kinship she felt with Virginia Woolf and Emily Dickinson. Together with the introductory essay by Myralyn Allgood and an extensive bibliography, the selections in ANOTHER WAY TO BE - most appearing in translation for the first time - give a rich and full sense of the diverse talents of a remarkable writer.
Rosario Castellanos (25 May 1925 – 7 August 1974) was a Mexican poet and author. Along with the other members of the Generation of 1950 (the poets who wrote following the Second World War, influenced by César Vallejo and others), she was one of Mexico's most important literary voices in the last century. Throughout her life, she wrote eloquently about issues of cultural and gender oppression, and her work has influenced feminist theory and cultural studies. Though she died young, she opened the door of Mexican literature to women, and left a legacy that still resonates today.
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Guzman, Martin Luis. The Eagle and the Serpent. New York. 1930. Knopf. Translated from the Spanish by Harriet De Onis. 360 pages. hardcover. Originally published as EL AGUILA Y LA SERPIENTE, 1928 - Madrid.
DESCRIPTION - A revolutionary novel, inspired by the experiences of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The Eagle and the Serpent (El águila y la serpiente, 1928) depicts the Mexican Revolution and its political aftermath both of which Guzman was familiar with, having contributed both to revolutionary agitation and to the formation of the new revolutionary government. In order that readers not familiar with the origin and nature of the Mexican Revolution may better understand the spirit of this book, we have thought it advisable to give a brief resume of the political events that took place in Mexico from 1910 to 1913. In 1910 Porfirio Diaz's dictatorship was still supreme in Mexico-a liberal, progressive dictator. ship. That same year, as the time for presidential elections approached-a periodical farce by which the letter of the Constitution was observed-the nation began to give evident signs that it wanted to regain possession of its civic will, which had been lost since 1850s. In opposition to the invariable candidacy of Diaz, which satisfied only the groups in power, the nation put forward another, that of Francisco I. Madero. The dictator, however, paid no attention to these premonitory indications; he and his supporters attempted to continue in power, whereupon Madero, at the head of a rising which was not merely political, but revolutionary in character, overthrew Porfirio Diaz and took over the presidency after new elections held in 1911. Madero was a reformer of gentle, apostolic character. He preached ideals of justice and a faith in the triumph of the right. As head of the government he attempted to divert the revolutionary tendencies he headed into legal channels, He also decided, in order to preserve the material well-being of the country, not to destroy the administrative machinery or the political instruments created by the dictatorship. He maintained the existing army; he respected the courts and the legislative bodies and made no changes in the personnel of the government departments. And in this way he lost the sympathy and support of his friends and delivered himself into the hands of his enemies, with results that were soon to prove fatal, A part of the army, headed by two ambitious generals, Bernardo Reyes and Felix Diaz, rose in February, 1913; another division, under the command of Victoriano Huerta, revolted a few days later, after solemnly swearing its loyalty. And then, all joining forces, Huerta had the revolutionary President assassinated a few hours after usurping his office. The indignation and anger of the populace were so great that the day after Madero's death the real revolution broke out; the ideals of justice and agrarian reform the 'martyr President' had advocated seemed too conservative; a vehement desire to regenerate everything asserted itself, an impulse to transform the whole social fabric of Mexico in its diverse aspects; and before the end of February the conflict had been kindled again. Venustiano Carranza, the governor of Coahuila, a civilian, was named First chief of the revolutionary army; the political purposes of the new uprising were outlined in the Plan of Guadalupe, drawn up on March 27, 1913. This new phase of the revolution was much more widespread than the first. From the beginning there were four principal centres of revolutionary action, three in the north: Sonora, Chihuahua, and Coahuila; and one in the south: Morelos. The military leaders in the various sections of the north were respectively, Alvaro Obregon, Francisco Villa, and Pablo Gonzalez; the leader in the south was Emiliano Zapata. The advance of the four revolutionary armies, which was very slow at first, finally became irresistible, especially after the big battles won by Villa and Felipe Angeles in Torreon and Zacatecas. In the northwest, through the states of Sonora, Sinaloa, Nayarit and Jalisco, Obregon marched from victory to victory, all the way from the American border to the heart of Mexico, After Villa had broken through the main division of Huerta's army, Pablo Gonzalez could move forward from the states of the northeast-that is to say, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, and San Luis. And as Zapata was becoming more and more of a menace from the south-his activities had spread through the states of Morelos, Mexico, and Puebla, surrounding the capital-Huerta fled from the country seventeen months after his crime. After wiping out a part of Porfirio Diaz's former army and discharging from the service those who surrendered, the revolutionary troops marched into the city of Mexico in August 1914. But the revolution was already divided in its hour of triumph. Carranza, whose background and formation were those of the dictatorship, and who was devoid of ideals and eager only for power, from the first moment did all he could to bar the advancement of all those revolutionists whose independence or whose faith in the just character of the revolution might prove a stumbling.block to the new leaders in the race of their personal ambitions. He was supported in this by Obregon and by the groups of Sonora and Coahuila, and he even went so far as to put obstacles in the way of Villa's and Angeles's military operations. This lost him the support of many leaders and large sections of the country; and it brought about a wide breach, which was already evident in December 1913, and of a frankly hostile character by August 1914. To put an end to these dissensions, which threatened to destroy the fruits of the revolution's military victories, the leaders of the different groups decided to call an assembly which should have sovereign authority, to be composed of generals and governors. This was the Convention. It met in October 1914, first in Mexico City and then in Aguascalientes, and voted to remove both Carranza and Villa from their commands, as their quarrels were the principal cause of strife, and to name General Eulalio Gutierrez president pro tern. of the Republic. The generals and governors in favour of Villa submitted to the terms laid down by the Convention; but as Carranza and his adherents demanded, as a preliminary to their obedience of orders, the fulfilment of certain conditions that could not be accepted, the new President had to temporize with Villa while waiting for the Carranza faction to recognize his authority. Finally, dis. owned by the one and at the mercy of the other, he left the power in December 1914 and took refuge with his soldiers. By the beginning of 1915 the revolution had degenerated into a veritable state of anarchy, into a simple struggle between rivals for power. This went on until 1916, when Obregon and Carranza, in great part with the help of the United States, managed to reduce Villa to a position in which he could do nothing, though without ever conquering him. As a guerrilla leader Villa was invincible. In May 1920 he was still lording it in the stronghold of the sierras, His energy and his daring were unrivalled. Even General Pershing's famous expedition.-the ten thousand men that Wilson sent to Mexico, with Carranza and Obregon's approval, 'to get Villa dead or alive'-had to relinquish the undertaking.
Martín Luis Guzmán Franco (October 6, 1887 – December 22, 1976) was a Mexican novelist and journalist. Guzmán was born in Chihuahua, Chihuahua. Along with Mariano Azuela, he is considered a pioneer of the revolutionary novel, a genre inspired by the experiences of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. His novels La sombra del caudillo (1929) and El águila y la serpiente (1928) depict the Mexican Revolution and its political aftermath, both of which the author was familiar with, having contributed both to revolutionary agitation and to the formation of the new revolutionary government. For several months in 1914, he was under the direct orders of General Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa. He later wrote a five-volume biography of Villa, Memorias de Pancho Villa (1936-1951). Martin Luis Guzmán died suddenly on December 22, 1976 in Mexico City due an acute myocardial infarction. His widow Ana West, died seven years after him, on October 21st, 1983. She was 95 years old when, after being hospitalized for some days due to an acute bilateral pneumonia, she suffered a cardiac arrest and died.
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The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker. Boston. 2000. Beacon Press. 433 pages. Jacket design: Sara Eisenman. Jacket art, clockwise from top left: 'Many poor women imprisoned, and hanged for Witches,' 1655, Rare Books Division, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations; 'A Negro hung alive by the Ribs to a Gallows. 0807050067.
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The culture of the Atlantic in an era of rapid expansion of trade, and the influence of sailors, slaves, pirates, and others in the creation of a new global economy. The notion of pirates as a free-enterprise and somewhat democratic alternative to the indentured sailors and more-or-less captive roving workforce options of the time is truly thought provoking. I'll never see pirates in quite the same way again. The intersection of aspects of the slave trade and the growing abolitionist movement with the developing Atlantic culture is a fascinating story told well by Linebaugh and Rediker. Certainly my favorite book of 2000 and one of my all-time favorites. 'For most readers the tale told here will be completely new. For those already well acquainted with the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the image of that age which they have been so carefully taught and cultivated will be profoundly challenged. ' - David Montgomery, author of Citizen Worker. Long before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. THE MANY HEADED-HYDRA recounts their stories in a sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world. When an unprecedented expansion of trade and colonization in the early seventeenth century launched the first global economy, a vast, diverse, and landless workforce was born. These workers crossed national, ethnic, and racial boundaries, as they circulated around the Atlantic world on trade ships and slave ships, from England to Virginia, from Africa to Barbados, and from the Americas back to Europe. Marshaling an impressive range of original research from archives in the Americas and Europe, the authors show how ordinary working people led dozens of rebellions on both sides of the North Atlantic. The rulers of the day called the multiethnic rebels a 'hydra' and brutally suppressed their risings, yet some of their ideas fueled the age of revolution. Others, hidden from history and recovered here, have much to teach us about our common humanity.
Peter Linebaugh, professor of history at the University of Toledo, is a contributing editor of ALBION'S FATAL TREE and author of THE LONDON HANGED. A member of the Midnight Notes Collective, he lives in Toledo, Ohio.
Marcus Rediker, associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, is author of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, winner of the American Studies Association's John Hope Franklin Prize and the Organization of American Historians' Merle Curti Social History Award. He is a contributing author of WHO BUILT AMERICA? and lives in Pittsburgh.
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