In the Land of Broken Jugs: Francisco Rojas Gonzalez and Mexican "Indigenismo" at MidTwentieth Century Author(s): Estelle Tarica

Reviewed work(s): Source: Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 30, No. 59 (Jan. - Jun., 2002), pp. 100-121 Published by: Latin American Literary Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20119871 . Accessed: 23/03/2012 16:36
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Latin American Literary Review is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Latin American Literary Review.

http://www.jstor.org

IN THE LAND OF BROKEN JUGS: FRANCISCO ROJAS GONZALEZ AND MEXICAN INDIGENISMO AT MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY

ESTELLETARICA

short stories El collection of indigenista Francisco Rojas Gonzalez's was first published in 1952, immediately after the author's death. diosero the best of his five critics and considered by Mexican Initially well-reviewed published attention.1 almost no critical of stories, it has since received of a minor lack can perhaps be taken as symptomatic that ocurred around mid-century, in Mexican transformation literary history literature to the category of the middle-brow namely, the entry ofindigenista collections This and its marginalization ture. Like these more diosero erished reflects modernization modern from the currents of "serious" however, mexicanista litera currents, respected an increasingly ambivalent on the part of metropolitan El Rojas Gonzalez's response to post-revolutionary Set amidst impov intellectuals. outside the time-space somewhere of the

located rural landscapes is stories reveal how this ambivalence nation, Rojas Gonzalez's eroticized resolved by, a feminized, and figuratively indig projected onto, enous sphere of natural relations. Women focus enous men. are not active on cross-cultural players interactions in El diosero, whose between indigenous generally and non-indig foregrounded, most notably to the body of the indigenous stories

Indigenous women are nevertheless his attention in the author's "porno-tropics:"2 often visceral to her breasts and her "sex." In its visually marked, woman, a marked the collection ideological displays portraits of these women, indigenismo. Through these images the ambiguity with respect to nationalist about its own visual strategies of collection registers a self-consciousness and channels a sense of loss the indigenous subjects it describes, knowing Yet Rojas and longing for a "primitive" world on the verge of disappearing. his life, such that the remained a committed nationalist Gonz?lez throughout collection combines this ambivalence with the hallmarks of indigenista

In the Land Mexican

of Broken

Indigenismo

Jugs: Francisco at Mid-twentieth

Rojas

Gonz?lez

and

101

Century

a call to end the marginalization and mistreatment of indigenous them to the nation-state, and a faith in the existence people by incorporating state able to do so. of a benevolent discourse: in the characteristically The collection thus participates split iconogra around the figure of "the Indian" that can be found in any number of phy texts atmid-twentieth Mexican of Mexico's century. The measure ability to overcome its underdevelopment through an ever-more rigorous application a confounding, of reason, the Indian also represented resistance fascinating to reasoned progress to which intellectuals were increasingly attracted. The figure of the Indian was at once an external object of science and public in applied anthropology's what Roger Bartra would indigenismo, policy, call "indigenismo de corte tecnocr?tico" and the emblem of a ghostly, (349); s interiority, of the kind found in intimate haunting of the mestizo everyman' the national psycho-drama of Octavio Paz's El laberinto de la soledad or in Carlos Fuentes's (1950), (1954). This story "Chac Mool" split Bhabha calls "the disjunctive time of the nation's "a knowledge between and its modernity:" caught political rationality between the shreds and patches of cultural signification and the impasse, certainties of a nationalist (Bhabha 142). Rojas Gonzalez's pedagogy" this erotic, knowing visions of Indian women attempt tomediate empathetic, as Bhabha that puts it, "that archaic ambivalence split; they articulate, corresponds also overwriting and undercut Such a strategy was progress. in nationalist films of the period,3 and it is perhaps Rojas widely popularized in fiction, this range of representational Gonzalez's ability to synthesize, of the Indian, to create a recognizably to "Mexican" strategies landscape, success of El diosero can be attributed.4 which the relative ting it with these disparate tendencies in a more with the blind earnestness of literary form?indigenismo?associated reform-minded makers than with the uneasy questioning of cosmo policy comes perhaps as less of a surprise when considered politan intellectuals the transformations in indigenista against thought in the decades after the Revolution. to the consolidation Instrumental of the revolutionary nation state since its inception, in the investment indigenismo's anthropological That El diosero manages mestizo nation has nevertheless forging of a unified, culturally homogenous taken different forms at different times. In the 1920s, under the intellectual itwas explicitly In the 1930s acculturationist. guidance of Manuel Gamio, and after, however, the focus shifted enough to allow for the possibility of the extirpation of Indian culture as such (Guti?rrez a contradiction, at the level of public policy, between 90-101 ), producing the assimilation and the preservation of indigenous culture. This is a contradic "mexican-ization" without whether tion that Rojas Gonzalez's enacts repeatedly, El diosero to denounce the passing of indigenous culture as if uncertain or celebrate its to unite informs the time of modernity" accounts optimistic (142) while of national to what Homi

102

Latin

American

Literary

Review

sought-after times frank

assimilation. celebration

It combines of

the state's

subjects by building highways of Indians reflect the paternalism char whimsically picturesque depictions a self But the stories also contain acteristic of official indigenismo. to their own visual ethnographic conscious component, calling attention an active sense of longing for pre narrative and transmitting strategies social relations. capitalist In addition to being a novelist and short-story writer, Rojas Gonz?lez was

realism with a some ethnographic to "better" its indigenous efforts and installing rural teachers and doctors. Its

aworking ethnologist for most of his career, which spanned key decades in the development of Mexican and literature. In indigenista anthropology and with Andr?s Molina and 40s he and Nacional, the prominent indigenista of the time?Mendiz?bal, Mois?s Saenz, Manuel Gamio, Nu?ez?with whom he carried out and published numer y Enriquez collaborated with among various ethnic groups.5 Most of the stories reflect the author's ethnological training in both their an omniscient Some of the stories employ ethnographic at the Museo

the 1920s he studied with socialist anthropologist Miguel Oth?n de

Mendiz?bal in the 1930s

anthropologists Lucio Mendieta ous field investigations collected inEl diosero form and content. narrator unmarked ters between

as such, others are explicitly structured as field encoun and their indigenous informants, narrated in anthropologists and filled with references to indigenous

the first-person by anthropologists, languages and customs.

as an "exponent Joseph Sommers correctly identified Rojas Gonz?lez one who put both his anthropological and his of nationalism," investigations at the service of elevating national ideals. revolutionary literary endeavors his carrancista orientation (his Politically speaking he never abandoned itself clearly felt in his stories). He for example, makes anti-clericalism, a member Intelectuales de M?xico became of the Bloque de Obreros a group founded in 1922 whose members included former presi (B.O.I.), dent Emilio Ruiz Cortines.6 The Portes Gil and future president Adolfo in the journal Crisol, the organ and stories Rojas Gonz?lez essays published affirm the group's commitment of the B.O.I, founded in 1929,7 uniformly to avoid producing la "vana literatura" in favor of "definir y esclarecer

of his ("Nuestros Prop?sitos" 162). Examples ideolog?a de la Revoluci?n" such as the story "Voy a cantar un corrido" ( 1935) and better-known fiction, in Prize for Literature winner of the National the novel La negra Angustias, are portraits of folk heroes, national "types" who were celebrated for 1944, embodying position, that Mexican "atm?sfera due?os stated "el alma mexicana."8 ideological They reflect the author's short story, in a widely-reproduced essay on the Mexican an "un terreno mexican?simo," should present literature en el que semueven hombres de peregrina idiosincracia, que hacen todos masa gestos o de in?ditas actitudes,

nativa...

de nuevos

In the Land Mexican

of Broken

Indigenismo

Jugs: Francisco at Mid-twentieth

Rojas

Gonz?lez

and

103

Century

anhelante

en marcha

firma

hacia

el

fin de

su destino"

mexicano"10). short stories should depict "algo de lo propio, claimed; can recognize that Mexicans themselves ("El cuento mexicano" 10). too was part of the author's broad investment in forging a El diosero It employed self-identification. national consciousness through collective has writing, what James Clifford literary strategy of most ethnographic in order to foster cross-cultural termed "ethnographic allegory," a national within identifications argues that any ethno totality. Clifford us, first, to imagine a different cultural norm.. .and graphic story "requires a basic

This kind of literature

is what

theMexican

("El cuento public wants, he so de lo familiar,"

a common human experience" works then to recognize (99). Ethnography "local cultural meanings" but then incorporates these into a by describing is the broad category referent of "the human." "general story" whose An ethnographic of birthing customs among a certain group, for description example, will initially draw attention to the strangeness of these practices to the readers' eyes, but then subsequently introduce elements that make these as a "common" human experience. "A difference practices comprehensible is posited and then transcended," Clifford writes "What one sees in (99); a coherent the imaged construct of the other, is account, ethnographic connected Most in a continuous of the stories between double in El structure with what one understands"

(Clifford 101).
structure, shifting in whimsical rather than scientific characteristics, cally-specific although a vision that emphasizes an underlying universal condition. The terms, and concerns or reader is always told whether the story the "reserved" Huichol the "charmingly discourteous" for example, but ultimately the Chinanteco, are subordinated of these forms of local identification to the specificities stories' conscious the Indians they depict. The stories attempt to "humanize" unfold their small dramas as if they were snapshots of universal human or joy, in the allegorical mode described by Clifford. This mode for the "in spite of reading that has been derived from the stories: "in spite of their strange or primitive ways of life, these natives are sensitive and likeable.9 suffering accounts The Gonz?lez ideological aim of this tactic is quite clear from a nationalist anthropological in this case, for Rojas tradition, one that saw diosero this allegorical double employ a vision of Indians that highlights their ethni

emerged itself as instrumentally linked to the state, and thus served its explicit aim to Indians into a national whole. This was Mexican incorporate indigenismo's raison d'?tre from the start, when Manuel Gamio ideological published in (1922), study of Teotihuacan to be put to use in the service of literary indigenismo might be said this anthropological strand, to the

Patria (1916) and his famous Forjando which every piece of data collected was the nation-state. A properly consolidating to have a distinct historical trajectory from

104

Latin

American

Literary

Review

famous examples in the first half of the century? Fuentes's El indio (1935) and Mauricio Magdaleno's El Gregorio L?pez y written by journalist authors, have no anthropologi ( 1937)?are resplandor cal underpinnings, and continue to reflect the highly factionalized political of the two decades following the war. These texts are critical of landscape degree state and depict the Indian as the victim of the corruption the revolutionary and unfulfilled of successive governments. post-revolutionary promises this significant the literary and However, difference, despite political are rhetorically strains of indigenismo identical in promi anthropological Indian symbolism, it as the root both manipulate re-configuring of and both hold the notion that the living members identity, are located somewhere of outside the time-space communities indigenous the modern nation-state and thus require integration. in the work of Rojas The two strands come together historically to literary use in such a way as who put his ethnological Gonz?lez, training nent ways: of national the two indigenista with defining preoccupied linked to fuse traditions lo mexicano into one, within a nationalist matrix that was, in this case, intimately stories of El diosero often read like

that its most

to state policy-making. The an from Alfonso Caso's excerpts pamphlet "?Qu? es el INI?" (1955), the goals of the Mexican manual Instituto Nacional Indigenista detailing state among indigenous Gonzalez's stories could have communities. Rojas as narrative extensions that of any number of the pithy captions included in Caso's of indigenista policy-in-action the photographs explain the other appar booklet. One picture of three boys, one apparently white, "No the third apparently black, sports a caption that proclaims ently Indian, served shows a group of Indians (15). Another nacional flag; its caption reads, "La conciencia gathered around theMexican se lleva a todos los rincones" of a car on a steep (43). A third, a photograph mountain road, declares "Los caminos facilitan la integraci?n al conglomerado nacional" (55). One can find a story from El diosero to illustrate, narratively, existe la discriminaci?n en M?xico" rhetoric: "La cabra en dos of official each of these components indigenista racist attitudes towards the Otomi condemns Indians, "La plaza de patas" a rural school, "La tona" turns on of the construction Xoxocotla" celebrates In presence of a highway work crew near a Zoque community. are portrayed as the Zoque Indian protagonists the latter story, for example, in need of modern medicine; they respond to the work crew desperately the felicitous doctor who and gratitude. bring modern saves and her baby with respect the lives of a birthing woman "La tona" thus reads like a blueprint for how the state should science to its most disadvantaged populations.

of the the cultural differences the collection, asserting to in the stories is, ultimately, secondary groups depicted indigenous a culturally unified national totality. This allegorical operation constructing to a broader collective identity, put to nationalist use, to subsume difference Throughout

In the Land Mexican

of Broken

Indigenismo

Jugs: Francisco at Mid-twentieth

Rojas

Gonz?lez

and

105

Century

stance on the role of literature to the author's well-articulated corresponds for the surprisingly Yet it does not account in a modernizing country. of El diosero marked regarding the role that anthro ambiguity ideological a modern mestizo nation. Taken as a in constructing should play pology an awareness among Mexican reflects the collection whole, anthropologists social science and the state was that the instrumental linkage between of acculturation processes already under way, and that the accelerating cultures and assimilating tension between preserving them, as indigenous an insoluble Luis Villoro paradox.10 Rojas put it, presented succintly between hostile or failed encounters for describing Gonzalez's penchant stories of numerous and their Indian subjects, a component ethnographers to this problematic. Stories such as "El is intimately linked in the collection, "Nuestra Se?ora de Nequetej?," cenzontle y la vereda," "H?culi Huahua," "El diosero," each depict ethno and the collection's eponymous story narrators these stories The self-conscious encounters gone awry. graphic or as impartial observers find their own position complicated employ undone when those whom they are studying proffer resistance, or implicate and the primitive them in such a way as to blur the line between civilization state and science of mission the modernizing that underwrites among Mexico's of the story "El diosero" The Lacand?n "god-maker" with the words "?Y a ti qu? te the ethnographer-narrator directly challenges en la vida de los vecinos!" (96), and never ?No hay que meterse importa? In the story "H?culi once cedes interpretive control to his uninvited guest. secret of peyote an anthropologist's Hualula," attempts to learn the mystical "natives." of the tribe he is studying. Back by the mistrust and hermeticism he wanted, he finds inMexico acquiring the materials City after deceitfully himself haunted by visions of a terrifying god that bring him to a state of on nervous the tribe is thus avenged. The story relies heavily collapse; are rebuffed but asserts that their secrets received notions of Indian "secretiveness," It reflects a skeptical approach to cannot be unlocked by scientific inquiry. an educated man of science prey to the Mexico's modernity, portraying same irrational fears as the "primitive" objects of his study. Stories pological such as these cast doubts They on the benevolent nature of anthro to for science it is possible question whether of human nature, and wonder whether the mysteries adequately comprehend a fragmented and the "natives" might not be better left alone. Presenting research.

conflictive cultural landscape within the bounds of the nation, these stories to promote are completely to the collection's other tendency contrary Indians' integration to the nation-state. They remain instances of what Mary innocent because "asserting a harmless Pratt terms "innocent" ethnography, vision that installs no apparatus of domination" (Pratt 33-4). hegemonic can be situated alongside Ricardo the collection Seen from this perspective, Pozas's far better known Juan P?rez Jolote (1952), an ethnographic study

106

Latin

American

Literary

Review

inwhich the object of the Indian couched as auto-ethnography, appears to have turned his life into a story told in his own words. Juan study in both literary and anthropological circles for P?rez Jolote was hailed the paternalist, of previous reform-minded with components breaking to the textual presence texts.11 By limiting the ethnographer's indigenista a kind of self-effacement, Pozas book's and thus enacting introduction to be suggesting frame was an obstacle, that the ethnographic appeared to cross-cultural rather than a vehicle, understanding. sEl diosero does not go as far as Juan P?rez Jolote in Gonz?lez' Rojas of the ethnographic frame. But the narrators breaking with the conventions of many of the stories do reflect a marked self-consciousness about the methods and aims of ethnographic that can be research, a self-consciousness some of the stories, at the level of the visual frame and point-of found, in each have an view. The stories "La tona" and "Las vacas de Quiviquinta" implied, omniscient ethnographic are self-conscious render narrator narrator, rather than the first person ethnographic of other stories. But like the other stories, these two to modes of surveillance enough about ethnographic frames

of a Chamula

explicit. They draw the readers' attention to the mechanisms through which Indians are viewed by naming this viewing as a penetration as transgressive, into a forbidden space. The stories open the comment "hidden" aspects of Indian culture to view while simultaneously on the process of doing so. ing In the story "La tona" this staging turns on a particular moment when at the knowledge?imparted the reader arrives belatedly mid-story?that a practice that neither he nor the reader the narrator has been describing a Zoque women should be seeing. The first part of the story describes is the object of the narrator's close to give birth. "Crisanta"12 attempting a detailed account of her very muscular efforts laden with examination, animal imagery and verging on the grotesque: tal si todas las dolencias irregularmente, Respir? profunda, hizo de sus hubi?ransele anidado en la garganta. Despu?s manos de aquellas manos, duras, agrietadas y rugosas de las pas? por el de consuelo, cuando fatigas, utensilios Los ojos vientre ahora convulso excesivo y acalambrado. de las escler?ticas que brotaban l?grimas Pero todo esfuerzo fue vano. Llev? despu?s congestionadas. sus dedos, ?nicos instrumentos de alivio, hasta la entrepierna tumefacta y de ah? los separ? por in?tiles... ardorosa, (8, escurr?an

their own visual

original ellipsis)
The Indian woman naked phy sicality is framed by a narrative gaze that attempts to capture her in the stark terms of clinical realism, yet without abandon

In the Land Mexican

of Broken

Indigenismo

Jugs: Francisco at Mid-twentieth

Rojas

Gonz?lez

and

107

Century

of after this detailed description ing a certain poetic empathy. Immediately the narrator informs the reader that "en aquel pueblo...las her, however, se las arreglaban solas, a orillas del r?o, sin m?s ayuda que sus mujeres of crossing in the moment su esfuerzo y sus gemidos" manos, (9). Suddenly, "us" and between we are made aware that a line marking the difference it, "them" exists. The narrator's account of this event in rural Indian life is to have been the product of visual penetration by a narrator who is to the scene described. The reader then becomes aware, retroac foreign a of having been treated to a view that is known to be transgressive, tively, violation of the custom of giving birth alone. The revelation of the transgres sive nature of the narrative gaze is not presented with any fanfare in this revealed interest, another example of the story. It is one more item of ethnographic of one ethnic group. But this piece of information cultural idiosyncracies all of the to call into question the methodology would appear by which about Crisanta and her customs has so far been gathered. information an otherwise awareness of having transgressed retroactive cultural boundary occurs in the story "Las vacas de Quiviquinta," and dramatic way. In this in a far more complex but here it is transmitted to leave her husband and baby story, famine forces a young village woman in order to serve as a wet nurse for a family in the city. It is a story about the A similar invisible end of rural life, about the cultural loss and moral corruption signified by of the amoral trajectory that can be traced in the representation capitalism, "Martina" and her baby are portrayed asMadonna Indian woman. Initially, and-child: face smiles down on her infant nursing at in their hut, Martina's moreno como cantarito de barro" (25). By "un pecho carnudo, abundante y the end of the story, however, when she takes leave of her husband and child cow?as to join the city family, she refers to herself as her husband's per the for cash. milk in exchange story's title?producing to commodification of transition from state-of-grace The key moment

still at a tianguis, a road side market. takes place, There, significantly, her breasts uncovered: "chaste" like a "matrona b?blica," Martina keeps los hermosos "Alza su blusa hasta el cuello y deja al aire los categ?ricos, como un par de odres a reventar" (29). However, tr?mulos pechos morenos, once the two "forasteros" view intimate arrive at the market looking for a wetnurse, different meaning: of her body takes on a wholly the

Los reci?n

llegados recorren con la vista al "tianguis," algo buscan. Penetran entre la gente, voltean de un lado a otro, su b?squeda. Se detienen inquieren y siguen preocupados en seco ?sta, al mirar a los y Martina; el rebozo sobre sus pechos, presa de es tard?a, ya los la maniobra s?bito rubor; sin embargo, lo que necesitaban. extra?os hab?an descubierto (30) frente a Esteban forasteros se echa

108

Latin

American

Literary

Review

The

and violate the Indian community, brusquely "penetrating" its order. The "natural" display of breasts for nursing sud "overturning" in the presence of the white couple who, Martina shameful denly becomes have brought a hegemonic moralism with them, a distinct sense of assumes, the proper. Thus her embarrassment and belated attempt to cover her breasts. outsiders ironic component confused innocence:

of the story then comes into play, turning on Martina's her inability to recognize, until it is too late, that the and corrupting at its core, moral authority of the white couple is hypocritical as the for the white couple intend not only to see her breasts but eventually, An to commodify them as well. story continues, The narrator is initially aligned with Martina, ignorant of the white intentions as the scene unfolds. A visual transgression occurs, but couple's or reader, whose it is not associated with the narrator gazing on Martina's had been empathetic, but rather with the white couple, whose gaze narrator and is violently and shaming. The alignment between invasive is undone by the carefully staged irony of Martina's mis Martina, however, intentions. At this point in the story, then, the of the couple's recognition narrator becomes if from Martina, and adopts a knowing, differentiated breasts es tard?a, ya stance about what has just transpired ("la maniobra dismayed, lo que necesitaban"). Within los extra?os hab?an descubierto his new once again, as in the the reader becomes aware?retroactively realignment, story "La tona"?of being an outsider to the scene. in the story's of this visual transgression unfold in the conclusion, inno the depictions of Martina's as a to the image of the Indian woman fertility give way cently brimming cow. Such is the consequence in of penetrating into the Indian community women The story's final for their labor potential. order to examine its note captures an image of the crying baby, "la ni?a que gime plaintive The consequences final paragraph. Here, with hu?rfana de sus dos cantaritos de barro moreno" (31). The story thus ends amoral lesson about the cultural loss thatMartina's into transformation the narrator's the experience of poetic strategies of a child's loss of

a wage earner will imply, and all of sentiment are put into play to dramatize her mother. These subdued which

in frames into relief, although stories throw their ethnographic rather than catastrophic fashion, for the author does not then link to the context of state domination of surveillance the narrators' method together with the failed stories, one has the distinct depicted ethnographic ' s indigenista a deep ambivalence at the heart of Roj as Gonz?lez impression of has histori describes how this ambivalence mexicanista fiction. Clifford surely authorized it.13 Nevertheless, taken encounters in other cally been establishes operation narrative tradition. Ethnography the ethnographic and then transcends it, Clifford argues, but this is then itself subsumed to a broader aim, what he calls a "redemp a part of difference

In the Land Mexican

of Broken

Indigenismo

Jugs: Francisco at Mid-twentieth

Rojas

Gonz?lez

and

109

Century

around "the theme of the vanishing Structured allegory." in such a way of the end of traditional society," and constructed primitive, as to give "scientific this redemp and moral authority" to the ethnographer, as the bearer of an authenticity that tive mode views the other romantically, between In other words, a difference theWest has lost (Clifford 112-114). "us" and "them" is once again asserted, in order to express the ethnographer's tive Western "we" or ironic stance towards modernity: "they" have something set lost or repressed, and which "we" long to recover, a less-alienated it is worth noting, is one for of social relations. This allegorical operation, discredited. literature has been repeatedly which Mexican indigenista critical have Rosario Castellanos, realism "simplistic" as much as possible celebrated used literature for its for example, indigenista reproached and its "exotic" portrayal of Indians, distancing herself she was at the time its most from the genre although

s "Las vacas de Quiviquinta," it is in the metaphors as a vessel then as a (clay jug, wineskin), is given shape. The c?ntaro metaphor this redemptive cow?that allegory situates the Indian woman among the objects of her daily life, as an unbroken In the formulation of the breast as "un extension of her natural surroundings. como un c?ntarito de barro," the final pecho carnudo, abundante y moreno, to describe Martina?first the mundane element: it eroticizes than just a picturesque the clay jug with her home by associating of the woman's surroundings flesh. This allows the story to depict a world not bound by the confining of public and private and the separation strictures of bourgeois civility simile adds more spheres. The c?ntaro image, rather than transforming a lifeless object, breathes life into the objects around other words, which lends moral force to the story's woman's commodification, letting us know that her wetnurse is destroying enables the Indian woman into her. It is this image, in critique of the Indian into a transformation

exponent.14 In Rojas Gonz?lez'

an entire sphere of natural relations. This particular or a critique of the present by simplifying meaning allegorical a primitive world; itmay be said to be the one that Castellanos exoticizing literature. about indigenista resisted in her comments loss As may already be apparent, the sphere of natural relations whose around is an erotic, feminine sphere, one that is constructed the story mourns the sensuality of the Indian woman with her baby. The narrator's pleasure set against the in viewing innocent when this eroticized body appears

story is thus seeing. at the same time, pious and sexual. This particu and eroticizing moralizing One lar combination of affects is not limited to "Las vacas de Quiviquinta." can find an instance of it in "La tona" as well, where the initial description to her "entrepierna reference sexualized of Crisanta's body?the highly between ardorosa, tumefacta," comes to mind?will eventually cede to chaste

exploitative distinction

aims

of

the white gaze, couple's two different modes of

as if to establish The

a moral

110

Latin

American

Literary

Review

images blatant

of her with the new born baby.15 This juxtaposition is especially in the story "La cabra en dos patas," another moral tale built around the erotic spectacle of an Indian woman. An Otomi Indian resists a white

miner who wants to buy the Otomi's daughter for ten pesos in order to have sex with her. The daughter is "the goat with two legs," dehumanized and commodified "the cow," was dehumanized by the miner just as Martina, by the white couple, except that in "La cabra" the offer is rebuffed. Like "Las vacas," this story depicts an eroticized, feminine, indigenous natural sphere is threatened by the intrusion of a white man. "Maria harmony the Otomi's leads a wild existence Agr?cola," daughter, goats, shepherding "aislada del mundo," and tigers, "conjuring" the herd fending off the wolves with "palabras solemnes y misteriosas" (83). This portrait of her simple life is a true pastoral fantasy, and so not surprisingly includes an overtly erotic "su cuerpo el?stico," comments the narrator when she is first component: l?neas graciosas con rotundeces prietas" (83). From introduced, "combinaba whose the perspective of the narrator, she is unquestionably desirable but, as with "Las vacas," this eroticizing is to be considered innocent when gaze of the white man. The story thus juxtaposed with the corrupt salaciousness it. actively elicits desire for the Indian woman while also condemning crafts a story that is simultaneously Again, Rojas Gonz?lez moralizing and erotic, a conjunction that can be identified as a particular "strategy of containment" Fredric Jameson has termed "moralizing alarm." It responds to, and attempts to suppress, certain kinds of powerful imagery that tap into "a longing for the more immediately sensory" (Jameson 2), a longing that the story itself has put into play for the warm place of the "cantarito" or those "rotundeces the stories' erotic entice prietas." Understood historically, ments alarm" can be taken coupled with their almost obligatory "moralizing as symptomatic of the cultural climate of the 1940s inMexico. The rise of as a patriotic value, the new cult o? pudor and middle bourgeois domesticity class decency that led to censorship of public art and films, the return to

of C?rdenas-era religion as a national virture, the elimination socio-political the anti-communist the re reforms, against "doctrinas ex?ticas," campaigns as a response of "traditional" to the entry of invigoration gender roles women into the urban work force: all mark the cultural and political conservatism that characterized and Miguel Not Alem?n.16 tioned moral conservatism the presidencies of Manuel Avila Camacho this shift toward officially-sanc surprisingly, was accompanied with the by a fascination The success of the "ex?ticas" Tongolele and Su Muy Fox argues, about social

erotics of the primitive. in the cabarets of Mexico bodies, Claire Key City, whose "became a screen upon which conservatives projected anxieties class, popular struggle, and national linked to the images of charmingly photo essays of politically-conservative identity"

(147), in this context become Indian women the topless populating illustrated magazines like Hoy}1

In the Land Mexican

of Broken

Indigenismo

Jugs: Francisco at Mid-twentieth

Rojas

Gonz?lez

and

111

Century

Both demonstrate how eroticism was displaced onto fetishized women who were exotic yet not foreign enough to be politically threatening.18 and political is perhaps not the socio-cultural This urban backdrop Yet as Carlos associated with Mexican environment indigenismo. generally to fulfill literature had a specific function Monsiv?is argues, indigenista to instill piety. He notes, "Criatura audience: its metropolitan among el doblemente 'ex?tica,' por ser a la vez un subhumano y un compatriota, indio, en la narrativa que abunda entre 1930 y 1960, 'propicia' la filantrop?a nacionales" del lector" ("Versiones 61). This is indeed what happens to the aesthetics of the "redemptive" ethnographic mode described by primitivist rather than and complacent, Clifford when received by a self-congratulatory critical, middle-class.19 to inspire a philanthropic attitude El diosero, although surely designed enables a more complex towards the Indian on the part of its readership, as the collection's internal conflict with respect to range of incitements, of sex makes apparent. The stories are titillating, but aware of the questions such titillations engender. They bring the reader into immoral temptations a relation of desire for the other, but contain that desire to the act of looking, subjecting all those who do more than look tomoral criticism. The collection makes calls good use of what Malek Alloula an alibi that can be found in texts like National colonial alibi" (28), the "ethnographic as well as in the Geographic

French

It is this alibi that enables the discusses. postcards Alloula like which focus on life processes of Rojas Gonzalez's stories, voyeurism "universal" human experiences and pubescence?the childbirth, nursing, as Clifford points out?and draw that are the stock in trade of ethnography, out their sensual

into an innocently the Indian woman aspects, converting this erotic gazing with a sense of eroticized spectacle. El diosero combines to which Indians are subjected, but it barely moral injustice at the indignities explores how commodities, complacent into of Indian women these indignities?the transformation or the poverty of the countryside?might be linked to the gazes and comfortable lifestyles of its readers. it is easier to understand why it is that an image this backdrop

Against as both nurturing and sensual emerges as a key of the indigenous woman element of so many of the stories. This version of the indigenous woman to the moralist-erotic resolution enables a figurative duality, for she repre de Quiviquinta" made available further

in "Las vacas sents both elements in one. Crisanta in "La tona" and Martina can both be read as examples of this figure, for they are to the desiring gaze without their maternal compromising to take a "Nuestra Se?ora de Nequetej?," story qualities. Rojas Gonzalez's

this constellation of also condenses from the collection, example describes into a single female image. The ethnographer-narrator qualities come across a reproduction da of Leonardo how the Indians of Nequetej? to adopt her as their jealously-guarded "Mona Lisa" and proceed Vinci's

112

Latin

American

Literary

Review

smile makes the virgin more virgin. The enigma of La Gioconda's than one traditionally finds her, but it does not fundamentally picaresque alter her chastity. The whimsical moral of the story is that Indians are patron and knowing in ways that educated man cannot quantify in ways the city man does not, how to keep whole they know, modern like to split. society would Gonz?lez done creative or predict; that which

In picking up on this image of the Indian "earth mother," Rojas was doing what a generation of Mexican artists and writers had at least. The since Diego Rivera link between maternal female

and the earthenware in the established sensuality jug that Rojas Gonz?lez "Las vacas" is echoed by a multitude of prominent artists. One is story for example, of Emilio Fernandez's 1947 indigenista film Rio reminded, escondido. In the film, the wide of cinematographer Gabriel expanses famous still-like shots of arid land and sky are interrupted by Figueroa's lined up at the well, holding images of starkly silhouetted women large clay to be filled with water, a precious resource whose access is entirely jugs controlled by the local latifundista. As with Rojas Gonz?lez' s story, the clay are employed to cement the association between life fluids and Indian jugs a natural sphere, in both cases and to set up a dichotomy between women, a maternal realm in which water/milk is freely available, and an unnatural of political and economic in which these life fluids are domination, sphere to the needs of elites. Notwithstanding the fact that the exclusively no analysis whatsoever film provides of capitalism (as Rojas Gonz?lez nor of the fact that the end of the cacique's rule involves the entry into does), another sphere of domination in each case (the modernizing nation-state), the clay jug channels for amaternal longing sphere that is considered more harnessed liberated. can also be found in Octavio The same set of metaphoric associations Paz' s contemporaneous poem "El c?ntaro roto" (1955). Like R?o escondido, as a longing for feminine the poem is a critique of caciquismo couched of fecundity that might nurture the desert of strong-man patri wellsprings a desire for a nation in the image of archy back to life. The poem expresses a god-mother, as a broken clay jug: "El dios-ma?z, in the poem textualized el dios-flor, el dios-agua, el dios-sangre, la Virgen,/ ?todos se han muerto, se han ido, c?ntaros rotos al borde de la fuente cegada?" The jug has been shattered and abandoned by the punitive masculinity of a destructive father that is "el cacique gordo" state, the immortal and grotesque "sapo verduzco" an anterior indigenous in Paz's poem. The broken clay vessel symbolizes feminine power principle that, if it could only be unearthed or reconstructed, the poem suggests, would a liberate the Mexican people from re-enacting supposed atavism, an "Aztec" drive to submit blindly to authority, and allow them to emerge fully into modernity. Paz's piece could almost be read as the poetic to Rio equivalent

In the Land Mexican

of Broken

Indigenismo

Jugs: Francisco at Mid-twentieth

Rojas

Gonz?lez

and

113

Century

for two significant differences. First, the film shows the and protective like to be seen, a benevolent paternal in the film by the figures of President Alem?n and a rural figure?embodied with children and the poor, who acts on their behalf as if a doctor?aligned "El c?ntaro roto," on the other hand, textualizes mother. its nurturing itwith the unrestrained masculinity of the criticism of the state by aligning escondido, except state as it would thus undoing the binary between selfless masculinity himself, (the or doctor) and oppressive masculinity that the film (the cacique) president In both cases, the clay jug holds a power associated with has set into motion. cacique unleashed in the film this but whereas below; the state, in the poem it is the state itself that by film operates within and broken it. Second, Fernandez's tion to represent screen heroines as wholesomely chaste: revolution from to be is a power has so constrained the state's the heroism injunc of the

schoolteacher played by Mar?a F?lix involves rebuffing the sexual advances s of the cacique. Paz' s poem, on the other hand, shares with Rojas Gonz?lez' a craving for a sexualized maternal one where "el d?a y la noche story sphere, se acarician largamente como un hombre y una mujer enamorados," and can thus be seen as representative of a counter-stance to official discourses on morality. In all three cases?Rojas Gonzalez's "Las vacas Fernandez's Paz's "El c?ntaro roto"?the R?o escondido, and erotic elements jug holds maternal together. Subject

de Quiviquinta," figure of the clay

to disaggregation and destruction, this fragile configuration of socio-psychic investments is well suited to the material of its metaphoric Like the qualities receptacle. clay jug, it can be sold away, pierced or shattered into pieces, or return to the matter whence it came. Although it can be taken as an emblem of mexicanidad, it is a diminutive, domestic less fitting to the task of one, noticeably

to the the nation's permanence than the principal monuments embodying or the of the nation-state, such as the stone icons of Teotihuacan permanence e Arqueolog?a, Museo Nacional de Antropolog?a already under construc tion in the 1950s.20 Rojas Gonzalez's stories in particular appear to resist what Monsiv?is del Rio terms "la Mexicanidad films abstracta disseminated Dolores in mainstream and embodied y pura" of the kind in the screen goddesses

In (Escenas 228), or found in the museum. the story "La cabra en dos patas," it is the villain of the story, the miner who wants to buy the Indian girl, who declares of the Indians, "?Bonita casta que no sirve m?s que para asustar a los ni?os en los museos!" (89). In the story and Mar?a F?lix

"El diosero," the ethnographer-narrator wife, gazing at the god-maker's en plenitud," "hembra at first to "un her "perfil arrogante" compares mascar?n the (92). But this intial abstraction, p?treo de Chichen-Itz?" to the stone artifact, is instantly revised by the narrator, who comparison notices how alive she is because made "una sonrisa terriblemente picaresca" of appetizing of flesh, possessed and sensual eyes that stare back at

114

Latin

American

Literary

Review

with coquettry and impudence (92-93). The image that similar to the earth goddess Coatlicue, of her is remarkably for she emerges too is adorned with the markings of the serpent: "De su cuello robusto y de lagarto" (93). She combines corto, cuelga un collar de colmillos danger and desire, animal-toothed and seductive. Approachable yet awe-inspiring, the god-maker's wife thus imaged is the product of a gaze that neatly inverts the power dynamic between the man of science and the object of his study: as the one below, (the one below)," writes Spivak, "masquerades so that the subaltern can be dissimulated into an icon" (265). But it is an icon that quickens made of an earthy substance the blood. Gonzalez's El diosero combines realism with Rojas ethnographic an effect that the back and erotic delight, sentimentalism piety-inducing Rojas Gonzalez's "spirit of loving seem to conform perfectly to the observation" of Mexico's Indians would idea of paternalist benevolence that the Mexican "estado pap?," as Alan itself on in its dealing with Indians. Knight has termed it (84), congratulated the vasconcelista phrase also reveals an affinity with project of the an urge expressed to resolve the duality of science in La raza c?smica 1920s, racial synthesis whose corresponding and spirit in a Latin American episte to Vasconcelos, consists of "un salto de esp?ritu nutrido according mology, The that Rojas Gonzalez's (15). This is indeed the synthesis early about the collection. One anonymous reviewer found compelling celebrated both its scientific accuracy and cultural authenticity, by making a reference to Rojas Gonzalez's ethnological training as well as to a more to the very "guts" of Mexico. connection Rojas Gonz?lez, poetic, passionate las entra?as mismas de nuestras razas this reviewer notes, "se form?...en reviewers 1 ).Another reviewer of El diosero ind?genas" ("Francisco Rojas Gonz?lez" that "En El diosero, made even stronger claims along similar lines, declaring el investigador cient?fico y el inventor de im?genes literarias, marchan de la mano. en la que la vida ind?gena no tiene secretos" aqu? esta simbiosis assert a positive These reviews of the collection 3). (Mancisidor uniformly in the words of the reviewers) and link between ("science," anthropology a homogenous national culture. The literature in the service of consolidating De de datos" of the most widely circulated de amorosa observaci?n." esp?ritu cover edition of the stories refers to as "un "The man

their beholder

to the stories?uncovering the "secrets" of ascribed grounding because it provides them with a pedagogical culture?is praised function, which fits the aims of the state to incorporate these hitherto ignored or misunderstood into the body of the nation. The stories are thus peoples scientific Indian into line with the development of a notion of cultural directly as instrumental to forging a unified, modern nation, a notion that mestizaje in his professional and in his Gonz?lez actively espoused writings Rojas on literature.21 essays brought For Vasconcelos, mestizaje was a racial affair, a process of miscege

In the Land Mexican

of Broken

Indigenismo

Jugs: Francisco at Mid-twentieth

Rojas

Gonz?lez

and

115

Century

that he described in erotic terms, by misogynistically rewriting the of Indian and African women by the Spanish as an act of love: "fue una rape crear una nueva raza abundancia de amor [lo que] permiti? a los espa?oles con el indio y con el negro" (26). What happens to this racialized eroticism when the paradigm of incorporation to accultura shifts from miscegenation as it had by the 1940s? Perhaps Vasconcelos's tion and "mexicanization," of rape as love, an instance of an allegorical narrative "that rewriting to domination" love as alternatives invoke[s] (Pratt 86), is a conjugal terms "the tender courtesy" that suffuses precursor to what Renato Rosaldo the ethnographic and which mode, observation" that marks the narrative is echoed position the appearance of "transcend[ing] and domination" gives inequality same ways as the intersubjective the (Rosaldo 97) inmuch space "courte s "loving encounter. Rojas Gonz?lez' in the ethnographic ously" established observation" in the "spirit of loving of the stories in El diosero. It

nation

is thus a later, modernized version of the "love" Vasconcelos one that was institutionalized a celebrated, INI, which espoused by Caso's notion of "respect" for the Indian community.22 This new consciousness of the fragile boundaries of the Indian community like the engenders plotlines ones found in El diosero, chaster in Indian investments commanding
women.

The longing for amore profound, carnal connection, such as however, or Paz, still makes the one evinced by Vasconcelos itself palpably felt in these stories. It taps into a species of erotic sentiment that may at first be to locate in the repertory of Mexican difficult at mid official nationalism twentieth as And yet it is always there: desire masquerading over carefully presented as respectful subordination innocence, power to, a longing to be consumed by the mother goddess when it is she who is being vision thus evokes the ideological kernel over ingested. Rojas Gonzalez's century. which Mexican and "official nationalism" have been repeat indigenismo in the course of their long career: a rationalizing contested edly objectifica as backwards?though tion of Indians that "others" them of pre-modernity in dire need of government atten picturesque?remnants to incorporate combined with a propietary necessity them to a collec tion, tive mestizo "we," a national "ours" in the nation as museum.23 To his contemporaries,

Rojas Gonz?lez made reason compatible with and fiction; he transformed the varie passion by integrating ethnography cultural landscape of the nation into a single commensurate whole, gated Indians. phantasmatically projected across the small worlds of El diosero's Itwas the power of his eye "to naturalize the rhetoric of national affiliation," celebrated in his day, but it is how this the enticements of archaic distractions that repeatedly by makes on national of a piece with mid-century the collection reflections once quoted the words of a poet who, in his review being. Rojas Gonz?lez (143), as Bhabha writes eye was snagged that was most

116

Latin

American

Literary

Review

of an earlier "hendedura diosero's

collection de sue?o

of the author's stories, described the short story as el mundo" donde vemos ("Por la ruta" 3). El por in the realm of visual fantasy, realism, and brings us around the Indian that perme vis-?-vis film to story to government

celebrated, overtly placement, unsettles its urge for scientifically-grounded to the space of nationalist wish-fulfillment ates a wealth of indigenista texts, from
document.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

NOTES
1 study dedicated to this Joseph Sommers has published the only monographic author's literary work as a whole, Francisco Rojas Gonz?lez: Exponente literario del nacionalismo mexicano', the only extended critical discussion of El diosero of which I am aware is Sylvia Bigas's chapter on the author in her La narrativa indigenista mexicana del siglo XX (108-130). For brief assessments of El diosero "Notas" 1458. The in surveys ofMexican literature, see Sefchovich 310; Monsiv?is, speeches given on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the author's death, also contain and collected in the volume Francisco Rojas Gonz?lez: Homenaje, information. What is striking references to El diosero as well as biographical about all of these examples is the variety of opinions?disagreements?regarding themerits and fate of his work, ranging from resentful dismay at the contemporary Mexican literary obscurity of his work tomore thoughtful insights about his place in in film has been far less contested. Several The fate of Rojas Gonz?lez history. of the stories from El diosero were made into a movie after the author's death, Benito Alazraki's independent film Ra?ces (1953); the film achieved ameasure of international success, winning a prize at Cannes in 1956, but has never circulated inMexico. For a review of the film, see Reyes; for an analysis of the widely Interestingly relationship between the original stories and the film, see Membrez. enough, this is not the only work by the author that was made into a film. Both of his novels, La negra Angustias and Lola Casanova, were brought to the screen in first women directors, Matilde Landeta, who was films directed by one ofMexico's At attracted to them because of the strength of their female protagonists (Landeta 18). least one critic had already noticed an affinity between Rojas Gonzalez's narrative strategies and filmic strategies of representation before the films were (see Solana). 2 The term was coined by Anne McClintock. 3 See Saragoza for a discussion ofMexican cinema's "gendered allegories" of national identity, and Franco's account of national fractures "plotted" through 4 El diosero is now in the twenty-eighth reprinting of its fourth edition with the

made

women.

In the Land Mexican

of Broken

Indigenismo

Jugs: Francisco at Mid-twentieth

Rojas

Gonz?lez

and

117

Century

Fondo de Cultura Econ?mica, and has recently been translated into English, for the first time, by Robert R. Rudder and Gloria Arjona, published by the Latin American Literary Review Press [TheMedicine Man]. 5 All biographical information on the author comes from Sommers' mono and the essays collected in Francisco Rojas Gonz?lez: Homenaje. graph The group of "intellectual workers" declared in its founding statement the to link the fate of "hombres superiores por su cultura o por su talento" with the need struggle against "las injusticias diarias y colectivas," although without defining a specific political doctrine and rather ambiguously situating themselves "sobre el ala izquierda, todo lom?s a la izquierda que se pueda" ("Declaraci?n de Principios del B.O.I., 67-68). It is worth noting that Rojas Gonz?lez died while campaigning for Ruiz Cortines, and immediately after announcing his candidacy for governor of Jalisco, his home state, a bid for power supported by Ruiz Cortines (Sommers 40, Flores 7). 7 was to which it is It founded one year after the journal Contempor?neos, likely that Crisol represented an implicit counter-stance; Rojas Gonz?lez once denounced those writers who were seduced by "el sutil t?ximo de la decadencia europea,"
mexicano"

in all likelihood
9).

referring to the group of Contempor?neos

("El cuento

8 See Abreu G?mez, Mancisidor. 9 For example, consider Sommers' comment on "El diosero": "[Kai-Lan] demuestra ser juicioso, y sensitivo, no obstante su elemental estado de civilizaci?n" los (172); or Ernesto Flores' summary of the collection: "[E]n El diosero...son estudiosos y los cient?ficos los que primero dudan de cualquier posibilidad de salvaci?n de los ind?genas y descubren despu?s sus atributos: sensibilidad art?stica, bondad, gracia" (6).
10 "La ?nica al mismo alternativa tiempo, real nos abre Por a una una paradoja: el respetar respeto de la identidad su alteridad, del el otro y, integrarlo. parte,

llamado a su libertad real; por otra, la intervenci?n activa para lograr en ?l un cambio que elimine su alteridad, mediante su integraci?n en una comunidad superior donde no haya 'uno' ni 'otro'" (Villoro 16). 11 "Juan P?rez Jolote fue el relato excepcional sobre los ind?genas. Y lo fue porque rompi? con todos los lugares comunes de la buena fe: no se trata de leyendas
o supersticiones, ni de h?bitos o modos de vida, no de afanes y reforma social, no

to an explicit of Indians by ethnic name?the like the careful identification symbology; reader always knows whether the story is about the Cora, the Zoque, the Huichol, names do nothing to remedy the lack of individual character develop etc?these ment or rigorous ethnographic accorded to all of the Indians the description stories describe. My use of quotation marks around the given name is meant to convey
personal

de miradas complacientes o paternalistas" (Sefchovich 296-97). 12 In all the stories the Indian characters are named according

the artificial nature of the intimacy the author most

names.

likely intended by using this and

13 For a discussion of how ethnographers often fail to make explicit connection by not revealing their "close links to contexts of domination"

118 Latin

American

Literary

Review

see Rosaldo 88. denying "the connections between power and knowledge," 14 See her 1965 interview with Emmanuel Carballo, when she declared of indigenista literature, "Uno de sus defectos principales reside en considerar el mundo ind?gena como un mundo ex?tico en el cual los personajes, por ser v?ctimas, son po?ticos y buenos. Esta simplicidad me causa risa" (Carballo 422). 15 un machito ?dijo con voz d?bil y en la aglutinante lengua "?Hicimos zoque Crisanta cuando mir? a sumarido. Entonces la boca de ella se ilumin? con el brillo de dos hileras de dientes como granitos de elotes" (El diosero 13). 16Forbiting analyses ofMexico in the 1940s, see Jos? Agust?n' s Tragicomedia I: La vida enM?xico de 1940 a 1970, 7-117; also the essays collected in Mexicana two very useful books on the 1940s, Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of inMexico Since 1940, and Entre la guerra y la estabilidad pol?tica, s essay on the cultural politics of the period, 259-280. particularly Carlos Monsiv?is' See also Fox for an excellent discussion of literary and filmic representations of spaces such as the Club Tivoli from the 1940s onward. morally-charged 17Mraz, 129-30. Mraz finds these "images of bare-breasted ind?genas" a
"form of soft

Culture

18 Agust?n calls attention to the double nature of the word "exotic" in this context, as both "exotic" political doctrines (Communism) and exotically-alluring female cultural others (Agust?n 94). 19 that this has always been a favored Perhaps it hardly needs mentioning rhetorical weapon of indigenista literature, which does not take "the Indian" per se as its object, but "the problem of the Indian." It is thus framed as a dialogue among
elite or middle class sectors, who charge themselves with "solving" this "problem."

pornography."

discussion of heterogeneity is the key theoretical text on this Cornejo on the foundational statements of Jos? Carlos Mari?tegui. subject, drawing heavily See Kristal for an extended historical elaboration of this idea in theAndes. The piety for which Monsiv?is faults indigenista literature, or the exoticism that Castellanos noticed, are thus key components of indigenista literature's rhetorical repertory, Polar's integral to its ideological aims. 20 See Garcia Canclini' s discussion of the history of the development of the museum and the ideological underpinnings of its spatial organization, in Chapter Four of Culturas h?bridas, 149-190. 21 an In article titled "El comercio entre los Indios de M?xico," for example, he came to the following conclusion: "La decadencia del comercio entre los indios es un claro ?ndice de la penetraci?n exterior en su hasta ayer herm?tico mundo y sugiere nuevos derroteros de progreso, a costa de la devastaci?n de la legendaria cultura. Sin embargo, el indio halla en la actividad de los extra?os, elementos que sabr? aprovechar pronto en defensa de s?mismo: la realizaci?n integral de este fen?meno precipitar? sin duda la amalgama cultural tan necesaria entre los habitantes de M?xico" (137). 22 "[L]o fundamental es adquirir la confianza de las comunidades y no emplear nunca procedimientos de coacci?n" (Qu? es el INI 55, original emphasis). comments on Rojas Gonzalez's 23In his fiction, for example, writer Ermilo Abreu G?mez declared that the author "ha sistematizado el paisaje que nos

In the Land Mexican

of Broken

Indigenismo

Jugs: Francisco at Mid-twentieth

Rojas

Gonz?lez

and

119

Century

pertenece,"
nuestro que,

and in so doing his stories "nos dan la impresi?n de que entramos en lo

de tan nuestro que es y por estar tan presente, sin orden ni concierto,

no lo conoc?amos

ni lo sab?amos apreciar" (Abreu G?mez

3).

WORKS CITED
Abreu G?mez, Ermilo. "Francisco Rojas Gonz?lez." Nacional [Mexico City] 18 October 1944: 3 I: La vida en M?xico de 1940 a 1970. Agust?n, Jos?. Tragicomedia Mexicana Mexico: Planeta, 1990. Alloula, Malek. The Colonial Harem. Trans. Myrna Godzich andWlad Godzich. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Bartra, Roger. "El problema ind?gena y la ideolog?a indigenista." La quiebra pol?tica de la antropolog?a social enM?xico: antolog?a de una pol?mica. Vol. de M?xico, IL Mexico: Universidad Aut?noma Instituto de Nacional 1983. 325-351. Investigaciones Antropol?gicas, The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, Bhabha, Homi. "Dissemination." 1994. 139-170. Bigas Torres, Sylvia. La narrativa indigenista mexicana del siglo xx. Guadalajara: Editorial Universidad de Guadalajara, 1990. 19 protagonistas de la literatura "Rosario Castellanos." Carballo, Emmanuel. mexicana del siglo XX. Mexico: Empresas editoriales, S.A., 1965. 411-424. Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1955. Caso, Alfonso. ?Qu? es el IN.I. ?Mexico: Clifford, James. "On Ethnographic Allegory." Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Ed. James Clifford & George E. Marcus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. 98-121. Cornejo Polar, Antonio. "El indigenismo y las literaturas heterog?neas: su doble
estatura socio-cultural." Sobre literaturay cr?tica latinoamericanas. Caracas:

Ediciones de la Facultad de Humanidades y Educaci?n, Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1982.67-85. "Declaraci?n de Principios del B.O.I." Crisol 6 (1934): 67-68. Flores, Ernesto. Francisco Rojas Gonz?lez, 1903-1951: Homenaje. Guadalajara: Secretaria de Educaci?n y Cultura, 1992. 5-9. Fox, Claire F. "Pornography and 'the Popular' in Post-Revolutionary Mexico: The Club Tivoli from Spota to Isaac." Visible Nations: Latin American Cinema of Minnesota and Video. Ed. Chon A. Noriega. Minneapolis: University Press, 2000. 143-173. Francisco Rojas Gonz?lez, 1903-1951: Educaci?n y Cultura, 1992. Homenaje. Guadalajara: Secretaria de

de "Francisco Rojas Gonz?lez: Investigador social y etn?logo." Universidad M?xico. January 1952: 1+ in Mexico. New York: Franco, Jean. Plotting Women: Gender and Representation

120

Latin

American

Literary

Review

Columbia University Press, 1989. Garc?a Canclini, N?stor. Culturas h?bridas: estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad. Mexico: Grijalbo, 1989. Guti?rrez, Natividad. Nationalist Myths and Ethnic Identities: Indigenous Intellec tuals and theMexican State. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. 1990. Jameson, Fredric. Signatures of the Visible. London: Routledge, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940." The Knight, Alan. "Racism, Revolution, Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940. Ed. Richard Graham. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. 71-113. Kristal, Efrain. The Andes Viewed from the City: Literary and Political Discourse on the Indian in Peru 1848-1930. New York: Peter Lang, 1987. Homenaje. 1992. 18-20. Loyola, Rafael, editor. Entre 40. Mexico: Landeta, Matilde. 1903-1951: "Francisco Rojas Gonz?lez Guadalajara: y el cine." Francisco Rojas Gonz?lez, Secretaria de Educaci?n y Cultura,

la guerra y la estabilidad pol?tica: El M?xico de los 1990. Grijalbo, Rev. of El diosero, by Francisco Jos?. "El diosero-Confabulario." Mancisidor, Juan Jos? Arre?la. Nacional Gonz?lez, and Confabulado, [Mexico by Rojas 1December 1952: 3. City] McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial 1995. Contest. New York: Routledge, J. "The Roots of Ra?ces: The Genesis of El diosero into Film." Membrez, Nancy Cine-Lit II: Essays on Hispanic Film and Fiction. George Cabello-Castellet, eds. Oregon: Published by the and Guy H. Wood, Jaume Marti-Olivella, editors, 1995. 39-58. Carlos. Escenas Monsiv?is,
-. "Notas sobre

de pudor y liviandad. Mexico:

mexicana del siglo XX,"

Grijalbo,
Historia

1988.
General de

la cultura

M?xico -.

1976. (2). Ed. Daniel Cosi? Villegas. Mexico: Colegio de Mexico, 1377-1548. "Versiones nacionales de lo ind?gena." Cultura y derechos de los pueblos de ind?genas de M?xico. Mexico: Archivo General de la Naci?n/Fondo

1996. 55-74. Cultura Econ?mica, and Always: The Golden Age of Illustrated John. "Today, Tomorrow Mraz, in 1937-1960." Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics Mexico, Magazines Mexico Since 1940. Eds. Gilbert Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, & of Culture in Eric Zolov. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. 116-117. Paz, Octavio. "El c?ntaro roto." Libertad bajo palabra: Obra po?tica (1935-1957). 1995. 240-244. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econ?mica, 1952. Pozas, Ricardo. Juan P?rez Jolote. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econ?mica, Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: 1992. Routledge, Reyes, Alfonso. "Los cuentos de Rojas Gonz?lez en el cine." Obras Completas 22: Tercera Serie: 1940-1959. Mexico: El Cerro de la Silla, 1959. Marginalia, 370-371. R?o Escondido. Dir. Emilio Fern?ndez. 1947. Mexcinema video, 1992.

In the Land Mexican

of Broken

Indigenismo

Jugs: Francisco at Mid-twentieth

Rojas

Gonz?lez

and

121

Century

Rojas Gonz?lez, Francisco. "El comercio entre los Indios de M?xico. Mexicana de Sociolog?a, 7.1 (1945): 123-137.
-. "El cuento Mexicano." Tiras de Colores. 1 November 1944:

"

Revista

4-10.

-. -.
-.

1986 [1952]. El diosero. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econ?mica, TheMedicine Man. Trans. Roberts. Rudder and Gloria Arjona. Pittsburgh: Lat?n American Literary Review Press, 2000.
"Por la ruta del cuento mexicano." M?xico en el arte. 10-11 (1952): 3-10.

Rosaldo, Renato. "From theDoor of His Tent: The Fieldworker and the Inquisitor." Eds. James Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Clifford & George E. Marcus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
77-97.

"Intimate Connections: Cinematic Saragoza, Alex M., with Graciela Berkovich. of Gender, the State and National Identity." The Mexican Cinema Allegories Project. Eds. Chon A Noriega and Steven Ricci. Los Angeles: UCLA Film 1994. 25-32. and Television Archive, Sara. "Filosof?a y literatura: la hora de los catrines." Entre la guerra y Sefchovich, la estabilidad pol?tica: El M?xico Grijalbo, 1990. 281-320.
Solana, Rafael. "La negra Angustias: Es

de los 40. Ed. Rafael Loyola. Mexico:

una aut?ntica obra maestra la novela

ganadora del Premio Nacional de Literatura de 1944." Rev. of La negra 25 November 1944: 74. Angustias, by Francisco Rojas Gonz?lez. Ma?ana. Francisco Rojas Gonz?lez: Exponente literario del nacionalismo Sommers, Joseph.
mexicano. Trans. Carlos Antonio Castro. Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana,

1966.
Vasconcelos, Jos?. La raza c?smica: Misi?n de la raza iberoamericana. Mexico:

1966 [1926]. Espasa-Calpe Mexicana, Luis. Presentaci?n. Hacia unM?xico Nuevo. Villoro, Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1987. 7-17.

By Manuel Gamio. Mexico: