The Underdogs, Mariano Azuela

Various first notes on THE UNDERDOGS

My first response was that the book is a very powerful opposite trajectory to Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso--what starts out looking like hell will very quickly, with hindsight, start looking (if not paradisiacal, then at least) innocent as it moves forward into total corruption, and finally desolation. It has a great deal of resonance with Machiavelli's works, and all the sagas of men going off to war, abandoning and abusing the women who all deserve much more. The Gravedigger's refrain conjures the notion that whatever mankind may think regarding its ability to choose its destiny, much of human action does not support that idea.

The initial "innocent" Part I is characterized by Macias and Montanes as men of feeling and action-- belief (esp. religiosity and sentimentality)-- who are suspicious of (while realizing the ability to benefit from) Cervantes thinking and fact-based perspective. Whatever ambiguities and contradictions may collide in Part I, at least the characters have aspirations other than personal gain. Part II is a propulsion of cruelty, greed and revenge, and Part III is senseless (and unavoidable?) devastation.

Each character does not so much wish to change the world in which they live, as to change their place in that world for one a little higher up or with a broader range of freedom. It is interesting that Cervantes becomes, through his failure as a Federalist, the "confidante" of the unhappy troops who have landed by chance or coercion on that side of the fight. As a pragmatist and profiteer, Cervantes will "realize" that the revolutionaries represent the future and he will change sides, eventually becoming the "confidante" of these men, who also explain how chance and altercations with the law dictated on which side of the fight they landed, not political idealism.

I especially enjoyed Azuela's creation and use of the character Alberto Solis, and Solis’s unappreciated clear-eyed observations and still-true predictions that end Part I.