10 Poems of the Mexican Revolution

3884
David Holt

The poems of the Mexican Revolution had significance in a deeply violent and unstable decade in the North American country, which had no peace or political stability for almost two decades and was never the same again..

The Mexican Revolution began in 1910 as a response to the dictatorship of more than 30 years of Porfirio Díaz; It was a popular movement against the bourgeoisie that dominated politically and economically to the detriment of the poor and disadvantaged.

Events of such magnitude, of course, influenced all the social, ideological and cultural aspects of the Mexicans of the early twentieth century, and this was therefore reflected in their literature and artistic expressions..

Although the decade of the 10s promoted the emergence of the novel of the revolution, the cinema of the revolution and the painting of the revolution, in the specific case of poetry, according to the opinion of certain researchers, it was not the most popular genre. used or featured.

This was due in part to its very structure and the inability to take a position in a setting where everyone was constantly changing sides..

For this reason, the poetry that exalted the Mexican Revolution was perhaps more prolific after the revolutionary movement and outside the Mexican borders, than within and in the very heat of the battle.. 

There have been numerous writers who were inspired throughout recent history by such an event, writing odes to the Mexican Revolution and its protagonists..

Poems inspired by the Mexican revolution

1- Soft Homeland

Author: Ramón López Velarde (1921) 

I who only sang of the exquisite 
score of intimate decorum, 
I raise my voice today in the middle of the forum 
in the manner of the tenor that imitates
the throaty modulation of the bass, 
to cut a slice to the epic.

I will sail the civil waves 
with oars that do not weigh, because they go 
like the arms of the mail chuán that 
he rowed La Mancha with rifles. 

I'll say with an epic mute: 
the country is impeccable and diamond. 
Suave Patria: let me wrap you in 
the deepest jungle music with which
you shaped me whole at once 
lilting of the axes and birds of 
carpenter trade. 

Homeland: your surface is corn, 
your mines the palace of the King of Pentacles, and you
sky, herons gliding 
and the green lightning of the parrots.

The Child God wrote you a stable 
and the devil's oil poisons. 

Over your Capital, every hour flies 
haggard and painted, on a cart; 
and in your province, from the clock on candle 
that haunt the colipavo pigeons, 
the chimes fall like pennies. 

Homeland: a mutilated territory 
he dresses in calico and bead 
Suave Patria: your home still 
It is so big that the train goes on the track 
as a toy store bonus. 

And in the hubbub of the seasons, 
with your mestizo look, you put 
the immensity over the hearts.
Who, in the night that scares the frog
did not look, before knowing the vice, 
on the arm of his girlfriend, the gallant 
gunpowder from artifacts? 

Suave Patria: in your torrid feast 
colorful dolphin lights, 
and with your blonde hair he marries 
the soul, tightrope walker, 
and your two tobacco braids, 
knows how to offer mead all my spirits 
syrup dancers race. 

Your clay sounds like silver, and in your fist
their sonorous misery is a piggy bank; 
and in the early mornings of the terroir,
in streets like mirrors, you could see 
the holy smell of the bakery. 

When we are born, you give us notes, 
later, a compote paradise, 
and then you give yourself all of it 
soft homeland, cupboard and aviary.
To the sad and happy you say yes, 
that in your language of love they taste of you
the sesame bite. 

And your wedding sky, that when it thunders 
of frenzied delights fills us! 
Thunder from our clouds, that bathes us 
crazy, drive the mountain crazy, 
heal the woman, heal the lunatic
incorporates the dead, asks for Viaticum, 
and finally collapses the lumberyards 
of God, on farmland. 

Storm thunder: I hear in your complaints 
crunch the skeletons in pairs; 
I hear what is gone, what I have not touched yet,
and the current time with her coconut belly. 
And I hear in the jump of your coming and going 
oh thunder, the roulette of my life. 

2- To Zapata. 

Author: Pablo Neruda

When the pains got worse 
in the land, and the desolate thorn groves 
they were the inheritance of the peasants 
and as before, the birds of prey 
ceremonial beards, and whips, 
then, flower and galloping fire ...  

Drunk, I'm going to the capital 
He reared in the transitory dawn 
the land shaken with knives, 
the pawn of their bitter burrows 
fell like a shelled corn on 
the dizzying loneliness, 
to ask the boss 
who sent me to call 
Zapata then was land and dawn. 

All over the horizon appeared 
The multitude of his armed seed. 
In an attack of waters and borders 
the iron spring of Coahuila, 
the stellar stones of Sonora; 
everything came in its wake advancing, 
to his agrarian storm of horseshoes. 

What if he leaves the ranch
very soon will return 
Divide the bread, the earth; 
I accompany you. 

I renounce my blue eyelids, 
I, Zapata, I go with the dew 
of the morning knights, 
in a shot from the nopales 
to the pink wall houses. 
little ribbons for your hair, don't cry for your Pancho ...  

The moon sleeps on the saddles, 
Death piled up and distributed 
lies with the soldiers of Zapata. 
The dream hides under the bastions 
of the heavy night its destiny, 
your brooding sheet incubator. 

The bonfire gathers the sleepless air; 
grease, sweat and night powder. 
... Drunk, I'm going to forget ...  
We ask homeland for the humiliated. 

Your knife divides the heritage 
and the shots and steeds intimidate 
the punishments, the hangman's beard. 
The land is divided with a rifle. 

Don't wait, dusty peasant,
after your sweat the full light 
and the sky parceled on your knees. 
Get up and gallop with Zapata. 

I wanted to bring her, she said no ...
Mexico, sullen agriculture, beloved 
land among the dark divided; 
from the backs of the corn came 
in the sun your sweaty centurions. 

From the southern snow I come to sing to you. 
Let me gallop into your destiny 
and fill myself with gunpowder and plows.
... What if he will cry 
why go back.

3- From the remote past

Author: Salvador Novo

From the remote past 
on the great pyramids of Teotihuacán, 
over the teocalis and the volcanoes, 
on the bones and crosses of the golden conquerors 
time grows in silence.

Leaves of Grass 
in the dust, in the cold graves; 
Whitman loved her innocent and wild perfume.

Our heroes 
they have been dressed as puppets 
and crushed on the pages of the books 
for veneration and remembrance of studious childhood, 
and Father Hidalgo, 
Morelos and the Corregidora of Querétaro.

Revolution, revolution 
follow the heroes dressed as puppets, 
dressed in signal words.

The literature of the revolution, 
revolutionary poetry 
about three or four anecdotes from Villa 
and the flowering of the maussers, 
lasso rubrics, soldadera, 
the holsters and the ears, 
the sickle and the sun, brother proletarian painter, 
the corridos and the songs of the peasant 
and the sky blue overalls, 
the factory strangled siren 
and the new rhythm of the hammers 
of the worker brothers 
and the green patches of the ejidos 
that the peasant brothers 
they have thrown out the priest's scarecrow.

The revolutionary propaganda brochures, 
the government at the service of the proletariat, 
proletarian intellectuals at the service of the government 
radios at the service of proletarian intellectuals 
at the service of the Government of the Revolution 
to incessantly repeat its postulates 
until they are etched in the minds of the proletarians 
-of the proletarians who have a radio and listen to them.

Time grows in silence, 
blades of grass, dust from the graves 
that barely shakes the word.

4 and 5- Instructions to change the World

Author: Verses attributed to Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation EZLN.

1- Build a rather concave sky. Paint yourself green or brown, earthy and beautiful colors. Splash clouds at will.

Carefully hang a full moon in the west, say three-quarters above the respective horizon. On the east, slowly, the rise of a bright and powerful sun began. Bring men and women together, talk to them slowly and lovingly, they will start to walk on their own. Contemplate with love the sea. Rest on the seventh day.

2- Gather the necessary silences.

Forge them with sun and sea and rain and dust and night. With patience go sharpening one of its ends. Choose a brown suit and a red scarf. Wait for the sunrise and, with the rain to go, march to the big city.

Upon seeing it, the tyrants will flee in terror, running over each other.

But, don't stop! The fight is just beginning. 

6- The Sun

Author: Gutiérrez Cruz

Round and red sun

like a copper wheel,

you're looking at me every day

and everyday you look at me poor.

7- Revolution (extract)

Author: Manuel Maples Arce (1927)

Night inside

the soldiers

they ripped

chest

popular songs.

(…)

Military trains

that go to the four cardinal points,

to the baptism of blood

where everything is confusion,

and drunk men

they play cards

and to human sacrifices;

sound and martial trains

where we did singing the Revolution.

Far away,

pregnant women

they have been begging

for us

to the Stone Christs.

8- Leaf removal

Author: Gregorio López y Fuentes (1914)

There are many rare gems in the clear display case
from heaven, who has dressed in his richest finery,
and the moon snows like a pilgrim heron
it will fly defollowing the feathers of its wings.

You stand tall like a sharp thorn
and you look into my eyes; with your hand, at
that the moon, which speck, if it barely flours,
a flower that you hate the air, undo them.

You see how the petals flee and you get very sad
and you sob and moan because you didn't get
rip out your secret; then slowly
next to your shoulders damp with moon and ashes
"It is from your garden" - I tell you - and I recline my forehead
and pleasantly undo your lips in smiles.

9- Vrbe, Bolshevik superpoem in 5 chants

Author: Manuel Maples Arce (1924)

Here is my poem
brutal
and multanimous
to the new city.

Oh city all tense
cables and stress,
sound all
of engines and wings.

Simultaneous explosion
of the new theories
a little further
On the spatial plane
Whitman and Turner
and a little more here
by Maples Arce.

The lungs of Russia
they blow towards us
the wind of the social revolution.
The literary flyers
they will understand nothing
of this new beauty
sweaty of the century,
and the moons
mature
that fell,
are this rot
what comes to us
of the intellectual culverts.
Here is my poem:
Oh strong city
and multiple,
made all of iron and steel!

The quays. The docks.
The cranes.
And the sex fever
from factories.
City:
Tram escorts
who walk the subversist streets.
Shop windows assault the sidewalks,
and the sun plunders the avenues.
On the sidelines of the days
tariffs of telephone poles
momentary landscapes parade
by elevator tube systems.

Suddenly,
Oh the flash
green of his eyes!

Under the naive blinds of the hour
the red battalions pass.
The cannibalistic romanticism of Yankee music
has been making its nests in the masts.
Oh international city!
Towards what remote meridian
cut that ocean liner?
I feel that everything is moving away.

The faded twilights
they float among the masonry of the panorama.
Spectral trains going
over there
away, gasping for civilizations.

The disengaged crowd
splashing musically in the streets.

And now the burglar bourgeois will tremble
by the flows
that robbed the town,
but someone hid under his dreams
the spirit pentagram of the explosive.

Here is my poem:
Hurray pennants in the wind,
scalps on fire
and mornings captive in the eyes.

Oh musical city
made all of mechanical rhythms!

Tomorrow maybe,
only the living fire of my verses
will illuminate the humiliated horizons.

10- Wake up Mexicans!

Author: Ignacio López Tarso (1966)

Wake up Mexicans
Those who have not been able to see
Who are shedding blood
For raising the Other to Power
Poor Mexican Nation!
How bad your luck has been;

Your children still have
But in misfortune to see you.
Look at my beloved homeland,
Just how it is remaining;

That his bravest men,
They are all betraying them.
Where is Chief Zapata?
That his sword no longer shines?
Where is the Braco del Norte
What was Don Francisco Villa?

There were the 3 hairs sitting in the window
La Cuca, La Petra, the crazy woman from Soledad
And then a soldier arrived wanting to take them
One said what if
The other said no
One said yes
And to the Tine I take them
They were leaders first
Who wielded the Steel;

Until I rise to power
To Don Francisco I. Madero
But what an illusion Madero
Well, when he came to power;
To Pancho Villa and Zapata
He wanted to ignore them.
I have not seen Candidate
That is not Conveneciero;

When they rise to power
They don't know a partner.
Zapata told Villa
-We already lost the Albur;

You will attack by the North,
And I will attack for the South.
With this I say goodbye
Why are we leaving;

Here ends the Corrido:
Wake up Mexicans.

References

  1. Katharina Niemeyer. "That hardly shakes the word". Mexican poetry in the face of the Revolution. Recovered from cervantesvirtual.com.
  2. Mariana Gaxiola. 3 exquisite poems about the Mexican Revolution. Recovered from mxcity.mx.
  3. From yesterday to the future: Long live Zapata! And long live the Zapatista! Recovered from zocalopoets.com
  4. Poetry in Mexico during the years of the Revolution. Recovered from pavelgranados.blogspot.com.ar.
  5. The subverted eden: poems of the Mexican Revolution. Recovered from elem.mx.
  6. Poets of the world. Gregorio López and Fuente. Recovered from rincondelpoetasmajo.blogspot.com.ar.
  7. Mexican Revolution. Recovered from historiacultural.com.
  8. Mexican Revolution. Recovered from lahistoriamexicana.mx.
  9. Mexican Revolution. Recovered from es.wikipedia.org.

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