Jose Revueltas (1914-1976)was a Mexican writer and politician. His literary work spanned genres such as the novel, the short story, the essay, and the theater. He is considered one of the most controversial intellectuals of the 20th century.
His writings were characterized by being precise and critical and were closely related to the political events of his time. His literature was a reflection of his rebellious and revolutionary personality, which brought with it multiple criticisms of the writer from his detractors throughout his career..
The most important works of José Revueltas were: Human mourning, In some valley of tears, El apando, They await us in April, Material of dreams and Mexico: barbaric democracy. The writer received few recognitions in life, however those that were awarded were significant, highlighting among them the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize.
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José Maximiliano Revueltas Sánchez was born on November 20, 1914 in Durango. The writer came from a cultured, middle-class family. His parents were Gregorio Revueltas Gutiérrez and Ramona Sánchez Arias. He had three brothers, Silvestre, Rosaura and Fermín, who were important artists of the time..
José Revueltas and his family moved to the Mexican capital in 1920. There they spent their years of studies, first at the German School and then at public institutions. In 1923 his father died and two years later he left school to learn on his own at the National Library.
Revueltas demonstrated in his early teens his rebellious character, his passion for politics and his revolutionary ideals. At the age of fifteen, he was taken to jail accused of rebellion after participating in a concentration. Six months later he was released on bail.
His Marxist thinking remained firm and he continued to participate in political activities. As a consequence of his attitude, he went to prison twice more in the 1930s. One of them was in 1934, after launching a protest with farm workers in the state of Nuevo León..
In the midst of his convulsive political life, Revueltas gave up a space for his personal life. This is how in 1937 he married a young woman named Olivia Peralta. The following year their daughter Andrea was born; the couple stayed together for about a decade.
Literature and writing were other passions of José Revueltas. The writer knew how to combine these trades with politics very well during his life. In 1941 he took the first steps in his literary career with the publication of the novel The walls of water, which was about his experience in the prison of the Marías Islands.
Revueltas' literary growth was on the rise in the 1940s. In 1943 he brought to light the work Human mourning, a novel of a political and ideological nature in which the author dealt with the distinctive characteristics of Mexico. With this publication he won the National Literature Prize.
The writer remained active in the development of his work in subsequent years. This is how in 1944 he released his first book of short stories entitled God on earth.
Five years later Revueltas published The earthly days, his third novel, and the following year the play The quadrant of loneliness. The criticism was negative, so the writer stopped publishing for a while.
Revueltas separated from his first wife and married María Teresa Retes in 1947. On that same date he participated as a scriptwriter in the film The kneeling goddess. In 1951, the newly married couple had a daughter named Olivia and the following year Román was born..
In 1957, José Revueltas resumed his literary career after almost seven years of absence, and he did so with a fourth novel which he entitled In some valley of tears. Then, between 1960 and 1968, he published works such as Essay on a Headless Proletarian Y Sleep on land.
In November 1968, José Revueltas was imprisoned again for his participation in an event with the student movement that culminated in the well-known "October 2 massacre." The activist was accused of being the "ringleader" of the protests. The series of student protests was called "the 1968 movement.".
Before being arrested, Revueltas hid with several friends. Finally the authorities apprehended him during a conference at the university. The writer agreed with the government assuming the unfounded allegations and sentenced him to sixteen years in prison, but he was able to leave in 1970.
In prison the author conceived the novel The apando, and once released he published Mexico 68 processes: time to speak. In 1973 he married for the third time, this time with Ema Barrón Licona. José Revueltas kept writing the rest of his days, and died on April 14, 1976 in Mexico City of a brain condition..
The mortal remains of the writer José Revueltas rest in the Panteón Francés de la Piedad, in Mexico City.
José Revueltas's literary style was strongly marked by his political ideology and his rebellious and anarchic personality. The writer used a simple and colloquial language, but precise and critical. The author wrote about his experiences in prison and about the political and social situation in Mexico.
It should be noted that Revueltas was aggressive with its lyrics, provocative, sought to impact with its contents and cause changes in its environment. His political life and struggles went hand in hand with his writings. He did not want to unlink both aspects because he considered that the revolutionary required to be integral, and his way of acting should be in everything.
- The walls of water (1941).
- Human mourning (1943).
- The earthly days (1949).
- In some valley of tears (1957).
- Cain's motives (1958).
- The mistakes (1964).
- The apando (1969).
- Mrs. Tears (1941).
- The dead will live (1947).
- Israel (1947).
- The quadrant of loneliness: drama piece (1950).
- They await us in April (1956).
- Pico Pérez at the stake. Released in 1975.
- God on earth (1944).
- Sleep on land (1961).
- Dream material (1974).
- Mexico: barbaric democracy (1958).
- Essay on a Headless Proletariat (1962).
- Cinematographic knowledge and its problems (1965).
- Notes for a profile of Silvestre (1966).
- Literary works (1967). Two volumes.
- The processes of Mexico 68: time to speak (1970).
- Personal anthology (1975).
- Mexico 68: youth and revolution (1978).
- Questions and intentions (nineteen eighty one).
- Dialectic of consciousness (1982).
- Mexico: a barbaric democracy, and writings about Lombardo Toledano (1983).
- Political writings: the historical failure of the communist party in Mexico (1984).
- Essays on Mexico (1985).
- Vision of Paricutín. Other chronicles and reviews (1983).
- The quadrant of loneliness and other plays (1984).
- Land and freedom (nineteen eighty one). Written in 1955.
- The Masons: A Rejected Script (1984). Screenplay for cinema written in 1966.
- The apando (nineteen ninety five). Film script written in 1973, jointly with José Agustín.
- Shoe (nineteen ninety five).
- The required evocations: memories, diaries, correspondence (1987).
- The ashes: posthumous literary work (1988).
- The fate of the scorpion and other texts (nineteen ninety five).
- The sacred word: anthology (1999).
- Statues and ashes (2002).
- The other (1946). Written jointly with Roberto Gavaldón.
- The kneeling goddess (1947). Written with Roberto Gavaldón.
- In the palm of your hand (1950).
- Lost (1950).
- The night progresses (1951). Screenplay written with Jesús Cárdenas and Roberto Gavaldón.
- Illusion travels by tram (1953). Screenplay written with Luís Alcoriza, Luís Buñuel, Luís Alcoriza and Mauricio de la Serna.
It was Revueltas' first published novel. In it, he recounted the injustices that, in his opinion, he lived in the prison of the Marías Islands in the Mexican Pacific. The experiences that were related were those of the five protagonists with Marxist ideals. Corruption was also a predominant theme.
“The mind is something curious and almost implausible. It has an extraordinary resemblance to a setting of those very deep -so much that you would feel vertigo-, which had a successive series of unforeseen decorations ...
"It also resembles two large and colossal mirrors found, which reproduce themselves without fatigue and in a way as infinite as in nightmares ...".
It was one of the Revueltas novels least discussed and studied. The story was developed within an urban environment and was about a wealthy and greedy man who lived accompanied by his maid, Amparo. In a deep sense it was a critique of the capitalist system.
The author gave the main character features of the typical macho man, in addition to adding phrases that denote a clear contempt for indigenous peoples. It was a short work and narrated almost entirely in the past tense..
The characters in this story were:
- The protagonist: the author did not give it a name, because he compared it to how abstract money was.
- Macedonia: is an elderly lady who served as the protagonist's housekeeper.
- Hipólito Cervantes: he is one of the complementary characters of the novel. He was a man of vices and explosive character, the author used it to reflect the malfunction of public entities.
- Saldaña: is the lawyer of the protagonist and notary public. Represents corruption.
- Doña Porfirita: is an ex-prostitute, owner of the whorehouse where the protagonist attends.
- The affectionate: it is the cat that the protagonist had as a pet.
- The stutterer: he is the only friend of the protagonist. He's honest, with a good job, but his speech problem keeps him stuck.
- Doctor Menchaca: is the main doctor's family doctor.
- Professor Moralitos. is the teacher in the main character's school.
“The earth had lost the dawn, an anguished fight was being fought from the storm against the dawn, from the gigantic saurian of the tempest against the sword, as at the beginning of this system of hate and love, of animals and man, of gods and mountains. what is the world ...
“Life is abandoned and an indefinable feeling of anxious resignation prompts us to look at everything with detained and fervent eyes… The world is not alone, but it is occupied by man. Its extension makes sense and how much the stars, the animals, the tree cover it ".
“The 'neighborhood' was made up of a group of small buildings, all identical and arranged, all also in the same way: a relatively spacious hall, with a concrete floor, and at the back, by the orchestra site, two narrow corridors a through which one entered the rooms, tiny and smelly.
“'Yoshiwara'. The gringos believed, in reality, that it was a kind of vernacular Yoshiwara, with 'geishas' and all, Mexican geishas ... Invariably black women and mulatto women, their colonial, exotic meat, where blond sex would try in vain and scandalous discoveries.
"The gringos were not ashamed, because they were expressly stunned by alcohol, bad or good whiskey, to sink awkwardly between black legs ...".
- “We have learned that the only truth, above and against all the miserable little truths of parties, of heroes, of flags, of stones, of gods, that the only truth, the only freedom is poetry, that gloomy song , that luminous song ".
- "For me, the bars of the apando are the bars of my life, of the world, of existence".
- "Every act of creation is an act of love".
- "If you fight for freedom you have to be in prison, if you fight for food you have to feel hungry".
- “I equal men; the executioner and the victim ... ".
- “My literary life has never been separated from my ideological life. My experiences are precisely of an ideological, political and social struggle type ".
- “I speak of love in the highest sense of the word. The redignification of man, the alienation of the human being himself ".
- "The freedom of conscience has a unambiguous meaning, it does not admit coordinates, it does not accept being caged, it cannot live locked in the apando".
- "God worries me as social existence, as sociology, but not as a God above men".
- "God exists in man, does not exist outside of man".
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