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The Lawless Roads

by Graham Greene, David Rieff (Introduction)

3.64 of 5 stars 3.64 · rating details · 166 ratings · 21 reviews

Now with a new introduction by David Rieff, The Lawless Roads is the result of Graham Greene's expedition to Mexico in the late 1930s to report on how the inhabitants had reacted to the brutal anticlerical purges of President Calles. His journey took him through the tropical states of Chiapas and Tabasco, places where all the churches had been destroyed or closed and the p...more

Paperback, 240 pages

Published June 27th 2006 by Penguin Classics (first published 1939)

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Jan 03, 2009 Samuel rated it 2 of 5 stars

“The lawless roads” by Graham Green is a book that talks about a travel that the author makes to Mexico during the end of the 1930s. He goes to Mexico to see how things were after the government set up a persecution against Catholic Church. This official persecution got to its higher point with the assassination of Father Pro.
These are the years of the Cardenas administration that was responsible for the expropriation of foreign oil companies. These are the years of convulsion and reconstruction...more “The lawless roads” by Graham Green is a book that talks about a travel that the author makes to Mexico during the end of the 1930s. He goes to Mexico to see how things were after the government set up a persecution against Catholic Church. This official persecution got to its higher point with the assassination of Father Pro.
These are the years of the Cardenas administration that was responsible for the expropriation of foreign oil companies. These are the years of convulsion and reconstruction of a state devastated by a violent social movement which has just passed. So Graham Green began his trip from north to south, from the border of US-Mexico to the state of Chiapas.
From the beginning to the end one of the first things that we will see is that the author was mortified by the external disadvantages of his trip and how his feelings of hatred will let him to describe the things that he sees more based on emotion rather than rational thought. Bad roads, native food, the weather, unfriendly people, lack of services for tourists, etcetera, would be the cause of disgust that will make him to feel homesick and adverse to a country and its people. And with this feeling of animosity he will express his opinions about politics, social issues, and religion.
If we talk about religious, we will learn how limited his opinions were. When talking about catholic and native religion it seems that he takes for granted that catholic myths were much better that the myths of native people. And when trying to explain the persecution and the situation of Catholic churches in his way to the South, shortage and misrepresentation of a country that he does not know will be present too.
Thinking about positive things in the book is his description about poverty, bad government, the way of doing politics and in general his description of a country passing for a modernization process. And finally thinking about which part of the book could be considered to understand the feelings of a religious man in an unfriendly and unknown country here there is one part of his thinking that I think reflexes the general mood of the book: “There was nothing in this country so beautiful as an English village, but then beauty is only an emotion in the observer, and perhaps to someone these forests and crags, these withdrawn and gentle Indians, abandoned churches, the mule teams ringing down the hillside might have given an effect of beauty. I felt something wrong in myself -tiredness and anxiety and homesickness can turn the heart to stone as easily as cruelty, sin, the violent act, the rejection of God.”
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Dec 16, 2011 Alison added it · review of another edition

I interrupted my current sea-faring binge because of a sudden urge to read The Lawless Roads again. I can't count how many times I've read this book, ever since I found it in a second-hand bookshop in Adelaide and shipped it to myself in the boxes of books I used to send before the days of online bookshops. It's such a satisfying book that I reread it every one or two years, and every time is like the first. That's a testament to the power of Greene's skill as a writer, because I don't have a pa...more

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Feb 26, 2011 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars

A more dour, grim, contemptuous travelogue than The Lawless Roads is difficult to imagine. The British publishing company Longman commissioned Greene to travel to the southern Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas in 1938, to investigate the anti-Catholic purges of President Plutarco Elias Calles. Greene’s assignment, more specifically, was to write a report about the reactions of the Catholic people there to the assassination of some 40 priests and the destruction of hundreds of churches, and t...more A more dour, grim, contemptuous travelogue than The Lawless Roads is difficult to imagine. The British publishing company Longman commissioned Greene to travel to the southern Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas in 1938, to investigate the anti-Catholic purges of President Plutarco Elias Calles. Greene’s assignment, more specifically, was to write a report about the reactions of the Catholic people there to the assassination of some 40 priests and the destruction of hundreds of churches, and to determine the state of the faith under the repressive regime. Greene had written eight novels, a book of poetry and an African travel book by this time, and he was a practicing Catholic himself, so he must have seemed an ideal candidate to take the lay of the land, but it’s hard to imagine that he completely grasped the difficulties he would encounter when he took the assignment. Granted, no one goes to a violent anti-clerical purge expecting a fiesta, but Greene found violent culprits in southern Mexico in the government and in private organizations alike, coming from both right-wing and left-wing factions. There seemed to be no safety on any front.

The political instability puts Greene in many dangerous situations: the Calles government was left-wing (the United States called him a Bolshevik), yet the governors of Tabasco and Chiapas employed fascist paramilitary groups to enforce their own private orders, and Greene encounters more than one private commandante who identifies with Hitler and/or Franco. Corrupt generals in Mexico’s army also kept private armed forces to confiscate resources as they saw fit. While Greene is traveling south, President Calles nationalizes the foreign oil companies that have been exploiting Mexico’s new petroleum wealth, causing international threats of war. An atmosphere of unpredictable violence reigns. However, Greene’s narrative concentrates as much on the strangeness of everyday life as it does on the revolutionary political events sweeping Mexico.

Greene spends much of his time waiting: waiting for a boat to take him by sea from Veracruz to Tabasco, waiting for a barge to convey him upriver to Villahermosa, waiting for a plane to carry him to Salto, waiting for a mule to ride to Las Casas, and he waits most of the time in torrential rains and stifling heat. When his waiting pays off and he actually finds a mode of transport, the travel is treacherous: the boat to Tabasco is barely seaworthy, overloaded and foul, and Greene spends the overnight journey vomiting; the barge to Villahermosa is incompetently piloted and runs aground three times; the plane has a faulty engine and is forced to fly dangerously between mountains instead of over them. Greene waits nearly a week for another plane to take him to Las Casas, but it never arrives, so he is forced to hire an inexperienced mule guide to escort him on a four-day ride through the mountains, where he constantly encounters armed men of uncertain politics and where rain routinely washes out the trail. Oddly, factoring in the unreliable air traffic schedule, the mule ride from Salto to Las Casas costs more and takes less time than the plane trip would have.

Everywhere along the way, Greene meets hapless Americans, cynical Mexicans, a surprising number of Germans and Norwegians, and Catholics of all nationalities who have been driven to worship secretly, in sheds and storerooms and basements, by the religious persecution. Only in Las Casas, Chiapas, during Easter Week, do people attend Mass openly, and most of the worshipers who defy the ban on celebrating Mass are Indians, who seem unaware of the ban in the first place. These Indians practice a hybrid of Catholicism and native religions that Greene finds both frightening and alluring.

Greene is openly reviled as a Gringo in Las Casas, yet he finds enough friends among the underground priests to escape serious confrontations. Despite Greene’s stature as an established author, it’s difficult to imagine that his fame had spread as far as southern Mexico by 1938, yet bishops and generals routinely grant his requests for interviews, and he seems to travel under a kind of magic protection, bestowed on him as much by his irrelevance as his journalistic credentials.

The Lawless Roads is witty and sour, and Greene involves you intimately and sympathetically with the everyday people he meets. He occasionally falls into colonial smugness, but most of his observations are keen and commiserative, and the portrait he paints—of people resigned to endure the whims of powerful tyrants that they have no hope of defying—is engaging. The Catholics, like everyone else in southern Mexico at that time (and now), carry on despite the oppressions and corruption of local government leaders.

When he left Mexico and returned to England, Greene found that the Mass in his home church felt curiously fictitious compared to the furtive, secret Masses he had celebrated in Chiapas. Later, he would describe this trip as the real beginning of his conversion to Catholicism, which he thought of ever afterward as a sustaining faith to people who have no worldly place to turn for consolation.(less)

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Aug 19, 2009 Peregrino rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

Extraordinario otra vez Greene. No se trata de una novela, sino de una especie de diario de su viaje al laicista Méjico de los años 30 del siglo pasado. Un Méjico donde las autoridades se habían afanado en perseguir la religión católica, matando, exiliando, violando monjas y sacerdotes, profanando iglesias, destruyendo iconos, de manera que se borrase de la sociedad mejicana todo atisbo de esperanza en la Resurrección, sino más bien en el Estado.

Viajando solo desde la frontera con Estados Unido...more

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May 24, 2011 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Greene spent time in Mexico traveling to understand why the priests were persecuted in the states of Chiapas and Tasbasco in 1938. These travels are documented in this book and the theme of persecution would form the basis of one of his most famous books, The Power and the Glory. Beginning on the U.S. border, he travels by train to Mexico City and then by plane and then a variety of rougher forms of transport. The farther into rural southern Mexico, the more the hardships he encounters. He final...more

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Apr 19, 2008 Kent rated it 1 of 5 stars

Elitist, racist, superficial, self-righteous...the author seems utterly unaware that he is guilty of many of the shortcomings that he ascribes to others. Though it is interesting to see how in many aspects Mexico has changed little since this book was written, Greene's pompous confidence in the rightness of his own beliefs is insufferable.

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Sep 25, 2011 Patrick McCoy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel, classics

Graham Greene is one of my favorite author and The Lawless Roads is the second non-fiction travel book of his that I read. (Journey Without Maps was also a great book about travel in Africa) Greene is a brilliant travel writer; he makes detailed observations about he countryside, people, and customs of Mexico. The way he traveled in the 30s makes you appreciate modern infrastructure and the advances of civilization that make godforsaken places livable. He was on assignment for a paper to report...more

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Jul 13, 2011 Elaine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

At first, I thought this book would be too piously soaked in Greene's Catholicism or with the distant details of Mexican 20th Century history for me to be into it. But Greene the narrator, Greene the cynic, Greene the traveller who lets you feel, see and taste what he feels, sees and tastes, won me over. It's trenchant, bitter, with a knack for the telling detail and the quick characterization. What a writer. This is not his greatest book, but he ends up sucking you in, down into southern Mexico...more

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Jul 17, 2012 Walter Panzar rated it 2 of 5 stars

Graham Greene has a masterful command of the English language and terrific powers of description. His voyage thru Mexico of 1938 was undoubtedly adventurous and courageous and covered a time period and places that most of us know very little about. It's just too f. bad that, from beginning to end, the author is obsessed with how odious, vicious and disgusting so much in Mexico appears to him. When we read about British colonialist racism in the abstract, it is hard to imagine what it is in detai...more

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Apr 23, 2012 Fawn rated it 3 of 5 stars

My husband encouraged me to read this book when we were contemplating journeying to Pelenque to visit the ruins. Graham Greene had told authorities that the reason for his trip was to visit Pelenque, but in truth, his ultimate destination was to visit San Cristobal de las Casas, where masses were being held which at that time were against the law and punishable by death and imprisonment. We never made it to Pelenque that year but have recently discussed making a trip there this year. I most like...more

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Jan 20, 2008 Deborah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Over the past year, Graham Greene has become one of my favorite authors. The Lawless Roads is probably my least favorite among his books I've read, and yet it's still full of brilliant narrative.

Set in Mexico in the late thirties, the book is an account of his travels through the country on a mission to document the effects of religious persecution. My biggest gripe has to do with his Catholic bias in approaching the topic. From the very beginning, it seems he's ready to forgive the atrocities o...more

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Jul 05, 2009 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: See above

Shelves: 2009, mexico, travel-books, favorite-writers

I would only recommend this book if 1) you are a huge Graham Greene fan and have already read The Power and the Glory, and 2) you are particularly interested in 20th century Mexican history. If, like me, you fit these two criteria, you may get some enjoyment out of reading about Greene's travels through Mexico. Otherwise, I'd steer clear! Greene makes no secret of how much he hates Mexico and Mexicans, and he is pretty offensive. I guess it just demonstrates his power as a novelist - he must hav...more

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Aug 29, 2007 Aileen rated it 4 of 5 stars

I bought this book for a friend who is moving to Mexico City, but I wanted to read it first (so I could be sure it was a worthwhile gift). It is Graham Greene's account of his trip to Mexico to investigate the government's suppression of religion. It's pretty depressing, lots of poverty and oppression and violence. But towards the end I started to find it funnier. Graham Greene is not a great traveler - he doesn't like scenery, he hates the food, and he seems to consider most native Mexicans stu...more

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Jan 31, 2013 Alan Fricker rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: library

A random pick from the library. Greene visits Mexico in the late thirties. He loathes it. I rather enjoyed his discomfort if not his sweeping generalisations. Must reread the power and the glory.

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Jan 13, 2013 Rich rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: People who want an understanding of Mexico and the English in the previous century

Shelves: non-fiction-general, travel-writing

Great reading on Mexico for any traveller who wants some insight into their history, but jeeze, Greene was a real self-rightous jerk sometimes.

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Jun 22, 2012 Nynke rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

After reading "the Power and the Glory", I read this book. I had no idea there was a connection between the two (except the author of course). The difficulty was that I constantly was under the impression of reading fiction. It is in some ways similar to "the Power and the Glory". The book was very well written and interresting.

The problem I had with it was the racism. I know from another book "the Human Factor" that Graham Greene changed his opinion about race radically. This is why I could fo...more

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Jan 15, 2013 Steve marked it as to-read

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Nov 09, 2009 Gareth Vaughan rated it 3 of 5 stars

The non-fiction that inspired The Power and The Glory

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Aug 08, 2008 Matt Brant added it · review of another edition

Vivid descriptions of a miserable trip to Mexico in the 1930s, after the anti-clerical government persecuted members of the Catholic church. Really intense.

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Mar 20, 2013 Kevin rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Then we went to the Regis and had Bacardi cocktails and got a little lit and talked of the American debt and the Immaculate Conception ..."

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Nov 20, 2011 James Thompson rated it 4 of 5 stars

The prelude to THE POWER AND THE GLORY, a journalistic endeavor in which he travelled to Mexico.

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May 19, 2013 Allison marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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Shelves: graham-greene

May 08, 2013 Mersini is currently reading it · review of another edition

Shelves: uni-texts, classics

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May 05, 2013 Hamish rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: modern-classics

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About Graham Greene

Graham Greene was an English novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenplay writer, travel writer and critic whose works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Greene combined serious literary acclaim with wide popularity.

Although Greene objected strongly to being described as a “Catholic novelist” rather than as a “novelist who happened to be Catholic,” Catho...more

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“So one always starts a journey in a strange land -- taking too many precautions, until one tires of the exertion and abandons care in the worst spot of all.” — 3 people liked it

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