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El Vago
El Vago, the Vagabond, recalls his life as a bandit, his best friend who became Pancho Villa, the idealism of Zapata, his love for the beautiful Consuelo, and the tragic violence of the Mexican Revolution
309 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1983
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October 28, 2014
From Google ... "El Vago, the Vagabond, recalls his life as a bandit, his best friend who became Pancho Villa, the idealism of Zapata, his love for the beautiful Consuelo, and the tragic violence of the Mexican Revolution"
Another book to reread. The craziness of Mexico 100+ years ago.
copied and pasted from "KIRKUS REVIEW
In mid-1940s New Mexico, during a night of wandering in the San Andres Mountains, a grandfather tells his grandson the story of his 1894-1919 exploits as a bandit/revolutionary with Villa and Zapata: a shrewdly unromanticized version, yet without enough personality or style to give much novelistic shape to the year-by-year, battle-by-battle history. An orphan, child of Mexican peasants, narrator Agustin is raised with his cousins and their adoptive sister Consuelo: he idolizes bold cousin Doroteo, adores Consuelo. But when landowner Lopez Negrete molests Consuelo, Doroteo shoots him, the teenage cousins flee--and so begins their bandit/fugitive life, painfully separated from Consuelo. Eventually the lads are recruited by rebel forces: ""I had never harbored a political thought in my life. . . . Out interest was, simply, that we should come to power and pardon ourselves for out many crimes. . . ."" And Doroteo, who changes his name to Pancho Villa, mostly just ""liked to have people shot."" Villa and Agustin, trained in guerrilla tactics by a Boer, help to get President Madero installed; they briefly reunite with Consuelo, now a true revolutionary who foresees the outcome of Villa's brutal selfishness. Then Agustin switches over to the southern rebels of Zapata, who refuses to accept the Madero regime: he becomes a dynamiter with cook-companion Petra (whom he'll eventually come to love). After yet another dictator comes to power, Zapata asks Agustin--""El Vago""--to seek out Villa for a north/south rebel alliance: he'll rail in that mission but will join in Villa's military successes and the carnage circa 1914. And finally, as Mexico dissolves into chaos, Petra will be killed, Consuelo will convert her idealism into a circus sideshow (and then a sell-out), and Agustin will return to share Zapata's last stand--after which he'll be allowed to retire by Villa, rebel-turned-fat-cat. Gonzales (Jambeaux, The Last Deal) has a sturdy theme here: the petty brutality and power-grabs behind the myth of some revolutionary heroes, the interchangeability of tyrants, doomed idealism. Occasionally he embodies those ideas in a vivid image--e.g., Consuelo's circus act. But Agustin himself remains a bland, murkily motivated hero whose supposed conflicts are inadequately dramatized. (The storytelling frame tends to work against immediacy.) And, despite an attempt to relate the Mexican carnage to all wars and the looming A-bomb specter, this workmanlike novel too often becomes merely fictionalized history: repetitious, flat, less inventive (if more wisely skeptical) than other Villa fictions--and primarily for those with a strong interest in the much-traveled Villa/Zapata territory.
Another book to reread. The craziness of Mexico 100+ years ago.
copied and pasted from "KIRKUS REVIEW
In mid-1940s New Mexico, during a night of wandering in the San Andres Mountains, a grandfather tells his grandson the story of his 1894-1919 exploits as a bandit/revolutionary with Villa and Zapata: a shrewdly unromanticized version, yet without enough personality or style to give much novelistic shape to the year-by-year, battle-by-battle history. An orphan, child of Mexican peasants, narrator Agustin is raised with his cousins and their adoptive sister Consuelo: he idolizes bold cousin Doroteo, adores Consuelo. But when landowner Lopez Negrete molests Consuelo, Doroteo shoots him, the teenage cousins flee--and so begins their bandit/fugitive life, painfully separated from Consuelo. Eventually the lads are recruited by rebel forces: ""I had never harbored a political thought in my life. . . . Out interest was, simply, that we should come to power and pardon ourselves for out many crimes. . . ."" And Doroteo, who changes his name to Pancho Villa, mostly just ""liked to have people shot."" Villa and Agustin, trained in guerrilla tactics by a Boer, help to get President Madero installed; they briefly reunite with Consuelo, now a true revolutionary who foresees the outcome of Villa's brutal selfishness. Then Agustin switches over to the southern rebels of Zapata, who refuses to accept the Madero regime: he becomes a dynamiter with cook-companion Petra (whom he'll eventually come to love). After yet another dictator comes to power, Zapata asks Agustin--""El Vago""--to seek out Villa for a north/south rebel alliance: he'll rail in that mission but will join in Villa's military successes and the carnage circa 1914. And finally, as Mexico dissolves into chaos, Petra will be killed, Consuelo will convert her idealism into a circus sideshow (and then a sell-out), and Agustin will return to share Zapata's last stand--after which he'll be allowed to retire by Villa, rebel-turned-fat-cat. Gonzales (Jambeaux, The Last Deal) has a sturdy theme here: the petty brutality and power-grabs behind the myth of some revolutionary heroes, the interchangeability of tyrants, doomed idealism. Occasionally he embodies those ideas in a vivid image--e.g., Consuelo's circus act. But Agustin himself remains a bland, murkily motivated hero whose supposed conflicts are inadequately dramatized. (The storytelling frame tends to work against immediacy.) And, despite an attempt to relate the Mexican carnage to all wars and the looming A-bomb specter, this workmanlike novel too often becomes merely fictionalized history: repetitious, flat, less inventive (if more wisely skeptical) than other Villa fictions--and primarily for those with a strong interest in the much-traveled Villa/Zapata territory.
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