Revolution and romance: Social change and desire in Mexican narrative, 1955--1989

Since the 1940s, narrative fiction centered around the Mexican Revolution has muted the economic and social-class issues that gave rise to the Revolution. This process coincided with an overall turn in Mexico towards a capitalist, industrial economic base. The new class that established its hegemony after World War II did not attempt to erase the memory of the Revolution, a memory deeply embedded in the conscience of Mexico's people. It sought, rather, to redefine it with an imprint of desire and other psychological impulses over social issues, in order to show that desire is something worth fighting over. In this dissertation I trace the process in which intimate romance joins social conflict, effectively shifting the attention from class struggle to private relations, from social conscience to national psyche, in four novels from 1955 to 1989: Pedro Paramo (1955) by Juan Rulfo, Los recuerdos del porvenir (1963) by Elena Garro, Gringo viejo (1985) by Carlos Fuentes, and Como agua para chocolate (1989) by Laura Esquivel.;The historical period from mid- to late-twentieth century framed by these novels covers a path from initial urban economic growth and development to recent national crisis and despair. Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo portrays obsessive love and desire as the psychological cause of a rural community's decline. Elena Garro's Los recuerdos del porvenir shows the unattainable ideal of true love because personal obsessions and political divisions stand in the way, leading to the downfall of a village. Carlos Fuentes's Gringo viejo depicts romance and desire as the solution towards understanding and respecting national sovereignty. Laura Esquivel's Como agua para chocolate represents desire as the driving force behind a new hybrid, transnational identity. The first two novels portray the tragic decline of rural Mexico precisely when the nation appeared the most prosperous and optimistic as a whole. They saw the death of the Revolution and the subsequent decline of the countryside during the 1940s and 1950s as a result of collective or personal obsessions and desires, rather than as effects of capitalist concentration of wealth and power in the city, the very locus of that prosperity. A curious inversion in the representation of the Revolution took place during the economic crisis of the 1980s. The two later novels celebrate the sexuality and desire of Mexican characters and simultaneously affirm in various ways the revolutionary experience, at a time of national strife and political pressures from abroad.