A Subverted Eden, López Velarde’s Jerez: A Past, and Present, Disaster

Abstract

The year 1910 marks the beginning of a civil war that ravaged Mexico for the next seven years, leaving an estimated death toll of well over a million. This conflict, known to Mexicans as ‘La Revolución’, gave rise to a vast literary output encompassing both oral and written genres. The former in the countless ‘corridos’, songs whose lyrics cover the whole gamut of actions, from the heroic patriotism of the caudillos to the savagery and sacrifice endured by the population. For its part, the written genre played a pivotal role in modern Mexican letters, in the form of what critics call ‘Novela de la revolución’. Apart from its representation in novels and short stories, this violent armed conflict also found its way into the poetic output of Ramón López Velarde (RLV), who is Mexico’s literary figure closest to national poet. Velarde’s highly evocative poems and essays are a paean to Mexico’s provincial life. Jerez, López Velarde’s birthplace —a backwater in the Northern state of Zacatecas— was his very own personal Eden, albeit one caught in the crossfire of the warrying factions. In 1910, Jerez, Zacatecas, stood as a symbol of senseless bloodshed and indiscriminate violence. Once more, but one hundred years later, this remote corner of the Mexican geography stands out as one of the most violent zones in the whole country. This paper analyses Velarde’s Women in Exile and The Maleficent Return, together with some other theme-related texts dedicated to the conflict, while discussing its new violent avatar, a century later.