Azuela's Los caciques: A Reassessment

Abstract

This article attempts a detailed literary-critical reassessment of Mariano Azuela's novel Los caciques (1914/1917), focusing in particular on the figure of the intellectual, Rodríguez, and the novel's dramatic ending. It aims to show that, as a consequence of the unacknowledged subtlety of Azuela’s art, the former is not as unambiguously idealized a figure as commentators have generally assumed, and the latter may be considerably more pessimistic than certain of the novel's leading critics have allowed.