Drinking to Fraternity: Alcohol, Masculinity and National Identity in the Novels of Manuel Payno and Heriberto Frías

Abstract

This essay explores literary representations of drinking, drunkenness and alcoholism, and their relationship to issues of masculinity and national identity, in nineteenth-century Mexican fiction. I focus on the novels of Manuel Payno and Heriberto Frias, who used images of drinking to create contrasting male characters and to articulate their differing views on the meanings of manhood in nineteenth-century Mexico. Payno celebrated the values of fraternity and patriotism in Los bandidos de Rio Frio (1888-91) in his heroic male prototype, Juan Robreno, who drinks in a moderate and socially appropriate manner, and condemned a macho-style pattern of heavy drinking, irresponsibility and violent behaviour through his portrait of Evaristo, a murderous worker and cruel bandit, in the same novel. In contrast, Frias created an alcoholic protagonist in his 1893 novel Tomochic to challenge the validity of nationalist ideology centred on the values of fraternity and patriotism.