El Zarco

Por Ignacio Manuel Altamirano

En su prólogo, redactado en el año 1900, Francisco Sosa considera la novela de altamirano un documento que "refiere sobre las hazañas de los bandidos que infestaron durante unos años la región que forma hoy el Estado de Morelos". El autor encuentra en la vida del Zarco y en el relato de sus amores con una desventurada joven de Yautepec, el argumento que le permite desarrollar una apasionante novela de aventuras y la rigurosa reconstrucción de una época y sus males.

• Idioma: Español
• Editorial: Siglo XXI Editores México
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 6 sept 2014
• ISBN: 9786070306051

Comentarios para El Zarco

[chrisconway_1 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Full-disclosure: I wrote the introduction to this book, which I have been teaching for almost ten years in a variety of Latin American literature classes.Ignacio Manuel Altamirano was one of nineteenth-century Mexico's most important political and cultural figures. Altamirano was born into a modest, indigenous family but received a scholarship to go to one of Mexico's finest nineteenth-century schools, the Institute of Toluca. During the civil wars of mid-nineteenth-century Mexico, Altamirano allied himself with the liberal cause and became one of its most famous and eloquent spokesmen. Altamirano was an avid journalist and writer: he wrote book and theater reviews, urban chronicles (describing life in Mexico City), poetry, novels, and political and cultural tracts on every imaginable subject under the sun. He was a pioneer because of how he promoted modern literary nationalism in Mexico. El Zarco the Blue-Eyed Bandit is a posthumous novel, published in 1901, that may be loosely compared to a "western" (if we chose to use that quintessentially American genre as a frame of reference). It tells the story of a villainous blue-eyed bandit who elopes with a lovely village girl whose good sense is weakened by her exposure to Romantic fictions that idealize the world. Another protagonist is Nicolas, the noble and heroic acculturated Indian who joins Martín Sánchez in hunting down Zarco the Bandit.The novel is an interesting blend of Romanticism and Realism. There isn't a lot of psychological realism, but the writing is engaging and it's a good, quick read that will teach you a lot about the literary imagination in nineteenth-century Mexico. The good guys give great speeches and stand strong against evil in the name of civilization. The bandit villains are grotesque brutes. In spite of these commonplaces of nineteenth-century melodrama, the novel has some very subtle dimensions and makes interesting arguments about the meanings of race in Mexico. If you like reading nineteenth-century literature and general, or if you're interested in Mexican history and culture, this book is highly recommended. In closing, this book is a landmark novel for many reasons, including the fact that its author was Indian. In particular, the treatment of racial identity in the novel will interest students of Native American literature.*Ronald Christ's fine translation recently won an award.