The Underdogs

Underdogs, The

The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Underdogs, by Mariano Azuela Copyright laws are
changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before
posting these files!!
Please take a look at the important information in this header.
We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for
the next readers. Do not remove this.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
The Underdogs
by Mariano Azuela
Mariano Azuela, the first of the "novelists of the Revolution," was born in Lagos de
Moreno, Jalisco, Mexico, in 1873. He studied medicine in Guadalajara and returned to
Lagos in 1909, where he began the practice of his profession. He began his writing career
early; in 1896 he published Impressions of a Student in a weekly of Mexico City. This
was followed by numerous sketches and short stories, and in 1911 by his first novel,
Andres Perez, maderista.
Like most of the young Liberals, he supported Francisco I. Madero's uprising, which
overthrew the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, and in 1911 was made Director of Education
of the State of Jalisco. After Madero's assassination, he joined the army of Pancho Villa
as doctor, and his knowledge of the Revolution was acquired at firsthand. When the
counterrevolutionary forces of Victoriano Huerta were temporarily triumphant, he
emigrated to El Paso, Texas, where in 1915 he wrote The Underdogs (Los de abajo),
which did not receive general recognition until 1924, when it was hailed as the novel of
the Revolution.
But Azuela was fundamentally a moralist, and his disappointment with the Revolution
soon began to manifest itself. He had fought for a better Mexico; but he saw that while
the Revolution had corrected certain injustices, it had given rise to others equally
deplorable. When he saw the self-servers and the unprincipled turning his hopes for the
redemption of the underprivileged of his country into a ladder to serve their own ends, his
disillusionment was deep and often bitter. His later novels are marred at times by a
savage sarcasm

During his later years, and until his death in 1952, he lived in Mexico City writing and
practicing his profession among the poor.
The Underdogs
by Mariano Azuela
A Novel of the Mexican Revolution
Translated by E. Munguia, Jr. Original Title: LOS DE ABAJO
PART ONE
"How beautiful the revolution! Even in its most barbarous aspect it is beautiful," Solis
said with deep feeling.
I
That's no animal, I tell you! Listen to the dog barking! It must be a human being."
The woman stared into the darkness of the sierra.
"What if they're soldiers?" said a man, who sat Indian-fashion, eating, a coarse
earthenware plate in his right hand, three folded tortillas in the other.
The woman made no answer, all her senses directed outside the hut. The beat of horses'
hoofs rang in the quarry nearby. The dog barked again, louder and more angrily.
"Well, Demetrio, I think you had better hide, all the same."
Stolidly, the man finished eating; next he reached for a cantaro and gulped down the
water in it; then he stood up.
"Your rifle is under the mat," she whispered.
A tallow candle illumined the small room. In one corner stood a plow, a yoke, a goad,
and other agricultural implements. Ropes hung from the roof, securing an old adobe mold,
used as a bed; on it a child slept, covered with gray rags.
Demetrio buckled his cartridge belt about his waist and picked up his rifle. He was tall
and well built, with a sanguine face and beardless chin; he wore shirt and trousers of
white cloth, a broad Mexican hat and leather sandals.
With slow, measured step, he left the room, vanishing into the impenetrable darkness of
the night.
The dog, excited to the point of madness, had jumped over the corral fence.
Suddenly a shot rang out. The dog moaned, then barked no more. Some men on

horseback rode up, shouting and sweating; two of them dismounted, while the other hung
back to watch the horses.
"Hey, there, woman: we want food! Give us eggs, milk, beans, anything you've got!
We're starving!"
"Curse the sierra! It would take the Devil himself not to lose his way!"
"Guess again, Sergeant! Even the Devil would go astray if he were as drunk as you are."
The first speaker wore chevrons on his arm, the other red stripes on his shoulders.
"Whose place is this, old woman? Or is it an empty house? God's truth, which is it?"
"Of course it's not empty. How about the light and that child there? Look here, confound
it, we want to eat, and damn quick tool Are you