Mariano Azuela’s 1916 Revolutionary novel “The Underdogs” provided not only the earliest break with traditional Mexican literary architecture, but the earliest break with what would become the institutionalized myth that Mexico’s 1910-1929 Revolution was ushering in democracy.  “Los de Abajo” (the novel’s Spanish title) actually was his second novel sounding the death knell of the revolutionary idealism of both Mexican intellectuals and peasants. The first, “Andrés Perez, maderista,” was didactic and dry.

“No, I didn’t go out much yesterday.  A cold day is a good time to read.  I was in front of the fire with an old revolutionary novel by a guy named Azuela.  It’s old-fashioned, but …”

-Overheard in an Ajijic restaurant.

Refreshing and encouraging.  But if Mariano Azuela is old-fashioned (in the novel “The Underdogs”), how can he be of use to us? Short answer (dodging cultural, intellectual and, especially, economic downsides of fashion) is context.  As U.S. political and economic chaos continues, serious analysts there speak increasingly of “context.”  Because it’s the major tool in understanding life. If we as foreigners wish to have any idea of where we are in what is a very different world, then context is critical.  Azuela provides the context of Mexican literary growth, and exposed the corruption that infected the post-Revolutionary era and continues to maim Mexico now.

Some associate serpent and eagle with the novel-as-history about Mexico’s 1910 Revolution by Martin Guzman. (Guzman served with Doroteo Arango. Thus his best book: “Memoirs of Pancho Villa”). The two words also echo Aesop’s Fables and ancient Nordic Germanic Runes. And, of course, here recall the famed legend in which the migrating tribe of Mexica (me-shee-ka) was told by its sun-fire-war god, Huitzilopochtli, to settle where an eagle perched on a nopal cactus held a writhing serpent in its beak. (Pre-Hispanic depictions of Tenochtitlan’s founding by Mexica artists exist; so do Conquistador-era scenes — Codex Mendoza, c.1541.)

Promising, phenomenon: Monday, celebrated in the United States as “Presidents’ Day” — a confected federal national holiday (so dumbed down that the apostrophe is usually missing or in the wrong place) — a number of U.S. citizens here vainly tried to conduct business with financial institutions across the border. They’d forgotten that artificial holiday. A good sign that they’re getting familiar to where they are.