The Battle of Tomochic Read online

  THE BATTLE OF TOMOCHIC

  LIBRARY OF LATIN AMERICA

  General Editor

  Jean Franco

  Series Editor for Brazil

  Richard Graham, with the assistance of Alfredo Bosi

  Editorial Board

  Tulio Halperín Donghi

  Iván Jaksić

  Naomi Lindstrom

  Eduardo Lozano

  Francine Masiello

  THE BATTLE OF TOMOCHIC

  The Battle of Tomochic

  MEMOIRS OF A SECOND LIEUTENANT

  by Heriberto Frías

  Translated from the Spanish by

  BARBARA JAMISON

  With an Introduction by

  ANTONIO SABORIT

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Frías, Heriberto, 1870–1925.

  [Tomochic. English]

  The battle of Tomochic : memoirs of a second lieutenant / by Heriberto Frías ; translated from the Spanish by Barbara Jamison ; edited with an introduction and notes by Antonio Saborit.

  p. cm. — (Library of Latin America)

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-19-511742-4

  ISBN-13: 978-0-19-511743-1 (pbk.)

  1. Tomóchic (Mexico)—History—Fiction. I. Jamison, Barbara.

  II. Saborit, Antonio, 1957– III. Title. IV. Series.

  PQ 7297.F75T613 2002

  863′.5—dc21

  2001035906

  Printed in the United States of America

  on acid-free paper

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Series Editors’ General Introduction

  Introduction

  ANTONIO SABORIT

  The Battle of Tomochic

  HERIBERTO FRÍAS

  Editor’s Notes

  This effort is dedicated to E.B. for her fine literary eye, to Diana Hembree, comadre of words and children, and to my daughter Isabel Estrada, dancer, scholar, muse, without whose variegated intensities neither life nor literature would be so rich.

  Series Editors’ General Introduction

  The Library of Latin America series makes available in translation major nineteenth-century authors whose work has been neglected in the English-speaking world. The titles for the translations from the Spanish and Portuguese were suggested by an editorial committee that included Jean Franco (general editor responsible for works in Spanish), Richard Graham (series editor responsible for works in Portuguese), Tulio Halperín Donghi (University of California–Berkeley), Iván Jaksić (University of Notre Dame), Naomi Lindstrom (University of Texas–Austin), Francine Masiello (University of California–Berkeley), and Eduardo Lozano of the Library at the University of Pittsburgh. The late Antonio Cornejo Polar of the University of California–Berkeley was also a founding member of the committee. The translations have been funded thanks to the generosity of the Lampadia Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

  During the period of national formation between 1810 and into the early years of the twentieth century, the new nations of Latin America fashioned their identities, drew up constitutions, engaged in bitter struggles over territory, and debated questions of education, government, ethnicity, and culture. This was a unique period unlike the process of nation formation in Europe and one that should be more familiar than it is to students of comparative politics, history, and literature.

  The image of the nation was envisioned by the lettered classes—a minority in countries in which indigenous, mestizo, black, or mulatto peasants and slaves predominated—although alternative nationalisms existed at the grassroots level. The cultural elite were well educated in European thought and letters, but as statesmen, journalists, poets, and academics, they confronted the problem of the racial and linguistic heterogeneity of the continent and the difficulties of integrating the population into a modern nation-state. Some of the writers whose works will be translated in the Library of Latin America series played leading roles in politics. Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, a friar who translated Rousseau’s The Social Contract and was one of the most colorful characters of the independence period, was faced with imprisonment and expulsion from Mexico for his heterodox beliefs. When he returned after independence, he was elected to the congress. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, exiled from his native Argentina under the dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas, wrote Facundo: Civilizatión y barbarie, a stinging denunciation of that government. He returned after Rosas’ overthrow and was elected president in 1868. Andrés Bello was born in Venezuela, lived in London where he published poetry during the independence period, settled in Chile where he founded the university, wrote his grammar of the Spanish language, and drew up the country’s legal code.

  These post-independence intelligentsia were not simply dreaming of castles in the air, but vitally contributed to the founding of nations and the shaping of culture. The advantage of hindsight makes us aware of problems they themselves did not foresee, but this should not affect our assessment of their astonishing energy and achievements. Although there is a recent translation of Sarmiento’s celebrated Facundo, there is no translation of his memoirs, Recuerdos de provincia (Provincial Recollections). The predominance of memoirs in the Library of Latin America Series is no accident—many offer entertaining insights into a vast, complex continent.

  Nor have we neglected the novel. The Series includes new translations of the outstanding Brazilian writer Machado de Assis’ work, including Dom Casmurro and The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. There is no reason why other novels and writers who are not so well known outside Latin America—the Peruvian novelist Clorinda Matto de Turner’s Aves sin nido, Nataniel Aguirre’s Juan de la Rosa, José de Alencar’s Iracema, Juana Manuela Gorriti’s short stories—should not be read with as much interest as the political novels of Anthony Trollope.

  However, a series on nineteenth-century Latin America cannot be limited to literary genres such as the novel, the poem, and the short story. The literature of independent Latin America was eclectic and strongly influenced by the periodical press newly liberated from scrutiny by colonial authorities and the Inquisition. Newspapers were miscellanies of fiction, essays, poems, and translations from all manner of European writing. The novels written on the eve of Mexican independence by José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi included disquisitions on secular education and law, as well as denunciations of the evils of gaming and idleness. Other works, such as a well-known poem by Andrés Bello, “Ode to Tropical Agriculture,” and novels such
as Amalia by José Mármol and the Bolivian Nataniel Aguirre’s Juan de la Rosa, were openly partisan. By the end of the century, sophisticated scholars were beginning to address the history of their countries, as did João Capistrano de Abreu in his Capítulos de história colonial.

  Memoirs such as those by Fray Servando Teresa de Mier or Sarmiento frequently offer the descriptions of everyday life that in Europe were incorporated into the realist novel. Latin American literature at this time was seen largely as a pedagogical tool, a “light” alternative to speeches, sermons, and philosophical tracts. Especially in the early part of the century, the readership for novels was small because of the high illiteracy rate. Nevertheless, the orally transmitted culture of the gaucho and the urban underclasses became the linguistic repertoire of some of the most interesting nineteenth-century writers—notably José Hernández, author of the “gauchesque” poem “Martin Fierro,” which enjoyed an unparalleled popularity. For many writers the task was not to appropriate popular language but to civilize, and their literary works were strongly influenced by the high style of political oratory.

  The editorial committee has not attempted to limit its selection to the better-known writers such as Machado de Assis; it has also selected many works that have never appeared in translation or writers whose works have not been translated recently. The Series now makes these works available to the English-speaking public.

  Because of the preferences of funding organizations, the series initially focuses on writing from Brazil, the Southern Cone, the Andean region, and Mexico. Each of our editions will have an introduction that places the work in its appropriate context and includes explanatory notes.

  We owe special thanks to the late Robert Glynn of the Lampadia Foundation, whose initiative jump-started the project, and to Richard Ekman and his successors at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which generously supported the project. We also thank the Rockefeller Foundation for funding the 1996 symposium “Culture and Nation in Iberoamerica,” organized by the editorial board of the Library of Latin America. The support of Edward Barry of Oxford University Press was crucial in the founding years of the project, as was the assistance of Ellen Chodosh and Elda Rotor of Oxford University Press. The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, has served as the grant administrator of the project since 1998.

  —Jean Franco

  —Richard Graham

  Introduction

  Accusations, Confessions, and Proclamations

  Who knows what a man hides, even from himself, when he is telling the truth for his survival?

  —John Le Carré

  Eyewitness

  The manuscript of this novel disappeared in Mexico City. That would correspond to all twenty-four installments of Tomochic! Episodios de campaña, published by El Demócrata between March 14 and April 14, 1893. Each episode claimed “to be written by an eyewitness.” “Rigorously edited and enlivened with historical detail,” the novel circulated in the capital city until 1894. The veteran publishing house of Jesús T. Recio, an ex–comrade in arms of Porfirio Díaz with a string of three terms as president of Mexico behind him, printed the book. At that time, Recio was a resident of Rio Grande City, Texas. The novel was first published outside the country in a shabby edition. In Mexico City it was sold in La America, a tiny shop in the Portal de Mercaderes, across the street from the bohemian Café del Cazador.

  When it was printed in book form, the novel was subjected to the usual process of editing, additions, and changes without initially altering its strategy of attribution. For example, it retained the anonymity of the supposed “eyewitness,” but from the outset the novel arrived in the hands of its readers with a slightly modified title: Tomóchic! Episodios de la campaña de Chihuahua: 1892. The new historical details consisted of several paragraphs that added a note of political irony aimed at the government; a number of lines suggesting that the conflict between the “pure-hearted, simple souls” of the mountain fighters and “the sad heroism of federal bayonets” had been artificially stirred up; several paragraphs that pointed to the possibility of armed rebellion against Díaz in the north in the mid-1890s, and a new chapter, “Sotol and Kerosene.”

  The prestigious Maucci Brothers publishing house brought out the next edition of this unusual work under the abridged 1899 title Tomochic. In 1906, another edition came out under the auspices of the Valdés publishing house. It was “unique … the whole work, edited and expanded, with annotations and previously unpublished chapters written by the author for publication in El Correo de la Tarde,” the prestigious Mazatlán newspaper published in the city’s northern state of Sinaloa. By that time Díaz had served six presidential terms. Writer José Ferrel, one of El Demócrata’s principal contributors (thirteen years previously the newspaper dared publish the book in fragments) added a prologue to the Sinaloan edition. This was the edition which the Librería, owned by Charles Bouret’s widow, reprinted in 1911, titled Tomochic: Novela histórica mexicana. Even then the author preferred to remain anonymous. The 1906 edition was the most heavily edited, adding several paragraphs in the following chapters: “Heroic Troops,” “The Hand of General Díaz,” “Ready to Kill or Be Killed,” “Apparent Causes,” “Crossing the Sierra Madre.” Additionally, there were three new chapters: “Recalling the Campaign against the Apaches,” “The Dogs of Tomochic,” and “The Saint of Cabora.” The most casual comparison reveals the sequence of the various editions. That “Los perros de Tomochic” originally appeared in story form in the elegant and exclusive Revista Moderna in January 1900 points to the ongoing interest in the work and also touches on its authorship. At the time, a few Mexican books were printed in many (and varied) editions. This explains the appearance of a sequel, El triunfo de Sancho Panza: Novela de crítica social mexicana, published in 1911 by Luis Herrera’s press. Even though there was no manuscript (although military authorities and police agents of President Díaz were enthusiastically looking for it in the first weeks of spring 1893) but rather an original version of an edition published in El Demócrata, the definitive text was established after fifteen years of its intense life by going back to the five earliest editions. The testimonial intent of the work perhaps explains its initial broad success.

  The action, writing, and publication dates for Tomochic all point to its incontrovertible testimonial slant. For example, let’s take a look at one part of its internal chronology: Miguel Mercado, a young second lieutenant of the 9th Battalion appears in the sun-drenched plaza of Guerrero City at some point after September 2, 1892, “when General Rangel attempted to attack the town of Tomochic.” In the plaza’s immediate vicinity, in the “inn” frequented by officers of the 5th Regiment of the 11th Battalion and the Public Security Corps of Chihuahua State, the talk is of “the inexplicable betrayal of Santa Ana Pérez. He had shamelessly defected to the enemy side, it was said, along with more than sixty men from the Chihuahua State forces.”

  The government’s defense also comes up in the conversation, and General Díaz is toasted in gratitude for “order, which means peace and progress.” How did they get there? Miguel Mercado, along with “half a battalion,” left Mexico City by train the night of October 3, arriving in Chihuahua “after traveling two days and two nights.” There the young second lieutenant joined ranks “with his two companies” and learns that “an isolated group had taken up arms against the government and was making a defiant stand in the heart of the Sierra Madre mountains; military might had been used repeatedly to no avail. Many officers had died, and Colonel Ramirez of the 11th Battalion had been taken prisoner.” In Chihuahua State’s capital the Tomochic rebellion was the vital issue of the day. On the tenth of the month “the march began” on horseback toward the city of Guerrero. The “two companies arrived in Concepción on the fifteenth, having traversed the lonely wild lands and inhospitable rocky hills.” The two companies of the 9th Battalion pitched camp “along the Alameda, eager for the order to push on into the Sierra Madre, whose dar
k silhouette undulated majestically just ahead.” From there, the companies pushed forward “in the dawn hours of October 16” making their “their slow ascent toward the west,” on their way to Tomochic, where they arrived after three days on the road. Gunshots, raids, and voices of death filled the valley of high rocky ridges during all nine days of confrontations between federal forces and the civilian population of Tomochic until the place was transformed into a landscape of desolation, silence, and death. “The campaign was over. The last stronghold was burning, engulfed in immense, whistling flames that the harsh morning winds fanned. The bugles’ disorderly reveilles vibrated convulsively one after the other in the cold air, their thunderous martial joy contrasting darkly with the devastated landscape.” The tale ends amid “deadly bursts of flames [from] the piles of corpses” and dawn breaking over the occupied valley.1

  Three months and a few days after the massacre, on February 2, 1893, from its offices in Mexico City, El Demócrata advised its readers that it had sent reporters to collect particulars for a detailed account of the Tomochic campaign.

  The initial chronicle, written immediately after the campaign and published in El Demócrata, implicated and reproved Mexico’s leaders in an unprecedented manner. How did they interpret it? As an accusation? A settling of accounts with General Díaz and his supporters, instigated by a political minority such as the one headed up by local strongman Luis Terrazas in Chihuahua? The chronology in Tomochic is a good indicator in this respect. Despite certain discrepancies between the campaign and the literary version, the cataloguing of unfortunate events that befall Miguel Mercado (a literary character in his own right with his own motivations) justifies the surprise of the important political personalities named and alluded to in the book. It is a fictional account, told in the third person. Indebted to European war novels, it is a historical account of facts. It is open and sensitive to the atrocious realities of a confrontation between a professional army and a handful of civilians, and it exploded like a bomb in the presidential palace. Consequently Díaz ordered legal proceedings against Lieutenant Heriberto Frías. First he ordered him to be arrested and held incommunicado, declaring that he had reliable information that Frías was the author of the chronicle of the military campaign against the people of Tomochic.