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81.4.cifuentes Goodbody
81.4.cifuentes Goodbody
lvaro
Obrego n, an act that led to several years of exile in Spain during which the
author renounced his Mexican citizenship. Maybe he chose not to recall the
darker days of postrevolutionary politics with so many high-ranking mem-
bers of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in his audience, or he did not
want to mention a novel that tarnished the Ofce of the President in front
of the President himself. Regardless, it is clear that Guzmans autobiography
is an effort to explain his self-realization as writer in terms that are not only
favorable to himself and his audience but also to the single-party political
system to which they both belong.
Guzman prefaces his third attempt to write his denitive text of the Mexi-
can Revolution with a realization. Instead of trying to raise the movements
awed protagonists to the level of his own ideals using juicios absolutorios
o apolog as ensalzadoras, he must reduce the movement to the razo n de
ser de los personajes (,o,). This approach, he explains, grows out of the
belief that toda grande obra que se consumaba gracias a los recursos de una
personalidad, elevaba los recursos de la personalidad a la categor a de la obra
y redim a a la personalidad de sus aparentes imperfecciones (,o,). The indi-
vidual most in need of this biographical restoration was one who was no
longer able to defend himself against detractors, one who had lost the lucha
interna por el bot n de la Revolucio n (,o,): General Francisco Villa. Era
. . . a Villa a quien deb a recrear, elaborando con lo eventual y transitorio
de su existencia efectiva valores esteticamente necesarios y permanentes, y
quedarse entonces con esa verdad, que ser a inconmovible en las proporcio-
nes en que la lograse, porque toda verdad literaria es una verdad suprema
que vive por s sola (,o,). It would be through the Memorias de Pancho
Villa, a rst-person biography in which the general would tell his own story,
that Guzma n would fully realize his identity as an artist and make good on
the autobiographical pact with his audience.
4
There is a problem, however, with Guzma n pinning this promise to the
. For an in-depth study of Guzma ns portraits of Villa in both El aguila y la serpiente and
Memorias de Pancho Villa, see Max Parra.
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8o i ui sv.xi c vvvi vw : autumn :o:,
completion of his biography of Villaa fact that is lost neither on him nor
on the audience of the Mexican Academy of Language in I,,. Although
Guzma n had republished the ve parts of Memorias de Pancho Villa in I,,I,
the work itself was incomplete, only detailing the generals life up to I,I,
(some eight years before his death and well before the decline and defeat of
his army). In spite of the rhetorical role that Villas biography plays in the
narrative of Apunte sobre una personalidad, Guzma n freely admits that
the work is unnished. He explains that the same imperativo que lo forzaba
. . . a engolfarse y consumirse en las fortunas y adversidades de la pol tica . . .
vendr a obligando a diferir . . . la ejecucio n de los empenos suyos: los de las
letras puras y simples (,o,). Going beyond the time frame of the Academy
ceremony, Guzman would in fact never complete Memorias de Pancho Villa.
In several interviews after I,, he would claim to be nishing the work but
would ultimately renege on that promise in I,,,, saying bluntly to a journal-
ist, Pues s lo dije . . . , pero me temo que no voy a poder cumplirlo
(Cardona). In short, both in the moment of its original utterance and with
every successive republication of Apunte sobre una personalidad, Memo-
rias de Pancho Villa was and would be an unnished text.
If the conclusion of Guzmans biography of Villa serves as the artistic and
personal moment of self-realization for the majority of Apunte sobre una
personalidad, its incompleteness ultimately serves as the lynchpin for Guz-
ma ns autobiographical act, both within and beyond that same text. Guzma n
says that it was only after leaving Memorias de Pancho Villa unnished that
he was able to understand that the divergent pursuits of art, politics, and
journalism were actually una sola y misma cosa, capaz . . . de expresarse en
una sola y misma forma (,o,). It is precisely in acknowledging his inability
to write the single text that realizes his vocation as an artist, admitting failure
in the autobiographical pact of Apunte sobre una personalidad, that Guz-
ma n expands the scope of his autobiographical project. Lejeune describes the
extreme humility of such admissions as a sort of textual sleight-of-hand:
no one notices that, by the same movement, we extend . . . the autobio-
graphical pact, in an indirect form, to the whole of what we have written
(:,). Accordingly, in his I,, speech, Guzman implies that all his works are
products of the same Norte, that all his texts are, on some level, autobio-
graphical. What he originally presented as the motivation behind his biogra-
phy of Villa has turned out to be the goal of Apunte sobre una
personalidad: to elevate los recursos de la personalidad a la categor a de la
obra, redeeming his own work within a new autobiographical context that
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Cifuentes-Goodbody : cuzx. x s .u1oni ocv.vui c.i .c1s j 8I
purges it of any aparentes imperfecciones or inconsistencies vis-a`-vis that
refashioned life narrative.
Much in the way Guzman begins his speech with a series of apologies, he
ends it with a litany of negations that seems deant and even confrontational:
En n, heme aqu , con vosotros y ante vosotros, y tal cual me elegisteis: ni
gramatico . . . ni hombre de letras como me hubiera gustado ser . . . Bien
pudiera deciros, al acogerme hoy a vuestro reposo, que no vengo de las aulas
ni de las bibliotecas, sino del traj n de la calle (,ooo,). As in so many other
passages, there are a series of inconsistencies that could not have escaped his
fellow members of the Academy. After all, he had passed through the most
prestigious classrooms of his generation, had been a member of the Ateneo
de la Juventud (albeit a peripheral one [Quintanilla, Nosotros Io]), had at
one point written small pieces for the arielista magazine Nosotros, and had
even worked as a librarian in what would become the Faculty of Philosophy
and Letters at UNAM. On another level, though, this is his nal deferment.
Here, the author strikes the pose of an outsider who has been accepted as a
member of the most prestigious intellectual institution in Mexico in spite of
his inability to precisely explain that acceptance, one whose personality
whose very presence in and before the Academyjusties itself in the same
performative and self-sufcient way that Guzma ns notion of literary truth
does: it is una verdad suprema que vive por s sola.
A Change of Course
In Apology to Apostrophe, James Ferna ndez notes that the concept of posterity
can play a powerful role in the rhetoric of autobiography. He argues that
when faced with a hostile audience, the autobiographer often uses the rhetor-
ical strategy of speaking to an idealized and abstract audience that can prop-
erly interpret his or her story. The author thus invites the real reader to
have his or her perception coincide with that of, say, God, History, or Pub-
lic Opinion (,). In the case of Apunte sobre una personalidad, it is
important to point out that Guzma ns audience is far from hostile. As the
author himself notes, by I,, he had been an associate member of the Acad-
emy for fourteen years and, in fact, had already received full Academy mem-
bership in July of I,,:, only postponing the formality of his discurso de
ingreso for administrative and personal reasons (Ca rdenas de la Pena ::,).
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8: iui sv.xi c vvvi vw : autumn :o:,
It is tempting to see the prestigious members of Guzma ns audience (the
Archbishop of Mexico, a former dean of UNAM, the countrys most promi-
nent media mogul, the President) as sectors of Mexican society that the
author must win over with his life narrative, but the prole of the audience
speaks to the fact that Guzma n is already unquestionably part of Mexicos
intellectual elite. His many apologies serve only as a pretext for him to pro-
vide his own correct interpretation of his personal history, and the audi-
ences acceptance of his speechnot to mention its disregard for his obvious
omissionsis a foregone conclusion.
However, the movement from apology to apostrophe, the clear progres-
sion from the immediate to the transcendent, perfectly describes the editorial
history of Apunte sobre una personalidad, and it reveals the nature of the
autobiographical project that culminates in the publication of Guzma ns
Obras completas. In I,,, the author addresses a nite number of Mexicos
cultural and political elite with a single intention: trazar ante vosotros un
esquema de m mismo (,,). A month later, when the text of his speech
appears in his magazine Tiempo, the same vosotros refers to a larger and
more abstract readership: the Mexican public. In I,,,, it serves as the center-
piece of Guzma ns collection of speeches from his most controversial
moments in the Mexican Academy of Language, Academia: Tradicion. Inde-
pendencia. Libertad, and thus touts his actions during the First Congress of
Spanish Language Academies as a historic victory. By I,oI, when it becomes
part of the Obras completas, vosotros is more a notion than a concrete
audience or person, an ideal reader that transcends time in the same way
that a denitive volume of complete works is meant to outlive words spoken
at a ceremony that has long since passed.
In the last book in his Obras completas, namely Cronicas de mi destierro,
Guzma n makes a passing reference to a Greek philosopher in an attempt to
describe the urban disorder of Madrid:
La famosa apor a de Zeno n acerca de la echa (aquella segu n la cual la
echa arrojada por el arco no avanza, porque no puede avanzar en el lugar
donde esta , pues eso no ser a avanzar, ni en el lugar donde no esta , puesto
que no esta all ) ayuda a comprender algunas de la dicultades del tra co
de Madrid: los que van despacio estan mas tiempo en todas partes; no se
aduenan so lo de un lugar de una acera, sino de la acera ntegra, y de la
calle, y del barrio, y de toda la ciudad. (Tra co y felicidad Io,o)
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Cifuentes-Goodbody : cuzx. x s .u1oni ocv.vui c.i .c1s j 8,
In its original context, Zeno of Eleas arrow paradox is meant to refute the
idea that time is composed of nothing but nite, present moments; that all
is a single, indivisible reality. When read towards the end of Obras completas,
however, the quote speaks to a different issue, not unlike the complaint by
Alfonso Reyes that serves as the epigraph for this article. When presented
with separate texts produced over the course of his or her life, how does an
author create the indivisible reality of a single body of work that presents
an integral portrait of its creator? How does Guzma n package these textual
fragments into the coherent autobiographical portrait that is the Obras com-
pletas, the denitive reading of his lifes work?
Guzmans principal strategy is one of simple juxtaposition. By including
Apunte sobre una personalidad in the Obras completas, he allows the for-
mer to act as an interpretive framework for the latter. As the author himself
explains in one of the volumes many prefaces, his apunte is more than an
autonomous autobiographical sketch: a modo de presentacio n de m
mismo, [el texto] me explica, en parte, como escritor . . . y penetra el porque
y el co mo de lo que pueda considerarse caracter stico de mis obras princi-
pales (,,). From a chronological perspective, it may seem odd that Guz-
ma n includes a text from I,, in the very rst volume of his complete works
when nearly all of the other pieces date from the I,Ios and :os. However, by
situating La querella de Me xico and El aguila y la serpiente in the same tome
with an autobiography that describes the ongoing process of artistic self-
realization out of which those texts have supposedly arisen, the author
inscribes an additional layer of meaning onto these two books. It imposes a
Norte or essence onto the works a posteriori through a quasi-epitextual
intervention, a revised reading that Guzma n himself controls. In this context,
it seems even more logical that the author would want to disseminate this
controlled reading in the rst volume of the Obras completas together with
his most well-known and widely read works (namely El aguila y la serpiente
and La sombra del caudillo). Moreover, this autobiographical act is a com-
mercial one that transforms the entire edition into a preface and preview for
Memorias de Pancho Villa, which appears in the second volume two years
later.
5
Apunte sobre una personalidad, then, is not unlike the leisurely
moving occupants of Madrid who seemingly take over the entire city from
,. It should be noted that the Fondo de Cultura Econo micas most recent edition of the Obras
completas (:oIo) is three volumes, not two, and the texts are essentially ordered chronologically.
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8 iui sv.xi c vvvi vw : autumn :o:,
the stationary point in which they stand; it unites the various fragments that
comprise the Obras completas under a single narrative.
Conclusion: October :nd, :,o8
Of course, Mart n Luis Guzman did not stop writing after the publication of
the second volume of his Obras completas. Correspondence from the authors
archive suggests that he was planning to add a third volume to his complete
works, though the same archive gives few clues as to which works the author
planned to include or why he ultimately abandoned the project. Likewise,
Guzma ns own biography and its relationship with his literary legacy did not
end with the eightieth-birthday celebrations described at the opening of this
article. If October of I,o, was arguably the zenith of Guzmans literary life,
October of I,o8 was just the opposite. Despite his previous calls for amena-
bility towards Mexicos youth, the authors reaction to the student protests
in Mexico City in the lead-up to the Olympic Games was unforgiving. On
October ,th, his magazine Tiempo ran a four-page story on the continuing
student occupation of UNAM. The nal quarter of the article gave purported
details of an incident that had occurred the previous week in the Plaza de las
Tres Culturas. According to a military ofcial, a gun battle had broken out
between two different student groups during a rally, and the army had inter-
vened. Twenty students had been killed, seventy-ve wounded, and more
than four hundred arrested (Operacio n Guerrilla :,). These numbers,
however, would later prove to be greatly understated, and what Tiempo
labeled an accio n subversiva . . . que quiere echarse por tierra el orden . . .
que hoy impera en Me xico (Fuego y subversio n) would come to be
known as the Tlatelolco Massacre.
Tiempos portrayal of the student movement and the events of October :
would become increasingly critical over the coming months. While some
members of Mexicos literary intellectual community vocally criticized Presi-
dent D az Ordaz, Guzma n continued to staunchly support the government.
As he told one reporter, Los que hablan de hacer en Mexico una nueva
Revolucio n no saben lo que dicen. The country had already realized its
revolution, in I,Io, and the continuation of that movement under the cur-
rent government would provide todas la realizaciones igualitarias y satis-
factorias a que puede aspirar el ser humano (Ochoa ,).
Guzman would deliver his most notorious remarks on Tlatelolco in June
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I,o,, at the annual ceremony for Freedom of the Press Day. Speaking before
President D az Ordaz, he referred to his fellow members of the media as
miembros de una especie de trust o cartel de la opinio n pu blica (Discurso
. . . Libertad de Prensa o,), one that had remained united during what
had been an all-out assault on the countrys institutions: Las autoridades se
enfrentaron durante aquellos meses a una agitacio n de evidentes tendencias
subversivas; subversivas, s , segu n . . . lo inagotable de su creciente proseli-
tismo, enfocado hacia la guerrilla y el terror (o,). The author ended by
directly addressing the President, applauding him for his actions and promis-
ing that the national press would continue to serve al regimen democratico
e institucional del Mexico de hoy, al Mexico de libertades, realidad y pro-
mesa (,,). For the generation born out of the events of I,o8, these words
would do more than ring false and hollow: they would transform their
speaker into a literary pariah.
Guzmans reaction to the events of I,o8and its contrast to the celebrations
of I,o,are signicant because they expose a ssure in the authors continued
legacy. Critic Fernando Curiel gives voice to this issue in his I,8, book La
querella de Mart n Luis Guzman. For Curiel, Guzmans contribution to the
panorama of Mexican letters is unquestionable, but his advocacy on behalf
of Mexicos perfect dictatorship remains unpardonablela herida que no
cicatriza (,,). Taking stock of literary criticism in Mexico, Curiel explains that
the reaction to the disparity between Guzmans obras and his biography has
been one of silencio . . . convertido en prohibicio n, sello, olvido, lapida (I).
For all his successnot to mention his tireless efforts to cultivate his own
legacy during his lifetimethe author had become a largely forgotten gure.
On the one hand, Guzma ns fall into relative obscurity is indicative of
how I,o8 changed the relationship between Mexican intellectuals and the
postrevolutionary state. If intellectuals are creators and purveyors of ideol-
ogy in general (Knight, Intellectuals I), Guzma n in particular spent
decades purveying the ideology of the Institutional Revolutionary Party,
grounding that regime in Mexicos nineteenth-century liberal tradition and
then inserting himself in that narrative. The state handsomely rewarded him
for these efforts. In I,,8, he accepted a National Science and Arts Prize from
President Ruiz Cortines. In February I,,,, President Lo pez Mateos honored
him with the Manuel A