The Regional Novel and the Novel of the Mexican Revolution on Common Ground

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the common ground tread by the Latin American regional novel and the novel of the Mexican Revolution, namely, a shared preoccupation with questions of land sovereignty and land ownership. While the two narrative modes are often considered separate literary phenomena, this chapter argues for evaluating them together as critical responses to the reorganization of Latin American economies, politics, and cultures by neocolonial interests. Focusing on an emblematic novel from each category—José Eustasio Rivera’s La vorágine (The Vortex, 1924) and Martín Luis Guzmán’s El águila y la serpiente (The Eagle and the Serpent, 1928), this analysis charts a more expansive geography of the presence of tierra in the Latin American novel and proposes an alternative shared legacy of such works.