The Underdogs
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9 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 Stu-
dent in a weekly of Mexico City. This was followed by numer-
ous 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 Un-
derdogs (Los de abajo), which did not receive general recogni-
tion until 1924, when it was hailed as the novel of the Revolution.
But Azuela was fundamentally a moralist, and his disappoint-
ment 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 un-
principled turning his hopes for the redemption of the under-
privileged 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 bark-
ing! 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 In-
dian-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 cor-
ner 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, shout-
ing 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 coming out or are we
going to make you?"
"You swine! Both of you! You've gone and killed my
dog, that's what you've done! What harm did he ever do
you? What did you have against him?"
The woman reentered the house, dragging the dog be-
hind her, very white and fat, with lifeless eyes and flabby
body.
"Look at those cheeks, Sergeant! Don't get riled, light
of my life: I swear I'll turn your home into a dovecot,
see?"
"By God!" he said, breaking off into song:
"Don't look so haughty, dear,
Banish all fears,
Kiss me and melt to me,
I'll drink up your tears!"
His alcoholic tenor trailed off into the night.
"Tell me what they call this ranch, woman?" the ser-
geant asked.
"Limon," the woman replied curtly, carrying wood to
the fire and fanning the coals.
"So we're in Limon, eh, the famous Demetrio Macias'
country, eh? Do you hear that, Lieutenant? We're in
Limon."
"Limon? What the hell do I care? If I'm bound for
hell, Sergeant, I might as well go there now. I don't
mind, now that I've found as good a remount as this!
Look at the cheeks on the darling, look at them! There's
a pair of ripe red apples for a fellow to bite into!"
"I'll wager you know Macias the bandit, lady? I was
in the pen with him at Escobedo, once."
"Bring me a bottle of tequila, Sergeant: I've decided
to spend the night with this charming lady. . . . What's
that? The colonel? . . . Why in God's name talk about
the colonel now? He can go straight to hell, for all I
care. And if he doesn't like it, it's all right with me. Come
on, Sergeant, tell the corporal outside to unsaddle the
horses and feed them. I'll stay here all night. Here, my
girl, you let the sergeant fry the eggs and warm up the
tortillas; you come here to me. See this wallet full of nice
new bills? They're all for you, darling. Sure, I want you
to have them. Figure it out for yourself. I'm drunk, see:
I've a bit of a load on and that's why I'm kind of hoarse,
you might call it. I left half my gullet down Guadalajara
way, and I've been spitting the other half out all the way
up here. Oh well, who cares? But I want you to have that
money, see, dearie? Hey, Sergeant, where's my bottle?
Now, little girl, come here and pour yourself a drink.
You won't, eh? Aw, come on! Afraid of your--er--hus-
band . . . or whatever he is, huh? Well, if he's skulking in
some hole, you tell him to come out. What the hell do I
care? I'm not scared of rats, see!"
Suddenly a white shadow loomed on the threshold.
"Demetrio Macias!" the sergeant cried as he stepped
back in terror.
The lieutenant stood up, silent, cold and motionless
as a statue.
"Shoot them!" the woman croaked.
"Oh, come, you'll surely spare us! I didn't know you
were there. I'll always stand up for a brave man."
Demetrio stood his ground, looking them up and down,
an insolent and disdainful smile wrinkling his face.
"Yes, I not only respect brave men, but I like them.
I'm proud and happy to call them friends. Here's my
hand on it: friend to friend." Then, after a pause: "All
right, Demetrio Macias, if you don't want to shake
hands, all right! But it's because you don't know me,
that's why, just because the first time you saw me I was
doing this dog's job. But look here, I ask you, what in
God's name can a man do when he's poor and has a
wife to support and kids? . . . Right you are, Sergeant,
let's go: I've nothing but respect for the home of what I
call a brave man, a real, honest, genuine man!"
When they had gone, the woman drew close to
Demetrio.
"Holy Virgin, what agony! I suffered as though it was
you they'd shot."
"You go to father's house, quick!" Demetrio ordered.
She wanted to hold him in her arms; she entreated, she
wept. But he pushed away from her gently and, in a sullen
voice, said, "I've an idea the whole lot of them are com-
ing."
"Why didn't you kill 'em?"
"Their hour hasn't struck yet."
They went out together; she bore the child in her
arms. At the door, they separated, moving off in different
directions.
The moon peopled the mountain with vague shadows.
As he advanced at every turn of his way Demetrio could
see the poignant, sharp silhouette of a woman pushing
forward painfully, bearing a child in her arms.
When, after many hours of climbing, he gazed back,
huge flames shot up from the depths of the canyon by
the river. It was his house, blazing. . . .
II
Everything was still swathed in shadows as
Demetrio Macias began his descent to the bottom of
the ravine. Between rocks striped with huge eroded
cracks, and a squarely cut wall, with the river flowing
below, a narrow ledge along the steep incline served as a
mountain trail.
"They'll surely find me now and track us down like
dogs," he mused. "It's a good thing they know nothing
about the trails and paths up here. . . . But if they got
someone from Moyahua to guide them . . ." He left the
sinister thought unfinished. "All the men from Limon or
Santa Rosa or the other nearby ranches are on our side:
they wouldn't try to trail us. That cacique who's chased
and run me ragged over these hills, is at Mohayua now;
he'd give his eyeteeth to see me dangling from a telegraph
pole with my tongue hanging out of my mouth, purple
and swollen. . . ."
At dawn, he approached the pit of the canyon. Here,
he lay on the rocks and fell asleep.
The river crept along, murmuring as the waters rose
and fell in small cascades. Birds sang lyrically from their
hiding among the pitaya trees. The monotonous, eternal
drone of insects filled the rocky solitude with mystery.
Demetrio awoke with a start. He waded the river, fol-
lowing its course which ran counter to the canyon; he
climbed the crags laboriously as an ant, gripping root and
rock with his hands, clutching every stone in the trail
with his bare feet.
When he reached the summit, he glanced down to
see the sun steeping the valley in a lake of gold. Near the
canyon, enormous rocks loomed protrudent, like fantastic
Negro skulls. The pitaya trees rose tenuous, tall, like the
tapering, gnarled fingers of a giant; other trees of all sorts
bowed their crests toward the pit of the abyss. Amid
the stark rocks and dry branches, roses bloomed like a
white offering to the sun as smoothly, suavely, it unrav-
eled its golden threads, one by one, from rock to rock.
Demetrio stopped at the summit. Reaching backward,
with his right arm he drew his horn which hung at his
back, held it up to his thick lips, and, swelling his cheeks
out, blew three loud blasts. From across the hill close by,
three sharp whistles answered his signal.
In the distance, from a conical heap of reeds and dry
straws, man after man emerged, one after the other, their
legs and chests naked, lambent and dark as old bronze.
They rushed forward to greet Demetrio, and stopped be-
fore him, askance.
"They've burnt my house," he said.
A murmur of oaths, imprecations, and threats rose
among them.
Demetrio let their anger run its course. Then he drew
a bottle from under his shirt and took a deep swig;
then he wiped the neck of the bottle with the back of his
hand and passed it around. It passed from mouth to
mouth; not a drop was left. The men passed their tongues
greedily over their lips to recapture the tang of the liq-
uor.
"Glory be to God and by His Will," said Demetrio,
"tonight or tomorrow at the latest we'll meet the Federals.
What do you say, boys, shall we let them find their way
about these trails?"
The ragged crew jumped to their feet, uttering shrill
cries of joy; then their jubilation turned sinister and they
gave vent to threats, oaths and imprecations.
"Of course, we can't tell how strong they are," said
Demetrio as his glance traveled over their faces in
scrutiny.
"Do you remember Medina? Out there at Hos-
totipaquillo, he only had a half a dozen men with knives
that they sharpened on a grindstone. Well, he held back
the soldiers and the police, didn't he? And he beat them,
too."
"We're every bit as good as Medina's crowd!" said a
tall, broad-shouldered man with a black beard and bushy
eyebrows.
"By God, if I don't own a Mauser and a lot of car-
tridges, if I can't get a pair of trousers and shoes, then
my name's not Anastasio Montanez! Look here, Quail,
you don't believe it, do you? You ask my partner
Demetrio if I haven't half a dozen bullets in me already.
Christ! Bullets are marbles to me! And I dare you to
contradict me!"
"Viva Anastasio Montanez," shouted Manteca.
"All right, all right!" said Montanez. "Viva Demetrio
Macias, our chief, and long life to God in His heaven
and to the Virgin Mary."
"Viva Demetrio Macias," they all shouted.
They gathered dry brush and wood, built a fire and
placed chunks of fresh meat upon the burning coals. As
the blaze rose, they collected about the fire, sat down In-
dian-fashion and inhaled the odor of the meat as it twist-
ed on the crackling fire. The rays of the sun, falling about
them, cast a golden radiance over the bloody hide of a
calf, lying on the ground nearby. The meat dangled from a
rope fastened to a huizache tree, to dry in the sun and
wind.
"Well, men," Demetrio said, "you know we've only
twenty rifles, besides my thirty-thirty. If there are just a
few of them, we'll shoot until there's not a live man left.
If there's a lot of 'em, we can give 'em a good scare, any-
how."
He undid a rag belt about his waist, loosened a knot
in it and offered the contents to his companions. Salt. A
murmur of approbation rose among them as each took a
few grains between the tips of his fingers.
They ate voraciously; then, glutted, lay down on the
ground, facing the sky. They sang monotonous, sad
songs, uttering a strident shout after each stanza.
III
In the brush and foliage of the sierra, Demetrio Macias
and his threescore men slept until the halloo of the horn,
blown by Pancracio from the crest of a peak, awakened
them.
"Time, boys! Look around and see what's what!"
Anastasio Montanez said, examining his rifle springs.
Yet he was previous; an hour or more elapsed with no
sound or stir save the song of the locust in the brush or
the frog stirring in his mudhole. At last, when the ulti-
mate faint rays of the moon were spent in the rosy dim-
ness of the dawn, the silhouette of a soldier loomed at the
end of the trail. As they strained their eyes, they could
distinguish others behind him, ten, twenty, a hundred.
. . . Then, suddenly, darkness swallowed them up. Only
when the sun rose, Demetrio's band realized that the
canyon was alive with men, midgets seated on miniature
horses.
"Look at 'em, will you?" said Pancracio. "Pretty, ain't
they? Come on, boys, let's go and roll marbles with 'em."
Now the moving dwarf figures were lost in the dense
chaparral, now they reappeared, stark and black against
the ocher. The voices of officers, as they gave orders, and
soldiers, marching at ease, were clearly audible.
Demetrio raised his hand; the locks of rifles clicked.
"Fire!" he cried tensely.
Twenty-one men shot as one; twenty-one soldiers fell
off their horses. Caught by surprise, the column halted,
etched like bas-reliefs in stone against the rocks.
Another volley and a score of soldiers hurtled down
from rock to rock.
"Come out, bandits. Come out, you starved dogs!"
"To hell with you, you corn rustlers!"
"Kill the cattle thieves! Kill 'em!"
The soldiers shouted defiance to their enemies; the lat-
ter, giving proof of a marksmanship which had already
made them famous, were content to keep under cover,
quiet, mute.
"Look, Pancracio," said Meco, completely black save
for his eyes and teeth. "This is for that man who passes
that tree. I'll get the son of a . . ."
"Take that! Right in the head. You saw it, didn't you,
mate? Now, this is for the fellow on the roan horse.
Down you come, you shave-headed bastard!"
"I'll give that lad on the trail's edge a shower of lead.
If you don't hit the river, I'm a liar! Now: look at him!"
"Oh, come on, Anastasio don't be cruel; lend me your
rifle. Come along, one shot, just one!"
Manteca and Quail, unarmed, begged for a gun as a
boon, imploring permission to fire at least a shot apiece.
"Come out of your holes if you've got any guts!"
"Show your faces, you lousy cowards!"
From peak to peak, the shouts rang as distinctly as
though uttered across a street. Suddenly, Quail stood up,
naked, holding his trousers to windward as though he
were a bullfighter flaunting a red cape, and the soldiers
below the bull. A shower of shots peppered upon
Demetrio's men.
"God! That was like a hornet's nest buzzing over-
head," said Anastasio Montanez, lying flat on the ground
without daring to wink an eye.
"Here, Quail, you son of a bitch, you stay where I
told you," roared Demetrio.
They crawled to take new positions. The soldiers, con-
gratulating themselves on their successes, ceased firing
when another volley roused them.
"More coming!" they shouted.
Some, panic-stricken, turned their horses back; others,
abandoning their mounts, began to climb up the moun-
tain and seek shelter behind the rocks. The officers had
to shoot at them to enforce discipline.
"Down there, down there!" said Demetrio as he leveled
his rifle at the translucent thread of the river.
A soldier fell into the water; at each shot, invariably
a soldier bit the dust. Only Demetrio was shooting in that
direction; for every soldier killed, ten or twenty of them,
intact, climbed afresh on the other side.
"Get those coming up from under! Los de Abajo!
Get the underdogs!" he screamed.
Now his fellows were exchanging rifles, laughing and
making wagers on their marksmanship.
"My leather belt if I miss that head there, on the black
horse!"
"Lend me your rifle, Meco."
"Twenty Mauser cartridges and a half yard of sausage
if you let me spill that lad riding the bay mare. All right!
Watch me.... There! See him jump! Like a bloody deer."
"Don't run, you half-breeds. Come along with you!
Come and meet Father Demetrio!"
Now it was Demetrio's men who screamed insults.
Manteca, his smooth face swollen in exertion, yelled his
lungs out. Pancracio roared, the veins and muscles in his
neck dilated, his murderous eyes narrowed to two evil
slits.
Demetrio fired shot after shot, constantly warning his
men of impending danger, but they took no heed until
they felt the bullets spattering them from one side.
"Goddamn their souls, they've branded me!" Demetrio
cried, his teeth flashing.
Then, very swiftly, he slid down a gully and was lost....
IV
Two men were missing, Serapio the candymaker, and
Antonio, who played the cymbals in the Juchipila band.
"Maybe they'll join us further on," said Demetrio.
The return journey proved moody. Anastasio Montanez
alone preserved his equanimity, a kindly expression play-
ing in his sleepy eyes and on his bearded face. Pancracio's
harsh, gorillalike profile retained its repulsive immuta-
bility.
The soldiers had retreated; Demetrio began the search
for the soldiers' horses which had been hidden in the
sierra.
Suddenly Quail, who had been walking ahead, shrieked.
He had caught sight of his companions swinging from
the branches of a mesquite. There could be no doubt of
their identity; Serapio and Antonio they certainly were.
Anastasio Montanez prayed brokenly.
"Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy
name. Thy kingdom come..."
"Amen," his men answered in low tones, their heads
bowed, their hats upon their breasts. . . .
Then, hurriedly, they took the Juchipila canyon north-
ward, without halting to rest until nightfall.
Quail kept walking close to Anastasio unable to
banish from his mind the two who were hanged, their
dislocated limp necks, their dangling legs, their arms
pendulous, and their bodies moving slowly in the wind.
On the morrow, Demetrio complained bitterly of his
wound; he could no longer ride on horseback. They were
forced to carry him the rest of the way on a makeshift
stretcher of leaves and branches.
"He's bleeding frightfully," said Anastasio Montanez,
tearing off one of his shirt-sleeves and tying it tightly
about Demetrio's thigh, a little above the wound.
"That's good," said Venancio. "It'll keep him from
bleeding and stop the pain."
Venancio was a barber. In his native town, he pulled
teeth and fulfilled the office of medicine man. He was
accorded an unimpeachable authority because he had
read The Wandering Jew and one or two other books.
They called him "Doctor"; and since he was conceited
about his knowledge, he employed very few words.
They took turns, carrying the stretcher in relays of
four over the bare stony mesa and up the steep passes.
At high noon, when the reflection of the sun on the
calcareous soil burned their shoulders and made the
landscape dimly waver before their eyes, the monoto-
nous, rhythmical moan of the wounded rose in unison
with the ceaseless cry of the locusts. They stopped to rest
at every small hut they found hidden between the steep,
jagged rocks.
"Thank God, a kind soul and tortillas full of beans and
chili are never lacking," Anastasio Montanez said with
a triumphant belch.
The mountaineers would shake calloused hands with
the travelers, saying:
"God's blessing on you! He will find a way to help you
all, never fear. We're going ourselves, starting tomorrow
morning. We're dodging the draft, with those damned
Government people who've declared war to the death on
us, on all the poor. They come and steal our pigs, our
chickens and corn, they burn our homes and carry our
women off, and if they ever get hold of us they'll kill us
like mad dogs, and we die right there on the spot and
that's the end of the story!"
At sunset, amid the flames dyeing the sky with vivid,
variegated colors, they descried a group of houses up
in the heart of the blue mountains. Demetrio ordered
them to carry him there.
These proved to be a few wretched straw huts, dis-
persed all over the river slopes, between rows of young
sprouting corn and beans. They lowered the stretcher
and Demetrio, in a weak voice, asked for a glass of
water.
Groups of squalid Indians sat in the dark pits of the
huts, men with bony chests, disheveled, matted hair,
and ruddy cheeks; behind them, eyes shone up from
floors of fresh reeds.
A child with a large belly and glossy dark skin came
close to the stretcher to inspect the wounded man. An
old woman followed, and soon all of them drew about
Demetrio in a circle.
A girl sympathizing with him in his plight brought a
jicara of bluish water. With hands shaking, Demetrio took
it up and drank greedily.
"Will you have some more?"
He raised his eyes and glanced at the girl, whose
features were common but whose voice had a note of
kindness in it. Wiping his sweating brow with the back of
his palm and turning on one side, he gasped:
"May God reward you."
Then his whole body shook, making the leaves of the
stretcher rustle. Fever possessed him; he fainted.
"It's a damp night and that's terrible for the fever,"
said Remigia, an old wrinkled barefooted woman, wear-
ing a cloth rag for a blouse.
She invited them to move Demetrio into her hut.
Pancracio, Anastasio Montanez, and Quail lay down
beside the stretcher like faithful dogs, watchful of their
master's wishes. The rest scattered about in search of
food.
Remigia offered them all she had, chili and tortillas.
"Imagine! I had eggs, chickens, even a goat and her
kid, but those damn soldiers wiped me out clean."
Then, making a trumpet of her hands, she drew near
Anastasio and murmured in his ear:
"Imagine, they even carried away Senora Nieves'
little girl!"
V
Suddenly awakening, Quail opened his eyes and
stood up.
"Montanez, did you hear? A shot, Montanez! Hey,
Montanez, get up!"
He shook him vigorously until Montanez ceased
snoring and in turn woke up.
"What in the name of . . . Now you're at it again,
damn it. I tell you there aren't ghosts any more," An-
astasio muttered out of a half-sleep.
"I heard a shot, Montanez!"
"Go back to sleep, Quail, or I'll bust your nose."
"Hell, Anastasio I tell you it's no nightmare. I've for-
gotten those fellows they hung, honest. It's a shot, I tell
you. I heard it all right."
"A shot, you say? All right, then, hand me my gun."
Anastasio Montanez rubbed his eyes, stretched out his
arms and legs, and stood up lazily.
They left the hut. The sky was solid with stars; the
moon rose like a sharp scythe. The confused rumor of
women crying in fright resounded from the various huts;
the men who had been sleeping in the open, also woke up
and the rattle of arms echoed over the mountain.
"You cursed fool, you've maimed me for life."
A voice rang clearly through the darkness.
"Who goes there?"
The shout echoed from rock to rock, through mound
and over hollow, until it spent itself at the far, silent
reaches of the night.
"Who goes there?" Anastasio repeated his challenge
louder, pulling back the lock of his Mauser.
"One of Demetrio's men," came the answer.
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