John Rathbone's "Global Insight" in Friday's Financial Times was amusing until it evoked a memory of an article written by G.J. Demko on the history of crime
novels in Mexico (see quote below from Demko's work @
http://www.dartmouth.edu/...). Maria Bermudez was one of the great figures in Mexican detective literature, her novel, "Death has different Reasons,"
1947 is a cornerstone. J. Patrick Duffy has written on her work, but
her novels and especially feminist female characters seem largely out
of place in Mexican literature and it is recognized that she borrow
heavily from the American tradition and gained little recognition in
Mexico. Persephone Braham in her "Crimes Against the State" 2004,
argues against this interpretation, but she compares Cuban detective
stories with Mexican and shows a definite difference.Her it seems to be
in Cuba the genre is popular but in Mexico it is limited to the
political intelligencia thus supporting Demko's argument. Ilan Stavans,
Jesse H. Lytle, and Jennifer A. Mattson's book, "Antiheros" seems to
bring all this together, they argue that there is a division between
Anglo-American segments of the genre with the noir as a later American
version of the detective story more acceptable to the Central and South
American audience who do not expect justice in a thoroughly corrupt
world, while the British Holmes variety assumes rightness as a cultural
ideal.
But, what is the point, Rathbone does not try and explain the
existence of the genre except a brief reference to fragile
institutions. One might note that the same condition is true of much
of Central and South America, and social scientists used to argue that
it resulted from the victory of the Spanish oligarchies over
revolutionary democratic movements in the 19th century and the
resulting feudalism that was established with the Conquest. This was attacked by a wave of nationalist historians in the late 60's & 1970s (see Petras and Zeitlin, Latin America: Reform or Revolution, 1968) as an example) who celebrated the local revolutions of the middle classes in the 19th century. This was hard to accept even at the time and has become more so in recent years, though the "miracle south of the border" in the past 10 years has renewed the theme while the drug wars continue and kidnappings have created a multi-billion dollar industry.
The transition from 16th century hacienda to 20th century factory has been
made with little transformation of the political process. The
plantation boss has simply morphed into the criminal gang or police
chief doing the bidding of the various layers of the oligarchy. The
great wealth inequality is maintained by a corrupt system that rewards
violence and makes justice a strange and curious abnormality. As
Shirer said of Nazi Germany, when the criminals rule society the
virtuous are criminals.
Niccolo Caldararo, Ph.D.
Dept. of Anthropology
San Francisco State University
Crime fiction in Mexico is a very unusual genre in that it is a
literature of pessimism and antiheroes. The first Mexican mysteries
appeared in the 1940s and 1950s but the great explosion in popularity
occurred in the 70s and 80s. Mexican writers were, and are, heavily
influenced by American writers such as Hammett and Chandler but have
also developed a distinctive style of their own. True to the Hispanic
mystery tradition police and authorities are distrusted and considered
corrupt. Societal disorder or chaos is assumed to be the normal
condition and the heroes, or rather antiheroes, are not obligated to
restore order but rather to parody and satirize its absence. Frequently
the mystery is turned upside down and the police or authorities are the
"bad guys" whereas the criminals are the "good guys". Mexico City (the
Federal District) is overwhelmingly their setting for Mexican stories
but Mexican writers have a distinct gift for describing the settings
with skill and color.
The first indigenous Mexican mystery appears to be one by Alfonso
Quiroga — Vila y milagros de Pancho Reyes, detective Mexicano — but a
complete citation with date of publication has been impossible to find.
Most specialists consider the modern Mexican mystery genre to begin
with Rodolfo Usigli’s Ensayo de un crimen, published in 1944
(republished by V. Siglos, Mexico City, 1980). Usigli taught at the
National Autonomous University of Mexico and it was his only detective
novel. It set a standard, however, in that the primary protagonist
—Roberto de la Cruz- is a dandy who aspires to commit the perfect set
of crimes. His dastardly deeds are solved by a police inspector but yet
he goes unpunished, reflecting Mexican cynicism concerning justice.