SOURCE: Bradley, D. “Patterns of Myth in ‘Los de Abajo.’” Modern Language Review 75, no. 1 (1980): 94-104.

In the following essay, Bradley argues that despite critical debate over its lack of structural unity, Los de abajo abounds in religious motifs and mythological themes that provide it with thematic unity.

Despite the numerous works of later writers dealing with the same troubled period, Mariano Azuela's novel, Los de abajo, first published in 1915, remains the outstanding novel of the Mexican Revolution; in its brief pages, through the realistic portrayal of the experiences of a band of rebel guerrilleros—minor characters in the national drama—Azuela presents and assesses in authentic detail and with the authority of experience the moral course of the Revolution and its effects on Mexican society.¹ For, although the immediate theme of the novel is the activities of a minor band of rebels, crucial developments at national level, such...