SOURCE: Laraway, David. “Doctoring the Revolution: Medical Discourse and Interpretation in Los de Abajo and El Aguila y la Serpiente.” Hispanofila 127 (September 1999): 53-65.

In the following essay, Laraway discusses how the human body and the Revolution are linked in Martín Luis Guzmán's El águila y la serpiente and Azuela's Los de abajo.

Ever since a moribund Artemio Cruz became an emblem of the fragmented, postrevolutionary history of Mexico, the individual human body and the Mexican body politic have been regarded as dual aspects of a single text, demanding a unifying act of interpretation even while the possibility of a seamless reading is perpetually undercut. However, it might well be claimed that the very synecdoche by which the human body and the Revolution are linked in Carlos Fuentes's novel is anticipated by earlier narratives of the Revolution, including, as this study aims to demonstrate, Mariano Azuela's Los...