SOURCE: "From the Reform Movement to the Beginning of Realism," in The Mexican Historical Novel, 1826-1910, Instituto de las Espaiias, 1939, pp. 134-252.

In the following excerpt, Read discusses the trend toward greater realism in the late-nineteenth-century Mexican historical novels of several authors.

In the late [eighteen] fifties there began a struggle without possibility of compromise between two opposite points of view, the liberal and the reactionary. The heat of that struggle separated the population into two camps, both radical in their attitudes and bent on extermination, each unaware of its own weaknesses. Mexico was a nation seething with hatreds, wherein moderation scarcely existed. In that period every fireside was a forum for fierce outbursts; all eyes were blinded by swirling storms of passion, and all ears were filled with the roar of fanaticisms. But for the first time in Mexican history the issue was clearly defined and understood...