La novela de la revolución is a specifically Mexican genre, focused on a particular time period in Mexican history. The genre owes much of its vitality and staying power to the eternal debate about the effects of the revolutionary movement, and its relevance for understanding events and problematics in today’s Mexico. In the Fall of 2014, I had the opportunity to teach a graduate level class on the novela de la revolución, at San Jose State University. All of my students were enrolled in the Master’s program in Spanish in the Department of World Languages and Literatures, and the vast majority of the students in the class were either Mexican American, or Mexican nationals. Many had been raised to commemorate the Revolution as a proud event in Mexico’s history, and remember dressing up as Adelitas and Soldados as children to celebrate the day.

In this paper, I address these students’ reactions to the largely critical stance of many novels and non-fiction essays dealing with the Mexican Revolution, including Mariano Azuela’s Los de abajo, Nellie Campobello’s Cartucho, Carlos Fuentes’s La muerte de Artemio Cruz, and Octavio Paz’s El laberinto de la soledad. For many, the experience of reading these texts was one of disillusionment, but also of enlightenment. One of the central points of debate in the class was to what extent can Mexico’s present problems be linked to structures established during and after the Revolution. The students drew very personal lines of connection between the caudillismo in Los de Abajo, the machismo apparent in Cartucho and the corruption decried in La muerte de Artemio Cruz, with real examples from today’s Mexico. I was impressed by the power of the students’ reactions to these works, and by their sense that the literature remains relevant to the understanding of Mexico’s history and development. In this way, la novela de la revolución can serve as a dynamic optic for teaching about the effects and outcomes of the Mexican Revolution, and for grappling with the problems facing Mexico today.