The Man Who Wrote Pancho Villa: Martin Luis Guzman and the Politics of Life Writing

by Nicholas Cifuentes-Goodbody

Overview

Martin Luis Guzman was many things throughout his career in twentieth-century Mexico: a soldier in Pancho Villa's revolutionary army, a journalist-in-exile, one of the most esteemed novelists and scholars of the revolutionary era, and an elder statesman and politician. In The Man Who Wrote Pancho Villa, we see the famous author as he really was: a careful craftsman of his own image and legacy. His five-volume biography of Villa propelled him to the heights of Mexican cultural life, and thus began his true life's work. Nicholas Cifuentes-Goodbody shapes this study of Guzman through the lens of "life writing" and uncovers a tireless effort by Guzman to shape his public image.

The Man Who Wrote Pancho Villa places Guzman's work in a biographical context, shedding light on the immediate motivations behind his writing in a given moment and the subsequent ways in which he rewrote or repackaged the material. Despite his efforts to establish a definitive reading of his life and literature, Guzman was unable to control that interpretation as audiences became less tolerant of the glaring omissions in his self-portrait.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826503695
Publisher:	Vanderbilt University Press
Publication date:	04/30/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	627 KB

About the Author

Nicholas Cifuentes-Goodbody is an Assistant Professor and the Coordinator for the Master in Translation Studies at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Doha, Qatar.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Prologue First Glimpse of Guzmán xi

Introduction The Eightieth Birthday. October 1967 1

Part 1 The Push for Posterity

1 Autobiographical Acts within and beyond "Apunte sobre una personalidad" 27

2 Controlled Readings and Contested Memories in Academia 47

Part 2 Looking beyond Mexico

3 Autobiographical Authority in Crónicas de mi destierro, El águilay la serpiente, and La sombra del Caudillo 69

4 New Biographies 95

Part 3 Courting Cardenas

5 Political Rhetoric and the Female Subject in Maestros rurales 119

6 Guzmán's Citizenship and the Vindication of Pancho Villa 139

Conclusion The Tlatelolco Massacre, October 1968 165

Appendix: Editorial History of the Obras completas as Compiled by Guzmán 175

Notes 179

References 189

Index 203

Editorial Reviews

"The Man Who Wrote Pancho Villa is an original, well-researched contribution to the critical study of Martin Luis Guzman's works and offers new insights into the rich tradition of auto/biographical writings in Mexico and Latin America."
—Max Parra, author of Writing Pancho Villa's Revolution: Rebels in the Literary Imagination of Mexico

From the Publisher