Society (2018) 55:68–77

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-017-0212-z

PROFILE

The Present of an Illusion: José Revueltas and the Moral Voice of Dissent
José Antonio Aguilar Rivera 1

Published online: 18 December 2017

# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2017

Abstract
This work presents an analysis of the intellectual and political legacy of Mexican writer José Revueltas in an attempt to properly
assess the relevance of his thought and work. This can be elucidated through his literary and political work as an heterodox
communist, who always placed words before weapons, although he toyed with the idea of violence as the midwife of History and
defended its revolutionary role. His time in prison as well as his differences with the Soviet Union and the Mexican Communist
Party influenced his Marxist outlook and provided him with a different set of answers to the questions posed by the failures of the
October Revolution. Cognitive democracy, a concept developed by Revueltas and alienation theory (in which capitalist society
affects not only the working classes but every manifestation of human life)) constitute his legacy. His life is also a cautionary tale
about religious commitment and politics.

Keywords Revolution . Communism . Intellectuals

When the Mexican government killed a number of protesting
university students in Mexico City in 1968 Octavio Paz, then
ambassador to India, resigned in protest. After the killings
several student leaders were jailed, charged with Bsocial dis-
solution^. That year saw the emergence of a massive student
movement against the authoritarian policies of the PRI gov-
ernment that had ruled the country for nearly
40 years.1President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964–1970) de-
nounced a communist plot against his administration in the
wake of the Olympic Games that were to take place in Mexico
City that year. Along many young students an old communist
writer and intellectual was imprisoned, José Revueltas. He
was living proof, according to the prosecutor of the case, of
the communist scheme in place. Revueltas was charged with
several counts of robbery, rioting, destruction of private prop-
erty, etc. In order to ease the burden of the students and to
protect the leaders of the movement he took the whole blame
upon himself. He later recalled: B[They] were so satisfied of
having me arrested that I wanted to assume a responsibility
1
On student protests in Mexico at the time, see: Jaime Pensado, Rebel
Mexico. Student Unrest and Authoritarian Political Culture During the Long
Sixties (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2013).
* José Antonio Aguilar Rivera
joseantonio.aguilar@cide.edu
1
División de Estudios Políticos, CIDE, Mexico City, Mexico
that would free the comrades of the Facultad of Philosophy,
who were in danger, from arrest and prosecution^.2He
remained nearly three years in the infamous prison of
Lecumberri, where he wrote a novel, El apando, and many
political essays. By the time Revueltas was jailed he was al-
ready a hero to the younger generation of middle class univer-
sity students that listened to him in awe while he lectured on
Marxist theory in the campus cafeteria at the Facultad of
Filosofía y Letras of the Universidad Nacional. Revueltas
was no stranger to prison since he had served time(in two
occasions) in the penal island colony of Islas Marías in the
Pacific Ocean. Yet, this proved to be the longest of his jail
terms. While Revueltas was still in prison (1970) Octavio Paz
wrote a footnote in his famous political essay Postdata about
the government repression of the student movement: BThere
are still in jail 200 students, several university professors and
José Revueltas, one of the best writers of my generation and
one of the purest men in Mexico^.3
When he died five years after his release from prison at the
relative young age of 62in 1976, he received a heartfelt hom-
age by hundreds of students that gave eulogies at his memorial
2
Elena Poniatowska, BHablan los presos^, in Andrea Revueltas and
PhilipeCheron, (eds.) Conversaciones con José Revueltas (Mexico: ERA,
2001), p. 64.
3
Octavio Paz, Postdata, in Octavio Paz, El laberinto de la soledad, Postdata,
Vuelta a El Laberinto de la soledad(Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica,
1994), p. 252. B…uno de los mejores escritores de mi generación y uno de los
hombres más puros de México^.
Soc (2018) 55:68–77
service, where the minister of Education, who intended to give
a speech, was booed off the funeral. For many young persons
of the 1968 generation Revueltas was nothing less than a hero
of mythical stature, a figure of great moral import. He was the
guru of some of the young writers of the literary current of BLa
Onda^, such as José Agustín and Gustavo Sainz. 4 As
Sainzasserted, Bfor me, as for many others, Revueltas was
much more than an intellectual from whom one could learn
ideas, and even more than an ethical and political guide^.5
Revueltas, as a political man, was the model of the intellectual
that speaks truth to power. He conceived of the role of the
writer as such. As he asserted in an interview in 1974, two
years before his death regarding the work of the Russian dis-
sident Solzhenitsyn: BTruth is always revolutionary, no matter
where it comes from or how […] the first duty of the writer is
to tell the truth^.6 Revueltas was a heretic communist thinker.
He was at odds with the Mexican Communist party (PCM)
and became a critic, first of Stalinism and later also of the
Soviet Union herself but unlike George Orwell, Octavio Paz
or Arthur Koestler, Revueltas never renounced Marxism. He
saw himself as an internal critic of communism. BI am^, he
claimed in several occasions a BMarxist without a party^.7 His
life was devoted to the Revolution.
What is the moral voice of José Revueltas after the end of
communism and of one-party rule in Mexico? What is his
significance today? What is alive and what is dead in
Revueltas’ legacy? I claim that Revueltas, as a moral example,
is a problematic case.
The Redeemer in His Labyrinth
José Revueltas was born in the city of Durango on November
20, 1914. He was the son of a merchant in the small town of
Santiago Papasquiaro. He was one of twelve children and had
two elder brothers who were prominent in the arts: Silvestre an
accomplish composer and Fermín, an acclaimed painter. The
Revueltas’ were a devoted Catholic family. At the age of six
José and his family moved to Mexico City, where he attended
elementary school. At first, the family had a moderate middle
class income and their children could attend private schools.
4
In his 1987 novel Pasaban en silencio nuestros dioses (Mexico: ERA, 1987)
Héctor Manjarrez recounts the effect Revueltas had on his generation. Bnot a
militant, not a leader, not a guide, but the living presence of the past^, one of
the characters in the novel claims about Revueltas.
5
Gustavo Sainz, BPara mi las rejas de la cárcel son las rejas del país y del
mundo^, in Revueltas and Cheron, Conversaciones, p. 190.
6
Whenqueried in regard to the criticisms leveled against the Russian writer
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Revulet as asserted on his behalf: BLa verdad es
siempre revolucionaria, no importa de dónde ni cómo surja […] Una verdad
siempre vale por sí misma. La obligación primera del escritor es decir esa
verdad^. Ignacio Solares, BLa verdad es siempre revolucionaria^, in Ibid. p.
129.
7
Magdalena Saldaña, BUno de los mayores problemas del mexicano es ser
acrítico por completo^, in Ibid. p. 125.
69
Yet, José’s father died shortly after in 1923 and the family fell
on hard times. They moved to the working class neighborhood
of La Merced. The young Revueltas transferred to a public
school and spent many days wandering around the proletarian
surroundings of Mexico City. The poverty and the filth that he
found there perturbed him greatly.8 It was during one of these
excursions that he discovered the city’s morgue. The world
stroke him as an unjust place. He dropped out of school. He
basically educated himself at the local library. When he was
13 years old his mother, Romana, sent him to work as an
errands boy at a nearby hardware store. The family, nearly
destitute, needed the extra income. He also became an appren-
tice in a printing business. At the hardware store Revueltas
met a fellow employee who happened to be a Trotskyite.
BTrotsky^, was his knick name, indoctrinated other workers
in the shop’s warehouse. There Revueltas came into contact
with socialist discourse.
The religious origins of Revueltas’ politics and ideological
beliefs are explicit. José was experiencing at an early age a
spiritual crisis. BI was^ Revueltas explained, Bvery religious
from age nine to eleven. I looked for God in every religion. I
spent three years in the library studying religions to see which
one convinced me the most. And in that way I found crude
materialism first, then the socialist dialectic materialism of
Kautsky until I finally came to Marxism, properly^.9
One night after a political meeting at the warehouse,
Revueltas had a revelation: he would devote his life to the
cause of socialism. He had fallen for redemption; for a cause
that promised, in one or two generations, nothing less than
Bworldly salvation, the destruction of the valley of tears^ and
the construction of the BCity of Man^.10 He was enraptured by
this vision. Getting a job, providing for his mother and sisters,
was no longer important for him. His main objective in life
would be to fight exploitation and capitalism. He actively
sought to become a member of the communist party but at
first he was refused admittance and so he became a member
of a related organization, the International Red Aid (IRA),until
the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) finally opened its doors
to him in 1929, just when the PCM became an illegal
organization.
On José Revueltas’ 15th birthday, anniversary of the
Mexican Revolution, the Communist Party staged a demon-
stration in the main square (zócalo) of Mexico City. A red flag
was flown in the main flag pole of the plaza. The government
responded harshly. Revueltas was not at the demonstration,
but at a political rally elsewhere. All the same, he was
apprehended among other militants. Because of his young
age he was sent to a reformatory. Thus started the first of his
8
Álvaro Ruiz Abreu, José Revueltas: los muros de la utopía (Mexico: Cal y
Arena/UAM Xochimilco, 1992), 47–60.
9
Elena Poniatowska, BVivir dignamente en la zozobra^, in Revueltas and
Cheron, Conversaciones, pp. 140–41.
10
Abreu, Muros de la utopía, p. 55.
70
jail terms. He spent six months there. In juvenile detention
Revueltas Bfound solidarity among men of the same persua-
sion and the apathy, indifference and forgetfulness of every
human principle from those that had nothing to cling to^.11
When he was released he had proven himself to the leadership
of the PCM.
In 1931 Revueltas was again apprehended during a dem-
onstration and taken to the island penal colony of Islas Marías,
along with other comrades. He spent five months there. A few
years later, in 1934,Revueltas was arrested once more while
he participated in a strike of farm workers in Nuevo León. He
was twenty years old. This time he would spend ten months at
Islas Marías doing forced labor. He was freed in 1935 as a
result of the political amnesty of President Cárdenas. As a
result of these experiences Revueltas wrote his first novel,
Los murosdelaguain 1941.12
For the next 35 years José Revueltas would be a fixture of
the Mexican political and literary landscape. Both, his politics
and his literature would be contentious. His trademark was
dissent. In 1943 Revueltas published his first major novel,
El lutohumano, which won the Farrar & Rinehart prize to best
foreign novel. It was translated to three foreign languages. In
English the novel was translated as The Stone Knife.13The
novel depicts in Faulknerian terms a group of peasants strand-
ed after a flow. They forsake all hope and end up dying on the
top of a roof.
Revueltas was an unusual Marxist, because he was no op-
timist, particularly in his fiction. His characters, thieves, pros-
titutes, murderers and peasants are beyond redemption. They
are hopeless, abandoned to their gloomy fates. The characters
of the novel are plagued by feelings of guilt and eternal pun-
ishment. In all his fiction Revueltas deals with the Bdying
side^ (el ladomoridor) of his characters.14 His literature was
often described as Bexistential^, although he often denied the
charge. Octavio Paz claimed that Revueltas Blived Marxism as
a Christian^, that is, as an experience of agony, doubt and
negation.15There were no happy endings in Revueltas’
fiction.16He rejected the uplifting moral teachings of standard
socialist realism, with its Manichean portrayal of good
workers overcoming evil capitalists. In Revueltas literature
not even the selfless communist is free of sin. Moral degrada-
tion is ubiquitous. As a result of this philosophical outlook, he
was often denounced, by his fellow communists, as a pessi-
mist, a reactionary, an existentialist. While these charges
11
Ibid. p. 65.
12
José Revueltas, Los muros de agua (Mexico: ERA, 1978)
13
José Revueltas, The Stone Knife: a novel (translated by H. R. Hayes) (New
York: Reynal& Hitchcock, 1947)
14
Onthissee: Evodio Escalante, José Revueltas: unaliteratura ‘del lado
moridor’ (Mexico: Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, 1990)
15
Octavio Paz, México en la obra de Octavio Paz (Mexico, Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 1987) p. 575.
16
José Revueltas, Los errores (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1964)
Soc (2018) 55:68–77
might be excessive it is true that Revueltas was an unorthodox
Marxist. He put suffering in a prominent place on his philo-
sophical outlook. Some experts claim that this perspective is
fully consistent with the writings of the Byoung^ Marx in his
1844 Manuscripts, a work that Revueltas avidly read early in
his life.17 Yet, his regard for the place of suffering, as some-
thing not to be overcome, but preserved, seems to be truly
alien to the enlightened nature of Marxism. A year before his
dead he told some interviewers: Bcivilization has been created
to fight against suffering. In contrast, culture, by its very na-
ture, tends to suffering… a true man, that is, a man that con-
tinuously recreates life and enlarges it, not only in the biolog-
ical sense but also in its spiritual and moral sense, will never
give up, as Dostoyevsky asserted, genuine suffering and there-
fore will never be able to free himself from destruction and
chaos. In other words, he does not give up on becoming a
passionate and terrifying conscience of the infinite^.18
At times Revueltas sounded like the Savage in Aldous
Huxley’s Brave New World, who claimed the right to be
unhappy. As the Savage, the Mexican writer criticized the
desire of the modern world of Bgetting rid of everything un-
pleasant instead of learning to put up with it^. Inspired by
Dostoyevsky, José Revueltas claimed, as the Savage did, the
right to suffer. Alas, the Savage claimed the right Bto grow old
and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer;
the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right
to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to- mor-
row; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by
unspeakable pains of every kind.^.19
It is no wonder that many of Revueltas’ fellow travelers
were taken aback by this vindication of suffering. It was very
Christian, but not very Marxist. Theodor Adorno, a Marxist of
the Frankfurt School, was likewise critical of Huxley, (who
was not a Marxist)and claimed that the author of Brave New
World harbored a reactionary admiration for the world of the
Savage. One could contend that Revueltas, as Huxley,
disowned the humanist promise of civilization. Adorno
claimed that in Huxley the exaltation of suffering was not
merely a trait of irreducible individualism, but an appeal to a
Christian metaphysics that allow for salvation only in the af-
terlife and then only in exchange of suffering.20But in
17
Jorge Fuentes Morúa, José Revueltas. Una biografía intelectual (Mexico
UAM-Iztapalapa, /Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2001) pp. 153–325.
18
RomanSamsel and KrystynaRodowska, BCharla con José Revueltas^, in
Revueltas and Cheron, Conversaciones, p.160. B…un verdadero hombre, es
decir, un hombre que constantemente sigue recreando la vida y la prolonga, no
sólo en el sentido físico, sino también espiritual y moral, jamás renuncia –
como decía Dostoievski—a un auténtico sufrimiento; por consiguiente, nunca
podrá librarse de la destrucción y el caos. En otras palabras no desiste de ser
una apasionada y terrorífica conciencia del infinito^.
19
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World(London: Chatto&Windus, 1932)
20
Theodor Adorno, BPrólogo^, AldusHuxley, Un mundo feliz. Retorno a un
mundo feliz (Mexico: Porrúa, 1998) p. xx.
Soc (2018) 55:68–77
Revueltas world there would be no after life and no eternal
salvation.
The same year El lutohumano was published (1943)
Revueltas was expelled from the PCM. He collided with the
leadership over both, practical and theoretical issues. While he
was a convinced Leninisthe was nonetheless not able to ad-
here to the strict discipline of the party. He never renounced
his right to exercise free speech and Bcriticism^ in all sorts of
matters. Therefore, he criticized the lack of autonomy of the
PCM from Moscow.
In 1949 politics and literature clashed when Revueltas pub-
lished his third novel, Los díasterrenales.21In this novel
Revueltas sharply criticized his former communist friends.
The communist characters have given up their faith on re-
demption. They no longer believed in the bright future prom-
ised by soviet socialism, and they rebelled against all hope.22
They were moved by base passions and dogmas. The reaction
of the communist establishment against Revueltas was swift
and brutal. Several critics charged that Revueltas’ fiction den-
igrated human beings in general and slandered the communist
comrades in particular. His novels, charged the communist
critic Ramírez y Ramírez, Bpresent a dark and closed outlook,
without any possibility of change, portray communists as ab-
ject beings^. Such was the work of existentialism, a decadent
philosophy, employed by Bthe merchants of war to poison the
masses and crush every fighting spirit^.23 Some critics
contended that while Revueltas might have won as an artist
he had lost himself as a man and as a revolutionary. By Bat-
tributing physical and moral misery to the human condition
and not to certain historical circumstances, Pepe (José) not
only betrays his people, his old theories, his old comrades.
Pepe betrays his family name and betrays his brother,
Silvestre^.24 It was a low blow.
Revueltas was deeply moved by these attacks. As a re-
sponse he issued a full blown apology and withdrew Los
díasterrenales and a related play, El cuadrante de la soledad,
from circulation. He felt deeply depressed by the condemna-
tion his novel had suffered. While he was no longer an active
member of the PCM, he felt excommunicated from a religion
in which he stilled believed wholeheartedly. In 1954, after five
years, Revueltas wrote an extensive mea culpa and requested
to be readmitted into the PCM, a kind of Bcommunist church^.
He claimed that a writer was Bnot only made by his work, but
also, and most importantly, by his thoughts, even if these
thoughts are never put down in paper; by his spiritual attitude,
even if this attitude never turns into books. For me, a writer is
21
José Revueltas, Los días terrenales (Mexico: ERA, 1973)
22
Abreu, Muros de la utopía, pp. 235
23
Ibid.pp. 226–28.
24
Revueltas’ brother, Silvestre, was also a committed communist. This criti-
cism was particularly insidious since José Revueltas cherished his elder broth-
er. Ibid. p. 230.
71
above all a moral fact, an ethical problem^.25Revueltas
claimed that most of his books were communist-safe, and only
a couple of them were infected by the virus a bourgeois dec-
adent philosophy. Regarding his novel Los díasterrenales,
Revueltas asserted that this fiction partook from the negative
stand, anti-dialectical and anti-Marxist, of considering man as
a being without end or purpose on earth whatsoever. He ac-
knowledged that his novel was populated by abject,
dehumanized, extravagant, morally and physically ill, charac-
ters for which there was no escape beyond suicide. BIt is log-
ical^, he acknowledged, Bthat such a novel has a demoralizing
effect and that…it tends to disarm the proletariat, to slander
the communists and to preach the dissolution and bankruptcy
of all values^.26One wonders how a novel as dense and com-
plex as Los díasterrenales Bdisarmed the proletariat^. In any
case, his apologies were accepted and in 1956 comrade
Revueltas was readmitted once more into the bosom of the
PCM.
Six years after Revueltas reentered the Mexican
Communist Party he was again expelled, this time for good.
In the wake of the railroad workers strike of 1959, he had
argued that the Communist Party was not, in fact, the Borga-
nized conscience of the proletariat^. According to Revueltas
the PCM had turned its back on the workers. He then went on
to build in 1960 a new party, the Liga Leninista Espartaco,
along with some of his dissident friends. However, soon
enough Revueltas found himself at odds with the organization
he had founded. His published opinions on international pol-
itics were harshly criticized by his comrades of the Liga and
he was expelled from this organization in 1963.27
Five years later Revueltas found a new cause, (or a new
cause found him): the student movement. By that time his
second marriage had failed and he was nearly destitute, living
with friends. In 1964 he published his last major novel, Los
errores, where he finally acknowledged the crimes of the
25
BEl escritor no está hecho, no está formado, tan sólo por lo que su obra es,
sino también –¿o diré fundamentalmente?—por su pensamiento, aunque no
llegue a escribirse; por su actitud espiritual, aunque ésta no llegue a convertirse
en libros. Para mí, el escritor es ante todo un hecho moral, un problema de
ética…^ José Revueltas, BCarta al Comité Central del Partido Comunista
Mexicano^, Escritos políticos I. (El fracaso histórico del partido comunista
en México) (Mexico: ERA, 1984), p. 86.
26
BLos días terrenales parten de una consideración negativa, anti dialéctica,
antimarxista, que es la de considerar al hombre como un ser sin finalidad
alguna sobre la tierra. Los días terrenales juzgan al hombre valiéndose de la
misma medida con que se juzgan los demás fenómenos de la naturaleza, es
decir, como si el hombre fuera una entidad inconsciente. Aquí radica el error
básico mecanicista, que me hizo caer de lleno en una filosofía reaccionaria y
pintar un mundo falso de seres abyectos, deshumanizados, extravagantes,
enfermos moral y físicamente, para quienes no hay ninguna salida, fuera del
suicidio. Es lógico que una novela semejante no tenga otro resultado que un
efecto desmoralizador y que no tienda –de igual modo que la literatura
decadente actual, que es inspirada por el imperialismo y sufragada por él—
sino a desarmar al proletariado, calumniar a los comunistas y a predicar la
disolución y quiebra de todos los valores^. Ibid. p. 91.
27
Abrau, Muros de la utopía, 348–350.
72
Stalinist era. One of his characters wonders if the XXth cen-
tury would be remembered as the century of the Moscow
Trials or the century of the October Revolution.28 Yet, he
believed that Stalin’s associates who had been put on trial
where, at heart, still true communists and that they were strug-
gling to save socialism from a tyrannical regime by exposing
the injustice they suffered with their indicting silence. Indeed,
in a way, Revueltas thought that they were willingly Bsacrific-
ing^ themselves for the cause of communism.29
In the 1968 student movement Revueltas found the social
and political energy that he believed the proletariat was lack-
ing. In 1971 he asserted: Bthe students represent the only ‘es-
cape of conscience’ in a country where for forty years thought
has been monopolized by a State that has repressed all oppo-
sition, be it Sinarquista, Enriquista, or Communist, with
blood^.30We believe, he added, Bthat when the proletariat lost
its independence, then its conscience reverted to the
University and now the University wishes that such con-
science reverts to the whole country^. Realizing that he had
a chance to further his ideals, he jumped right in and set camp
at the campus cafeteria, where he lectured, wrote manifestos
and strategized with the student leaders.31
Looking back, he asserted near the end of his life: BFor Me,
1968 was the most important revolutionary explosion I had
ever seen. When I analyzed its possibilities I told myself: you
have to be there through and through. And you have to fight,
because this is the rebirth of a new Mexico, that you need to
support with all your soul^.32 When the government cracked
at the movement and killed a number of students at the
Tlatelolco Square on October 2, 1968 he knew that soon he
would be put in jail. When he was arrested and taken to the
Lecumberri prison he was already a very well-known writer
and public figure. He took upon himself the full responsibility
of the student movement to spare the students from jail. Of
Revueltas jail terms that last one proved to be the longest:
30 months. When he was set free, after an amnesty, he was a
28
José Revueltas, Los errores (Mexico: FCE, 1964)
29
For a critique of Revueltas’ interpretation of the Moscow Trials, see:
Christopher Domínguez Michael, BJosé Revueltas BLepra y utopía^, in Tiros
en el concierto. Literatura mexicana del siglo V (México, ERA, 1997)pp. 391–
394.
30
BNosotros creemos que al perder su independencia el proletariado, su
conciencia ha revertido a la Universidad, y es ahora la Universidad la que
desea que esa conciencia revierta en todo el país^. Raúl Torres Barrón, BUn
partido político de jóvenes, ilusorio^, in Revueltas and Cheron,
Conversaciones, 93. Sinarquistas or Cristeros were religious foes of the
Revolutionary Regime that waged a peasant war in the 1930’s in Central
Mexico. Enriquistas were followers of general Miguel Henríquez Guzmán, a
leftwing dissident member of the BRevolutionary Family^, who challenged the
official candidate Adolfo Ruiz Cortines of the PRIin the 1952 presidential
elections.
31
On Revueltas’ politicalwritingsrelated to thestudentmovement, see: José
Revueltas, México 68: juventud y revolución (Mexico: Era, 1978).
32
Ignacio Hernández, BJosé Revueltas: un balance existencial^, in Revueltas
and Cheron, Conversaciones^, p. 185.
Soc (2018) 55:68–77
hero to a the 1968 generation and, above all, a moral example.
Five years after his release he died from an illness related to
his alcoholism. By then the legend of José Revueltas was
firmly established.
A Critique of Selflessness
How can we make sense of Octavio Paz’s assertion that
Revueltas was the Bpurest man^ in Mexico? Had
Revueltas’ renounced communism, and not only Stalinism,
during his lifetime as Paz did, it would have been easier to
place him in the moral landscape of the Cold War. He did
not. While he became deeply skeptical of socialist parties in
general (and of the PCM in particular), and critical of the
USSR and other communist regimes, he considered himself
a Marxist and a Leninist until the end. Yet, he believed that
socialism had failed.
In 1971 he told an interviewer: Bpersonally I believe
that socialism has failed at a global scale. It has failed at
the human aspect, because of its bureaucratic excesses
and its statism. I believe that the historical experience
has fused two great failures: bourgeois democracy and
state socialism^. If both alternatives had failed, what
was left? BWe wish to distill a synthesis^, Revueltas ar-
gued, Bwe want a democratic and free socialism, without
gags. We care more for freedom and democracy than for
the socialization of the means of production. That is what
we wish for Mexico^. 3 3 The next year Revueltas
expressed doubts on the possibility of building a true par-
ty of the working class. In another interview he acknowl-
edged: Bthe attempts to create a party of the working class
have failed continuously. We have been striving at this
end for more than twenty years and yet we have failed.
Now we have to find new roads. It is impossible for a
single group to achieve this task. What is needed is a
broad based independent, socialist movement, separated
from all parties…^.
Revueltas recognized that the Leninist blueprint for the
construction of an avant-garde party had failed miserably in
Mexico. Yet, he had not given up on Revolution. He was
ambivalent regarding a democratic future. In 1972 he foresaw
a Btransitional^ stage in which new parties would emerge.
Such political openness would allow for leftists and Marxists
to form a Brevolutionary vanguard^ that would enjoy a better
suited environment to operate. For such reason, according to
Revueltas, the struggle to achieve a wide political democracy
and freedom of expression was instrumental. Freedom of ex-
pression and openness took place at the universities. BThat is
why my work is focused onthe universities. A purely
33
Barrón, BUn partido político^, p. 95.
Soc (2018) 55:68–77
theoretical work, if you will, but that can clear the way to-
wards ulterior practical action^.34
Revueltas, as George Orwell, always hoped that socialists
could be for freedom, even if socialism itself had bureaucratic
and authoritarian tendencies. Yet, unlike Orwell the Mexican
writer lacked the ability to clearly discern the ingrained tyran-
nical aspect of some of his most cherished theories and au-
thors. This is true of his unconditional admiration for Lenin
and Leninist theories. When Revueltas founded the Liga
Leninista Espartaco, he stated: BLeninist democracy, at first
in the party (and later in a classless society and in commu-
nism), signals the highest level that any democracy has
attained in the history of mankind. It is a qualitative
democracy, completely alien to quantitative democracy, that
sacrifices the rational process of knowledge to the mere opin-
ion (or the sum of opinions) of the majority^.35
Likewise, at the start of the Moscow Trials Revueltas was
in the Soviet Union but did not see what was taking place at
the time. Orwell, unlike Revueltas, claimed that Bsuch horrors
as the Russian purges never surprised me, because I had al-
ways felt that –not exactly that but something like that– was
implicit in Bolshevik rule^.36
Indeed, for many years Revueltas kept faith in the promise
of Breal existing^ socialism. Even after Stalinism. For a long
period of time he saw himself as a committed Cold War war-
rior. In 1957, a year after he was readmitted into the PCM,
Revueltas made a journey to the Soviet Union and several
countries of Eastern Europe. In Berlin, he visited the Central
Committee of the Communist Party. He was dazzled by the
organization and the discipline he found there.37Revueltas
wrote to his wife back home: BI love socialism with all my
soul!^. He even thought that what he saw there would some-
how cure him from his alcoholism: Btell my dear friends that I
drink no more, because in the USSR and in the popular de-
mocracies they gave me a medicine to stop me from drinking
ever again. Such medicine was to respect myself and to
34
BVeo una larga etapa de lucha ideológica en el terreno político que
desemboque en la organización de diferentes núcleos de ciudadanos en forma
de partidos. Esto nos permitirá a la gente de izquierda y a los marxistas integrar
la vanguardia revolucionaria, muy difícil dentro de la atmósfera que nos
agobia en el sistema político mexicano de hoy. Preveo una etapa de
transición que nos permitirá una acción política más libre. De ahí deduzco
ya la necesidad de luchar por una amplia democracia política y una libertad
de expresión cuyo instrumento radica, a mi juicio, principalmente en la lucha
que libran las universidades. Por eso mi trabajo se concentra en las
universidades. Un trabajo si tú quieres puramente teórico, pero que puede
despejar un tanto el camino hacia una acción práctica ulterior^. Moisés I.
Villafaña, BLa oposición vista por ella misma^, Sucesos para Todos,
September 8, 15 and 22, 1972, reproduced in José Revueltas, Escritos
políticos III (Mexico: ERA, 1984) pp. 244–247.
35
José Revueltas, BPlataforma de la Liga Leninista Espartaco sobre el
problema de la unidad con otros grupos marxistas revolucionarios^, in
Revueltas, Escritos políticos III, p. 47.
36
Orwell quoted by Christopher Hitchens, Why Orwell Matters (New York:
Basic Books, 2002) p. 59.
37
Abreu, Muros de la utopía, p. 285
73
believe in myself^. He was truly pleased with what he saw.
When he visited Hungary, a year had passed since the Soviet
Unionhad intervened in that country. He blamed such event on
the Hungarian Bfascists^ and the Bcounterrevolution^ that
forced the Soviet’s intervention. All in all, the actions of the
USSR had been fully justified.38
As many other leftists in Latin America, Revueltas wel-
comed the Cuban revolution. In 1967, when Che Guevara
was killed in the jungles of Bolivia, he wrote an article titled
BChe Guevara or the Confirmation of the Human Being in
Hope.^39The religious overtone is evident. He found in
Ernesto Guevara not only a political leader, but goodness itself
incarnated. He praised Guevara, chiefly, as a writer. He was Ba
hero who does not acknowledge himself as a hero^. For above
all things the legacy of the Che was his Btenderness^: there
was nothing Bnoble and beautiful that it is alien to
Che^.40Revueltas was well aware of Che’s bloody record as
executioner of the Cuban revolutionary regime, but still he
found him faultless.41 According to Revueltas, Che’s predic-
ament was truly tragic, in the classical sense: Bviolence is an
evil that man should accept as necessary, that has been im-
posed on him by the zoological circumstances of the actual
social existence.^42 Accordingly, Che Bdid not love violence
and death; but he did not shun them either. He accepted them
as a criminal conviction to be served with simplicity and with-
out insolence^.43 By doing so, Che was able to find the Bbright
spot in the human, a fleeting and dazzling moment, a promis-
sory hint, with which both the example of his life and the
greatness of his death, reaffirmed the belief of Man in his
inevitable victory^.44 Deeply moved, Revueltas recalled the
first days of the Revolution in Cuba. He looked back on the
Bincredible kindness of Fidel, perhaps his most striking trait
among all his virtues and defects^ and the Bmoving tenderness
38
Ibid, pp. 287–289. Onthissee: José Revueltas, BCarta de Budapest a los
escritores comunistas^, in José Revueltas, Cuestionamientos e intenciones
(Mexico: ERA, 1984) pp. 71–76.
39
José Revueltas, BEl Che Guevara o de la confirmación del ser humano en la
esperanza^, Época, num. 28, 15 de noviembre 1967, pp. 44–77, in José
Revueltas, Visión del Paricutín (y otras crónicas y reseñas) (Mexico: ERA,
1983), 175–179.
40
BNo hay nada que sea noble y hermoso que pueda ser ajeno al Che^. Ibid. p.
175
41
For an unembellished account of Che Guevara see: Jorge G. Castañeda,
Compañero. The Life and Death of Che Guevara (New York: Vintage, 1998).
42
BEra en este tono mayor, a nivel de la tragedia clásica, como el Che asumía
la realidad de la literatura y de la vida, indiscutibles ambas: la violencia es un
mal que el hombre ha de aceptar como necesario y que se le ha impuesto por
las circunstancias zoológicas que aún reviste la existencia social^ . Revueltas,
BEl Che Guevara^, p, 175.
43
BNo amaba la violencia ni la muerte; no las rehuía tampoco. Las aceptaba
como una condena que debe cumplir con sencillez y sin desplantes^. Ibid. p.
176.
44
BEl Che supo cumplir su amada sentencia y supo encontrar, en medio de las
contradicciones históricas, ese punto luminoso de lo humano, ese detalle fugaz
y deslumbrante, ese indicio promisorio con los que el ejemplo de su vida y la
grandeza de su muerte, reafirmaron la convicción del hombre en su victoria
inevitable^. Idem.
74
of the Che^. Both leaders were a moral example to Revueltas,
because they were Bsimple, real and authentic human beings.^
He was touched by Bthe beautiful spirit of the Cuban revolu-
tionaries and their leaders, the frank and straight honesty of
their methods, their sincere love for truth and, that, that, how
kind they are^. All in all, the Blight of the Cuban revolution
raises over the darkness of our times^.45 For Cuba became
Bthe center of gravity of the historical universal struggle for
the rescue and validity of proletarian internationalism, of the
realization and creative observance of Marxism-Leninism, of
a return to Lenin and to the political principles of a class party
of the workers, of the restitution of the principles of the inter-
national proletarian revolution^..46
To be sure, Revueltas changed his views over time. He
came to realize, as we have seen, that real existing socialism
was a failure and disowned many of his previous assessments.
He came to regret some of the Bnecessary^ violence he had
justified in the 1950’s. Particularly, he revisited his early belief
on the justice of the Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956. In
1964 Revueltas dedicated his novel Los erroresto the
Hungarian leader Imre Nagy, one of those Bfascists^ he had
previously condemned and who had died at the hands of the
Russians invaders. He explained his reasons in an article.
Nagy might have been mistaken, Revueltas now argued, but
that did not warrant his execution, since he was a loyal and
honest communist. Thus, the Mexican writer dedicated his
book to the memory of all the communists Bthat never
betrayed the cause of the proletarians, but that have suffered
a vile and unjust death for the last atrocious decades when
dogmatism and the inquisitorial clergy of the bureaucracy
prevailed over truth, reason and the critical examination
among comrades^. Revueltas concluded that Bsocialism and
communism must stand on their own essence, on the principle
of the utmost respect of the dignity of the human being.
Otherwise, even in a world where private property and the
exploitation of man by man have been abolished, history will
not have been realized^.47 His former friends from the Liga
Leninista Espartaco thought that Revueltas had gone soft on
violence and attacked him on their leaflet Hoja Proletaria.
BBy wishing violence away^, they charged, Bwe will not be
abolishing violence for good from the surface of the earth^.48
Likewise, while he never turned his back on Cuba, as many
other leftist intellectuals did in the early 1970’s, Revueltas
45
Ibid. pp. 178–179.
46
Likewise, Cuba Bproved and will prove that the historical bankruptcy of the
communist parties is not the bankruptcy of Marxism-Leninism, but that from
this crisis it will rise more potent, more combative, more resolved and more
effective to accomplish its historic tasks^.José Revueltas, BLa ‘guerra fría’
entre las potencias socialistas: parte del contexto de la tercera guerra mundial^,
José Revueltas, Escritos políticos III (Mexico: ERA, 1984) pp. 201–211. The
article is dated July 1967.
47
José Revueltas, BCrónicas sincrónicas^, El Día, January 25, 1964, in
Revueltas, Escritos políticos III, pp. 66–168.
48
Andrea Revueltas and Philippe Cheron, in Ibid. pp. 280–281.
Soc (2018) 55:68–77
kept a critical stance towards some of the repressive actions
of the Castro regime. For instance, he joined Mario Vargas
Llosa, Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes and several other prominent
Latin American writers in condemning the Cuban government
persecution of the poet Heberto Padilla in 1971.49
At the end of his life, and as a result of his own political
experiences, Revueltas came to value highly the unrestrained
freedom to express critical opinions. He therefore came out in
the defense of Jewish minorities in the USSR. When asked
why he had supported the poet Heberto Padilla against the
Bkindness^ of the Cuban government, Revueltas gave this
explanation: BI will always fight for liberty and free thinking
in any country be it socialist or capitalist. I thought that the
attitude of the Cuban government towards Heberto Padilla
was exaggerated and I protested from prison, so it can’t be
said that I was a counterrevolutionary. They brought me the
poem of Heberto Padilla and I did not find anything on it; the
only thing that I found there was authentic pessimism.^50
To be sure, Revueltas had ambivalent ideas regarding the
use of violence until the last years of his life. As a committed
revolutionary, it could hardly have been otherwise. In
June 1971, a month after he was released from prison, he gave
an interview. When asked if he considered the inmates who
had been arrested with possession of weapons and who had
the intent to start an armed revolt as political prisoners,
Revueltas answered unambiguously: BWe believe that vio-
lence is also, in many instances, a political weapon, even if
it breaks a legalist order^.51 When queried about his opinion
of the administration of the then President Luis Echeverría,
Revueltas stated, paraphrasing Marx, that Ba real critical posi-
tion face to face the government entails its negation. To negate
it with the arms of criticism until the time comes for the crit-
icism by the weapons^.52 Such statement triggered and an-
gered response by Octavio Paz, the man who a year earlier
had called Revueltas the Bpurest man^ in Mexico. Paz argued
that the revolutionary alternative in Mexico was Bchimerical^.
The poet chided Revueltas: Btoo much mental and moral flip-
pancy is needed to say, now a days, that it is necessary to
employ ‘the arms of criticism until the time comes for criti-
cism by the weapons’^.53
49
In 1971 the Cuban poet Heberto Padilla was put in prison for his political
criticism of the Revolution. He was forced to issue a public retraction, Moscow
Trials style, of his political views. This action put an end to the romance
between many progressive artists and the Cuban regime.
50
At the time the Padilla affair broke out Revueltas was still jailed at the
Lecumberriprison. Poniatowska, BSi luchas^, in Revueltas and Cheron,
Conversaciones, p. 205.
51
BNosotros creemos que la violencia es también, en muchos casos, un arma
política, así incurra en infracciones de un orden legalista^. Torres, BUn partido
político^, in Revueltas and Cheron, Conversaciones, p. 92.
52
Raúl Torres, BUn partido político^, in Revueltas and Cheron,
Conversaciones, p. 93.
53
Octavio Paz, BParches, remiendos, reformas. Entre el silencio y el grito^,
Excélsior June 29, 1971.
Soc (2018) 55:68–77
Revueltas’ support of armed revolution in Mexico, howev-
er, was a matter of abstract reasoning or posturing. For a rev-
olutionary, of course, Revolution, as a matter of principle, is a
good thing everywhere, if it is possible. Yet, he knew very
well that the necessary conditions for an armed struggled did
not exist in the country. When asked if the time had come for
the Bcriticism of the weapons^, Revueltas answered: Bthere are
no conditions. I believe that in a long time there will not be a
revolution^. The reason of this was that there were no poten-
tially revolutionary forces available. The National University
was, at the time, Bthe only one capable of catalyzing those
forces and of bringing those demands and aspirations to the
fore, but neither the students or the intellectuals want to orga-
nize or lead the workers^.54
Some of the protesters of 1968 concluded after the violent
government crackdown of the student movement that there
was no other way than guerrilla warfare. Some groups decided
to rob banks and kidnap business men to fund their struggles.
In 1972, when queried about these activities, Revueltas openly
criticized these Bultra-leftists^ and argued that such activities
led nowhere.55
Redeeming the Redeemer?
What is alive today in José Revueltas’ legacy? Is his moral
voice still relevant for the problems people face in Latin
America and the rest of the world? Perhaps it is tempting to
think of Revueltas’ as the voice of the vanquished. The proud
voice of resistance and dignity. Probably that vision would
have pleased him. Yet, I believe that Revueltas is relevant
for other reasons. He was a man of principle, pure as Paz
had it. Revueltas was willing to sacrifice his wellbeing (and
the wellbeing of his family) for his political ideas. BI love^, he
stated Bthe human being above all things. I consider it a value
that has been created through history, the most important value
that we have on earth^.56It was a matter of philosophical and
moral consistency: Bif you fight for freedom you have to be a
prisoner, if you fight for food you must feel hunger^. His
second wife asserted about him: Bthe social state of affairs
was for Revueltas a constant preoccupation. We could almost
say a torment. His desperation almost reached mystical levels;
the misery and exploitation of the workers tore him and he
suffered to extremes since he was unable to change that real-
ity^.57 It is hard not to feel admiration for the moral integrity of
José Revueltas. In a political world of egoism and opportun-
ism, where selfishness prevails, Revueltas is certainly an at-
tractive example and a beacon to many.He devoted his life to a
54
Ibid. p. 94.
55
Revueltas, Escritos políticos III, p. 246.
56
Poniatowska, BSi luchas^, in Revueltas and Cheron, Conversaciones, p. 203
57
Abreu, Muros de la utopía, p. 217
75
cause that he deemed just. In this sense Revueltas’ life consti-
tutes a lesson in rightful indignation. His selflessness is
sobering.
To be sure, this attitude is not without problems. For one,
while acknowledging his responsibility to humanity he often
disregarded his most direct responsibilities to his children and
wife (and former wives). Fully immersed in his political and
literary quests he seldom provided enough money to support
his own family. Maria Teresa Retes, his second wife, asserted:
BHe could not stay still; he was a man alien to family respon-
sibilities. If he [Revueltas] set a goal he achieved it even if that
meant going over the dead body of his son, of his wife, or of
his marriage^.58 He always felt guilty for this inability to be a
good provider. One does not need sharing the ideological out-
look of a conservative critic, such as Paul Johnson, to agree
with him that the way intellectuals live their private lives is
relevant to assess them morally.59Secondly, there is something
troubling with the idea that pain and suffering are necessary
for the artist and the political activist. Revueltas believed that
it was necessary to live an exalted life, in anguish and he
rejected the comforts of bourgeois’ life. As Abreu claims,
for Revueltas living really meant the process of dying.60 In a
way he was enamored of the Bdying side^ of life. And there is
something morbid about it.
While Revueltas raved about el Che, I claim that if he is a
moral example today it is because his actions resembled more
closely those of Gandhi than of Castro. He can be admired by
observers fully alien to his Marxist ideological perspective be-
cause while he held steadfastly to his political convictions, to the
extent of suffering persecution, he did not kill anyone, did not
plant bombs and did not succumb to the sirens of guerrilla
warfare.61He was not a violent man. He is an example of moral
rectitude. All his criminal convictions were wrongful. He was
jailed unjustly, every time, right from juvenile detention when he
was a teenager up to Lecumberri prison when he was sixty. He
was a true prisoner of conscience; jailed for his political ideas. In
prison he always maintained an exemplary dignity. In 1968 he
was charged with ten unlikely offenses: sedition, theft, homicide,
etc. Revueltas jokingly asked about these charges: Bhow can a
writer rob? How does he hoard weapons? Only by writing. It is
forbidden to be a writer, it is a crime to be a writer because [by
writing] palaces are sunken and cathedrals are overthrown
58
BNo podía estar tranquilo; era un hombre ajeno a la responsabilidad familiar.
Si él se trazaba una meta la cumplía, aunque pasara sobre el cadáver de su hijo,
de su mujer, de su matrimonio^. Ibid. p. 280
59
Paul Johnson, Intellectuals (New York: Harper, 2007)
60
Ibid. pp. 320–21.BLa muerte para mi es una cuestión completamente íntima
y próxima. No me importaría morir en este instante… la muerte no me interesa
en lo absoluto, es una sensación natural y te puedo decir que en cierto modo la
amo^, and Bamar la vida es una canallada^. Vicente Francisco Torres, BLa
muerte es un problema secundario^, in Revueltas and Cheron,
Conversaciones, pp. 138–9.
61
Solares, BLa verdad^, in Revueltas and Cheron, Conversaciones, p. 129 .
B… desde hace tiempo la guerrilla no es ninguna solución^. (1974).
76
without breaking any constitutional norm^.62As Revueltas him-
self acknowledged when he was set free from jail at last: Bour
freedom was as illegal as our prison sentence^.
Revueltas, unlike the Zapatista Subcommander Marcos, nev-
er hid his face and never sent anyone to his death. José Revueltas
has a powerful moral voice in this century because he was a
supporter of the idea of the Revolution but did not attempt to
carry it out. Not that he did not want. But he realized its practical
impossibility. In the end, this impossibility became a virtue.
Thus, Jaime Labastida was perfectly wrong when he argued that
Revueltas’ life was a lesson in Brevolutionary conduct^.
Revueltas’ voice is relevant today, in spite of the downfall
of Marxist theory because his existential pessimism did not go
down along with the Berlin Wall. What is not truly Marxist in
Revueltas fiction lives on: a disenchanted view of human life,
a sobering reminder that there are no happy endings, that man
Bhas no other ultimate end than his own disappearance. The
history of humanity is nothing else than the attempt of man-
kind of surviving itself^.63
More importantly, José Revueltas lives on as a staunch
defender of freedom of expression. He defended his free
speech rights with the utmost fervor. It was only logical that
he would run into trouble with the political organizations to
which he belonged throughout his life. In spite of what he
wanted to believe, all of these groups were inimical to indi-
vidual freedom. BA critical spirit^, Revueltas claimed, Bdoes
not submit to the flock of any ideology^.64 Likewise, Bthe
suppression of liberty is the most serious crime in a class
society^.65 According to Revueltas, a society without freedom
is nothing but Bpure animalism^.66 Liberty Bmust be unre-
stricted in a socialist or capitalist regime^. Liberty was an
intrinsic trait of human personality.67 The abolition of freedom
entailed the suppression of human personality itself.
In 2005 the Argentinean Claudia Hilb, a former leftist and
supporter of armed revolution, asked: Bwhat would have hap-
pened if we had won instead of being defeated in the
70’s?^68The Cuban Revolution was a mirror where one could
62
Mercedes Padrés, BJosé Revueltas, el escritor y el hombre^, in Revueltas
and Cheron, Conversaciones, p. 59.
63
Gustavo Sainz, BPara mí las rejas de la cárcel son las rejas del país y del
mundo^, in Revueltas and Cheron, Conversaciones, p. 194.
64
Poniatowska, BSi luchas^ in Revueltas and Cheron, Conversaciones, p. 205.
65
Gustavo Sainz, BUn hechicero consumado, un brujo de la palabra^ in
Revueltas and Cheron, Conversaciones, p. 109.
66
Margarita Flores, BLa libertad como conocimiento y transformación^, in
Revueltas and Cheron, Conversaciones, p. 74.
67
BLa libertad debe ser irrestricta en un régimen socialista o capitalista…
tenemos que estar alerta respecto a esa libertad irrestricta que debe existir,
porque la libertad no es libertinaje. Es un en sí de la personalidad humana.
Si acabamos con ese en sí, acabamos con la personalidad humana misma, tanto
en el capitalismo como en el socialismo^.
68
Claudia Hilb, BMoldeando la arcilla humana^, in Usos del pasado. Qué
hacemos hoy con los setenta (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2013).Ponencia
presentada al Encuentro Internacional Política y Violencia, Córdoba, 3 y 4
de noviembre, 2005.http://www.clubsocialista.com.ar/scripts/leer.php?
seccion=otras_publicaciones&archivo=15
Soc (2018) 55:68–77
contemplate such possibility. BI believe that in the fate of the
Cuban Revolution it is manifestly clear that what we hoped
for, a radically egalitarian society, could have only been im-
posed under the form of a totalitarian regime, under a regime
of terror^.69 An she adds, Brevolutionary asceticism, often
times tightly cultivated by the members of armed organiza-
tions in the 60’s and 70’s, an asceticism whose emblematic
image was Che Guevara, was inseparable of the ideal of the
New Man: a generic man who expressed the highest human
capacities, who transcended egoism and individualism and
who found the highest happiness in his devotion to the
Common Good. Strange figure, terrible figure, that of the
modern revolutionary ascetic, who instead of removing him-
self from the world, as the Stoic, intends to act upon it to mold
it on his own form and shape. In order to do so, however, he
must make men, either by conviction or by force, to become
what they ought to become: new men. Not all revolutionary
militants were revolutionary ascetics, although some of them
came close without a doubt, but the redeemer’s discourse of
revolutionary asceticism and of the transformation of man in
the New Man provided the framework that enabled and justi-
fied the project of molding human clay, of molding the clay
and discarding the unusable material^.70
What would have happened if Revueltas had succeeded? If
his cherished Revolution, his life’ s work, had triumphed in
Mexico as it did in Cuba? Revueltas already had an answer.
He would have been in the opposition.71And it is very likely
that he would have followed the steps of Heberto Padilla. But
would he have realized, as Claudia Hilb, that he had helped to
bring about a totalitarian regime? Would he have owned such
responsibility? It is not clear because he was too enamored of
the idea of the Revolution.72 Yet, all his instincts led him away
from the real world materializations of his dearest ideals: the
PCM, (and all communist parties and groups), the USSR, etc.
69
Ibid. BCreo que, en el destino de la Revolución Cubana, se pone de
manifiesto de una manera especialmente flagrante que aquello que
anhelábamos –una sociedad radicalmente igualitaria- sólo podía imponerse
bajo la forma de un régimen totalitario, bajo un régimen de terror.^
70
No todos los militantes revolucionarios fueron, de hecho, ascetas
revolucionarios –aunque sin duda algunos estuvieran cerca de serlo. Pero el
discurso redentista del ascetismo revolucionario y de la transformación del
hombre en hombre nuevo brindó el horizonte que hacía pensable y justificable
el proyecto de moldear la arcilla humana –de moldear la arcilla, y de descartar
el material inservible.
71
BYo, en lo personal, no sólo sería un oposicionista en este régimen, sino
también en un país socialista, porque la tarea del pensamiento es la crítica de la
realidad, para lograr su perfeccionamiento^. Torres, BUn partido político^, in
Revueltas and Cheron, Conversaciones, p. 94.
72
Even if in the last years of his life the term Brevolution^ had taken a wide
and diffuse meaning. In 1975 Revueltas stated that: Bby revolution I under-
stand the participation of everyone in the creation of values, in the fight for the
definition of culture… Man can not be transformed solely through a social
revolution. The revolution needs to be a spiritual and cultural revolution.^
Samsel and Rodowska, BCharla con Revueltas^, in Revueltas and Cheron,
Conversaciones, p. 162
Soc (2018) 55:68–77
Perhaps, had he lived 15 more years. Yet, until the end
Revueltas was an undefiled epigone of an illusion.
Further Reading
Abreu, Á. R. 1992. José Revueltas: los muros de la utopía. Mexico:Cal y
Arena/UAM Xochimilco.
Escalante, E. 1990. José Revueltas: una literatura ‘del lado moridor’.
Mexico:Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas.
Michael, C. D. 1997. José Revueltas BLepra y utopía^. In Tiros en el
concierto. Literatura mexicana del siglo V (pp. 391–394). México:
ERA.
Morúa, J. F. 2001. José Revueltas. Una biografía intelectual. Mexico
UAM-Iztapalapa, /Miguel Ángel Porrúa.
Revueltas, A., & Cheron, P. (Eds.) 2001. Conversaciones con José
Revueltas. Mexico:ERA.
José Antonio Aguilar Rivera (Ph.D. Political Science, University of
Chicago) is professor of political science at the División de Estudios
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Políticos, CIDE (Mexico City). He has been a visiting fellow at the
Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame,
and the Institute for Advanced Studies, Warwick University, and a visit-
ing scholar at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, as
well as a Fulbright Scholar. He is the author of, among other books: El
sonido y la furia. La persuasión multicultural en México y Estados
Unidos (Taurus, 2004); En pos de la quimera: reflexiones sobre el
experimento constitucional atlántico (Fondo de Cultura Económica,
2000); La geometría y el mito. Un ensayo sobre la libertad y el
liberalismo en México, 1821–1970 (Fondo de Cultura Económica,
2010); and Ausentes del Universo. Reflexiones sobre el pensamiento
político hispanoamericano en la era de la construcción nacional,
1821–1850 (Fondo de Cultura Económica/CIDE, 2012). He is the editor
of Liberty in Mexico: Writings on Liberalism from the Early Republican
Period to the Second Half of the Twentieth Century (Liberty Fund, 2012)
and Aire en libertad. Octavio Paz y la crítica, (FCE, 2015). He has
authored articles in: the Journal of Latin American Studies, Historia
Mexicana, Revista de Occidente, and Cardozo Law Review, among
others. He publishes regularly in Nexos, a leading Mexican intellectual
magazine. The author wishes to thank Christopher Domínguez Michael
for his help in researching this essay, as well as the assistance of Esteban
González.