Mesoamerican writing
In South America, literature certainly didn't start being written until the arrival of the conquistadors. In fact, several pre-colonial societies already had their own systems long before the Spanish invasion. The oldest epigraphic evidence dates back to the Olmec period, around 900 BC, making Mexico one of the first places in the world to have developed writing. The true initiators of Mesoamerican civilization, the Olmecs are said to have influenced the expansion of Mayan, Aztec (or Nahuatl) and then Zapotec culture, thanks to their system of glyphs that enabled the dissemination of their cosmogonic narrative. These characters were represented on stone tablets, animal skin and amate paper made from plant fibers such as ficus bark, maguey fiber or cotton. What's more, the emergence of codexes (manuscripts made from sheets sewn together) led to an increase in the number of administrative (tributes, cadastres or censuses), historical and religious documents. As a result, copyists, considered as superior beings, paid no taxes to the State, so highly was the value of this sacred work esteemed.
On the other hand, the majority of Mesoamerican codices were unfortunately destroyed during the conquest (only four remain today, one of which can be admired at the National Museum of Anthropology). The most famous of these, the Codex Mendoza, preserved in Oxford University's Bodley Library, was transcribed for Spanish King Charles V in 1542, so that he could witness the victory of the Spanish empire and the priceless treasures it had recovered. The American novelist Gary Jennings (1928-1999) drew inspiration from this to write Azteca (published by Le Livre de Poche), a fascinating novel about the fall of Aztec civilization and the shattering arrival of the conquistadors. Whatever the case, pre-Columbian writing played a major role in structuring pre-colonial society, legitimizing the power and intervention of the intellectual and aristocratic elite.
Collision between two worlds
The priceless cultural heritage that the Mesoamerican peoples bequeathed was soon crushed by the arrival of the first settlers in America. The set of pre-Columbian works went in a completely different direction when Cortés' troops landed in Yucantán in 1519. From that moment on, all the manuscripts, registers and other historical accounts took a tragic turn. The shocking testimonies of the natives and the Spaniards about the conquest were reported in several accounts, both fictional and real. These include The Conquest of Mexico, written by none other than Hernan Cortes himself, and the Histoire véridique de la conquête de la Nouvelle-Espagne by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, the close friend of the emperor Moctezuma (2007 and 2009, published by La Découverte). Also worth mentioning is the book The Conquest of Mexico by Hugh Thomas (2011, Bouquins edition), the short stories by Carlos Fuentes and the novel Malinche by Laura Esquivel (2006, Alfaguara Santillana edition), which traces the fabulous biographical story of Doña Marina. In 1519, this woman of Nahua origin was offered to Hernán Cortès with whom she had a son. However, her role was not limited to that of mistress, since she soon became the interpreter and advisor of the Spanish army. Considered by some as an abominable traitor and by others as a skilful negotiator, she represents today the symbol of miscegenation and acculturation in Mexico. A second emblematic writer of New Spain literature is Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695), famous for her values of rebellion, access to knowledge and the struggle for women's equality (Octavio Paz even dedicated an essay to her in 1982 with the Fondo de Cultura Económica edition). The intersection of Spanish and indigenous ways of life did guide the thinking of New Spanish authors, but cultural assimilation remained a priority, at least for the Church. The latter encouraged the establishment of printing, which was seen as a means of providing the necessary tools for the conversion of the native peoples. Mexico City became the first city in the Americas to publish printed works, as early as 1539. It was the New World that inspired the first original works, such as the chronicles written by Fernando Alvarado Tezozómoc, grandson of an Aztec emperor, who wrote 110 chapters on the country's past and conquest, and Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl, who was interested in the Toltec civilization. Obviously, cultivating the memory does not prevent the production of a literary work. Antonio de Saavedra Guzmán with El Peregrino Indiano had the honor of composing the first poem of New Spain that was printed in Madrid (1559). This was followed by the famous poetic work of Bernardo de Balbuena (1562-1627), which was also critically acclaimed. Finally, fictional stories also quickly became part of the most popular literary representations, especially the publications of Juan Ruiz de Alarcón (1581-1639) and José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi (1776-1827).
Independence
Nevertheless, during the 18th century, production remained strongly influenced by the peninsula, and it was not until the early 19th century that what was to become a truly national literature took shape. In any case, its appearance coincided with the War of Independence (1810-1821) and the publication of a novel that is considered the first written in Latin America. Undoubtedly, the two are linked. A disgraced magistrate, José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi (1776-1827) took up journalism to support his family. It's tricky to interpret his political pirouettes retroactively, but we have to concede that the era was highly complex, and in no way simplified the publication of his work, which he had chosen to serialize as early as 1816. While he was certainly aware that publication would soon be interrupted by censorship - he didn't dare broach the subject of slavery - he had no doubt that his work would be published as a serial -he may not have guessed that the final episodes would not be delivered to readers until 1831, four years after his death. In El Periquillo Sarniento, he portrays the wanderings of Pedro Sarmiento in pursuit of a job that would enable him to earn a living. Bordering on the picaresque, this novel won over the masses and has been reprinted ever since.
Although it begins with the signing of the Act of Independence in 1822, the 19th century was not to be a peaceful one, as war followed one another, first against Spain, which attempted a final reconquest, then against the United States, which annexed Texas, and finally against France for financial reasons. By the time Porfirio Díaz took office in 1884, the country was on its last legs, and his presidency ended with a revolution that began in 1910 and lasted ten years. In a word, the century was hardly conducive to literature, although it did have one important work to its credit: Los Mexicanos pintados pos sí mismos. This collective work, published between 1854 and 1855, was inspired by what had been done elsewhere in Europe: authors - including Hilarión Frías y Soto (1831-1905) and Pantaleón Tovar (1828-1876) - questioned their national identity, thereby putting the figure of the mestizo back at the heart of the debate. When the authors were not religious, such as Anastasio Maria de Ocha y Acuña, whose Poesías de un Mexicano appeared in New York in 1828, they were involved in political circles, like the playwright and diplomat Manuel Eduardo de Gorostiza (1789-1851), the particularly prolific journalist and writer Manuel Payno Flores, or Florencio Maria de El Castillo (1828-1863), who added novellas to his responsibilities as a member of parliament, as did Ignacio Manuel Altamirano (1834-1893). Romanticism, introduced late in Mexico, was combined with realism and readily became studies of manners or historical novels, such as those written by Justo Sierra O'Reilly (1814-1861) or Vicente Riva Palacio (1832-1896). But the new century was to prove far more innovative.
Modernism and revolution
In 1894, two men decided to found a magazine, La Revista Azul, which was to revolutionize Mexican literature and become the mouthpiece of a new trend, modernism. The first was Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, born in Mexico City in 1859 and a surgeon in civilian life. However, it was literature that stirred his inner world from his earliest youth, and he wrote reviews, travel notes, poems and short stories, which were published in a collection in 1883 under the title El Duque. Using several pseudonyms in his journalistic career, Nájera was a true admirer of European authors, and dreamed of combining the inspiration of both continents in a single breath. At the end of his short life, which ended as a result of illness in 1895, his body was deposited in the French Pantheon in his home town. His colleague, Carlos Diaz Dufoo (1861-1941), was born in Veracruz but grew up in Spain. On his return to Mexico, he devoted himself to journalism and his own works: plays, essays, biographies and short stories. La Revista Azul didn't survive the year 1896, when the newspaper that hosted it disappeared, but in two years it published texts by around a hundred writers and just as many experiments, as well as translations by French authors. From 1898 to 1903, a second magazine took over, La Revista Moderna, whose pages welcomed a host of innovative writers of the day, including Luis Gonzaga Urbina, a major poet and future director of the National Library, José Juan Tablada, who excelled in the art of calligrams and symbolic metaphors, and Amado Nervo, who gave in to melancholy and his love of rhyme.
As modernism fades, the fire of revolution ignites, giving rise to a new trend that bears his name and is realized in the publication of realist novels nourished by journalism. This quasi-photographic approach is perfectly embodied in Mariano Azuela's Ceux d'en bas(Los de abajo, 1915), slices of life to be devoured, published by L'Herne, as well as in the work of Alfonso Reyes Ochoa and Martín Luis Guzmán(L'Ombre du Caudillo, published by Folio). While Rafael Felipe Muñoz (1899-1972) seized on the myth of the revolutionary Pancho Villa in the 1920s, Rodolfo Usigli Wainer's play El Gesticulador was censored in 1938. In the same year, a periodical, Taller, was created, bringing together writers who questioned social issues. This new generation of writers contrasted with their predecessors, the Contemporáneos published in the eponymous magazine founded in 1928, who were mainly concerned with stylistic issues. The name of Octavio Paz soon emerged. It was not yet known, but the young man, born in Mexico City in 1914, was destined to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990, an award that seemed entirely justified in view of the resounding success in the 1950s of both his poetry, collected under the title Liberté sur parole, and his essay Le Labyrinthe de la solitude (The Labyrinth of Solitude). His work was multi-faceted and never ceased to explore many poetic avenues. As for the man himself, he remained true to his convictions and became involved in politics.
For the time being, the mid-twentieth century saw two other important publications: Augustín Yáñez's Al filo del agua(Tomorrow's Storm) in 1947, an almost joyful novel depicting the life of a small village, and Pedro Paramo (Folio editions) in 1955, thanks to which Juan Rulfo has been compared to William Faulkner. These new voices, which sometimes encompass the "indigenism" movement but raise the more global question of defining a national identity, and are tinged with a certain disillusionment, augur well for the "Boom" of the 1960s, the explosion of talent of which Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012) was a leading figure in Mexico. His novels, both critical and political, quickly won him international recognition, and many have been translated into French by Gallimard(La Frontière de verre, Le Bonheur des familles, L'Instinct d'Inez, etc.). In 1966, José Agustín published De Perfil(Mexico noon minus five, published by La Différence) and became the instigator of the counter-culture movement, which did not hesitate to break the rules and use slang. Finally, in the 1990s, it was the work of Jorge Volpi (1968) that heralded the "Crack", the clear desire of a new generation of writers to break away from their purely Mexican roots and tackle more universal issues.
