Survivors in Mexico

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Summary: E-mail I sent to the the author.
Review: Professor Schweizer, I don't know how I reached the age of 64 without being aware of Rebecca West. I purchased this book on a whim hoping it would help me to understand Mexico. I spent the overseas years of my foreign service career in Asia and ignored Europe. Upon retirement nine years ago I set out to understand how the Roman Empire (cum Christendom and Christendom in the New World) has molded our lives and minds. I vowed to visit the outlines of the Roman Empire and certainly many of those places where great things happened. I have largely accomplished this.

Next month and in Feb I'm going to make my fourth and fifth trip to Mexico. I have read Krause's history of modern Mexico and several books on Hernan Cortez (e.g. Conquest). However Rebecca West's reflections on Mexico seem to be the most insightful of the lot. With every page I grasped a clearer image of something that I had only imperfectly understood. How (why?) does a non specialist come to such a clear vision that seems to elude those who are better prepared?

Her thoughts on the Aztec religion and Montezuma had me saying, "Of course, that is the way it must have been." Also I am under a social cloud for rather admiring Hernan Cortez for his historic accomplishment all the while acknowledging his less than savory side. I say this because not only does West's estimation of this man equal mine but because her's is an approach (or an attitude) toward this and other things that I wish were mine.

The question is: What does that say about me?

I finished the book early on yesterday's flight from Orlando to Reagan Airport in Virginia. Such a lofty perspective is just the place to re-read your fine introduction.

Thank you for bringing this book to publication.

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Summary: Posthumous Births, the Fiesta of Gloria and Other Tall Tales
Review: Survivors is a delightful read full of incisive observations made by a brilliant woman. It is also splendidly organized by its editor, Professor Bernard Schweizer. It is simply that its historical content and other factual, cultural, onomastic and toponymic information cannot be trusted. Please do not get me wrong. I'm thankful to Dr Schweizer for bringing this book to print, and it is a good book in spite of its idiosyncracies and flaws. However, as a Mexican whose historian mother hammered down Zumárraga, I couldn't overlook the spelling of the good padre's name. Likewise, I had breakfast daily next to Xipe Totec, a prominent member of my family's pre-Columbian art collection, and a Dr. Atl painting hung in my room. In addition, I am the granddaughter of a Mexican intellectual and cabinet minister partially responsible for the anti-clerical legislation Mexico is known for (and whose Ph.D. disertation mentor at Columbia was John Dewey, the same man who headed the inquest into Trotsky's treason trial in NY). Also, it was Amalia Hernández (not someone called Eva, as West states and Schweizer lets stand), who was the artistic director and overall genius behind the Ballet Folclórico and who really, really and avidly pursued my eligible bachelor Dad in their salad days. And to top it all off, my childhood friend was Nora Volkow, daughter of Seva Volkow Bronstein, whom I felt betrayed by this book, so I felt I had to write this review.

In the Introduction, Schweizer states: "... I have silently corrected obvious grammatical mistakes, rectified factual errors, and introduced more consistent punctuation. I have further added accent marks to reflect contemporary spelling of Spanish names: Zummaraga is spelled Zummáraga, [sic] for instance, Cortes is Cortés, and so on." For all of the editor's good intentions, there are several spelling mistakes (Zummáraga should be spelled Zumárraga; Chulela, Cholula; Xochomilco, Xochimilco; Xipe Toltec, Xipe Totec, inter alia) and even though the editor did well in adding diacritics, their use is not consistent across the text. Unfortunately, in spite of the editor's efforts in rectifying factual errors, a good number of them are still to be found.

I came across what at first glance looked like a miracle. On page 96, line 8, West states: "Her [Isabella's] only son died at nineteen and her posthumous son died at birth..." Huh? A woman giving birth posthumously? Shucks! after the only synapse I have left clicked, I knew that this was not a miraculous birth, just a case of sloppy writing. What West tried to say was that Prince Juan died when his wife Marguerite was pregnant, and then the baby (his, not his Mom's) died soon after birth.

I kept on reading: "...of her four daughters one died in childbirth and the child survived only a couple of years, another was the insulted first queen of Henry the VIII of England, another was insane." Isabella did have four girls, but West accounts for only three of them: Isabel, Catalina (Catherine) and Juana. For the record, the fourth one was María, married to her dead sister Isabel's husband, Manuel I of Portugal. With all due respect for the editor, both the mistake and the omission really stared me in the face.

On the chapter on Lev Davidovich Bronstein, whose nom de guerre was Leon Trotsky, West opted for not mentioning this fact. This is a little awkward, for she does mention later in the chapter that it was well-known that Trotsky was Jewish, something one cannot deduce from the pseudonym. Trotsky's assassin is identified in the book as Jacson Mornard, a name no one in Mexico ever used; we know him either as Jacques Mornard or, most commonly, as Ramón Mercader. But most surprising is that even though West had an informal chat with Trotsky's grandson, she identifies him in the book incorrectly as "Seva Trotsky." His name is Esteban (Seva) Volkow Bronstein (son of Trotsky's eldest daughter Zina). Esteban's second daughter Nora Volkow Fernández is the current director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, MD. I now think that West never figured out that Trotsky was a pseudonym, and forgort that Seva was a son of a daughter who bore her husband's name.

In the chapter on Chapultepec II West states "A Mexican anti-clerical may spit on the pavement when he sees a priest (nuns he cannot see, for they are forbidden by law)." A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. First of all, from the time of Sor Juana there have always been nuns in Mexico (most of them were involved in education, although there were a few colorful ones, like the erstwhile nuns Catalina de Erauso who dabbled in cattle herding and soldiering, and the Madre Conchita, who dabbled in murder). Second, an anti-clerical person would never be able to spit on the pavement when seeing a priest in Mexico, for he/she would not be able to know that the man was a priest as, by law, clergy could not wear religious garb in public (Cf. Article 130 of the Mexican Constitution of 1917).

Then there's more problems with names. In the chapter on Frida and Diego, West mentions (and Schweizer lets it stand) the "Company of Jesuits," and when speaking about the burning of the effigies of Judas, she claims that they are burned in "...the fiesta of Gloria...". Both West and Schweizer should have availed themselves of a good translator, for La Compañía de Jesús is rendered correctly into English as "The Society of Jesus" and "Sábado de Gloria" has no good official name in English(as a translator I have found Easter Saturday, Holy Saturday and Easter Eve), but in simple terms it is the Saturday after Good Friday and before Easter Sunday, but call it what we may, it is most certainly not a fiesta at Gloria's house.

But it must have been at a fiesta in somebody's house where Rebecca West fell prey to the Prince of Xochimilco story. The way the prank works (usually perpetrated by upper class Mexican guys to impress beautiful, gullible, American women) is that you tell the foreigner that your last name, whatever it may be (West was fed Andrada [sic], Cano, Sotelo and Miravalles) proves that you are a direct descendant of Moctezuma and also of Spanish nobility and, as such, you are entitled to use the title of Prince of Xochimilco.

This book is West's experience in the Land of Volcanoes, and reading it made me smile a number of times. It proves my native land and my people were cunning enough to, more often than not, take an exceedingly bright woman for a good long ride. But then again, it is also evidence that an exceedingly bright woman could often manage to see through the many layers we Mexicans try to hide under. This book has horrendous flaws, but I'd still tell you to give it a go.

Vero Albin

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Summary: Travel to Mexico with an Engaging Guide
Review: This book, which is an assemblage of fragments Rebecca West intended to form into a book, but never completed, is a very enjoyable and provocative read. I think we get more insight into the mind of West than into her subject, which is the people and country of Mexico, but since she thinks a lot about the world, and the intersections of history, art, religion, and politics, one comes away having learned a lot. Although some might consider West opinionated, she has an engaging style, and forms judgements only after examining an issue from several angles, so one might disagree with her conclusions, but still enjoy the internal debates she conducts with herself. She dwells on several topics which interest her, including Aztec society, the historical encounter between Cortes and Montezuma, the relationship between native people, Europeans and the mixed culture, and individual historical figures that have lived in or passed through Mexico (Kahlo, Rivera, Trotzky, Zummarago). West seems especially interested in Encounters between very different people and cultures, and what those encounters reveal. This book gives the reader the sense of being present at several occasions, partly with vivid detail, as well as because West has familial connections with some of the individuals, and so can give an insider's view. The introduction is also very interesting, giving a sense of who Rebecca West was, as well as the struggle she faced in trying to write a book that could live up to the success of her earlier book, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.