Heme aqu: Martn Luis Guzmn's Autobiographical Acts Within

and Beyond "Apunte sobre una personalidad"

Nicholas Cifuentes-Goodbody
Hispanic Review, Volume 81, Number 4, Autumn 2013, pp. 467-489 (Article)
Published by University of Pennsylvania Press
DOI: 10.1353/hir.2013.0032
For additional information about this article
Access provided by Queen Mary, University of London (1 Mar 2014 18:52 GMT)
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hir/summary/v081/81.4.cifuentes-goodbody.html
Heme aqu : Mart n Lui s Guzma n s
Autobi ographi cal Acts Wi thi n and
Beyond Apunte sobre una
personali dad
Nicholas Cifuentes-Goodbody
Translation and Interpreting Institute
Hamad Bin Khalifa University
El mundo esta necesitado de realidades externas, objetivas, vulgares,
y usted a trave s del zod aco de sus cartas actuales
se me esfuma en radiosas visiones de poetas
o se me rompe en un fracaso de cristales.
Alfonso Reyes in a letter to Guzma n, I,I
abstract This article examines the efforts of Mart n Luis Guzman
(I88,I,,o), as both an author and publisher, to cultivate his legacy within
the canon of Mexican letters. He begins this autobiographical project with
a speech to the Mexican Academy of Language in I,,, Apunte sobre una
personalidad, where he links his identity as an artist to a gloried history
of the Mexican Revolution. By portraying himself as a writer whose greatest
work is perpetually deferred, he is able to unite his disparate literary pro-
duction from the previous forty years under a single narrative. Using this
renovated life story, the author goes on to republish his work to great suc-
cess, as seen in the ofcial celebrations surrounding his eightieth birthday.
However, the drastic change that his reputation undergoes just one year
later show the limits of Guzmans autobiographical acts, the price that he
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ultimately pays for attempting to so closely control his life story, and the
importance of referentiality in the study of autobiography.
Introduction: October oth, :,o,
When Mart n Luis Guzman reached his eightieth birthday, the most promi-
nent members of Mexicos intellectual community celebrated both the
author himself and the magnitude of his literary legacy. At a luncheon in his
honor, poet and diplomat Jose Gorostiza toasted the author as a master of
narrative on a par with a foundational gure in Mexican letters, sixteenth-
century chronicler and conquistador Bernal D az de Castillo (La felicidad
II). At another event, novelist Jose Revueltas stated unequivocally that toda
la prosa narrativa mexicana moderna desciende de la obra de Mart n Luis
Guzma n, sin exageracio n alguna (::). While these speakers lauded him for
his past accomplishments, Guzma n himself seemed more focused on his
future. Regardless of the months or years he had left, he was determined to
live them como joven . . . , no como anciano (Discurso . . . LXXX aniver-
sario :,). Guzman then expressed the afnity he felt with Mexicos younger
generation, whose increasing political protests and student strikes had
recently brought about the occupation of the National Autonomous Univer-
sity of Mexico (UNAM) campus by the Mexican army. He said that he and
his contemporaries needed to be open-minded, maintaining maleable y du c-
til nuestro esp ritu tratando de comprender lo que la juventud hace (:).
Even when the author alluded to his death, describing it as an inevitable fall
desde la montura de mi caballo (:,), it was in the context of a legacy
that would be carried forward precisely by Mexicos youth: a horse waiting
expectantly for the next rider to gallop into the future.
What Guzma n did not mention was that alongside this life narrativethe
illustrious past, the celebratory present, and the enduring future of his oeuvre
there existed another, more material side to his literary success. In his study
of the issues of the news magazine Tiempo, Semanario de la Vida y la Verdad
from October of I,o, (and it should be noted that Guzma n had been the
magazines editor-in-chief since its founding in I,:), critic Gabriel Zaid
notes that books by Guzma n dominate the magazines bestseller list (I,,
o). Zaid also shows that in the weeks preceding and following the authors
birthday, nearly all the titles appearing on the list are published by Guzmans
own Empresas Editoriales and that, moreover, the data on which the gures
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are based come from his own chain of bookstores, the Librer as de Cristal
(I:). In this light, Guzmans eightieth birthday was not simply a literary
event but a campaign of self-promotion that the author oversaw on every
level. His celebration as an artist was covered by his magazine, and his maga-
zine advertised his works which, in turn, were sold in his bookstores. In
short, the authors legacy as evaluated in October of I,o, was not simply the
result of his literary production but also his extraliterary efforts to cultivate
a place for himself within the canon of modern Mexican letters.
One fact that falls outside the scope of Zaids study is that this degree of
vertical integration in the making of Guzma ns literary prole is not unique
to October I,o,. On the contrary, the I,,os and oos were a period of intense
editorial activity for the author. His Empresas Editoriales and Compan a
General de Ediciones released nine titles by him as well as a biography,
Ermilio Abreu Go mezs Mart n Luis Guzman. Though the majority of these
texts had been previously published in newspapers, magazines, or in other
editions during the :os and ,os, they now appeared within the context of a
different life narrative. For example, the back cover of a I,oo edition of Fila-
dela, para so de conspiradores (I,,I) declares, Ningu n autor ha superado en
Mexico la maestr a tecnica y emotiva de Mart n Luis Guzman . . . , desde El
aguila y la serpiente hasta las Memorias de Pancho Villa. Many of the books
Guzma n republished during this period include this same peritext. What
this sweeping statement does not mention, however, is that the historical
circumstances of these two works could not be more disparate. Guzma n
wrote the former while living in exile as an outspoken critic of President
Plutarco El as Calles, while he wrote the latter in Mexico ten years later with
the overt support of President La zaro Ca rdenas. Such omissions are emblem-
atic of the life narrative cultivated in the authors self-publishing during the
period. Through the collection and reorganizationand sometimes exclu-
sionof the texts that he had written over the previous fty years, Guzma n
fashioned a renovated self-image, one that found its fullest expression in the
authors two-volume Obras completas, issued in I,oI and I,o,.
Published well before his death in I,,o, Guzmans Obras completas is an
autobiographical act in and of itself, a literary self-portrait that the author
seemingly offers up to posterity. However, it is also the culmination of
another decade-long autobiographical act: the very same self-publishing and
media activities described above. The Obras completas is the last in a series
of textual enclosures, and its composition is relatively straightforward on a
diachronic level. Critics have already made invaluable contributions to the
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study of Guzmans work by tracing the genealogy of his most famous novels
back to their rst appearances as short chronicles in Spanish, Mexican, and
American newspapers (Olea Franco, La sombra and Reejos; Pineda
Franco). These studies rightly call attention to discrepancies between the
authors literary work and the way he would later describe it, but they do not
necessarily discuss the framework in which Guzma n republished his texts,
the carefully composed life narrative that binds his oeuvre together.
In this article I will study the text that sets Guzmans project in motion,
his most explicitly autobiographical work, Apunte sobre una personalidad.
Originally a seventy-ve-minute speech read before the Mexican Academy of
Language in February of I,, at a ceremony marking his promotion to full
membership within the organization, Guzman recounts his life from his rst
moments of conscious perception to the very instant in which he addresses
his audience. Affecting a pose of apology, the author presents himself as a
unique individual created at the intersection of personal experience and
national historical events. Drawing on a version of history that portrays Mex-
icos current one-party state as rightful heir to the independence and
Reforma movements of the previous century, he narrates his childhood as
the ongoing internalization of artistic and ideological absolutes, from xed
notions of beauty to the essence of his country and its liberal heritage. He
describes himself coming of age during the nal days of the D az dictator-
ship, when these absolutes come into conict with the countrys reality in
the Revolution of I,Io. Finally, in an effort to reconcile his literary inclina-
tions and political ideals with the brutal reality of the conict, he speaks of a
series of works that are artistically unsuccessful or that simply go unnished.
In short, Guzma n presents himself as a failed artist.
However, by pinning his autobiographical narrative to texts that are never
fully realized, Guzma n reveals himself as an author whose greatest work is
perpetually deferred. This rhetorical act creates a void that forces the dispa-
rate texts produced during his life into a single narrative, proof of what he
characterizes as his Norte, or essential character. Through this trope of
deferment within his speech, coupled with its successive republishing over
the next two decades, Guzma n transforms Apunte sobre una personalidad
into the reading notes for the rest of his work, the text that brings coherence
and structure to the Obras completas. The celebrations of Guzmans eightieth
birthday speak to the effectiveness of his efforts and the power of the auto-
biographical mode within the intellectual establishment of Mexico. However,
less than a year later, Guzmans reputation would undergo a drastic change
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following the events of Tlatelolco. This transformation reveals not only the
radical shift in the relationship between intellectuals and the Mexican state
in the wake of I,o8 but also the limitations of autobiography as a genre, the
degree to which the validity of self-writing depends on an authors audience,
and the extent to which the latter will give license to the former when dis-
crepancies between life and life narrative arise.
Finding North
Mart n Luis Guzma n begins Apunte sobre una personalidad with an apol-
ogy and a promise. He excuses himself for not having prepared a speech
more in keeping with the academic rigor of such a solemn ceremony. He
explains, however, that his often controversial role within the Mexican Acad-
emy of Language obliges him to use the occasion as an opportunity to supply
his audience with la interpretacio n correcta que ha de darse a mi conducta
cerca de vosotros (,o), something that can only be done through an auto-
biographical sketch. Here, Guzma n speaks using the rst person, but he goes
on to narrate the actual story of his life in the third person. In his study of
autobiography, Philippe Lejeune has noted that the divide between the rst
and third person is a feature of all life writing, but that this gap is usually
masked by the use of a single I (,; also Starobinski ,,). Sidonie Smith
and Julia Watson have shown the limits of this critical approach, how it
cannot account for the complexities of self-narrating or the heterogeneous
array of autobiographical modes (,I). They also rightly point out that such
an interpretation envisions the present, rst-person narrator as static and
complete, which is far from the truth. Regardless, Lejeunes conception of
the autobiographical I is indispensable in understanding Apunte sobre
una personalidad because Guzman conceives his life narrative in those same
terms. As he promises his audience, al pintarme en funcio n de mi propia
historia, [os revelare] cua les son el mo vil y el sentido de mis actos, . . . y
cua les las directrices de mi modesta personalidad conforme a lo que ella
encierra de cierto (,,). In fact, as I will argue later, the certainty of this
promise and the inexibility it masks are a precursor to the limitations of
Guzma ns larger autobiographical project in the face of I,o8, his unwilling-
ness to offer his own story up for interpretation. Furthermore, the discrepan-
cies that arise between external events like Tlatelolco and the internal
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rhetoric of Apunte sobre una personalidad underline the ongoing impor-
tance of referentiality in the study of autobiographical narrative. That is, in
addition to the performative approaches proposed by critics like Smith and
Watson, and A

ngel Loureiro (discussed below), historical and editorial con-

text are key in understanding an autobiographical project like that of
Guzma n.
Guzman roots the story of his formation as a person in geographical and
monumental spaces that both legitimate him as an heir to nineteenth-
century Mexican liberalism and fuse that liberalism with the essential charac-
ter of Mexico itself. He masks this politically charged narrative as a coming
into consciousness through an artistic sensibility, a childs innate talent to
absorb the essence of the spaces that surround him. As his young senses
begin to sharpen, the bucolic and simple beauty of the town of Tacubaya
(where his father worked as an instructor at the Military Academy from I88,
to I8,,)
1
fosters an appreciation of lo bello, while the snow-topped peak
of the Ajusco volcano inscribes la presencia de lo histo rico en toda su gran-
deza onto his consciousness (,8). Playing in the shadow of the presidential
palace in Chapultepec, he begins to conceptualize his patria as a sort of pro-
tective mantle and, when he sees President Porrio D az at a public cere-
mony on the same grounds, the latters military regalia overwhelms him with
a sense of euphoria.
It is situated within this space of natural and man-made monuments that
Guzma ns father initiates him into the written word, the nal tool that allows
him to fully access this national, liberal heritage. When the colonel Mart n
Luis Guzman Rendo n catches his son pretending to say Mass to his siblings,
he decides to substitute el sentimiento religioso crepuscular in him with
el de la lectura (,,I). As a reader, the young Guzman quickly graduates to
the poems of writer and liberal politician Juan de Dios Peza, and popular
corridos illustrated by Jose Guadalupe Posada. When the family moves to the
port city of Veracruz in I8,,, his readings take on a deeper and more interna-
tional character. He spends hours in the public library with the nineteenth-
century encyclopedic history Me xico a trave s de los siglos,
2
the novels of Hugo
I. The dates for the events in Apunte sobre una personalidad are all taken from Abreu Go mezs
timeline of the authors life (:,,,II).
:. Thomas Benjamin cites Me xico a trave s de los siglos as the rst work in which prominent
liberal intellectuals integrated what had been different, neglected, and often opposed pasts into
one conciliatory history (I8), much like Guzman does in his autobiography.
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and Perez Galdo s, and Rousseaus The Social Contract. In her study of Span-
ish American autobiography, Sylvia Molloy notes that the scene of rst read-
ing is often portrayed as pivotal, that these rst books become attributes of
the individual and tell his story (I,). The titles that Guzma n cites in his own
autobiography serve as printed monumentsworks which, like the Ajusco
volcano, bind Mexico as a nation to the author as an individual.
Guzman tells his audience that the nal step in the formation of his char-
acter occurs when, searching for new texts to read in his fathers library, he
inadvertently nds a compass. His father explains that the instrument always
points north and that he will be the same way when he becomes an adult:
Sabras do nde esta tu Norte y no te extraviaras (,,:). Shortly after this
conversation, Guzman has an epiphany while looking out over at the Atlantic
Ocean, realizing that he indeed does have un Norte dentro de s (,,). For
such a decisive moment, though, the exact nature of the impulse to which
Guzma n refers is surprisingly vague. At the start of his speech, he promised
his audience an explanation of the essential traits of his personality, the single
force that has driven his actions within the Academy. Although the author
has portrayed himself as progressing through childhood by understanding
and articulating increasingly complicated signs that embody his country, the
impetus of those thoughtsGuzmans Norteremains obscure. So while
the audience of Apunte sobre una personalidad may see the movement of
this Norte passing from monument to individual, from father to son, and
from Guzma ns own thoughts to his later actions, they never receive a clear
explanation of what this Norte is.
On the one hand, it seems contradictory for the author to explain that the
singular mo vil y sentido of his actions is a cardinal direction, neither an
origin nor a destination but rather the movement from one point towards
but not necessarily toanother. How can he claim that the very thing that
has dictated the course of his life over the last half-century is the very course
that his life has taken? On the other hand, this contradiction is clearly the
generative source of Guzma ns autobiographical discourse. Norte could be
seen, for example, in Lacanian terms, as an absence or insatiable desire that
sends the subject from one signier to another in a potentially innite search
for meaning and presenceGuzma ns need to unify the rst and third per-
son. Perhaps Norte is not a question of individual psychology but a
dilemma inherent in all autobiographical writing. Paul de Man has famously
explored how the genre strivesand ultimately failsto make an individual
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fully present through the medium of the written word. In this light, Norte
could simply mark Guzma ns inability to capture the essence of his personal-
ity in words.
Of course, in the nearly thirty years since the publication of Autobiogra-
phy as De-facement, many critics have pointed out that De Man fails to
consider the value of autobiography beyond its supposedly futile attempt
to restore the individual through language. Loureiro, for one, argues that
autobiography is a performative act and not a cognitive operation (:o).
He maintains that in striving to capture the complexities of a single life
(which, by nature, will exceed any discourse), autobiographical mimesis is
forced to create meaning, and thus, make sense out of that life. Guzmans
Norte, then, is rst and foremost a rhetorical strategy. The author states
that a unique sense of self drives his actions when, in fact, the inverse is true.
By not dening lo que [su personalidad] encierra de cierto, he compels his
audience to extrapolate that driving force from the events of the narrative. So
where the authors Norte may mark an absence, that same void produces
Apunte sobre una personalidad, propelling the narrative forward and giv-
ing meaning to Guzmans autobiography.
Watershed Moments, Conspicuous Omissions
Upon returning to Mexico City to attend the National Preparatory School in
I,o, Guzma n describes himself as increasingly drawn to moments of inner
integrity and truthan appreciation that stands in contrast to a void within
Mexicos current political regime. He is now more given to la contempla-
cio n del arte y de la naturaleza and hopes to one day capture los instantes
de lo bello . . . en el papel por medio de las letras (,,,). When the aspiring
artist has the opportunity to meet with Porrio D az as a representative of
the Mexico City Student Society, he sees the President as surrounded by la
ccio n y el emblema vac os (,,o). Even the creases in his shoes seem arti-
cial (,,8). This meeting is the rst of two decisive moments in Guzma ns
autobiography, experiences during his young adulthood that lead him to join
the Revolution. As he explains to his audience, son indiscutibles los fueros
que otorga la vertiente de cada personalidad . . . y . . . el ejercicio de esos
fueros se convierte pronto en ferreo carril de la conducta (,,,,o). Here,
the path that Guzma ns Norte traces is at its clearest: a direct line
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literally, a railwayfrom character to action, from the experiences of his
adolescence to his participation in the Mexican Revolution.
Historically speaking, however, there are glaring omissions in the descrip-
tion of these watershed moments in Apunte sobre una personalidad, and
Guzma ns path to the Revolution was not nearly as direct and unambiguous
as his stated autobiography would have it seem. When Guzma n met with the
President in September of I,o8, for example, it was because the Mexico City
Student Society had been planning a series of events to celebrate the centen-
nial of Mexican independence, one of which was a torchlight procession
where Guzman would speak in honor of Jose Mar a Morelos. With the sanc-
tion of, among others, the Secretary of Public Education and the mayor of
Mexico City, a small planning committee met with D az. The President
approved the proposal but, according to Apunte sobre una personalidad,
did so with a warning: tengan cuidado, mucho cuidado; hay en este pueblo
atavismos dormidos que, si alguna vez despiertan, no surgira ya quien sepa
someterlos (,,8). In his account, Guzman leaves the meeting certain that
the only atavismos mexicanos that the President wants to suppress are el
ansia que la nacio n siente por encontrarse a s misma (,,8). This judgment
clearly serves as foreshadowing the political upheaval that would occur two
years later.
Though Guzma n represents his interaction with the President as, at the
very least, a psychological break with the D az regime, journalistic accounts
of the meeting call that claim into question. While it is true that El Diario
carried an admonition by D az that was very similar to the one cited by
Guzma nSomos revolucionarios por atavismo. [P]or ello aconsejen a sus
oradores que se porten mesurados ante la multitudsuch a warning was
aimed at preventing a riot, not an outright revolution (Recibe). It also
appears that Guzma n was, at least publicly, respectful of D azs warning, and
he made students in the National Preparatory School promise to maintain
el mayor orden y la mayor circunspeccio n y cordura during the celebra-
tion (Junta). Following the torchlight procession, Mexico City newspapers
praised the orden irreprochable of the event, going so far as to characterize
the young participants as futuros directores de la nacio n (La procesio n,
La velada). And though it is not clear whether D az himself witnessed the
march, he was certainly present at the next event organized by the students,
a literary and musical soiree in the Abreu Theater. In short, the student
celebrations of I,o8 seem less the intellectual and political awakening of a
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,o iui sv.xi c vvvi vw : autumn :o:,
generation, as Guzma n characterizes them, and more a moment of state-
sponsored patriotisman effort to fortify the current regime, not under-
mine it.
The second and nal event that cements Guzma ns decision to enter the
political sphere is the death of his father. Colonel Mart n Luis Guzman Ren-
do n died on December :,th, I,Io from injuries sustained in an ambush of
his troops by rebels near Pedernales, Chihuahua. In Apunte sobre una
personalidad, the colonel, on his deathbed, tells his son that members of
Chihuahuas elite had given him photos of the revolutionary leaders so that
he could quickly execute them upon winning the battle, the logic being that
la mala hierba hay que arrancarla de cuajo (,,8). The colonels dying
words, a nal motto for his son, are: no creo que sea esa la mala hierba
(,,,). Again, however, historical documents cast doubt on this version of
events. In an interview that appeared the week after his fathers death, Guz-
ma n makes no mention of the colonels nal words. On the contrary, he
laments missing a nal opportunity to speak to him: En cuanto a m ,
cuando llegue a su cabecera, no quise molestar su ebre con pedirle el relato
de sus hazanas (Entrevista con el hijo). Some scholars have even sug-
gested that Guzma n was unable to meet with his father before his death
(Quintanilla, A salto Io,). Of course, there are reasons why Guzma n might
have suppressed the nal words of his father in the above interview. Suddenly
in charge of two households, perhaps he did not want to endanger the pen-
sion owed to his mother. Equally likely, though, is that Mart n Luis Guzma n
Rendo n never uttered the last words that his son would later cite as a call for
him to join the Revolution.
Within the context of Guzmans I,, reading of Apunte sobre una per-
sonalidad, the various mottos that the Colonel Guzma n Rendo n instills in
his son serve as a narrative and historical connection between past and pres-
ent, one that simultaneously links liberal heroes of the nineteenth century
(names such as Juan de Dios Peza, Guillermo Prieto, and Benito Jua rez,
which the author cites in his autobiography [,,:]) with more recently canon-
ized gures like Francisco I. Maderoand even with the still controversial
Francisco Pancho Villa. At the same time, it excludes Porrio D azs thirty-
ve-year autocratic regime from that liberal tradition, portraying it as
falsea ccio n that is ultimately unrepresentative of the very atavismos
mexicanos that Guzma n so successfully absorbed during childhood and
now represents through the concept of his Norte. What is more, the fact
that Guzmans father lays down the ferreo carril that will carry his son to
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the Revolution in Apunte sobre una personalidad helps to validate the
modern political regime that has grown out of that movement, placing its
roots in an era that predates the Porriato. In drawing this direct line from
the Reforma to the events of I,Io, Guzma n places himself at the center of the
same grand myth of the Revolution cultivated by the Institutional Revolu-
tionary Party that began to gain traction as a historical narrative in the I,os
and ,os (Knight, The Myth :o:). So intellectually aligned was Guzman
with the state and this ideology that during the same period, his Empresas
Editoriales published thirteen titles in the series El Liberalismo mexicano
en pensamiento y accio n, and the author made several speeches that would
be published in his Necesidad de cumplir las Leyes de Reforma (I,o,) which,
in turn, would become part of the Obras completas.
The Latent Artist, the Unnished Text
From the scene of his fathers death in December of I,Io, Guzman moves
directly to his participation in the demonstrations against D az in May of
I,II. Unlike with the torchlight procession of I,o8, government troops did
feel compelled to violently repress the crowd, and Guzma n, as he describes
it, dio entrada en su vida pol tica (,,,). The author points out that,
although he is swept up in historical events before he can realize his ability
to capture lo bello on paper, joining the Revolution does not put an end
to his literary aspirations. Rather, in embracing a career other than the
vocacio n franca y resuelta (,,,) that he had originally envisioned for him-
self, he sets a specic course for his future artistic conduct. As he portrays it,
de all en adelante . . . sus pasos y vicisitudes de revolucionario y pol tico
lo pondr an en contacto con todo un mundo de posibilidades literarias,
mundo que . . . lo conrmar a en su idea de que nada era superior al
empeno de dar vida art stica a las esencias y contemplaciones del hombre,
buenas o malas; pero mundo tambien que . . . le crear a estados de concien-
cia destinados a reejarse en su obra, si llegaba de intentarla. (,,,)
Guzma ns use of the conditional tense in this passage (pondr a, conrmar a,
crear a) reveals a slight modication in the original autobiographical pact
with his audience. Shifting the entire passage into the present tense, it
becomes clear that the author is making another series of promises: he will
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,8 i ui sv.xi c vvvi vw : autumn :o:,
come into contact with literary possibilities, he will conrm his literary call-
ing in life, and his experiences in the Revolution will be reected in his work.
All of these events, however, are hypothetical consequences of a single condi-
tion: he must write that work. In other words, Guzma ns ability to fulll
these promises hinges on a text that, at this point in Apunte sobre una
personalidad, does not exist. Until it does, Guzma n is a potential or latent
artist, an author without the text to prove it.
Guzmans autobiography is, from this point on, a continuous effort to
overcome the obstacles that separate the would-be artist from his promised
text, and his rst dilemma is the disparity between his ideals for the Revolu-
tion and the actual brutality of the movement. Guzman underlines that this
discrepancy never leads him to question his actual participation in the Revo-
lution. His Norte never wavers. Rather, it is an artistic impasse, a consider-
ation of the extent to which the potential writer might have license to gloss
over these inconsistencies:
Habiendo estado cerca de aquellos hombres [revolucionarios], habiendolos
conocido en toda su desnudez y a la Revolucio n en toda su crudeza, le era
l cito intentar pintarlos, en lo que de individual ten an los unos y la otra,
con trazo equiparable, por su propo sito estetico, a la grandeza de la propia
aspiracio n revolucionaria, que el hab a hecho suya? (,oo)
Instead of explicitly answering this question, Guzman describes his literary
production over the next forty years as an ongoing effort to reconcile la
materia revolucionaria with his own deniciones patrias (,oI). He
explains that his rst effort, the essay La querella de Me xico (I,I,), falls victim
to abstraction. His second attempt, El aguila y la serpiente (I,:8), is a hybrid
work that draws on the genres of history, biography, and novel para no
restar fuerza al principio creador ni verdad sustantiva a lo creado (,oI).
3
Although this strategy provides a wealth of literary possibilities, Guzma n
concludes that the Revolution it paints no se hace justicia a s misma (,oI).
Much like the laudatory notes on the back cover of Guzma ns work repub-
lished during the ,os and oos, Apunte sobre una personalidad moves
directly from El aguila y la serpiente to Memorias de Pancho Villaa jump
,. Interestingly, the rst edition of El aguila y la serpiente carried the label memoria or memoir.
In subsequent editions, this label would be changed to novela.
PAGE 478 ................. 18463$ $CH4 09-17-13 13:55:16 PS
Cifuentes-Goodbody : cuzx. x s .u1oni ocv.vui c.i .c1s j,,
that excludes several of the works that would become part of his Obras com-
pletas. Most conspicuously absent is his roman a` clef on the world of I,:os
Mexican politics, La sombra del caudillo (I,:,). The reasons for such an
omission are likely political. Perhaps Guzman did not want to broach the
subject of his own participation in the delahuertista rebellion against A

lvaro
Obrego n, an act that led to several years of exile in Spain during which the
author renounced his Mexican citizenship. Maybe he chose not to recall the
darker days of postrevolutionary politics with so many high-ranking mem-
bers of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in his audience, or he did not
want to mention a novel that tarnished the Ofce of the President in front
of the President himself. Regardless, it is clear that Guzmans autobiography
is an effort to explain his self-realization as writer in terms that are not only
favorable to himself and his audience but also to the single-party political
system to which they both belong.
Guzman prefaces his third attempt to write his denitive text of the Mexi-
can Revolution with a realization. Instead of trying to raise the movements
awed protagonists to the level of his own ideals using juicios absolutorios
o apolog as ensalzadoras, he must reduce the movement to the razo n de
ser de los personajes (,o,). This approach, he explains, grows out of the
belief that toda grande obra que se consumaba gracias a los recursos de una
personalidad, elevaba los recursos de la personalidad a la categor a de la obra
y redim a a la personalidad de sus aparentes imperfecciones (,o,). The indi-
vidual most in need of this biographical restoration was one who was no
longer able to defend himself against detractors, one who had lost the lucha
interna por el bot n de la Revolucio n (,o,): General Francisco Villa. Era
. . . a Villa a quien deb a recrear, elaborando con lo eventual y transitorio
de su existencia efectiva valores esteticamente necesarios y permanentes, y
quedarse entonces con esa verdad, que ser a inconmovible en las proporcio-
nes en que la lograse, porque toda verdad literaria es una verdad suprema
que vive por s sola (,o,). It would be through the Memorias de Pancho
Villa, a rst-person biography in which the general would tell his own story,
that Guzma n would fully realize his identity as an artist and make good on
the autobiographical pact with his audience.
4
There is a problem, however, with Guzma n pinning this promise to the
. For an in-depth study of Guzma ns portraits of Villa in both El aguila y la serpiente and
Memorias de Pancho Villa, see Max Parra.
PAGE 479 ................. 18463$ $CH4 09-17-13 13:55:16 PS
8o i ui sv.xi c vvvi vw : autumn :o:,
completion of his biography of Villaa fact that is lost neither on him nor
on the audience of the Mexican Academy of Language in I,,. Although
Guzma n had republished the ve parts of Memorias de Pancho Villa in I,,I,
the work itself was incomplete, only detailing the generals life up to I,I,
(some eight years before his death and well before the decline and defeat of
his army). In spite of the rhetorical role that Villas biography plays in the
narrative of Apunte sobre una personalidad, Guzma n freely admits that
the work is unnished. He explains that the same imperativo que lo forzaba
. . . a engolfarse y consumirse en las fortunas y adversidades de la pol tica . . .
vendr a obligando a diferir . . . la ejecucio n de los empenos suyos: los de las
letras puras y simples (,o,). Going beyond the time frame of the Academy
ceremony, Guzman would in fact never complete Memorias de Pancho Villa.
In several interviews after I,, he would claim to be nishing the work but
would ultimately renege on that promise in I,,,, saying bluntly to a journal-
ist, Pues s lo dije . . . , pero me temo que no voy a poder cumplirlo
(Cardona). In short, both in the moment of its original utterance and with
every successive republication of Apunte sobre una personalidad, Memo-
rias de Pancho Villa was and would be an unnished text.
If the conclusion of Guzmans biography of Villa serves as the artistic and
personal moment of self-realization for the majority of Apunte sobre una
personalidad, its incompleteness ultimately serves as the lynchpin for Guz-
ma ns autobiographical act, both within and beyond that same text. Guzma n
says that it was only after leaving Memorias de Pancho Villa unnished that
he was able to understand that the divergent pursuits of art, politics, and
journalism were actually una sola y misma cosa, capaz . . . de expresarse en
una sola y misma forma (,o,). It is precisely in acknowledging his inability
to write the single text that realizes his vocation as an artist, admitting failure
in the autobiographical pact of Apunte sobre una personalidad, that Guz-
ma n expands the scope of his autobiographical project. Lejeune describes the
extreme humility of such admissions as a sort of textual sleight-of-hand:
no one notices that, by the same movement, we extend . . . the autobio-
graphical pact, in an indirect form, to the whole of what we have written
(:,). Accordingly, in his I,, speech, Guzman implies that all his works are
products of the same Norte, that all his texts are, on some level, autobio-
graphical. What he originally presented as the motivation behind his biogra-
phy of Villa has turned out to be the goal of Apunte sobre una
personalidad: to elevate los recursos de la personalidad a la categor a de la
obra, redeeming his own work within a new autobiographical context that
PAGE 480 ................. 18463$ $CH4 09-17-13 13:55:16 PS
Cifuentes-Goodbody : cuzx. x s .u1oni ocv.vui c.i .c1s j 8I
purges it of any aparentes imperfecciones or inconsistencies vis-a`-vis that
refashioned life narrative.
Much in the way Guzman begins his speech with a series of apologies, he
ends it with a litany of negations that seems deant and even confrontational:
En n, heme aqu , con vosotros y ante vosotros, y tal cual me elegisteis: ni
gramatico . . . ni hombre de letras como me hubiera gustado ser . . . Bien
pudiera deciros, al acogerme hoy a vuestro reposo, que no vengo de las aulas
ni de las bibliotecas, sino del traj n de la calle (,ooo,). As in so many other
passages, there are a series of inconsistencies that could not have escaped his
fellow members of the Academy. After all, he had passed through the most
prestigious classrooms of his generation, had been a member of the Ateneo
de la Juventud (albeit a peripheral one [Quintanilla, Nosotros Io]), had at
one point written small pieces for the arielista magazine Nosotros, and had
even worked as a librarian in what would become the Faculty of Philosophy
and Letters at UNAM. On another level, though, this is his nal deferment.
Here, the author strikes the pose of an outsider who has been accepted as a
member of the most prestigious intellectual institution in Mexico in spite of
his inability to precisely explain that acceptance, one whose personality
whose very presence in and before the Academyjusties itself in the same
performative and self-sufcient way that Guzma ns notion of literary truth
does: it is una verdad suprema que vive por s sola.
A Change of Course
In Apology to Apostrophe, James Ferna ndez notes that the concept of posterity
can play a powerful role in the rhetoric of autobiography. He argues that
when faced with a hostile audience, the autobiographer often uses the rhetor-
ical strategy of speaking to an idealized and abstract audience that can prop-
erly interpret his or her story. The author thus invites the real reader to
have his or her perception coincide with that of, say, God, History, or Pub-
lic Opinion (,). In the case of Apunte sobre una personalidad, it is
important to point out that Guzma ns audience is far from hostile. As the
author himself notes, by I,, he had been an associate member of the Acad-
emy for fourteen years and, in fact, had already received full Academy mem-
bership in July of I,,:, only postponing the formality of his discurso de
ingreso for administrative and personal reasons (Ca rdenas de la Pena ::,).
PAGE 481 ................. 18463$ $CH4 09-17-13 13:55:17 PS
8: iui sv.xi c vvvi vw : autumn :o:,
It is tempting to see the prestigious members of Guzma ns audience (the
Archbishop of Mexico, a former dean of UNAM, the countrys most promi-
nent media mogul, the President) as sectors of Mexican society that the
author must win over with his life narrative, but the prole of the audience
speaks to the fact that Guzma n is already unquestionably part of Mexicos
intellectual elite. His many apologies serve only as a pretext for him to pro-
vide his own correct interpretation of his personal history, and the audi-
ences acceptance of his speechnot to mention its disregard for his obvious
omissionsis a foregone conclusion.
However, the movement from apology to apostrophe, the clear progres-
sion from the immediate to the transcendent, perfectly describes the editorial
history of Apunte sobre una personalidad, and it reveals the nature of the
autobiographical project that culminates in the publication of Guzma ns
Obras completas. In I,,, the author addresses a nite number of Mexicos
cultural and political elite with a single intention: trazar ante vosotros un
esquema de m mismo (,,). A month later, when the text of his speech
appears in his magazine Tiempo, the same vosotros refers to a larger and
more abstract readership: the Mexican public. In I,,,, it serves as the center-
piece of Guzma ns collection of speeches from his most controversial
moments in the Mexican Academy of Language, Academia: Tradicion. Inde-
pendencia. Libertad, and thus touts his actions during the First Congress of
Spanish Language Academies as a historic victory. By I,oI, when it becomes
part of the Obras completas, vosotros is more a notion than a concrete
audience or person, an ideal reader that transcends time in the same way
that a denitive volume of complete works is meant to outlive words spoken
at a ceremony that has long since passed.
In the last book in his Obras completas, namely Cronicas de mi destierro,
Guzma n makes a passing reference to a Greek philosopher in an attempt to
describe the urban disorder of Madrid:
La famosa apor a de Zeno n acerca de la echa (aquella segu n la cual la
echa arrojada por el arco no avanza, porque no puede avanzar en el lugar
donde esta , pues eso no ser a avanzar, ni en el lugar donde no esta , puesto
que no esta all ) ayuda a comprender algunas de la dicultades del tra co
de Madrid: los que van despacio estan mas tiempo en todas partes; no se
aduenan so lo de un lugar de una acera, sino de la acera ntegra, y de la
calle, y del barrio, y de toda la ciudad. (Tra co y felicidad Io,o)
PAGE 482 ................. 18463$ $CH4 09-17-13 13:55:17 PS
Cifuentes-Goodbody : cuzx. x s .u1oni ocv.vui c.i .c1s j 8,
In its original context, Zeno of Eleas arrow paradox is meant to refute the
idea that time is composed of nothing but nite, present moments; that all
is a single, indivisible reality. When read towards the end of Obras completas,
however, the quote speaks to a different issue, not unlike the complaint by
Alfonso Reyes that serves as the epigraph for this article. When presented
with separate texts produced over the course of his or her life, how does an
author create the indivisible reality of a single body of work that presents
an integral portrait of its creator? How does Guzma n package these textual
fragments into the coherent autobiographical portrait that is the Obras com-
pletas, the denitive reading of his lifes work?
Guzmans principal strategy is one of simple juxtaposition. By including
Apunte sobre una personalidad in the Obras completas, he allows the for-
mer to act as an interpretive framework for the latter. As the author himself
explains in one of the volumes many prefaces, his apunte is more than an
autonomous autobiographical sketch: a modo de presentacio n de m
mismo, [el texto] me explica, en parte, como escritor . . . y penetra el porque
y el co mo de lo que pueda considerarse caracter stico de mis obras princi-
pales (,,). From a chronological perspective, it may seem odd that Guz-
ma n includes a text from I,, in the very rst volume of his complete works
when nearly all of the other pieces date from the I,Ios and :os. However, by
situating La querella de Me xico and El aguila y la serpiente in the same tome
with an autobiography that describes the ongoing process of artistic self-
realization out of which those texts have supposedly arisen, the author
inscribes an additional layer of meaning onto these two books. It imposes a
Norte or essence onto the works a posteriori through a quasi-epitextual
intervention, a revised reading that Guzma n himself controls. In this context,
it seems even more logical that the author would want to disseminate this
controlled reading in the rst volume of the Obras completas together with
his most well-known and widely read works (namely El aguila y la serpiente
and La sombra del caudillo). Moreover, this autobiographical act is a com-
mercial one that transforms the entire edition into a preface and preview for
Memorias de Pancho Villa, which appears in the second volume two years
later.
5
Apunte sobre una personalidad, then, is not unlike the leisurely
moving occupants of Madrid who seemingly take over the entire city from
,. It should be noted that the Fondo de Cultura Econo micas most recent edition of the Obras
completas (:oIo) is three volumes, not two, and the texts are essentially ordered chronologically.
PAGE 483 ................. 18463$ $CH4 09-17-13 13:55:18 PS
8 iui sv.xi c vvvi vw : autumn :o:,
the stationary point in which they stand; it unites the various fragments that
comprise the Obras completas under a single narrative.
Conclusion: October :nd, :,o8
Of course, Mart n Luis Guzman did not stop writing after the publication of
the second volume of his Obras completas. Correspondence from the authors
archive suggests that he was planning to add a third volume to his complete
works, though the same archive gives few clues as to which works the author
planned to include or why he ultimately abandoned the project. Likewise,
Guzma ns own biography and its relationship with his literary legacy did not
end with the eightieth-birthday celebrations described at the opening of this
article. If October of I,o, was arguably the zenith of Guzmans literary life,
October of I,o8 was just the opposite. Despite his previous calls for amena-
bility towards Mexicos youth, the authors reaction to the student protests
in Mexico City in the lead-up to the Olympic Games was unforgiving. On
October ,th, his magazine Tiempo ran a four-page story on the continuing
student occupation of UNAM. The nal quarter of the article gave purported
details of an incident that had occurred the previous week in the Plaza de las
Tres Culturas. According to a military ofcial, a gun battle had broken out
between two different student groups during a rally, and the army had inter-
vened. Twenty students had been killed, seventy-ve wounded, and more
than four hundred arrested (Operacio n Guerrilla :,). These numbers,
however, would later prove to be greatly understated, and what Tiempo
labeled an accio n subversiva . . . que quiere echarse por tierra el orden . . .
que hoy impera en Me xico (Fuego y subversio n) would come to be
known as the Tlatelolco Massacre.
Tiempos portrayal of the student movement and the events of October :
would become increasingly critical over the coming months. While some
members of Mexicos literary intellectual community vocally criticized Presi-
dent D az Ordaz, Guzma n continued to staunchly support the government.
As he told one reporter, Los que hablan de hacer en Mexico una nueva
Revolucio n no saben lo que dicen. The country had already realized its
revolution, in I,Io, and the continuation of that movement under the cur-
rent government would provide todas la realizaciones igualitarias y satis-
factorias a que puede aspirar el ser humano (Ochoa ,).
Guzman would deliver his most notorious remarks on Tlatelolco in June
PAGE 484 ................. 18463$ $CH4 09-17-13 13:55:18 PS
Cifuentes-Goodbody : cuzx. x s .u1oni ocv.vui c.i .c1s j 8,
I,o,, at the annual ceremony for Freedom of the Press Day. Speaking before
President D az Ordaz, he referred to his fellow members of the media as
miembros de una especie de trust o cartel de la opinio n pu blica (Discurso
. . . Libertad de Prensa o,), one that had remained united during what
had been an all-out assault on the countrys institutions: Las autoridades se
enfrentaron durante aquellos meses a una agitacio n de evidentes tendencias
subversivas; subversivas, s , segu n . . . lo inagotable de su creciente proseli-
tismo, enfocado hacia la guerrilla y el terror (o,). The author ended by
directly addressing the President, applauding him for his actions and promis-
ing that the national press would continue to serve al regimen democratico
e institucional del Mexico de hoy, al Mexico de libertades, realidad y pro-
mesa (,,). For the generation born out of the events of I,o8, these words
would do more than ring false and hollow: they would transform their
speaker into a literary pariah.
Guzmans reaction to the events of I,o8and its contrast to the celebrations
of I,o,are signicant because they expose a ssure in the authors continued
legacy. Critic Fernando Curiel gives voice to this issue in his I,8, book La
querella de Mart n Luis Guzman. For Curiel, Guzmans contribution to the
panorama of Mexican letters is unquestionable, but his advocacy on behalf
of Mexicos perfect dictatorship remains unpardonablela herida que no
cicatriza (,,). Taking stock of literary criticism in Mexico, Curiel explains that
the reaction to the disparity between Guzmans obras and his biography has
been one of silencio . . . convertido en prohibicio n, sello, olvido, lapida (I).
For all his successnot to mention his tireless efforts to cultivate his own
legacy during his lifetimethe author had become a largely forgotten gure.
On the one hand, Guzma ns fall into relative obscurity is indicative of
how I,o8 changed the relationship between Mexican intellectuals and the
postrevolutionary state. If intellectuals are creators and purveyors of ideol-
ogy in general (Knight, Intellectuals I), Guzma n in particular spent
decades purveying the ideology of the Institutional Revolutionary Party,
grounding that regime in Mexicos nineteenth-century liberal tradition and
then inserting himself in that narrative. The state handsomely rewarded him
for these efforts. In I,,8, he accepted a National Science and Arts Prize from
President Ruiz Cortines. In February I,,,, President Lo pez Mateos honored
him with the Manuel A

vila Camacho Prize in Literature, and shortly there-

after, named him president of the National Commission for Free Textbooks.
The events of I,o8 not only shattered the historical and personal narrative at
the center of Guzma ns autobiography, they also broke the link between
PAGE 485 ................. 18463$ $CH4 09-17-13 13:55:19 PS
8o i ui sv.xi c vvvi vw : autumn :o:,
future intellectuals (then students) and the state (Camp :o,). In short, at a
moment when a critical stance towards the government became an integral
part of an intellectuals role in society, Guzman continued to follow the party
line.
On the other hand, for someone who so closely allied his own life narrative
with the postrevolutionary regime, the querella of Mart n Luis Guzma n, this
discord within his public image, speaks specically to the power and limita-
tions of his autobiographical project. Gillian Whitlock characterizes auto-
biography as a soft weapon, one that can make powerful interventions
into debates about social justice but is also easily co-opted into propa-
ganda (,). The case of Apunte sobre una personalidad could be seen as a
counterexample that proves the same point. Guzma ns autobiography was
an effective tool in shaping his image and legitimating the political system to
which he belonged, but that narrative could not withstand the social injustice
of the Tlatelolco Massacre.
To put it in different terms, Guzmans transformation from a foundational
gure of Mexican letters to a literary pariah in less than a year highlights the
intersubjective nature of autobiographical discourse. Smith and Watson have
shown that the greatest limitation of approaching autobiography as one sub-
jects effort to unite the past third-person (the narrated I) with the present
rst-person (the narrating I) is that neither is stable or denitive. The
former is a fragmented . . . provisional perspective from which the auto-
biographer analyzes the moving target of his or her past (oI). The latter is
an equally provisional subject, always in the process of coming together and
dispersing (,,). This same critique applies to the feasibility of Guzma ns
autobiographical acts within and beyond Apunte sobre una personalidad.
The authors speech explains, to an extent, his presence before the Mexican
Academy of Language in I,, and also provides a framework for the republi-
cation of his work over the following decade. However, once this project
culminates in the publication of the Obras completas, Guzma ns textual self-
portrait becomes static, unable to incorporate his later life into a heroic life
narrativeincapable of elevating la personalidad a la categor a de la obra.
If the movement from apology to apostrophe helps to explain not only the
rhetoric of Apunte sobre una personalidad but also its subsequent republi-
cation aimed at ever larger audiences, it also exposes the greatest limitation
of Guzmans autobiographical project. When speaking before the Mexican
Academy of Language, the author has no need for apostrophe because his
ideal audience is already seated before him. For all his contentious acts
PAGE 486 ................. 18463$ $CH4 09-17-13 13:55:19 PS
Cifuentes-Goodbody : cuzx. x s .u1oni ocv.vui c.i .c1s j8,
within the organization, Guzmans life narrative is not a defense of icono-
clastic values, but rather an afrmation of the beliefs that he and his audience
already share: a unied and triumphant vision of the Revolution of I,Io, one
that roots the movement in pre-Porrian liberalism and places its continued
legacy with the monolithic Institutional Revolutionary Party.
In the end, the greatest ssure in Guzma ns autobiographical project
comes to light by examining the rhetoric of Apunte sobre una personali-
dad in dialogue with its material history as a text. Judith Butler argues that,
when giving an account of oneself, the subject always fails to achieve self-
identity (:) because such accounts always take place in relation to an
imposed set of norms from which the subject is never fully free (I,). For
this reason, the interpretation of an autobiographical act should focus on the
extent to which the subject recognizes that it is not knowable even to itself
and, nonetheless, offers its account up to interpretation by the other. As
Butler says, It is only in dispossession that I can and do give any account of
myself (,,). Apunte sobre una personalidad is built on a similar failure,
the authors inability to realize his identity as an artist. However, Guzmans
acknowledgement of and apology for the failure of his account are born out
of a narrow scene of address, a ceremony whose outcome has already been
decided. His autobiography is disseminated through a media monopoly,
using an editorial strategy that imposes a new and stricter interpretation on
his other works. Simply put, any gesture of dispossession by Guzma n within
Apunte sobre una personalidad is a masked effort to tighten his control
over his self-image as a writer, not relinquish it.
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Abreu Go mez, Ermilo. Mart n Luis Guzman. Mexico: Empresas Editoriales, I,o8.
Benjamin, Thomas. La Revolucion: Mexicos Great Revolution as Memory, Myth, and His-
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Butler, Judith. Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham UP, :oo,.
Camp, Roderic A. Intellectuals and the State in Twentieth-Century Mexico. Austin: U of
Texas P, I,8,.
Cardenas de la Pena, Enrique. Historia de la Academia Mexicana de la Lengua (:,,o
:ooo). Vol. :. Mexico: Academia de la Lengua Mexicana; Fondo de Cultura Econo m-
ica, :ooo.
Cardona, Rafael. Mart n Luis Guzma n se aleja de la literatura. U

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I,,,. Newspaper clipping. Fondo Mart n Luis Guzma n Franco. Biblioteca Nacional de
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Curiel, Fernando. La querella de Mart n Luis Guzman. Mexico: Coyoacan, I,,, [I,8,].
De Man, Paul. Autobiography as De-facement. MLN ,., (I,,,): ,I,,o.
Entrevista con el hijo del coronel Guzman. El Imparcial Jan. I,II.
La felicidad y la vida. Tiempo Io Oct. I,o,: IoI:.
Ferna ndez, James D. Apology to Apostrophe: Autobiography and the Rhetoric of Self-
Representation in Spain. Durham, NC: Duke UP, I,,:.
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Guzman, Mart n Luis. Apunte sobre una personalidad [I,,]. In Academia: Tradicion.
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. Discurso pronunciado por don Mart n Luis Guzman con motivo de su LXXX
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Colegio de Me xico; Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Latin American Studies, I,,I.
II,I.
. The Myth of the Mexican Revolution. Past and Present :o,.I (:oIo): ::,,,.
Lejeune, Philippe. On Autobiography. Trans. Katherine Leary. Fwd. Paul John Eakin.
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Loureiro, A

ngel G. The Ethics of Autobiography. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt UP, :ooo.

Molloy, Sylvia. At Face Value: Autobiographical Writing in Spanish America. Cambridge,
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Ochoa, Guillermo. La Revolucio n no es anticuada ni es inferior. Tiempo : Dec. I,o8:
:? ,. Reprinted from Novedades I, Nov. I,o8.
Olea Franco, Rafael. Reejos de Obrego n en la obra de Mart n Luis Guzman. ConNotas
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, ed. La sombra del caudillo. By Mart n Luis Guzman. Coleccio n Archivos ,.
Nanterre, Fr.: ALLCA XX; Paris: Universite Paris X, :oo:.
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