Government by B. Traven

The Porfiriato’s culture of corruption

B. Traven was a German-born author who wrote mostly fiction set in Mexico and Central America. His novel Government, published in 1931, is one of a series of six books known as the Jungle Novels. Depending on which list you’re looking at, this is either the first or second book in that series (both Government and The Carreta were published in 1931). The Jungle Novels take place in the state of Chiapas in Southern Mexico in the years just prior to the Mexican Revolution. This period is known as the Porfiriato because Mexico was governed by the dictator Porfirio Díaz, who ruled from 1876 to 1911. During his reign, Díaz invited foreign corporations to exploit Mexico’s resources for his own financial gain. He and an oligarchy of favored landowners and industrialists enjoyed immense wealth, while the majority of the country’s population struggled for survival as illiterate peasants and laborers. Traven’s Jungle Novels deal directly with this social and economic environment.

Under Díaz’s regime, as depicted in the novel Government, a system of trickle-down patronage determined the granting of government positions. Government offices at all levels were reserved for Spaniards, Mestizos, or Ladinos—essentially the “whiter” population of Mexico as opposed to the Native Mexicans or Indians (the term Traven uses), who were treated little better than beasts of burden. In this novel, Don Gabriel is granted a minor role as secretario of an Indian village, basically the federal government’s appointed mayor. His job is to keep the Natives in line and keep rebellions in check to ensure that farms in the region remain profitable. Because such government jobs pay very little, it is understood that the functionaries appointed to such positions will generate wealth for themselves through various schemes of corruption or graft, including arbitrary taxes, fines, and fees, the taking of bribes, and the monopolization of certain goods, in particular alcohol. The drawback to such a seemingly lucrative position, however, is that if the secretario pushes his Indians too far, he may find himself beheaded by a machete. At first, Don Gabriel is somewhat reluctant and very ignorant of such unethical techniques of income generation, but by the end of the book he is wheeling and dealing in Indian lives as if they were cattle.

In this novel, Traven uses the word “montería” a lot, and he doesn’t define it for the reader. This is a logging camp in the tropical jungle where hardwoods like mahogany were extracted for export. In other regions of Mexico, mines were the primary scene of slave labor, but in Southern Mexico and the Yucatan it was the monterías. The labor was grueling and the living conditions extremely harsh. Technically, of course, it wasn’t slave labor, because slavery was nominally illegal under the Porfiriato. However, a system of indentured servitude was common and basically amounted to slavery for many Indians, who had no power, no rights, and little or no chance of ever earning their way out of debt peonage.

Traven lived in Mexico for much of his adult life and spent considerable time in Chiapas from 1924 to 1931. Despite being born in Germany and writing in the German language, Traven is one of the best writers of fiction about Mexico for English-language readers. If Mexican writers wrote critical novels of this sort, they haven’t made it into translation. Juan Rulfo’s The Burning Plain, although set after the Revolution, is the closest I can think of to Traven’s work as far as considering the plight of the Mexican Indians. Mariano Azuela’s Los de Abajo is in a similar ballpark, but more about the Revolution itself and not the conditions that inspired it.

One surprising thing about Traven’s Government is how well it has stood up to the passage of time. The book is still very relevant to our political climate today. In recent years, the United States has drifted farther from democracy, and government officials at the highest level commit blatantly corrupt acts of self-enriching graft. Occasionally you’ll hear critics saying, “This certain politician [who shall remain unnamed] wants to be the next Hitler or Mussolini.” No, that’s not quite accurate. What he really wants to be is the next Porfirio Díaz, and Traven’s Government gives us a pretty good idea of what that might be like.