Pedro Martinez: A Mexican Peasant and His Family

New York: Random House, 1964. First Edition, First Printing. 1/4 cloth. Very good +/very good. Alberto Beltrán. A very good plus first edition, first printing, as stated, in a very good, price clipped dust jacket. Red quarter cloth under black cloth boards with sun insignia on front cover and black and gold titling on spine. Previous owner's name stamped on pastedown. Binding is sturdy, tight and square. Smudge to bottom page edges, not affecting text. Text is clean and bright. Dust staining and a smudge to rear cover of dust jacket. lvii, 507 pp., illustrated. Octavo. Pedro Martínez is Oscar Lewis’ newest contribution to our knowledge of the culture of Mexican poverty. The book tries to do for the village scene what the earlier volume, The Children of Sanchez, did for the urban slum. In that both works are multi-biographical in nature, they are quite similar. However, this new one contains a number of features that make it distinctive from the first and, perhaps, more valuable.The most important of these is the time span involved. Pedro Martinez is the result of no less than twenty years of contact with a single family. Lewis met the Martínez family for the first time in 1943. Formal study of the family began in 1944. Between that date and 1948 life histories were obtained from Pedro and his wife, Esperanza. Approximately ten years later Lewis returned, this time with a tape recorder. He re-interviewed Pedro alone, for Esperanza had already died. He tells us that the concordance between the two series of interviews is impressive, though the reader has no way of judging. Beginning in 1960, a life history was obtained from Felipe, Pedro’s oldest living son. The three life histories, translated and set into order by Lewis, make up the body of the book.Pedro was born in 1889. He was seventy two when Lewis wrote his introduction to the book. His life, therefore, has spanned one of the most dynamic periods of Mexican history. This is fortunate, for seldom do we encounter a record of the feelings and thoughts that ordinary men have when caught up in significant historical processes. Historians will find Pedro’s recollections of the Zapata movement particularly illuminating. And his frustrating experience with the ejido system will perhaps aid in giving us a more balanced appraisal of that instrument of reform.It is difficult to say how representative Pedro is of Mexican villagers. One might even question the accuracy of much that he tells. For he gives very numerous reproductions of conversations held in the distant past. Some of these too easily could have grown out of involuntary fabrication. Esperanza’s and Felipe’s accounts of events Pedro describes provides a check not only on differing perspective but also on accuracy of detail. Often the three stories vary widely. When Pedro and his wife speak of the death of Pedro’s mother, they cannot agree on even the most basic facts.However, given the nature of the Mexican revolution, Pedro’s aspirations both for himself and for his offspring would appear to be anything but idiosyncratic. And if Lewis’ concluding data on the local economy is reliable, Pedro’s difficulties in merely staying alive would appear to be fairly typical. Moreover, his acceptance of violence as normal, his subjugation of women, his love of alcohol, and his fatalism are impressively similar to those encountered in The Children of Sánchez.Pedro is not an introspective man. As Lewis points out in his introduction: “He rarely questions his own motives and actions although he is quite critical of others . . . He has little sense of guilt . . . He claims to have been ‘a Zapatista down to the marrow’ but tells of deserting Zapata’s forces.. . . He speaks ardently of the need for justice but uses connections, bribes, and trickery to get his nephew out of jail. He says he admires democracy but is fundamentally authoritarian.” The ideal and the real are widely separated in Pedro Martínez. Those who become perplexed at the seeming inconsistencies in the behavior of many Latin Americans would do well to keep his case in mind.A few simple things could have improved the book considerably. For example, the glossary should contain all the Spanish and Náhuatl items which appear in the text. This it does not. Moreover, Lewis refers to Rorschach and TAT tests which were administered to Pedro in 1945 and 1960. Yet he gives us very little idea as to what the results were. Finally, portions of the text seem overly verbose. More editing might have made a far more readable book without sacrificing any of the richness of its content.But these are all relatively minor points. The book, as The Children of Sánchez before it, has given a voice to people who ordinarily are not heard. In its straightforward, homey accounts it borders on literary art. It broadens our understanding of what life must be like for the Mexican portion of what Ralph Linton has called the “most of the world.” Yet it does not indicate what the “culture of poverty” is in all of Latin America. For that we must await parallel studies in other countries." ---William Carter in Hispanic American Historical Review (1965) 45 (1): 133–134.