| synopsis :
The Federal forces come to the countryside, behaving in a thoroughly despicable way ...looting, killing and stealing women.
So the peasants form their own rough troop, and fight against the Federals on the revotionary side. They get experience, become good fighters, win battles, but we see them then behave in the same despicable way. And also at the end of the war they go back to the same life on the farms. They have no influence over the new revolutionary politicians who just serve their own interests. All that turmoil and nothing has really changed.
"But Azuela was fundamentally a moralist, and his disappoint-
ment with the Revolution soon began to manifest itself. He had
fought for a better Mexico; but he saw that while the Revolution
had corrected certain injustices, it had given rise to others
equally deplorable. When he saw the self-servers and the un-
principled turning his hopes for the redemption of the under-
privileged of his country into a ladder to serve their own ends,
his disillusionment was deep and often bitter." |