_When the Owl Cries_ has been described by reviewers as "The _Gone with
the Wind_ of Mexico." It is a gripping, vivid story that takes place on
a huge estate, an hacienda, at the beginning of the Mexican Revolution
of 1910. The novel centers about the life of Don Raul Medina, soon to
take over the management of the hacienda from his father, Fernando, who
is now dying. Fernando has been a cruel _hacendado_, ruling with an
iron hand, whip, and gun. Raul is caught in a complex web: his
estrangement from his emotionally frail and disturbed wife, his love
for the young blonde Lucienne, _hacendada_ of a neighboring estate, and
the turmoil and hardships they are plunged into during the Revolution.
The colorful, descriptive panorama of the novel leads the reader into a
first-hand experience as hacienda life came to an end as a result of
the Revolution.
_When the Owl Cries_ was originally published in 1960 to commemorate
the fiftieth anniversary of the Mexican Revolution and was an immediate
success. The book was listed by the _New York Times Book Review_ in its
Best-seller/Recommended column for 13 continuous weeks after its
release. The novel received rave reviews across the country. Excerpts
of a few of these reviews appear later in this introduction.
Readers may be interested in some personal background about the author
and where _When the Owl Cries_ was written. Paul Alexander Bartlett
(1909-1990) was a fine artist and the author of numerous short stories,
novels, and non-fiction works. He came to Mexico during WWII and
developed a life-long interest in visiting haciendas throughout the
country in order to make the first large-scale artistic and
photographic record of these ancient, fascinating, but rapidly
vanishing places. His interest was inspired by the realization that
most of these old estates were rapidly crumbling and disappearing after
the ravages of the Mexican Revolution had left them in ruins, and from
the neglect that followed the Revolution as Mexican peasants dismantled
many of the hacienda buildings for use as building materials.
From the mid-1940s until late in the 1980s, Bartlett visited more than
350 haciendas throughout Mexico. Many were remote and difficult to find
and then to visit. He, and often with me as his young _compañero_,
traveled by horseback, by car, boat, motorcycle, or on foot to visit
these old estates. Some were completely abandoned, the roofs of the
buildings having caved in, with gaping holes in their walls and trees
growing up through their unsheltered floors. Some, in ramshackle
condition, were still being lived in by poor Mexican families. Very
rarely a select few were occupied or maintained in absentia by the
descendants of their original owners, while a small number of the
estimated original 8,000 haciendas have been converted into tourist
hotels, schools, and government buildings.
There was no grant funding available for my father's lifelong project.
It was a labor of love financed by his and my mother's meager savings,
the frequent fate of creative artists. (My mother was Elizabeth
Bartlett, well-known for her many published books of poetry.) During
each hacienda visit, my father made sketches he later turned into
finished pen-and-ink illustrations, of which he completed 350. The
collection of hacienda illustrations was exhibited in more than 40
one-man shows in leading galleries, museums, and libraries in the U.S.
and Mexico. In addition, he took more than a thousand photographs of
the haciendas. Before his death in 1990, the University Press of
Colorado published his non-fiction book, _The Haciendas of Mexico: An
Artist's Record_, which contains selections of his many illustrations
and photographs, accompanied by a text that describes hacienda life and
the history of the haciendas.
In 1959, thanks to my parents' friendship with Cuca Cámara, of the
long-established Cámara family of Mérida, Yucatán, my father was
offered the opportunity live on one of the family's haciendas, located
outside of Mérida between the small towns of Motul and Suma. My father
and I lived at the Hacienda Kambul while he completed _When the Owl
Cries_. The Hacienda Kambul provided a very spartan existence: We slept
in hammocks in a large bare room of what had been the _casa principal_,
the main residence of the hacienda. The 20-foot-high ceilings and the
thick adobe walls helped cool the hot and dry Yucatecan weather; in the
mornings, swallows would fly through the opened ten-foot-high doors
into the room, chitterling and swooping above our heads.
[Illustration: The author on horseback at the Hacienda Kambul]
The time there was not limited to serious writing. We went horseback
riding across the fields of _henequén_, whose fiber, like that of
sisal, was traditionally used for rope and twine. Sometimes, we would
relax in hammocks on the wide terrace of the _casa principal_. Often,
we would travel out into the _campo_ on the hacienda's narrow-gauge
railway, on a flat-topped rail car pulled by a mule, called a
_plataforma_.
[Illustration: Riding an hacienda _plataforma_. The author's son on
the right, the hacienda driver on the left, the mule in front.]
We had no electricity, so evenings were short and mornings early. We
had a _huipíl_-clad Maya maid, Bicha, who, along with a thin, old, lame
Maya gentleman, Lázaro, helped us to provision ourselves on a close to
starvation diet. We were sometimes very sick from the polluted water of
the well, which had unwisely been dug right next to the horse corral.
We boiled the water conscientiously, but Moctezuma exacted considerable
revenge despite our efforts.
[Illustration: Stressful life at the Hacienda Kambul! The author's son
on the hacienda terrace; in the foreground their pet dog, a Mexican
Maltese, named Mona, whose namesake appears in _When the Owl Cries_.]
It was hard to leave Kambul behind despite the weight we'd lost. But my
father had completed _When the Owl Cries_ in the most appropriate
setting for a book that seeks to recreate hacienda life, and we shared
many happy memories of our outings and leisurely hours there.