Mariano Azuela, the first of the "novelists of the Revolution," was
born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, Mexico, in 1873. He studied medicine
in Guadalajara and returned to Lagos in 1909, where he began the
practice of his profession. He began his writing career early; in 1896
he published Impressions of a Student in a weekly of Mexico City. This
was followed by numerous sketches and short stories, and in 1911 by his
first novel, Andres Perez, maderista.
Like most of the young Liberals, he supported Francisco I. Madero's
uprising, which overthrew the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, and in
1911 was made Director of Education of the State of Jalisco. After
Madero's assassination, he joined the army of Pancho Villa as doctor,
and his knowledge of the Revolution was acquired at firsthand. When the
counterrevolutionary forces of Victoriano Huerta were temporarily
triumphant, he emigrated to El Paso, Texas, where in 1915 he wrote The
Underdogs (Los de abajo), which did not receive general recognition
until 1924, when it was hailed as the novel of the Revolution.
But Azuela was fundamentally a moralist, and his disappointment 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 unprincipled 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.
His later novels are marred at times by a savage sarcasm.
During his later years, and until his death in 1952, he lived in Mexico
City writing and practicing his profession among the poor.