March to the Monteria

This superb novel is one of several "jungle books" by the author that describes exploitation and debt slavery among the impoverished Indians of Southern Mexico in the early 20th Century. The story centers on Celso, an illiterate young Indian trying to earn enough money to buy a wife. Celso works two years on a ranch, only to lose most of his savings in a quasi-legal swindle. He then undertakes a dangerous trip into the jungle, and contracts to work in a jungle logging camp - called a Monteria. After two years of ceaseless labor on the Monteria he tries to return home with his savings to marry. Once again he is cheated, this time by an under-handed conspiracy involving agents, contractors, and the law. Celso then tries to adjust to his situation as he joins the forced march of fellow pseudo-slaves deep into the jungle to their new Monteria. Readers quickly identify with Celso as he attempts to control his life despite an unfair system that repeatedly cheats and abuses people like him. Author B. Traven (1890-1969) wrote with great sympathy for the impoverished Indians of Mexico, as well as other exploited workers. Traven held leftist/anarchist views, and as usual, exposes the dark sides of human nature, racial bigotry, and capitalist exploitation.

This is the third in a series of books written by Traven. They are usually called the Jungle Novels. In the first book; Government, there is a detailed explanation of the social and economic structure under the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. We see how Indian peon work on farms as serfs, always in dept to the large land owners. In some ways the first book reminded me of the books of Victor Hugo where he combines social science with novel. In the second book; The Carreta, a young man makes his living traveling the roads of Mexico with an ox drawn cart full of goods owned by his master. This third novel in the series is actually better than the first two in some ways. In the first novel, Traven gives a tremedous amount of social commentary, which is good, but the characters lack the cohesion and depth of a novel. In the second novel, a romance between Andres and a young runaway Indian girl becomes a marriage, but they experience one challenge after another in a system that is rigged against them. In this third novel, Celso, a young Indian man who has assumed his father's debts and has gone to work in the mahogony plantations of Southern Mexico, must survive under the cruelest and most brutal of conditions. Celso is a more heroic character than characters in the first two novels. He is heroic in assuming his father's debts. He has a critical consciousness that allows him to make judgements about the system in which he is trapped. He begins to try to figure a way out of the system instead of resigning his fate to daily back breaking toil and death. The reader dearly wants him to escape. Therefore the reader becomes more emotionally involved in his struggel to escape from the man-destroying experiences of the Monteria, the mahogany plantations. Celso has a sense of justice and injustice that allows him to look beyond his personal circumstance and at the circumstances that entrap his people.

Traven's Jungle series is the gripping saga of the Mexican struggle for hope and dignity.

Read this in a British translation many years ago. After all these years it remains for me the most memorable of the "jungle" novels by Traven. Of course, all of them are exceptional, and all should be read. This novel has the ring of truth, a truth that indicts the comfortable and complacent, a truth from which most of us would like to avert our gaze, but truth nonetheless. This is Traven at his most powerful.

This is a spellbinding and disturbing story about the abuse suffered by the indians of southern Mexico at the hands of the large logging companies as well as the more "elite" classes. The translation is flawed, however. For example "jefecito" is translated as "little chief" which, while being literally correct is not what is meant which is "dear chief", a term of respect given by the "inferior" indian to his boss.