Katherine Anne Porter (157 page)

866.8
the Select] Café in Montparnasse, Paris.

869.7
Madero revolution] In 1910–11; see
note 102.22
.

871.6
La Muerte] Death.

872.3
Carranza] In 1914 Venustiano Carranza became the acting president of Mexico, and in 1917 the first president of Mexico under its present constitution; see
note 76.8
.

872.12
de la Huerta] Adolfo de la Huerta (1888–1955) was provisional president of Mexico from June 1 to December 1, 1920, from the murder of President Carranza to the inauguration of President Obregón.

873.1
Camara] Mexican House of Congress. Under the Constitution of 1917, the Mexican Congress is bicameral, with a Senate
(Senado)
, or upper house, and a Chamber of Deputies
(Cámara de Diputados)
, or lower house.

873.6
diputados] Mexican congressional deputies (analogous to U.S. representatives).

873.17
Soto y Gama] Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama (1880–1967), a Zapatista (see
note 101.12–13
).

873.24
Luis Leon] Luis L. León Uranga (1891–1981) held several important Cabinet-level posts in 1920–28.

876.19–20
Porfirio Diaz] See
note 152.17
.

876.26–27
And their swords. . . more.”] Isaiah 2:4.

878.28–30
Waddy. . . book] Waddy Thompson Jr. (1798–1868), U.S. representative from South Carolina, was ambassador to Mexico in 1842–44. He recorded his Mexican experiences in
Recollections
(1846).

879.7–12
Mary Guadalupe. . . Empress] See
note 20.21–22
.

881.12
Tilma] Cloak typically worn by native Mexican Indians until the 1600s. See
note 20.21–22
.

881.40
Teocalli] Sacred temple of the Aztecs, built atop a terraced pyramid.

883.24
GENERAL BENJAMÍN HILL] Although an autopsy determined that Hill (1874–1920), President Obregón’s nephew and close adviser, died from complications of a stomach ailment, partisans suspected that he was poisoned by enemies of the Obregón administration.

883.30
ships”] Dirigibles.

883.31
Alameda] See
note 100.22
.

884.26
San Felipe] Philip of Jesus, the first Mexican saint, crucified in 1596 in Nagasaki, Japan, and canonized in 1862.

885.10
Reina] Queen.

886.21
canoa] Canoe.

887.4
henequen fibre] Sisal.

889.16–17
Oaxaca bowl] Traditional dark brown clay bowl with brightly colored flower-like designs made in Oaxaca, central region of Mexico famous for its pottery.

891.30–31
La Adelita,”. . . “La Norteña,”] Four popular songs of Revolutionary Mexico: “La Adelita” and “La Norteña,” songs about
soldaderas
(female soldiers from the north, allied to Pancho Villa); “La Pajarera” (“The Bird”), attributed to Manuel María Ponce Cuéllar (1882–1948); “La Sandunga” (see
note 158.8
).

894.38
syndicalists] Members of the socialist and anarchist wing of the Mexican labor movement.

895.7–10
Calles. . . Capmany] Plutarco Elías Calles (1877–1955), Obregón’s secretary of the interior, later president of Mexico (1924–28); Adolfo de la Huerta (see
note 872.12
), Obregón’s secretary of finance; Alberto J. Pani (1878–1955), Obregón’s secretary of the treasury and secretary of foreign relations; Rafael Zuberán Capmany, Obregón’s secretary of labor and industry.

896.23
land-reform laws of Juárez] See
note 102.22–23
.

897.2
oratorio
] Chapel or other designated place for prayer.

898.4–7
Carranza. . . May, 1920.] By the end of his elected term, Venustiano Carranza, the first post-Revolution president of Mexico (1914–20), was unpopular with those who wanted swifter government reform. In June 1919, General Álvaro Obregón, one of his most vocal critics, declared his intention to run for president in the June 1920 election. On April 8, 1920, in the run-up to the election, a worker for the Obregón campaign attempted to kill Carranza, and the president threatened Obregón with arrest. Obregón withdrew from the race to declare an armed revolt against Carranza; days later, military supporters of Obregón published their plan to form a junta that, after removing Carranza from office, would hold a free and fair popular election. On May 21, after fleeing Mexico City, Carranza was intercepted en route to Veracruz and killed by revolutionary forces led by General Rodolfo Herrera. Adolfo de la Huerta was named provisional president until December 1, 1920, when Obregón took office after a decisive victory in the popular election.

899.6
Lupe Sánchez] General Guadalupe Sánchez (1856–1933), chief of military operations in the state of Veracruz.

899.7–8
Candido Aguilar] General Cándido Aguilar (1889–1960), Carranza’s son-in-law, was governor of Veracruz in 1917–20.

899.12
La Suerte
] Luck or fortune.

899.34
Trevino] General Jacinto B. Treviño (1883–1971) returned from military studies in Europe to join the revolt against Carranza.

903.11
Senator Fall] Albert B. Fall (1861–1944), U.S. senator (Republican) from New Mexico (1912–21) and secretary of the interior under President Warren Harding (1921–23). He led the 1919 Senate investigation into post-Revolution Mexican-American oil futures, which heightened U.S. economic fears of Mexican appropriation and nationalization of U.S. holdings there.

903.13–14
Vasconcelos. . . Villarreal] José Vasconcelos (1881–1959), Mexican man of letters and Obregón’s secretary of education; Antonio I. Villarreal (1879–1944), a founder of the Mexican Labor Party and Obregón’s secretary of agriculture and development.

904.10–11
Guggenheims and Dohenys] By the early 1920s, the sons of Meyer Guggenheim (1828–1905) controlled much of North American mining and smelting, and Edward J. Doheny (1865–1935), founder of PanAmerican Petroleum and its Mexican affiliate, Huasteca, controlled much of its oil.

904.22
Guffey] Joseph F. Guffey (1870–1959), owner of AGWI, a U.S. oil company with strong Mexican connections.

905.2
Esteban Cantu] Colonel Esteban Cantú Jiménez (1881–1966), governor of Baja California under Carranza and a political adversary of Obregón.

905.24
Pablo Gonzales] General Pablo Gonzáles Garza (1879–1950) plotted the ambush of Emiliano Zapata (April 10, 1919) at the behest of President Carranza and was later hunted as a traitor by the Obregón regime. He was eventually captured, tried, and condemned to death, but released on orders of President Calles. He was exiled from Mexico, and lived in San Antonio, Texas, until his death.

906.19
Zapata’s horde] See
note 101.12–13
.

907.33
five men] General Sidronio Méndez and his sons (both officers); General Fernando Vizcaino; and General Carlos Greene.

908.36
Luis Morones] Luis Napoleón Morones (1890–1946) was Calles’s secretary of economy in 1924, a position he abused for his own financial gain.

909.15
magazine] Vasconcelos published the magazine
El Maestro
(“The Master”) and in 1924 founded
La Antorcha
(“The Torch”).

909.23
Manuel Gamio] Gamio (1883–1960), archaeologist and one of the leaders of the indigenest movement in Mexico. Porter became friends with him shortly after her arrival in Mexico in 1920.

909.29
Jorge Enciso] Enciso (1879–1969), designer and painter, was Inspector General of Artistic Monuments 1916–20.

909.31
Adolfo Best-Maugard] See
note 544.35–36
.

910.17
Land and liberty. . . forever!”] “¡Tierra y Libertad!” (“Life and Liberty!”) was a revolutionary slogan popularized by Emiliano Zapata.

914.20
Oaxaca bowl] See
note 889.16–17
.

914.31
Emperor Maximilian’s time] The 1860s.

915.13
La Cocinera] Female cook.

916.29
Pobrecito!] Poor little thing!

918.21
Musetta Waltz] Leitmotif from
La Bohème
(1896) by Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924).

919.3
Yo solita] Lonely little me.

920.4–5
Yo te amo. . . Lindo.”] “I love you, Heavenly One.”

921.15
jota] Spanish dance rhythm in three-quarters time.

927.4–5
manzanilla] Chamomile.

929.1
The Charmed Life
] The unnamed subject of this memoir is Porter’s friend William Niven (1850–1937), a Scottish-born American mineralogist and archaeologist. He arrived in Mexico in 1890 to promote gold mining and the construction of a railroad, but by 1910 his interests had shifted to the Valley of Mexico, especially the area around Atzcapotzalco, where he unearthed thousands of artifacts.

936.33
Victoriano Huerta] Huerta (1854–1916)  was, after a coup d’etat in which he seized power from Francisco I. Madero, president of Mexico, 1913–14. When forced from office by revolutionary forces, he went into voluntary exile.

936.38
Bertram D. Wolfe] Wolfe (1896–1977), American historian and journalist whose lifelong subjects were the revolutions in Mexico and Russia.

937.20
Pancho Villa] See
note 76.7
.

943.3
The Itching Parrot
] Porter prefaced her translation of Lizardi’s novel with the following note:

“The first full translation from the Spanish of
El Periquillo Sarniento
was made by Eugene Pressly, who lived a number of years in Mexico and had made a study of the Mexican popular language and slang in which the novel was partly written, and on which its first appeal to the Mexican public was based. I edited it and revised it at great length. Ford Madox Ford then kindly read it, found it still much too long, and offered suggestions for further deletions. The final editing and cutting was done by Donald Elder, of Doubleday, Doran and Company, and at last the story has been stripped of its immense accumulation of political pamphlets and moral disquisitions, which served their purpose once, let us hope, as the author meant them to. What remains, I believe, is a typical picaresque novel, almost the last of its kind.

“For the clearing up of some knotty chronology, and some material on the life of Lizardi, I owe thanks to Dr. Rea Jefferson Spell, whose doctoral thesis,
The Life and Works of José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi
, was published by the University of Pennsylvania in 1931.
Notes for a Biography of the Mexican Thinker
, now used as a preface to the Barcelona edition, was written in the early 1840s by an anonymous author who contributes refreshing partisanship, indignation, and sympathy to his subject, but it is a little difficult to find one’s way around in.

“The first and best authority on the life of Lizardi is Don Luis González Obregón, distinguished Mexican critic and historian of literature, who wrote his first study of Lizardi as long ago as 1888. [Published by Oficias Tipografica de la Seretararía de Fomento, 1888.] Through his original researches he aroused interest in the almost lost history of Mexico’s unique novelist of manners and speech, and later studies have clarified some points and disposed of others for good. To Don Luis I offer my special thanks and acknowledgments.”

945.22
Morelos] José María Morelos (1765–1815), Roman Catholic priest turned leader of the Mexican War of Independence. He was captured by the Spanish in 1815 and executed by firing squad near Mexico City.

945.32
Mexico] Mexico City.

946.12–13
Hidalgo] Miguel Hidalgo (1753–1811), revolutionary Roman Catholic priest known as the father of the Mexican independence movement.

946.14
Philip VII] It was Ferdinand VII (1784–1833), not Philip VII, who was King of Spain, from 1813 until 1833, after a brief ascension in 1808 when the emperor Napoleon forced him to abdicate and imprisoned him in France for seven years.

947.2
Aldama, Jimínez, and Allende] Juan Aldama, José Mariano Jimínez, and Ignacio Allende, fellow revolutionaries with Miguel Hidalgo.

951.9
Bustamante] Carlos María Bustamante (1774–1848), publisher and lawyer who worked vigorously for Mexican independence and afterward to block a Mexican monarchy.

953.22
Calleja] Félix María Calleja (1753–1828), viceroy of New Spain, 1813–16.

955.35–37
Blanchard. . . education.”] Jean-Baptiste Blanchard (1731–1797) revised the theories on “natural” education that Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) presented in
Émile, ou l‘education
(1762).

956.5
Dr. Beristain] José Mariano Beristain (1756–1817), scholar, critic, and bibliographer of Spanish literature in the New World.

956.11–12
Torres Villaroel] Diego de Torres Villarroel (1693–1770), Spanish poet, playwright, and professor.

956.13–14
Guzman de Alfarache] Hero of
Guzmán de Alfarache
(1599–1604), picaresque novel by Mateo Alemán y de Enero (1547–1614).

966.25
Gil Blas] Hero of
Histoire de Gil Blas
(1715–47), picaresque novel by Alain-René Lesage (1668–1747).

966.25–26
Peregrine. . . Jones]
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle
(1751) and
The Adventures of Roderick Random
(1748) were written by Tobias Smollett (1721–1771);
The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling
(1729) was written by Henry Fielding (1707–1754).

974.8
Fantasies”]
Fantastics and Other Fancies
(1914) by Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904), posthumous collection of stories and sketches from New Orleans newspapers.

974.21
The Cabin”]
La Barraca
(1898), social novel set among the poor and oppressed of the Valencia countryside, by the Spanish writer Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1867–1928).

978.10
Mr. Saenz] Moisés Sáenz (1888–1941), educator, diplomat, and Mexican ambassador to Peru, was Porter’s friend in 1920–31.

978.40
Mr. Priestley’s] Herbert Ingram Priestley (1875–1944), longtime professor of Latin American history at the University of California.