Historical Background: The Mexican Revolution and its Aftermath

It may appear surprising that an author born in 1949 – over 30 years after the end of the ‘military’ phase of the Revolution – should set Arráncame la vida in the 1930s and 1940s and Mal de amores between the 1890s and 1965. But such retrogression is not uncommon in contemporary Mexican writing – indeed it is almost the norm – since the Revolution was to provide the central point of reference for the remainder of twentieth-century Mexican history and fiction. It is in the revolutionary period that the roots of the country’s current malaise are to be found. The Mexican Revolution and its aftermath provide Mastretta with the historical backdrop to her two novels.

Mastretta offers a feminist revision of the historical record, giving voice to suppressed marginal perspectives – particularly of women. The author considers the often unacknowledged function of women during and after the Revolution, a role which was to undermine entrenched patriarchal attitudes and machista domination of women in Mexican society. It is important to consider Mexican history and politics as both Arráncame la vida and Mal de amores offer a faithful representation of the historical circumstances of women in Mexico and of the nation’s political machinations. Her critical examination of the past has clear relevance for the present. As many have observed, Mexico’s tumultuous history is marked by an almost cyclic pattern of growth and decline, hope and disappointment, life and death, peace and violence. Mastretta’s fictions reflect in many ways the political and social mood of Mastretta’s own era, in the last twenty-five years, which also express this pattern.

The Historical Setting of ‘Arráncame la vida’ and ‘Mal de amores’

The action of both Mal de amores and Arráncame la vida takes place primarily in the city and state of Puebla which lies to the south-east of Mexico City. Mastretta mentions the names of surrounding districts in the State of Puebla such as Izúcar de Matamorros and Cholula, but the city of Puebla is the location of most relevance to both Mal de amores and Arráncame la vida. Puebla has played an important role in Mexican history. The city of Puebla, where Ángeles Mastretta herself was born in 1949, developed an important agricultural and industrial base in the late nineteenth century.