Ignacio Manuel Altamirano

Mexican-born writer, politician, and judge

• Born: November 13, 1834
• Birthplace: Tixtla, Guerrero, Mexico
• Died: February 13, 1893
• Place of death: San Remo, Italy

Altamirano was a prominent Mexican politician and judge of Nahuatl descent who promoted the modernization agenda of the Liberal Party during the nineteenth century. His novels Clemencia (1869), Julia (1870), La Navidad en las montañas (1871; Christmas in the Mountains, 1961), and El Zarco: Episodios de la vida Mexicana en 1861-1863 (1901; El Zarco: The Bandit, 1957) played an important role in shaping Mexican cultural identity.

Early Life

Ignacio Manuel Altamirano Basilio (eeg-NAH-see-oh mah-new-EHL AHL-tah-mee-RAH-noh bah-SEE-lee-oh) was born in the village of Tixtla in the state of Guerrero, Mexico, in 1834. Altamirano, the son of Nahuatl-speaking parents, did not learn Spanish until he turned twelve. The political influence of his father, the mayor of Tixtla, secured him a place in Tixtla’s middle school, and his excellent academic skills allowed him to receive a scholarship to the Instituto Literario Toluca. He went on to become a lawyer.

Altamirano’s early life was marked by the constant struggle for power that followed Mexico’s declaration of independence in 1810. The ruling elites had split into two groups: conservatives and liberals. The conservatives supported the rule of the Creole (descendants of the Spanish colonizers) and resisted any attempt to integrate the indigenous populations into the government; the liberals promoted the modernization of the country and advocated for a rearticulation of Mexican culture in accordance with the dictates of the Enlightenment.

As a young man, Altamirano participated in the revolution of Ayutla that aimed to remove Antonio López de Santa Anna from power and draft a federal constitution. After the War of Reform, the Constitution of 1857 finally was approved. The next year, Benito Juárez, a Zapotec Indian and the first Mexican leader without a military background, was elected president of Mexico. Altamirano initially supported Juárez’s presidency but soon became disillusioned with his conciliatory approach to nation-building. Altamirano favored a more radical reform of the country and opposed Juárez’s decision to offer amnesty to all the conservatives who had fought against the liberals.

Life’s Work

Although Altamirano retired from military life as a decorated colonel and went on to become attorney general and to win an election to Mexico’s Supreme Court, he is best remembered for his tireless promotion of modern Mexican culture. Altamirano played a crucial role in developing the infrastructure that allowed Mexican national culture to flourish. He founded four newspapers—El Federalista, La Tribuna, El Correo de México, and La República—as well as a literary journal, El Renacimiento, that helped launch a generation of Mexican writers.

Early in his literary career, Altamirano wrote an essay titled “Elementos para una literatura nacional” (1868; “Elements of a National Literature”) in which he describes how his political agenda is aided by his literary production. Altamirano, like many other Latin American writers of this period, chose the romance as the ideal genre to promote the articulation of a Mexican national identity. In his novels, the traditional plot of star-crossed lovers becomes an allegory for Mexicans’ need to overcome personal differences and love their homeland.

Despite Altamirano’s firm belief in the power of the novel to shape national conscience, he was painfully aware of the limitations that the high index of illiteracy in nineteenth century Mexico entailed for his modernizing project. In an essay titled “De la poesia epica y de la poesia lirica en 1870” (1872; “Of Epic Poetry and Lyric Poetry in 1870”), Altamirano complained that only a small cultural elite had access to his romances. His prolific literary production, his predilection for the sentimental romance, and his interest in publishing much of his work in serial form are examples of Altamirano’s earnest efforts to overcome this obstacle.

Between 1869 and 1889, Altamirano wrote six novels, the last two of which were published posthumously: Clemencia (1869), published serially in El Renacimiento, Julia (1870), La Navidad en las montañas (1871; Christmas in the Mountains, 1961), Idilios y elegías (published in two volumes in 1872 and 1873; Idylls and Elegies), El Zarco: Episodios de la vida Mexicana en 1861-1863 (1901; El Zarco, the Bandit, 1957) and Atenea (1935). Besides promoting national pride, Altamirano’s sentimental prose often comments directly or indirectly on the political reality of his time. El Zarco, one of his most popular novels, is a thinly disguised critique of Mexican president Juárez’s inability to control the conservative insurrection.

Significance

The quality of Altamirano’s literary production often has been questioned, but as the literary critic Doris Sommer has explained, his novels—as well as the sentimental novels of his contemporaries throughout Latin America—constitute the foundational narrative on which the new nations built their identities. Although Latin American fiction would not achieve international recognition until the arrival of the writers of the Latin American Boom in the 1960’s, the work of writers like Gabriel García Márquez or Mario Vargas Llosa was deeply influenced by writers such as Altamirano. The nineteenth century sentimental romance was the tradition on which the writers of the Boom modeled their prose.

Altamirano’s sentimental romances also have been criticized for their supposed complicity in liberal efforts to homogenize Mexican culture. It is certainly true that Altamirano had no patience with indigenous traditions that he interpreted as backward superstitions, but he was equally impatient with Creole provincialism. Altamirano was a pragmatic statesman. His critique of Mexican culture did not intend to replace it with an enlightened version of Spanish or French culture but to provide it with the coherence that a nation requires as his detailed analysis of indigenous culture in his collection of essays Paisajes y Leyendas (1884; Landscapes and Legends) suggests.

Bibliography

Altamirano, Ignacio M. El Zarco, the Blue-Eyed Bandit: Episodes of Mexican Life Between 1861-1863. Translated by Ronald J. Christ. Edited by Christ and Sheridan Phillips. Santa Fe, N. Mex.: Lumen Books, 2007. Altamirano’s literary attempt to reconcile the interests of nineteenth century marginal bandits and mainstream Mexicans.

Sommer, Doris. Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. A seminal exploration of the significance of Altamirano’s work and that of other Latin American writers in developing national discourses.

Wright-Rios, Edward. “Indian Saints and Nation-States: Ignacio Manuel Altamirano’s Landscapes and Legends.” Mexican Studies/estudios Mexicanos 20, no. 1 (2004): 47-68. An analysis of the precarious balance of traditional, indigenous, and modern Mexican identities in Altamirano’s work.