The Lean Lands by Agustín Yáñez

First published:Las tierras flacas, 1962 (English translation, 1968)

Type of plot: Allegorical realism

Time of work: The early 1920’s

Locale: A typical, isolated, high-plain, sparsely populated region of Jalisco, Mexico, called Tierra Santa (Holy Land)

Principal Characters:

• Don Epifanio Trujillo, one of three protagonists, a landowner, and the father of Don Felipe, Don Jesús, and Miguel Arcángel, half-brothers to one another
• Miguel Arcángel/Jacob Gallo, the antagonist, who overthrows his father and his two half-brothers
• Rómulo, the second protagonist, a peasant, the father of Teófila, husband of Merced, and the “voice” of the people
• Doña Matiana, the third protagonist, a bruja (seeress), the “voice” of faith/spirit
• Plácida, Don Epifanio’s willful daughter, who replaces him on his death

The Novel

The Lean Lands portrays a transitional moment in the history of the Trujillo family, the sociopolitical center of the region. The action involves an internecine war among three half brothers to gain access to the power center held by their ill father, Don Epifanio (Pifanio, Don Pifas).

Consistent with the hacendado system (a parafeudal system of land ownership), throughout his life, Epifanio has conformed majestically to the traditional functions of the cacique (chieftain), the Arawak term for tribal chief.

Arrogantly, he has subjugated all in the region to his arbitrary and willful nature in various ways. Chief among them is the long-held prerogative of having multiple “wives” to create an enormous progeny. Sensuality is totally lacking in the “conquests,” which are motivated strictly by sociopolitical considerations. Nor is sentiment valued, for Epifanio selects from the children those whose characters promise the same uncompromising attitude that he holds toward the weak.

These chosen few are brought to the Big House for watchful training to polish their ruthlessness. It seems pleasingly ironic, then, that, though the region is impotent to withstand him, it is his own potency as prolific father and his deficiencies as a guide which are the seeds of his demise and of the destruction of the region.

Two of his sons, Don Jesús, “the Snake,” and Don Felipe, “the Tiger”—nicknames which delineate their basic characters—remain in the Big House until they reach majority. They then occupy two extensive ranches and solidify the family’s hold over the mountain plain. Quickly, however, they begin to vie for their father’s favor and undercut each other’s power.

The third son, Miguel Arcángel, “the King of Diamonds,” has left the valley, changing his name to Jacob Gallo (his mother’s surname), and immersed himself in the political world of the immediate post-Revolutionary period. He becomes an officer in the army, establishes himself with the state government, embraces the fruits of progress, such as electricity, and, eventually, gains immense power. Wearing fox’s clothing, he returns to his birthplace and quickly intensifies the tension between his two half brothers. The peasants, sensitive as victims are to changing forces, give, in varying degree, their allegiance to this Prodigal Son, whose promise of a better life with technology—electricity, irrigation, and better agronomy—they seem to accept. Thus, the outside world has conquered the valley.

At this level, the novel’s general movement is toward Progress as the antidote to the Old Way and suggests an allegorical treatment of good triumphing over evil. Yet Yáñez, a moralist and an intense observer of history, deepens the novel’s significance. In fact, Jacob Gallo’s purpose is the same as that of his father and brothers—to win dominance over the valley. This view, which the peasants begin to express in murmurs, increasingly sharpens until the final scene, when, etched against a gathering storm of lightning and thunder, Gallo’s baser character stands revealed. As he prepares to switch on the electrical current initiating Progress, the voice of the Old Way, belonging to the blind bruja, Doña Matiana, prophesies God’s punishment for Gallo’s hypocrisy and deceit: “I come . . . Miguel Arcángel to remind you that the higher you rise the greater your fall will be. There are no short cuts in the straight and narrow path.”

The Characters

There are three gravity points in this novel, each represented by a major character: the powerful, the disfranchised, and the spiritual. At the social level, they are created as stereotypes. At the individual level, each acquires his own voice through the technical device of the internal monologue. While this baroque characterization tends to disorient the reader, much of the novel’s vitality derives from the interplay between the external and internal experience of the characters.

Don Epifanio has dominated the landscape. A victim himself of the cacique image, he now carries on the tradition of the cardinal sins. He is gluttonous, greedy, insensitive, envious, proud, hard, and, ultimately, evil.

His cultural inheritance continues in Felipe and Jesús. There are no redeeming features in Felipe; his vengeance and malice are of a piece, and he fulfills adequately Yáñez’s design for him—as a projection of the external, cultural side of his father’s personality. Jesus is a loss, for his carefully wrought portrayal as the Snake reflects a lively intelligence, sensitivity, and psychological insight gone mad. In the language of the peasants, he is the devil’s very tongue.

With Jacob Gallo, the author completes his study of the various facets of the mano dura (ruthless justice) mentality. He suggests that this ingrained pattern not only refuses to yield to civilizing influences, but also seems, rather, to turn the benefits and promise of Progress into even more subtle forms of manipulation and dominance. Gallo beguiles the peasants with hope and an abrazo (hug) while he ravages them.

Yáñez broadens his study of the thwarting of human potential with the last figure under this category, Plácida. A half sister to the three men, she becomes the dominant personality in the Big House in the last years of Don Epifanio’s life. She matches any of the men for will, dominance, and greed; not for her is the sentimentality of her sisters as they wail over the dead body of their father. She pays dearly, however, for distancing herself from her female and human base—for, in the end, she becomes insane.

Only Epifanio speaks of the inner turmoil that this position at the top has exacted from his humanity. Through his internal monologue, the stone is turned over and the reader finds pathos. The “I” voice meanders from its origins, back four generations, and up to its current state exploring life’s meanings. The tone is plaintive. There is none of the strident pride of the external, perceived, social self. Epifanio ruminates over lost opportunities to be “authentic” with his children, mistresses, and his one true love, Teófila. There is no satisfaction in what he has achieved; he worries about the unhealing wounds of political failures, of his inability to control his sons, of his status as the prisoner, in his own home, of a ruthless daughter. A picture emerges, then, of a man caught in the power of evil and ending as the flotsam of time and history.

In juxtaposition to this portrayal of the powerful, Yáñez characterizes the collective voice of the weak, the victimized, in the figure of Rómulo. He is a peasant, the husband of Merced, and father of Teófila. In varying degrees, these three roles constitute his makeup, with that of the peasant/male predominant. As with Epifanio, the author presents him through the duality of his acts and his internal monologue. His social role as the disenfranchised is defined and criticized through the eyes of his wife. She sees him as weak physically and, particularly, morally. While the reader does empathize with this single individual whose demands for restitution are fruitless, the statement of his “failures” through his wife’s comments further attests the isolating, divisive power of the hacendado system.

Rómulo’s internal monologues, in tone and content, reveal the degree to which he shares his wife’s view of himself. Yet he cannot be blamed for his humiliation, for his ability to be part of the land, to live with it in harmony, is as fragile as a spider’s web in a storm. In his story, then, is recapitulated the denigration of the life of a peasant in a harsh environment.

The third constituting voice of this world is the eternal, spiritual one of the bruja, Matiana. In her extensive monologues, she draws on the wisdom of all seers. In the main, she is a witness-observer, filling gaps in the large mosaic of this world. At critical moments, she enters into the power struggle, the final time to recover Teófila’s magical sewing machine. Although Matiana is attacked in the night, and her eyes are torn from her face, she foresees the future more clearly than ever. Through her, Yáñez suggests that the light of electricity—standing for Progress and ambition—will blind the people to the spiritual purity which she achieves in her final acts.

Critical Context

Yáñez is a major figure in the development of both Mexican and Latin American narrative. Particularly significant were his efforts to assimilate international literary techniques to the distinctive materials of Mexican history and culture. He was fascinated by experimenting with simultaneity (as did John Dos Passos), with incorporating the past as a living influence in the present and the blending of subjective and objective reality (as did James Joyce), with the transference of universal myths and complexes as rationale and foundation for character (as did Sigmund Freud). In addition, his attention to unique structural devices to tie together a broad narrative panorama—the music in Al filo del agua (1947; The Edge of the Storm, 1963), critically considered his best novel, the religious calendar in The Lean Lands—instructs other novelists of similar epic tendencies on how to integrate their works. Finally, in the figures of The Lean Lands, he was to achieve a humanistic breakthrough for his countrymen by destroying the stereotypes that distance people from one another.

Bibliography

Clark, Stella T. “Agustín Yáñez.” In Latin American Writers, edited by Carlos A. Solé and Maria I. Abreau. Vol. 3. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989. Offers an in-depth profile of Agustín Yáñez’s life and career. Many of his works are discussed in detail, including The Lean Lands.

Detjens, Wilma E. Home as Creation: The Influence of Early Childhood Experience in the Literary Creation of Gabriel García Márquez, Agustín Yáñez, and Juan Rulfo. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. Examines the influence of Yáñez’s childhood experiences in the formation of his novels.

Flores, Angel. “Agustín Yáñez.” In Spanish American Authors: The Twentieth Century. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1992. A good overall view of Yáñez’s work. Offers a brief critical analysis of selected novels and common themes that thread through Yáñez’s fiction.