The Death of Artemio Cruz

The purpose of this research is to examine Carlos Fuentes's The Death of Artemio Cruz, with a view toward showing how Artemio's character personifies the ultimate betrayal of the ideals of the Mexican Revolution. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which Artemio's character develops, and then to show how Fuentes uses him as an analogue for the success of the goals of the revolution on one hand, and for the failure of the ideals of the revolution on the other.

Artemio is an emblem of the successful revolutionary who has co-opted the goals of the revolution to achieve economic gain and a more generalized personal power. To put it another way, one set of oligarchs (disguised as petty bourgeois) has supplanted the other, and by the time the new oligarchy has been established, one can hardly tell the new regime from the old one, where the mass of people is concerned. Whatever ideals of property redistribution that may have been contained in the hearts of the revolutionaries are superseded by more immediate, parochial interests. The trade-off for Mexico has been between what emerges as having been the foolishly repressive Diaz cadre of bullies and the revolutionary bourgeoisie to whom physical torture may be repellent but for whom the mass of Mexican peasantry in whose name the revolution was fought is also an afterthought. In this connection, Hart comments that one of the principal factors in the revolution of 1910 was "pequena burguesa disillusionm

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the fruits of the revolution after the revolution itself is successful, and his experience of it becomes an analogue for the experience of Mexico after the ouster of Diaz. This is the subtext of a reflection by Artemio on his deathbed, as he knows that he is dying and that his family is estranged from him. There is a dichotomy of feeling as he reflects on his success in the face of betrayal of the successful revolution; he doesn't care, he thinks. What do they know, Catalina, the priest, Teresa, Gerardo? What importance are their boasts going to have, or the statements of sympathy that will appear in the newspapers? Who will have the honesty to say, as I say now, that my only love has been material possessions, sensual acquisition? Property, that is what I want. The sheet that I touch. And everything else before me now . . . Land, land that can change itself into money (Fuentes Death 132-3). Who says crime doesn't pay? The evidence is plain, even if death comes to Artemio as to other men. Artemio betrayed the ideals of the revolution in order to succeed. He has benefitted from the betrayal, materially and sensually if not emotionally. So he resents emotional entanglements--what do the others know--and revels in wea

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