ench themselves in the post revolutionary Mexican power structure.
Why this is a betrayal that Artemio personifies is that the successful revolt against Diaz presented the revolutionaries with clear choices in the way the goals of the revolution would be carried out. In part, the choices stemmed from the fact that, as Hart notes, disparate social classes, "the peasantry, industrial and urban workers, pequena burguesia, and provincial elites manifested distinct revolutionary objectives during the struggle. Their visions included violently contradictory goals as well as reconcilable ones" (4:2). The "multiclass" rebellion, if successful, would inevitably produce a new order that would be confronted with competing goals from its inception. The fact that Artemio, ambitious as he is, sees more opportunity in allying himself with the material results oriented bourgeoisie, shows that he was, after all, interested less in "pure" revolution than in staking a claim for personal revolutionary goals. He becomes a key player in the entrenchment of the new oligarchy of putatively self made men. Or, as Hart puts it, "The new regime, in conjunction with the rapid gorwth of the capitalist economy, has given power to a resurgent bourgeoisie and left the Mexican working classes in deplorably poor economic conditions" (4:16). Artemio is a part of that resurgency, personifying, indeed, a self interested sordidness that is only remediated with a sordid and painful death.
At several points in the book the man that Artemio Cruz is about to become because of his motivations and actions is set forth by Fuentes in a way that shows how Artemio personifies the process of betrayal of his ideals. The first such moment occurs when Artemio arrives at the Bernal estate, flush on one hand from the late revolutionary victory and bearing, on the other, a death message to the patriarch of the estate, who had been a member of the now dispossessed oligarchy. Don Gamali...