any other in the book: it really is more than just ‘una regia del ju ego’.ss The opening chapter o f K i is an excellent example o f a contemporary travel-chronicle in itself: the narrative is fast moving, unencumbered by lengthy explanations and descriptions; it picks out for comment both touristic sights and ephemeral, idiosyncratic images o f daily life in M exico; and it makes effective use o f literary imagery in its impressionistic review of the route taken from M exico City to Mérida. The narrator, though obviously knowledgeable, also depicts him self as an approachable person through the narration o f personal data; som eone who is able to blend in with the ‘ p u e b l o ’.89
Again in En la tierra m âgica, intercalated with the serious scientific rubrics and references o f the introduction are footnotes which bicker about p la g i a r i s m ,9 0 and throughout the text B enitez cannot resist his travel-writerly im pulses to describe ‘escenas del desierto’ (a chaotic m ix o f botany and im pressionism ) and to detail ‘los sentim ientos y [...] las reflexiones del viajero’ (p. 1 6 ) .9 i In this book, more than in any other, Bem tez the traveller
is in evidence. He notes in the introduction that he prefers to publish this journal o f his travels rather than spend time refining it into a purely scientific study. This he claim s is in order to beat the foreign anthropologists with the news o f his peyote experience (p. 11); however, the desire to narrate his own story is clearly in competition with any scientific urges.
B enitez’s ostensible acceptance o f indigenous myths and his sharing o f the experience of a peyote trip also take him well beyond the realms o f anthropology into those o f literature. The description o f the psychedelic effects o f peyote, though brief, rank with the work of
87 Personal interview with the author, 7 February 1997. In the introductory chapter to K i Benitez makes an impassioned plea for Mexicans to travel and write about their own country (he gives special mention to the work o f Mexican archaeologists Miguel Angel Femdndez, Alberto Ruz L ’Huillier, and to his friend Hector Pérez Martfnez). Mexicans should try to counter the works o f foreign travellers, both anthropologists and writers: in the prologue to the first volume of Los indios de México (pp. 30-31) Benitez specifically criticises Lawrence’s The Plumed Serpent and Greene’s The Power and the Glory and Lawless Roads.
88 Carlos Monsivâis, interview.
89 Carlos Fuentes actually considers Benitez to be one o f the world’s best travel-writers together with Bruce Chatwin and Peter Matthiessen (introduction to Los indios de México: antologia, pp. 11-21).
90 The debate still rages for Benitez on whether he was really the first non-indigenous person to go on a peyote pilgrimage, and how he was exploited and plagiarised by the photographer he took along (see Peter Furst’s introduction to Benitez’s In the Magic Land o f Peyote, trans. by John Upton (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975), pp. xi-xxii, where Furst claims that he actually beat Benitez to it by a year. See also Benitez’s own prologue to the same text.)
W illiam Burroughs {En la tierra magica, pp. 180-87). Bem tez’s attempt to balance political ideology with science with concrete real life experience devolves into literature: in his introduction to the first volume o f Los indios de M éxico he discusses the development of the role o f the indigenous people in his work, m oving over the years from political journalism in ViajealaTarahumara, through anthropology {En el p ais m agico), to ‘drama’
{La ultima trinchera and En el p a is de las nubes): ‘Otra vez me dejé arrastrar por la intensidad de su drama relegando a un segundo término los aspectos meramente antropologicos’ (pp. 65-66). He finally gives up the struggle to ‘equilibrar la denuncia con el documento etnografico’ in preference for a more literary approach (p. 66).92
Again, in his description o f indigenous communities, the people and their customs, what appears clear in B en itez’s work is the easy slippage from costumbrista description to anthropological analysis and back to costumbrismo. A s Benitez tries to distance him self scientifically from costumbrismo, his analysis o f social situations is quite frequently overcharged by his literary ‘style’ and his desire to make value judgments: Bem tez the anthropologist observes, ‘En la manana, los hombres estan en el campo y las mujeres son las duenas de los pueblos’ {Ki , p. 27), but instead o f continuing with a study o f the roles of the sexes in Mayan society he goes on to comment on the ‘majestic’ gait o f the women and to describe the scene before his eyes with neither scientific analysis nor interpretation. The conflict between anthropology and politics, literature and journalism in B enitez’s writing is the source o f its richness and its innovative quality. Indeed, B enitez’s chronicles have turned out to be massively popular: his five weighty and expensive volum es of Los indios de M éxico have now been reprinted over seven times.93
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92 This is actually where his work achieves the full dimensions of ‘social documentary’.
93 More recent examples of more or less politically-committed documentary travels which benefit from the literary affiliations of their authors are: Vicente Lenero’s articles on Michoacân, published in Claudia (1966) and his ‘Viaje a Cuba’, published in Excelsior (1973), both now collected in Talacha periodistica (1989); Ricardo Garibay’s AcapwZco (written 1978, published 1979) and Chicoasén (written 1979, published 1986) -
^Acapulco es, quizâ, la crônica mural mâs ambiciosa del periodismo mexicano en los anos recientes’
(Monsivâis, A ustedes les consta, p. 358) Hermann Bellinghausen’s articles published in Nexos and La
Jomada\ Sergio Mastretta’s articles published in Nexos\ Verônica Volkow’s txceXXeni Diariod e Suddfrica
(1988); and Carlos Montemayor’s record of his attempts to run poetry workshops in the sierras of Oaxaca in 1981/82 recorded in Encuentrosen Oaxaca (1995). To a lesser degree there is also David Martin del
Campo’s Los mares de M éxico:crônicasde la tercerafrontera (1987) - the personal element is very slim, and the literary quality waivers, but it has still achieved much acclaim in Mexico -; and Juan Manuel Leal Apdez’s Por los Caminos del Sur: redescubriendo el estado de Guerrero (1995) - a rather badly written anthropological, archaeological and speleological adventure through the state of Guerrero, sponsored by the then rector of the UNAM, Dr. José Sarukhan Kérmez.