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Chapter 9 - Mexican Revolutions: The Forgotten Village, The Pearl, and the Global South

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2021

Gavin Jones
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
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Summary

This chapter continues to uncover Steinbeck’s interest in Mexico (and the Mexican Revolution) and his relevance as a thinker on the Global South and its social inequalities. Turning to Steinbeck’s collaborative projects in Mexico, the documentary film about water sanitation, The Forgotten Village, and The Pearl--both novel and film made with the Mexican director Emilio Fernandez--we encounter experimental artistic forms that embody a transamerican political vision. If The Forgotten Village fails in its efforts to politicize and improve the living conditions of the indigenous peoples it depicts, then The Pearl represents a more successful attempt to participate in history. Comparing the novel and the film reveals a creative dialogue between Steinbeck and Fernandez, in which the novel’s techniques of sound and vision look forward to its existence as a film. Together with a new understanding of uncertainty and of a human consciousness extending into and capable of changing the world, The Pearl has a curious temporality that imagines society on the verge of revolutionary change.

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Reclaiming John Steinbeck
Writing for the Future of Humanity
, pp. 168 - 191
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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