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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
The History of nineteenth-century Mexico presents a strange succession of violent changes, political and social upheavals, bitter struggles among rival factions whose aims and ideals were often ill-defined and illusory. The infant republic found that the gaining of its independence was only the beginning of its troubles. The bane of personalism was never to abandon the Mexican political stage, and the ambitions of individuals, to a large extent, were to guide the destinies of the entire nation. José María Roa Bárcena, whose life embraced the last three quarters of the century, was one of the most prominent figures of those troubled times. A man of action, integrity of character, and no small intellectual gifts, he entered resolutely into the struggle between liberals and conservatives, leaving the stamp of his personality on the history of the period.
1 The chief biographical sources on Roa Barcena are Ignacio Montes de Oca’s Introduction to the Obras Poéticas de Don José María Roa Barcena (Mexico, 1913), and Victoriano Agüeros’ Escritores Mexicanos Contemparáneos (Mexico, 1880).
2 Agüeros, op. cit., 65.
3 Palacio, Vicente Riva, Los Ceros, Galería de Contemporáneos (Mexico, 1882), 346.Google Scholar
4 Rafael Roa Barcena was prominent as a lawyer, scholar and writer. For a sketch of his life, see Lara, Margarita Oliva “Biografías de Veracruzanos Distinguidos,” Anales del Museo de Arqueología, Historia, y Etnografía, Mexico, Vol. VI, 4th Series (1930), 229-231.Google Scholar
5 Agüeros, op. cit., xxxi.
6 Oca, Montes de, op. cit., 94.Google Scholar
7 Barcena, Roa, Últimas Poesías Líricas (Mexico, 1888), 27.Google Scholar
8 Ibid., vi.
9 El Dictamen, Diario Veracruzana independiente, de información (Veracruz), Año V (1908), Núm. 223 (Sept. 24).
10 More than one writer has lamented the loss sustained by journalism with his withdrawal. Ferrari, Olavarría y, in his El Arte Literario en México (Madrid, 1878), 35,Google Scholar writes:
“Debido a esto, la caída de Maximiliano, hanse eliminado de sus filas los verdaderos talentos periodísticos con que ciertamente cuenta el partido antiliberal. Gloria de las prensas mexicanas serán siempre los García Icazbalceta y Roa Barcena, entusiastas defensores de las ideas conservadoras; especialmente el último, poeta, literato, erudito, brilló siempre espléndidamente en el periodismo; podría volver a ser, cuando quiera, un paladín digno de sus contrarios, y no obstante, permanece retraído, sin conceder que su nombre respetado pierda en los actuales diarios conservadores el prestigio que acertó a darle al frente de las columnas de La Sociedad durante las guerras de la República en el segundo imperio.”
11 For further details on the establishment of the Academy, see de la Peña, Rafael Angel , “Reseña Histórica de la Academia Mexicana,” Memorias de la Academia Mexicana, Vol. III (Mexico, 1886), 5-11.Google Scholar’
12 Icazbalceta, García was elected director of the Academia on August 11, 1885.Google Scholar
13 Revilla, Manuel G., Elogio del Historiador y Novelista Don José María Roa Barcena (Mexico, 1909), 8.Google Scholar
14 “Una Flor en su Sepulcro” had been published in El Veracruzano in 1851. “Buendelmonti” was first printed in La Cruz in 1856, and “La Quinta Modelo” in 1857. “Noche al Raso” subsequently appeared in El Tiempo in 1883, and in La Familia the following year.
15 Agüeros, Victoriano points out in his Introduction to Roa Bárcena’s Cuentos Originales y Traducidos (Mexico, 1897), Vol. X Google Scholar of the Biblioteca de Autores Mexicanos, vi, that Juan Valera was delighted with “Noche al Raso,” calling it a “lindísima colección de anécdotas y cuadros de costumbres, donde el engenio, el talento, y la habilidad para narrar están realzados por la naturalidad del estilo y por la gracia y primor de un lenguaje castizo y puro, sin la menor afectación de arcaísmo.”
16 Montes de Oca, op. cit., 147.
17 La Voz de México, founded on April 17, 1870, as an organ of the Sociedad Católica, lived until 1909.
18 Early in his career, as vice-governor of Veracruz, Pesado helped carry out an order expelling the friars from that state; and he wrote articles in support of the liberal cause in La Oposición in 1834 and 1835. Later, however, in remorse and repentance for these acts, he wrote a poem, “La Visión,” wherein his mother appears in a vision and beseeches her son to lead a better life.
19 Datos y apuntamientos para la biografìa de D. Manuel Eduardo de Gorostiza (Mexico, 1876). The other studies may be found in Biografías (Biblioteca de Autores Mexicanos, Vol. XLI, Mexico, 1878). The studies on Columbus, Bello, Díaz and Father Serra first appeared in La Cruz, Vols. II and III (1856).
20 Bárcena’s, Roa only other work of compilation is the Antología de Poetas Mexicanos (1894),Google Scholar which he undertook jointly with Casimiro del Collado and José María Vigil. Vigil’s excellent “Reseña Histórica ‘de la Poesía Mexicana” occupies the first fifty pages of the anthology.
21 Published originally in El Siglo XIX, the Recuerdos appeared in 1883 in a-volume of nearly seven hundred pages, and in 1901 was reprinted in two volumes as a part of the Biblioteca de Autores Mexicanos.
22 El Dictamen, Diario Veracruzano independiente, September 23, 1908.
23 Published in the Biblioteca de Autores Mexicanos, Vol. LXVI (Mexico, 1909).
24 La Cruz, Vol. III (1856), 538-542.