The Bandits from Rio Frio appears here for the first time in English in a translation that captures all the warmth and vitality of the original Spanish. All of Mexico in the mid nineteenth-century parades through the pages of Manuel Payno's classic novel. Landscapes painted with the clear light and shadows of the Mexican valleys and mountains, portraits of Indians and presidents in the teeming capital and in the humble indigenous pueblos; these provide the background as the author develops a romantic history of the ...
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The Bandits from Rio Frio appears here for the first time in English in a translation that captures all the warmth and vitality of the original Spanish. All of Mexico in the mid nineteenth-century parades through the pages of Manuel Payno's classic novel. Landscapes painted with the clear light and shadows of the Mexican valleys and mountains, portraits of Indians and presidents in the teeming capital and in the humble indigenous pueblos; these provide the background as the author develops a romantic history of the impossible love between the Countess Mariana del Sauz and Lieutenant Colonel Juan Robreno. An illegitimate son results from a brief union of these lovers, and this star-crossed child is kidnapped and abandoned by Aztec witches. Wrongly accused of theft and murder, he must pursue the truth of his birth through staggering misfortunes. Another thread traces the criminal career of the notorious Evaristo, an artisan who becomes involved with the Countess' family and becomes a murderer and a bandit of national and even international fame. Yet another thread follows the lawyer Lamparilla's schemes for the love of the beautiful and independent Cecilia, a fruit vender and captain of a trajinera, the ancient Mexican freight canoe. The lives of these and many other memorable characters are swept up in a great web of organized crime spun by the fabulous Relumbron, presidential assistant, wealthy aristocrat, church stalwart, family man, and former associate of the great Santa Ana. Payno has lovingly preserved these portraits and landscapes of a Mexico and a society now long gone, yet somehow still familiar, still recognizable within the modern republic. He has defined what it means to beMexican, and his themes resonate today as powerfully as they must have a hundred years ago. Praise for Manuel Payno and Los Bandidos de Rio Frio ... a sweeping epic vision of a country... Payno's novel is an immense fresco of [Mexico], depicting members of all social classes... By presenting a wide spectrum of characters, Payno covers every aspect of popular life in Mexico... while sketching the political, rural, provincial, urban, military, religious, and economic problems of the country during times of anarchy. Jose Tomas de Cuellar, author of The Magic Lantern: Having a Ball and Christmas Eve (Library of Latin America) Manuel Payno's Los Bandidos de Rio Frio [is] the only Mexican novel of the nineteenth-century to approach an adequate and persuasive portrayal of the tragi-comedy of national politics and life in the decades after the Reformation. D. A. Brading, author of The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots and the Liberal State 1492 - 1866 (Cambridge University Press) [Payno's] consistent refusal to assume a fixed and fervid loyalty to any one party left his judgment clear for objective evaluation of forces at play around him... Doris Sommer, author of Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (University of California Press) Los Bandidos de Rio Frio is the most ample study of customs that exists in Mexican literature... nobody in Mexico has so completely covered the entire society of an epoch within the pages of a single book... Frank E. Warner, author of Historia de la novela mexicana en el siglo XIX (Editorial Porrua) ... a wild ride through tumultuous times... hang on to your hats (and wallets)! from the Preface
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