Two discursive spaces of La Guerra de Tres Años

Abstract

This article deals with the novel La Guerra de Tres Años by Emilio Rabasa, who was not only an outstanding novelist but also a public servant and a jurist who participated in the preparation of legal documents in Mexico about constitutional order. La Guerra de Tres Años corresponds to the legal discourse of the liberals and was published for the first time in the newspaper El Universal in 1891 under the direction of Rafael Reyes Spíndola, a character closely linked to the Porfirio Díaz regime. The purpose of the article is to contrast the original discursive space of the novel (typical of a liberal newspaper engaged in the ideological struggles of the late Porfiriato) with the space corresponding to the second edition produced in 1931 by the editorial Cvltura, whose foreword was in charge of Victoriano Salado Álvarez. This second edition has become the reference textual testimony for Mexican literary historiography. The editorial consecration of this testimony, however, has overlooked the operations of meaning that are implied in the incorporation of the work of a nineteenth-century liberal writer in full swing of the populist turn of the Mexican Revolution, transforming the most precious convictions of liberalism towards the 30s. The focus of our study lies in this last aspect.