The Lawless Roads

I'm a big fan of [author:Graham Greene|2533] but this nonfiction account of his journey through Mexico shortly before the beginning of World War II was largely disappointing. While it did show readers occasional glimpses of the wondrous beauty of Mexico that I encountered during the months that I spent there, Greene's own attitudes tended to sour his account of his journey. I joked early on while reading this that I was 'stunned by how much Greene absolutely loathes everything about Mexico. The streets are muddy. the houses are dirty. The food is repellent. The view from the train is a "melancholy plain that lay like lead under the rainclouds". I get the feeling that his editor sent him to Mexico against his wishes when he really wanted show more to be assigned to the Paris desk.' After finishing it, I don't think that I was far off of the mark. His attitudes were very colonial, bordering on racist. He judged everyone based on their ancestry and if they were Mexican, he usually found them wanting.
Another issue I had with his account is his clear bias where religion is concerned. Greene converted to Catholicism when he married and clearly took his conversion seriously. At the time of his journey, the Catholic church was outlawed in Mexico and priests were forbidden from practicing their rites. Some who continued to practice were executed. To Greene, all priests were kindly souls along the lines of Spencer Tracy's Father Flanagan, who learned the languages of the natives and lived lives of service and austerity. Anyone who has seen the tremendous gold inside some massive Mexican cathedrals, built by the slave labor of Indians, knows that there was more to the church's activities than just love and sacrifice.
I'm glad I had the chance to read this book. It gave me the opportunity to see Mexico through different eyes at a different time, something that is always a learning experience.
My thanks to RJ, Nancy, Robert and all the good folks at The Literary Darkness reading group for introducing me to this and many other examples of literary dark fiction. There is no other group at Goodreads as capable of picking apart a book and helping readers glean from it all they can. show less

Greene's contempt for everyone he meets, and his condescension towards Mexicans in particular, was getting on my nerves, and I finally gave up when I got to this description of Mexican food (particularly galling coming from a Briton in the 1930s—what was he comparing it to, kidney pies and fish n' chips?):

"Lunch was awful: like the food you eat in a dream, tasteless in a positive way, so that the very absence of taste is repellent. All Mexican food is like that: if it isn’t hot with sauces, it’s nothing at all, just a multitude of plates planked down on the table simultaneously, so that five are getting cold while you eat the sixth; pieces of anonymous meat, a plate of beans, fish from which the taste of the sea has long been show more squeezed away, rice mixed with what look like grubs—perhaps they are grubs—a salad (dangerous, you are always warned, and for a long while you heed the warning), a little heap of bones and skin they call a chicken—the parade of cooling dishes goes endlessly on to the table edge. After a while your palate loses all discrimination; hunger conquers; you begin in a dim way even to look forward to your meal. I suppose if you live long enough in Mexico you begin to write like Miss Frances Toor—“Mexican cooking appeals to the eye as well as to the palate.” (It is all a hideous red and yellow, green and brown, like art needlework and the sort of cushions popular among decayed gentlewomen in Cotswold teashops.)" show less

Summary: Greene’s journey through Mexico to the states of Chiapas and Tabasco where Catholicism was most severely repressed.

Graham Greene is one of my favorite novelists. However, I would not pick him as a travel writer. I have to admit to not looking closely when I purchased The Lawless Roads, only discovering after beginning to read the book, that it was a non-fiction account of Greene’s journey from north to south in Mexico during 1938. His publisher asked him to investigate the anti-Catholic purges in the states of Chiapas and Tabasco.

These began in the 1920’s under Plutarco Elías Calles, President of Mexico from 1924 to 1928 and de facto leader of the country from 1929-1934. Being a Catholic, the publisher thought Greene show more would have a special connection to the people. As a travel account, it is a dreary read, reflecting the dysfunctional and dangerous character of Mexico in this period. However, the account served as backgroud of perhaps his most acclaimed novel, The Power and the Glory.

He begins at Laredo, then crosses over into northern Mexico, where he succeeds in interviewing General Cedillo, leader of a rebel state. As it turns out, Cedillo is aging and President Cardenas will soon replace him. He then makes his way to Mexico City, describing the life of the city, attending Mass, and meeting the exiled Bishop of Chiapas, “considered “one of the most dangerous and astute of the Mexican bishops.” That visit hardened his determination to reach Las Casas. Then, he travels to Veracruz, on the coast.

From here the journey grows more perilous. He books passage on the Ruiz Cano, little more than a barge, in unbearable heat, with constant rolling motion, and cramped quarters with no sex divisions. Then, he takes another barge from Frontera to Villahermosa, capitol of Tabasco, meets up with a Scottish adventurer, and spends a Sunday with no Mass, comforting himself in a godless state by reading Trollope. Then on to Salto in a small plane, from which he hoped to get a flight to Las Casas. Instead, he settles for a mule trip to Yajalon, with a sketchy guide, from which he hopes to catch a plane. Before departing, he learns of covert mass baptisms by itinerant priests in Yajalon

Finally, when no plane turns up, he embarks on another mule trip across the mountains to Las Casas, braving Arctic chills, changes in elevation, and passing cemeteries of slain Catholics, before finally reaching his destination in time for Holy Week. Masses occur in private homes, hidden services on Good Friday, a visit to the site of miraculous healings on Easter. All the while evidence of the suppression of faith is all about.

By this time, Greene himself is deathly sick with dysentery and we wonder if he will make it back. He does and in an epilogue recounts the journey home. Mass in Chelsea is “curiously fictitious.” He writes:

“[N]o peon knelt with his arms out in the attitude of the cross, no woman dragged herself up the aisle on her knees. It would have seemed shocking, like the Agony itself. We do not mortify ourselves. Perhaps we are in need of violence.”

Greene’s narrative has little plot, only a destination. Apart from the gritty faith of the people, led by courageous priests, there is little to inspire. Crass tourism, corrupt government, risky transport, and endless heat and mosquitoes are recurring themes. Perhaps the most suspenseful part of the account is our uncertainty that Greene will survive. At best, it is an unvarnished account of the aftermath of totalitarian rule.

So this is a tough read. It offers good background for The Power and the Glory. It describes the venality that descends on a nation under totalitarian rule. And it recounts the instances of courage of faith-led resistance. If you are a Greene fan and these reasons are important to you, it is a worthwhile read. Otherwise, you may just find it a slog. show less

Graham Greene was a deeply religious man. When he was commissioned to write of the Mexican government's forced anti-Catholic secularization and anti-clerical purges he traveled to the country to see for himself what effects this had on the people. Churches were being destroyed and clergymen were being driven into exile or brutally murdered at an alarming rate. As Greene traveled to the areas where the Catholic persecutions were the most violent Greene was deeply affected and reaches an almost despondent state. It is hard to tell if his depression was cause by an inability to connect to people and culture of Mexico (his Spanish was limited and their English was nonexistent), his on-going illness or the inability to open his mind beyond show more his own colonialism. In the end Mexico was a country he could barely wait to escape. show less

I love Greene's prose, but he seems like the kind of guy who'd order shepard's pie using church Latin in the middle of nowhere Tabasco and then be disappointed when brought tamales.

After reading "the Power and the Glory", I read this book. I had no idea there was a connection between the two (except the author of course). The difficulty was that I constantly was under the impression of reading fiction. It is in some ways similar to "the Power and the Glory". The book was very well written and interresting.

The problem I had with it was the racism. I know from another book "the Human Factor" that Graham Greene changed his opinion about race radically. This is why I could forgive him for that.

The Lawless Roads is Graham Greene's account of his journey through Mexico in 1938. His experiences during this trip inspired his famous novel, The Power and the Glory.

Beginning in San Antonio and crossing the border into Mexico at Larado, Greene finds himself in a nation that has still not recovered from the ravages of civil war. Travelling south towards Mexico City via Monterrey, his real goal is in the south, where the churches are still closed and priests banned. He wants to be at San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas for Holy Week to experience it in a place where the Catholic Church is banned. Since the south is still suffering unrest, the Mexican state allows few outside visitors, so Greene pretends he wants to visit the Mayan show more ruins at Palenque. Will he make it in time, or will he fall afoul of the authorities in anticlerical Tabasco first.

Throughout the course of the book, Greene struggles to balance his respect for some aspects of the native populations with his sense that they and their culture are inferior to that of White Europeans. Ultimately after suffering what today's traveller might call Montezuma's Revenge, he is more than ready to go home. Only to find that parts of Mexico may not have been that bad after all.

Recommended for anyone with an interest in 20th century Mexico or Graham Greene. show less