Mexico City in Ojerosa and painted, by Agustín Yañez, 50 years later

Abstract

This analysis is based on the socio-critical theory according to Claude Duchet and aims to answer the question: how do the central characters and narrators of this novel describe, how do they live and how are they represented in the space of Mexico City? The approach allows me to show the effectiveness of the novel to know the reality of Mexico City in the fifties and the power of socio-critical theory to interpret the work. On the other hand, the novel shows a story of deceptive simplicity at the bottom of which is encrypted an energetic denunciation of the social putrefaction that permeated the imaginary of the capital of the country under the official discourse of the Revolution; as well as the foolish aspiration of modernity centered on the bureaucracy of the new institutionality, where the trap of the new urban myths (power, money, fame and pleasures) were powerful centers of attraction for the impoverished mass that saw in migration to the city their only possibility of social advancement. Haggard and painted constitutes a profound and moving coincidence with the history and reality of the Mexican capital today. Just half a century after it was published.