1. THE UNDERDOGS
Sophia Mick (71154)

2. The Underdogs
 The Mexican Revolution “was a major armed
struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising
led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime
autocrat Porfino Diaz” says wikipeia. However
the book tells us the story of peasant Demetrio
Macías, who becomes the enemy of a
local cacique (leader, or important person) in
his town, and so has to abandon his family
when the government soldiers (Federales)
come looking for him. He escapes to the
mountains, and forms a group of rebels who
support the Mexican Revolution.

3. The Underdogs
 Some of them are prototypes of the sort of people
that would be attracted by a revolution, like Luis
Cervantes, who is an educated man mistreated by
the Federales and therefore turning on them, or
Güero Margarito, a cruel man who finds
justification for his deeds in the tumultuousness of
the times. Also Camila, a young peasant who is in
love with Cervantes, who cheats her into
becoming Macías' lover, and whose kind and stoic
nature gives her a tragic uniqueness among the
rest. With a concise, unsympathetic tone, Azuela
takes us along with this band of outcasts as they
move along the hills of the country, seemingly
struggling for a cause whose leader changes from
day to night.

4. The Underdogs
 The rebels, not very certain of what or whom they
are fighting for, practice themselves the abuse
and injustice they used to suffer in the hands of
the old leaders. So the Mexican people, as the
title of the book hints, are always the “ones
below”, no matter who runs the country. In the
end, Macías has lost his lover and most of his
men, and reunites with his family with no real
desire or hope for redemption or peace. He has
forebodings of his destiny, and the last scene of
the book leaves him firing his rifle with deathly
accuracy, alone and extremely outnumbered by
his enemies.