Lawrence encounters the first populist presidential campaign in Mexico’s history and a scorpion...
If you make a Reality TV star president, then expect Reality TV politics. But Donald Trump is not the first populist president. On 1 December 1924 Plutarco Elías Calles (1877 – 1945), a former soldier who fought in Venustiano Carranza's Constitutional Army during the Mexican Revolution become President of Mexico via the first populist presidential campaign in Mexico's history. Inevitably, it did not unite the country and on 5 December, rebels burn down two bridges, but this doesn’t stop Lawrence going on a road trip to visit ‘ruins’, though the motoring left him ‘battered and shattered.’ This is offset by walking about his home barefoot, though he needs to be cautious as ‘there was a scorpion on the floor this morning.’
Once he has come to terms with ‘the peculiar resistance Mexico offers always’ he is complimentary of the ‘lonely’ little town of Oaxaca which is ‘away in the south and miles from anywhere except the Indian villages in the hills. I like it.’ But a Spring visit to Europe continues to crop up in his letters. Lawrence claims, ‘one needs a rest after America: the hardness, the resistance of all things to all things, inwardly, tires one.’ But there is a more apposite reason, ‘Frieda is sniffing Europe-wards’ so that she can be reunited with her children.
These video essays are based on the letters of D.H. Lawrence one hundred years ago and are published monthly as part of the D.H. Lawrence Memory Theatre project.
To see previous Locating Lawrence videos from 1922, click here.
To see previous Locating Lawrence videos from 1923, click here.
To see previous Locating Lawrence videos from 1924, click here.
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