Caoba cycle
The caoba cycle , also called mahogany cycle, is a six-part novel cycle by the author B. Traven , written between 1930 and 1940. The first edition of the works was published in German by the social democratic book guild Gutenberg , only the last novel was rejected by the book guild, because it is only about "a kind of story of Indians and robbers". Despite several protests by Traven, the novel had to appear in a different publishing house.
Plot, characters and motifs
The cycle describes the painful existence of Indian lumberjacks in southern Mexico around 1910. Debt bondage , racist oppression and lack of rights in quasi-feudal conditions shape the existence of the Indians. At some point their life becomes so unbearable that a rebellion breaks out. The loggers kill their overseers, leave the jungle and form a revolutionary army under the 21-year-old "General" Juan Mendez. The novels form a cycle with a chronological sequence that culminates in the revolution - but at the same time the works can be read as self-contained books, since the main characters and locations change and each work has a self-contained composition. This is deliberately set up so that Traven did not want to overwhelm his proletarian target audience with a 1000-page mammoth work.
Traven's political novel cycle describes in detail and knowledgeably the causes of the Mexican Revolution of 1910/1911, in which the dictator Porfirio Diaz was overthrown by the people. The caoba cycle gives a unique insight into the social causes that triggered the revolution.
The first four novels illuminate the situation of the Mexican Indians and the lack of prospects for their existence. Whether peon on a finca, assistant to a small trader, lumberjack on a "monteria" in the jungle on the Guatemalan border - her life is always characterized by hunger, poverty, violence and complete personal dependence on the master, be it the "Don" the finca or the overseer in the lumberjack camp. Due to these living conditions, Traven's characters often appear more like a type of collective; in view of the constant struggle for survival, they have no room for development problems such as self-doubt, lovesickness, fear of failure, identity problems etc., which are mainly dealt with in the bourgeois novel.
Nonetheless, Traven's heroes do not remain stereotypes - their individualization usually only takes place in the act of rebellion: through rebellion, they break away from the mass of their submissive comrades and learn to formulate their own elementary needs. However, only the collective rebellion offers them a chance to actually do something against their oppressors.
Interpretations
The caoba cycle, especially the last two novels, are often interpreted as an allegory of the struggle against European fascism. Indeed, the motif of the popular uprising against the dictatorship has anti-fascist features; In particular, the torture methods of the guards in the logging camps resemble descriptions of the mistreatment of political prisoners, and in several places the novel explicitly refers to Mexican “concentration camps” for the isolation and extermination of political opponents of the dictatorship.
Traven portrays his Indians as proletarians. Despite their dependency, reminiscent of medieval feudal relationships, they appear to be integrated into a regional and worldwide trading system on which their exploitation is based. The mahogany production for luxury items in the industrialized world illustrates the devastating effects of capitalism in every corner of the Mexican jungle.
The solidarity of the Indians arises first of all from this common oppression they suffered, and only secondarily from linguistic and cultural commonality. Traven's point of view is oriented more towards anarchist / Marxist than culturalist. Traven was one of the first writers to point to the connection between racism and capitalism - a criticism that in many cases was not understood by literary and social sciences until the postmodern turn of the 1980s.
In view of the debate about slave-like working conditions in the third world and the affluent society of the West, which has intensified in the context of the criticism of globalization since the 1990s , Traven's work remains burning topicality to this day.
The works of the cycle
- The cart. Berlin: Gutenberg Book Guild 1931 DNB
- Government. Berlin: Gutenberg Book Guild 1931 DNB
- The march into the empire of the caoba: a war march. Zurich; Vienna; Prague: Book Guild Gutenberg 1934 DNB (1954 filmed by Pedro Armendáriz )
- The Troza. Zurich; Prague: Gutenberg Book Guild 1936 DNB
- The rebellion of the hanged. Zurich; Prague: Gutenberg Book Guild 1936 DNB
- A general comes from the jungle. Amsterdam: De Lange 1940 DNB
literature
- Epilogue by Peter Lüttke to the novel A General Comes from the Jungle (Edition of Book Club 65 , Verlag Volk und Welt Berlin (GDR) 1971).
- Hans Rudolf Brenne: Revolution and Adventure. Structure and message of B. Traven's Caoba cycle as a series of operational historical novels. Description of an innovative novel form . Münster 2006, ISBN 978-3-86582-358-8 (dissertation).
- Christoph Ludszuweit: B. Traven. On the problem of "internal colonization" in B. Traven's work. Karin Kramer Verlag, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-87956-225-3 (also dissertation Freie Univ. Berlin 1994).