“One of the masterpieces of 20th century world literature” is how The New York Times described Juan Rulfo’s revolutionary novel, “Pedro Paramo,” in 1995. The novel is not only revolutionary because it takes place during that period of Mexico’s history, but because it introduces magic realism to Latin American and world literature. Gabriel Garcia Marquez described “Pedro Paramo” in 1982 as, for him, “the most important, the most beautiful novel ever written in Spanish.” He continued, “If I had written ‘Pedro Paramo’ I would never worry or write again in my life.” 

The novel ignited what is known as the Latin American literary boom, a movement that coined the term magic realism, as authors like Julio Cortazar, Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa, to name a few, became known throughout the world.

Juan Rulfo was born in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, in 1917. He was raised in the small town of San Gabriel amid the Mexican Revolution and Cristeros War, a witness to those great social upheavals that fractured both the country and his life. When Juan was 6 years old, his father was murdered during the time of the revolt. His mother, devastated, died four years later. Juan lived for a time with his grandmother and was then sent to a Catholic orphanage in Guadalajara, where he became an avid reader. Unable to pursue a university education because of strikes and his inability to obtain academic documents, he left for Mexico City, where he worked for government agencies, studied photography and began to write. In 1953, his collection of short stories, “The Burning Plain,” was published and, in 1955, “Pedro Paramo.”

“Pedro Paramo” begins as a simple narrative. Juan Preciado, at the deathbed of his mother, the estranged wife of Pedro Paramo, promises her that he will visit Comala, the village at the heart of Pedro Paramo’s huge hacienda. There, Juan Preciado promises he will find Pedro Paramo and avenge the betrayal of his mother. Juan Preciado undertakes the journey and finds himself accompanied by a stranger. When Juan Preciado approaches Comala, a hot and dusty place, abandoned and unreal, the stranger announces that he is Juan’s brother and that Pedro Paramo is dead. He then goes his own way.

The story unfolds in two worlds, present and past, above all a world of remembrance since Comala’s inhabitants are all dead. Some of the dead know they are dead; some are not aware; and others think they are living. Comala is a world of monologues and dialogues from beyond the grave, voices from a supposed present and voices from different zones of the past.

This world of emerging conversations, from different eras of time, unveils an epoch of budding, flowering, ripening and death: a Comala, once green and beautiful, becomes a desiccated path to hell or purgatory. The soul of Comala is Pedro Paramo, who takes control of the hacienda and makes it prosperous by marrying the mother of Juan Preciado to take control of her fortune. He controls everyone’s lives and defies the revolution by implanting his own men in the insurgency. With the death of his uncontrollable son, Miguel, and the love of his life, Susana San Juan, he loses interest in everything he has, his own life included. The hacienda withers, disintegrates and dies, Comala along with it. Pedro Paramo is killed by another son, the half-brother of Juan Preciado, who had walked with him to Comala.

Some see “Pedro Paramo” as a novel about corruption, landholders, government and the church. Others see it as a representation of the culture of the nation. Mexico, for those who know it well, can seem to be a place where time and space are unhinged, a country where death is revered. 

Octavio Paz, one of Mexico’s most famous authors, wrote in “The Labyrinth of Solitude”: “The Mexican … is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love. True, there is perhaps as much fear in his attitude as in that of others, but at least death is not hidden away: he looks at it face to face, with impatience, disdain or irony.”

“Pedro Paramo” can be viewed as a metaphor for a style of life or, more likely, a style of death.