When the Owl Cries Part 1

When the Owl Cries.

by Paul Bartlett.

INTRODUCTION

by

Steven James Bartlett

The book's t.i.tle, _When the Owl Cries_, comes from the ancient Mexican-Indian superst.i.tion, "_Cuando el tecolote llora, se muere el indio_"--"When the owl cries, an Indian dies."

ABOUT THE BOOK AND ITS AUTHOR

_When the Owl Cries_ has been described by reviewers as "The _Gone with the Wind_ of Mexico." It is a gripping, vivid story that takes place on a huge estate, an hacienda, at the beginning of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The novel centers about the life of Don Raul Medina, soon to take over the management of the hacienda from his father, Fernando, who is now dying. Fernando has been a cruel _hacendado_, ruling with an iron hand, whip, and gun. Raul is caught in a complex web: his estrangement from his emotionally frail and disturbed wife, his love for the young blonde Lucienne, _hacendada_ of a neighboring estate, and the turmoil and hardships they are plunged into during the Revolution.

The colorful, descriptive panorama of the novel leads the reader into a first-hand experience as hacienda life came to an end as a result of the Revolution.

_When the Owl Cries_ was originally published in 1960 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Mexican Revolution and was an immediate success. The book was listed by the _New York Times Book Review_ in its Best-seller/Recommended column for 13 continuous weeks after its release. The novel received rave reviews across the country. Excerpts of a few of these reviews appear later in this introduction.

Readers may be interested in some personal background about the author and where _When the Owl Cries_ was written. Paul Alexander Bartlett (1909-1990) was a fine artist and the author of numerous short stories, novels, and non-fiction works. He came to Mexico during WWII and developed a life-long interest in visiting haciendas throughout the country in order to make the first large-scale artistic and photographic record of these ancient, fascinating, but rapidly vanishing places. His interest was inspired by the realization that most of these old estates were rapidly crumbling and disappearing after the ravages of the Mexican Revolution had left them in ruins, and from the neglect that followed the Revolution as Mexican peasants dismantled many of the hacienda buildings for use as building materials.

From the mid-1940s until late in the 1980s, Bartlett visited more than 350 haciendas throughout Mexico. Many were remote and difficult to find and then to visit. He, and often with me as his young _companero_, traveled by horseback, by car, boat, motorcycle, or on foot to visit these old estates. Some were completely abandoned, the roofs of the buildings having caved in, with gaping holes in their walls and trees growing up through their unsheltered floors. Some, in ramshackle condition, were still being lived in by poor Mexican families. Very rarely a select few were occupied or maintained in absentia by the descendants of their original owners, while a small number of the estimated original 8,000 haciendas have been converted into tourist hotels, schools, and government buildings.

There was no grant funding available for my father's lifelong project.

It was a labor of love financed by his and my mother's meager savings, the frequent fate of creative artists. (My mother was Elizabeth Bartlett, well-known for her many published books of poetry.) During each hacienda visit, my father made sketches he later turned into finished pen-and-ink ill.u.s.trations, of which he completed 350. The collection of hacienda ill.u.s.trations was exhibited in more than 40 one-man shows in leading galleries, museums, and libraries in the U.S.

and Mexico. In addition, he took more than a thousand photographs of the haciendas. Before his death in 1990, the University Press of Colorado published his non-fiction book, _The Haciendas of Mexico: An Artist's Record_, which contains selections of his many ill.u.s.trations and photographs, accompanied by a text that describes hacienda life and the history of the haciendas.

In 1959, thanks to my parents' friendship with Cuca Camara, of the long-established Camara family of Merida, Yucatan, my father was offered the opportunity live on one of the family's haciendas, located outside of Merida between the small towns of Motul and Suma. My father and I lived at the Hacienda Kambul while he completed _When the Owl Cries_. The Hacienda Kambul provided a very spartan existence: We slept in hammocks in a large bare room of what had been the _casa princ.i.p.al_, the main residence of the hacienda. The 20-foot-high ceilings and the thick adobe walls helped cool the hot and dry Yucatecan weather; in the mornings, swallows would fly through the opened ten-foot-high doors into the room, chitterling and swooping above our heads.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The author on horseback at the Hacienda Kambul]

The time there was not limited to serious writing. We went horseback riding across the fields of _henequen_, whose fiber, like that of sisal, was traditionally used for rope and twine. Sometimes, we would relax in hammocks on the wide terrace of the _casa princ.i.p.al_. Often, we would travel out into the _campo_ on the hacienda's narrow-gauge railway, on a flat-topped rail car pulled by a mule, called a _plataforma_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Riding an hacienda _plataforma_. The author's son on the right, the hacienda driver on the left, the mule in front.]

We had no electricity, so evenings were short and mornings early. We had a _huipil_-clad Maya maid, Bicha, who, along with a thin, old, lame Maya gentleman, Lazaro, helped us to provision ourselves on a close to starvation diet. We were sometimes very sick from the polluted water of the well, which had unwisely been dug right next to the horse corral.

We boiled the water conscientiously, but Moctezuma exacted considerable revenge despite our efforts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Stressful life at the Hacienda Kambul! The author's son on the hacienda terrace; in the foreground their pet dog, a Mexican Maltese, named Mona, whose namesake appears in _When the Owl Cries_.]

It was hard to leave Kambul behind despite the weight we'd lost. But my father had completed _When the Owl Cries_ in the most appropriate setting for a book that seeks to recreate hacienda life, and we shared many happy memories of our outings and leisurely hours there.

REVIEWS OF THE BOOK

As already mentioned, _When the Owl Cries_ was widely and enthusiastically reviewed throughout the country. The following are excerpts from some of these reviews:

"_When the Owl Cries_ is a novel rich in pictorially vivid reading. As you turn the pages, you ask, What next? That is the immemorial appeal of the thriller. But what gives the story stature as a work of art is that Bartlett has been at pains to populate it with believable characters who are stirred by intensely personal concerns."--Charles Poore, in the _New York Times_

"The book charms with its expert knowledge of place and people."--Paul Engle, in the _Chicago Tribune_

"Vivid, impressive, highly pictorial. What makes it a pleasure to read are its marvelous vignettes of Mexican ways of life."--Lon Tinkle, in the _Dallas News_

"Only rarely is an American writer gifted with the perception and sensitivity required to translate into English the intensity and sense of tragedy of the Latin races."--Joe Knefler, in the _L. A. Times_

"Mr. Bartlett has given us a powerful, unusual and taunting novel, filled with characters as real as the headlines in today's papers, who move toward the inevitability of defeat like figures in a Greek tragedy."--D. Evan Gwen, in the _Oxford Mail_

"A _Gone with the Wind_ of Mexico."--_Library Journal_

"The Spirit and atmosphere of Mexico breathe from every page of Paul Bartlett's poignant novel."--Clifford Gessler, in the _Oakland Tribune_

"This is a book the reader can see in his mind--on a wide screen in technicolor with stereophonic sound. It doesn't need Hollywood but it's the kind of story that wouldn't do the movies any harm."--_Florida Times-Union_

"The interiors are magnificent: the feeling one gets of candles and bronze and rosemaries and Spanish furniture and nostalgia and hatred."--_London Times Literary Supplement_

[Ill.u.s.tration: author photo]

"The revolution is reflected in the crumbling of the great feudal hacienda system and the beginning of democracy... a warmly human novel."--_Kansas City Times_

"A novel of exploitation and retribution."--_London Free Press_

"A capably written novel about an exciting land and an exciting era."--_Los Angeles Mirror News_

"An intense struggle heightened by personal involvement, written with understanding."--_Los Angeles Examiner_

"A beautifully atmospheric tale with a punch."--_Washington Post_

"Bartlett has pinpointed the struggle between the old order and new--between father and son."--_The Atlanta Journal_

"One of the high-ranking novels of the year."--Worchester Telegram

"A dramatic, well-written symbol of transition."--_San Jose Mercury_

"Achieves a totality of effect that reminds one of Poe."--_Wichita Falls Times_

"If you like to feel the exotic made factual, here it is."--_Saskatchewan Star-Phoenix_

"A lively and richly picturesque chronicle of a Mexico that was."--_Chicago Sun-Times_

"A book of substance and depth--beautifully, poetically written.--_Moberly Monitor-Index_

"A skillfully written novel, interwoven with color and excitement."--_New Bedford Standard Times_