Pedro Martínez is Oscar Lewis’ newest contribution to our knowledge of the culture of Mexican poverty. The book tries to do for the village scene what the earlier volume, The Children of Sanchez, did for the urban slum. In that both works are multi-biographical in nature, they are quite similar. However, this new one contains a number of features that make it distinctive from the first and, perhaps, more valuable.
The most important of these is the time span involved. Pedro Martinez is the result of no less than twenty years of contact with a single family. Lewis met the Martínez family for the first time in 1943. Formal study of the family began in 1944. Between that date and 1948 life histories were obtained from Pedro and his wife, Esperanza. Approximately ten years later Lewis returned, this time with a tape recorder. He re-interviewed Pedro alone, for Esperanza had already died. He tells us that the concordance between the two series of interviews is impressive, though the reader has no way of judging. Beginning in 1960, a life history was obtained from Felipe, Pedro’s oldest living son. The three life histories, translated and set into order by Lewis, make up the body of the book.
Pedro was born in 1889. He was seventy two when Lewis wrote his introduction to the book. His life, therefore, has spanned one of the most dynamic periods of Mexican history. This is fortunate, for seldom do we encounter a record of the feelings and thoughts that ordinary men have when caught up in significant historical processes. Historians will find Pedro’s recollections of the Zapata movement particularly illuminating. And his frustrating experience with the ejido system will perhaps aid in giving us a more balanced appraisal of that instrument of reform.
