LITMIR.BIZ

      Facundo Bernal López (1883-1962)

      Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz

      Facundo Bernal is a man from the North. A son of Sonora, he was forced to leave his native state, and even his country, in order to escape political violence and upheaval. But Don Facundo, as his colleagues in the press would call him, was always a Sonoran at heart. He was born on October 16, 1883, in Hermosillo, the first son of Facundo Bernal Sr. and Luisa López de Bernal. His father worked for the state government, and the family’s economic situation was precarious, like that of many in Sonora in the years before the Revolution. Facundo Jr. received a secular fourth grade education from the Colegio Sonora, a public school. After the early death of Facundo Sr., the son took a government post no less dreary and miserable that the one his father had occupied. Yet he continued to educate himself with the help of his cultured mother, who ensured that no matter how difficult life was at the Bernal household, there was never a lack of books. Facundo read the poets of the Golden Age of Spanish literature — Garcilaso de la Vega, Francisco de Quevedo, Luis de Góngora, and Lope de Vega — as well as the Romantics and the Latin American Modernistas, especially Rubén Darío, Gutiérrez Nájera, and Amado Nervo. This bookishness was not uncommon in Hermosillo, which was home to small but busy communities of foreign-born residents — French, North American, and English — brought to the region by the politic ups and downs of Maximilian’s empire, as well as Don Porfirio Díaz’s campaign for foreign investment. The town was close to the port of Guaymas, and was a stop on the new railroad, which brought not only raw materials, but also books, newspapers, and magazines from the interior of the country and from abroad.

      This all contributed to a vibrant cultural atmosphere. Presiding over it were Manuel Campillo and Rodolfo Campodonico (1866-1926), who were troubadours of popular verse rather than champions of Latin American Modernismo, and clearly influenced Facundo’s poetic sensibility. And there was never a lack of political disputes in the town, nor a shortage of literary salons, dances, and bohemian gatherings replete with musicians and poets improvising, mano a mano, songs and poems celebrating their respective sweethearts. It’s no surprise, then, that Facundo — like his younger brother Francisco, born on October 4, 1896 — formed closer friendships with troubadours and musicians like Chito Peralta and Campodonico than they did with writers. Culture back then meant political rallies, dances, and block parties. Naturally, it found written expression most readily in journalism.

      Facundo soon became an important voice in the Sonoran press, which itself became a prime mover behind the Revolution. He published teasingly erotic romantic sonnets along with articles and sarcastic verses targeting the arbitrary decisions of politicians and the greed of the mercantile class. It’s important to note that, in Sonoran society in those days, a writer was no better than any of the other locals, serving as something like a social worker, a promoter of interpersonal relationships, and an unofficial spokesperson for the community. Facundo’s writing possessed social utility, and had direct economic benefits for him personally. Consider this early poem, a parody of Manuel Acuña’s suicidal “Nocturno a Rosario,” which Facundo wrote to protest a promotion to Manager-Collector granted to the Copyist-Correspondent of Sonora’s General Treasury Office:

      So. I must

      inform the treasurer,

      inform him that my

      sad situation overwhelms me,

      for I have been only

      a Manager-Collector

      for three whole years;

      so profoundly do I suffer,

      so profoundly do I wait

      for them to regale me

      with a pen set, and not a broom.

      I would beg that they recall

      how many years past

      I did request the post

      which today I learned was filled;

      let them know

      these hopes of mine

      have been dashed;

      and my joys have been drained

      because of that yearned-for post;

      let them know

      that from my precipice

      the future blackens deeply.

      At night, when I ponder,

      (with my soul thrashing),

      how others so easily do find

      their station rising,

      and their wages plentiful,

      yet they work hardly at all,

      it does spur me to ponder matters,

      and in the end, my luck depleted,

      I recall that another day

      slaving behind the broom awaits me.

      I grasp how that job

      never shall be mine,

      never shall I earn

      those

Скачать книгу