With the fury of the Maderista militant of the first hour, Ramon lopez velarde He obtained the title of lawyer on October 31, 1911, endorsed by the Supreme Court of Justice of San Luis Potosí. In a few more days, on Monday, November 6, Francisco I. Madero will receive the presidential sash in Mexico City. Why is he not among the crowds that cheer the politician from Parras, his civic hero who put an end to the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz? Instead of joining the event of national life – the chariot of history, one would say pompously – the poet has decided to withdraw from the centers of power and secludes himself in the town of Venado, where he marches as a judge of First Instance. In that oasis of the Potosino desert, north of the state capital, in a short time he will be integrated into the domestic life of its inhabitants while exercising “a Solomonic justice” in an enclave “under which irreconcilable beliefs boil, close to exploding.” (1)
In that town of nogaleras, with a water spring and a singing gutter, of flirtatious maidens, the Zacatecan was always attentive to the future of the new Madero government, as shown in the three letters he sent to Eduardo J. Correa where, faced with the skepticism of his correspondent, breaks spears over and over in favor of the so-called apostle of democracy. Also, in the face of the first vicissitudes of his administration, he remains optimistic. Far from the political epicenter, is the new lawyer waiting for the call of the president of Mexico or one of his collaborators? Items shipped to The Regional In those days, “The triumph of the lawyer Pino” published on November 10 and another about former president De la Barra, lost or not reproduced in the pages of the Guadalajara newspaper, corroborate his faith and commitment to the Maderista crusade. In such coordinates, his political passion confined in the dense hours of the small-town boredom is contradictory. He is even more so because his law school classmate, Pedro Antonio de los Santos, rubs shoulders with the cream of the crop of the new regime. In June 1911, while Dr. Rafael Cepeda was in Potosí governor, his partner served as Secretary General of the Government; before long, the rivalry between these figures who collaborated in the Madero campaign will turn harsh and irreconcilable. When the time comes, López Velarde will take the side of De los Santos and will systematically attack “Cepedita” in the pages of The nation as of June 1912. With such a bishop in the corridors of the National Palace and of the Castle of Chapultepec, it seems that López Velarde’s “interior exile” in Venado is an absurd penance of the fate’s clashing fates.
Without yielding to any of the “mental poles” of the town represented by a clothes seller and by the Administrator of the Timbre – wishing to have the newly arrived judge in their ranks -, the poet tore, between abúlic and resigned, the pages of the calendar of the days of November and December of 1911 and of those of January of 1912. Finally, one day of ice needles in the Venado wind, the telegram or letter arrived urging their presence in the capital. With euphoria and curiosity, he dispatched his office affairs, packed his suitcase and took the train to Mexico City – with an obligatory stopover in San Luis Potosí – to receive the appointment of Acting Secretary of the Fifth Minor Court according to news published by Time on Sunday, February 4, 1912. It is known that Pedro Antonio de los Santos pulled those strings, not knowing with certainty what position they would offer the friend. Indeed, the position was in the fifth category. However, he accepted the assignment. Recommended, perhaps by his classmate from the Aguascalientes Institute of Sciences, Pedro de Alba, he would hire a care home in the first of Dolores number 9; his friend was about to graduate as a doctor from the Military College and would become his star guide when it came to walking and discovering the city of Anahuac. His future stay ordered, he would return to Venado to complete his last earrings. Disappointed and confused by the crumbs of the feast, he would take his professional situation as a litmus test without questioning at all, on the contrary, the companies and tribulations of the new government.
In the Memories of Pedro Antonio Santos Santos, father of Pedro Antonio and Samuel de los Santos, document exhumed in 1990, the author refers that President Madero called the first of his sons at the beginning of his term to join his government as a counselor . To fulfill his services, the politician from Potosí – notes the memorable father – set up “his office on number one street in Gante, in whose office he had employees Ramón López Velarde and Julián Ramírez Martínez.”(2)
Since the Memories They were drawn up a few months after the assassination of Pedro Antonio de los Santos, on July 31, 1913, in his native Tampamolón, town of the Huasteca Potosina, the testimony is completely reliable. With this additional source of work, the poet will better cope with his economy and that of his brother Jesús, who has moved to Mexico City to continue his medical studies initially in San Luis Potosí. The salary in the capital court, as regards the letter of his resignation, dated May 5, 1912, was modest, insufficient to cover the daily expenses of the two brothers, as unthinkable to part with some pesos and send them to Jerez in support of his family supported by his maternal uncles. To make matters worse, one of the usual tasks of the post consisted of drawing up the minutes in situ, in the home of delinquent tenants, who had to be evicted, sometimes auctioning off their belongings or simply thrown onto the public highway.(3)
When he was certain that his friend and mentor Eduardo J. Correa was leaving the management of The Regional to move to the capital with the intention of founding The nationSurely he wrote the letter of resignation to the court in his own hand. In that tight page – institutional man after all – he appreciates the president’s trust for the appointment but does not reserve himself to state that “Because it is not in my economic interests” he is separated from his position (4). Indeed, with the support of the National Catholic Party, Correa settles in the same guest house as López Velarde and prepares the ground to launch the new newspaper that he will run until August 1913. (5). From the first issue of The nation, the edition of June 1, 1912, the Velardean pen will be very present in its pages until its last installment of February 7, 1913, the eve of the Tragic Ten (6). Editorials, regional policy articles, bibliographic notes and literary texts – signed with his name or with a pseudonym – will add 192 collaborations according to the accounts of Luis Mario Schneider referred to in the foreword of Ramón López Velarde in La Nación. From that journalistic trench, without a trace of bitterness over the treatment of the government in relation to the position he had just resigned, the Zacatecan writer reaffirmed his Maderista convictions and went to the defense of his hero fighting the enemy fronts that, day by day, were they were part of the common desire to overthrow Madero.
1. “The mental province”, RLV works, FCE, second edition, Mexico, 1994. p. 424
2. Memories, Pedro Antonio Santos Santos, Introduction, transcription and notes by María Isabel Monroy Castillo, Editorial Ponciano Arriaga-Gobierno de San Luis Potosí, third edition, 2011, p. 103.
3. Jesús López Velarde says: “As a newcomer, Ramón went to visit Don Francisco I. Madero; He found it in the Palace elevator. From that interview it turned out that he was appointed clerk of a court; a position he held for a short time, since his temperament did not allow him to throw people and take their belongings. “Ramon lopez velarde. Their unfamiliar faces”, Guadalupe Appendini, FCE, Mexico, second edition, 1990, p. 18.
4. The Secretary of Justice referred to in the document is Mr. Manuel Vázquez Tagle, who accompanied Madero throughout his administration, from November 6, 1911 to February 18, 1913.
5. Correa himself notes in autobiographical pages about the offer of the newspaper’s address: “I don’t know if in view of the success I was having with The Regional or as a means to avoid compromise with those who aspired to his leadership, Mons. Mora y del Río offered it to me, as it was sought by the attorneys José Elguero, Francisco de P. García, Victorianos Agüeros, Alejandro Villaseñor y Villaseñor and Don Trinidad Sánchez Saints”. Intimate autobiography, Eduardo J. Correa.
6. In the inaugural issue of The nation He will deliver the first version of the poem “A tusindows”, dedicated to his classmate from the Scientific and Literary Institute of San Luis Potosí, Artemio de Valle Arizpe and the column “Goodbye to the Legislature” signed with the pseudonym Marcelo Estebanez.
ÁSS
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