The Carreta

In the 1930s, B. Traven, best known in this country for his Treasure of the Sierra Madre and for the speculation about his identity which now appears to have been fairly well resolved, wrote a series of six short novels intended to describe the background and nature of the Mexican Revolution. Through the story of a driver of a carreta drawn by yoked oxen carrying freight between the villages of Chiapas, the author sketches conditions under which rural Mexicans lived early in the present century with detailed descriptions of the prevailing systems of peonage and debt slavery. The series of “Jungle Novels” should prove a welcome addition to the available background reading for students of Mexican history.