Santa

Santa

A book in the series Latin America in Translation / en Traducción / em Tradução

Sponsored by the Consortium in Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University

Santa

A NOVEL OF MEXICO CITY

Federico Gamboa

Translated and edited by John Charles Chasteen

The University of North Carolina Press

Chapel Hill

Translation of the books in the series Latin America in Translation / en Traducción /em Tradução, a collaboration between the Consortium in Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University and the university presses of the University of North Carolina and Duke, is supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

© 2010
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

All rights reserved. Designed by Courtney Leigh Baker and set in Merlo with Milk Script by Rebecca Evans. Manufactured in the United States of America. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gamboa, Federico, 1864–1939
[Santa. English]
Santa : a novel of Mexico City /
Federico Gamboa ; translated and edited by John Charles Chasteen.
p. cm.—(Latin America in translation/en traducción/em tradução.)
ISBN 978-0-8078-7107-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
I. Chasteen, John Charles, 1955– II. Title.
PQ 7297.G3S3 2010 863□.62—dc22 2010004478

cloth 14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1
paper 14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1

TO PROFESSOR BILL BEEZLEY,

who inspired this translation and who has

done so much to promote the historical study of

Mexican popular culture in the United States.

Contents

INTRODUCTION Why Read Santa?

Part One

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Part Two

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Introduction
WHY READ SANTA?

Why read Santa, a novel written more than a century ago? Because of its quality, above all. This is a sophisticated and beautifully executed novel. Santa, the paradigmatic prostitute of late nineteenth-century naturalist fiction in her Mexican incarnation, is rendered by Federico Gamboa with carefully researched veracity, a cinematic eye, and, it must be admitted, not inconsiderable lust.

No wonder that Mexican filmmakers have done so many movie adaptations of the novel, no fewer than four. Though the novel immediately attracted an avid readership when it was published in 1903, it is the cinematic and other nonprint versions that have given Santa its enormous projection in Mexican popular culture. There was a silent Santa film in 1918. Then, in 1932, Santa became the first Mexican “talkie,” with notable box office success and a soundtrack hit song, “Santa,” by the immortal Agustín Lara, who might be described as Mexico's Cole Porter. A bit later, Santa also became a pornographic comic strip. Historian Katherine Elaine Bliss has found that some young Mexican prostitutes of the 1930s told their life stories to social workers in terms that sounded much like Santa's and that, in doing so, they often mentioned the 1932 film version starring Lupita Tovar, Mexico's first glamorous movie actress. Meanwhile, Santa found its way into a steady stream of stage productions and returned to the big screen in 1943 and 1969. In 1978, it became a primetime television series, or telenovela. An analog to Santa in the United States would have to be a novel like UncleTom's Cabin or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because of Santa's familiarity to the nation at large, rich and poor, readers and nonreaders over several generations.