Juan Rulfo: Whispers & Myths From Mexico’s Most Enigmatic Writer

Juan Rulfo (1917-1968) is widely regarded as one of the most influential Latin-American writers of the 20th century. He is deeply respected and praised by authors such as Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luís Borges. However, his personal life and literary career are far from those of his analogs. His cryptic biographical tale, marked by many failed attempts to create a concise biography of him, plus his practically anecdotic public appearances and scarce production of work, render Rulfo one of Mexico’s most enigmatic writers.

Juan Rulfo was born in 1917 in Apulco, in the state of Jalisco. However, he was officially registered at birth in Sayula, the town of his paternal grandfather, thus beginning his life with ambiguity. In 1923, his father was killed during the first uprisings of the Cristero Civil War, a conflict that sparked in the rural areas of Mexico in reaction to the enforcement of laws advocating secularism and opposing the influence of the clergy. After four years, his mother also passed away, and Rulfo moved to San Gabriel, Jalisco, to be raised by his grandmother.

In the 1930s, he relocated to Mexico City after encountering problems entering the University of Guadalajara. There, he started studying law at the Autonomous National University of Mexico while beginning his first literary pursuits in local magazines. Being in the capital city at a young age, Rulfo started surrounding himself with artists and befriended writers such as Efrén Hernández or Juan José Arreola.

His next few decades in Mexico City proved to be the most productive and fruitful literary years of his professional career. Starting by publishing short tales in numerous renowned Mexican literary magazines, Rulfo produced his first major work, El llano en llamas, in 1953. This book, which contained many of the previously published tales, paved the way for him to publish his first major novel in 1955: Pedro Páramo. Translated into more than 30 languages, his novel ultimately established Rulfo as one of the major figures in contemporary Mexican literature and magical realism.

Rulfo only produced three narrative works: El llano en llamas (1953), Pedro Páramo (1955), and El Gallo de Oro (1980), usually forgotten, as it is not a complete piece but a compilation of unrelated short stories. Nevertheless, he influenced an entire generation of Latin-American writers with just 300 pages. How was he able to achieve such an accomplishment? The answer lies in the ontological depth of his main literary motifs, as they could explore fundamental questions of the Mexican identity and the overall meaning of being human.

Death can be analyzed as the central motif of Rulfo’s entire literary career. The experience of losing both his parents suddenly and at a very young age profoundly shaped his future artistic production. “Rulfian” characters accept death calmly and without complaining, marked by a sense of resigned peace towards both life and death. Death is seen as something inherent in life. In this regard, death becomes a sacred and pivotal narrative force in Rulfo’s characters and their dialogues, permeating nearly every major event in his literature.

Despite portraying death as something common, Rulfo’s stories are full of vivid depictions of despair and brutality. This aspect can be connected to his second central motif: the harshness of rural life. Growing up in Jalisco, one of Mexico’s most arid regions, Rulfo was immersed in the daily realities of countryside life. As a result, the plains, deserts, and small villages of Mexico serve as the primary settings for his tales.

Within these environments, “Rulfian” characters experience a constant state of suffering, facing atmospheric perils and social injustices. Nevertheless, like the motif of death, these characters calmly accept their reality. Hence, rural life ends up being characterized as harsh but simple, producing a kind of wisdom that is hard to seek.

Rulfo’s final motif is connected with his preoccupation with pre-colonial Indigenous culture. Even if this literary theme can be initially challenging to grasp, Rulfo often employed various symbolism rooted in pre-colonial mythology and culture. Nonetheless, he decided to portray this pre-colonial identity in an indirect and subtle way, in opposition to the straightforwardness of his previous motifs. In this regard, readers will only be able to understand this layer of “Rulfian” literature when reading between the lines, focusing on the metaphors and cosmological elements of Rulfo’s stories.

The writer’s concern for Indigenous culture was also present in his life, as he worked as the subdirector and editor of publications at the National Indigenist Institute of Mexico during the last two decades of his life. Also, he was a “mestizo,” having Spanish and Indigenous ancestries. Hence, Rulfo’s father was related to Indigenous communities, while his mother had her roots in an Andalusian Spanish family, allowing Rulfo to discover both worldviews.

In addition, this last theme is explicitly understood compared to the motif of death. As mentioned in Rulfo’s literature, death is something common, always linked to life and calmly expected by his characters. This resembles Indigenous cosmologies, as death was also tightly associated with life, and vice versa. In contrast, in a Western Christian worldview, death is the antithesis of life, its main antagonist. The motif of death is probably one of the clearest examples that enables readers to understand the role of pre-colonial mythology in Rulfo’s literature.

El llano en llamas (1953), translated as The Plain in Flames, was Rulfo’s breakthrough. This book collects 17 short tales set around the villages and desert areas of Jalisco during the 1920s when Mexico entered its post-Revolution era, and the Cristero War began to unravel. In this sense, El llano en llamas is a fictional but vivid depiction of Rulfo’s experiences when he was young, which once again emphasizes the deep effect of his youth in his literature.

The structure and style of the tales change along the book, alternating action-driven stories, like “La Cuesta de las Comadres” or “Talpa,” with ambient stories characterized by their dreamlike and unorthodox plots, like “Luvina” or “En la madrugada.” This narrative and stylistic characteristic lets Rulfo explore the surface of his rural Mexican identity and the latent and hidden layers of his Mexican heritage, as in the case of the already mentioned Indigenous cultural past.

Examining the stories from two contrasting tales can exemplify this: “Talpa” is focused on the journey of Tanilo, his brother, and Natalia, the wife of Tanilo and the secret lover of the brother. Tanilo seeks healing from the Virgin of Talpa as he suffers from a serious illness. His brother and Natalia decide to accompany him on a journey they know Tanilo won’t survive. “Talpa” is a tale about suffering, love, and regret that follows a typical straightforward structure.

“Luvina,” in contrast, is an ambient story in which an anonymous narrator describes the village of San Juan Luvina. The story is unconventional, as the village itself is the main character.

Juan Rulfo’s first and only novel, Pedro Páramo (1955), is a tale about hope, death, and the mysteries of the unseen. The book presents the story of Juan Preciado, who journeys towards the town of Comala to meet his lost father. However, after arriving at Comala, he discovers that his destination is a ghost town inhabited by spectral beings. As the story progresses, these ghostly characters tell the story of Preciado’s father, Pedro Páramo, a despotic ruler who was once in charge of Comala.

The novel, as in the case of El llano en llamas, uses multiple storytelling styles that alternate sections with various characters and engaging dialogues with other parts focused on describing the environments of the novel in a non-linear way. Thus, readers who venture into the stories of Pedro Páramo may find themselves confused in some parts of the book. Nevertheless, this element of confusion is what elevates the novel, as the audience is urged to return to some sections of the book to grasp all the meanings of its plot.

Pedro Páramo truly influenced Latin American writers. This is exemplified by García Márquez, who overcame his creative block shortly after encountering Rulfo’s novel in 1961, leading to the creation of his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Being a precursor of the greatest magical realism novels, Pedro Páramo has been translated into more than 30 languages, and the English version has sold more than a million copies in the United States. In Borges’ words (1985), “Pedro Páramo is one of the finest novels in Hispanic literature, and even in all of literature.”

Juan Rulfo passed away on January 7, 1986, due to lung cancer. His death deeply affected the cultural community of Mexico. However, in artistic terms, his career “died” long before him. In Rulfo’s case, the death of the art preceded the death of the artist.

According to many Mexican writers, attempting to decipher the end of Rulfo’s career often leads to the consensus that what caused him to stop writing was the pain and suffering depicted in his works. For Rulfo, continuing to write meant continuously evoking in words the emotions of despair, cruelty, and death, which ultimately became a personal burden—in the end, writing about suffering inflicted suffering upon the artist himself. Without access to an objective biographical account, the previous explanation not only illuminates Rulfo’s abrupt departure from the literary scene but also underscores the depth and artistic significance of his works.

The reason he stopped writing is the same one that has cemented his name as one of the most influential contemporary Latin American writers in history. Being able to profoundly shape the genre of magical realism and greatly impact some of its greatest masters with just 300 pages stands as a testament to the enduring power of his literary legacy. His rich imagery of pain and death, his dreamlike scenarios that echo a nearly lost Indigenous culture, and his vivid depictions of rural Mexico at the start of the 20th century continue to captivate audiences and inspire admiration from both readers and writers around the world.

References:

• Alatorre, A. (1998). La persona de Juan Rulfo. Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos.
• Bonilla, R. G. (2008). Rostros biográficos de Juan Rulfo. Literatura Mexicana, 19(2).
• Borges, J. L. (1985). Pedro Páramo. Hyspamérica.
• Correa Rodríguez, P. (1992). Raíces prehispánicas en “El Llano en llamas” de Juan Rulfo. Cauce 14-15.
• De Báez, Y. J. (1992). Historia y sentido en la obra de Juan Rulfo. Juan Rulfo: Toda la obra.
• García Márquez, G. (2003). Breves nostalgias sobre Juan Rulfo. In La ficción de la memoria. Ediciones Era.
• Lyon, T. (1973). Ontological Motifs in the Short Stories of Juan Rulfo. Journal of Spanish Studies: Twentieth Century.
• Noya, M. (2006, August 14). Juan Rulfo: pocas pero bruscas obras juntas. LibertadDigital.com.
• Orrego Arismendi, J. C. (2008). Lo indígena en la obra de Juan Rulfo, vicisitudes de una “mente antropológica”. Co-herencia, 9, vol.5.
• Orrego Arismendi, J. C. (2017). Juan Rulfo, antropólogo. Agenda Cultural Alma Máter.
• Rulfo, J. (2017). El llano en llamas. Editorial RM. (Original work published 1952)
• Rulfo, J. (2017). Pedro Páramo. Editorial RM. (Original work published 1955)