Gambusino

Among the most respected of contemporary Mexican novelists, Montemayor published Gambusino in 1982. It became a bestseller in Mexico and won El Nacional's 50th Anniversary Novel Contest. The novel explores the moral universe of early 20th-century Mexico by way of a searing portrait of one man trying to make his way in a world where the powers that be--American mining interests and their Mexican counterparts--rank property rights over human rights. Alfredo Montenegro is a gambusino, a prospector of sorts who lives a nomadic, risky life as he tries to make a fortune spotting gold. Alfredo has seen how the dismantling of a mine can obliterate a community. He has asked and been asked if a company town deserves to live if its mine is not productive. A second generation miner, Alfredo has a gambler's soul. He wants to find lost veins not only in order to save jobs and to become rich but also simply to prove it can be done. His story is narrated by his educated boyhood friend, Armando, who juxtaposes the past and the present while observing that his friend does not know another way to live even as his obsession estranges him from his bosses and from his family. Everything Alfredo does is part of his insistence on free will. He wants to make his own luck--or his own trouble. And yet fatalistic overtones drive the book to its surprisingly subtle conclusion. The prose is rich and dark, like spilt blood, and tied to the very earth that keeps its secrets from Alfredo. Written with a muscular simplicity that rises to an elemental lyricism, Gambusino is a grave and beautiful novel. (July) FYI: An English translation of Montemayor's novel Blood Relations was published in 1995 by Plover.