In the 1820s, great-great grandfather Alferez Antonio Sonoro is a Spanish-bred aristocrat who exploits the indigenous Mexican peons in his search for gold. In the process, he sadistically kills hundreds of them. In the 1890s, grandfather Antonio Sonoro has no aristocratic connections left and is reduced to cultivating arid land where few crops grow. Desperate to support his family, he becomes a bandido, raiding across the border into Texas, the land the “Yanquis” have stolen. He becomes known as “El Tragabalas” – the Bullet Swallower – when he is shot in the throat and survives, his face scarred and mutilated.
In the 1960s, great-great grandson Jaime, a Mexican movie star living in luxury in Mexico City, is confronted with the dark past of his family – exploitation, banditry, much killing. Most of the narrative bounces between the bandido in the 1890s and the movie star in the 1960s.
Elizabeth Gonzalez James, part-Mexican, part-Yanqui, tells us that much of this family saga is very loosely based on her own family’s ancestry. She also appears to be inspired by the family sagas and “magical realism” that were perfected by great writers from further south, the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez and the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa. (Mexico’s own greatest modernist writer, Carlos Fuentes, tended to steer clear of magical realism.)
The magic comes in the form of a kind of pagan guardian angel called Remedio (“remedy” or “healer”) who intervenes in the lives of grandfather and grandson and gives wise advice, such as, “The past is not as far away as you think … No man lives free from history.” Remedio is miraculously healed when scorpions bite him.
There is also an accursed book which damns the whole family lineage. Can one cleanse the family curse and redeem oneself by good deeds? Or is evil an inevitable part of the human species? These are philosophical questions that run through the book, especially when bandido Antonio argues with his pious, pacifist brother Hugo.
Gonzalez James is concerned with the whole problem of colonialism and empire-building. For Mexico, there was a three-way colonisation. First, the Spanish rode over the indigenous Mexicans. Then, when much intermarriage had made many Mexicans mestizo, the gringo Yanquis waged aggressive wars in the 19th century and took over everything from California to Texas, treating the surviving Mexicans as a very inferior race. Indigenous peoples, Spaniards, mestizo and Yanquis: it all made for many feuds, much hostility and much violence. Yet cultures did sometimes overlap. It’s fitting to find a scene where the bandido has his wounds cared for by a mestizo peasant woman who uses pre-Hispanic, pre-Christian folklore and remedies to great effect yet still prays fervently to Our Lady of Guadaloupe.
The Bullet Swallower offers many impassioned and vivid moments, but most of them come in the chapters involving the bandido. They throw in the shade the angst of the 1960s movie star. Antonio attempts to raid a Yanqui train and has to shoot it out with the Texas Rangers. He crosses deserts when pursued. He’s almost trapped when he hides in a brothel. Sometimes, he is accompanied by a sharp-shooting Englishman who also has a grudge with the Texas Rangers. Above all else, Antonio is fuelled by vengeance on those who have wronged him, there is much macho talk of what it is to be a man, and Antonio is as murderous as his enemies.
Put simply, much of The Bullet Swallower reads like a superior Western, with its firearms aimed at the US. As such, it can be read with much pleasure.
