The Worm in the Wheat: Rosalie Evans and Agrarian Struggle in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley of Mexico, 1906-1927

by Timothy J. Henderson

The Worm in the Wheat is a compelling tale of political intrigue, violence, shifting allegiances, extreme poverty, and the recalcitrance of one woman. Above all, it is a multileveled interpretation of the Mexican revolution and the ultimate failure of agrarian reform. Timothy J. Henderson recounts the story of Rosalie Evans, a woman who lost her life defending her Mexican hacienda in defiance of confiscation decrees. This dramatic narrative is populated with many diverse Mexican, British, and American officials, soldiers, rebel leaders, bureaucrats, peasants, vigilantes, and the unforgettable figure of Evans herself.
In a world where power and wealth are distributed unevenly and where revolutionary ideas aiming to right the balance continue to proliferate, it is essential, Henderson claims, to understand the revolutionary process not as a philosophical abstraction but as intimate human drama. This book, by providing a detailed study of a single case, sheds invaluable light on this process and on the making of modern Mexico. Incorporating extensive primary research, Henderson describes the complexity of international, national, state, and local politics and the corresponding diverse responses to this historic attempt at agrarian reform.
The Worm in the Wheat will be informative reading for those interested in the modern history of Mexico, students of social movements and revolution, Latin Americanists, and scholars of agrarian history.

Genres: Nonfiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published August 25, 1998

About the author

Tim Henderson has been studying, teaching, and writing about Mexican history for about twenty years. He has just completed a book on the Mexican wars of independence, which will be published in early 2009 by Hill & Wang, and he is currently doing research for a history of Mexican immigration to the United States.

Reviews

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 5 out of 5]

August 17 ~~ Review coming tomorrow.

August 21 ~~ When I finished this book I had so many things I wanted to say, but felt the need for a little time to sort out my thoughts. More than one 'tomorrow' has slipped away since I closed the book for the final time and I have given up trying to compose an objective review. I will try not to sputter too much, though.

I've been in Mexico for 7 years now, living in the three-room house that used to belong to my husband's paternal grandparents. We are in Tlaxcala, about 25 miles away from the valley in question, which is why I ordered the book in the first place. I knew Puebla and the surrounding area had been a violent place during the Revolution, but I had not read anything about Rosalie Evans so of course I was curious. Especially because all the blurbs I've read make her out to be some sort of heroine struggling against everyone to protect her home. But is that really what she was? A heroine? Or simply one more foreign landlord squeezing the turnip until it bled?

Rosalie's Texan father had an import business, bringing hides and wool into the US from Mexico. The family moved to Puebla in 1896. There Rosalie met Harry Evans, the son of a man who worked for the then British-owned Mexican Railway. I quote the author:
"Harry Evans was a proper British gentleman who had been brought up in what he regarded as a semisavage country. . . .[Rosalie] appears to have regarded [Mexico's] inhabitants as exotic, mysterious, often childlike and not altogether human. She and Harry came to see themselves as inevitable allies in a world where they did not entirely belong.

The two married in 1898, settling in the city of Puebla where Harry was the head of a bank. After the death of her sister in 1904, Rosalie felt they needed a change so Harry left the banking business, bought the hacienda San Pedro Coxtacan, and they settled down to be farmers for the rest of their lives. With no idea of the reality of the political situation or any inkling that the campesinos who worked for them might not be as happy with their own lives as the new owners seemed to be.

Revolution broke out in 1910; Harry and Rosalie ran away for the most violent early years, then Harry went back alone in 1917 and tried to prove that he was the legal owner of the hacienda. Unfortunately, dealing with the new and struggling government was not easy, and when Harry became ill, everything took a turn for the worse. He died in Mexico City, and Rosalie was devastated. She tried to contact his spirit, she felt she was now entirely alone in the world, she really did not want to live any longer. But because Harry was fighting to regain the hacienda at the time he died, she decided she would go to Mexico and continue the fight. It would make her feel close to him, she would be able to complete something that was important to him, and maybe she would die in the process, allowing her to be with Harry again.

I very much admire Timothy Henderson for tackling such a complex subject. He explains why the haciendas planted wheat; how the economics of the day were influenced by the meddling of the US and Great Britain; how President Obregon forced industrialization onto a country that was not ready for it; how high society warped the country, as it seems to do world wide. Henderson gives a readable account of a rough phase in Mexican history, which helped me understand my adopted country better than ever. And made me cry for the injustices done not only by the owners of the
haciendas but by the country's own government.

Rosalie Evans was obsessed with her land. She made herself into a 'cause'. She eventually allowed the world to think that her husband had died in battle in WWI, in a desperate effort at both sympathy and publicity during the final years of her campaign. She was, in my opinion, a bigoted, greedy lunatic. She played the same crooked game other landowners had done: in the glory days they all undervalued their lands in order to avoid paying their fair share of taxes to the government. Then when they were offered compensation after the Revolution, compensation based on the recorded land values, they all cried Alas and Alack, our land is worth much more than this!

I did not care at all for Rosalie Evans, but her story, enmeshed as it was with the story of Mexico itself, was fascinating. I just hope that after the next revolution, Mexico can get things right. But we humans seem completely unable to change our core natures. Power corrupts, greed takes everything for itself, and ignorance gets elected president. Repeatedly, in all countries. When will we ever learn? Poor Mexico. Poor world.

[Dave-O · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very thorough account of an unusual case in the agrarian history of Mexico in the tumultuous years during and following the Mexican Revolution. This is the story of a American/British owner of the San Pedro Coxtocán hacienda and her struggle against bureaucratic indifference on the one hand and near-anarchy on the other.

Henderson's well-rounded research satisfies will satisfy any student of the immediate post-Revolution Mexico. As is the case with this history in general, there are few sympathetic players especially the hotheaded Evans herself who shockingly was oblivious to the seismic social upheavals going on around her.

[Scott · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. Ahistorical, inaccurate, and imperial. If you're hankering for a text on how "Indians" are "guarded, suspicious, hostile" and lazy; or if you want to weep some tears for a gringa colonizer fighting to defend land that was never hers to begin with; or you just have some nostalgia for the good old days of the Porfiriato, then this text is for you. If you actually want to know about the Mexican Revolution and the project of land reform, I'd suggest probably literally any other book on the subject.

[Andrew Paxman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nearly twenty-five years after I first read it, this biography remains my favourite work of Mexican history. Beautifully written, deeply researched, and highly instructive about the ways in which the Mexican Revolution meant different things to different classes of people.

[Kathleen (itpdx) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating history. Henderson gives us the story of Rosalie Evans and the early 20th century history of the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley and by extension the struggles of Mexico and the challenges of agrarian land reform. Rosalie Evans was an American-born widow of an English man. She and her husband had purchased a wheat growing hacienda in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley in 1906. She tries to defend the hacienda against land reform which was an effort to redistribute land to the local villages. The book takes us through revolution and civil war, idealistic reforms, corruption, and ineffective leadership at the state and national level.

The book has given me a much clearer understanding of this period of Mexican history, the crucible in which the modern Mexico was formed. I can even see the current drug cartel problems as an extension of the divisions and attitudes of this era. And probably as difficult to deal with.

Telling history by focusing on individuals resonates with me. Henderson has picked interesting individual stories to give us this history. He does not quite have the narrative writing finesse that some other authors such as Timothy Egan or Isabel Wilkerson have.