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The Lawless Roads
This eyewitness account of religious and political persecution in 1930s Mexico inspired the British novelist’s “masterpiece,” The Power and the Glory (John Updike). In 1938, Graham Greene, a burgeoning convert to Roman Catholicism, was commissioned to expose the anticlerical purges in Mexico by President Plutarco Elías Calles. Churches had been destroyed, peasants held secret masses in their homes, religious icons were banned, and priests disappeared. Traveling under the growing clouds of fascism, Greene was anxious to see for himself the effect it had on the people—what he found was a combination of despair, resignation, and fierce resilience. Journeying through the rugged and remote terrain of Chiapas and Tabasco, Greene’s emotional, gut response to the landscape, the sights and sounds, the fears, the oppressive heat, and the state of mind under “the fiercest persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of Elizabeth” makes for a vivid and candid account, and stands alone as a “singularly beautiful travel book” (New Statesman). Hailed by William Golding as “the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety,” Greene would draw on the experiences of The Lawless Roads for one of his greatest novels, The Power and the Glory.
226 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1939
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About the author
Graham Greene
801 books6,118 followersHenry Graham Greene was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century.
Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivienne Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland. William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety".
Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivienne Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland. William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety".
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August 28, 2022
This is definitely not a bad book, but I did find it a difficult read. For me it was incredibly dense, although my Penguin edition does have very small font, which did not help. Every paragraph was filled with description - not that this is a bad thing - but it was relentless in its presentation. There was much that was outside of my knowledge - lots of religion, lots on politics - neither of which are really things I look for in books. I acknowledge this is not the fault of the book, but the reader.
I had been looking forward to reading another Graham Greene non-fiction travel book, this one in Mexico in spring of 1938. However it was not really just a travel book. Greene was commissioned to visit and write about the anti-Catholic purges of Calles which had occurred and were ongoing. This became more of a focus for the book than I would have preferred. After some fairly rapid travel from Laredo, Texas, Greene pausing in Monterrey, San Luis Potosi, Mexico City and Vera Cruz before his travel concentrates on the provinces of Tobasco and Chiapas.
Greene writes of religion & the religious purges, politics and insurgents, history and culture. He meets with priests, politicians, military leaders and old men in the streets; a doctor and a dentist feature heavily too. He visits closed churches, he visits empty churches (the clergy were banned from entering them) where people still visit - "...it gave the effect of fullness - and of emptiness, like a meeting where the leader has gone." P173. The people attended mass in private houses, hiding away from the military.
But, I have not yet mentioned the tone of this book. It is overwhelmingly dour. Mexico at this time was a loveless place. The people were oppressed, there was no joy, little colour and the people seemed almost devoid of hope. I know Paul Theroux takes inspiration from Greene, and without doubt this book picks up on a lot of the negative reportage we see in Theroux's travel books (not a negative, I love Theroux's grumpy outlook), but I have not seen it before from Greene in such a one sided presentation. This was by no means the reason I didn't love this book, but if you are a person who thrives on positives and upbeat reportage, this book will wear you down.
3.5 stars, rounded down.
I had been looking forward to reading another Graham Greene non-fiction travel book, this one in Mexico in spring of 1938. However it was not really just a travel book. Greene was commissioned to visit and write about the anti-Catholic purges of Calles which had occurred and were ongoing. This became more of a focus for the book than I would have preferred. After some fairly rapid travel from Laredo, Texas, Greene pausing in Monterrey, San Luis Potosi, Mexico City and Vera Cruz before his travel concentrates on the provinces of Tobasco and Chiapas.
Greene writes of religion & the religious purges, politics and insurgents, history and culture. He meets with priests, politicians, military leaders and old men in the streets; a doctor and a dentist feature heavily too. He visits closed churches, he visits empty churches (the clergy were banned from entering them) where people still visit - "...it gave the effect of fullness - and of emptiness, like a meeting where the leader has gone." P173. The people attended mass in private houses, hiding away from the military.
But, I have not yet mentioned the tone of this book. It is overwhelmingly dour. Mexico at this time was a loveless place. The people were oppressed, there was no joy, little colour and the people seemed almost devoid of hope. I know Paul Theroux takes inspiration from Greene, and without doubt this book picks up on a lot of the negative reportage we see in Theroux's travel books (not a negative, I love Theroux's grumpy outlook), but I have not seen it before from Greene in such a one sided presentation. This was by no means the reason I didn't love this book, but if you are a person who thrives on positives and upbeat reportage, this book will wear you down.
3.5 stars, rounded down.
February 27, 2011
A more dour, grim, contemptuous travelogue than The Lawless Roads is difficult to imagine. The British publishing company Longman commissioned Greene to travel to the southern Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas in 1938, to investigate the anti-Catholic purges of President Plutarco Elias Calles. Greene’s assignment, more specifically, was to write a report about the reactions of the Catholic people there to the assassination of some 40 priests and the destruction of hundreds of churches, and to determine the state of the faith under the repressive regime. Greene had written eight novels, a book of poetry and an African travel book by this time, and he was a practicing Catholic himself, so he must have seemed an ideal candidate to take the lay of the land, but it’s hard to imagine that he completely grasped the difficulties he would encounter when he took the assignment. Granted, no one goes to a violent anti-clerical purge expecting a fiesta, but Greene found violent culprits in southern Mexico in the government and in private organizations alike, coming from both right-wing and left-wing factions. There seemed to be no safety on any front.
The political instability puts Greene in many dangerous situations: the Calles government was left-wing (the United States called him a Bolshevik), yet the governors of Tabasco and Chiapas employed fascist paramilitary groups to enforce their own private orders, and Greene encounters more than one private commandante who identifies with Hitler and/or Franco. Corrupt generals in Mexico’s army also kept private armed forces to confiscate resources as they saw fit. While Greene is traveling south, President Calles nationalizes the foreign oil companies that have been exploiting Mexico’s new petroleum wealth, causing international threats of war. An atmosphere of unpredictable violence reigns. However, Greene’s narrative concentrates as much on the strangeness of everyday life as it does on the revolutionary political events sweeping Mexico.
Greene spends much of his time waiting: waiting for a boat to take him by sea from Veracruz to Tabasco, waiting for a barge to convey him upriver to Villahermosa, waiting for a plane to carry him to Salto, waiting for a mule to ride to Las Casas, and he waits most of the time in torrential rains and stifling heat. When his waiting pays off and he actually finds a mode of transport, the travel is treacherous: the boat to Tabasco is barely seaworthy, overloaded and foul, and Greene spends the overnight journey vomiting; the barge to Villahermosa is incompetently piloted and runs aground three times; the plane has a faulty engine and is forced to fly dangerously between mountains instead of over them. Greene waits nearly a week for another plane to take him to Las Casas, but it never arrives, so he is forced to hire an inexperienced mule guide to escort him on a four-day ride through the mountains, where he constantly encounters armed men of uncertain politics and where rain routinely washes out the trail. Oddly, factoring in the unreliable air traffic schedule, the mule ride from Salto to Las Casas costs more and takes less time than the plane trip would have.
Everywhere along the way, Greene meets hapless Americans, cynical Mexicans, a surprising number of Germans and Norwegians, and Catholics of all nationalities who have been driven to worship secretly, in sheds and storerooms and basements, by the religious persecution. Only in Las Casas, Chiapas, during Easter Week, do people attend Mass openly, and most of the worshipers who defy the ban on celebrating Mass are Indians, who seem unaware of the ban in the first place. These Indians practice a hybrid of Catholicism and native religions that Greene finds both frightening and alluring.
Greene is openly reviled as a Gringo in Las Casas, yet he finds enough friends among the underground priests to escape serious confrontations. Despite Greene’s stature as an established author, it’s difficult to imagine that his fame had spread as far as southern Mexico by 1938, yet bishops and generals routinely grant his requests for interviews, and he seems to travel under a kind of magic protection, bestowed on him as much by his irrelevance as his journalistic credentials.
The Lawless Roads is witty and sour, and Greene involves you intimately and sympathetically with the everyday people he meets. He occasionally falls into colonial smugness, but most of his observations are keen and commiserative, and the portrait he paints—of people resigned to endure the whims of powerful tyrants that they have no hope of defying—is engaging. The Catholics, like everyone else in southern Mexico at that time (and now), carry on despite the oppressions and corruption of local government leaders.
When he left Mexico and returned to England, Greene found that the Mass in his home church felt curiously fictitious compared to the furtive, secret Masses he had celebrated in Chiapas. Later, he would describe this trip as the real beginning of his conversion to Catholicism, which he thought of ever afterward as a sustaining faith to people who have no worldly place to turn for consolation.
The political instability puts Greene in many dangerous situations: the Calles government was left-wing (the United States called him a Bolshevik), yet the governors of Tabasco and Chiapas employed fascist paramilitary groups to enforce their own private orders, and Greene encounters more than one private commandante who identifies with Hitler and/or Franco. Corrupt generals in Mexico’s army also kept private armed forces to confiscate resources as they saw fit. While Greene is traveling south, President Calles nationalizes the foreign oil companies that have been exploiting Mexico’s new petroleum wealth, causing international threats of war. An atmosphere of unpredictable violence reigns. However, Greene’s narrative concentrates as much on the strangeness of everyday life as it does on the revolutionary political events sweeping Mexico.
Greene spends much of his time waiting: waiting for a boat to take him by sea from Veracruz to Tabasco, waiting for a barge to convey him upriver to Villahermosa, waiting for a plane to carry him to Salto, waiting for a mule to ride to Las Casas, and he waits most of the time in torrential rains and stifling heat. When his waiting pays off and he actually finds a mode of transport, the travel is treacherous: the boat to Tabasco is barely seaworthy, overloaded and foul, and Greene spends the overnight journey vomiting; the barge to Villahermosa is incompetently piloted and runs aground three times; the plane has a faulty engine and is forced to fly dangerously between mountains instead of over them. Greene waits nearly a week for another plane to take him to Las Casas, but it never arrives, so he is forced to hire an inexperienced mule guide to escort him on a four-day ride through the mountains, where he constantly encounters armed men of uncertain politics and where rain routinely washes out the trail. Oddly, factoring in the unreliable air traffic schedule, the mule ride from Salto to Las Casas costs more and takes less time than the plane trip would have.
Everywhere along the way, Greene meets hapless Americans, cynical Mexicans, a surprising number of Germans and Norwegians, and Catholics of all nationalities who have been driven to worship secretly, in sheds and storerooms and basements, by the religious persecution. Only in Las Casas, Chiapas, during Easter Week, do people attend Mass openly, and most of the worshipers who defy the ban on celebrating Mass are Indians, who seem unaware of the ban in the first place. These Indians practice a hybrid of Catholicism and native religions that Greene finds both frightening and alluring.
Greene is openly reviled as a Gringo in Las Casas, yet he finds enough friends among the underground priests to escape serious confrontations. Despite Greene’s stature as an established author, it’s difficult to imagine that his fame had spread as far as southern Mexico by 1938, yet bishops and generals routinely grant his requests for interviews, and he seems to travel under a kind of magic protection, bestowed on him as much by his irrelevance as his journalistic credentials.
The Lawless Roads is witty and sour, and Greene involves you intimately and sympathetically with the everyday people he meets. He occasionally falls into colonial smugness, but most of his observations are keen and commiserative, and the portrait he paints—of people resigned to endure the whims of powerful tyrants that they have no hope of defying—is engaging. The Catholics, like everyone else in southern Mexico at that time (and now), carry on despite the oppressions and corruption of local government leaders.
When he left Mexico and returned to England, Greene found that the Mass in his home church felt curiously fictitious compared to the furtive, secret Masses he had celebrated in Chiapas. Later, he would describe this trip as the real beginning of his conversion to Catholicism, which he thought of ever afterward as a sustaining faith to people who have no worldly place to turn for consolation.
January 4, 2024
The Lawless Roads is Graham Greene’s travelogue based on his 1938 trip to Mexico. His intent was to investigate the government’s suppression of Catholicism. The government of the time was heading towards socialism and wanted the Roman Catholic citizenry to focus on the needs of the State rather than those of the Church. To this end churches were closed and defaced, practices were outlawed, and Catholics were jailed and even executed. The practice was not consistent throughout the country, but two Mexican states, Tabasco and Chiapas, enforced these acts to the extreme. Hence, Greene focuses on these two states for the core of his journey and the book has a very Catholic orientation.
The book is outstanding to a point. When it comes to Greene’s sensory observations, his mastery of writing puts those things in words that are anchored to reality. His travels by car, boat, airplane, train, and mule though undeveloped Mexico are exceedingly interesting. They allow the reader to be transported to a time when travel in such a land was a matter of chance and hardship. Greene shows the physical makeup of 1930s Mexico for what it was.
But Greene was born at the height of British Imperialism and his education at Oxford was without a doubt steeped in British pride founded upon the notion that the sun never sets on the British Empire. It is this pride, embedded with feelings of British superiority over the rest of their colonized world, i.e. racism, that influences this work and makes it distasteful in today’s world.
When Greene applies his British-borne judgement to his observations the narrative takes shameful turns. Most things to Greene are labeled as "hideous." The art, the food, and especially the people. He indicates that the native Indian population still "belonged to the caves." His description of "the dumb brown eyes of Mexicans" applies to all whom he saw. He was undoubtedly writing from his personal perspective of superiority as well as to his belief that his readers see the world in the same way.
But yet, one last positive element exists in The Lawless Roads and it’s of an academic nature. Greene’s journey served as the foundation for his novel, The Power and the Glory. It should be pointed out that the novel somehow sheds most of the negatives that plague The Lawless Roads. It may be that Greene’s allegiance to his characters disallowed his own personal judgements of them. In any case, it was very interesting to read about Greene’s numerous real-world experience that were ultimately included as elements of Greene’s novel.
The book is outstanding to a point. When it comes to Greene’s sensory observations, his mastery of writing puts those things in words that are anchored to reality. His travels by car, boat, airplane, train, and mule though undeveloped Mexico are exceedingly interesting. They allow the reader to be transported to a time when travel in such a land was a matter of chance and hardship. Greene shows the physical makeup of 1930s Mexico for what it was.
But Greene was born at the height of British Imperialism and his education at Oxford was without a doubt steeped in British pride founded upon the notion that the sun never sets on the British Empire. It is this pride, embedded with feelings of British superiority over the rest of their colonized world, i.e. racism, that influences this work and makes it distasteful in today’s world.
When Greene applies his British-borne judgement to his observations the narrative takes shameful turns. Most things to Greene are labeled as "hideous." The art, the food, and especially the people. He indicates that the native Indian population still "belonged to the caves." His description of "the dumb brown eyes of Mexicans" applies to all whom he saw. He was undoubtedly writing from his personal perspective of superiority as well as to his belief that his readers see the world in the same way.
But yet, one last positive element exists in The Lawless Roads and it’s of an academic nature. Greene’s journey served as the foundation for his novel, The Power and the Glory. It should be pointed out that the novel somehow sheds most of the negatives that plague The Lawless Roads. It may be that Greene’s allegiance to his characters disallowed his own personal judgements of them. In any case, it was very interesting to read about Greene’s numerous real-world experience that were ultimately included as elements of Greene’s novel.
September 7, 2020
I enjoyed this travelogue of a journey that Greene took in the late 1930s. I can understand why it might not be to everyone’s taste as its episodic and by the end of it Greene loathed Mexico.
Graham Greene was commissioned by a publishing to visit Mexico and report on how the people were dealing with the brutal Catholic purges of President Calles. The Lawless Roads is a fascinating study of Greene’s journey. Beginning in Laredo on to Mexico City, Veracruz, Frontera, Palenque, Yajalon, Las Casas, Tuxfla, Oaxaca and back to Mexico City. He travels by car, bus, train, plane, burro and boat. Enduring some very uncomfortable experiences.
He visits the tropical states of Chiapas and Tabasco, where churches had been destroyed or closed and the priests exiled or shot. This journey inspired Greene the setting and theme for one of his masterpieces, The Power and the Glory.
One paragraph for me summed up his experiences::
“I loathed Mexico-but there were times when it seemed as if there worse places. ‘In a book once...’ Here were idolatry and oppression, starvation and casual violence, but you lived under the shadow of religion- of God or the Devil. ‘Rating for Dating’- it wasn’t evil, it wasn’t anything at all, it was just the drugstore and the Coca Cola, the hamburger, the sinless graceless chromium world. “
Greene is referring to an American magazine and advertisement for girls to make themselves attractive for dating by a points system.
The book is divided into 11 chapters and is fascinating to read his account of the villages, landscape, people, persecution, endurance and the challenges of traveling in Mexico. It would be interesting to retrace his route today and see the changes.
Graham Greene was commissioned by a publishing to visit Mexico and report on how the people were dealing with the brutal Catholic purges of President Calles. The Lawless Roads is a fascinating study of Greene’s journey. Beginning in Laredo on to Mexico City, Veracruz, Frontera, Palenque, Yajalon, Las Casas, Tuxfla, Oaxaca and back to Mexico City. He travels by car, bus, train, plane, burro and boat. Enduring some very uncomfortable experiences.
He visits the tropical states of Chiapas and Tabasco, where churches had been destroyed or closed and the priests exiled or shot. This journey inspired Greene the setting and theme for one of his masterpieces, The Power and the Glory.
One paragraph for me summed up his experiences::
“I loathed Mexico-but there were times when it seemed as if there worse places. ‘In a book once...’ Here were idolatry and oppression, starvation and casual violence, but you lived under the shadow of religion- of God or the Devil. ‘Rating for Dating’- it wasn’t evil, it wasn’t anything at all, it was just the drugstore and the Coca Cola, the hamburger, the sinless graceless chromium world. “
Greene is referring to an American magazine and advertisement for girls to make themselves attractive for dating by a points system.
The book is divided into 11 chapters and is fascinating to read his account of the villages, landscape, people, persecution, endurance and the challenges of traveling in Mexico. It would be interesting to retrace his route today and see the changes.
June 13, 2021
It seems to have become fashionable among even the most ardent of Greene's admirers to despise "The Lawless Roads" simply because Greene did not have, as it seemed to them, anything bright or positive to talk about Mexico. Yes, I understand that Mexico has become something of an exotic tourist destination in the present-day generation, thanks to Hollywood, Pixar and even the opening scene of last James Bond film but surely, as many of these admirers thought, when one of the twentieth century's most astute storytellers did not find much to commend in this country, including the food as well, they were all aghast and rallied together unanimously against this book, decrying it relentlessly without ever understanding as to why was Greene repelled and what had he set out to deconstruct in the first place.
Because, as it turns out, and as after some mild hesitation, thanks to all the negative publicity that one usually discovers about this book, when I finally picked up "The Lawless Roads", I discovered how exaggerated and even wrong were all those opinions that I had read - again, a timely reminder to myself that I should not always trust public opinion on books, at least. And how dare I expect even anything remotely disappointing from Greene himself?
In 1938, Greene was commissioned by the Catholic Church to visit Mexico, a country where the Catholic faith had been persecuted or even abolished in the 1930s, and to report on what had remained of the faith in that anti-religious, almost fascist regime. What came out of his journey, however, was not merely a lament of the abolition of faith in an alienating, even oddly hostile country but also a profound, probing and even poignant chronicle of a country reeling under corruption and punctuated by random violence and anarchy, a desolate landscape of poverty and impoverishment where the stranded, almost fugitive but still noble remnants of the clergy struggled to keep the flag of the faith flying and where the equally hapless believers took matters in their own hands when there was no church for them nearby to receive Mass.
A Mexico, then, that is a far cry from the sultry backdrop of present-day action thrillers or the romanticised land of magic and miracles as to be found in the happier kind of films. This is more of the Mexico of Malcolm Lowry even as Greene chronicled it almost a decade before his revolutionary novel "Under The Volcano" was published. But even as Greene admittedly does not find much worthiness here, partly from his anguish at the state of impoverishment left behind by the persecution of faith and also from the prevalent corruption and venality that had ensured a complete economic and social decline for the country, he still balances his unabashed but starkly honest dislike for the land, its ramshackle reign of terror and even, on occasion, its distinctly pagan, make-believe culture, with an equally discerning but much more empathetic portrait of the Quixotic band of priests trying, sometimes in vain, to do small acts of grace to the needy, the men with their cocky camaraderie, the women with their inexorable resilience and even the native Indians, whom he even grows to respect for keeping intact at least a sort of wild, undisciplined but passionate faith even under the fear of the bloodthirsty but inefficient "pistoleros".
At the same time, "The Lawless Roads" is also a mesmerising, exhilarating and even beautifully rendered adventure; Greene's wanderlust blends in beautifully with his peerless skill at prose that is , assuredly, both lucid and visually evocative, both clipped with neat, concise, journalistic economy and poetic and philosophical as well. And there is not any glamour or romance to be found in his odyssey into the uncharted depths of this country - first by an elusive car across the border from America, then by a bus winding down the immense precipices, then by a sordid steamer, then by the wearisome plod of the hesitant mules and even, if available, a little rickety aeroplane - but through all these eventful and even gently amusing adventures, Greene never fails to grip our attention, nor is he completely blind or impervious to the stark, rugged but undeniably formidable physical beauty of the terrain or even the chance of hope that enliven his journey and even temper his feelings for Mexico in hindsight.
He describes both lonely, sordid nights in cheap rooms infested in rodents and insects and the guileless feeling of relief on arriving in Las Casas after a long and winding trod from the mountains of Chiapas; he even throws in a lively interlude about how the effortless romance and subtle storytelling of Trollope almost helped him escape the tedium of the night and also yearn for pastoral England. And even pushed to the extreme, trying to sleep in an open hammock with pigs and turkeys - one of whom he describes as having a Dali head and the arrogance of a pasha - he still lets himself loose and be soaked by the storm that descends at night.
The sheer breadth and scale of Greene's deconstruction of Mexico, ranging from a critique of its hard stance on Catholicism to even its political and social troubles, is truly formidable but what distinguishes "The Lawless Roads" eventually as both an immensely compelling travelogue and an objective portrait of a country's incongruities is how effortless, enjoyable and enlightening read it is for everyone. Go ahead, ignore the less-than-savoury opinions and discover this absorbing book by the man who always made us question what we and he, most of all, should believe in.
Because, as it turns out, and as after some mild hesitation, thanks to all the negative publicity that one usually discovers about this book, when I finally picked up "The Lawless Roads", I discovered how exaggerated and even wrong were all those opinions that I had read - again, a timely reminder to myself that I should not always trust public opinion on books, at least. And how dare I expect even anything remotely disappointing from Greene himself?
In 1938, Greene was commissioned by the Catholic Church to visit Mexico, a country where the Catholic faith had been persecuted or even abolished in the 1930s, and to report on what had remained of the faith in that anti-religious, almost fascist regime. What came out of his journey, however, was not merely a lament of the abolition of faith in an alienating, even oddly hostile country but also a profound, probing and even poignant chronicle of a country reeling under corruption and punctuated by random violence and anarchy, a desolate landscape of poverty and impoverishment where the stranded, almost fugitive but still noble remnants of the clergy struggled to keep the flag of the faith flying and where the equally hapless believers took matters in their own hands when there was no church for them nearby to receive Mass.
A Mexico, then, that is a far cry from the sultry backdrop of present-day action thrillers or the romanticised land of magic and miracles as to be found in the happier kind of films. This is more of the Mexico of Malcolm Lowry even as Greene chronicled it almost a decade before his revolutionary novel "Under The Volcano" was published. But even as Greene admittedly does not find much worthiness here, partly from his anguish at the state of impoverishment left behind by the persecution of faith and also from the prevalent corruption and venality that had ensured a complete economic and social decline for the country, he still balances his unabashed but starkly honest dislike for the land, its ramshackle reign of terror and even, on occasion, its distinctly pagan, make-believe culture, with an equally discerning but much more empathetic portrait of the Quixotic band of priests trying, sometimes in vain, to do small acts of grace to the needy, the men with their cocky camaraderie, the women with their inexorable resilience and even the native Indians, whom he even grows to respect for keeping intact at least a sort of wild, undisciplined but passionate faith even under the fear of the bloodthirsty but inefficient "pistoleros".
At the same time, "The Lawless Roads" is also a mesmerising, exhilarating and even beautifully rendered adventure; Greene's wanderlust blends in beautifully with his peerless skill at prose that is , assuredly, both lucid and visually evocative, both clipped with neat, concise, journalistic economy and poetic and philosophical as well. And there is not any glamour or romance to be found in his odyssey into the uncharted depths of this country - first by an elusive car across the border from America, then by a bus winding down the immense precipices, then by a sordid steamer, then by the wearisome plod of the hesitant mules and even, if available, a little rickety aeroplane - but through all these eventful and even gently amusing adventures, Greene never fails to grip our attention, nor is he completely blind or impervious to the stark, rugged but undeniably formidable physical beauty of the terrain or even the chance of hope that enliven his journey and even temper his feelings for Mexico in hindsight.
He describes both lonely, sordid nights in cheap rooms infested in rodents and insects and the guileless feeling of relief on arriving in Las Casas after a long and winding trod from the mountains of Chiapas; he even throws in a lively interlude about how the effortless romance and subtle storytelling of Trollope almost helped him escape the tedium of the night and also yearn for pastoral England. And even pushed to the extreme, trying to sleep in an open hammock with pigs and turkeys - one of whom he describes as having a Dali head and the arrogance of a pasha - he still lets himself loose and be soaked by the storm that descends at night.
The sheer breadth and scale of Greene's deconstruction of Mexico, ranging from a critique of its hard stance on Catholicism to even its political and social troubles, is truly formidable but what distinguishes "The Lawless Roads" eventually as both an immensely compelling travelogue and an objective portrait of a country's incongruities is how effortless, enjoyable and enlightening read it is for everyone. Go ahead, ignore the less-than-savoury opinions and discover this absorbing book by the man who always made us question what we and he, most of all, should believe in.
September 12, 2023
"After the first three hours the journey became, like all the others, just weariness...Just weariness shot through occasionally with flashes - not exactly of beauty, but of consciousness, consciousness of something simple and strange and uncomplicated, a way of life we have hopelessly lost but can never quite forget."
Smarting from a lawsuit filed by Twentieth Century Fox over remarks he made about Shirley Temple in a review of her film Wee Willie Winkle*, Greene traveled to Mexico in 1938 (during the Spanish Civil War and just a year prior to WWII) to research anti-Catholic sentiment in the states of Tabasco and Chiapas, a journey that would lead him to write not only this account but also one of his most celebrated novels, The Power and the Glory. Although his prose is immaculate as usual, Greene's glum attitude unfortunately lends a sour flavor to much of the book - he complains constantly about Mexico and her people, whom he claims on more than one occasion to "hate" - and his pompous Britishness is suffocating at times as well. But there is a brutal honesty to his encounters with both native citizens and European expatriates, and the historical examination of the Cristero War and its impact on the pious, impoverished rural areas caught in the middle makes the journey worth the suffering to some degree. Those unversed in the region's history and notable ruins may want to take the extra time to research the unfamiliar names and locations to enrich their reading experience.
*He said:
Smarting from a lawsuit filed by Twentieth Century Fox over remarks he made about Shirley Temple in a review of her film Wee Willie Winkle*, Greene traveled to Mexico in 1938 (during the Spanish Civil War and just a year prior to WWII) to research anti-Catholic sentiment in the states of Tabasco and Chiapas, a journey that would lead him to write not only this account but also one of his most celebrated novels, The Power and the Glory. Although his prose is immaculate as usual, Greene's glum attitude unfortunately lends a sour flavor to much of the book - he complains constantly about Mexico and her people, whom he claims on more than one occasion to "hate" - and his pompous Britishness is suffocating at times as well. But there is a brutal honesty to his encounters with both native citizens and European expatriates, and the historical examination of the Cristero War and its impact on the pious, impoverished rural areas caught in the middle makes the journey worth the suffering to some degree. Those unversed in the region's history and notable ruins may want to take the extra time to research the unfamiliar names and locations to enrich their reading experience.
*He said:
August 14, 2023
I'm a big fan of Graham Greene but this nonfiction account of his journey through Mexico shortly before the beginning of World War II was largely disappointing. While it did show readers occasional glimpses of the wondrous beauty of Mexico that I encountered during the months that I spent there, Greene's own attitudes tended to sour his account of his journey. I joked early on while reading this that I was 'stunned by how much Greene absolutely loathes everything about Mexico. The streets are muddy. the houses are dirty. The food is repellent. The view from the train is a "melancholy plain that lay like lead under the rainclouds". I get the feeling that his editor sent him to Mexico against his wishes when he really wanted to be assigned to the Paris desk.' After finishing it, I don't think that I was far off of the mark. His attitudes were very colonial, bordering on racist. He judged everyone based on their ancestry and if they were Mexican, he usually found them wanting.
Another issue I had with his account is his clear bias where religion is concerned. Greene converted to Catholicism when he married and clearly took his conversion seriously. At the time of his journey, the Catholic church was outlawed in Mexico and priests were forbidden from practicing their rites. Some who continued to practice were executed. To Greene, all priests were kindly souls along the lines of Spencer Tracy's Father Flanagan, who learned the languages of the natives and lived lives of service and austerity. Anyone who has seen the tremendous gold inside some massive Mexican cathedrals, built by the slave labor of Indians, knows that there was more to the church's activities than just love and sacrifice.
I'm glad I had the chance to read this book. It gave me the opportunity to see Mexico through different eyes at a different time, something that is always a learning experience.
My thanks to RJ, Nancy, Robert and all the good folks at The Literary Darkness reading group for introducing me to this and many other examples of literary dark fiction. There is no other group at Goodreads as capable of picking apart a book and helping readers glean from it all they can.
Another issue I had with his account is his clear bias where religion is concerned. Greene converted to Catholicism when he married and clearly took his conversion seriously. At the time of his journey, the Catholic church was outlawed in Mexico and priests were forbidden from practicing their rites. Some who continued to practice were executed. To Greene, all priests were kindly souls along the lines of Spencer Tracy's Father Flanagan, who learned the languages of the natives and lived lives of service and austerity. Anyone who has seen the tremendous gold inside some massive Mexican cathedrals, built by the slave labor of Indians, knows that there was more to the church's activities than just love and sacrifice.
I'm glad I had the chance to read this book. It gave me the opportunity to see Mexico through different eyes at a different time, something that is always a learning experience.
My thanks to RJ, Nancy, Robert and all the good folks at The Literary Darkness reading group for introducing me to this and many other examples of literary dark fiction. There is no other group at Goodreads as capable of picking apart a book and helping readers glean from it all they can.
March 10, 2019
Pure torture; pure relentless torture. Thank God, I had read ten or more books by Graham Greene before picking this book up because if this was the first book I had read by this literary giant it would have been the last.
"The Lawless Roads" reads like a diary, without any constructive narrative and with run on sentences that makes the works of Proust look like the works of Hemingway; and in reality it is the impressions of Mr. Greene, who as a journalist, went down to Mexico in 1937 to report on the persecution of Catholics by the government in many of the cities and towns. It is the framework for his latest masterpiece "The Power and the Glory" and I am really happy that out of this pile of garbage was born the above mentioned masterpiece.
"The Lawless Roads" reads like a diary, without any constructive narrative and with run on sentences that makes the works of Proust look like the works of Hemingway; and in reality it is the impressions of Mr. Greene, who as a journalist, went down to Mexico in 1937 to report on the persecution of Catholics by the government in many of the cities and towns. It is the framework for his latest masterpiece "The Power and the Glory" and I am really happy that out of this pile of garbage was born the above mentioned masterpiece.
Read
December 17, 2011I interrupted my current sea-faring binge because of a sudden urge to read The Lawless Roads again. I can't count how many times I've read this book, ever since I found it in a second-hand bookshop in Adelaide and shipped it to myself in the boxes of books I used to send before the days of online bookshops. It's such a satisfying book that I reread it every one or two years, and every time is like the first. That's a testament to the power of Greene's skill as a writer, because I don't have a particular interest in Mexico, or the suppression of Catholicism there in the 1930s. Although I do have in common the fact that I also once travelled in Mexico, and didn't like it. Greene's journey is tortuous, he comes to loathe Mexico and he doesn't hide it. But his prose is beautiful and the subject matter complex; he writes about a spiritual journey— one that begins in England— as well as a physical journey, and his descriptions of Mexico are vivid and carefully chosen, reported through the lens of being English and a Catholic convert, with all the baggage that would have entailed back then.
February 7, 2017
This book was tricky to rate – I veered between three an four out of five. But there’s a pretty simply reason for that – it can be difficult to read at times, and the small print also makes it feel as though you’re not making much progress. For some people, it might be off-putting, but it’s worth persevering with, especially if you’re interested in the subject matter.
This book is interesting because it tells the real story of what happened when Graham Greene travelled around Mexico in 1938, just before the start of the Second World War. He was there on commission – the Catholic church wanted to find out more about the state of religious persecution in the country. As a result of this, the book has two particular quirks which simultaneously make it harder to read and more intriguing. The first is the references to religion, which might not make much sense unless you, yourself, are a Catholic. And the same goes for Mexican words and place names – unless you pay attention, they all start to sound the same.
But still, if you like to read books that give your brain a workout, give this a try. It’s like travelling, but from your armchair.
This book is interesting because it tells the real story of what happened when Graham Greene travelled around Mexico in 1938, just before the start of the Second World War. He was there on commission – the Catholic church wanted to find out more about the state of religious persecution in the country. As a result of this, the book has two particular quirks which simultaneously make it harder to read and more intriguing. The first is the references to religion, which might not make much sense unless you, yourself, are a Catholic. And the same goes for Mexican words and place names – unless you pay attention, they all start to sound the same.
But still, if you like to read books that give your brain a workout, give this a try. It’s like travelling, but from your armchair.
February 4, 2024
Published in 1939, "The Lawless Roads" is Graham Greene's account of his 1938 trip to Mexico. Greene's initial or primary focus was to be a ground's eye view of the impact of Mexico's harsh anti-clerical purges on the populace. Being non-fiction, complete with Greene himself muttering along the way a few Our Fathers and Hail Mary, it's probably the most explicitly Catholic of Greene's books. It would also provide Greene with the material that would be the basis for his 1940 novel "The Power and the Glory." Though Greene's always on the lookout for things Catholic, this soon becomes muted as Greene travels the harsh roads and waterways of Mexico. Muddy, miserable mule rides, leaky boat rides, daredevil plane trips, rain, rats, ticks, dysentery, and a cast of characters straight out of Conrad's "Nostromo." Lots of excellent writing in this one. It's much more than a just travel book. It even has a discernible arc, as Greene bemoans non-believing state of England, though noting a portion of a portion of Canterbury wall still remaining, he signals that this adventure or misadventure is pilgrimage (or martyrdom?) of sorts. What prompted this trip, at least in part, was the execution of Catholic priest by the Mexican government for trying to provide the people with access to the Sacraments. What's left unsaid, at least until the end of the book (be sure to read Green's thumbnail portrait "The Escapist") the dark hour fast approaching England.
July 29, 2020
I'm reading everything by Graham Greene - in chronological order, in one year. You have to make up things to do during this pandemic. It's odd that I have REALLY disliked his early novels, but this is his second travel book and I really LIKE them both. The first was about Liberia and this one is obviously about Mexico - a very early 1938 Mexico. This was the Mexico during that odd period when the Catholic priests were banned, the churches were all closed, and there was an attempt to make Mexico a socialist country. (Needless to say, it didn't work - which is probably a shame). Half way through the book, Greene says that he is beginning to hate Mexico - and the last half of the book is all down hill from there. There are wonderful individual tales in the book - and the usual Greenian introspection of his childhood and his dreams. I was getting a little bitter about this reading experiment, but this has refreshed me. Fortunately, I know there are some really GOOD novels ahead.
August 30, 2020
I didn't think it was possible for me to dislike a Graham Greene book this much (or even at all). About twenty pages in, I checked the back cover to make sure it was written by the right Graham Greene. A nonfiction account of his 1938 trip to Mexico, it shows none of the grace, humility, and open-mindedness of his later travel journals. Basically it's 220 pages of him complaining about the food, the heat, and the bugs, with no insight into the local populace (whom he openly despises). What a damn embarrassment.
January 31, 2025
I caught early on the phrase as a muttered aside, judging a "whiskey priest," words made famous in the novel which is better known, The Power and the Glory, than this more scattershot, casual, if just as acerbic journal about Graham Greene's travels in Chiapas and Tabasco in anti-clerical Mexico 1938.
Contrary to stereotypes, Greene although a standout convert, remains far too sharply observant to fall for any pious claptrap, as in the odd rumors of San Miguelito, the miraculous voice in a box, or for the kind of cleric turning away a mother for not having the fifty centavos more which the baptizing padre demanded before administering the sacrament. Greene.opens this account in his unnamed hometown powerfully, amidst teenaged suicides, illegitimate births, hypocrisy, religious senility of the C of E, and the disturbing childhood of being caught between a boarding school regimen and the weekends on the other side of the wall, as apparently his own parents ran the institution or at least staffed it.
He has wonderfully engaging rants about the border of San Antonio and Laredo, for instance, awful fellow tourists, the gripes of trains, mules, planes, buses, and jalopies, and the heat of the tropics. And bad food, bugs, primitive lodging, endless excursions to pointless hinterlands or appointments with expats or officials who never turn up when expected. And amidst the hagiography about the murdered Jesuit Father Pro, the true faith of the indigenous, overlaying their own "Indian" mystery.
Contrary to stereotypes, Greene although a standout convert, remains far too sharply observant to fall for any pious claptrap, as in the odd rumors of San Miguelito, the miraculous voice in a box, or for the kind of cleric turning away a mother for not having the fifty centavos more which the baptizing padre demanded before administering the sacrament. Greene.opens this account in his unnamed hometown powerfully, amidst teenaged suicides, illegitimate births, hypocrisy, religious senility of the C of E, and the disturbing childhood of being caught between a boarding school regimen and the weekends on the other side of the wall, as apparently his own parents ran the institution or at least staffed it.
He has wonderfully engaging rants about the border of San Antonio and Laredo, for instance, awful fellow tourists, the gripes of trains, mules, planes, buses, and jalopies, and the heat of the tropics. And bad food, bugs, primitive lodging, endless excursions to pointless hinterlands or appointments with expats or officials who never turn up when expected. And amidst the hagiography about the murdered Jesuit Father Pro, the true faith of the indigenous, overlaying their own "Indian" mystery.
November 24, 2023
When I read Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory I was a little wary because all I knew going in was that Greene ended his life as a lapsed, agnostic Catholic and that the book was about a whisky priest. I ended up loving the book as a book and I know that it will end up being a book I reread periodically. Yet, I wonder how much of my reading was colored by the little bit that I knew about Greene.
I picked up The Lawless Roads to read this year without knowing that it was a nonfiction account of Greene’s travels through Mexico before he wrote the Power and the Glory. I don’t know if I have ever read that sort of paring from an author - the novel and then the travels that informed the novel. Notable characters and landscapes from Greene’s travels end up in TPATG and that was fun to recognize. I think I will read TPATG differently after reading The Lawless Roads because I will have more context of the political environment and geography. And I won’t have the same doubts about Greene under the surface because I now know how he thought and felt about Catholicism at this point in his life.
This is not a book that you have to read in order to read TPATG well, but if you feel like following a rabbit trail this is a worthy one. Greene also mentions several books that he read during his Mexico trip and his theory about what sort of books you should travel with, so those name drops will provide more potential rabbit trails.
I picked up The Lawless Roads to read this year without knowing that it was a nonfiction account of Greene’s travels through Mexico before he wrote the Power and the Glory. I don’t know if I have ever read that sort of paring from an author - the novel and then the travels that informed the novel. Notable characters and landscapes from Greene’s travels end up in TPATG and that was fun to recognize. I think I will read TPATG differently after reading The Lawless Roads because I will have more context of the political environment and geography. And I won’t have the same doubts about Greene under the surface because I now know how he thought and felt about Catholicism at this point in his life.
This is not a book that you have to read in order to read TPATG well, but if you feel like following a rabbit trail this is a worthy one. Greene also mentions several books that he read during his Mexico trip and his theory about what sort of books you should travel with, so those name drops will provide more potential rabbit trails.
October 5, 2024
Having been to all the places mentioned in the book (bar two of the small villages) 85 years after Greene, this was a fascinating read.
January 21, 2008
Over the past year, Graham Greene has become one of my favorite authors. The Lawless Roads is probably my least favorite among his books I've read, and yet it's still full of brilliant narrative.
Set in Mexico in the late thirties, the book is an account of his travels through the country on a mission to document the effects of religious persecution. My biggest gripe has to do with his Catholic bias in approaching the topic. From the very beginning, it seems he's ready to forgive the atrocities of the Spanish colonialists on the grounds that they brought Christ to the heathen of Mexico, while there is no such forgiveness for the contemporary political revolutionaries on the basis of any of their altruistic contributions or ideals.
This pro-Catholic sympathy emerged strongly on the subject of the Indian. Greene gave the Spanish clergy extra brownie points for learning the Indian languages for the purpose of converting naitives, for whatever that's supposed to be worth. To me, this sounds like "another one of the white man's lies." (In modern times, it reminds me of the debate between Democrats and Republicans--which party really represents and defends hard-working, American families? Each would claim the honor, and politicians on both sides of the aisle would claim to espouse Christian family values. And yet Jesus abandoned his family and instructed his followers to do the same--not exactly the example of family values we should want to emulate, but I guess some stupid, religiously-idealized political debates die hard.)
Still, it was a worthwhile read--perfect for the Cinco de Mayo month. And as any good book should do, it reminded me of more reading I should undertake; I really should learn more about Mexican history.
Set in Mexico in the late thirties, the book is an account of his travels through the country on a mission to document the effects of religious persecution. My biggest gripe has to do with his Catholic bias in approaching the topic. From the very beginning, it seems he's ready to forgive the atrocities of the Spanish colonialists on the grounds that they brought Christ to the heathen of Mexico, while there is no such forgiveness for the contemporary political revolutionaries on the basis of any of their altruistic contributions or ideals.
This pro-Catholic sympathy emerged strongly on the subject of the Indian. Greene gave the Spanish clergy extra brownie points for learning the Indian languages for the purpose of converting naitives, for whatever that's supposed to be worth. To me, this sounds like "another one of the white man's lies." (In modern times, it reminds me of the debate between Democrats and Republicans--which party really represents and defends hard-working, American families? Each would claim the honor, and politicians on both sides of the aisle would claim to espouse Christian family values. And yet Jesus abandoned his family and instructed his followers to do the same--not exactly the example of family values we should want to emulate, but I guess some stupid, religiously-idealized political debates die hard.)
Still, it was a worthwhile read--perfect for the Cinco de Mayo month. And as any good book should do, it reminded me of more reading I should undertake; I really should learn more about Mexican history.
May 2, 2020
I'll never take a steam train into the suburbs of Mexico City. I'll never take an insurance write-off barge across the Gulf of Mexico to a bad-water town in Tabasco. Or get stuck on a sandbar in that town's river. I'll never meet a semi-feudal, Pancho Villa-type general in the badlands of the Mexican interior. Or ride a donkey to Palenque. And so on.
Despite being a book about Mexico, The Lawless Roads begins with morally-tinted memories of childhood in England, which seem meant to explore something like the nature of good and evil, and the place of the Church in society, at a time when churchgoing was officially banned in Mexico. Greene spends the first quarter of the book reporting on the trials of the Mexican poor, and the strange back-alley dealings one must engage in to do something as mundane as attend Catholic mass. This is interesting, but I care less for hearing him imply that teenagers sitting together on park benches are contemplating acts he describes in terms of filth (sex outside of marriage, that is).
If those starting chapters do not appeal to a reader, though, the following ones— with content from above— might make up for it.
Despite being a book about Mexico, The Lawless Roads begins with morally-tinted memories of childhood in England, which seem meant to explore something like the nature of good and evil, and the place of the Church in society, at a time when churchgoing was officially banned in Mexico. Greene spends the first quarter of the book reporting on the trials of the Mexican poor, and the strange back-alley dealings one must engage in to do something as mundane as attend Catholic mass. This is interesting, but I care less for hearing him imply that teenagers sitting together on park benches are contemplating acts he describes in terms of filth (sex outside of marriage, that is).
If those starting chapters do not appeal to a reader, though, the following ones— with content from above— might make up for it.
January 1, 2014
There was something comforting about this book- the disgust and anger that Greene, the traveler felt as he want through Mexico. I have often felt this way as I travel but feel ashamed of it. Reading his loathing and discomfort made me laugh and feel better about that dark side of myself. I admire his bravery in the journey and the writing.
November 16, 2017
Interesting and well-written, with many sharp observations about Mexico, but also very whiny, pissy even. Greene's sour Catholicism is lacking in generosity of spirit and is not attractive. When it serves as a wellspring for his best fiction, that's one thing; but here, in a direct dose, it is off-putting.
July 5, 2020
Bitchy Graham Greene is the best Graham Greene.
I went through a big GG phase just after turning thirty, it seems like I went through a good chunk of his body of work in a short span of time and would even consider him my favorite author. Then the fire petered out, no doubt because his dour brand of melancholy religiosity seemed a little bit much novel after novel, essay after essay. I still would say reading a lot of his work was a good thing, but I didn't have much of a problem clearing him out from my bookcase last year while going through books to part with.
But then I found myself in a bookstore where this was on the shelf, and I'd read and loved "The Power and the Glory" (which was inspired by the same trip that is documented here), so I had to give it a try. And I'm glad I did, even though I wouldn't say this is Greene's best book, or even in the discussion. It's a travel book, nonfiction, and doesn't have the pacing of his novels (even his "entertainments"). It's more episodic, which is actually a relief after a while, and we may find the Graham Greene of this book less appealing than in his fiction (or I did, anyway; he definitely has a sort of "better than you" approach to the Mexican people that borders on racism at times, though I think he was probably reflecting the biases of his class and race at that time). After a while, you notice that he's spending so much time bitching that, frankly, it becomes entertaining seeing what depths he'll sink to in his half-assed survey of the Tabasco and Chiapas regions of Mexico, where he's supposed to be looking into the state of the Catholic Church in Socialist Mexico in the Thirties. He's less interested in the people and more in the religious issues of the day.
All in all, this is the kind of book that, if you go into it expecting open-mindedness and warmth, you had best stop now before you get too far. But Bitchy Graham Greene might be the best Graham Greene, and it's enjoyable in a way seeing him get some form of comeuppance again and again.
I went through a big GG phase just after turning thirty, it seems like I went through a good chunk of his body of work in a short span of time and would even consider him my favorite author. Then the fire petered out, no doubt because his dour brand of melancholy religiosity seemed a little bit much novel after novel, essay after essay. I still would say reading a lot of his work was a good thing, but I didn't have much of a problem clearing him out from my bookcase last year while going through books to part with.
But then I found myself in a bookstore where this was on the shelf, and I'd read and loved "The Power and the Glory" (which was inspired by the same trip that is documented here), so I had to give it a try. And I'm glad I did, even though I wouldn't say this is Greene's best book, or even in the discussion. It's a travel book, nonfiction, and doesn't have the pacing of his novels (even his "entertainments"). It's more episodic, which is actually a relief after a while, and we may find the Graham Greene of this book less appealing than in his fiction (or I did, anyway; he definitely has a sort of "better than you" approach to the Mexican people that borders on racism at times, though I think he was probably reflecting the biases of his class and race at that time). After a while, you notice that he's spending so much time bitching that, frankly, it becomes entertaining seeing what depths he'll sink to in his half-assed survey of the Tabasco and Chiapas regions of Mexico, where he's supposed to be looking into the state of the Catholic Church in Socialist Mexico in the Thirties. He's less interested in the people and more in the religious issues of the day.
All in all, this is the kind of book that, if you go into it expecting open-mindedness and warmth, you had best stop now before you get too far. But Bitchy Graham Greene might be the best Graham Greene, and it's enjoyable in a way seeing him get some form of comeuppance again and again.
December 24, 2021
For such a good writer, this book is horribly written. It didn’t help that he hated just about everything of Mexico and made that clear throughout the book. His disdain and prejudice against Mexican people and superiority complex was off putting enough to make me not want to reread any of his great works. Greene was reportedly a fake catholic who made money by way of a capitalist adventure he purportedly despised. He thought, during this visit, that suppressed religion made its way in this country to a poisonous form. What he didn’t know, or at least didn’t let on, was that it was already poisonous from the time of its birth.
July 5, 2018
So far I have read four types of books by Graham Greene [1]. First, there are lighthearted and often cynical novels that he considered as "entertainments." Next are the short stories he wrote as film treatments or prose fiction of a miscellaneous nature. After that there comes the darker and more serious novels that he wrote examining issues of faith and power and sin. This book is part of the fourth type of Graham Greene books that I have read so far, though, and that is the travelogue. As someone who frequently writes about my own travel experiences, there is a great deal of interest to be found in reading about the travels of someone who was a trenchant and candid observer of the habits and traditions and behaviors of the places where he visited, and especially hostile in cases (like Mexico) where the political powers that be are phony leftists who end up helping the US and persecuting religious Catholics, both of which were matters that Greene was rather prickly and fierce about. If you have an interest in Greene's writing or in the relationship of Church and State in contemporary regimes, there is much here to appreciate.
The edition of this book that I read was a large print version that was about 280 pages or so. After an introduction and prologue where the author talks about the way that this book helped to inspire his classic novel The Power And The Glory and the circumstances that led to his travel to Mexico in 1938, the book is itself divided into eleven chapters and an intriguing epilogue involving some fascist volunteers to the Spanish Civil War. First the author comments on his experiences with some Americans on the Texas side of the border (1) and his crossing into the rebel state of San Luis Obispo (2) where water was scarce. After this the author makes some considerable notes on Mexico City (3) and then discusses his travels to the coast (4) where he finds the city of Puebla lovely at least. He then voyages across the waters in a terrible boat where he has a lot of colorful things to say about the ravages of the heat and mosquitoes (5) before entering into the godless state of Tabasco (6). He then travels, against the advice of many, into Chiapas (7), where he then spends some time in a local village there (8) before traveling across the mountains to Las Casas (9). He spends some time observing the Catholic celebrations of Holy Week (10) before returning to the capital (11) and leaving the country.
There are at least some things to note about this book that would be interesting to potential readers. For one, this book contains a great deal of commentary by Greene about Mexico in areas that many tourists still do not visit and that are still filled with contentious relationships between the local people and the central and state governments to this day, like Chiapas. The author's comments about American travelers as well as the savage behavior of the Mexican state against Catholicism are pretty pointed and not everyone would likely appreciate the author's forthright honesty about the way that contemporary secular societies do not handle religious affairs well. These are matters that are obviously relevant to the contemporary world where many regimes in supposedly "advanced" and "free" countries are unwilling to accept the rebuke of faith on the corrupt social practices of our own times. Whether or not you prefer reading this novel for its insights into the basis of Greene's own fiction about Mexico from his travels there or whether you are interested in his thoughts on the relationship between faith and politics, there is a lot to take in here and ponder about.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2012...
The edition of this book that I read was a large print version that was about 280 pages or so. After an introduction and prologue where the author talks about the way that this book helped to inspire his classic novel The Power And The Glory and the circumstances that led to his travel to Mexico in 1938, the book is itself divided into eleven chapters and an intriguing epilogue involving some fascist volunteers to the Spanish Civil War. First the author comments on his experiences with some Americans on the Texas side of the border (1) and his crossing into the rebel state of San Luis Obispo (2) where water was scarce. After this the author makes some considerable notes on Mexico City (3) and then discusses his travels to the coast (4) where he finds the city of Puebla lovely at least. He then voyages across the waters in a terrible boat where he has a lot of colorful things to say about the ravages of the heat and mosquitoes (5) before entering into the godless state of Tabasco (6). He then travels, against the advice of many, into Chiapas (7), where he then spends some time in a local village there (8) before traveling across the mountains to Las Casas (9). He spends some time observing the Catholic celebrations of Holy Week (10) before returning to the capital (11) and leaving the country.
There are at least some things to note about this book that would be interesting to potential readers. For one, this book contains a great deal of commentary by Greene about Mexico in areas that many tourists still do not visit and that are still filled with contentious relationships between the local people and the central and state governments to this day, like Chiapas. The author's comments about American travelers as well as the savage behavior of the Mexican state against Catholicism are pretty pointed and not everyone would likely appreciate the author's forthright honesty about the way that contemporary secular societies do not handle religious affairs well. These are matters that are obviously relevant to the contemporary world where many regimes in supposedly "advanced" and "free" countries are unwilling to accept the rebuke of faith on the corrupt social practices of our own times. Whether or not you prefer reading this novel for its insights into the basis of Greene's own fiction about Mexico from his travels there or whether you are interested in his thoughts on the relationship between faith and politics, there is a lot to take in here and ponder about.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2012...
October 6, 2023
Greene's hatred of Mexico crackles and writhes on every page. A harrowing tale of a torturous journey through a cursed land. As you would expect, his journey ends with dysentery.
March 5, 2018
I only read this book because I wanted to understand the background to The Power and the Glory before I read it. What I found was one of the most brisk, evocative travel memoirs I've read.
Now, some of the criticisms I've seen are valid. He doesn't talk much about the land itself, mostly focused on small interactions with people he met, how much he hates riding mules, and his distaste for Mexican food. He also comes across as pretty judgmental and elitist in many of his evaluations of the people he meets.
The reason that doesn't drag the book down is because that is not all he's doing. Yes, he doesn't focus on the travel, but that wasn't the story he wanted to write. He hoped to talk about suppression of the Catholic church, and he clearly took every opportunity available. But he was only there for a few weeks, and he discovered that most people didn't want to let a foreigner deeply into their lives and struggles just so he could write an article in the UK. So instead, he was honest about his feelings. He made an effort to learn and took away what impressions he could.
One of many things I liked, though, is that he doesn't hold too tightly to his own impressions. Throughout the book, he will go on for some time about a conclusion he's come to... then immediately contradict himself, explaining that later evidence proved him wrong or that he was just angry at the time because he lost his glasses. I appreciate that he refuses to whitewash the bitterness of his honesty from the book, while still acknowledging throughout that just because he was being honest doesn't mean he was right. This is the experience of traveling to a foreign land, isn't it? Intrigue along with revulsion, anger along with wonder. If he just said what a wonderful time he had with everyone he met, we might have an uplifting book, but not an honest one. He's okay with showing his ugliness.
Ultimately, it's the organization of the book that propelled me through it so quickly. Each chapter is centered on a location in his journey, then further subdivided into anecdotes, usually centered on a particular person he meets along the way. One of Greene's greatest strengths is his descriptive prowess, building truly evocative and memorable images in a few short words. In this volume, he has the opportunity to be at his best in this regard. Letting his language wash over you makes the book hard to put down. I would recommend it broadly.
Now, some of the criticisms I've seen are valid. He doesn't talk much about the land itself, mostly focused on small interactions with people he met, how much he hates riding mules, and his distaste for Mexican food. He also comes across as pretty judgmental and elitist in many of his evaluations of the people he meets.
The reason that doesn't drag the book down is because that is not all he's doing. Yes, he doesn't focus on the travel, but that wasn't the story he wanted to write. He hoped to talk about suppression of the Catholic church, and he clearly took every opportunity available. But he was only there for a few weeks, and he discovered that most people didn't want to let a foreigner deeply into their lives and struggles just so he could write an article in the UK. So instead, he was honest about his feelings. He made an effort to learn and took away what impressions he could.
One of many things I liked, though, is that he doesn't hold too tightly to his own impressions. Throughout the book, he will go on for some time about a conclusion he's come to... then immediately contradict himself, explaining that later evidence proved him wrong or that he was just angry at the time because he lost his glasses. I appreciate that he refuses to whitewash the bitterness of his honesty from the book, while still acknowledging throughout that just because he was being honest doesn't mean he was right. This is the experience of traveling to a foreign land, isn't it? Intrigue along with revulsion, anger along with wonder. If he just said what a wonderful time he had with everyone he met, we might have an uplifting book, but not an honest one. He's okay with showing his ugliness.
Ultimately, it's the organization of the book that propelled me through it so quickly. Each chapter is centered on a location in his journey, then further subdivided into anecdotes, usually centered on a particular person he meets along the way. One of Greene's greatest strengths is his descriptive prowess, building truly evocative and memorable images in a few short words. In this volume, he has the opportunity to be at his best in this regard. Letting his language wash over you makes the book hard to put down. I would recommend it broadly.
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July 27, 2025I have something of a problematic relationship with Anglo-Catholic writers like Waugh and Greene, with this particular book being no exception. Much of it reads like a Mexican travel guide but the main subject were the anti-clerical policies enacted by President Calles that had shut churches across much of the country. Greene depicts Mexico as existing within a constant state of violence, whether from cockfighting, street fighting or the execution of jesuit priests like Miguel Pro. As is often the case with Greene, his tendency to fetishize this brutality as a way of giving meaning to acts of of grace is something I feel fairly queasy about. Having returned to London Greene looks back on his travels thus: "Mass in Chelsea seemed curiously fictitious; no peon knelt with his arms out in the attitude of the cross, no woman dragged herself up the aisle on her knees. It would have seemed shocking, like the Agony itself. We do not mortify ourselves. Perhaps we are in need of violence."
June 2, 2019
I've been exploring more of Graham Greene's work the past few years and I enjoy his writing very much. This book is the second of his non-fiction works that I've read. Written originally in 1939, the story follows Greene as he explores Mexico, especially the Chiapas and Tabasco regions, in the wake of the destruction of the Catholic churches and teachings by the Mexican rulers. At the time of this visit, the Mexican government is also in the process of nationalizing the petroleum industry, making life uncomfortable for gringos. Greene travels through a primitive, backward region by plane and donkey. I enjoy his observations of the people and life and admire his spirit. I found the memoir kind of lost its way as he came to the end and headed back to England, but overall found the story quite interesting. (3.5 stars)
November 9, 2014
Graham Greene is one of my favorite authors and The Lawless Roads is the second non-fiction travel book of his that I read. (Journey Without Maps was also a great book about travel in Africa) Greene is a brilliant travel writer; he makes detailed observations about the countryside, people, and customs of Mexico. The way he traveled in the 30s makes you appreciate modern infrastructure and the advances of civilization that make godforsaken places livable. He was on assignment for a paper to report on the anti-clerical government that was persecuting the Catholics. It was from this experience that Greene wrote The Power and The Glory, which germinated from an anecdote he heard in Mexico about a whiskey priest.
April 19, 2008
Elitist, racist, superficial, self-righteous...the author seems utterly unaware that he is guilty of many of the shortcomings that he ascribes to others. Though it is interesting to see how in many aspects Mexico has changed little since this book was written, Greene's pompous confidence in the rightness of his own beliefs is insufferable.
April 16, 2019
"People never seem to help each other in small ways, removing a parcel from a seat, making room with their legs. They just sit about. If Spain is like this, I can understand the temptation to massacre."
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