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Jungle Novels #4
Trozas
With the first publication in English of Trozas, B. Traven's legendary Jungle Novels, an epic of the birth of the Mexican Revolution, are complete. Trozas is the fourth of the six Jungle Novels that describe the conditions of peonage and debt slavery under which Mexican Indians suffered during the reign of Porfirio Díaz. The main character of the novel is a young Indian named Andrés Ugaldo, a virtual slave worker in a montería―-mahogany plantation―which is purchased by the profit ?hungry Montellano brothers, widely despised for their brutal treatment of workers. The demands on Andrés and his companions exceed even the usual insufferable conditions in the montería. Trozas (the word means "logs") captures the origins of the rebellious spirit that slowly spread through the labor camps and haciendas, culminating in the bloody revolt that ended Díaz's rule. Traven masterfully evokes the backbreaking daily routine of the montería, brings alive the players in this sordid drama, and tells the story in riveting narrative.
- GenresFictionLiterature
269 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1936
3 people are currently reading
122 people want to read
About the author
B. Traven
115 books253 followersB. Traven was the pen name of a German novelist, whose real name, nationality, date and place of birth and details of biography are all subject to dispute. A rare certainty is that B. Traven lived much of his life in Mexico, where the majority of his fiction is also set—including his best-known work, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1927), which was adapted as the Academy Award nominated film of the same name in 1948.
Virtually every detail of Traven's life has been disputed and hotly debated. There were many hypotheses on the true identity of B. Traven, some of them wildly fantastic. Most agree, that Traven was Ret Marut, a German stage actor and anarchist, who supposedly left Europe for Mexico around 1924. There are also reasons to believe that Marut/Traven's real name was Otto Feige and that he was born in Schwiebus in Brandenburg, modern day Świebodzin in Poland. B. Traven in Mexico is also connected with Berick Traven Torsvan and Hal Croves, both of whom appeared and acted in different periods of the writer's life. Both, however, denied being Traven and claimed that they were his literary agents only, representing him in contacts with his publishers.
B. Traven is the author of twelve novels, one book of reportage and several short stories, in which the sensational and adventure subjects combine with a critical attitude towards capitalism, betraying the socialist and even anarchist sympathies of the writer. B. Traven's best known works include the novels The Death Ship from 1926 and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre from 1927, in 1948 filmed by John Huston, and the so-called Jungle Novels, also known as the Caoba cyclus (from the Spanish word caoba, meaning mahogany), a group of six novels (including The Carreta, Government), published in the years 1930-1939, set among Mexican Indians just before and during the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century. B. Traven's novels and short stories became very popular as early as the interwar period and retained this popularity after the war; they were also translated into many languages. Most of B. Traven's books were published in German first and their English editions appeared later; nevertheless the author always claimed that the English versions were the original ones and that the German versions were only their translations. This claim is not taken seriously.
Virtually every detail of Traven's life has been disputed and hotly debated. There were many hypotheses on the true identity of B. Traven, some of them wildly fantastic. Most agree, that Traven was Ret Marut, a German stage actor and anarchist, who supposedly left Europe for Mexico around 1924. There are also reasons to believe that Marut/Traven's real name was Otto Feige and that he was born in Schwiebus in Brandenburg, modern day Świebodzin in Poland. B. Traven in Mexico is also connected with Berick Traven Torsvan and Hal Croves, both of whom appeared and acted in different periods of the writer's life. Both, however, denied being Traven and claimed that they were his literary agents only, representing him in contacts with his publishers.
B. Traven is the author of twelve novels, one book of reportage and several short stories, in which the sensational and adventure subjects combine with a critical attitude towards capitalism, betraying the socialist and even anarchist sympathies of the writer. B. Traven's best known works include the novels The Death Ship from 1926 and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre from 1927, in 1948 filmed by John Huston, and the so-called Jungle Novels, also known as the Caoba cyclus (from the Spanish word caoba, meaning mahogany), a group of six novels (including The Carreta, Government), published in the years 1930-1939, set among Mexican Indians just before and during the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century. B. Traven's novels and short stories became very popular as early as the interwar period and retained this popularity after the war; they were also translated into many languages. Most of B. Traven's books were published in German first and their English editions appeared later; nevertheless the author always claimed that the English versions were the original ones and that the German versions were only their translations. This claim is not taken seriously.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 5, 2020
I have a confession to make: in my most democratic home, some books have privileges.
The normal life of a book in my house is 4-phased.
First, it is being brought home. Most of the time, I do it myself, going to a bookshop, browsing through Fiction, Science-Fiction, Crime, Horror and History, selecting seven or eight titles, leaving six behind, paying for the surviving candidate, carrying it back to my work office, showing it excitedly to my surroundings who could not care less, laying it lovingly on my desk, stroking its cover, flipping through the pages with anticipation. Sometimes the book comes through the post which, for all its convenience, spoils the ritual. The last stages are always the same: after giving a close and thorough look to its body (books have bodies and souls just the same as we do), examining its spine, evaluating its weight, feeling the thickness, grain and colour of its paper, the size of its font, the smell of its ink, the robustness of its binding, I put it on the sill, give it a last glance, then I turn off the light for the night.
In a second phase, the book sleeps. Like a plant or a cat, it lies there, where I have put it, cropping time and dust. But a sleeping book has a stillness quality unlike plants or cats. It does not grow invasive, it does not get restless. It just collects days and dust, its pages turning slowly yellow, its colours slowly fading away. It has no worries and all the patience in the world. It knows that, one day, it will be read.
This day finally arrives. It can be the day after I bought it, it can be after one month, it can be after ten years. One day, having closed another book, I spot this one. Its time has come. I pick it up, undust it with a stroke of the hand, flip it around, read the back cover, the front cover, the dust jacket when it has one. I rub it in my hands, feeling the excitement again. Yes, this will be my next read and oh boy, it’s gonna be a good one. From there on and for anything between three days and three month, I will carry the book everywhere with me: to the living room, to the kitchen, to the toilets of course, to the bedroom, to the gym, to the office, to the shops – because one never knows when one will need a book ! -, in the car, in the train, in the plane. It is in my bag when I visit my parents, it is in my pocket when I meet friends at the pub, it is in my hands when I sit in a cinema – what else am I gonna do before the movie starts? It is on the table when I go to the restaurant. People laugh at me and I just shrug. So I have an addiction, so what? A book doesn’t destroy my lungs, my kidneys or my liver. A book is nowhere near as possessive as a dog or a kid. A book is not jealous. A book is quiet.
Then, when I am done with it, I put the book in its final resting place. This is where democracy ends. For, in my house, there are book shrines. There is a shrine for any book from or about Blaise Cendrars. There is a shrine for Antoine Volodine’s novels. There is a shrine for the popular stories of Rosny Ainé and for Jean Ray’s Harry Dickson stories. There is a small shrine for Flaubert’s works. And there is a shrine for B.Traven.
I still can’t explain why I take so much pleasure in reading B.Traven. He writes with a machete. His stories are basic; to be completely frank, B.Traven doesn’t even seem that bothered about his stories. In his novels, a good half is dedicated to documenting workers’ life or providing full details about their daily work, while the other half is just a long comment about the greed of company directors, the cupidity of landowners and the corrupt and lethal nature of the Mexican dictatorship.
This is what I find so admirable and comforting about B.Traven’s novels. The man has no doubt. He does not ponder, he does not hesitate. He picked his side a long time ago and he defends it, no matter what, without compromise. He does not see the other side of the argument. The other side of the argument is simply wrong and corrupted and evil. He has no interest in it. B.Traven is integrity incarnated, so are his novels: raw, in one block, immovable. They have one angle, one approach. You can burn them if you don’t find them to your taste. You cannot spin them.
All hail to Trozas. I will give her as many stars as any rating allows me. She is now resting on the top shelf of my shrine, along with her sisters The Carreta, Government, March to the Monteria, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and, of course, The Death Ship.
The normal life of a book in my house is 4-phased.
First, it is being brought home. Most of the time, I do it myself, going to a bookshop, browsing through Fiction, Science-Fiction, Crime, Horror and History, selecting seven or eight titles, leaving six behind, paying for the surviving candidate, carrying it back to my work office, showing it excitedly to my surroundings who could not care less, laying it lovingly on my desk, stroking its cover, flipping through the pages with anticipation. Sometimes the book comes through the post which, for all its convenience, spoils the ritual. The last stages are always the same: after giving a close and thorough look to its body (books have bodies and souls just the same as we do), examining its spine, evaluating its weight, feeling the thickness, grain and colour of its paper, the size of its font, the smell of its ink, the robustness of its binding, I put it on the sill, give it a last glance, then I turn off the light for the night.
In a second phase, the book sleeps. Like a plant or a cat, it lies there, where I have put it, cropping time and dust. But a sleeping book has a stillness quality unlike plants or cats. It does not grow invasive, it does not get restless. It just collects days and dust, its pages turning slowly yellow, its colours slowly fading away. It has no worries and all the patience in the world. It knows that, one day, it will be read.
This day finally arrives. It can be the day after I bought it, it can be after one month, it can be after ten years. One day, having closed another book, I spot this one. Its time has come. I pick it up, undust it with a stroke of the hand, flip it around, read the back cover, the front cover, the dust jacket when it has one. I rub it in my hands, feeling the excitement again. Yes, this will be my next read and oh boy, it’s gonna be a good one. From there on and for anything between three days and three month, I will carry the book everywhere with me: to the living room, to the kitchen, to the toilets of course, to the bedroom, to the gym, to the office, to the shops – because one never knows when one will need a book ! -, in the car, in the train, in the plane. It is in my bag when I visit my parents, it is in my pocket when I meet friends at the pub, it is in my hands when I sit in a cinema – what else am I gonna do before the movie starts? It is on the table when I go to the restaurant. People laugh at me and I just shrug. So I have an addiction, so what? A book doesn’t destroy my lungs, my kidneys or my liver. A book is nowhere near as possessive as a dog or a kid. A book is not jealous. A book is quiet.
Then, when I am done with it, I put the book in its final resting place. This is where democracy ends. For, in my house, there are book shrines. There is a shrine for any book from or about Blaise Cendrars. There is a shrine for Antoine Volodine’s novels. There is a shrine for the popular stories of Rosny Ainé and for Jean Ray’s Harry Dickson stories. There is a small shrine for Flaubert’s works. And there is a shrine for B.Traven.
I still can’t explain why I take so much pleasure in reading B.Traven. He writes with a machete. His stories are basic; to be completely frank, B.Traven doesn’t even seem that bothered about his stories. In his novels, a good half is dedicated to documenting workers’ life or providing full details about their daily work, while the other half is just a long comment about the greed of company directors, the cupidity of landowners and the corrupt and lethal nature of the Mexican dictatorship.
This is what I find so admirable and comforting about B.Traven’s novels. The man has no doubt. He does not ponder, he does not hesitate. He picked his side a long time ago and he defends it, no matter what, without compromise. He does not see the other side of the argument. The other side of the argument is simply wrong and corrupted and evil. He has no interest in it. B.Traven is integrity incarnated, so are his novels: raw, in one block, immovable. They have one angle, one approach. You can burn them if you don’t find them to your taste. You cannot spin them.
All hail to Trozas. I will give her as many stars as any rating allows me. She is now resting on the top shelf of my shrine, along with her sisters The Carreta, Government, March to the Monteria, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and, of course, The Death Ship.
April 28, 2025
if I were to take pride in any book I've read, it would be this one. this book was recommended by someone to which this book was very special to her. It belonged to her father who traveled throughout Latin America for very political reasons.
it was a lot of pressure to take on this book given the fact that this woman was so excited to sell it to me, because I know she doesn't go around recommending this to just anyone (or maybe she does and I'm a sucker for a good story).
this book is rich with a history that not enough people know about, as someone who studied Mexican American studies in school I knew what I was walking into. and I must admit I've never read a book with an author that writes like Traven. in the best way Traven is talented, and it felt like I was reading a classic in itself. I noticed there are only 108 reviews on this book and that needs to change. this book will have an impact on me, the tragedies and even the humor I found within it.
it was a lot of pressure to take on this book given the fact that this woman was so excited to sell it to me, because I know she doesn't go around recommending this to just anyone (or maybe she does and I'm a sucker for a good story).
this book is rich with a history that not enough people know about, as someone who studied Mexican American studies in school I knew what I was walking into. and I must admit I've never read a book with an author that writes like Traven. in the best way Traven is talented, and it felt like I was reading a classic in itself. I noticed there are only 108 reviews on this book and that needs to change. this book will have an impact on me, the tragedies and even the humor I found within it.
June 7, 2024
Brutal and real. Almost more a historical document than novel. The publishers and editors would throw a fit if you tried to structure a novel like this now.
Still, I do feel strangely compelled to read more of Traven’s “Jungle Novels” now.
Still, I do feel strangely compelled to read more of Traven’s “Jungle Novels” now.
January 5, 2016
Trozas by B Traven
This is a novel by B Traven. Traven wrote a series of jungle novels in the 1930s. I think this is the fourth one I’ve read over a number of years. The books have to do with the exploitation of Indians in southern Mexico, mostly those involved with the harvesting of mahogany in the jungle.
The indians were roped into the work, and enslaved, through a system of debt. Debt as a motivation for continued work is not an unusual thing in a capitalist society. Many people, even in the current USA, have to continue working at something they might not particularly want to spend their days doing for the enrichment of the boss, business owner, or corporation. Here this situation is very extreme as the tentacles of exploitation are transparent and Traven does a great job of putting them on display, in our faces. This extreme situation becomes an example of how unorganized workers are vulnerable to what capitalism is capable of in its relentless lust for profit from the work of others.
This is a vision of hell. The indians are trapped in a system of debt that they can never escape from. They are brought to a company store with inflated prices and given credit for the things they will need for the year or two long isolation of work in the remote jungle. They have to buy their own tools, the axes they use to chop down the trees, etc. If they die, their families are then forced to assume the debt. They have to pay for their daily rations, cooked by Chinese workers who come along.
The working conditions are horrible. The jungle, a miserable wet place inhabited by wild animals like pumas and countless ruthless biting insects that leave the indian worker’s bodies and the other beasts of burden, the oxen used to haul the mahogany, bloody from the fly and tick bites, every day.
A trozas is a felled mahogany tree. It is big and very heavy. It must be moved from where it was cut to a port to be shipped to the USA and to europe where the market for the mahogany is. There is a lot of jungle through which the trozas must be moved. There are no roads in the jungle, There is nothing in the jungle but jungle. The trozas are attached to teams of oxen with chains and dragged through the jungle. The trozas get stuck in morasses along the way. This is deep wet mud into which the workers sink up to their waists. The work is extremely hard. The workers don’t even have shoes.
If this was not bad enough, they are brutally treated by the owners and their overseers. If they do not reach their daily quotas of trozas, not only are they docked, not credited with their miniscule daily wage, thereby extending their enslavement, but they are beaten, whipped by the overseers. There is even a more extreme punishment of hanging the worker in the jungle for an extended period, hours, and beating them like that. All this in supposed modification for meeting impossible daily production goals.
In showing us all this Traven maintains a sort of matter-of-fact tone. He just tells us in detail what is going on and why, so the writing doesn’t come off as a propaganda piece, or a hysterical call to action. It is simply the way it is in all it’s horrible, exploitative brutality.
The jungle books are very great accomplishments in documenting all this.
Highly recommended. Traven was a great mysterious man. A real literary hero.
This is a novel by B Traven. Traven wrote a series of jungle novels in the 1930s. I think this is the fourth one I’ve read over a number of years. The books have to do with the exploitation of Indians in southern Mexico, mostly those involved with the harvesting of mahogany in the jungle.
The indians were roped into the work, and enslaved, through a system of debt. Debt as a motivation for continued work is not an unusual thing in a capitalist society. Many people, even in the current USA, have to continue working at something they might not particularly want to spend their days doing for the enrichment of the boss, business owner, or corporation. Here this situation is very extreme as the tentacles of exploitation are transparent and Traven does a great job of putting them on display, in our faces. This extreme situation becomes an example of how unorganized workers are vulnerable to what capitalism is capable of in its relentless lust for profit from the work of others.
This is a vision of hell. The indians are trapped in a system of debt that they can never escape from. They are brought to a company store with inflated prices and given credit for the things they will need for the year or two long isolation of work in the remote jungle. They have to buy their own tools, the axes they use to chop down the trees, etc. If they die, their families are then forced to assume the debt. They have to pay for their daily rations, cooked by Chinese workers who come along.
The working conditions are horrible. The jungle, a miserable wet place inhabited by wild animals like pumas and countless ruthless biting insects that leave the indian worker’s bodies and the other beasts of burden, the oxen used to haul the mahogany, bloody from the fly and tick bites, every day.
A trozas is a felled mahogany tree. It is big and very heavy. It must be moved from where it was cut to a port to be shipped to the USA and to europe where the market for the mahogany is. There is a lot of jungle through which the trozas must be moved. There are no roads in the jungle, There is nothing in the jungle but jungle. The trozas are attached to teams of oxen with chains and dragged through the jungle. The trozas get stuck in morasses along the way. This is deep wet mud into which the workers sink up to their waists. The work is extremely hard. The workers don’t even have shoes.
If this was not bad enough, they are brutally treated by the owners and their overseers. If they do not reach their daily quotas of trozas, not only are they docked, not credited with their miniscule daily wage, thereby extending their enslavement, but they are beaten, whipped by the overseers. There is even a more extreme punishment of hanging the worker in the jungle for an extended period, hours, and beating them like that. All this in supposed modification for meeting impossible daily production goals.
In showing us all this Traven maintains a sort of matter-of-fact tone. He just tells us in detail what is going on and why, so the writing doesn’t come off as a propaganda piece, or a hysterical call to action. It is simply the way it is in all it’s horrible, exploitative brutality.
The jungle books are very great accomplishments in documenting all this.
Highly recommended. Traven was a great mysterious man. A real literary hero.
December 30, 2017
It's amazing how Traven manages to weave the story of Andrés with the history of the lives of people in Southern Mexico. In this installment of his Jungle novels we see how Andrés is now working in the monterías where they cut down and transport logs (trozas) of mahogany to the ports. To say that it is hard work would be a complete understatement. We learn not only about the physical hardships that the people who worked in this area of Mexico, we learn about the mentality that was instilled in them through this hard work.
The only reason I'm not giving this one 5 stars is because I wanted more from Andrés' perspective. Either way, this was a great novel that taught me so much about how life was for the men and women at that time in Mexico. I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in history and great writing.
The only reason I'm not giving this one 5 stars is because I wanted more from Andrés' perspective. Either way, this was a great novel that taught me so much about how life was for the men and women at that time in Mexico. I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in history and great writing.
June 19, 2021
This book brought me into a world I was unaware of--a world of debt slavery that's described in fascinating detail within a compelling story. Just as the children of super-rich Americans inherit wealth virtually tax-free, the Indians of Mexico inherited their fathers' estates. Except in their world the inheritances were negative -- debts owed to employers. But the Indians didn't have expensive tax lawyers to free them of their obligations. They were helpless in a jungle of brutality where bugs, snakes and a relentless sun tortured them as they toiled to bring mahogany out of the forest for folks who knew nothing about the true origins of their living room furniture. The mysterious Traven's characters are confined within a claustrophobic jungle that surrounds them like evil magic on an alien planet.
January 16, 2018
Less of a page-turner than the previous book,'March to the Monteria', this fourth book in Traven's 'Jungle' sequence slows the narrative to describe life at the monteria in detail. It's no surprise to learn that it's basically Hell on Earth. The title translates as 'Logs' - appropriate enough, as the peons in debt slavery working on the monteria deep in the jungle have the backbreaking task of felling mahogany trees and dragging the logs to the river so they can be transported to wealthy countries and turned into expensive furniture. It's vivid stuff, but Traven has a tendency to labour a point more than necessary at times and he does that quite a bit here.
December 18, 2018
Brutal conditions described well.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews