Event

El gesticulador

"El gesticulador: Pieza para demagogos en tres actos" by Rodolfo Usigli, produced by the Division of Spanish and Portuguese Studies (IN SPANISH)

Resumen

El protagonista, Cesar Rubio, es un profesor desempleado que, tras los disturbios de la Revolucion Mexicana, se establece con su familia en un pueblo pequeno en el norte de Mexico. Alli, un profesor de la Universidad de Harvard le confunde con un heroe revolucionario desaparecido con el mismo nombre. Rubio afirma que es este heroe difunto, diciendole al profesor que, desilusionado con el curso de la Revolucion, habia vivido en anonimato por treinta anos a partir de entonces. Se publica el encuentro en el New York Times y Rubio atrae la atencion de sus compatriotas, quienes le convencen a postular para el gobernador del Estado contra un general revolucionario corrupto. Rubio se pierde en su nueva identidad, viendola como una oportunidad de renovar la promesa de la Revolucion.

In the late 1930s, Cesar Rubio, an unemployed professor of Mexican history, moves back with his family to his small hometown in the north of Mexico. There he meets a professor from Harvard University who takes him for a missing hero from the Mexican Revolution. Cesar claims to be the deceased hero, telling the professor that his disillusionment with the course of the Revolution led him to embrace the anonymity of a modest academic post. The story is published in the New York Times, and Cesar's hidden identity eventually comes to the attention of his compatriots, who convince him to run for the governorship of his state against a corrupt revolutionary general. Cesar soon loses himself in his new identity, viewing it as an opportunity to renew the promise of the Revolution.