Federico Gamboa: Mexican Novelist and Diplomat

On the surface of this document, you see nothing about books and important literature. It’s a letter from a Mexican diplomat in Mexico City in 1910 to another Mexican diplomat serving in La Paz, Bolivia. But scratch beneath the surface and you will discover an important figure in Mexican letters—Federico Gamboa (1864–1939), the father of literary naturalism in Mexico.  

While this letter to the Consul General of Mexico in La Paz, Bolivia provides a window into Gamboa’s diplomatic service to Mexico as Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs during the Porfiriato era (1876-1911), it also provides window into Mexican literary history, complete with an autograph from the author of the classic 1903 Mexican novel Santa.

Santa is the tragic tale of a country girl trying to survive in Mexico City against the backdrop of harsh social conditions in pre-revolutionary Mexico during the administration Gamboa served as a diplomat. Cast out by her conservative family in a rural village after she became pregnant, Santa makes her way to Mexico City and survives as a prostitute, and eventually the most desired prostitute, in the city. Despite her success, her life’s trajectory is one of sadness and ultimate tragedy.

Gamboa was strongly influenced by French naturalism author Emile Zola, but his attempt at developing a correspondence with Zola, hoping for encouragement of his early writing, was met with silence. Though disheartened, he was not discouraged and Zola’s indifference may have led to Gamboa crafting a style of his own. Inspired by his Catholic faith, Gamboa included the idea of spiritual redemption into his writing, which separated him stylistically from Zola and strict naturalism.

For a description of naturalism, Encyclopedia Britannica offers the following: “Naturalism, in literature and the visual arts, late 19th- and early 20th-century movement that was inspired by adaptation of the principles and methods of natural science, especially the Darwinian view of nature, to literature and art. In literature it extended the tradition of realism, aiming at an even more faithful, unselective representation of reality, a veritable “slice of life,” presented without moral judgment. Naturalism differed from realism in its assumption of scientific determinism, which led naturalistic authors to emphasize man’s accidental, physiological nature rather than his moral or rational qualities. Individual characters were seen as helpless products of heredity and environment, motivated by strong instinctual drives from within and harassed by social and economic pressures from without. As such, they had little will or responsibility for their fates, and the prognosis for their “cases” was pessimistic at the outset.”

The popularity of Santa inspired Mexico's first sound film in 1932 (the silent film version was in 1918), followed later by remakes, radio shows, and telenovelas. Despite the success of Santa and its influence on literary and cinematic genres in Mexico, Gamboa was not moved to quit his public service, which had defined his career since 1888 and went farther back than that with his family’s government involvement. The prestige and security afforded by his profession countered any desires to write full-time. As a diplomat serving in various positions and countries, his status as a representative of Mexico on the world stage led to ambitions of higher office, including the presidency, which he did not achieve.

Federico Gamboa saw himself as a politician and diplomat who happened to also write. And he happened to also write the most popular novel in early 20^th-century Mexico.