Government     by B Traven Original title: Regierung Original language: German Published by Dee, Ivan R. Publisher Pub. Date: 1993 Format: Paperback, 240 pages Dimensions: (in inches): 0.62 x 8.00 x 5.42 ISBN: 156663038X Edition: 1st Elephant pbk. ed List Price: $15.90 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £7.99 Buy online from Amazon.com for $11.13 Published by Schocken Books, Incorporated Pub. Date: 1983 Format: Paperback, 240 pages ISBN: 0805281657 List Price: $5.95, £3.78 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £3.78 Published by Allison & Busby Pub. Date: 1994 Format: Paperback, 231 pages List Price: £5.99 Not available for ordering Published by Allison & Busby Pub. Date: 1980 Format: Hardcover, 231 pages Not available for ordering

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‘A job in government is far and away the best. A man has only to keep his eyes open and pounce as soon as the prey shows its nose.’ And that’s how the worldly-wise and mysterious author of the famous Treasure of the Sierra Madre (made into a Hollywood film with Humphrey Bogart) saw and exposed the workings of political power in the Third World and elsewhere.

Traven was a German radical who went to live in Mexico after revolutionary activity at home towards the end of World War One. His dissection of Mexican political corruption in Government and the savage exploitation of the poor, especially of the Indian population is brilliant and terrifying; particularly as, judging from the popularity of SubCommandante Marcos and the recent revolt in Chiapas state, things don’t seem to have changed much in the countryside since the turn-of-the-century conditions Traven describes.

Mexico at that time was a run-for-profit dictatorship under Porfirio Diaz and what Traven convincingly and wittily shows is how a big dictator operates through a system of little dictators, each taking their slice out of the person beneath them in the hierarchy of greed. Traven lived in Mexico and Government is part of a whole cycle of novels about the origins and progression of the Mexican revolution of 1910-12. What this means is that, rather than being a superficial drop-in exposé by a foreign journalist, Government comes from knowing the territory inch by inch and it is the telling details that make the book. Traven understood too a very modern point; that brutal regimes work hard to have themselves seen in a good light to keep investment flowing — exemplified here by the hilarious and tragic description of a local school for Indian children, one of the funniest set-pieces in the book.

As well as a being a striking analysis of ‘the system’ Government is full of fascinating detail of rural Mexico, of Indian culture and observances; it is a respectful and appreciative understanding by a writer of working-class origin, very different from the patronising tone we expect from Europeans writing about the Third World in this period. He ends with a nice description of the Indian system of annually elected chiefs, a wonderful contrast to the dictator Diaz’s thirty-two year rule.

‘A few weeks later don Casimiro was on an inspection tour of the district and ran across don Gabriel again. Don Gabriel reminded him of his unfortunate situation, and as don Casimiro had a good heart and could not bear to see his friends suffer, he said, «I haven’t much for you. Everything’s gone. And they all sit as tight as sticks. But I’ve got a little Indian village — Bujvilum. A bad lot there. Won’t behave themselves. Kick up against everything, we send soldiers to burn their huts down time after time — but can’t catch one of them. They always clear out into the jungle and you can’t get ‘em there. When everything’s burnt and their maize fields laid flat and the soldiers are gone, out they come and build their village again as if nothing had happened. Then we leave them alone for a bit, but we can’t get any taxes out of them. If you’d like to go there, I’ll make you local secretary. You open a tienda, a little store. And I’ll give you an exclusive permit to sell brandy. You have a lockup — prison, in fact. I needn’t say more. Well, there you are — it you want to go, the job’s yours. I’ve nothing else for you at the moment.»

Don Gabriel had a good revolver and he could shoot as straight as the next man. The Indians had no revolvers and could not buy any either; they had no money and, in any case, it was strictly forbidden to sell them revolvers or rifles, apart from muzzle-loaders for game. So don Gabriel accepted the post. He would have accepted the post of watching boiling cauldrons in hell if anyone had offered it to him. He was so down on his luck that he had no choice. It was getting on to twenty years since he had sought a way out in honest work. And a job in government is far and away the best. A man has only to keep his eyes open and pounce as soon as the prey shows its nose.’ p2-3