WITHIN the trilogy of Rosario Castellanos' short story, "Primera Revelacion" (1950), and her two novels, Balun Canan (1957) and Oficio de tinieblas (1962), one can discern a trajectory of experimentation and reformation, with each piece growing out of and recontextualizing the material from the earlier effort. Indeed, there is evidence of a metaphorical Kunstleroman, the coming of age of a writer, in the author's passage into a mature commentator of her homeland in Chiapas. This essay will examine the three works in succession, with attention given to strategies of enunciation, autobiographical references, the adversarial positioning of words vs. action and the ontological limits of class, gender and race in Mexico. The pieces exist as entities, yet are intertwined within time, space, character and thematics. The first two are the closest in story; the third is more of a major reworking, yet clearly a response to the earlier works. The main point of view of "Primera revelacion" and Balun Canan is that of an unnamed girl, eight-years old, told primarily in the first person. In the short story, the child and her brother attend catechism classes, and readers are privy to their bewildered reactions. In Balun Canan, the child has an indigenous nana from whom she learns Mayan values, superstitions and mythologies as counterpoint to the classes in Catholic dogma. Each has a brother Mario, younger by one year, who is the clear favorite as the male who will continue the family name. His death is traumatic for the family, leaving the girl in solitude in her attempt to reconcile church teachings with the concept of death. Both fictions depict vividly the frightening lessons of catechism when taken literally by children.
