Language English Publication date 1911 Publisher The Saturday Evening Post Country United States of America | Publication type Magazine short story Originally published 1911 Genre Short story Adaptations The Fighter (1952) | |
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Similar Jack London books, Classical Studies books | ||
"The Mexican" is a 1911 short story by American author Jack London. It was filmed in 1952 as The Fighter starring Richard Conte and Lee J. Cobb.
Contents
Background
Written during the Mexican Revolution, while London was in El Paso, Texas, "The Mexican" was first published in the Saturday Evening Post. In 1913 it was republished by Grosset & Dunlap in the collection of short stories The Night Born. The protagonist is based on the real-life "Joe Rivers," the pseudonym of a Mexican revolutionary whose boxing winnings supported the Junta Revolucionaria Mexicana, a group of revolutionaries-in-exile. Joe Rivers eventually retired from boxing and became an ice deliveryperson in El Paso.
Plot summary
The story centers around Felipe Rivera, the son of a Mexican printer who had published articles favorable to striking workers in the hydraulic power plants of Río Blanco, Veracruz. The workers are locked out, and the federal troops are sent against them. Rivera escapes the massacre by climbing over the bodies of the deceased—including those of his mother and father. He makes his way to El Paso, Texas where he comes into contact with the Junta Revolucionaria Mexicana. He volunteers to serve the Revolution at the office of the Junta, who, suspicious, put him to work doing menial labor.
Soon, however, he is dispatched to Baja California to reestablish connections between Los Angeles revolutionaries and the peninsula. Exceeding his orders, he assassinates federal General Juan Alvarado and returns to El Paso.
The fate of the Revolution hangs in the balance as the Junta scrambles to finance the revolutionary armies. Rivera, who has been boxing on the local circuit to support the Junta, decides to fight the well-known boxer Danny Ward in order to secure the funds needed by the Junta. He negotiates a winner-take-all contract for the fight, on Ward's condition that the weigh-in occur at ten in the morning rather than immediately prior to the fight.
The fight lasts seventeen rounds, but eventually Ward succumbs to Rivera, who is fueled by visions of violent vengeance.