This dissertation examines a series of Mexican indigenista narratives published between 1948 and 1962, all of them concerned with the culture and problematics of the Mayan peoples of the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. One of the things that the recent Zapatista rebellion has achieved is to bring the peoples of the marginal region to the center of national discourse and debate. With this fact kept always in the foreground, we examine how these narratives are involved in the construction and (re)definition of the Mexican nation--and how the status of the indigenous peoples of Chiapas has in fact been a focal point of national discourse and debate for quite some time. To further highlight the relevance of these novels to the present moment, attention is also given to the ways in which they shed some light on the rebellion and make it more comprehensible As the title indicates, Mexico's national discourse and debate has tended to revolve around two large issues: the role of indigenous peoples in the modern Mexican nation, and the nature and meaning of the Mexican Revolution. We will see how the narrators of all of the works in question--from Ricardo Pozas's Juan Perez Jolete (1948) to Rosario Castellanos's Oficio de tinieblas (1962)--contribute to the discussion of these issues in creative and often prophetic ways
