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father were the most formal and “correct” and rarely used vulgar terms during the recording sessions.
    The translation of lower-class Mexican Spanish has presented formidable and in some ways insoluble problems, particularly in attempting to find equivalents for slang expressions, idioms, and jokes with sexual innuendo. I have tried to capture the essential meaning and flavor of the language rather than to render a literal translation. Inevitably, some of the unique quality and charm of the original as well as the personal style of each individual has been lost. The English translation gives a surprisingly high level of language and vocabulary to relatively unlettered people. The fluency of language and the vocabulary of Mexicans, be they peasants or slum dwellers, have always impressed me. On the whole, the language of Manuel and Consuelo is somwhat richer than that of Roberto and Marta, perhaps because the former have had more schooling. Manuel’s use of such sophisticated terms as “subconscious,” “luminaries,” and “portentous opulence” may be surprising, but Manuel reads the Spanish version of the
Reader’s Digest
and has a flair for intellectuality. Moreover, in this day and age, even illiterate slum dwellers pick up advanced ideas and terminology from TV, radio and movies.
    It will become apparent to the reader that there is a marked contrast between Jesús Sánchez and his children. This contrast reflects not only the difference in rural and urban backgrounds but also the difference between pre-Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary Mexico.Jesús was born in a small village in the state of Veracruz in 1910, the very year which marked the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. His children were born between 1928 and 1935 in the slums of Mexico City. Jesús was brought up in a Mexico without cars, movies, radios or TV, without free universal education, without free elections, and without the hope of upward mobility and the possibility of getting rich quick. He was raised in the tradition of authoritarianism, with its emphasis upon knowing one’s place, hard work, and self-abnegation. The children of Sánchez, although subject to his domineering and authoritarian character, were also exposed to post-Revolutionary values, with their greater emphasis upon individualism and social mobility. It is all the more striking, therefore, that the father who never aspired to be more than a simple worker managed to raise himself out of the lower depths of poverty, whereas the children have remained at that level.
    In the nineteenth century, when the social sciences were still in their infancy, the job of recording the effects of the process of industrialization and urbanization on personal and family life was left to novelists, playwrights, journalists, and social reformers. Today, a similar process of culture change is going on among the peoples of the less-developed countries but we find no comparable outpouring of a universal literature which would help us to improve our understanding of the process and the people. And yet the need for such an understanding has never been more urgent, now that the less-developed countries have become a major force on the world scene.
    In the case of the new African nations that are emerging from a tribal, nonliterate cultural tradition, the paucity of a great native literature on the lower class is not surprising. In Mexico and in other Latin American countries where there has been a middle class, from which most writers come, this class has been very small. Moreover, the hierarchical nature of Mexican society has inhibited any profound communication across class lines. An additional factor in Mexico has been the preoccupation of both writers and anthropologists with their Indian problem, to the neglect of the urban poor.
    This situation presents a unique opportunity to the social sciences and particularly to anthropology to step into the gap and develop a literature of its own.