Administración y política en la historia de México

En ésta novela se retratan con detalle y empatía la despesperanzada vida de los ferrocarrileros en México de mediados del siglo xx, sus batallas laborales y su miseria, la ilusión de una huelga redentora y la severidad de la traición. Por estas páginas atraviesa un fantasmal José Trigo, más símbolo que protagonista, y un conjunto de personajes doloridos, víctimas del drama cristero de los años treinta, de la corrupción sindical de las décadas posteriores y del inequitativo progreso de la nación. [From back cover.]

Included are "Personal de la Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Obras Públicas," enero de 1904, "Personal de la Dirección General de Telégrafos Federales y Oficinas de su Dependencia," enero-abril de 1904, and "Personal de la Dirección General de Correos y Oficinas de su Dependencia," julio de 1904.

This work contains fresh information located at the Sergei Eisenstein Museum and in his personal archive, both located in Moscow, which clearly indicates that there is still more to say about the Soviet director's unfinished movie, financed by Upton Sinclair. The discovery of the first version of the screenplay as well as books on Mexico and bullfight programs enables the manner in which the film developed and was structured through short stories to be reconsidered.

Los de abjo treats what is perhaps the saddest period in modern Mexican history, a period of aimless slaughter when a whole nation was plunged into strife by leaders who had few clear ideas of what they were striving for. The reader shares the same disillusionment that the author himself must have felt as he met leader after leader whose revolutionary zeal was merely a disguise for base passions and desires.