In 1910, in a still relatively tranquil world, the Mexican revolution exploded--the sinister quiet of the Diaz dictatorship was broken by Villa and Zapata and their avenging mobs of peons and vaqueros. Mariano Azuela, most famous Mexican author of his day, was a doctor in Villa's army. Taking refuge in El Paso after Villa's defeat, he wrote a series of poignant sketches, together with the full-length novel, The Underdogs, which is considered a masterpiece of Hispanic American literature. The Flies and The Bosses, two remarkable vignettes of the revolution (here translated into English for the first time) were written in hot anger, direct from life; they show Azuela as a skeptic and realist who was nevertheless full of charity for his troubled people.--Cover.