Rewriting José Zorrilla’s Don Juan Tenorio in Revolutionary Mexico. Inés as a Working-Class Heroine

Abstract

This article is to be understaood as an addendum to Robert Buff­ington’s reading of Don Juan Tenorio in Mexico as developed in his 2015’s literary study, A Sentimental Education for the Working Man: The Mexico City Penny Press, 1900-1910. By examining newspaper articles from the turn of the 19th century Mexico, I show how journalistic debates surrounding productions of Zorrilla’s play registered the profound transformations that Porfirian theater underwent. The last section of the article explores two Don Juan parodies written and staged in Revolutionary Mexico, El Tenorio maderista (1912) and Tenorio Sam (1914), each of which recast Inés as a working-class heroine.