The Treasure of the Sierra Madre () is a 1927 adventure novel by German author B. Traven, whose identity remains unknown.James Goldwasser (1993)“Ret Marut: the Early B. Traven” in The Germanic Review, Volume 63, 1993 – Issue 3, reprinted Libcom.org https://libcom.org/history/ret-marut-early-b-traven-james-goldwasser In the book, two destitute American men in Mexico of the 1920s join an older American prospector in a search for gold. John Huston adapted the book as a 1948 film of the same name.
Historical setting The novel is set in the decade following the global upheavals of the First World War and social revolutions in Russia and Mexico. The United States is an emerging economic and political power. European and US corporations are aggressively seeking foreign markets, natural resources and cheap labor. Elements within the Catholic Church are struggling to retain their religious freedom as anticlerical Mexican administrations institute social reforms, including an eight hour workday, as well as programs to increase literacy and healthcare availability.
Plot The author employs a third person-omniscient in a dramatic-progressive structure, where Howard is the focal character. Three stories within a story provide historical and social significance for the outer narrative.
Summary The story opens in the oil boomtown of Tampico, Mexico in the early 1920s. Dobbs, an expatriate from the US is generally unemployed, and works informally. He is living at the Hotel Oso Negro (the Black Bear Hotel), a vermin-infested flophouse.
Seeking higher wages, Dobbs joins a rigging crew as a roughneck, run by American contractor Pat McCormick. A bidder on drilling projects, McCormick has a reputation for fast-paced operations and high productivity. He postures as an anti-capitalist and comrade to revolutionaries to win the loyalty of his newly arrived European laborers, who are sympathetic to Bolshevism. Mexican labor is never hired due to their national eight-hour day provision.
Story within a story: The Legend of La Mina Agua Verde One day at the Oso Negro, Dobbs encounters Howard, an elderly, loquacious gold prospector. The old man lectures several bunkmates on the perils of striking it rich. Discovered in quantity, he avers, gold distorts a man's estimate of vice and virtue. Invariably he succumbs to greed, and no amount of gold will satisfy him. Howard tells the story of La Mina Agua de Verde (the Green Water Mine), as told to him by a Harry Tilton, former mentor and fellow-prospector. The historic diggings are said to be located on today's border between the American state of Arizona and the Mexican state of Sonora.
The social history associated with the mine presents a litany of horrors, beginning with the Aztecs and proceeding to the forced labor of indigenous people by the Spanish conquerors. The complicity of the Catholic Church in maintaining order among the Indian workers is detailed, including their authorization of torture. A malediction is placed on the mine. In 1762 local inhabitants launch a revolt, exterminating the Spanish officials presiding over the slave laborers. Spain’s military retaliates with a program of terror, burning villages and hanging women and children attempting to flee the oppression. A pattern of retaliatory killings escalates, until the Indian insurgents obliterate the mine and utterly transform the landscape to conceal any evidence of its existence. Attempts by Spanish authorities to relocate the diggings fail. The legend of the cursed La Mina Agua Verde persists nonetheless in subsequent decades, revived when the United States takes possession of northern Mexico in the 1840s. The fate of those who seek the fabled mine ends in madness or death.
During the 1870s, three American students from a distant college are on vacation in Arizona, among them Harry Tilton. As guests of a local priest, they secretly copy a map of La Mina Agua Verde – the Green Water Mine – found in the cleric's library. After weeks of relentless excavation, a three-man crew unearths some rich gold-laden ore. They attempt to conceal their discovery from their fellow prospectors, but the deception is exposed. Their vengeful comrades murder them. The mine proves to contain immense quantities of gold. Harry Tilton, satisfied with his share of the gold, departs from the dig early. He settles down on a farm in his native Kansas. Unbeknownst to him, the remaining 11 men are massacred by bands of Indians, and the mine sinks back into legend. Near the turn of the century, gold fever grips the world with the great gold rushes in the Alaska, Australia and South Africa. Tilton is coerced, against his better judgment, to lead an expedition to relocate the legendary Green Water Mine. The members of the prospecting party include the much younger Howard. Dobbs shares the legend of the Green Water Mine with Curtin, and has a premonition that he may be subject to a gold curse. Curtin discounts any “curse” associated with gold and holds that a person's character determines its effects.
With many oil fields beginning to shut down operation in Mexico and relocate to other countries, the two men are impelled to partner with Howard to seek gold. With about $600 in pooled funds, the trio depart immediately by train for the city of Durango, in the Mexican interior, where they locate placer gold. The men intend to pose as professional game hunters seeking commercial hides. As the fortune piles up, the prospectors' class identity shifts. With property to defend, they adopt a bourgeois outlook, suspicious of the have-nots. They cease to be proletarians. Even as the men share the same hardships, they do not forge friendships, merely alliances for profit. Their willingness to rescue a partner in distress is self-serving: the loss of one man to death or injury could cripple the profitable enterprise.
While on a final supply run to the local village, Curtin is accosted by an American newcomer visiting the store. The man insinuates that there is much gold in the nearby mountains; Curtin emphatically denies it. The stranger guesses the significance of Curtin's aloofness and trails him into the mountain wilderness. The stranger informs the men that the area is unfit for commercial hunting – rather, they are sitting on a gold field. The prospectors return to their tent intensely suspicious of the man's purpose. They permit him to stay the night. The stranger introduces himself as Robert W. Lacaud of Phoenix, Arizona, “Tech, Pasadena”.
When Howard goes to check the burros, he spots mounted men in the distance approaching the encampment. Lacaud warns the miners that the horsemen are dangerous bandits, led by the notorious Gold Hat. Tipped off by locals, they are searching for the “hunter” (Curtin) to seize his guns and ammunition. Lacaud assures his companions that their lives are in imminent danger. As they anxiously watch the bandits slowly ascend the trail, Lacaud relates to them the story of Gold Hat, conveyed to him by a local nobleman, don Genaro Montereal, while visiting his estate the previous week.
Story within a story: Lacaud’s narrative of an incident in the Viva Nuestro Rey Cristo Uprising In a remote region of western Mexico, a passenger train stops to pick up mail at a small station. At nightfall, twenty mestizos, dressed in peasant garb, board the train. When the train reaches full speed the mestizos begin shooting at the occupants: men, women and children are indiscriminately slaughtered.
Stopping the train, the bandits and their 200 confederates waiting along the tracks, carry away the loot before setting all the carriages on fire. The trains’ engineer, though mortally wounded, escapes with the locomotive to the nearby depot. A rescue train is sent and the outlaws are driven away. The federal military forces in the adjoining states are mobilized to pursue the perpetrators. Two Catholic priests are apprehended and admit to directing the attack on the train. The bandits, or rebels, as the case may be, are poor and politically ignorant agrarians who perform these deeds in struggle between the Catholic Church and the government of Mexico.
Lacaud concludes his report, informing his cohorts that the approaching bandits, led by Gold Hat, are the last surviving members of the outlaws that had joined in the deadly train assault. Gold Hat and his men enter the campsite looking for a lone hunter. Failing to find him, they quarrel and consider returning to the village. As the 20-man bandit group prepare to spend the night, one member discovers Curtin in the trench. Gold Hat tries to lure Curtin from his foxhole with promises of a gold watch. Rebutted, the outlaws construct movable barriers to assault the trench. Before they can deploy them, a company of genuine mounted police, alerted by villagers, appear and pursue Gold Hat and his gang as they flee the encampment.
With the ordeal over, Howard, Dobbs and Curtin express a desire to terminate operations and return immediately to civilization, Howard confides to Dobbs and Curtin that Lacaud is an eccentric “eternal” – a prospector who becomes obsessed over a coveted diggings and will not abandoned even after decades of failure. They leave him to his fate. Howard directs the dismantling of their mine so as to leave no trace of its existence. Howard warns his cohorts that the next phase – transferring the gold dust back to civilization – may be the riskiest phase and they become preoccupied with its challenges. Howard illustrates these dangers in his tale of the Dona Maria Mine.
Story within a Story: Legend of Dona Catalina Maria de Rodriguez and the “Dona Maria” Mine. The story is set in the late 18th Century in Chihuahuan Desert region of Northern Mexico.
A Chiricahuan chieftain named Aguila Bravo (Brave Eagle) lives a contented life. The chieftains’ only son, approaching adulthood, is handsome and intelligent, but has been born blind. This is his father’s sole regret. A parasitic monk, who live off the hospitality of the local villagers, promises to provide the chieftain with the method by which to restore his son’s vision, for a fee. The secret, he tells father, is to appeal to the heavenly Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe (Our Lady of Guadalupe), on behalf of the Catholic Church.
The chief, as instructed, makes a 1400-mile pilgrimage on foot to Mexico City in company with his wife and son, carrying all his money and jewelry as an offering to the Saint. The family travels the final three miles on their knees to the holy site of Cerrito de Tepeyac (Hill of Tepeyac), saying Ave Marias as they go. For three days, the chief and his dependents pray before the icons, without food or water. Nothing happens. Aguila Bravo, hoping to appease the Saint, offers his cattle and next year’s crops so as to induce a miracle. After seven more days, encouraged by the clergy, the chief offers to transfer his entire estate to the church to obtain eyesight for his son. No miracle takes place. The boy’s health begins to fail due to the privations they’ve endured, and the father fears for his life. Exasperated, he renounces his faith in the Virgin. The priests accuse him of blasphemy and warn that he may be tortured by a court of the holy Inquisition. The fathers of the church explain that the Virgin has withheld her intervention because the chief has failed to perform the requisite number of Ave Marias, or perhaps took a sip of water in violation of the fast. He admits as much, and departs in disgust.