THE ADELITA

by Oakley Hall ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 19, 1975

An imperialist blood-and-bugle western which reduces the Mexican Revolution to the drunken debauched lark of a bunch of corrupt, illiterate generals. More important here is the lifelong affair between oil man Robert MacBean and the hot-blooded revolutionary mama Adelita whom he first meets while he's prospecting south of the border. Out of bed, they engage in confused if sobersided political dialogues that opt for submission to the exploitation of American capitalists like MacBean in the guise of ""pacifism."" Adelita goes down for everyone in sight, including Pancho Villa, after MacBean's railroad magnate/landowner/Teapot Domer daddy fetches him home to the country club in L.A., but she's sure anyway that little Carlos--a snotty kid who will one day be president of Mexico--is his. By the end of her life, Adelita comes to regret wasting her life on the Revolution instead of devoting herself to love while MacBean is sitting pretty on all those oil wells and sometimes financing the kind of good works that supposedly achieve inch-by-inch ""progress"" since the end never justifies violent means, right? Wrong. A morass of reactionary blather.

Pub Date: Sept. 19, 1975

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1975

Categories: FICTION