T HE SERFDOM of the peasant and agrarian reform hold a prominent place in any artistic presentation of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. They are favorite subjects of the paintings of Rivera and other modern artists, and provide the themes of many of the stories and novels of the period. Novels describing the years just prior to the Revolution, such as Mala yerba (1909), by Mariano Azuela, and Campo Celis (1935), by Mauricio Magdaleno, stress the state of abjection into which the peasant had fallen. His possessions, his life, and his honor were often at the command of brutal landowners who themselves were gamblers, bandits, and assassins. These masters, although degenerate, were the personification of force in the eyes of the peon, against whom all manner of injustice, cruelty, and crime were committed. But the Indian did not dare protest. Tyranny had made of him "a race sick from centuries of humiliation and bitterness." The peasants had no thought of uniting to overthrow the master, and their acts of revenge were personal, not group rebellion. The class struggle had not yet begun in Mexico. Tierra (1933), by Gregorio L6pez y Fuentes, is the novel of the agrarian revolution, and deals with the years 1910 to 1920. The first chapter, entitled "1910," describes familiar pre-Revolutionary figures--the land-grabbing farmer who opposes establishing a school because it would teach his men to ask for higher wages, the brutal overseer, and the hard-working peon who is always poor and hungry. The second chapter, called "1911," shows little improvement. Although the peon is no longer sent to do military service as a punishment for opposing the master's will, he still devotes his time to the owner's land, and has no time to till his own plot of ground. The remaining eight chapters narrate different stages of Zapata's campaign. By 1920 a great change has come over the region. Although the country has been badly devastated, the peons have high hopes for the future. They now have their own brook, woods, fields, and community farm. El indio (1935), by the same author, presents similar conditions in the pre-Revolutionary period. The poverty of the peasant is due in a large measure to the mal-distribution of the land. The fertile valleys have been seized by the wealthy farmers; only the barren hillsides are left for the