Of all the issues raised by the Mexican Revolution, none has stimulated artistic creativity more than that of the Indian, his past, his culture and his exclusion from the mainstream of national life. At the same time, no artistic form provides so thorough a treatment of these issues as the indigenista novel.
While the Revolution was not launched by Indians, nor were their interests initially central to it, as it developed their problems became a natural and important issue in the reorganization of Mexican society. As one writer observes: “in attempting to organize Mexican society, the mestizo revolutionary has had no other choice but to take into consideration the indigenous factor, so that although the Revolution was not the work of the Indian, in certain ways it has been for his benefit.”2