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Current readings of La casa del dolor ajeno underscore its potential to disrupt the Mexican national historical discourse. Since the work directly dialogues with the literature of the Mexican Revolution, the present article compares Herbert’s material with two works by iconic writers of the period: Tropa vieja, by Francisco L. Urquizo, which Herbert uses as one of his many sources; and “Villa ataca Ciudad Juárez,” where the Chinese community is briefly presented performing a particular action: that of shooting some of the villista rebels leaving the town in defeat. Through this comparative analysis, I argue that these works present two different mechanisms of national integration: in the Revolutionary discourse, the active participation in the armed conflict; in the early twenty-first century, the vulnerability of the subject in the presence of both criminal and state violence. In addition to focusing on the disruptive potential of La casa del dolor ajeno, this reading posits that books such as Julián Herbert’s rethink the terms in which Mexican national community is conceived in the present day against the imposed terms of twentieth-century officialdom.
