The Melancholy Left by Bruno Bosteels

In the midst of so much cult of victory, these are stories of tremendous but for this reason no less heroic defeats. Histories that have to do with tenacity, the cult of principles, politics understood as tragic and terrible morality. - Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Arcángeles

One day after the massacre of October 2 in Tlatelolco, Paz composed perhaps the most famous poem about 1968 in Mexico, titled "Intermitencias del Oeste (3)" ("Intermittencies of the West (3)"), included in the collection Ladera este (Eastern Slope). At the time, the poet was living in India as Mexico's ambassador. From this voluntary exile, he reflects upon the revolutionary myth in a series of four poems, as so many "intermittencies" of the West in the East: two are devoted to the revolutions in Russia and Mexico, respectively, and two more to the student-popular movements of 1968 in Mexico and France. The third poem is actually based on another letter Marx wrote to Ruge just prior to the uprisings that would hit Europe in 1848. In this period, the soon-to-be coauthor of The Communist Manifesto was likewise living in exile, but even from Holland he felt a certain national shame for the dismal state in which Germany found itself. "The mantle of liberalism has been discarded and the most disgusting despotism in all its nakedness is disclosed to the eyes of the whole world," wrote Marx, before anticipating the skepticism of his correspondent: