Biography of Juan Rulfo (1917-1986)
Juan Rulfo
Juan Rulfo was a Mexican author of both novels and short stories. On May 16, 1917 he was
born in the town of Sayula, in the state of Jalisco (in the western part of central Mexico).
Jalisco is a Nahuatl word that means “sandy plain” and this is precisely the hot, arid,
imposing terrain where nearly all of Rulfo’s narratives take place.
Rulfo’s birth certificate bore the prodigious name “Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez Rulfo
Vizcaíno,” and he spent a great deal of his childhood in the house of his paternal
grandparents in San Gabriel. During this time he was granted access to the library of a
priest who stored his books in the grandparents’ home, and he would always fondly
remember devouring these texts which proved to be fundamental in his literary
development.
In order to understand Rulfo’s novel and short stories, it is important to be aware of the two
events which were determining factors in Rulfo’s childhood: the aftermath of the Mexican
Revolution (1910-1920), without a doubt the most influential event in Mexican culture and
history in the 20th Century, and the Cristero War (1926-1929), a struggle between the
government of Plutarco Elias Calles and Catholic militias over the restricted rights of the
Church. The latter event was particularly notable for Rulfo because during this time a
number of his family members died, leaving him an orphan. In particular, the death of his
father in 1923 (apparently killed by a young man with whom he had a conflict) and his
mother in 1927, shortly after Rulfo had been sent to boarding school, would have a lasting
effect on Rulfo and his work.
The Mexican Revolution greatly altered Rulfo’s childhood home of San Gabriel, which had
been a thriving town ever since the colonial period. After the Revolution, the town became
poor. San Gabriel is much like the “ghost towns” that Rulfo writes about in many of his
short stories, a place where the promised reforms of the Revolution never materialized.
Rulfo’s literary production is relatively limited. In his lifetime he only published two narrative
works, though each were of immense importance. The novel Pedro Páramo (1955) is
recognized as one of the greatest works of Latin American literature, and The Burning Plain
(1953) (El llano en llamas) is a collection of short stories. Short as both these works are,
they had a profound influence on subsequent generations of Mexican writers.
While Rulfo belongs chronologically to the “Generation of 1952,” his works (especially Pedro
Páramo) are often classified as belonging to the period of the Latin American literary “boom”
in the sixties and seventies during which novels from this part of the world gained
international recognition, allowing prominent novelists were able to begin to make a living
from their craft.
Rulfo held a number of different writing, culture and art-related jobs during his lifetime. He
worked as an archiver, an immigration agent, a travel agent, and as an editor in the
National Indigenous Institute in Mexico City for twenty-four years. Another aspect of his
work as an artist is apparent in the significant photography exhibit he presented in 1980 in
the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.
Two years after publishing Pedro Páramo, Rulfo retroactively won the Premio Xavier
Villaurrutia of 1955. He also received the Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras in 1983
and was posthumously awarded the Premio Manuel Gamio of 1985. He died January 7, 1986
in Mexico City.
About The Burning Plain and Other Stories
Juan Rulfo's The Burning Plain and other Short Stories (originally En llano en llamas) was
published in 1953. It marked the first of Rulfo's two publications, the other being his highly
regarded novel, Pedro Páramo (1955). These two works, though short, established Rulfo as
among the most important writers of his generation - a figure comparable to Jorge Luis
Borges in stature and a source of inspiration for subsequent writers, most notably Gabriel
Garcia Marquez. Indeed, Marquez credits Rulfo as influencing the composition of his great
novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Rulfo’s narrative style in The Burning Plain is regarded by many critics as revolutionary - he
had clearly invented a new way of writing about rural life in Mexico. In the collection, he
avoids the conventions of regional realism (which involve an educated narrator who
identifies local “traditional” characters and scenes) that made rural folk seem rustic or
ignorant, and focuses instead on reproducing the peasant’s thought and spoken word. As a
result, Rulfo’s narrators employ language found in no other Latin American author. They
seem to use an artless, everyday discourse, but the language is actually highly metaphorical
and lyrically stylized. This is perhaps the most unique aspect of Rulfo’s literary production.
In keeping with his approach to the dialog of the narrators and peasants, Rulfo generally
strives for simplicity and avoids challenging the reader with difficult constructions
throughout his collection. The stories consist of simple, everyday words; the lexicon
employed is relatively small, and sentences are typically short. The author does not,
however, use regional dialects, for this would increase the difficulty of the text. Rulfo also
avoids words that are emotionally charged. All this contributes to the remarkable impression
of “neutrality” that Rulfo’s writing evokes.
In these stories solitude constantly besets the main characters, and the only rest from it can
be found in their monologues, confessions and testimonial narratives. These intimate
discourses constitute the main structural framework of the short stories. As a result,
throughout The Burning Plain the reader acts very much like a confessor who patiently lends
an ear to the last words of the frequently condemned, marginalized or dying characters.
Despite the works’ simplicity, rarely is this task of deciphering stories communicated
through snippets of monologues an easy one. More often than not the meaning and nature
of the characters’ original motives has been lost or forgotten due to the passage of time. Or,
in many cases the backdrop to their current situation can be increasingly difficult to make
out in the growing physical darkness. General elements and concerns of the the Mexican
post-revolutionary period often provide the only discernible contextual landmarks.
The work - especially the short story "Tell Them Not to Kill Me!" - has gained in popularity
as well as critical interest and literary influence since its publication.
Character List
Macario (“Macario”): Macario is main character of the story that bears his name. He is a
unique character in one of Rulfo’s most unique tales. What we can gather about Macario
comes exclusively from what he tells us in his monologue, which is narrated in a style that
could be characterized as “stream of consciousness.” We know he lives with his Godmother
and Felipa, and that his parents have died. As the town “idiot” he is a social outcast and
apparently has been adopted by the Godmother and Felipa.
Felipa (“Macario”): Felipa is one of the two women Macario lives with, and we only learn
about her through his words. He tells us she has green eyes. We get the impression that
Felipa is a housekeeper and cook for Godmother. She is closer to Macario’s age than the
Godmother and he likes her best because she treats him well and often gives him her food
at mealtimes. Although they are not family, when she feeds him her breast milk and
subsequently “tickles” him one gets the sense that their connection sometimes borders on
incest.
Godmother (“Macario”): She is the more severe of the two women Macario lives with.
Macario tells us she has black eyes. She is still good to him but he prefers Felipa. She ties
his hands with her shawl when he is at church to prevent him from making a scene and
threatens him with descriptions of hell when he misbehaves.
The narrator (“They Gave Us the Land”): The narrator is just one of a number of men
who have been given the infertile, desert-like Big Plain as their share of redistributed land
following the Revolution. He tells us in first person how he and three companions cross the
Big Plain looking for a suitable place to plant their crop. He tells us about the men’s
conversation with the unsympathetic government official who gave them the land and
describes the arid, desolate conditions they confront on the plain before arriving at the town
on the other side.
Esteban (“They Gave Us the Land”): Like the other peasants in “They Gave Us the
Land,” Esteban has been given the Big Plain as his share of the redistributed land after the
Revolution. Esteban stands out in this group because he his carrying a red hen under his
coat. He is very protective of the hen and has brought her along not for food but
companionship.
Melitón (“They Gave Us the Land”): Like the other peasants in the story, Melitón has
been given the Big Plain as his share of the redistributed land after the Revolution. He
travels with Esteban, the narrator, and Faustino, and is singled out for his unusual
comments on the land that make his companions think he is suffering from sunstroke. He
insists the land must be good for something when it is obvious to the others that the land is
worthless.
Faustino (“They Gave Us the Land”): The peasant Faustino is also crossing the Big Plain
in search of a parcel of land. He is the most minor character of the four companions and
says very little.
Government Official (“They Gave Us the Land”): The government official is the
distributor of land and represents the revolutionary government. He takes away the men’s
guns and horses, explains to them that they can have the Big Plain up to the borders of the
town, and sets them off to claim their parcels of land on the Big Plain. There is no
negotiating with him, though the peasants try. When they complain, he says they can
appeal in writing. The official also tells them that their attacks should be directed at the
large landowners and not the government.
The narrator (“We’re Very Poor”): The narrator of this story is the sibling of Tacha, the
youngest daughter in his family. He speaks using simple language and we know very little
about him, not even his age relative to his sisters. He explains both the flood and the
family’s economic situation and seems to grasp the grave implications of the cards fate has
dealt poor Tacha.
Tacha (“We’re Very Poor”): Sister of the narrator and the last remaining daughter in the
family. Her cow has been lost in the flooding of the river and, as a result, she no longer has
a dowry. She is in puberty and her growing breasts are referenced by the narrator as signs
of her impending perdition. This is because if she no longer has any capital to offer them
she will be tempted to win their hearts through sex, something that her older sisters tried.
As a result they became prostitutes.
La Serpentina and her calf (“We’re Very Poor”): La Serpentina is Tacha’s cow, and it is
killed in the flood. It was spotted and had a pink ear and pretty eyes. Along with her calf, La
Serpentina was meant to be Tacha’s dowry, but now that it is lost, the calf is the girl’s only
hope of escaping a life as a prostitute.
The father (“We’re Very Poor”): The father is the first character in “We’re Very Poor” to
fully recognize the devastation caused by the rains. Not only has his family lost its harvest
of rye, but his daughter Tacha has lost her dowry. This almost certainly means she will
become a prostitute, something which he had been trying to avoid since his two oldest
daughters took that path in the past.
The mother (“We’re Very Poor”): The mother in “We’re Very Poor” cannot comprehend
why her daughters have each become prostitutes (with Tacha likely to follow suit). She
searches her family tree for evidence of “bad women” but cannot find any explanation.
The narrator (“The Hill of the Comadres”): This man narrates in first person the story
of his relationship with the leading family on the Hill of the Comadres, the Torricos. He
speaks in a matter-of-fact tone and, like nearly all of Rulfo’s characters, he is not highly
educated or much of a “deep thinker.” He is simply a man who has grown accustomed over
time to accepting the world the way it is.
Remigio Torrico (“The Hill of the Comadres”):
A local ruffian who, together with his brother Odilón, terrorizes the town of the Hill of the
Comadres. Remigio has one black eye and has excellent vision. He and Odilón eat the other
residents’ food and animals and rob and sometimes murder those who pass by the town on
the road below, as is the case of the mule driver whom they rob and kill with the help of the
narrator.
Odilón Torrico (“The Hill of the Comadres”): A local ruffian who, together with his
brother Remigio, terrorize the town of the Hill of the Comadres. Odilón is killed by the
Alcaraz family in Zapotlán for spitting mescal in the face of an Alacaraz. His brother Remigio
later erroneously accuses the narrator of killing Odilón and stealing his money.
The Alcaraces (“The Hill of the Comadres”): The equivalent of the Torricos in the
nearby town of Zapotlán. They do not like the Torricos and they control the city of Zapotlán
(likely in the same way the Torricos control the Hill of the Comadres). They collectively kill
Odilón by stabbing him after he spits liquor in the face of a member of their family.
The man (“The Man”): The man’s real name is José, although that name is only used
once in the story. Rulfo prefers the anonymity and general confusion that the use of the
name “the man” implies. He is a fugitive fleeing a man who is pursuing him, and he spends
most of the story lost as he wanders through a labyrinth-like riverbed. The man is running
away because he killed the pursuer’s family with a machete as they slept in their beds. His
goal was to kill the pursuer — as an act of revenge for this man’s murder of his brother —
but as it turns out his intended victim was not at home that night.
The pursuer (“The Man”): The pursuer’s last name is Urquidi, although that name is only
used once for the same reason as in the case of José, the man he is pursuing: Rulfo prefers
to emphasize the men’s universal qualities, rather than their particularities. The pursuer is
chasing the man in order to exact revenge for the murder of his family at night while they
slept in their beds. As Urquidi chases the man, he chastises himself for not being at home to
defend his family.
The shepherd (“The Man”): The shepherd is an innocent bystander who has partially
witnessed the unfolding drama of the man and the pursuer from afar. He tends his boss’s
sheep and sees the man wandering lost in the riverbed through the slats of a fence. Later in
the story the man encounters the shepherd and drinks milk directly from one of his sheep.
The two converse about the man’s family, and later on the shepherd finds the man dead in
the riverbed, shot in the back of the head by the pursuer.
Old Esteban (“At Daybreak”): Old Esteban is an elderly man whose job is to tend to Don
Justo’s cows. He brings them back to his boss Don Justo’s corral in San Gabriel each
morning. For no apparent reason he decides one morning that will kill one of the calves and
begins to kick it until Don Justo intervenes and begins to beat the old man instead. He loses
consciousness and wakes up to find that Don Justo has somehow died in the encounter.
Don Justo Brambila (“At Daybreak”): Justo Brambila is Old Esteban’s boss, and he is
described by Esteban as an angry man with a bad temper. In “At Daybreak” Don Justo
beats Esteban for kicking one of his calves to death and dies while doing so. The reader
does not find out whether Don Justo was killed by Esteban, whether he slipped on a rock
and hit his head, or simply died of anger. Don Justo is also sexually involved with his niece,
Margarita, with whom he sleeps at night. He returns her to her bed each morning and has
considered marrying her except that the priest would excommunicate them for incest.
Margarita (“At Daybreak”):: Margarita lives with her mother in her uncle Justo
Brambila’s house. She has an incestuous relationship with her uncle and she sleeps with him
at night before returning to her own bed each morning. Her mother does not know about
the relationship because she is bedridden and sleeps in an adjoining room, but the mother
does suspect that Margarita is seeing someone. Margarita discovers Justo’s body when she
runs to tell him that her mother has scolded her and called her a prostitute.
Justo Brambila’s Sister (“At Daybreak”): Justo Brambila’s sister and her daughter
Margarita live with Justo. She is a bedridden cripple and as a result does not know about the
incestuous relationship her daughter has with her brother. She does suspect Margarita is
sneaking out at night with men, however, and therefore accuses her of being a prostitute.
This accusation causes Margarita to run to Justo only to find him dead in the corral.
Tanilo Santos (“Talpa”): Tanilo is the brother of the narrator and the husband of Natalia.
He has an illness that covers his body in sores that ooze a pestilent yellow pus. His wife
cannot bear to be around him in this state and is therefore involved in an affair with the
narrator. Knowing the trip will kill him, the narrator and Natalia decide to encourage Tanilo’s
idea of making a pilgrimage to the Virgin of Talpa, who he hopes will cure him.
Natalia (“Talpa”): Natalia is Tanilo’s wife and the lover of Tanilo’s brother, the narrator.
Natalia cannot stand the sight and smell of Tanilo’s illness, so she conspires with the
narrator to urge Tanilo to undertake the pilgrimage to Talpa, even though she knows it will
kill him.
The narrator (“Talpa”): The narrator is the brother of Tanilo and the lover of Tanilo’s
wife, Natalia. The narrator is not named by Rulfo, but like other characters in The Burning
Plain he is driven by a primal instinct — in this case lust — which pushes him to seduce
Natalia and plot his brother’s death. Together with Natalia he pushes Tanilo to take the
voyage to Talpa to see the Virgin there, even though he knows the trip will kill the sick man.
After this death, the narrator finds that his relationship with Natalia has changed.
El Pichón (“The Burning Plain”): El Pichón is the narrator of “The Burning Plain.” He is a
revolutionary and a bandit (these become interchangeable terms as the story proceeds) in
Pedro Zamora’s band. Like his companions, he is an unscrupulous character who we can
suspect has no reservations about stealing and killing. Although the text does not describe
the narrator as involved in any murders, we know he fought the government soldiers and
raided many towns. Pichón is occasionally given particular commands by Pedro, but
generally plays the part of a chronicler who is relatively detached from the events he
describes, even though he undoubtedly takes part.
Pedro Zamora (“The Burning Plain”):: Pedro Zamora is the leader of a band of
revolutionaries who might be characterized more as bandits and murderers than inspired
ideologues. Zamora is a powerful leader who keeps his men constantly “alert.” His eyes are
always “open” and watching his men or counting them in silence. Though Pedro is an
effective leader, he also has a sadistic side. A shadowy figure, he appears and disappears at
different points in the story. At the end we learn that Pichón believes he was killed in Mexico
City after following a woman there.
El Chihuila, Los Cuatro, La Perra (“The Burning Plain”): These characters are men in
Pedro Zamora’s bloodthirsty band of revolutionaries. They are relatively indistinguishable
from one another and are killed off as the story proceeds. El Chihuila, whose death comes
last, is perhaps the most unsettling reminder of what awaits them all: he dies with a
bloodstained grin on his face, appearing to laugh at those who look at him.
The woman and her son (“The Burning Plain”): The woman who waits for Pichón at the
end of the story is one of the best women the narrator has encountered in his travels. She
is strong-willed and has waited for him to get out of jail for quite a while so she could
introduce him to their son, who is also called Pichón. The boy is different from his father,
however, in that he is a “good person” and not a bandit or murderer, despite the mean look
he displays.
Juvencio Nava (“Tell Them Not to Kill Me!”): Juvencio is the main character of “Tell
Them Not to Kill Me!” At times in the story he takes up the narration in first person. He is
the father of Justino and has been tied to a post where he awaits his execution by firing
squad. Juvencio is to be executed for murdering a man, Don Lupe, nearly forty years
earlier. Don Lupe had refused to let Juvencio graze his livestock on his land, so Juvencio
killed him. Since the murder Juvencio has spent his life hiding from strangers and living in
fear.
Justino Nava (“Tell Them Not to Kill Me!”): Justino is Juvencio’s son, and he is
pressured by his father to plead with the colonel for his father’s life. Justino is worried that
his association with Juvencio will make him a target for execution and hereby endanger his
wife and children, but he submits to his father’s begging and talks to the colonel.
Unfortunately this is to no avail and Juvencio is shot. Justino then has the unpleasant job of
transporting the corpse back to Palo de Venado for the wake.
Colonel Terreros (“Tell Them Not to Kill Me!”): The Colonel is Don Lupe’s son, and was
orphaned quite young due to the murder of his father by Juvencio. He has always had
difficulty forgetting that his father’s murderer was wandering around free, and as a result
when he finds Juvencio he is inflexible in executing him. The Colonel is not seen by
Juvencio, but only heard.
Don Lupe (Guadalupe) Terreros (“Tell Them Not to Kill Me!”): Don Lupe is the father
of the colonel and the previous friend of Juvencio. Don Lupe was the owner of the Puerta de
Piedra, a property with room for grazing that Juvencio lacked. Don Lupe would not share the
grazing field with Juvencio, so Juvencio began to let his animals into Don Lupe’s property at
night by cutting the fence so they could graze and Don Lupe would have to repair the fence
each morning. This continued until Don Lupe killed one of Juvencio’s yearlings. This sparked
Justino’s rage and he killed Don Lupe by hacking him first with a machete and then sticking
an ox goad in his belly.
The narrator (“Luvina”): The narrator is a teacher who used to work in the town of
Luvina. Now he lives in another town quite different from Luvina, where children actually
live happily and there is a river nearby. He is in a bar talking with an interlocutor who does
not speak in the story but who has been assigned to teach in the ghost town. The narrator
has taken it upon himself to tell the listener what he is getting into and describes the town
and its surroundings in vivid detail. He is rather unique in Rulfo’s works because although
descriptions of nature are relatively common, this narrator gives particularly vivid ones.
The listener/interlocutor (“Luvina”): The listener in “Luvina” does not say a word
throughout the story, but the narrator makes frequent references to him. The reader could
almost take the place of the person listening in the story. We know he is a new teacher,
likely relatively young and idealistic, and that he has been assigned to teach in Luvina,
where the narrator once worked. In the story the narrator has taken it upon himself to bring
the young man down to earth (if not frighten him) with his description of the dead-end town
that is his destination.
Feliciano Ruelas (“The Night They Left Him Alone”): Feliciano is the nephew of Tanis
and Librado. He and his uncles are Cristero Rebels during the Cristero War against the
revolutionary government. He is just a boy and is the one who laid an ambush for
Lieutenant Parra of the federal forces. When the story begins Feliciano and the two men are
fleeing at night toward the Comanja Sierra where they will meet up with the conservative
forces of the Catorce. They are exhausted, however, and Feliciano slowly begins to fall
behind. Eventually he sleeps against a tree by the side of the road and wakes up in horror
to realize he is alone and exposed to travelers on the road who may see him.
Tanis and Librado (“The Night They Left Him Alone”): Tanis and Librado are
Feliciano’s uncles. They appear to be the more conscientious and disciplined Cristero rebels,
but in contrast with their nephew they are caught by the federal soldiers and hung from a
mesquite tree. This is ironic since they insisted that traveling at night was the best way to
evade capture but it is Feliciano — who finally gave in to sleep — that survives in the end.
Urbano Gómez (“Remember”): Urbano is someone the narrator (and apparently his
interlocutor) knows from his childhood. Urbano was one of only two children to survive past
infancy in his family, and he was known for making money by scamming the other children
in the schoolyard. Although the narrator and his listener were friends with Urbano as
children, they ceased to be his friends when he started to ask them to repay the money
they owed his sister. Their friendship ended definitively when Urbano was caught fooling
around with his cousin and was expelled from school and left town. He later returned to
town as a policeman but refused to talk to anyone until he snapped one day and killed his
brother-in-law Nachito.
Eggplant (“Remember”): “Eggplant” is the nickname for Urbano’s mother. She was called
this because she seemed to get pregnant every time she fooled around with a new man.
She had many children but all died shortly after birth except for Urbano and his sister
Natalia. She lost her fortune paying for extravagant funerals and wakes for these children.
She died giving birth to her last baby.
Stuck Up (“Remember”): This is the unfortunate nickname of Urbano’s cousin. Urbano
was expelled from school when he was caught fooling around with her. This experience was
traumatic for both parties as they were subjected to ridicule by the entire school.
Nachito (“Remember”): Nachito is Urbano’s brother-in-law. He became feeble-minded
shortly after getting married and played songs all day on a mandolin. He was violently killed
by Urbano for no apparent reason when he tried to serenade him in the center of town.
Urbano seemed to show remorse the next day when the authorities caught up with him by
voluntarily assisting in his own execution by hanging.
The father (“No Dogs Bark”): The father of Ignacio is not described in any detail. We
only come to know him from the anxious questions (often rhetorical) and comments he
directs at his injured son sitting on his shoulders. He bears his burden out of love for
Ignacio's now-deceased mother. Toward the end of the story the father says that the
mother died in childbirth — while delivering a younger sibling of Ignacio (perhaps his twin)
— but that Ignacio would have killed her himself had she lived.
Ignacio (“No Dogs Bark”): We receive no physical description of the wounded son,
Ignacio. All we know of him is what he says (less and less as the story advances and
Ignacio slowly dies while sitting on his father’s shoulders) and what his father says of him.
We do know that he is not a boy, but rather an adult, because the narrator refers to the two
characters at the beginning as two “men.” The narrator also says of Ignacio that he speaks
very little, in some moments seems to sleep, and at others trembles as if he were very cold
as his father carries him toward the town of Tonaya.
The dogs (“No Dogs Bark”): Their sound of their barking is the sign that the two men
have reached Tonaya. They listen for it throughout the story but only at the end — when it
is too late and death has taken Ignacio — does the father hear them as he enters the town.
The Son (“Paso del Norte”): The son is the central character of “El Paso del Norte.”
Although he only narrates in third person for a few moments, his conversations with his
father, workers in Ciudad Juárez and the Immigration Officer constitute the vast majority of
the text. The son is a man struggling with a dilemma since he wants to provide for his
family but cannot afford to do so in Mexico. Desperate to feed them something other than
the weeds they have been eating he feels the only way to do this is to cross the border and
work for some time in the United States.
The Father (“Paso del Norte”): The father in “Paso del Norte” is portrayed by the son as
a selfish character. He knows how to make firecrackers and gunpowder but refuses to teach
his son this livelihood would give him financial security since they might have to compete
for business. He also never taught his son how to recite poetry which would have also
possibly earned him money. The father is not totally irresponsible, however, since he does
decide to take care of the son’s family in the end.
Tránsito (“Paso del Norte”): Tránsito is the son’s wife and the mother of his five
children. The father did not like Tránsito when he met her and compared her to a prostitute
he had met once on the street. She is a good woman according to the son, but at the end of
the story she abandon’s her children and runs off with a mule driver. The son pursues her at
the end of the story.
Estanislado (“Paso del Norte”): Estanislado is a character the son knew from home and
they decide to cross the Rio Grande together as the go to the “North.” As they cross the
river their group is fired upon from the other side and Estanislado is fatally wounded. He
dies after the son drags him to shore.
The Immigration Officer (“Paso del Norte”): The immigration officer is described at
first as a sergeant, but the son suspects he is from the army since he carries such a big
gun. He accuses the son of murdering Estanislado when he finds him in the desert but then
realizes the truth when he sees that the son has also been shot in the arm. The officer tells
the son that the people who shot at him were probably Apaches and that he ought to go
back home. He gives him some money for the trip and tells him not to come back.
Lucas Lucatero (“Anacleto Morones”): Lucas Lucatero is the main character and
narrator of “Anacleto Morones.” Like his mentor, Anacleto, Lucatero is a swindler who
specializes in stealing women’s virginity, especially women like those who — many years
after the fact — visit him in the story. Lucatero is a selfish rogue who now wants nothing to
do with these women since he considers them “old” and “dried up” and he knows that all
they are interested in doing is reviving the memory of Anacleto and turning him into a saint.
Anacleto Morones (“Anacleto Morones”): Anacleto or “the Holy Child” as the women of
Amula call him is Lucatero’s mentor in the art of swindling. He masquerades as a miracle
worker and is a false salesman of saintly relics. He tricks the women of the town to sleep
with him and preys on their desire to be loved and to approach something resembling
divinity. Anacleto appears to be a more despicable character than Lucatero, but this may be
because we only learn about him through his disenchanted apprentice.
Pancha Fregoso (“Anacleto Morones”): : Pancha is the first spinster of the Congregation
of Amula to address Lucatero and the last to leave his home. She was carried off by a man
named Homobono Ramos, according to Lucatero, although Pancha denies this and says they
were just “looking for berries.” At the end of the story Pancha agrees to spend the night
with Lucatero if he agrees to come with her to Amula to testify.
Nieves García (“Anacleto Morones”): Nieves García is one of the women from the Amula
congregation and she is an old lover of Lucatero. He pretends not to recognize her in the
story in order to provoke her departure. He slept with her when she was younger and then
never married her despite her waiting for him. When she found out he was married to
Anacleto’s daughter it was too late for her to marry anyone else.
Eldemiro (“Anacleto Morones”): Eldemiro is the owner of a drugstore in Amula. He is
described as an evil man by the women since he criticized the “Holy Child” for being an
impostor. He died of rabies and this seems like divine justice to the women.
Filomena (the “Dead One”) (“Anacleto Morones”): Disgusted with Lucatero’s behavior,
Filomena, known as the “Dead One” for her quiet nature, forces herself to vomit up all the
food and myrtle water he has offered her. Wanting to be purged of his evil influence,
Filomena does this into one of Lucatero’s flowerpots and promptly leaves.
Melquíades (“Anacleto Morones”): Melquíades is another of the women who visit
Lucatero’s home. She tells Lucatero that Anacleto never required her to sleep with him, only
to allow him to hold her through the night. Lucatero tells her that this is because she is old.
“The Orphan” (“Anacleto Morones”): “The Orphan” is the oldest of the women who visit
Lucatero. She claims to have found her lost parents in the arms of Anacleto Morones, and
says because of this it was the happiest night of her life.
Anastasio’s daughter Micaela (“Anacleto Morones”): Micaela claims that Anacleto
cured her husband of syphilis by burning him with a hot reed and rubbing saliva on his
sores. Lucatero says that the illness was probably only measles since he was cured the
same way as a child.
Major Themes
The problematic relationship between father and son: Problematic relationships
between father and son are plentiful in The Burning Plain. We see them in “No dogs bark,”
“Tell them not to kill me!” and “The burning plain,” among other stories. These strained
relationships can be symptomatic of the general breakdown of the family institution after
the Mexican Revolution, or they be metaphors for the wider political circumstances faced by
the Mexican nation during this period. Often in The Burning Plain, the father can represent
the state apparatus which endeavors to create a union with the land (frequently portrayed
in Rulfo and other Latin American works as the wife or mother). This union will ideally result
in a son representing the nation. As we see in many of the stories in this collection,
however, this process is almost always incomplete. The son (the nation) is typically in some
way estranged from his father (the state).
Eroticism: The theme of eroticism is also frequent in The Burning Plain. Among other
stories it appears in “Macario,” “We’re very poor,” and “Anacleto Morones.” At times this
eroticism is unconscious or innocent, as we see in “Macario” and “We’re very poor,” and at
others it is quite the opposite, as in “Anacleto Morones.” In any case, those who dedicate
themselves to erotic pleasure in Rulfo’s works are often characterized as mentally
unbalanced. Macario clearly has a developmental disorder that alienates him from
mainstream society, and should Tacha continue on the path of her sisters and become a
prostitute, she too will be treated as an immoral woman. As we see in “Anacleto Morones”
Lucas Lucatero is rejected by the Congregation of Amula as a lascivious heretic. It is
important to note that in all these cases eroticism is infertile.
Death: The anticipation of death is omnipresent in Rulfo’s collection of short stories, and
death itself appears in quite a few of them. “No dogs bark,” “Tell them not to kill me,”
“Talpa,” “Luvina,” “No dogs bark” and “The man” are just a few. The constant shadow of
death leads to a certain fatalism in The Burning Plain, which leads the reader to expect the
worst in any given situation. The reader is made aware of this predisposition in a story like
“The night they left him alone” where seemingly certain death awaits the protagonist but
claims his companions instead.
Disequilibrium in nature: Nature frequently appears as unbalanced in the stories in The
Burning Plain. In “They gave us the land” there is an overabundance of land, but an
extreme paucity of water makes that land useless. In “We’re very poor” we encounter just
the opposite: so much water that it threatens the family’s future. Nature rarely presents
itself in Rulfo’s works as a balanced force. Its unpredictability always conspires against the
characters, never working in their favor. The harsh natural environment mirrors the
behavior of the protagonists, who frequently act in an equally savage manner, as we see in
“The man.”
Testimony/Confession: Many of Rulfo’s stories have testimonial or confessional qualities.
In “Talpa” the main character confesses to having killed his brother, while in “Remember”
the narrator asks the reader or listener to confess to knowing Urbano Gómez. In “The man”
both the pursuer and the “man” confess their shortcomings to the reader, just as the
shepherd confesses to the authorities, and in “Macario” the main character tells us in an
intimate tone what everyday life is like for him. In these and other stories confession and
testimony have ties to the Catholic rite of penance, but they also have a narrative function.
The intimacy afforded by the confessional tone allows the narrators to tell their stories in an
unguarded fashion that lends itself well to the task of objective analysis. It is a
conversational, informal discourse that casts the reader in the role of judge or priest. We
are charged with evaluating the events as objectively as possible.
The Mexican Revolution and its shortcomings:
The stories in The Burning Plain cannot be fully appreciated without first considering the
historical context in which they take place. Nearly all of the stories take place after 1920,
following the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), and they all deal, even if indirectly, with
everyday life after this momentous event. Rulfo’s evaluation of the Revolution is almost
always negative, and his concerns range from topics as broad as: Cycles of violence (“The
man,” “The burning plain”); Illegitimate children (“The burning plain”); The unrealized goal
of land reform (“They gave us the land,” “Tell them not to kill me,” “The Hill of the
Comadres”); Failed educational reform (“Luvina”); Immigration to the North (“Paso del
Norte”); The subsequent Cristero War (“Anacleto Morones,” “The night they left him alone”).
In just under one hundred pages Rulfo manages to give us a vivid panoramic view of the
many struggles faced by rural Mexicans in the postrevolutionary period.
The Cristero War: Another historical theme which provides some context for these stories
is the Cristero War. This war, which occurred between 1926 and 1929 was a conservative
reaction to the Mexican Revolution (1910-20) and more specifically the "revolutionary"
government of Plutarco Elias Calles. Catholic militias rose up to protest the restricted rights
of the Church under this new government and the Constitution of 1917. The Cristero rebels
believed they were fighting for Christ. It is for this reason that Feliciano’s character
repeatedly makes references such as “Long live Christ, Our Lord!” in "The night they left
him alone" and Lucas Lucatero recounts having to confess at gunpoint before the Cristeros
in "Anacleto Morones." The conflict was ended through diplomacy just as the future of the
Cristero cause was beginning to appear more promising.
The "Rulfian" narrator: Due to the relatively homogeneous style, tone and content of
many of Rulfo’s stories in The Burning Plain, it is possible to conceive of nearly all the third
person narrators as nearly interchangeable. This character, (along with nearly all the
others) is dispossessed of any physical description. His narration is limited and occurs in
third person. This narrator’s job—the same in each short story narrated in the third
person—is to discreetly point out relevant and often more poetic details to the reader (for
instance, in “No dogs bark” he notes that the father and son form just one wavering
shadow, “una sola sombra, tambaleante”). Concentrated brevity is the goal in the narrator’s
discourse, since Rulfo felt that the best short stories should be as short as possible.
Glossary of Terms
“Arroyo":
A stream.
“Barranca”: A gully or ravine.
“Campesino”: A peasant.
“Casuarina”: A tree whose leaves make a musical sound in the wind.
“Caudillo”: A charismatic military and political leader who acts as a strongman or warlord.
“Chachalaca”: A chicken-like bird found in Central America. It has greenish feathers and
can fly.
“Comadre”: The godmother of one's child or mother of one's godchild. Literally, “comother.”
“Floripondio”: A Peruvian tree that grows to be three meters high.
“Hibiscus”: A conspicuous tropical or subtropical flower with five petals in a trumpet shape.
It comes in tones of white to pink, red, purple or yellow.
“Huizache”: A spiny tree found in arid parts of Mexico.
“Jarillas”: Flowering bushes that can grow to be three meters high.
“Licenciado”: A lawyer or government representative.
“Machismo”: The prominent exhibition of qualities typically considered “masculine,” often
resulting in an emphasis on virility or even male chauvinism.
“Maguey”: A fibrous plant that can be used to make thread and a cactus sap beverage.
“Mescal”: A distilled liquor made from Agave plants.
“Naturalism”: A philosophical and literary movement which gained impulse during the
19th century. It emphasized the importance of realist representation and science, as
opposed to the representation of idealized forms.
“Novena”: A prayer group for a deceased person; A book containing prayers dedicated to a
deceased person.
“Picaresque”: A humorous, satirical, realist narrative subgenre that usually deals with the
adventures of a lower-class hero (or anti-hero) who survives though clever manipulation of
his surroundings and wit. This genre first became popular in hispanic literature during the
Spanish Golden Age in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.”
“Scapulary”: Garment consisting of a long wide piece of woolen cloth worn over the
shoulders with an opening for the head; part of a monastic habit
“Zapotlán”: A city in the state of Jalisco
Short Summary
The short story “Macario” is actually more of a monologue. In it the orphaned town idiot
Macario describes in a flowing narrative style some of the aspects of his everyday life. He
begins by talking about how his Godmother, with whom he lives, who has asked him to
squash the frogs by the sewer which keep her awake at night. He then goes aspects of his
life in her home and his relationship with Felipa, the other woman who lives with
Godmother, in one long paragraph. We learn he suffers from being bullied by other
townspeople who throw stones at him, and that he likes to bang his head on different
surfaces to listen to the sound it makes. He also has an unusual relationship with Felipa who
used to feed him her breast milk and tickle him in bed all night long.
“They Gave Us the Land” involves four men (the narrator, Esteban, Melitón and Faustino)
who are crossing a portion of the “Big Plain” somewhere in central Mexico. The men have
been given this land by the government in order to cultivate it, but it consists entirely of
sterile, desert terrain. As they cross the plain they recall a conversation they had with the
official who gave them the land. He took their guns and horses and set them off walking to
claim their plots. As they walk, they sense for a moment it is going to rain, but it doesn’t.
Only one drop of water falls. The narrator also notices that Esteban is carrying a red hen
under his coat. Esteban doesn’t keep it for food, but rather just because he cares about the
animal’s welfare and didn’t want to leave it at home. Eventually the party gets to the other
side of the plain where the town and river are, and they go their separate ways. They will
presumably find whatever work they can and not return to the useless land they have been
“given.”
In “The Hill of the Comadres” a man describes his relationship with the most powerful family
at the Hill of the Comadres, the Torricos. He explains how although the Torricos (more
specifically Remigio and Odilón) weren’t liked by most who lived there, they were by him —
at least initially. He tells us that the people who lived in the village feel the need to hide
their possessions when the Torricos are around, and that they are always on the lookout to
rob those who pass by the town on the road below the hill. One time the narrator
participated in the robbery of a mule driver and discovered to his surprise that Remigio and
Odilón had killed the man. The narrator decides not to participate again. He then tells us
that he killed Remigio Torrico. This happened one night when Remigio came to him and
accused him of killing his brother Odilón and taking the fourteen pesos he had on him at the
time to buy a new blanket. The brother had actually been killed by the family in power in
the nearby town of Zapotlán, but Remigio wouldn’t listen and picked up a machete to kill
the narrator. The narrator had been mending a sack with a harness needle and managed to
stab Remigio in the belly first. Remigio then dies an unpleasant death. The narrator
remembers that the event happened during a festival because every time rockets were shot
off he would see a flock of buzzards rise up from the place where he hid Remigio’s body.
The story “We’re Very Poor” begins as the narrator describes how his family’s fortunes have
taken a tragic turn. Torrential rains have begun to fall and have ruined his family’s rye
harvest, which they did not have time to bring inside. Then, the family discovered that the
cow (La Serpentina) the narrator’s sister Tacha had been counting on for her dowry has
been swept away by the rising river. They are still uncertain as to whether its calf survived
the flood. This is the last hope for Tacha, because if it is lost no good man will want to
marry her and the father is sure that, like her two older sisters, she will succumb to the
advances of local men and becoming a “bad woman” or a prostitute. As the story closes,
Tacha watches the river and cries. The narrator notices that her breasts rise and fall with
her sobs and observes that these signs of her impending womanhood are likely to be the
cause of her ruin.
“The Man” is a dark and relatively disorienting story told in two parts. The first part of the
story is told in third person from two alternating points of view — that of a “man” (José
Alcancía) and “the one pursuing him” (Urquidi). We learn the man killed the pursuer’s wife
and two sons with a machete while they were asleep in their beds. This occurred while the
pursuer was away from home mourning the death of his infant son. The man’s goal had
been to only kill the pursuer (as an act of revenge for the murder of his brother), but since
it was dark and he didn’t want to give himself away he killed all three of the people in the
house to be sure. Since the pursuer was not at home, he decides to track the man down
and kill him. Most of the first part of the story narrates the lost and confused man’s attempt
to flee a labyrinth-like riverbed, while the pursuer tracks him. The second part of the story
is told in first person to government authorities by a shepherd who has found the body of
José, riddled with bullets (presumably killed by the pursuer). He explains that he saw José
alive as he ran around the riverbed and even talked to him a few times before one day
finding him dead. The shepherd is anxious now because the authorities have begun to
accuse him of helping the dead man.
The story “At Daybreak” is also told from multiple perspectives. It begins with a description
of the city of San Gabriel at dawn and Old Esteban who is driving cattle to Don Justo’s
corral. When they arrive there he begins to kick one of the calves until his boss, Don Justo,
intervenes and instead begins to beat him until he loses consciousness. When the
perspective shifts to Esteban we learn that Don Justo somehow died in the scuffle, although
no one knows if Esteban killed him in the fight, if the man slipped and hit his head or simply
died of rage. Margarita, Justo’s niece and lover, was the person who discovered his body. In
any case Esteban ends up burdened with the blame and seems fatalistically prepared to
accept whatever verdict the authorities will render. The story ends twenty-four hours it
began with yet another eerie description of foggy San Gabriel “at daybreak.”
“Talpa” is the story of three characters who make a pilgrimage to the city of Talpa from
their home in Zenzontla. The pilgrimage is being undertaken by the leprosy-stricken Tanilo
with the help of his brother the narrator and his wife Natalia. Tanilo hopes that the Virgin of
Talpa will cure his illness. The narrator remorsefully tells us from the beginning, however,
that the voyage is tainted by the fact that he and Natalia are lovers and know that the trip
to Talpa will kill Tanilo rather than heal him. The voyage is long and difficult, and along the
way Tanilo loses hope and wants to turn back but his brother and wife will not let him. They
travel with other pilgrims and their only rest from the suffocating dust and heat of the road
comes for a few hours at nighttime, during which time the narrator and Natalia make love in
the shadows. When they finally reach Talpa, Tanilo needs his family’s help to drag his
rotting body through the streets to the Virgin of Talpa. He dances before her with the other
devotees and tries to emulate Christ with a crown of thorns, but he eventually dies of his
exhaustion-exacerbated sickness. Along the way, however, the narrator and Natalia have
begun to regret how they drove Tanilo to his death. When they arrive home Natalia cries in
her mother’s arms and the narrator knows that the experience has made their relationship
impossible.
“The Burning Plain” is the story of a band of murderers and thieves who call themselves
revolutionaries and terrorize the Great Plain and its surroundings, burning and plundering
nearly every town and field they encounter. The narrator, El Pichón, is a member of this
band and he chronicles the men’s activities and relates them to the reader. The band is lead
by Pedro Zamora, a fearless man who keeps the revolutionaries on their toes. Along the
way they fight with Federal soldiers, winning some battles and losing many more, until their
cruelty — specifically their derailment of a train — causes the government to more actively
rid the Plain of them. At the end of the story nearly all the men have been killed by the
soldiers, and Pichón is one of the few who has survived. He has been jailed “only” for
kidnapping and rape, and when he gets out one of his previous female conquests confronts
him with her child. The boy displays the same mean look Pichón so often bore, but the
mother insists that her son is a “good person” and not a bandit or killer. To this the narrator
can only “hang his head.”
In “Tell Them Not to Kill Me!” Juvencio Nava pleads with his son Justino to intervene on his
behalf in order to stop his execution by firing squad. Juvencio is about to be executed by a
colonel for the murder of a man, Don Lupe, forty years earlier. The conflict arose when Don
Lupe would not allow Juvencio to let his livestock graze on his land, and Juvencio did it
anyway. After Don Lupe killed one of Juvencio’s animals, Juvencio responded by killing the
man with a machete. What Juvencio did not anticipate was the torment he would endure
throughout the rest of his life as he constantly fled from the law in order to save his skin. He
was successful up until his capture, now, at sixty years of age. It is only when he is
confronted by the colonel that he understands that the colonel is the orphaned son of Don
Lupe who has finally caught his father’s murderer. Despite Juvencio’s pleas that he has
suffered enough for his crime, he is executed shortly afterward and his son Justino has to
carry the bullet-riddled body home on the back of his burro.
The story “Luvina” involves a one-sided conversation between an older teacher who used to
teach in the town of Luvina quite a while ago and a younger one who has been assigned to
work there. Although the listener does not say anything in the story, the conversation takes
place in bar in a town on the young teacher’s way to Luvina. What stands out most in this
story is the narrator’s description of this ghost town (indeed, the inhabitants seem closer to
death than life) — “the place where sadness nests” — and the imposing terrain it occupies.
The most life-like aspect of the village is the wind that erodes everything from the high hill
that it rests on to weather-worn people who live there. It is a town with no future where
only old women live since their husbands and children move away as quickly as they can.
Additionally, the townspeople were skeptical of the narrator’s idealistic suggestion that they
appeal to the government for help since the government has no interest in a population as
isolated as theirs. On top of this, the inhabitants say they cannot leave because someone
must watch over their dead, who continue to live in the town. After living there amongst
these people with his family for as long as he could bear it, the narrator moved away. At the
end of the story the narrator (at this point drunk) falls asleep on the table.
In “The Night They Left Him Alone,” three Cristero rebels in the Cristero War (Feliciano
Ruelas and his two uncles Tanis and Librado) flee an ambush they laid for the federal forces.
The escape takes place at night in order to avoid the sentries, but the three men are
exhausted so they proceed at a very slow pace. Feliciano, the main character, begins to fall
behind and — in an act that seems at the time to foreshadow his demise — he eventually
elects to spend the night sleeping at the foot of a tree beside the road. In the morning he
wakes to the sound of mule drivers who greet him, but Feliciano is horrified that he might
be turned in by them so he leaves the road and throws away his rifles to continue his
journey in daylight. He vividly imagines the mule drivers telling the soldiers about having
seen him and prays to God for help. Feliciano reaches the town of Agua Zarca and creeps
along a fence in order to pass through it. As he does he hears soldiers discussing how they
are lying in wait for him in the town and how he and the other Cristero rebels are headed to
the sierra of Comanja. He also sees his uncles hanging from nooses from a mesquite tree.
Feliciano creeps along the fence until he can move no further and then makes a run for it
out into the open plain. Once he feels safe he can finally breathe.
The story “Remember” comes in the form of a monologue by a narrator who urges an
interlocutor (or, more likely, the reader) to “remember” Urbano Gómez. In this very short
story the narrator runs through a series of memories surrounding Urbano, including
memorable figures in his family tree and some of the things Urbano did that make him
worth remembering. The narrator tells us about how Urbano was one of only two children
his mother successfully gave birth to, and how he was adept at swindling children at school
by selling them fruit he had stolen or bought for less money elsewhere. The narrator and
the unnamed person he is speaking with also drank the juice Urbano’s sister sold without
paying for it. This distanced them from him and then when Urbano was caught fooling
around with his cousin at school, his expulsion and the ridicule he faced definitively
separated him from his peers. Urbano left the town but later returned as a police officer. By
then he was a sullen, bitter man and one day he snapped and beat his brother-in-law
Nachito to death for no apparent reason. The next day he was caught by the authorities
whereupon he willingly put a noose around his neck and picked the tree from which he was
to be hanged.
In “No Dogs Bark,” A father carries his injured son Ignacio in a sitting position on his
shoulders across an arid landscape at night toward the town of Tonaya. The father asks the
son (whose thighs are blocking his ears) every so often if he can hear the dogs of the town
barking yet, announcing their arrival, but the son either says no or is too hurt to respond.
As they proceed along the banks of a stream, the tired father talks to his semi-conscious
son and criticizes his conduct. Through these words we learn he has turned into a highway
robber and murderer who has even killed one of his father’s friends, Tranquilino. As the
story develops we finally learn that the two men are in this predicament because the father
happened across the gravely injured Ignacio (presumably from a robbery gone wrong) and
— despite having disavowed and disowned him — decided to carry him to the town for
medical attention. As the two men enter the town, the father finally hears the dogs barking,
but the body of his son has started to slump lifelessly. Due to the dark tone of the story, we
can be nearly certain they are too late and Ignacio has died.
“Paso del Norte” is a story comprised almost entirely of dialog. It begins with a son and his
father talking about how the son wants his father to take care of his family and five children
while he goes “North” to look for work. He needs to do this in order to earn money so his
family can eat. They are currently eating weeds and starving to death. The father refuses to
do this because he never approved of Tránsito, the son’s wife, and because he thinks the
son’s family should not be his burden. The son becomes angry, however, because his father
never helped him develop a solid profession but rather pushed him out the door as early as
possible. The son explains that the father didn’t even teach him how to make fireworks or
gunpowder because he didn’t want the competition. As a result the son has been working as
a pig seller, but this work has dried up. The two argue for some time about who’s fault the
son’s failure is, and finally the father agrees to take care of the son’s family. When the son
goes North he has to work in Ciudad Juárez (formally known as El Paso del Norte) for some
time to make enough money to cross the border. The narration then shifts forward to a
second conversation that the son has with his father after his return home. He explains how
he and a friend from home, Estanislado, paid for someone to take them across the border,
but as they crossed the Rio Grande the group was fired upon from the U.S. side. Estanislado
was gravely wounded and the son dragged him to safety but he died. The son had been
shot in the arm as well and in the morning was confronted by an immigration officer who
asked whether he killed the dead man. The son explained what happened and the officer
told them it was probably Apaches who shot at them. He told the son to go home. The
father then tells him that all his suffering was for nothing since, although the children are
sleeping in the back, Tránsito has run off with a mule driver and the father had to sell the
son’s house. The son says he will repay his father but first runs off to catch up with his wife.
In “Anacleto Morones,” Lucas Lucatero, the narrator and main character, sees that a group
of ten old women dressed in black and carrying scapularies is approaching his home. He
immediately recognizes them as the Congregation of Amula and desperately tries to think of
a way to divert their attention from what he knows is the reason for their visit: Anacleto
Morones. He greets them squatting on a rock naked, attempting to scandalize them, but he
finds them to be persistent and they come inside. Finally he is forced to listen to their
request that he accompany them back to Amula in order to testify that Anacleto, the “Holy
Child,” is worthy of becoming a saint. Lucatero knows, however, that Anacleto is really
nothing more than a devious rogue who, along with him, tricked many of these women into
sleeping with him by pretending to be a miracle-worker. Lucatero turns down the women of
Amula and they begin to chastise his lack of faith and the way he abandoned some of them
after sleeping with them. Lucatero toys with them and returns their insults with cruel jokes
about their age and status as single women. Eventually, infuriated, they abandon his house
one by one until only Pancha is left. He asks Pancha if she will spend the night with him and
says that if she does he will accompany her to Amula to testify. Pancha assents. Meanwhile,
we learn that the narrator held a grudge against Anacleto and buried him alive in his home;
grave stones still mark his final resting place. Pancha remains unaware of this, however.
The story ends the following morning when Pancha remarks to Lucatero that he is a poor
lover and that Anacleto was far better.
Summary and Analysis of "They gave us the land" ("Nos han dado la
tierra")
Summary
The story begins with the narrator hearing the sound of dogs barking after walking for hours
without coming across a trace of anything living on the plain. He describes the “Big Plain” as
a totally inhospitable place where the ground is so dry it cracks. There is a town ahead in
the distance, though, with all the sounds and smells that typically accompany it.
The narrator explains that he and his three companions (named Faustino, Esteban and
Melitón) have been walking since dawn and that it is now four in the afternoon. The men
walk two by two and as the narrator looks over his shoulder he realizes that they are now
alone. At eleven o’clock there were more than twenty men in their party, but that number
has dwindled down to the four that remain.
Faustino remarks that it may rain, and the four men look up at a black cloud in the hope he
is right, but then return to their silence. No one speaks because it is simply too hot.
Suddenly “a big fat drop of water falls, making a hole in the earth and leaving a mark like
spit. It’s the only one that falls.” The men wait for other drops, but none come and the
cloud races off into the distance. As a result, “the drop of water which fell here by mistake is
gobbled up by the thirsty earth.
The narrator complains to himself about the enormity of the plain and its uselessness, and
the men begin walking again. He remembers that since he was a boy he has never seen rain
fall on the plain. There are no animals or birds that live there, and only a few huizache trees
and some patches of grass.
The story’s protagonist remembers that before they set out on foot, the men had horses
and carried rifles, but that is not the case now. He notes that the government officials’
decision to take away their rifles was a good idea since it can be dangerous to be armed in
these parts. If you have your rifle with you, you can be killed without warning in these
parts. In the narrator’s opinion, taking the horses away was a bad idea, however, since they
would have made the trip across the plain much easier.
The narrator notes how, when his eyes scan the horizon of the plain, it is remarkable how
they don’t find anything to settle on. There is just open, useless land. Only a few lizards
stick their heads out from time to time before returning to the shade of a rock. The narrator
explains that this land has been given to them for planting—but where will they find shade
to rest from their work?
The narrator goes on to describe the conversation the men had with the government official.
To the peasants dismay this man explained to them that they could have all the land on the
Big Plain up to the town. They protested that they wanted to be near the river, where the
town and the cultivatable land can be found, but the officials said the issue wasn’t up for
discussion. They only sarcastically remarked that the men shouldn’t be “afraid to have so
much land just for yourselves.” The men complained that there is no water on the plain, and
the official’s response is that when the rainy season comes, there will be plenty of water for
corn. The peasants press him and argue that no corn will grow because the land is too hard
for planting. The official’s final response is that they can complain in writing to the
government, but that they should be arguing with the large landowners and not the
government who is giving them land. The men immediately say their complaint is with the
Big Plain and not the government. They try to start the conversation over but the official
refuses to listen.
This is what has brought the men to cross the plain in search of arable land. It is clear,
however, that the plain is no more than a “sizzling frying pan.” Not even buzzards appear
on the plain. They can only be seen flying high and fast in order to get away as quickly as
possible. Melitón speculates that perhaps they could run mares on the plain, a comment
that makes the others think he is suffering from sunstroke since they don’t have any mares.
The narrator then notices that Esteban is carrying a red hen under his coat. When he asks
Esteban where he found the hen, Esteban replies that she is his and that she’s from his
chicken yard. He hasn’t brought her along for food but rather because he wants to take care
of her. He brings her with him whenever he goes far from home. The narrator recommends
that Esteban let her out of his coat so that she doesn’t get smothered. Esteban takes her
out and blows air on her.
Finally the men come to the cliff. They descend it in single file and Esteban holds the hen by
her legs and swings her to avoid hitting her head on the rocks. After walking for so long in
the open they they enjoy getting dusty during the descent. As soon as they reach the
bottom of the barranca the land improves. Birds are flying over the green trees above the
river, and they can hear the dogs barking nearer now. The wind carries the other noises of
the town toward them.
When they get to the first houses Esteban unties the hen’s legs and lets her run off into
some nearby trees. He tells the others this is where he is stopping and they all begin to go
their separate ways as they move into town. The narrator closes the story with the simple
declaration: “The land they’ve given us is back up yonder.”
Analysis
The need of the rural poor for arable land was one of the main objectives of the Mexican
Revolution. The title of the story lets us know from the very beginning that we are now in
the postrevolutionary period, where the goals of the armed uprising have been realized and
the peasants have received the parcels of land they laid so many laid down their lives for.
The irony, however, is that the land they have been given is the desert-like Big Plain, a
place which no one—not even buzzards—wants to occupy for very long. Indeed, as soon as
the four men set foot upon its surface, their only goal is to cross it and get to the town and
river on the other side. The Revolution, which seemed to be a breeding ground for great
ideals, has proved to be as sterile as the cracked surface of the plain.
Rulfo’s use of the present tense in the story brings to life the sense of exhaustion and
defeat that the travelers face, and implies that this failure of the Revolution is something
that continues to this very day. This narrative strategy is accompanied by an overwhelming
sense of irony, which is evident in the way the travelers simply move from a town on one
side of the plain to the other, gaining nothing. This fatalistic futility is crystallized in
especially poetic fashion in the one drop of rain that falls “by mistake” on the plain and is
immediately swallowed up. It is also supremely ironic that before setting out to claim their
land the men must surrender the horses and weapons that helped them win the Revolution.
The implication is that they have ceased to be revolutionaries and must now return to being
poor, oppressed peasants who—once again—lack the means to impose their will on the
world. In addition, apparently one set of wealthy landowners has simply been replaced by
another, since the official invites them to complain to the “large-estate owners” and not to
him. Clearly the government has returned to being of little use to rural folk and—as we see
in the character of the official—a new opportunistic bureaucracy with little sense of solidarity
has risen.
It is also notable that this story was the first to appear in the version of The Burning Plain
which was printed in 1945. In this manner, Rulfo clearly wanted to foreground the issue of
land reform toward the end of the presidency of Manuel Ávila Camacho (1940-1946), and
more specifically this government’s abandonment of the project of land redistribution.
This story is perhaps most notable for the way it concentrates into so few pages the deep
irony and resignation of this particular historical moment. Rather than the beginning of
something new, the Revolution has proven to be a disenfranchising and uprooting event.
This is evident in the moving description of Esteban who does not want to leave behind his
hen since there would be no one at home to take care of it. It is important that, as in his
other stories, Rulfo never critiques these problems explicitly. The reader is lead to them
along the same winding path that the characters take as they cross the desert. Like the
narrator, it often occurs to us that “we’ve walked more than the ground we’ve covered,” and
that the characters’ story means much more than the six pages it is written on.
Summary and Analysis of "Macario"
Summary
This story, which is better described as a monologue, begins with Macario describing the
task of killing frogs that his Godmother has set for him: “I am sitting by the sewer waiting
for the frogs to come out.” Godmother had trouble sleeping the night before due to their
singing so she “ordered” him to sit by the sewer with a board to “whack to smithereens
every frong that may come hopping out.” Macario discusses the difference in appearance
between toads and frogs, noting that like the toads, Godmother’s eyes are black, whereas
like the frogs, Felipa’s eyes are green. Frogs are good to eat, whereas toads are not, a
detail which we later learn corresponds with the two women’s general disposition and
relationship with Macario.
Macario tells us that he loves Felipa more than Godmother, but that Godmother is the one
who pays for the all the food in the house, so he and Felipa follow her orders. Felipa shops
and cooks for Macario and Godmother, and we get the impression she is a housekeeper who
receives food and lodging in exchange for the work she does. Macario’s tells us his job in
the house is to do the dishes and carry wood for the stove. Godmother divides up and
serves the food. To Macario’s delight, Felipa sometimes doesn’t feel hungry and gives him
her food.
The protagonist then begins to tell us of the most dominant force in his life, hunger. He
says: “I’m always hungry and I never get filled up,” “They say in the street that I’m crazy
because I never stop being hungry. Godmother has heard them say that. I haven’t.” As the
story develops we learn that Macario is generally unaware of what other people think of
him, only of what he thinks of them. As a result, Godmother is usually the one to tell him of
his effect on the outside world and is careful to protect it from Macario’s disruptive nature.
At church she ties his hands with her shawl (“she says it’s because they say I do crazy
things”) so that he is tied to her. Macario also tells us that he has been accused of
“hanging” a lady, “just to be doing it,” and that sometimes he is invited to eat by people
who then throw stones at him. Due to these negative encounters with the outside world, he
prefers life at Godmother’s house.
Macario then goes on to describe Felipa’s breast milk, “as sweet as hibiscus flowers,” and
better than goat’s or sow’s milk. She used to come into his room every night and lean over
him to let him suckle, at “the breasts she has where we just have ribs.” Macario says that
the hibiscus flowers often let him forget his hunger, and that Felipa’s milk has the same
flavor. He prefers the milk to the flowers however, because as he sucked, she would also
“tickle him all over.” At the end she would usually sleep by him until morning. This section
of the text shows us the complex nature of Macario and Felipa’s relationship.
One reason Macario appreciates Felipa’s company is because he isn’t afraid of being damned
to hell if he is in her presence. She puts at ease his fear of dying, saying that when she goes
to heaven she will tell God about Macario’s sins and ask for his forgiveness so that Macario
doesn’t have to worry anymore. She goes to confession everyday to help rid Macario of the
devils he has inside by confessing for him.
Macario then begins to tell us about his hard head and how he loves to bang it against
different surfaces (pillars, the floor) with different rhythms and intensities in order to make
it sound like a drum. He especially wants to reproduce the sound of the drum that
accompanies the wood flute he hears outside when in church. He also refers to leaving the
house at night in order to wander the streets.
Macario explains that he needs to have his hands tied after strangers throw rocks at him
because he likes to pick at the scabs from his injuries. He says that the blood has a good
taste, like that of Felipa’s milk. This is why he doesn’t leave the house. He likes to bar the
door to his room so that his sins can’t find him in the dark. When he goes to sleep he
doesn’t leave a torch on so he can see the cockroaches that climb on him, instead he just
slaps them and listens to them “pop like firecrackers.” He doesn’t know if crickets make the
same sound when smashed. Felipa says the noise of crickets drowns out the screams of the
souls in purgatory. Macario therefore concludes that without crickets, “the world would be
filled with the screams of holy souls.” Every once in a while he feels a scorpion crawl across
him and has to stay very still. Felipa was stung once on the behind by a scorpion and was in
horrible pain. Macario rubbed spit on the sting but it didn’t help.
The protagonist says he likes it better in his room than outside because Godmother lets him
eat whatever he wants, including the slop for the pigs. Macario will stay at the house as
long as they continue to feed him. He then returns to the original topic of conversation and
says no frogs have come out of the sewer while he has been talking. He says Godmother
will be angry if the frogs start singing again and pray to the saints to send him straight to
hell without purgatory (where his papa and mama are) so he had better keep talking. With
the last lines of the story Macario returns to the topic of Felipa’s milk, saying he wishes he
could have a few swallows of it.
Analysis
“Macario” is undoubtedly the most challenging of Rulfo’s short stories to summarize due to
its narrative style. The story is really more of a monologue than a short story, and it is
delivered by the protagonist, Macario, in one long paragraph in the first person. The flowing
nature of Macario’s discourse resembles the technique of “stream of consciousness,” as the
character free-associates, jumping from one topic to another and back in very little time.
The sentences are short and simple, as in other Rulfo stories. The difference is that, in
addition to capturing the voice of simple rural folk, here Rulfo’s language also communicates
Macario’s childlike nature.
While the rural town life Macario describes is very much the same as we encounter in other
Rulfo stories, the “stream of conscious” narration is quite different. This is one of the few
stories where there is no external narrator. The presentation of the character of Macario is
akin to that which appears in Rulfo’s novel Pedro Páramo, where characters’ thoughts are
often related in an unmediated manner.
This exploration of Macario’s complicated psyche is also notable when compared with the
other stories in the collection. The majority of the characters in The Burning Plain are
involved in basic but intense — and often instinctual — struggles with the land, the
elements, or political forces beyond their control. In many cases these vaguely outlined
characters are almost mutually substitutable. In “Macario,” however, we find the author
content to explore the psyche of a most unique and irreplaceable figure, that of the town
idiot. He is undoubtedly one of the most complex of Rulfo’s characters. His nature is
strongly ambivalent, as he alternately entertains us (as he describes his Godmother’s habit
of tying him up while in church) or repulses us (as he describes eating pig slop or crushing
cockroaches or frogs and scratching his scabs). The story of his adoption by Godmother and
Felipa is also a touching one, yet his relationship with the latter is likewise simultaneously
beautiful and strange — or even taboo. These elements all combine to make “Macario” a
particularly complex and unusual short story in Rulfo’s collection, both in its presentation
and in the demands it makes on us as readers.
Macario’s relationship with Felipa is one of the most interesting aspects of this short story,
and is one source of the ambivalence it produces in the reader. Felipa is undoubtedly a
nurturing figure in Macario’s life since she gives him her extra food, prays for him, and
treats him with kindness. At the same time, her nurturing qualities manifest themselves in
an unsettling fashion when we learn she used to feed him her breast milk. The reader is not
given a time reference on when this occurred, we only know it happened when Macario was
younger (and we do not know how old he is now). This would seem rather innocent if we did
not also learn that after feeding him she would tickle him and spend the rest of the night in
his bed. This strange undercurrent of sexuality is actually a theme in Rulfo’s production that
some have characterized as “unconscious eroticism”: “Felipa used to come every night to
the room where I sleep, and snuggle up next to me, leaning over me […]. Then she would
fix her breasts so that I could suck the sweet, hot milk that came out in streams on my
tongue.” We also observe this technique of “unconscious eroticism” in the description of the
pubescent Tacha, whose growing breasts and work for her perdition, in “We’re very poor.”
One cannot discount Felipa’s role as a surrogate mother to Macario, however. While, the
moment of breastfeeding and subsequent tickling has erotic tones, these are complicated in
turn by other factors in the wider Mexican political landscape. The desperate economic
situation has evidently left all three of the characters in the story displaced. Although
Macario is the most overt outcast, the husbandless Godmother has clearly been isolated
from a relatively wealthy class since she willingly takes on Macario and Felipa. Felipa in turn
must have also lost her family in order to be capable of breastfeeding.
As a result, these characters have all managed to subtly build a makeshift family out of the
wreckage of the post-revolutionary period. This fact makes Macario Rulfo’s happiest
character (perhaps his only happy character), and makes this short story perhaps the only
evidence of the rural poor triumphing over adversity in The Burning Plain. Sadly, Rulfo could
be placing this story at the beginning of the collection in order to metaphorically represent
the destruction of happiness in the stories that follow.
Summary and Analysis of “The Hill of the Comadres” ("La Cuesta de las
Comadres")
Summary
The narrator begins by talking about the Torricos, the controlling family of the Hill of the
Comadres who, despite being good friends of his, are the enemies of the other residents of
the hill and of those who live in nearby Zapotlán. He does note, however, that he was
friends with them up until shortly before they died, a detail that foreshadows the ultimate
outcome of the story.
He tells us that the Torricos were constantly quarreling with those who lived on the Hill of
the Comadres. The Torricos owned all the land on the Hill, though when the land was
distributed most of it was divided equally among the sixty who lived there and the Torricos
got just a small piece like everyone else. Yet, the Hill still belonged to them. The narrator’s
land belonged to the brothers Odilón and Remigio Torrico, and he acknowledges no one ever
bothered to protest, “Everybody knew that’s the way it was.”
However, people began to periodically leave the Hill, simply crossing the cattle guard and
disappearing among the oaks. The narrator thought of doing the same, but he liked the hill
and was one of the few on good terms with the Torricos. The narrator is proud of his simple
though rugged plot of land on the Hill, especially of the corn he grows at a gully called Bull’s
Head, which does not require salt to taste good. He observes that the Torricos put salt on
everything, but they never needed it for his corn.
Even after the Torricos died, nobody came back. At first the narrator mended their houses
for them, but abandoned the task after a while. He describes the natural environment of the
hill in vivid terms, especially the view of nearby Zapotlán, which has now been obscured by
the jarillas (flowering bushes) that blow back and forth in the wind. When the Torricos
would sit and look in the direction of Zapotlán the narrator always thought they were
thinking of possibly going into town, but he later discovered they were actually watching the
sandy road below.
The narrator says that from time to time Remigio Torrico would lead his brother away from
the Hill to pursue something interesting he spotted off in the distance. When they did this,
everything would change on the Hill of the Comadres, because all the residents would bring
out the animals they had been hiding in the caves and hills and put them in their corrals. At
these times you could see how everyone had sheep, turkey and corn that was invisible
before, and it seemed as though the Hill had always been a peaceful village.
Then the Torricos would return, signaled by their dogs who would run out to greet them.
The residents could tell how far away they were and in which direction by the sound of the
barks. At these times everyone would hide all their things again. The narrator reiterates that
while “this was the kind of fear they spread,” he never was afraid of them because they
were friends. Sometimes he wishes he wasn’t so old so he could join in on whatever they
were doing.
He tried one time to help them rob a mule driver, but he realized that night that his body
wasn’t what it used to be: “like the life I had in me had been used up and couldn’t take any
more strain.” When they got to the mule driver he didn’t get up to see who was coming. The
narrator assumed he was waiting for the Torricos and that’s why their arrival didn’t surprise
him. However, as they were moving the sacks the driver didn’t make a sound and just lay
on the grass. The narrator pointed out to the Torricos that he seemed to be dead, but they
told him the man was just asleep. The narrator then kicked the man several times but it
was clear he was dead, though Remigio said he was just stunned since Odilón had hit him
with a piece of wood. The narrator says that’s how he found out what the Torricos were
looking for as they sat by his house on the Hill.
The narrator then stops the narration “dead” with the isolated statement: “I killed Remigio
Torrico.” He explains that this was when only a few people were left because frosts had
continually destroyed the crops. The people didn’t want to put up with both the weather and
the Torricos. As a result, there weren’t any people left when he killed Remigio.
The narrator had been mending a sack in the moonlight when Remigio came to his house
drunk. He said he liked to tell things like they were and wanted to talk with the protagonist,
who kept mending his sack because it required all his attention to see the harness needle
with which he was sewing in the darkness. This angered Remigio since he thought the
narrator wasn’t listening to him.
When Remigio finally got the narrator’s attention he accused him of killing his brother
Odilón. The narrator hadn’t committed the crime and knew who did, but it looked like
Remigio wouldn’t listen. Remigio said that he and Odilón fought a lot and wanted to know
from the narrator if his death had come about because of some sort of argument. When the
narrator shook his head Remigio then accused him of taking the fourteen pesos Odilón had
in his pocket and buying a new blanket with them. The narrator explains to us that he had
bought the blanket with the money from two goats he’d sold. Remigio then said he intended
to get even with the person who killed Odilón, and the narrator said “So it was me?,” to
which Remigio responded in the affirmative, angered not that he killed the man —
something the Torricos had done before — but that he had done it for so little money.
Remigio went and grabbed a machete and then came towards the narrator in the moonlight.
However, when he came close, “the moonlight shone brightly on the harness needle I’d
stuck in the sack,” and “when Remigio Torrico came up to my side, I pulled out the needle
and without waiting for anything stabbed him with it near his navel. I plunged it in as far as
it would go. And I left it there.” This begins a short but vivid description of Remigio’s last
moments. The narrator describes how “his one eye filled with fear” and how he had to stab
him once again in the heart to kill him.
Only afterwards did he tell Remigio’s corpse that he didn’t kill Odilón, but rather that the
Alcaraz family did. In Zapotlán (somewhere Odilón knew better than to be) they had all
jumped on him and stabbed him. Odilón had spat mescal in the face of an Alcaraz and they
all laughed and then pounced on him.
After the incident with Remigio, the narrator explains he returned to the Hill. He only
paused along the way to wash the man’s blood off of his market basket, since he was going
to need it and didn’t want to be reminded each time of Remigio. The story closes with the
narrator recalling that this happened in October during the fiesta in Zapotlán. He says he
remembered it in those days because they were firing rockets at the time and each time
one went off a great flock of buzzards rose up from the place he had left Remigio. The
narrator’s last words are “That’s what I remember,” reminding us that almost the entire
story is narrated in the past, from the perspective of the present.
Analysis
Narrated in first person by a man who speaks in a matter-of-fact tone, “The Hill of the
Comadres” is more typical of Rulfo’s literary production than “Macario.” In this story we get
the impression that (like nearly all of Rulfo’s characters) the story’s narrator is uneducated
and far from being a philosopher. Yet (also like all of Rulfo’s characters) despite his simple
language he nevertheless is able to show us a high level of understanding of the ways of the
world. His straightforward way of talking is not a sign of ignorance; he is simply a man who,
through contact with life’s hardships, has learned that one simply has to accept the things
the way they are.
This story touches again on one of Rulfo’s primary concerns in The Burning Plain: the failed
reforms of the postrevolutionary period in Mexico. Land reform was one of the principal
causes of the Revolution, and we learn in the second paragraph of “The Hill of the
Comadres” that “most of the Hill had been divided equally among the sixty of us who lived
there.”
Yet, although the Torricos “got just a piece of land with a maguey field,” they now
apparently “own” the land in the town. As in other stories, the narrator does not tell us
exactly how the Torrico brothers came to possess the town, but we slowly learn that
although the narrator gets along with them, most of the town doesn’t. When he describes
how the townspeople only bring out their animals and food when the Torricos are not
around, the implication is that the family forcefully takes whatever livestock or food it
wants. Despite his amicable relationship with the brothers, evidently even the narrator is
subject to giving up his food to the Torricos, as we learn that they never need to put salt on
his corn when they eat it.
This is therefore the dark story that bears witness to a high-minded Revolution with
significant legislative impulse but little executive power to enforce the land reforms
implemented. As a result, we see that slowly but surely the land redistributed to the
peasants returns to the hands of the few—those bold enough to take it by brute force. The
point of diminishing returns for the peasants — when they suddenly feel the need to
abandon their land — is expressed in a quite moving fashion by Rulfo: “They didn’t go to
Zapotlán, but in this other direction, from where the wind blows in full of the smell of oaks
and the sounds of the mountain. They left silently, without saying anything or fighting with
anybody.” This description of the peasants’ resignation over the loss of their land and their
dreams is quite powerful, and contrasts quite a bit with the revolutionary zeal which got
them the land in the first place. The narrator says these people “didn’t have the courage” to
fight the Torricos, but we can also guess they had little motivation to engage in more
fighting after all the violence they lived through between 1910 and 1920.
We cannot assume that the problems of these rural folk will be resolved by a simple change
of surroundings, however. The situation of the Hill of the Comadres is not unique, and
because of this, those who leave do not opt to move to nearby Zapotlán. Instead they elect
to leave with no particular destination in mind, to evaporate into thin air: “they would cross
the cattle guard where the high post is, disappear among the oaks, and never return again.
They left, that’s all.”
As we learn at the end of the story, Zapotlán is not an option is because the Alcaraces,
another family that rules by violence, live there. The narrator never tells us that the Alcaraz
family are Zapotlán’s equivalent of the Torricos, but this is made clear by his explanation
that the Torricos don’t like the Alcaraces and don’t have any urge to visit Zapotlán. Later on
the narrator also tells us that Odilón should have known better than to go there and pick a
fight when “so many people had reason to remember all about him. And the Alcaraces didn’t
like him either.” Rulfo therefore clearly implies that violence and extortion are commonplace
in most every rural town and village.
Perhaps it is also notable that the narrative voice of “The Hill of the Comadres” is different
from the average narrator of The Burning Plain in a number of ways. Most of Rulfo’s
narrators are interchangeable with the rural poor who surround them. In this case however,
the main character is clearly different from the other villagers. He likes the Torricos and
they like him, and — because he doesn’t understand why the townspeople would choose to
leave — he ends up being the only person left in the Hill at the story’s end.
Summary and Analysis of “We’re very poor” ("Es que somos muy pobres")
Summary
“We’re very poor” begins with a sentence that sums up the tone of the story quite well:
“Everything is going from bad to worse here.” The narrator is speaking about the hardships
that his family has recently had to endure, and he subsequently tells us that his Aunt
Jacinta died last week, and then during the burial “it began raining like never before.” The
rain represents a problem because it has ruined the rye harvest which was stacked outside
to dry in the sun, making the narrator's father very angry.
The storm came unexpectedly, “in great waves of water,” without giving the family time to
bring any of the harvest inside. All they could do was sit under their roof watching the
water. On top of these misfortunes, we are told that the cow that the father had given to
the narrator’s twelve-year-old sister Tacha for her birthday has been swept away by the
river.
The narrator then talks about the river, saying it began to rise at around dawn three nights
ago. He had been sleeping but the noise of the river woke him up and made him get out of
bed, because he thought the roof might be caving in. When he woke in the morning it was
still raining and the roar of the river sounded closer and louder than before. Now the
narrator could smell the river, “like you smell a fire, the rotting smell of backwater.” When
he went to look at the river it had breached it’s banks and was climbing along the town’s
main street toward the home of a woman called La Tambora. Water was gushing out of her
front door. The woman was desperately trying to move hens into the street so they could
find a place to escape the water. The narrator also notes that the tamarind tree in Aunt
Jacinta’s yard has been taken by the river. This is a sign that this is an extraordinary flood,
since the tree has always survived when the river rose in the past.
Tacha and the narrator went back later in the afternoon to watch “that mountain of water
that kept getting thicker and darker” and has risen far beyond where the bridge should be.
The two stood there for hours without tiring, just contemplating the water’s fury. Afterwards
they moved back to where one could talk over the sound, and then they learned that the
river had taken away La Serpentina, Tacha’s cow with one red ear and pretty eyes.
The narrator asks himself how it occurred to La Serpentina to cross the river when it was so
violent. All he can think of is that she must have fallen asleep and drowned when the water
reached her. He remembers that she was always content to stay and sleep in the corral
rather than leaving to feed. The narrator wonders if the cow woke up when the water
touched her. He imagines she must have been frightened and tried to escape, but she
probably got confused and got a cramp in the black slippery water. Perhaps she cried for
help: “Only God knows how she bellowed.”
The main character then asks a man who saw her swept away if he also saw the cow’s calf.
The man didn’t know, however. He only saw the spotted La Serpentina wash by with her
legs in the air before she turned over and disappeared. The man had been fishing firewood
out of the river so he couldn’t be sure what was floating by. As a result, the family doesn’t
know if the calf died with its mother.
The family is particularly upset because now Tacha is without her cow. The father worked
hard to acquire the animal to give to her as a future dowry. This way she wouldn’t become a
“bad woman” (a prostitute, in the Spanish), like his two older sisters did. The father says
they were bad because they were poor and very wild. They were difficult children, went out
with the wrong types of men and listened to the whistles directed their way at nighttime.
They would go down to the river for water all too often and all of a sudden would both be
rolling around naked on the ground with a man each.
After putting up with them for as long as he could, the narrator’s father ran the two girls off.
They went to Ayutla where they are now “bad women.” This is what makes the father upset,
because he doesn’t want Tacha to turn into a prostitute. Now she is very poor without the
cow and will have trouble attracting “a good man who will always love her.” The narrator
explains that before someone would have “had the courage to marry her, just to get that
fine cow.”
The family’s last hope is that the calf survived. If it didn’t Tacha is all too close to becoming
a “bad woman.” The mother questions God’s decision to punish her daughters, especially
since her family has always consisted of good people, ever since her grandmother. She
wonders where her daughters went wrong, because she can’t find any fault in the way they
were raised. She hopes God will look after them.
The father says there is nothing they can do now. The danger is that Tacha is growing,
particularly her chest, and her breasts are “promising to be like her sisters,” “the kind that
[…] attract attention.” He is sure that his daughter’s breasts will catch the eye of local men
and that she will end up a prostitute.
The narrator observes Tacha crying over the cow. At his side in her pink dress he watches
as “streams of dirty water run down her face as if the river had gotten inside her.” He hugs
her but she cries harder, and a noise comes out of her mouth — like the river as it overrides
its banks — and she shakes as the water rises. The story ends as the narrator describes
how drops from the river splash Tacha’s face, and her breasts move up and down
rhythmically “as if suddenly they were beginning to swell, to start now on the road to ruin.”
Analysis
In “We’re very poor” we once against perceive Rulfo’s subtle critique of post-revolutionary
Mexican society. This time it is the economy that comes under fire, however, as the reader
immediately notices the profoundly rudimentary agricultural methods of the narrator’s
family. The family has no choice but to set the harvest of rye out in the open to dry under
the sun. As a result, when bad weather comes there is no way to shelter it. Additionally,
when it needs to be moved, this can only be accomplished by hand. This description
emphasizes the extremely underdeveloped nature of Mexican agriculture, especially in
comparison with the modern capitalist system that the contemporary government hopes to
impose.
Given the relatively poor quality of the redistributed land after the Revolution, many of the
hopes of the rural poor rested in the possession of capital or consumption goods. In “We’re
very poor” resources are so scarce that all the family’s hopes rest in the cow La Serpentina
and her calf. This spotted cow with a pink ear and pretty eyes receives more physical
description than the vast majority of Rulfo’s characters.
The role of the father is prominent once again in “We’re very poor.” Throughout The Burning
Plain the father is the person charged with the responsibility of shepherding his family
through the various trials of life, and in this case we see he is the first to recognize the full
ramifications of the flood. With the rising of the waters not only has the family lost its
collective capital in the ruined rye, but also that of their last daughter. The father’s failed
economic attempt to capitalize therefore leads to a moral failure as it means his daughter
will become a prostitute.
The Rulfian theme of “unbalanced nature” is once again at play in this story. While in “They
gave us the land,” there is an extreme shortage of water on the Big Plain, in this there is far
too much water. This lack of equilibrium in nature is a common theme in Rulfo and proves
to be the downfall of many of his characters.
Such emphasis on the natural environment and its effect on the men and women who are
subject to its whims might remind us of the “naturalist” quality of much of Rulfo’s writing.
Naturalism is a philosophical and literary movement which gained impulse during the 19th
century and stressed the importance of realist representation and science, as opposed to
the ideal. In “We’re very poor” we see in an objective manner the effect of three of the
primary forces at work in naturalist writing: the environment, biological heritage and the
instincts. All three of these factors conspire to determine the fate of Tacha: the floods kills
her cow, the mother contemplates her family tree to discover where the trait of being a
“bad woman” comes from, and we see that Tacha’s sisters clearly succumb to their instinct
to fool around with the opposite sex. As we can see from these elements, naturalism tends
to show that — just like in the description of Tacha’s breasts at the end of the story —
nature usually works toward man’s destruction.
Summary and Analysis of "The man" ("El hombre")
Summary
The first of this very challenging story’s two parts is narrated in third person and alternates
between descriptions of two different people: a fugitive “man” and his “pursuer,” often
referred to as “the one who was following him.” The perspective changes every couple of
paragraphs from one man to the other, so for the purpose of clarity in this summary I will
refer to the fugitive as the “man” and the follower as the “pursuer.” In addition, it is
important to note that every once in a while the author includes a purely descriptive
paragraph about the terrain. In instances such as these it is impossible to definitively
attribute these descriptions to the experience of one man or the other.
“The man” begins with back-and-forth narration, as a man walks through the sand and his
pursuer follows at a distance. The pursuer notes that the man is missing his left big toe,
which makes him easy to track.
The pursuer says out loud that the man is using a machete to clear his path: “You can tell
he was gripped by fear. Fear always leaves marks. That’s what will cause his downfall.” The
narrator shifts back to the man and explains that his courage is disappearing as the horizon
seems to get further and further away. He cut away roots and grass and “chewed on a slimy
mess” before spitting it out in anger. It is the dry season and the terrain is very thorny and
rough. He decides to stop using the machete because otherwise it will get dull. The man
hears the sound of his own voice.
Although the narrator does not signal it explicitly, the narration then moves backwards in
time to an earlier sequence of events. The man is outside a house at night with his machete
and is greeted by two dogs in the darkness. The narration then jumps back to the present
perspective of the pursuer who talks to himself about what happened next in the house. He
says that the man didn’t wake up the people in the house. He arrived at around one in the
morning at the moment when, taken over by sleep, the body is completely unsuspecting. In
the next paragraph the man then says to himself: “I shouldn’t have killed all of them.”
In the present, the man approaches a winding river. The perspective then shifts back to the
moment when the man was in the house. The man asks for forgiveness and then “began his
work.” Although it is not completely clear to the reader exactly what is happening, we later
understand that he is killing three people in their sleep with a machete. As this happens he
can’t tell if the moisture on his face is sweat or tears.
The pursuer then notes that at this point in the trail the man must have sat down beside the
river to wait for the sun to come out. He says that he remembers that day because it was
the day he buried his newborn son. He says he remembers the flowers he was carrying
were faded and drooping since the sun wasn’t out that afternoon.
The perspective then shifts back to the fugitive man, who continues on his way, very guiltstricken. He says to himself that he had to leave the path in order to avoid others. The man
then says to himself that he has to be careful when crossing the river, which is a “tangle of
bends” that might take him back to where he doesn’t want to be.
The narration then shifts back to the pursuer, who imagines himself talking to members of
his dead family as he walks. The pursuer then reveals the significant detail that the fleeing
man was only trying to get revenge for the murder of his brother. He explains that the
man’s name is José Alcancía, and that José is the brother of a man he killed. The difference
between the pursuer’s act of murder and that of José is that José killed his victims while
they were asleep, whereas the pursuer killed José’s brother face to face. The pursuer goes
on to explain that he waited for José for a month, knowing he would come to kill him.
However, the burial of his newborn baby delayed him one day and this was the day the man
came to the house.
The perspective shifts back to the guilt-ridden man (José), who clearly thinks he managed
to kill his pursuer. In the meantime, he is still concerned that he has not been able to find a
way out of the riverbed.
Sensing that the man he is chasing has reached a dead end, the pursuer says to himself:
“You’re caught.” He decides to sit and wait for the man to come back since he knows the
fugitive is blocked from proceeding by the river. He says he will use the time to practice his
aim and plan where he will shoot the man: “Time doesn’t matter. I’m patient.” Sure
enough, when the perspective shifts back to the man, he realizes: “I’ll have to go back.”
The story then shifts to its second part, which is narrated in first person by a shepherd. His
narration seems to take form of a transcript of an interrogation where only the interviewee’s
responses are recorded. The shepherd describes how he saw the man from a distance. The
man wandered the riverbed, obviously lost.
The shepherd then explains how he saw the man come back to the riverbed a while later,
skinnier than before. The man approached the shepherd and asked if the sheep were his
before grabbing a ewe, turning it over and sucking on its teats. The animal protested but
the man held it so tightly it couldn’t escape. The man said he was from far away and that he
hadn’t eaten in days. The narrator reports that he would have killed him if he had known
about the murders. However, the man didn’t seem evil, and talked with sadness about his
wife and children. The shepherd mentions that later the man ate an animal that had died of
disease.
The tone of the story then becomes more urgent as the shepherd appears to defend himself
from his accusers: “So now when I come to tell you what I know, I’m in cahoots with him?
[…] And you say you’re going to throw me in jail for hiding that guy? Like I was the one who
killed that family. I just came to tell you that there’s a dead man in a pool of the river.” He
insists that had he known who the man was, he would have killed him.
The shepherd then relates finding the man dead. He says that he thought the man
somehow drowned in a pool when he found him, but then he saw that the back of his neck
was filled with bullet holes.
Analysis
The multiple perspectives in “The man” make it a relatively unique story in Rulfo’s
production. Three perspectives are employed by the author, and though they might seem to
belong to very different characters, they all actually correspond quite well with the Rulfian
practice of character interchangeability. While we might be tempted to classify José as the
murderer and Urquidi as the pursuer, this is really just a game of cat and mouse where the
roles are exchanged every so often.
Though at the beginning José is pursued by Urquidi, in the course of the story we learn that
José was originally looking for Urquidi in order to exact revenge for the murder of his
brother before he killed his family. When the story ends, we learn from the shepherd’s
testimony that Urquidi has again turned into a wanted man. In this manner, the two men
are actually quite similar in that they both love their family’s very much (Urquidi talks with
great sadness about the loss of his sons, and the shepherd tells us José cried when he
talked about his wife and children), and each also killed a member of the other’s family. As
a result, through their monologues we see how they classify themselves as both pursuer
and pursued, murderer and victim, family man and bad father. We as readers find ourselves
reacting with both empathy and dismay at both man’s actions. In the end we see that each
man’s particular circumstances end up being secondary to the cycle of violence in which
they are trapped. This lack of differentiation between the two men is reinforced by the fact
that the reader can scarcely tell the characters’ voices apart amidst the alternating
quotation marks and italics.
This cycle of violence does not limit itself to José and Urquidi, however. At the story’s end it
widens to include the shepherd, who at first was merely an innocent witness. Now he
becomes converted into a suspect, someone to be pursued by the law. Since he is being
interrogated by the Licenciado we can see that the local government officials who should
work to end this cycle only add to it. The intervention of official juridical forces does not
resolve problems but rather creates more victims. This is yet another indictment of the
post-revolutionary government in Mexico. All three men are fugitives in their own country.
In this story the reader also observes the breakdown of family institutions. Both of the men
in the first part of the story lose contact with their families as a result of personal vendettas.
The fugitive man has abandoned his wife and children in order to seek revenge on the
pursuer, and the pursuer has lost his family as a result of killing the fugitive’s brother. We
also learn that the pursuer was off on his own when his family was killed, mourning the loss
of his infant son. In this manner, these personal acts of vengeance come at the price of a
breakdown of the institution of the family. It is no coincidence that the most shocking crime
is committed against the innocent members of a family while they sleep in their own home.
Throughout this story, the impossibility of escape emerges as a dominant theme. The armed
struggle of the Revolution began a cycle of violence from which none of the characters can
disentangle themselves. Violence has evidently become so prevalent that it no longer
requires justification. Hence the apparent lack of information surrounding the events that
set off the conflict between José and Urquidi. Why did Urquidi kill José’s brother? What did
José’s brother do to deserve his fate? The attitudes of both men imply that these details
have become too distant to be relevant. The cycle of violence began at some point they are
compelled to continue it. Perhaps this is why Rulfo originally titled this story “Where the
river runs in circles.”
Summary and Analysis of “At daybreak” ("En la madrugada")
Summary
The third person narrator begins with a separated eerie description of the town of San
Gabriel. The town “emerges from the fog laden with dew,” and the narrator describes a
number of elements that serve to obscure it from view: clouds, rising steam and black
smoke from the kitchens. The narrator is describing sights and sounds of daybreak in a very
peculiar way: “an earth-colored spot shrouds the village, which keeps on snoring a little
longer, slumbering in the color of daybreak.”
The description then turns to the protagonist of the story, old Esteban, who advances up
Jiquilpan road riding on the back of his cow, followed by his milking herd. The toothless man
whistles to his cows, and when he hears the San Gabriel bell that rings at daybreak he gets
down off the cow, kneels, and makes the sign of the cross with his arms extended. Esteban
then climbs back on the cow, removes his shirt “so the breeze will whip away his fear,” and
continues toward San Gabriel.
He counts the cows as they enter the town, and grabs one of them by the ears. He says to
her “Now they’re going to take away your baby, you silly one. Carry on if you want to, but
it’s the last day you’ll see your calf.” The cow ignores the man and continues on. The
narrator then speculates on the uncertain origin of the swallows in San Gabriel that
constantly fly back and forth in a zigzag pattern.
Old Esteban explains in first person that he arrived at the corral and that they wouldn’t open
up the gate even though he was banging on it with a stone. He thought his boss, Don Justo,
was asleep. The cows were waiting behind him so in order to keep them from following him
he crept around the corral and entered it through a low point in the fence. Then he opened
the corral from the inside. Just as he was doing this he saw Don Justo come out of the attic
carrying his sleeping niece Margarita in his arms. The man crossed the corral without seeing
Esteban, “at least that’s what I thought.”
The narrator then describes how Esteban then milked the cows, letting them into the corral
one by one, and leaving the mother of the calf for last. He speaks to her and tells her that
he’ll let her in to see the calf one last time. He tells her that she is about to give birth again
and yet she is still worried about the older calf. He says to the calf that he ought to enjoy
his mother’s milk while he can because it is actually meant for the unborn calf. Then the
narrator says that Esteban kicked the calf when he saw it sucking on its mother’s teats.
The narration then shifts back to Esteban’s first person testimony, as he explains that he
would have broken the calf’s nose if Don Justo hadn’t kicked him and started to beat him.
He explains that the beating was severe and that he still has a great deal of pain. Esteban
then says: “What happened next? I didn’t know. I didn’t work for him any more. Nor
anybody else either, because he died that same day.” He tells us that some people came to
his house — where he was recovering from the beating under the care of his wife — to tell
him that Don Justo was dead. They accused him of killing his boss, but Esteban says he
does not remember doing this. He notes that since he is now in jail, perhaps that means
something about his guilt. All he remembers is the moment after he hit the calf when Don
Justo came towards him. After that he just recalls waking up and being cared for by his
wife. Esteban explains that they have accused him of killing the man with a rock. He says
that this information is relatively plausible because if they’d said he used a knife he would
know if was false because he hasn’t carried a knife in years.
The narrative then shifts back to that of the third person narrator. He describes how Justo
Brambila left his niece Margarita on her bed in the room beside that of her crippled mother.
Dawn is the only time when the mother sleeps, but she wakes up when the sun rises. The
mother calls out, asking her daughter where she was last night, but “before the yelling
started that would end by waking her up, Justo Brambila silently left the room.”
At six in the morning Don Justo went out to the corral to open the gate for Esteban. The
narrator tells us he also thought of going back up to the attic to smooth out the bed where
he and Margarita had slept. Don Justo thinks to himself: “If the priest would authorize this
I’d marry her,” but “He’ll say it’s incest and will excommunicate us both. Better to leave
things in secret.” Don Justo then saw Esteban kicking the calf in the head and sticking his
hands in the animal’s nose. The calf’s back seemed to already be broken, since its legs were
flopping around and it could not get up. He ran down to Esteban and began to beat him, but
then felt himself blacking out and falling back against the stone pavement. He tried to get
up but was unable to, and as darkness enveloped him he stopped feeling any pain.
Esteban began to move when the sun was high in the sky. He stumbled back to his house
with his eyes closed, dripping blood as he went. When he arrived he lay down on his cot and
slept. The narrator explains that at eleven in the morning Margarita entered the corral
looking for Don Justo. When she found him dead she had been crying because her mother
had accused her of being a prostitute.
The narration then shifts back to Esteban’s confession. He once again affirms that when the
others accuse him of killing his boss, it could be true. Esteban says the man might have
died of anger however, since he had a bad temper. He muses that now the authorities have
him and will judge him for killing his boss. Esteban speculates that perhaps they were both
blind and didn’t realize they were killing each other.
The narration then shifts back to the fog which advances on San Gabriel at night. That night
they didn’t turn the lights on because Don Justo owned them. The church was lit up with
candles for Don Justo’s wake. The church bells rang until dawn, hereby closing the twentyfour hours that the story covers.
Analysis
This story shares a number of similarities with “The man.” In both stories the discourse
shifts back and forth between multiple narrative voices and perspectives. While “The man”
shares three different perspectives with the reader, “At daybreak” presents two: the
narrator and old Esteban. In order to approach an understanding of both stories, it is
necessary to gather information from both narrators and combine it in order to fill in the
gaps. We learn in both cases that complete knowledge of the nature of the events narrated
will inevitably escape us.
Beyond the narrative style of these two stories, Rulfo seems to outline two different forms
of violence. In “The man” violence is willfully committed, and where it rears its head it
inevitably begets itself and sets in motion a cycle of destruction which eventually hurts even
the most innocent. In “At daybreak” violence is something that lies dormant inside us and is
often beyond our control. It is determined by our environment and basic instincts. As a
result, the protagonist in this story is almost “innocent.” Esteban’s senility is one possible
explanation for his mistreatment of the calf, and it sparks his boss’s anger. When Justo is
found dead, Esteban can also no longer remember exactly what happened. For his part,
Justo is clearly subservient to his instincts since he maintains an incestuous relationship
with his young niece Margarita. We also learn he is perpetually “angry.” Perhaps this is what
drives him to react forcefully to Esteban’s beating of the calf. If stories like “We’re very
poor” or “Macario” exhibit a tendency toward “unconscious” eroticism, in “At daybreak” the
reader encounters the theme of “unconscious” violence. Violence has become so second
nature that the protagonists cannot pinpoint what motivates their actions or even claim full
responsibility for them.
As in “The man,” there is certainly a cyclical nature to this violence, however. The story
begins and ends with a somewhat dream-like description of daybreak. Nature is described
as beautiful or even idyllic, but its tranquility is ominous because we know Rulfo’s fatalist
vision will soon take over. This nagging sense of foreboding reinforces the notion that—
unlike in “The man,” where violence is transferred back and forth through causes and
effects across a chain of relationships between people—the protagonists of “At daybreak” do
not know what the next day will bring and how or where violence will interrupt the peaceful
dawn. Indeed, Esteban’s killing of the calf seems quite unprovoked. Perhaps it is as a
response to the unpredictability of violence in San Gabriel that the narrator enigmatically
claims old Esteban removed his shirt “so the breeze will whip away his fear” that fateful
morning.
Like “The man,” “At daybreak” also deals with the theme of “official” justice. In both stories
we find “confessions” or “testimonies” of characters who defend themselves from the
accusations of the authorities. In “The man” we know the shepherd is innocent. In “At
daybreak,” the truth is more difficult to determine, although one interpretation of the story
is that Justo died when he suddenly blacked out and hit his head on the corral’s stone
pavement. However, when people show up at Esteban’s home, they tell him right away that
he killed Justo without a doubt. In both the stories we realize that when the institutions of
post-revolutionary justice are involved the guilt of the accused is assumed from the
beginning.
Summary and Analysis of “Talpa”
Summary
“Talpa” is narrated in third person by a nameless character who is described only as the
brother of Tanilo and the lover of Tanilo’s wife, Natalia. The story begins at what is
technically its end, with a description of Natalia throwing herself into her mother’s arms and
sobbing upon their return to Zenzontla. The narrator tells us she has been keeping these
emotions inside for the entire journey. He explains that she has not been able to cry
because they had been under the stress of burying Tanilo without help in Talpa. This had
been done using their bare hands and in great haste in order to “hide Tanilo in the grave so
he wouldn’t keep on scaring people with his smell so full of death.” Natalia did not allow
herself to cry on the way home despite the way their footsteps seemed “like blows on
Tanilo’s grave.”
Natalia cried in her mother’s arms in order to upset the woman, so she would know Natalia
was truly suffering from the death of her husband. The narrator explains that he felt her
weeping inside him too, “as if she was wringing out the cloth of our sins.” He goes on to
conclude the first section of the story with the startling confession that he and Natalia killed
Tanilo Santos. He says they made Tanilo come with them to Talpa, knowing the journey
would kill him.
The perspective of the story then shifts from a description of the recent past (Natalia and
the narrator’s return to Zenzontla) to the more distant past (the journey to Talpa and the
events that preceeded it). The narrator tells us that the idea of traveling to Talpa was
Tanilo’s before anyone else thought of it. Tanilo had been hoping someone would take him
for years, ever since he noticed the purple blisters on his arms and legs. The blisters then
became wounds that didn’t bleed but oozed yellow pus. He said he knew that the only cure
available was to travel to Talpa so the Virgin of Talpa could cure him with her gaze. Talpa
was far away and the voyage would be difficult under the hot sun and cold March nights,
but it would be worth it when the Virgin washed his wounds “making everything fresh and
new like a recently rained-on field.”
The narrator explains that he and Natalia encouraged this notion. They would both have to
go with him: the narrator because he is Tanilo’s brother, Natalia because she is his wife.
Natalia would have to help him, “taking him by the arm, bearing his weight on her shoulders
[…], while he dragged along on his hope.”
The narrator tells us that he and Natalia had feelings for each other, but that as long as
Talpa was alive they could never be together because she would have to take care of him.
Both the narrator and Natalia feel guilt for their role in expediting Talpa's death. What
makes them feel particularly guilty, however, is the way they pushed Tanilo on when he did
not want to walk anymore. When he told them he wanted to go back home Natalia and the
narrator would yank him up and tell him they couldn’t go back since Talpa was now closer
than Zenzontla. This was a lie however since Talpa was still many days away. They wanted
him to die.
The narrator recalls the nights on the road particularly well. At first they would have some
light from the fire, but when it died down they would go off into the shadows and make
love. Night after night the heat of their bodies would combine with that of the earth until the
cold dawn arrived. During these times Natalia would finally feel as if she were resting.
Getting to the main road to Talpa took twenty days of travel alone. However, at the main
road pilgrims began to join them and they formed a river-like mass, pushing one another
along. The current of people was difficult to navigate with Tanilo, and the dust raised by the
throngs made travel extra difficult. Only at nighttime was the trio able to rest from the sun
that had beat down on them all day. The days also began to get longer and the nights
shorter since it was now March and they had left Zenzontla in the middle of February.
Tanilo’s condition began to worsen and he started to say he didn’t want to proceed. His feet
had begun to bleed and they helped him recuperate. He said he would stay there for a
couple of days and then return to Zenzontla. Natalia and the narrator, however, could feel
no pity for him. Natalia rubbed his feet with alcohol and encouraged him, saying only the
Virgin of Talpa could cure him.
The narrator explains that they finally entered Talpa at the end of March singing a hymn
praising the Lord. A lot of people were already returning home. Inspired by the religious
sights and sounds of Talpa, Tanilo decided to do penance. He tied his feet together so that
walking was harder and wanted to wear a crown of thorns. Later he bandaged his eyes and
decided to walk on this knees. Due to this self-mortification he took on a dehumanized
appearance: “that thing that was my brother Tanilo Santos reached Talpa, that thing so
covered with plasters and dried streaks of blood that it left in the air a sour smell like a
dead animal when he passed by.”
When they entered the church Natalia had Tanilo kneel beside her in front of the golden
figure of the Virgin of Talpa. He started to pray and “let a huge tear fall, from way down
inside him, snuffing out the candle Natalia had placed in his hands.” He continued praying,
shouting so that he could hear himself over the other pilgrims. The narrator repeats that all
this didn’t matter, though, because Tanilo died anyway. A priest recited a prayer to the
Virgin from the pulpit and the narrator and Natalia discovered that Tanilo had died with his
head resting on his knees.
The story then returns to its initial perspective of the more recent past, after the trip to
Talpa. The narrator says that Natalia’s mother hasn’t asked him what he did with his brother
Tanilo. Natalia cried on her shoulder and told her everything.
He and Natalia have begun to be afraid of each other. Tanilo’s body seems to still be with
them. They cannot get the image of the cadaver out of their minds, especially the way his
eyes were wide open “like he was looking at his own death,” or the stench so thick they
could taste it in their mouths.
The narrator concludes with the confession-like observation that what they remember most
is that Tanilo was buried in the Talpa graveyard and that they had to throw earth and
stones on him “so the wild animals wouldn’t come dig him up.”
Analysis
Religion is a significant theme throughout The Burning Plain, but it takes a particularly
central position in “Talpa.” Not only is the story driven on the surface by Tanilo’s religious
pilgrimage to Talpa, but within this frame we also see other characters accommodate
Tanilo’s desire to be the consummate pilgrim by themselves behaving as if this were a
sacred voyage. Though Natalia and the narrator begin the trip with the intention of finishing
off the dying Tanilo so they can be together, along the way they do their best to feed his
hope of a religious miracle, if only to further motivate him to drive himself toward an early
grave. Ironically, Tanilo had been seeking a surprising miracle of renewed life when he
undertook the pilgrimage that unsurprisingly resulted in his death. The narrator ruins the
reader’s hope for this kind of miracle in the story’s first lines when he explains that Tanilo
did not survive.
However, in a way the pilgrimage to Talpa did result in a miracle — just not the one Tanilo
expected. Perhaps the miracle is the effect that the trip has on his wife and brother, who
come out of it shamed into abandoning their sinful relationship and stricken by guilt.
Additionally, while Tanilo is referred to by the narrator earlier in the story as “that thing that
was my brother Tanilo Santos,” his wife and brother come to contemplate him with empathy
in his last moments of life. The descriptions of the great tear that extinguishes his candle
and of the way his prayerful, curled-up body obstructs the Virgin’s view of the festivities are
quite moving and are what drive Natalia and the narrator to feel remorse and finally identify
with his suffering.
In this manner, Tanilo truly does become the Christ-like figure he tries to emulate. Through
his death and suffering, new awareness is born in Natalia and the narrator. Though the final
description of Tanilo’s dead body filled with flies might seem too grotesque to be
transcendent, visually graphic depictions of Christ’s suffering on the cross have long been
central images in Catholic iconography. The narrator’s discourse — as we see throughout
The Burning Plain — also comes in the form of a Catholic-like confession of sins: “we took
him there so he’d die, and that’s what I can’t forget.”
During the pilgrimage, Tanilo, Natalia and the narrator seem to do their best to perform the
ideal religious narrative to which the sick man is aspiring. Most notably, Tanilo asks to wear
a crown of thorns toward the end of the story. Also, the narrator explains in the beginning
that Natalia would have to bear “his weight on her shoulders on the trip there and perhaps
on the way back,” and later on says that: “Natalia and I felt that our bodies were being bent
double. It was as if something was holding us and placing a heavy load on top of us. Tanilo
fell down and we had to pick him up and sometimes carry him on our backs.” These
descriptions evoke the via crucis or Stations of the Cross, where Jesus struggled to carry
the cross and was helped at one point by Simon of Cyrene.
Natalia also is described in a similar way to Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene has been
identified as an adulteress and a prostitute, and this coincides with the description of
Natalia’s nightly lustful liaisons with her husband’s brother. Natalia also washes Tanilo’s
blistered feet with alcohol at one point in “Talpa,” which is similar to Mary Magdalene’s
washing of Jesus’s feet with oil at the house of Simon the Pharisee. Perhaps not
coincidentally, Simon the Pharisee is often viewed as a leper, and leprosy could be one
diagnosis of Tanilo’s disease. Lazarus is another character whose sickness could be
compared to that of Tanilo. As for the narrator, his traitorous behavior could be compared
with Judas’ betrayal of Jesus or with the way Cain lead Abel out into the field to kill him.
In this way, “Talpa” can be read as a religious allegory whose incomplete or even
contradictory nature becomes increasingly evident as the characters force themselves to
imitate ideals that they know are beyond them. Desperation drives them to call on elements
of a number of Biblical tales in an effort to transcend their surroundings. Though the
allegory is faulty and predominantly motivated by the trio’s self-interest, the reader
nevertheless finds him or herself moved by the painstaking lengths these characters go to
in order to make the story of their trip to Talpa approach the status of a parable.
Summary and Analysis of “The burning plain” ("El Llano en llamas")
Summary
This story begins with an epigraph from a popular ballad. These words (“They’ve gone and
killed the bitch / but the puppies still remain…”) refer to the way that the spark that began
the Revolution created successive movements which were often quite independent of its
original impulses and were difficult to bring to heel. The narrator of “The burning plain,”
Pichón, describes the fate of one such group, that of Pedro Zamora.
The narrator is a member of Pedro’s band of revolutionaries, and after the epigraph the
story begins in medias res with a battle cry from the federal soldiers in support of their
general, just before a skirmish begins: “¡Viva Petronilo Flores!” The soldiers are in a ravine
whereas the revolutionaries are up above, and after a few moments La Perra, one of Pedro’s
men, gathers the four Benavides brothers (Los Cuatro) to “see what bulls we’re going to
fight.” The reconnaissance mission is observed leaving by the rest of Pedro’s men (including
the narrator) from their position against a stone fence. The men try to sleep but keep
getting distracted by the noise in the ravine.
Finally a shot rings out and Pedro’s men hear the racket of a gunfight. El Chihuila gets up
and goes to see what has happened. Some time later, the soldiers suddenly appear right in
front of the men in hiding. They are passing by, unaware they are being watched. Pedro’s
men take aim and when then signal comes they fire on the soldiers, picking them off quite
easily, “like ninepins.” Once silence reigns again, one of Pedro’s men shouts out: “Viva
Pedro Zamora!,” to which some of the wounded federal troops whisper: “Save me, boss!
Save me! Holy Child of Atocha, help me!”
Suddenly the revolutionaries receive fire from behind their position. They run to the other
side of the fence, past the men they have killed. They continue to run for some time, and
every so often one of them is hit by a bullet. They reach the barranca and roll down as they
continue to hear the battle cry.
Panting, the men stay crouched behind some stones and look at Pedro Zamora to see what
he wants to do. Pedro is silent and counts the men silently with his eyes. Eleven or twelve
men are missing, not counting those who had left before the ambush. Los Joseses, La
Perra’s two sons pace back and forth until Pedro tells them not to worry, that they will find
their father. The Federal troops keep the revolutionaries pinned there all afternoon. When
night arrives El Chihuila returns with one of Los Cuatro, but he cannot tell the band if the
soldiers have left.
Pedro calls to the narrator, Pichón, and gives him a commission to go to Piedra Lisa with Los
Joseses and and see what happened to La Perra. If the man is dead, they will bury him,
along with any others. Any wounded will be left for the soldiers to pick up. When the
narrator reaches the corral where the horses had been, there are none left. The Federals
have taken the horses. Shortly later they find the bodies of Los Cuatro, stacked on top of
each other. They find other dead bodies in the vicinity as well, but see no sign of La Perra.
They speculate the soldiers must have taken him captive to show him to the government.
A few days later Pedro’s band meets Petronilo Flores at a river crossing. The narrator
manages to escape a general slaughter by sinking under his dead horse in the river until it
came ashore downstream. After this encounter, Pedro's band lays low for some time. As a
result, no one is afraid of Pedro’s men anymore: “Peace had returned to the Great Plain.”
This does not last long, however. Soon Armancio Alcalá arrives at Pichón's hiding place in
the Tozin Canyon. Alcalá a mountain of rifles slung like a suitcase over his horses’ haunches
and directs Pichón and the group to San Buenaventura, where Pedro Zamora is waiting. The
next day the party sets out.
Before they reach the ranch they can tell its buildings are on fire. Just before entering San
Buenaventura they encountered horses dragging men behind them, some living, some
dead. Pedro has more men than ever before, which pleases Pichón and his friends.
The united band later burns San Pedro and continues on to Petacal. It is harvest-time for
the corn, and Pichón takes pleasure in seeing the dry cornfields burn. The smoke “smelled
of cane and honey because the fire had reached the canefields too. Eventually, the federal
troops arrive, but this time they can't kill Pedro’s men as easily.
Pedro’s men ambush the Federals, who fight harder than the soldiers did before. These new
soldiers are brave and professional. They come from the highlands of Teocaltiche.
Pichón remarks that it would be much easier to simply raid the ranches rather than try to
ambush the Federals. As a result they scatter, doing more damage than ever this way.
Some burn ranches and others approach the soldiers, dragging branches behind them to stir
up dust and exaggerate their numbers. Many towns are burned during this time and the
soldiers are helpless to prevent it. Every time they moved, the town behind them would go
up in flames. At El Cuastecomate Pedro’s men kill soldiers in a playful way, goring them as
though they are “bullfighting.” Rulfo provides a description of one such "bullfight," in which
eight soldiers are killed with a razor.
Soon, people from other places, including Indians, join the revolutionaries. The Indians are
some of the most dedicated to Pedro; sometimes they bring him the best girls from the
towns they raided. All this changes after a train derailment on the Sayula hill, however. The
band puts cow bones and horns along the tracks and — just in case — bent the rails as the
tracks approached a curve. Then they waited. As dawn a train full of people topples off the
tracks and plunges "to the bottom of the barranca," killing all aboard.
Pedro’s men run away, but the federal troops come after them with machine guns.
Eventually, even the Indians turn against Pedro's band. The revolutionaries wish for peace,
but this is impossible after so much damage has been done. In the end, Pedro’s men have
no choice but to separate, “each one going in a different direction.”
Pichón remarks, from a present-day perspective, that he was with Pedro for five years. He
recalls some say Pedro went to Mexico City, following a woman, and that he was killed
there. Pichón was released from prison three years ago. He was punished for lots of crimes
while there, but not for being one of Pedro’s men. They didn’t know he was with Pedro, but
rather jailed him “for the bad habit I had of carrying off girls.” The narrator says that now
he is living with one of them, perhaps the best: the one that was waiting for him when he
was released.
She said to him that she had been waiting for him for a long time, and Pichón suspected she
might be there to kill him. He vaguely remembered her, and “felt again the cold water of
the storm falling that night we entered Telcampana and plundered the town.” He suspects
that this woman’s father was the man they killed as he pulled the girl up onto his horse. He
had to hit her a few times to stop her from biting him. Upon exiting the jail the woman told
him she had a son of his, “and she pointed with her finger at a tall skinny boy with
frightened eyes.”
The boy looked just like Pichón, “with something mean in his look.” The woman tells him
that they call the boy “El Pichón” too, “but he’s not a bandit or a killer. He’s a good person.”
Upon hearing this, the narrator’s final words are: “I hung my head.”
Analysis
“The burning plain” is the longest story in the collection that bears its name. This is the first
story that gives the reader insight into what the historical moment of the Revolution was
like, and it does a particularly effective job of eroding away the mythical veneer that makes
it seem to be a movement by and for the inspired, morally just masses. Narrated in first
person, “El llano en llamas” makes the Revolution seem like little more than a celebration of
“machista” brotherhood. Here Rulfo adds little to the description of the nature of the male
revolutionary already captured by other previous writers (men like Pedro are violent on and
off the battlefield and ignorant of the far-reaching repercussions generated by their
actions). Supposedly an emancipatory movement, the Revolution is ironically characterized
by violence and betrayal so profound that — when the fighting is over — it is hard to
imagine a way forward.
In fact, one must ask if the “Revolution” ever really accomplished anything, or if it has even
ended. This ambivalence is apparent in the final encounter of Pichón with the woman he
raped and who bore his son. While he seems to recognize his own “mean look” in the boy’s
face, the woman insists that he is no thief or murderer but rather a “good person.” Much
like the promises of the post-revolutionary politicians, despite the mother’s assurances it is
difficult to say with any certainty what the boy’s future holds.
Even the epigraph that starts the story — taken from a popular ballad — is ambivalent:
“They’ve gone and killed the bitch but the puppies still remain.” One might be tempted to
interpret this as an idealistic affirmation of revolutionary zeal: the Revolution is more than
just one man, each campesino is a seed capable of multiplying itself indefinitely, and the
struggle will run its course until justice is done. However, one can also interpret these lyrics
in a more troubling way. The violence done to and by one generation of Mexicans has
resulted in another generation of orphaned children who are now in jeopardy of losing their
moral compass. What example will guide the “puppies” left behind by the Revolution?
The ballad lyrics imply that the maternal influence is the crucial one, and it can be no
coincidence that the boy’s mother is the only “moral” character that Pichón has any contact
with. It is she who is capable of making him hang his head in shame by reaffirming the
value of being a “good person.” In this manner, her words subvert the violent cult of
masculinity that Pedro Zamora’s and his men have been promoting — always at the
expense of women and children — as the ideal model for male offspring to follow.
Perhaps “The burning plain” best captures the ambivalence of the Revolution in the
character of Pedro Zamora, which is very likely based on a real-life historical figure. Pedro is
much more than a small time bandit, he is a revolutionary caudillo. Latin American caudillos
(charismatic populist leaders who combined political and military strength in order to act as
strongmen or warlords) who were were common in the 19th and into the 20th century. As
much as one rejects Pedro’s violent tactics, he is still considered a great leader by his men.
His calm nature and particularly his watchful, piercing eyes are much admired by the
narrator. In this manner his men feel protected around him, and protection is exactly what
caudillos offered the campesinos who lived in the areas under their influence. The
admiration expressed in “The burning plain” for the figure of the caudillo is rather
remarkable, since normally realist narrative treated them as nothing more than oppressors.
Rulfo effectively communicates the apparent need men have for a powerful father, while
also recognizing the importance of the mediating ethical role played by the figure of the
mother in the story.
Summary and Analysis of “Tell them not to kill me!” ("¡Diles que no me
maten!")
Summary
“Tell them not to kill me!,” narrated in third person, begins with this very phrase, uttered by
Juvencio Nava speaking to his son Justino. Juvencio is begging his son to ask the sergeant
who has him tied to a post to spare him, to tell his captor that tying him up and scaring him
has been enough punishment. The son responds that he cannot help his father, that the
sergeant doesn’t want to listen, but the father continues to plead for his son’s intervention.
The son says that he cannot intervene because “if I do they’ll know I’m your son. If I keep
bothering them they’ll end up knowing who I am and will decide to shoot me too." The
father tells Justino that he should say that his father is not worth killing because he is so
old. Finally Justino relents and goes to the corral, turning on the way to ask his father what
will happen to his wife and kids if he too is shot. To this the father replies: “Providence will
take care of them, Justino. You go there now and see what you can do for me. That’s what
matters.”
After this first section of the story — which consists predominantly of dialog — the narrator’s
perspective shifts to become a little more omniscient and he takes a more active role in the
storytelling. The narrator tells us that the father was brought in at dawn and had been tied
to the post all morning long. Juvencio could not calm down, especially since “now that he
knew they were really going to kill him, all he could feel was his great desire to stay alive,
like a recently resuscitated man.”
The narrator then begins to relate to us Juvencio’s thoughts as he muses on his murder of
Don Lupe, the event that led to his condemnation. He recalls that he he killed Don Lupe
because he would not share his pasture with Juvencio's animals.
Juvencio remembers that at first he didn’t do anything, but with the drought later his
animals began to die off, so he broke through the fence and drove his animals through the
hole so they could eat the grass on the other side. Don Lupe didn’t like this and fixed the
fence, but Juvencio cut through it again. This became a pattern where at night the fence
would be broken and in the morning it would be mended. During the daytime the livestock
would stay right next to the fence, waiting for nighttime when Juvencio would cut the hole
so they could eat. Juvencio and Don Lupe would constantly argue but could not come to an
agreement. Finally Don Lupe said that he would kill any animal that came into his pasture.
Juvencio replied that the fact that the animals were breaking through was not his fault and
that if Don Lupe killed one of them, he would have to pay for it.
Then Don Lupe killed one of Juvencio’s yearlings. The narrator at this point switches to first
person and narrates from Juvencio’s perspective. The conflict happened thirty-five years
ago in March, because by April Juvencio was already on the run, living in the mountains.
The money and livestock he had given the judge didn’t matter, they kept pursuing him
anyway. Finally he and his son began living on another of his plots of land, Palo de Venado,
before his son married Ignacia, and had eight children. All this shows that the fateful event
took place years ago and should be forgotten.
Around that time Juvencio figured that everything should be fixed with around a hundred
pesos. Don Lupe had left his wife and two young kids behind, and then his widow died
shortly after from grief. The kids were shipped off to live with relatives, “so there was
nothing to fear from them.” Nevertheless, everyone kept pursuing him, and Juvencio
believes it was in order to keep robbing him. Every time someone would enter the village he
would have to run up into the mountains like an animal, and this happened for thirty-five
years. At this point in the story the narration then switches back to third person. The
narrator observes that ironically they caught Juvencio now, when he didn’t expect it. He had
hoped with all his heart that they would never find him. This is what made it so hard to
believe that he would die like this after fighting off death for so long.
The narrator tells us about Juvencio's capture. He had seen the men at nightfall walking
through his tender corn crop and he had told them to stop. Juvencio had had time to escape
but he didn’t; he simply walked beside them without protesting.
At this point the narration jumps forward in time to a meeting between the Colonel and
Juvencio. The Colonel, who is hidden, says that Don Lupe was his father and that he died
when he was young. As a result he had no male role model to follow as a boy. He goes on
to say that later he learned his father had been killed by being hacked with a machete and
then having an ox goad stuck in his belly. The Colonel found it particularly terrible that
Juvencio, the murderer, remained free.
After being condemned to die, Juvencio pleaded with the Colonel to let him go given his old
age, saying that he has paid many times over for his crime, since he has spent “forty years
hiding like a leper” and fearing death. In response to his cries the Colonel told his men to tie
the man up and get him drunk so the shots won’t hurt.
The narration then shifts to a more recent past, as Justino disposes of his father's corpse,
which has been hooded to hide a disfigured face. Justino spurs the burro forward in the
hopes that they can reach Palo de Venado in time to arrange the wake. He says to
Juvencio’s body that his daughter-in-law and grandchildren will miss the old man, and that
when they see his face they won’t believe it’s him. The narrator ends with these last words
from Justino: “They’ll think the coyote has been eating on you when they see your face so
full of holes from all those bullets they shot at you.”
Analysis
As in “The burning plain,” the father-son relationship is a crucial one in Rulfian narrative.
Fathers are usually considered crucial role models for their children and, as the colonel in
“Tell them not to kill me!” says to Juvencio: “It’s hard to grow up knowing that the thing we
have to hang on or take roots from is dead.” This loss of the father figure drives the Colonel
to affirm — if not exaggerate — his masculinity by hunting down the man who was “tough
enough” to kill his father.
Freudian theory could support the speculation that for the Colonel the killer of his father
(Juvencio) has come to replaced Don Lupe as the target of an Oedipal death wish. Since
Don Lupe’s murder precluded the Colonel’s ability to desire his death and hereby follow the
normative Oedipal trajectory, one could say that this hatred was displaced on to Juvencio.
By killing Juvencio, the Colonel is able to achieve manhood.
Intriguing as this interpretation may be however, it tells us little about the reality of the
Mexican context in which this story takes place. In this story of revenge, a son kills his
father’s murderer, but this moment of “justice” simply creates another imbalance where
another son (Justino) is left without a father. In this manner, the cycle of violence continues
much like in the story “The man.” This crisis in the father-son relationship can be read as a
metaphor for a relatively young nation (Mexico) experiencing the instability — if not
complete loss — of one of its fundamental pillars, the patriarchal state, after the chaotic
events of the Revolution. In “Tell them not to kill me!” we see that the burden of loss
constantly displaced, although none who pass it along find any consolation in the act.
In this story the reader is again subtly exposed to the problem of land reform in the postrevolutionary period. Although Juvencio appears to own more than one piece of land (the
property near Puerta de Piedra and Palo de Venado, where his son lives), apparently this
land is not irrigated and when droughts come his animals begin to die. This is much like the
characters in “They gave us the land” who have land in abundance, but none of it has
water. Between the lines one can tell that this lack of access to irrigated land is what drives
a wedge into the friendship between Juvencio and Don Lupe. Paradoxically, Juvencio might
almost be considered innocent despite murdering his friend, since the only way he can feed
his family is by killing his neighbor.
Much like “The man,” “Tell them not to kill me!” is another variation on the theme of
violence in post-revolutionary Jalisco. In this tale the violence experienced by the colonel at
an early age results in an implacable obsession and anticipation of revenge. However, by
the time he finally encounters his father’s murderer, we see that that the act revenge is
inconsequential in comparison with the immeasurable anguish Juvencio has felt while
running for decades from the authorities and from death. Indeed, the imminence of death is
tangible from the moment the reader sees the story’s remarkable title, and for Rulfo this is
just one more way to intensify and build suspense. Much like the title in the story “No dogs
bark,” Rulfo uses the line “Tell them not to kill me!” just enough times to make it a leitmotiv
but not so many as to make it repetitive.
Summary and Analysis of “Luvina”
Summary
Like other stories in The Burning Plain, “Luvina” is written in the form of a confession or
story told by one man to another. In this case the speaker is the teacher who previously
taught in the town of Luvina, speaking to the new teacher who is about to travel there. The
reader does not discover this until midway through the story, however. The narration occurs
in first person except in moments where an omniscient narrator intervenes with some
general details about the scene.
The story begins with a description of the terrain in which the town is situated. Luvina is a
mountain in the south and it is “the highest and the rockiest.” The narrator goes on to
describe in great detail how treacherous the mountainous terrain is. It is “steep and slashed
on all sides by deep barrancas, so deep you can’t make out the bottom.”
The man speaking goes quiet for a moment and the sound of the river can be heard along
with the air gently rustling through the tree branches. The sounds of children playing can
also be heard. Because of this the reader knows that the two men are not currently in the
town of Luvina.
The speaker asks for two more beers from the barman named Camilo. He continues talking
to his listener about Luvina, describing the landscape and the lack of luxuries - like the beer
they are now drinking. After much of this description, the reader learns that the narrator
used to live in Luvina, where the listener will be visiting. He says, “I went to that place full
of illusions and returned old and worn out.”
He says that when he first arrived in Luvina the mule driver who took him didn’t even want
to stop in the town. He left “spurring his horses on as if he was leaving some place haunted
by the devil.” The narrator was left with his wife and three children in the middle of the
plaza, and all they could hear was the wind. He then asked his wife: “What country are we
in, Agripina?” She didn’t answer and he sent her to find a place to eat and spend the night.
Agripina is not able to find either, and ends up sleeping with her child in the church. When
the narrator finds her there, she explains that she was denied food.
The family sleeps in the church. They awaken to see the women of Luvina carrying their
water jugs down to the river for water: “As if they were shadows they started walking down
the street with their black water jugs.”
The narrator says that the only people who live in Luvina are these dealth-like old women
and the unborn children. Everyone flees the town.
The narrator explains that one day he tried to convince the inhabitants that they should go
to another place where the land was good, or to at least ask for the government’s help.
After all, the government was beholden to them because it is their country. In response, the
people of Luvina laughed at his naive speech. The narrator explains that they were right.
The only time the government visits Luvina is when one of its sons has done something
wrong in a part of the country that matters: “Then he sends to Luvina for him and they kill
him.” The narrator explains that the only reason the people of Luvina don't leave is because
they do not want to abandon their dead.
The narrator explains that this is why he left Luvina and does not intend to return. His
listener, however, is going there in a few hours. He remembers how fifteen years ago told
him the same thing when they assigned him to teach there: “you’re going to San Juan
Luvina.” He remarks that once upon a time he was idealistic and hoped to change the town
and make a difference, “but it didn’t work out in Luvina. I made the experiment and it
failed.” The name “San Juan Luvina” originally sounded heavenly to him, but now he knows
it is “purgatory;” “A dying place where even the dogs have died off, so there’s not a
creature to bark at the silence.” He remarks that when the young teacher arrives there he
will understand.
The narrator then proposes that the two ask the bartender for some mescal instead of more
beers. He is about to begin talking again, but goes silent as his gaze becomes fixed on the
table where the carcasses of flying ants have collected in a ring around the lamp. The night
closes in outside and the children’s shouts are now further away. The narrator finally falls
asleep on the table.
Analysis
In terms of building an atmosphere of suspenseful malevolence, “Luvina” might well be
Rulfo’s most chilling tale. This is quite an accomplishment given no one dies in the story,
and Rulfo’s cultivation of dread is often predicated upon the presence or presentiment of
death. It is also notable that this story is practically devoid of action. It is simply one man’s
account of his first visit and subsequent stay in Luvina, told to a listener who is about to
depart for the town and does not speak. The only tangible action in the story is the
narrator’s description of his family’s first night in the town (his wife finds refuge in an
abandoned church and the family cannot sleep because of the wind and the bat-like
shuffling sound made by the town’s women before dawn). Other than this, the vast majority
of this story is comprised of vivid description of the town and the natural elements that
endeavor to rid the town of any vestiges of life. As a result, the wind is really the only active
“character” that inhabits the town. Everyone else simply “waits for death.”
The descriptions of the wind are particularly frightening: “it takes hold of things in Luvina as
if it was going to bite them,” “sweeping along Luvina’s streets, bearing behind it a black
blanket,” “it scratches like it had nails: scraping the walls, tearing off strips of earth, digging
with its sharp shovel under the doors, until you feel it boiling inside of you as if it was going
to remove the hinges of your very bones.” The wind is not the only inhospitable aspect of
Luvina’s environment, however. It’s backdrop is equally menacing: the moon is “the image
of despair,” the hills are “silent as if they were dead” and Luvina sits atop “the highest hill
with its white houses like a crown of the dead.” The horizon is also “always clouded over by
a dark stain that never goes away,” the terrain “is steep and slashed on all sides by deep
barrancas, so deep you can’t make out the bottom,” and as one walks on the ground it’s “as
if the earth itself had grown thorns there.” All these descriptions make Luvina the most
threatening and cruel terrain in The burning plain. The barren Great Plain in “They gave us
the land” might seem like stiff competition, but it lacks the “active” menace of the wind in
“Luvina” that willfully seeks out life in order to slowly wear it down and eventually
extinguish it.
The interiorization of the narrative action in “Luvina” (in the memory of the narrator) will be
familiar to readers who have read Rulfo’s later and best known work, Pedro Páramo. This
technique is intensified in Pedro Páramo, where much of the narration follows the thoughts
of the characters, often in a “stream of consciousness” format. This is not the only similarity
between the novel and “Luvina,” however. On the contrary, “Luvina” and Pedro Páramo are
so similar that the characters in the short story could easily fit into the novel and vice-versa.
In “Luvina” the town’s inhabitants have an ethereal, ghostly quality about them, and the
same is true of the residents of Comala in Pedro Páramo. In fact, in the novel the characters
actually are ghosts, although the reader does not realize this until late in the story. While
Luvina is described in the story as “purgatory,” and Comala is most certainly yet another
place where lost souls cannot find rest. One wonders if perhaps the idea for Rulfo’s master
work might draw heavily on “Luvina.”
While Luvina might seem otherwordly, like the other stories in The burning plain it is
nevertheless tied into the Mexico’s historical reality during the post-revolutionary period. In
this story the critical social issue at hand is the education of a country in desperate need of
social justice and modernization. As the narrator explains, however, not only is the
government deaf to the needs of the citizens of Luvina (it only pays them a visit when in
pursuit of one of their delinquent sons), but the citizens themselves are so closely tied to
provincial traditions that they cannot bear the thought of abandoning the town. This would
mean leaving dead ancestors behind, perhaps a metaphor for their strong attachment to the
past: “If we leave, who’ll bring along our dead ones?”
These two forces combine to crush the idealism of even the most spirited educators, as was
the narrator’s case so long ago. As the he describes his urging of the townspeople to appeal
to the government for assistance, we are reminded that—for the first time in The burning
plain—the protagonist is a employee and promoter of the revolutionary government.
However, his time in Luvina changes his mind about both the hope for the modernization of
rural Mexico and its political trajectory since he eventually confesses that the citizens were
right all along and the leaders aren’t aware of the existence of towns like this. In the end it
is clear that the likelihood of successfully integrating Luvina into the nation — the task laid
out for both the towns old (the narrator) and new (the listener) teachers — is slim. In fact,
one wonders by the story’s end if the new teacher was not scared off by the narrator long
before the story’s end, or if the narrator has been talking to himself all along.
Summary and Analysis of “The night they left him alone” ("La noche que lo
dejaron solo")
Summary
This story takes place between 1926 and 1929 during what was known as the Cristero War.
It is told in third person by an omniscient narrator who describes the flight of a Cristero
soldier, Feliciano Ruelas, from a successful ambush of federal troops.
The tale begins with Feliciano asking his two companions why they are walking so slowly,
warning them that if they continue at this pace they will become sleepy. The other two men
reply that they want to arrive at their destination at dawn. The narrator tells us that these
were the last words Feliciano heard his friends say, “but he would only remember that
afterward, the next day.” Then he adds that the men had also said that it was better to
travel in the dark because then they would not be seen.
Feliciano walks off ahead of his two companions. He leans back against a tree trunk and
falls fast asleep. Feliciano awakes to the sound of mule drivers traveling along the road.
They say, "Good morning!" but he doesn't reply. Feliciano gets up and leaves the road. He
abandons his heavy weaponry in order to travel faster, worried that the mule drivers will
alert sentries of his presence.
Finally he sees the gray plain stretch out ahead of him and thinks that his friends must now
be out there, lying in the sun with no worries.
Feliciano rolls down the canyon to the plain. Once there, he approaches the houses at Agua
Zarca and watches the noisy movements of soldiers warming up beside bonfires. He sees
two men hanging from a mesquite tree and realizes that they are his uncles, Tanis and
Librado.
Feliciano hides himself in a corner to rest and hears someone above him say, “What are we
waiting for to take them down?” Another man says, “We’re waiting for the other one to
come” and adds that “the third one is just a boy” but that he was the one who “laid the
ambush for Lieutenant Parra and wiped out his men.” They add that “if he doesn’t come
today or tomorrow, we’ll finish off the first one who passes by so our orders will be carried
out."
Feliciano calms his nerves, creeps to the edge of the stream begins to run through the tall
grass. He doesn’t stop until he could no longer see the water: “Then he stopped. He
breathed deeply, in trembling gulps.”
Analysis
As far as historical context is concerned, this story is notable because it is the first to treat
the subject of the Cristero War (1926-1929), which took place in Mexico after the
Revolution (1910-1920). The Cristero War was a period of conflict between Plutarco Elias
Calles’ government and Catholic militias. The topic of contention was the restricted rights of
the Church under the revolutionary government and the Constitution of 1917. The Cristero
rebels believed they were fighting for Christ, and this is why Feliciano’s character repeatedly
makes references such as “Long live Christ, Our Lord!” The conflict was ended through
diplomacy just as the tide was turning the Cristeros’ way.
This is a topic of particular interest for Rulfo because his family lost much their financial
assets in both this conflict and the Revolution. In addition to losing his mother during the
Cristero War in 1927, perhaps it is not irrelevant to the analysis of this story that two of his
uncles died in 1928. However, none of the family deaths have been conclusively linked to
the Cristero War despite speculation to the contrary.
“The night they left him alone” is also rather unique because it is a tale where negligence
does not cost the main character his life. Death stalks the protagonists in Rulfo’s works and
it seldom forgives mistakes. This is the case in stories like “The man,” “Tell them not to kill
me!” and “At daybreak.” “The Hill of the Comadres” is perhaps one of the few other
examples where impending death is foiled (or at least postponed). Rulfo cultivates a sense
of dread as “The night they left him alone” proceeds and we become certain that Feliciano
has made a fatal mistake in falling behind his uncles during the overnight trek. Indeed,
death is a sure thing from the fourth line of the story: “It was the last thing he heard them
say.” The only information we lack is who dies and how.
As a result, the reader is tempted to anticipate death in all its possible forms: Will Feliciano
get lost in the night and fall down a canyon? Will he freeze to death as he sleeps under the
tree? Will he wake up in the hands of the soldiers? Or, will the mule drivers turn him in as
he himself suspects? Ironically, however, death does not come for this negligent young man
but for the conscientious ones. Hence in this story we are confronted by the theme of death
as the great leveler: it comes for all of us and when or how is beyond our control. Luck and
chance are also depicted as being as important as calculation and preparation.
In some ways this brush with death brings the reality of its implacable yet unpredictable
nature into greater focus for both Feliciano and the reader. When seemingly certain death is
avoided it sends chills down both his and our spines. While the survival of the main
character is rather surprising in Rulfo’s narrative world, his stories are filled with “limitexperiences” that give them narrative intensity. While men and women are pushed to their
limits in stories like “The night they left him alone” and “Talpa,” in others (such as “They
gave us the land” or “We’re very poor, where water is either severely lacking or in excess,
respectively) it is nature that is presented in a situation of extreme disequilibrium. In all
these cases life hangs in the balance.
Summary and Analysis of “Remember” ("Acuérdate")
Summary
The narrator tells us that Urbano Gómez died a while ago, perhaps fifteen years, but that he
was a memorable person. He was often called “Grandfather” and his other son, Fidencio,
had two “frisky” daughters, one of which had the mean nickname of “Stuck Up.” The other
daughter was tall and blue-eyed and many said she wasn’t his. This one got hiccups often
and one time interrupted Mass at the moment of the Elevation: “it seemed like she was
laughing and crying at the same time.” She wound up marrying Lucio Chico the tavern
owner.
They called Urbano’s mother “Eggplant” because she would always get pregnant whenever
she fooled around. She had money, but it all went into elaborate burials since all her
children died shortly after being born. The wakes were always expensive so she lost her
fortune this way. Only two of her children, Urbano and Natalia, survived. “Eggplant” died in
her last childbirth, but in life she was a scrapper. The narrator tells us she would always get
into arguments with the saleswomen in the market. Eventually when she became poor she
had to rummage through the trash to find scraps to feed her children with.
The narrator explains that “Urbano Gómez was more or less our age — maybe a few months
older” and was a bit of a swindler or trickster. He sold the narrator Pink flowers, even
though they were easy to find on the hillsides. He also sold fruit he had stolen or bought for
less from other places, along with whatever other junk he had on him.
We also learn Urbano was also Nachito Rivera’s brother-in-law. Nachito got “feeble-minded”
after marrying his wife Inés who then had to take care of him. Nachito would spend all day
playing songs on an out of tune mandolin. The narrator and his interlocutor would always go
with Urbano to visit his sister and “drink the fruit juice we always owed her for and never
paid for.” Later on in life Urbano lost his friends because everyone avoided him so they
would not have to pay him back. The narrator wonders if this is why he turned bad, “or
maybe he was just that way right from birth.”
Urbano was expelled from school before his fifth year because he got caught “playing man
and wife” with his cousin Stuck Up. They humiliated him by pulling him out the doors by his
ears between rows of boys and girls: “He marched along there with his face held high,
shaking his fist at all of us, like he was saying, ‘You’ll pay for this.’” Later came Stuck Up
who burst into tears, “a shrill weeping you could hear all afternoon like it was a coyote’s
howl.” The narrator remarks that “only if your memory’s real bad you won’t remember
that.”
It is rumored that Urbano’s uncle Fidencio gave him a beating so bad that he almost left the
boy paralyzed. This caused Urbano to leave the village. He eventually came back as a
policeman, however. He would just sit in the town’s main square with his gun between his
legs, “staring at all of us filled with hate.” He never said anything and pretended not to
know anyone.
The narrator then remarks that soon afterwards Urbano killed his brother-in-law Nachito. At
nighttime Nachito had decided to serenade him with his out of tune mandolin. The church
bells were still ringing for the souls in purgatory when the people in the church heard the
screams and saw “Nachito on his back defending himself with the mandolin and Urbano
hitting him again and again with the butt of his mauser, not hearing what the people
shouted at him, rabid, like a sick dog.” Finally someone took the gun away and hit him in
the back with it. Urbano collapsed over the garden bench and lay there for the rest of the
night. He left in the morning, but not before asking for the priest’s blessing at the church,
which he was denied.
The narrator tells us that Urbano was arrested on the road. He didn’t resist and even put
the noose around his neck and picked out the tree for them to hang him. The narrator ends
the story with another reference to “you,” the reader or interlocutor: “You must remember
him, because we were classmates at school, and you knew him just like I did.”
Analysis
“Remember” is a particularly short story told in third person by a narrator who employs a
confidential tone. Like many of Rulfo’s stories, this tale has the intimate feel of a monologue
or a recited religious litany. The narrator recalls details about Urbano Gómez and his family
as if he were speaking to an invisible interlocutor or perhaps directly to the reader.
A significant trend in Rulfo’s narrative is the manner in which he manages to include or even
implicate the reader in the story. In “Remember,” the narrator repeatedly draws the reader
into a dialog with him, even if only through the use of rhetorical comments such as “You
must’ve known her,” or “Urbano Gómez was more or less our age — maybe a few months
older.” Still more frequent is the narrator’s use of the word “remember” early on in quite a
few sentences. When “remember” appears at the beginning of a sentence, it is never as a
question. In fact, there are no rhetorical questions asked of the reader or interlocutor. This
is significant because the narrator is not asking us to remember, he is telling us — or even
commanding us — to remember.
If the narrator were to ask us to remember and not tell us to do so, we would find it easier
to disengage from the story and shift the burden of memory onto someone else, onto a
contemporary of the narrator, perhaps. However, the way the narrator commands us to
dedicate to memory (or revive it in our memory) the story of Urbano Gómez demands the
reader’s more active participation. The story’s final line seems almost accusatory in nature:
“You must remember him, because we were classmates at school, and you knew him just
like I did.”
These words seem to elicit a particular response from the reader, specifically a confession.
Additionally, as we know by now, many of the stories in this collection already come in the
form of a confession. It almost seems as though after so many characters have spilled their
darkest secrets out on the page, the narrator is now asking the reader to do the same:
Confess that you know Urbano Gómez or someone like him, and that you have tried to
forget about them. Confess that stories like his are not as far from your own experience as
you might like to think. This confession need not be articulated out loud. The narrator
seems to suggest it would be sufficient to simply engage our memory and “remember.”
Rulfo was undoubtedly a politically and socially committed writer. His stories are filled with
vivid descriptions of the shortcomings of overarching political institutions like the judicial
system, the legislative branch, or the system of public education. In this story, however,
there is no apparent institution or governmental department at which one can point a
finger. It has been easy up until now for the reader to shake his or her fist at the sky and
curse the abstract “powers that be.”
For this reason “Remember” is special because it is the individual, rather than the
institution, that finally must bear the burden of responsibility for the tragic end of Urbano
Gómez. It is we who abandoned him along the way: “we’d go with Urbano to see his sister,
and to drink the fruit juice we always owed her and never paid her for […]. Later on he
didn’t have any friends left because all of us, when we’d see him, would avoid him so he
wouldn’t collect from us.” Individuals like “us” also subjected him to merciless ridicule as he
exited the school after being expelled, and the narrator tells us so: “Only if your memory’s
real bad you won’t remember that.” In the end Urbano certainly fully recognizes his own
guilt in the murder of Nachito (“he himself tied the rope around his neck and even picked
out the tree of his choice for them to hang him from”), it is only fair that we should
reciprocate and acknowledge or “confess” our role in forsaking him along the way.
Summary and Analysis of “No dogs bark” ("No oyes ladrar los perros")
Summary
The story with a father’s request that his son Ignacio tell him if he can’t hear anything or
see any lights in the distance: “You up there, Ignacio! Don’t you hear something or see a
light somewhere?” Ignacio responds that he does not, and the father says that they must be
getting close.
The reader slowly realizes that Ignacio is being carried in a sitting position on his father’s
shoulders. This is a technique typical of Rulfo, who likes to keep certain information from his
readers in order to disorient them and make them work to make sense of a story. We do
not yet know the relationship between the two adult men (both are referred to as “men”) or
why Ignacio is being carried.
The father notes that they should soon be getting to the town of Tonaya, which someone
told them was just beyond the hill they crossed hours ago. The father says he is tired and
Ignacio responds, “Put me down.” The “old man” is able to lean against a property wall for a
few moments but does not lower his son. The narrator notes that the son speaks very little,
and less and less with time. He also seems to sleep at times or tremble as if he were very
cold. We hereby know that something is wrong with Ignacio but we do not know what. The
son’s feet dig into his father’s sides as if they were spurs and his hands shake his head as if
it were a rattle.
The father wonders aloud where "Tonaya" is; Ignacio responds that the doesn’t feel well and
wants to be set down. The father responds that he’ll get his son to the town and there the
doctor will see him.
At this point, the relationship between father and son becomes more nuanced. The father
notes that he is not doing this for Ignacio, but rather for Ignacio’s dead mother, who would
never have forgiven him for leaving her son where he found him. He says that his wife is
what gives him courage, not his son, who has caused him “nothing but trouble, humiliation,
and shame.” We discover that Ignacio has been a wandering thief and has even murdered
people, including the father’s old friend, Tranquilino, who baptized the boy.
The father again asks Ignacio if he can see or hear anything, to which he responds in the
negative. The father observes that Ignacio should be able to hear the dogs barking even
thought the lights in the town have been turned off. The son asks for water but the father
says he can’t let him down because he won’t be able to lift him up again. This leads the
father to speak about Ignacio's mother, who died when her son was a baby. The memory of
Ignacio’s mother seems to make Ignacio cry, even though he never did anything for her. He
says his son’s body was always full of evil rather than love.
At the end of the story we finally glimpse the events that brought Ignacio to this point. The
father notes that now “they” have wounded Ignacio’s body. He notes that all Ignacio’s
“friends” have been killed, only they didn’t have anyone to look after them as Ignacio does.
Finally, the two men arrive at Tonaya, with it’s roofs shining in the moonlight. When the
father gets to the first house he leans against the wall. With difficulty he slips Ignacio’s
dangling body off his back and separates his son’s hands from around his neck. Now that
Ignacio is no longer blocking his hearing, the sound of dogs barking.
In a circular fashion, the story ends as it began, with the father words on the inefficacy of
Ignacio as a lookout. “And you didn’t hear them, Ignacio?” he says. “You didn’t even help
me listen.”
Analysis
In this story we witness a common theme in Mexican literature, as well as in that of Latin
America as a whole: the problematic nature of the father-son relationship. Ignacio’s
relationship with his father is interesting in and of itself for the way in which the father,
despite being clearly at odds with his son, nevertheless undertakes the incredible task of
carrying him to Tonaya. It can be also be read, however, as an allegory of the problematic
relationship of the post-revolutionary period with the idealistic Revolution that preceded it.
The Mexican Revolution (1910-20) was driven by idealism and hope for a great future,
particularly one where the poor would receive the land they desired and the economic
stability that had previously belonged to corrupt politicians. Many of these hopes were never
realized however, since instead of land reform, a new generation of corruption began where
previous revolutionaries sold their allegiance to the highest bidder.
Although the allegory is far from obvious, we can see the outlines of this problem in the
relationship of Ignacio and his father. The father clearly had great hopes for his family (a
common metaphor for the “nation”) but these quickly faded with the loss of his wife and the
fragmentation of his family. The next generation — his son Ignacio — due in part to the
impossibility of this ideal “family” and his own shortcomings, has become corrupted, much
like many during the post-revolutionary period.
The role of the bad friends who contribute to Ignacio’s downfall is important here, since
“friends” are allegiances that are outside the family and the nation. These friends could be
metaphors for the role of the foreign influences (such as the United States) that tried to
benefit economically from the chaos that followed the Revolution.
Rulfo does not neatly wrap this story up in allegory, however, since the father’s feelings for
his son are clearly ambivalent. He feels the strong desire to reject his son, but nevertheless
must yield to the urge to save him from mortal danger. Perhaps this could be a sign of the
persistence of revolutionary idealism in the face of what is clearly a lost cause.
The political shortcomings of the Revolution and their subsequent repercussions are not
treated directly by the story, but are certainly hidden below its surface and emanate out
through the dramatic events narrated. Evidence of these failures is implicit in “No dogs
bark” in the question of why the father is carrying the son to Tonaya, and not to his own
town. The unstated reason is that there is no doctor where the father and son live. With this
simple detail, Rulfo manages to work in a persistent problem that the Revolution proposed
to vanquish, the basic issues of social security: health care, shelter, employment,
education. He does not denounce or draw attention to it, but the lack of a doctor remains as
an underlying cause of the two men’s predicament. As a result, in the most subtle way —
and without taking away from the aesthetic value of the work — these stories continue to
serve as nagging reminders of how so many promises were broken or forgotten.
One could argue “No dogs bark” has some of the theatrical qualities of tragedy in the
fatalistic manner in which the characters are driven towards their inevitable destruction.
This quality is supported by the way the story largely consists of dialog between the father
and son. It is also notable that “No dogs bark” also exhibits a tendency towards
romanticism. The night, the moon and the individual heroism of the father in carrying his
son contribute to this romantic impulse, and these elements serve in turn to heighten the
force of the story’s tragic ending.
Summary and Analysis of “Paso del Norte”
Summary
Except for a sliver of third person narration at the story’s center, “Paso del Norte” consists
entirely of dialog. The story begins with a conversation between a son and his father: “I’m
going a long way off, Father, that’s why I’ve come to let you know.” The father asks the son
where he is headed and learns his destination is “up North.” The son’s pig-buying business
has failed and his family is starving, in contrast with his father. The son says the father
can’t understand his family’s suffering because he sells “skyrockets and firecrackers and gun
powder” which are popular whenever there are holiday celebrations. The business in pigs is
more seasonal and therefore less successful.
The father asks his son what he will do up North and the son responds that he doesn’t have
an exact idea except that Carmelo came back from there rich and brought a phonograph
that plays music. He charges money for each song and people line up to listen: “So you see,
you just have to go and come back.”
The father asks what the son will do with his wife and children, and the son responds that
he wants his father to look after them. The father responds that they are not his
responsibility and that he is too old to raise children. Raising his own son and daughter —
who has since passed away — was enough work. The son is angry upon hearing this and
says he didn’t get anything out of being raised by his father: “you didn’t even teach me the
fireworks trade, so I wouldn’t be in competition with you.” The son was almost thrown out
on the street to live and learn, and now he and his family are starving to death.
To this the father replies that he never gave his son permission to marry, but the son then
says his reason was that the father never liked his wife, Tránsito. The son explains that his
father treated the girl badly when she came by, acting as if she was a prostitute the old
man had met before on the streets. This is why he has not brought her by. The son repeats
that he must go up North and that he wants his father to watch over his family.
The father says that hard work is all a man needs to get by in the world, but the son says
that he never received any guidance from his father: “you should’ve got me started on the
road, and not just turn me out like a horse to pasture.” To this the father replies that the
son should be happy that he has managed to have a wife and family, “some others haven’t
even had that in their life.”
The son explains that his father didn’t even teach him to recite verses: “If I’d just had that I
might’ve earned something, amusing people the way you do.” Instead of teaching him, his
father told him to sell eggs. Last week his family ate weeds, and this week they ate less.
This is way he must go north.
His father tells him then that “in each new nest, one must leave an egg,” implying that
children will only cost you money and end up abandoning you. The son replies that this is
nonsense since he has not forgotten his father, but the father notes that his son only comes
to see him when he needs something. The father has been lonely for a long time and “now
you want to come and stir up my feelings, but you don’t know that it’s harder to revive a
dead man than give life again.”
The son then asks his father if he is saying definitively that he won’t care for his family, and
the father finally agrees to watch over the three boys, two girls and their mother. The son
promises he will return with money to compensate his father for double his expenses: just
feed them, that’s all I ask you.”
The narration then briefly changes to third person as the story shifts gears to the son’s
voyage to the North: “From the ranches the people came down to the villages; the people of
the villages went to the cities. In the cities the people got lost, vanished among the people.”
What then follows is a short jumbled series of conversations where the speaker is not
explicitly identified. It appears that the son is asking where work can be found so that he
can earn the money to cross the U.S.-Mexican border. He learns Ciudad Juárez is the place
to go in order to be “passed” for two hundred pesos. He hears that in Nonoalco men for
unloading trains are needed, and says that he unloaded bananas in Merced Market but was
subsequently accused of stealing so he was not paid. Working on the railroad is another
option, but an unidentified speaker wonders if the son is brave enough for this kind of labor.
The narration then jumps to the son offering two hundred pesos to the man who will
arrange for him to be taken across the border. The man tells him who he should contact in
Ciudad Juárez and explains that Oregon, not Texas, is the place to go for work. There a man
can harvest apples or lay railroad ties. Working on the railroad pays the most and lasts the
longest.
Rulfo jolts the reader forward in time to another conversation between the son and father.
The son explains that when he and his fellow immigrants crossed the Río Grande at El Paso
del Norte they were shot at until they were all dead. The son tells his father that
Estanislado, someone his father knows, organized the plan. They were to head to Mexico
City and then proceed from there to El Paso. But, when they reached the river they were
shot at and he had to turn back because Estanislado was wounded and didn’t want to be left
behind: “and then he was already on his back, his body all full of holes, and gone slack.”
The son explains that he dragged the man, trying as best he could to stay out of the beam
of the searchlights. Estanislado was still alive, but the son then realized his own arm had
been smashed by a bullet. He tried to pull the man further, but he died shortly later on the
Mexican side of the border. The son tried to revive Estanislado all night long, but to no avail.
In the morning an immigration officer found him and asked him what he was doing with the
dead man. The man interrogated the son about whether or not he killed Estanislado, but
when he saw his broken arm he stopped. He asked what happened and the son said the
group had been shot at while they were in the middle of the river. He and the dead man had
been the only two to escape. The officer asked if the son had seen who was shooting at
them and the son said no, they just turned the lights on and started firing.
The officer then noted that the shooters must have been Apaches. The son asked why they
would be Apaches if Texans lived on the other side and the officer said: “but you have no
idea how full of Apaches it is.” The officer then told the son to go home and gave him
money for the trip home in addition to the money Estanislado was carrying: “If I see you
here again, I’ll just let you look out for yourself. I don’t like to see the same face twice. Go
on now, on your way!”
The father then told the son: “That’s what you get for being a sucker and a fool. And you’ll
see when you go to your house, you’ll see what you gained by going.” He told the son that
the children are with him sleeping in the back, but that Tránsito had run off with a mule
driver: “And you can go look for some place to spend the night, because I sold your house
to pay for the expenses. And you still owe me thirty pesos, which the title cost.”
The son responds that he will pay his father back, but asks him which way the mule driver
went with Tránsito and the father points him in the general direction. The son says he will
be right back, since he is going to track her down.
Analysis
“Paso del Norte” deals with an issue as recognizable to contemporary readers as it was
when the collection was published in 1953: Immigration. In fact, an examination of this
story shows that little has changed for the immigrants since that time. Many of them today,
much like the son in this story, make their way to Mexico City before continuing on to
Ciudad Juárez where they make arrangements to pay a “coyote,” a guide, to conduct them
across the border and give them a contact who will help them find work. Just like at the
time of “Paso del Norte,” the border zone is still a dangerous place where many immigrants
are killed before making it to the United States. The description of the how the son’s
companions are shot after they have bright lights directed at them makes one wonder who
killed them. The Mexican immigration officer leads the son to believe it was probably Apache
Indians, but this is likely an ironic barb Rulfo has directed at the way indigenous
communities are poorly treated in both Mexico and in the United States and are easy
scapegoats for “uncivilized” incidents. “Paso del Norte” is especially resonant in this day and
age where private citizen groups patrol the border in addition to the United States Border
Patrol.
The location of the murder of the son’s companions is also significant. The Rio Grande was
designated as the border between the United States and Mexico a little over a century
before 1953 in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (indeed, 1953 was the centenary the
subsequent “Gadsden Purchase”). This treaty ended the Mexican-American War and made
what used to be nearly half of Mexico’s territory part of the southwestern United States.
This story is hereby interesting for its portrayal of the border as a site of much historical and
cultural frustration for Mexicans.
In addition to the social issue of immigration, this story also gives us a glimpse of the
contemporary Mexican demography. Suffering significant economic hardship, those who live
in rural areas are beginning to gravitate to the cities. The only two sentences narrated in
third person — and therefore significant ones — indicate that “from the ranches the people
came down to the villages; the people of the villages went to the cities. In the cities the
people got lost, vanished among the people.” This movement is precisely what the son
experiences as he goes to Mexico City. It is significant that this is the only time in the whole
book that the capital is mentioned, and it has strongly negative connotations.
This story also tells us a great deal about the county’s economy. The agricultural situation
has become so desperate that only certain types of work are well remunerated, and none of
them can serve as the base of a strong national economy. Notably, the son speaks jealously
of his father’s knowledge of fireworks. One would not think this to be a particularly lucrative
occupation, but the son observes that his father’s work is in high demand any time there is
a religious “fiesta.” For this same reason he wishes his father would have taught him how to
recite poetry: “If I’d just had that I might’ve earned something, amusing people the way
you do.” Entertainment and “amusement” appear to be the only jobs that pay well in the
countryside, and we learn that even this is not an exclusively domestic product, since the
son’s friend Carmelo brought back a phonograph from the North “and he charges five
centavos to listen to the music.” Even the songs are not Mexican, but rather Cuban, or by
“that Anderson woman who sings sad songs.” The only jobs that pay are the furthest from
being “modern”: they deal only in idle pleasures capable of distracting the farm laborer from
his or her troubles.
Summary and Analysis of “Anacleto Morones”
Summary
One of the longer stories in The Burning Plain, “Anacleto Morones” is told in first person by
the character of Lucas Lucatero. Lucatero begins the story by cursing the women who have
come to visit him: “Old women, daughters of the devil! I saw them coming all together in a
procession. Dressed in black, sweating like mules under the hot sun.” They were carrying
“their large black scapularies on which the sweat from their faces fell in big drops.”
Knowing “what they were up to and who they were looking for,” the narrator immediately
hides out in his backyard, running with his pants in his hands. The women found him naked,
idly squatting on a stone, however, and were immediately scandalized. Lucatero does this
intentionally, “so they would see me and not come close,” but this does not discourage the
women. They then explain that they have come from the town of Amula to see him, “but we
didn’t figure you would be way back here doing this.” The narrator curses them again,
comparing them to saddle sores on a donkey. He then asks them what they want as he
buttons his pants and they avert their eyes.
The women explain that they have come on a mission, and have been searching for him in
various towns. The narrator tells us he already knows all the women by name, but he
decides to act as if he doesn’t. He then invites them onto his porch, brings out some chairs
and offers them some food and drink. The women decline the food and return to the subject
of their visit. One woman asks him if he recognizes her and Lucatero says he thinks she
might be “Pancha Fregoso, who let herself be carried off by Homobono Ramos.” The woman
says she is Pancha but that no one carried her off, “the two of us got lost looking for
berries. I’m a church member and I would never have let him.” She then chastizes him for
having an evil mind.
The narrator then offers them a glass of water, and the women finally agree to accept it.
There were ten women seated on his porch in a row and all dressed in black, “the daugthers
of Ponciano, Emiliano, Crescenciano, Toribio the Tavernkeeper and Anastasio the barber.”
The women explain that they have had a hard time tracking him down, and as they begin to
go into the reason for their visit the narrator gets up to collect some eggs from the yard
despite the women’s protest.
The narrator sees a pile of stones outlining a grave. Lucatero scatters the rocks in every
direction. He goes back inside and gives the women the eggs. He knows that these women
of the Congregation of Amula have been looking for him since January, when Anacleto
Morones disappeared: “They were the only ones who could have any interest in Anacleto
Morones. And now here they were.”
The narrator decides to stall until night, when would have to leave: “They wouldn’t dare
spend the night in my house.” Sure enough, night falls and the women refuse to stay for
fear of what the townspeople would think if they spent the night there alone with him. They
don't leave yet, however.
Lucatero speaks to one of the women, Nieves García, continuing to stall her. Nieves and he
used to be lovers, and Lucatero abandoned her while she was pregnant; he conveniently
forgets this history for a while before flirting with her, describing how he used to kiss the
back of her knees. Nieves responds that God will not pardon Lucatero because she had to
abort their baby. The narrator feigns ignorance and goes outside to make more myrtle
water. When he returns Nieves has left.
The conversation soon turns to the subject of Anacleto, "the Holy Child." They speak of a
man, Eldemiro, who was punished by God for accusing Anacleto of being a quack. They note
that the judge who “sent the Holy Child to jail” also met the same fate.
Suddenly one of the women asks Lucatero if he will come with them to Amula. This is why
they have come. They explain that they want him to participate in their novena, a prayer
group for Anacleto. They need someone who had known him “before he became famous for
his miracles” so they can put together a case to have him made a saint.
This is repulsive to Lucatero, and he says he cannot go because no one will take care of his
house. They respond that two of them will stay to take care of it along with his wife, the
Holy Child's daughter. Lucatero says that he does not have a wife anymore, telling them
that he ran her off, which shocks the women. They hope that she has at least been placed
in a convent but the narrator says she was “too fond of being loose and bawdy” to be in a
convent.
The women then say that all this can be fixed if he just confesses when he gets to Amula.
They ask him when he last confessed and he says that it was fifteen years ago, “when the
Cristeros were going to shoot me. They shoved a gun in my back and made me kneel in
front of a priest, and I confessed to things there that I hadn’t even done yet.” To this the
women again say that if he wasn’t the son-in-law of the Holy Child they wouldn’t ask this of
him because “you’ve always been a real devil, Lucas Lucatero.” The narrator then remarks
that he was just “Anacleto Morones’ helper. He was the living devil himself.”
This scandalizes the women once again, and they say he was a saint. Lucatero explains,
however, that Anacleto used to sell phony saints’ relics in the fairs. Lucatero says that
Anacleto once pretended to endure ant bites with the help of a piece of the true cross, with
the aim of then selling the relic, though in fact he simply bit his tongue to keep from crying
out. The women deny that the narrator is telling the truth. They say Lucatero was
ungrateful because he was nothing more than a swineherd before he met Anacleto.
The women say that Anacleto is in heaven now, but Lucatero says he heard the man was in
jail. To this the women say that he has since escaped, leaving no trace, so he must be in
heaven. The women then kneel down and kiss their scapularies with images of Anacleto.
During this time the narrator goes to the kitchen to eat some tacos: “When I came out only
five women were left.” Pancha tells him that they were so disgusted they had to go. He then
offers those that remain some more myrtle water. Filomena, who’s nickname was the Dead
One for her quiet nature, “rushed over to one of my flowerpots and, putting her finger down
her throat, brought up all the myrtle water she had swallowed, mixed in with pieces of
sausage and fruit seeds.” She then said that she didn’t want anything from him and leaving
her egg on her chair, left: “Now only four were left.”
Pancha said she felt like vomiting too, but that they had to get him to go to Amula. She
reminds him that he was almost Anacleto’s son: “You inherited the fruit of his saintliness.
He put his eyes on you to perpetuate him. He gave you his daughter.” To this the narrator
responds by saying “yes, but he gave her to me already perpetuated.” The women again are
shocked, but he insists that the girl was already four months pregnant when they were
married and was proud of showing off her bulging stomach. She ran off with someone else
just because he offered to take care of the child.
The narrator then truly stuns the women by telling them that “inside Anacleto Morones’
daughter was Anacleto Morones’ grandchild.” She wasn’t the only one either, because he
“left this part of the country without virgins, always seeing to it that a maiden watched over
his sleep.” The women then defend the man by saying he did this to stay pure, but the
narrator responds that they say this because he didn’t choose to be with them.
Melquíades, one of the remaining four then said that Anacleto did call on her, and that he
only held her through the night. The narrator tells her that this was because she is old, and
that Anacleto “liked them young and tender, liked to hear their bones breaking, to hear
them snap as if they were peanut shells.” The one named “The Orphan” then called
Lucatero a cursed atheist. She said she was an orphan and that Anacleto comforted her.
She explains that she found her parents again in his embrace when the night they spent
together: the only happy night I spent was with the Holy Child Anacleto in his consoling
arms. And now you say bad things about him.”
After another batch of insults thrown Lucatero’s way, only two women remain. Anastasio’s
daughter Micaela then asks if he would really deny that Anacleto performed miracles. She
claims that he cured her husband of syphilis. The narrator expresses surprise at this since
he had heard that she was single. Micaela, then tells him that being a señorita and a being
single are different things. She says she got little benefit out of living as a señorita: “I’m a
woman. And a woman is born to give what is given her.” Lucatero remarks that these are
Anacleto’s words. Micaela explains that he got her to sleep with him in order to cure her
liver trouble, but that “being fifty years old and a virgin is a sin.” The narrator again
recognizes Anacleto’s voice in her words. He asks the two women why they don’t want to
make him a saint instead, and Micaela replies that he has never cured anyone of syphilis.
She describes how her husband suffered before Anacleto burned him with a hot reed and
rubbed saliva on his sores to cure him. Lucatero tells her that he must have had the
measles since he too was cured as a child using this technique. They again criticize his lack
of faith, but Lucatero responds: “I have the consolation that Anacleto Morones was worse
than me.” Upon hearing this Micaela decides to leave.
Lucatero then asks Pancha if she will stay and sleep with him now that the other women
have left. She replies that she only wants to convince him to come with them. Lucatero says
that they ought to try to convince each other: “After all, what have you got to lose? You’re
too old for anybody to pay attention to you or do you that favor.” Finally she says she will
stay but only until dawn and only if he promises to go to Amula with her so she can tell
them she spent the night begging him to accompany her. He then jokingly says: “Okay. But
first cuto off those hairs over your lips. I’ll bring you the scissors.” She replies that they
can’t trim her moustache since someone will notice.
When it gets dark Pancha helps Lucatero put the rocks he had scattered back into the
corner where they originally were. The narrator tells us that “she had no idea that Anacleto
Morones was buried there. Or that he died the same day he escaped from jail and came
here demanding I return his property to him.” Anacleto had asked him to sell everything so
he could have money to travel up North. He promised to write Lucatero so that he could
then join him and they could go into business together again. Lucatero had told him to take
his daughter since that’s all he had left of Anacleto’s. Anacleto responded that they could
join him later once he got in touch: “There we’ll settle accounts.” He asked Lucatero how
much money he had saved, and the narrator told him there was a little left, “but I’m not
going to give it to you. I’ve gone through hell with your shameless daughter. Consider
yourself well paid by my keeping her.” Anacleto then got angry and shouted that he had to
get out of town. Lucatero buried him with stones from the river and said to the grave: “You
won’t get out of here even though you use all your tricks.”
The narrator notes the irony that Pancha is now helping him rearrange the stones without
knowing Anacleto is buried underneath, and says the reason he puts stones on the grave is
so Anacleto won’t be able to escape: “Pile on more rocks, Pancha, here in this corner; I
don’t like to see my yard all rocky.”
The next morning at dawn Pancha says to him: “You’re a flop Lucas Lucatero. You aren’t the
least bit affectionate. Do you know who was really loving?” When the narrator asks who,
she replies: “The Holy Child Anacleto. He knew how to make love.”
Analysis
“Anacleto Morones” has a humorous tone that is quite different from the other stories in this
collection. The comic elements in this tale are certainly dark, but they nevertheless provide
a strong contrast with the stark and harrowing tales that accompany it. While the Amula
women have the understandable excuse of being little more than a product of their social
and historical context — much of which is shaped by the actions of “machista” men like
Anacleto and Lucatero — the narrator’s mockery of their rigid and provincial religiouslyoriented behavior is certainly capable of provoking laughter.
The humorous elements of “Anacleto Morones” are derived from a certain brand of the
comic, however. Moments such as the narrator’s naked greeting of the supposedly pious
congregation, Filomena’s decision to forcefully purge all the myrtle water she has drunk at
Lucatero’s house in one of his flowerpots, and Lucatero’s flirtatious request that Pancha trim
her moustache are all funny in grotesque, bodily ways. The story also has a strongly
macabre irony since the “Holy Child” whom the women are so desperately seeking is
actually buried a few meters away in the narrator’s backyard. This type of macabre humor
has deep roots in Mexico in particular and in Latin America in general. In fact, these roots
stretch all the way across the Atlantic to Spain, where during the sixteenth and seventeenth
century Golden Age authors wrote highly popular stories in the picaresque genre.
The picaresque is a satirical narrative sub-genre that usually deals with the adventures of a
lower-class hero who survives though clever manipulation of his surroundings and wit. Much
like “Anacleto Morones,” the picaresque hero is typically humorously involved in base and
grotesque acts and as he rises through the social hierarchy he descends morally. Lucatero is
clearly more wealthy at the end of the story than when he first met Anacleto, but along the
way he and his mentor have also corrupted the virtue of quite a few of Amula’s women.
However, the picaresque appears in Rulfo’s story with a typically Latin-American slant since
Anacleto and Lucatero masquerade as divinely inspired miracle-workers who are only
distinct from indigenous “curanderos” — or witch doctors — in their close identification with
the Catholic Church. Indeed, it appears that these “picaroons” are likely a product of the
devout Catholicism sparked by the Cristero War. Lucatero himself admits that the Cristeros
made a strong impression on him when they forced him to confess at gunpoint fifteen years
earlier. All he and Anacleto have done is to appeal to this heightened religious fervor at
every opportunity.
Though the women in this story certainly inspire a certain amount of laughter, they also at
times inspire compassion. Pancha is clearly a woman who, underneath the black clothing of
a spinster, simply wants to feel loved and live a little. Sadly enough, Lucatero is right when
he offers her the opportunity for intimacy and says: “you’re too old for anybody to pay
attention to you or do you that favor.” Micaela also demonstrates a strong understanding of
her tragic situation when she says: “what good did I get out of living as a señorita? I’m a
woman. And a woman is born to give what is given her.”
Micaela’s observation that “being fifty years old and a virgin is a sin” also gives us the
impression that, as repugnant as the story’s two roguish picaroons are, they certainly
provide some release for the sexual frustrations of women like these. Oppressed by the
more “respectable” — but still machista — men of their town, these women know where to
go to find satisfaction. While men like Lucatero and Anacleto have caused a great deal of
heartache, they do serve the purpose of making these women feel alive. As a result, just as
the rascals use the women, we should make no mistake that the women use them
reciprocally. After all, Pancha puts Lucatero in his place at the end of the story when his
performance in bed doesn’t live up to her expectations: “You’re a flop, Lucas Lucatero. You
aren’t the least bit affectionate.” Lucatero is just a shadow of the “Holy Child” Anacleto in
bed: “He knew how to make love.” In this way, it is important to remember that humor is
used to accent and highlight the social situation of the women, and not to trivialize it.