At the time that this poem was created, in 1962, Paz worked for the Mexican diplomatic corps. The country was relatively stable. Less than fifty years earlier, though, it had been through a violent civil war. The revolution, from 1911 to 1917, had removed a dictator who had held the country by military force since 1876. It had been led by Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, for whom Paz's father worked. With the overthrow of the government, Villa and Zapata, who went on to be remembered as folk heroes, and the government transformed into a one-party federal republic that followed socialist principles. After World War II came the Cold War, which pitted two superpowers against each other as they each tried to convert other countries to its economic system. Mexico's neighbor, the United States, tried to spread capitalism: Mexico's socialist political system made it more likely for Mexico to align...