Ixca and Gladys Garcia

Through a collection of character sketches in Mexico City, Fuentes shows the dynamism of postrevolutionary Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s as it tries to sort itself out. The characters can be seen as deities struggling for control of Mexico. The figure tying them all together, Ixca Cienfuegos, discounts the present and future to believe in the past. He is in fact a doorway for the reemergence of the Aztec gods who want revenge for their overthrow by the Spaniards. In keeping with Aztec mythology, Ixca needs a blood sacrifice to bring about a return to the past and an overthrow of the new gods, the jet set. Ironically, the other figure looming throughout the novel is Gladys Garcia, a verifiable descendant of the Aztecs, a prostitute whom Ixca, in all his wanderings, never meets. But Ixca wanders through the jet-set class and the...