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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What question did Edmundo O'Gorman try to answer?
(a) What is Mexico?
(b) Where does the future lie?
(c) Who are the Mexicans as a people?
(d) What comprises America?

2. According to Jorge Cuesta, how has Mexico created herself?
(a) With an eye toward preventing civil war.
(b) In agreement with her past.
(c) In opposition to her past.
(d) With no regard for the common people.

3. How did Paz see the 20th Century?
(a) A time when the common man asserted himself.
(b) A time when dictators took more power than ever before.
(c) A time when all historical eras mingled and merged.
(d) A time when feudalism was finally thrown off.

4. In Asia and Africa, what two seemingly-contradictory ideologies are being used?
(a) World power and individualism.
(b) Revolutionary aspiration and nationalism.
(c) Colonial past and nationalism.
(d) Future dreams and individualism.

5. How did the Independence movement begin in South America?
(a) Under the leadership of impassioned leader, San Martin.
(b) With simultaneous victories sweeping the continent.
(c) With Mexican housewives gradually overturning the governing body.
(d) With a small band of determined revolutionaries.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Paz, what must be the first step toward reform?

2. How did the Reform want to justify itself?

3. How did the Revolution relate to reality?

4. Why did the Spaniards not exterminate the Indians after they were conquered?

5. Who were the last people to enter the Valley of Mexico?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the role of the Mexican intelligentsia within society? How does it differ from the function of the intelligentsia within the United States and Europe; and which one is a better role?

2. Why did the new Constitution mandate that education be secular? How might that have made the Mexicans feel?

3. Mexico has entered a new phase of thinking and history. How does Paz explain that phase?

4. Pulling from the ideas of Jose Gaos, Paz, speaks of the physical duality in Mexico. What does that mean? What significance does that idea have?

5. Despite Mexico's advancements, where does she still stand on the world spectrum? How can she change her placement?

6. What happened when Spanish America separated itself from Spain? Given what Paz has stated throughout the book about that moment in history, draw your own conclusions about why that happened.

7. When did Independence begin in Mexico? How was it similar to or different from the Conquest?

8. What role did religion play in ancient South American cultures? Did Catholicism change that role?

9. Who was Sor Juana? Why was she an unusual person both in South America and in old Spain?

10. What does Paz think of the Soviet Union? How does it compare to Mexico?

(see the answer keys)

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