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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was the Mexican intellectual's goal?

2. According to Paz, who is most fascinated by death?

3. What does Paz mean by the word, "community"?

4. In Jose Gaos' thought, what unique opportunity do young people have through their education?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Paz explain the suicides of the Aztec people? Is it a reasonable explanation?

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

3. Why was the Aztec nation able to unify so many diverse tribes? How were they quite skilled with that type of action?

4. How does unemployment on the farms affect the cities? How does it slow all of Mexico's development?

5. What role did Catholicism play in the lives of the conquering Spaniards? Was that role contradictory?

6. 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?

7. Why could Mexico not have progressed as far as she has today if she were working within capitalism?

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

9. Throughout his career, what did Jorge Cuesta argue? What are the benefits and downfalls of his argument?

10. Paz asserts that every revolution attempts to restore the order that an oppressor has twisted or disregarded altogether. How was that true in Mexico?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What personal experiences did Paz pull from to write the book? How did he incorporate them into the broader scope of Mexican history? How did that affect the tone?

Essay Topic 2

Use this quote as the foundation for your essay: "We have been expelled from the center of the world, and are condemned to search for it through jungles and deserts or in the underground mazes of the labyrinth.

Essay Topic 3

When does the author mention the Mexican ripping open his breast to reveal his emotions? What similarities and differences do those stories share? What emotions are encapsulated within them?

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