View a FREE sample

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

Short Answer Questions

1. When did Spain begin to lose her hold on Mexico?

2. How does the Indian perceive salvation? (Chapter Five).

3. Why did the Mexican Revolution have to begin before the beginning?

4. Whom did Paz call the "guardian of freedom and traitor to his country"? (Chapter Six, page 125).

5. Where have the great revolutions of the 20th Century occurred?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. What does Paz say about the national differences among Central and South American nations? How does that tie into their relationship with Spain?

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

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

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

7. 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.

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

9. 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?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What are the varieties of chingar that the author explains? Does that help your comprehension of the word? Does it enrich your understanding of Mexican culture?

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

What dualities did Sor Juana represent (philosophical, religious, gender-based)? What lasting influence did she have?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,792 words (approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample