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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 has happened to the former plurality of ideas and customs? (Chapter Seven).

2. Mexico lacks basic industries except for one - what is it?

3. When Paz sees that Mexicans return to their tradition, what do they remember?

4. What happened to the people annexed by greater world powers?

5. What has history demonstrated through certain Contra authors such as Isaac Deutscher?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is Paz's definition of "community"? How is that definition knowingly idealistic?

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

3. How does Paz define "Mexicanism"? How does it mesh with the individual whom he had described earlier?

4. How was the Revolution similar to a fiesta? Because of any existing similarity, why do the people cling to that time in history? Can that be considered healthy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

What is Mexico's relation to the rest of the world? How is it different from the past? What are Paz's hopes and fears for the future? Do you agree or disagree with his ideas?

Essay Topic 3

Spain accepted all forms of the Renaissance and then closed itself off to further influence. How did that affect the Conquest? How does that continue to affect Mexico's philosophical and religious development?

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