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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 is one factor that drives world markets?

2. What was Vasconcelos' philosophy regarding the material world?

3. How did the Aztecs' final struggle manifest itself?

4. According to Jorge Cuesta, how has Mexico created herself?

5. According to the tribe of the Chamulas, what is a chulel?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. What role did Jose Vasconcelos play in modern education? From Paz's descriptions, what is his opinion of Vasconcelos?

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

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

7. 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?

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

9. What did Article 3 of the new Constitution mandate? What troubles did that Article cause?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

"Man is alone everywhere. But the solitude of the Mexican, under the great stone night of the high plateau that is still inhabited by insatiable gods, is very different from that of the North American, who wanders in an abstract world of machines, fellow citizens and moral precepts" (Chapter One, pg 20). What does that mean? Is it true?

Essay Topic 2

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?

Essay Topic 3

What are the gender roles explained throughout the book? Given the culture and the time, what are the gender expectations? Who acts against those expectations?

(see the answer keys)

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