Volume 20, Number 14 · September 20, 1973

Mexico and Its Demons

By Carlos Fuentes
The Other Mexico: Critique of the Pyramid
by Octavio Paz, translated by Lysander Kemp, with a postscript translated by Helen R. Lane

Grove Press, 149 pp., $1.65 (paper)

The Other Mexico was written in 1968, shortly after the democratic movement led by the students was abruptly ended with the massacre of several hundred peaceful demonstrators at the Plaza of the Three Cultures in Tlatelolco. In that ancient quarter of Mexico City nearly 450 years ago, the Spanish captain Pedro de Alvarado sealed off the square and mercilessly butchered the Indian priests and dancers. Today the square is bounded on three sides by a restored Aztec pyramid, a baroque Spanish church, and a complex of modern skyscrapers.



Review, 5851 words

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