The Labyrinth of Solitude: The Other Mexico, Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude, Mexico and the United States, the Philanthropic Ogre

published	January 12th 1985 by Grove Press
binding	Paperback
isbn	080215042X (isbn13: 9780802150424)
pages	398
description	First published in 1950, The Labyrinth of Solitude addresses issues that are both seemingly eternal and resoundingly contemporary: the nature o...more [close] First published in 1950, The Labyrinth of Solitude addresses issues that are both seemingly eternal and resoundingly contemporary: the nature of political power in post-conquest Mexico, the relation of Native Americans to Europeans, the ubiquity of official corruption. Noting these matters earned Paz no small amount of trouble from the Mexican leadership, but it also brought him renown as a social critic. Paz, who went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, later voiced his disillusionment with all political systems--as the Mexican proverb has it, "all revolutions degenerate into governments"--but his call for democracy in this book has lately been reverberating throughout Mexico, making it timely once again. [close]
date added	12-18-06 edit book

find at: Amazon | Half.com | Barnes & Noble | Abebooks | more...

Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of The Labyrinth of Solitude: The Other Mexico, Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude, Mexico and the United States, the Philanthropic Ogre.

discuss this book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

groups with this book

friend reviews (0)

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

lists with this book

This book is not in any lists. Go add it to a list.

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 292)

Aduren rated it:

02/29/08

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in April, 1994

recommends it for: Everyone

La Chingada es la madre de todos los Mexicanos
The Chingada [translations varies with sentence] is the mother of all Mexicans

I remember I move through Mexico through the years my family lived there after moving from Madrid like a ghost against a compulsory changing Mexico. I traveled the streets where legends are an integral part of both tradition and history just to turn around the corner into a night club. Mexico was a magical land, yet a place of change, or a never moving c...more La Chingada es la madre de todos los Mexicanos
The Chingada [translations varies with sentence] is the mother of all Mexicans

I remember I move through Mexico through the years my family lived there after moving from Madrid like a ghost against a compulsory changing Mexico. I traveled the streets where legends are an integral part of both tradition and history just to turn around the corner into a night club. Mexico was a magical land, yet a place of change, or a never moving change. It seemed to me that at every stage, at every part of Mexico, in every coffee house there is another revolution. Perhaps Carlos Fuentes is right in saying there was the beginning of the Mexican revolution but Mexico has not really seen the end.

Father Peñalosa in particular (a priest) gave me this book not only to find consolation in the feeling of detachment that I had from Mexican culture, a feeling of being left behind or being ignored, because it did not took long for me to have lost the air of a foreigner and having to adapt to a culture so family oriented was hard for me.

Reading Paz was studying Mexican culture. I understood the complexity of a Mexican teenager along with the fake masks we all wear. It allowed me to understand why it is so hard for them to adapt to USA or any other country whose family values are not really indigenous. Peñalosa confessed me that even he had doubts. Mexico Indian values are so deep rooted that when the Conquest of Mexico happened Franciscans had a really hard time converting Mexicas to Catholics. It was until the apparition of the Virgin Mary (it is important to note the differences in appearance of Virgin Mary in Mexico to the ones of Europe) to an Indian that ultimately change the converting to Catholicism exponentially. Here lies the dilemma Paz explains with “hijos de la malinche,” “Sons of the Malinche.”

The Malinche was the translator to Hernán Cortez. She was the one that opened the doors to diplomacy and the conquest of Mexico, this betrayal (one can argue that she wanted the extermination of the Aztecs not of entire Mexico here but that will be for another time) opened a deep injury in the heart of all Mexicans. The mother betrayed the sons and this would be a slow to forget event. Paz then decides all Mexicans are sons of la chingada—the mother, just like la Malinche. Not a mother of flesh and bone but a mythical figure. The chingada is one of the Mexican representations of Maternity, like la ‘llorona’ the long suffering Mexican mother. From here Paz moves to explain Ruben Dario’s study of the word Chingada, this was very funny for me to read, in fact I found it amusing a whole country can move with the saying of just one single word.

Do you want a deep study and self analysis (for Paz) of Mexico? The subjects in the book have never lost depth and are still very relevant in modern México. Do you want to understand more Mexican American Relations? Do you want to know Mexico? If yes then pick the book and read it, read it like you travel, like you have a Mexican woman that you cannot completely understand—then again which women can be completely understood?. A woman that carries a wound deep into herself and a doubt, a guapango and a danzón, a silver bullet and a sword, the love for the god snake and god deer conflicting with the love to a bleeding God.

The reading may be a bit heavy but the end justifies the means. Enjoy.
...less

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

title link
avg rating
small image
med image
large image

The Labyrinth of Solitude: The Other Mexico, Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude, Mexico and the United States, the Philanthropic Ogre

discuss this book

groups with this book

friend reviews (0)

lists with this book

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 292)

book data (includes all editions)

blog this book

popular shelves

other editions