SOURCE: “Debunking Myths: The Hero's Role in Ana Castillo's Sapogonia,” in Americas Review, Vol. 22, Nos. 1–2, Spring–Summer, 1994, pp. 244–58.

In the following essay, Gómez-Vega examines the character traits that define Sapogonia's anti-hero, Máximo Madrigal, and the true hero(ine), Pastora.

The characters in Ana Castillo's Sapogonia evolve out of a cultural mind set defined by sexual identity. In this novel, Castillo creates Máximo Madrigal, the “anti-hero,” a character who functions within an intrinsically male-identified culture in order to expose his lack of human connectedness as the direct result of his living by a male myth that values the mythological male hero's separation from the community as an individual rather than his fusion into the whole. Through this man's eyes, Castillo presents Pastora Velásquez Aké, a woman who epitomizes the Latin male's “myth” of the female. She is seen as an aloof, distant, unattainable beauty...