SOURCE: Boling, Becky. “Tracking the Feminine Subject in Elena Garro's El Rastro.” In Continental, Latin-American, and Francophone Women Writers. Volume II. Selected Papers from the Wichita State University Conference on Foreign Literature, 1986-1987, edited by Ginette Adamson and Eunice Myers, pp. 7-14. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1990.

In the following essay, Boling argues that Garro's play El Rastro introduces woman as the equally alienated figure in Mexican history, serving as a counterpoint to Octavio Paz's notion of the male mestizo figure.

Al repudiar a la Malinche-Eva mexicana, según la representa José Clemente Orozco en su mural …—el mexicano rompe sus ligas con el pasado, reniega de su origen y se adentra sólo en la vida histórica.

(Paz 78)

The Mexican sons have broken with their mothers. They exist alone and in isolation, abjuring their past. Thus, in El laberinto de la soledad, Octavio Paz describes...