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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What connotation does the verb, chingar, carry?
(a) Disaster.
(b) Failure.
(c) Violation.
(d) Mythical power.

2. How does the philosophy of progress treat death?
(a) It minimizes death.
(b) It pretends to make death disappear.
(c) It treats death as one more step in life.
(d) It disregards death entirely.

3. What role does the Mexican man play in society?
(a) He seeks to expand his control in the world.
(b) He defends everything that he has.
(c) He wants to raise Mexico to a place of prominence in the world.
(d) He protects everything entrusted to him.

4. What does Paz deem to be the first and most serious change that a man endures when he becomes a worker?
(a) He loses his individuality.
(b) He loses his sense of the Divine.
(c) He loses communion with his fellow man.
(d) He stops earning what he is worth.

5. What is Paz's opinion about the physical features distinguishing Mexicans from North Americans?
(a) People are too distracted by them.
(b) They are more important than commonly believed.
(c) People do not understand their significance.
(d) They are not as important as commonly believed.

Short Answer Questions

1. What do a pachuco's actions and lifestyle demonstrate?

2. To follow Paz's previous argument, what is the result when one Mexican confides in another?

3. What is the Mexican concept of work?

4. When does the pachuco become his true self?

5. In Paz's view, why does the Spaniard still use and enjoy blasphemy?

Short Essay Questions

1. How is the modern murderer different from a murderer of the past? How has modernity contributed to that difference?

2. How did the Aztecs view sin? How does that idea explain the Conquest? What enormous change did Catholicism introduce?

3. "The pachuco has lost his whole inheritance: Language, religion, customs, and beliefs. He is left with only a body and a soul with which to confront the elements" (Chapter One, pg 15). Is that a true statement?

4. In Chapter Three, the following idea is presented: "There is nothing so joyous as a Mexican fiesta, but there is also nothing so sorrowful. Fiesta night is also a night of mourning" (Chapter 3, page 53). What does that mean?

5. What is the world of terrorism like? How is it different from the past world of conquest and war?

6. What is the origin of the pachuco? How does that characterization prepare the reader for the rest of the book?

7. Who represents the conflict that Mexicans have not been able to solve? What effect does that conflict have on their culture?

8. When does Paz say that a nation questions itself? Is it necessary?

9. What mutual problem do both the Mexican and the North American face? What is the solution to that problem?

10. What is dissimulation? How does it compare to lying? How does it affect the Mexican's idea of himself?

(see the answer keys)

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