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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Whom did Paz call the "guardian of freedom and traitor to his country"? (Chapter Six, page 125).

2. According to Jorge Cuesta, how has Mexico created herself?

3. What was sacrificed when Porfirio Diaz took power and subdued anarchy?

4. What was the Mexican intellectual's goal?

5. When Paz sees that Mexicans return to their tradition, what do they remember?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why could Mexico not have progressed as far as she has today if she were working within capitalism?

2. When did Independence begin in Mexico? How was it similar to or different from the Conquest?

3. Pulling from the ideas of Jose Gaos, Paz, speaks of the physical duality in Mexico. What does that mean? What significance does that idea have?

4. What did Article 3 of the new Constitution mandate? What troubles did that Article cause?

5. What role did Jose Vasconcelos play in modern education? From Paz's descriptions, what is his opinion of Vasconcelos?

6. How does Paz define "Mexicanism"? How does it mesh with the individual whom he had described earlier?

7. Despite Mexico's advancements, where does she still stand on the world spectrum? How can she change her placement?

8. Who was Sor Juana? Why was she an unusual person both in South America and in old Spain?

9. What is Paz's definition of "community"? How is that definition knowingly idealistic?

10. What happened when Spanish America separated itself from Spain? Given what Paz has stated throughout the book about that moment in history, draw your own conclusions about why that happened.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What are the gender roles explained throughout the book? Given the culture and the time, what are the gender expectations? Who acts against those expectations?

Essay Topic 2

"Man is alone everywhere. But the solitude of the Mexican, under the great stone night of the high plateau that is still inhabited by insatiable gods, is very different from that of the North American, who wanders in an abstract world of machines, fellow citizens and moral precepts" (Chapter One, pg 20). What does that mean? Is it true?

Essay Topic 3

What dualities did Sor Juana represent (philosophical, religious, gender-based)? What lasting influence did she have?

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