Michener's use of the bullfight as a metaphor for Mexican history is reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon (1932), a treatise on bullfighting that makes correlations between the taurine art and other phenomena, including writing, painting, and history. Of the two main bullfighters in Mexico, Victoriano Leal symbolizes Mexico's Spanish past while Gomez symbolizes the country's indigenous roots. Like Hemingway in Death in the Afternoon, Michener compares the bullfighters' techniques to the styles of various Spanish painters and writers.

For example, Victoriano Leal's bullfighting recalls the painting of El Greco and the literature of Federico Garcia Lorca; Gomez' bullfighting resembles the painting of Velazquez and the writing of Seneca, a Roman philosopher from Cordoba.

Considering that Michener began researching and writing Mexico between 1959 and 1961, one must recall that, also in 1959, Hemingway spent the bullfight season in Spain researching The Dangerous Summer, which Life magazine published...