In presenting Mexican history as a series of violent conflicts between various indigenous groups, between Spaniards and Indians, or between various social classes during the Mexican Revolution, Michener conveys the idea that the revolutionary spirit is inherent to Mexican civilization and that revolutionaries from all over the world can assimilate comfortably into Mexican society. For example, the narrator's grandfather Jubal Clay migrated to Mexico from Virginia in 1866 after participating with the losing side in the American Civil War. Eduardo Palafox, Toledo's prominent bull breeder, is the descendant of victims of persecution at the hands of the Inquisition in six teenth-century Spain. Leon Ledesma, the bullfight critic, left Spain for Mexico in 1936 because of his political associations at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Michener portrays Mexico as the natural refuge for these political exiles from Spain and America.