Summary
The speaker's name, in the first of these stories, is Clemencia; her mother, a Chicana, told her never to marry a Mexican. She says she will never marry, period. She doesn't trust men because she's helped too many be unfaithful to their wives. She describes the difference between her parents' backgrounds, tells something of her own life (she is an artist) and her alienation from her mother after her father's death. Then she addresses her ex-lover, Drew, a married man with a son. Years ago, before the son (now apparently in his late teens) was conceived, she was a student of his father, who seduced her and convinced her that he loved her. But in the end, he went back to his wife; he and Clemencia, however, continued their affair until a number of years after the boy was born. Alternately, Clemencia addresses the son himself, whom she now has as a lover. She feels she is in control of both of them, and she is vengeful, hating Drew's wife. She describes things she has done to hurt the wife and, indirectly, the man himself; she seems to be using the son, whom she despises, for this purpose only.
In "Bread," a sketch of less than one page, the speaker describes driving with her lover in the city (perhaps San Antonio) where she grew up; they are eating fresh bread. He remarks that it is a "charming city," and she remembers a child's death there.
"Eyes of Zapata" is told by Inés, the wife of Emiliano Zapata (an historical Mexican revolutionary leader [1879-1919]; Inés is a fictional character, but she is based on a real woman). Zapata is sleeping. Beside him, Inés muses about him and their life together. He is now a famous leader and has changed, she says, into a man who trusts no one. Their story emerges in a very non-linear fashion: In their youth, she went with him against her father's wishes and in due time bore two children. She and Zapata were never officially married, and he has other women, other children. Inés' life has always been difficult, especially during the revolutionary war; she has had to work hard just to feed her children, and Zapata has always put his work for the country ahead of his family. Inés has lived in poverty. Her mother was thought to be a witch and was killed; now the same stories are whispered about Inéz herself, and they are true, she says. She becomes an owl and circles above the countryside, where she can see everything, present, past, and future. Her monologue ends at dawn, when she tells Zapata she wants to look at him once again before he wakes and leaves her.
Analysis
The two major speakers in these stories (and there may be only two; the speaker in "Bread" may be Clemencia, who also narrates "Never Marry a Mexican"), although they exist in very dissimilar settings, are alike in several ways. Both see themselves as independent women, having to work to support themselves and rather happier than otherwise to be able to do so. Both see themselves as powerful, specifically within their relationships with the men in their lives, and the power of each consists of a kind of magic: Clemencia is a painter who can "make" and "remake" her art and her subjects; Inés is a witch who can see past and future as well as present. Yet both, at least in the monologues that make up the stories, seem to define themselves and their lives by their relationships to men. Each is bitter that she is not the central woman in the man's life, yet neither seems willing (or perhaps able) to end her relationship. Clemencia, especially, seems tied to her ex-lover to the point that she "circles around" him obsessively. Perhaps the reader finds this obsession less understandable in her case only because she has no children from the relationship, whereas Inés does have children with Zapata; Clemencia reveals that she has had affairs with other men, while Inés has not, but for each of these women her relationship with the man she addresses (Drew, Zapata) is obviously the central and only serious romantic relationship of her life.
Both women seem to define their relationships as love, and to both of them this seems to mean, among other things, holding power over their men. Each woman seems to compare and contrast her relationship with her lover to her relationship with her father. In each story, too, the narrator seems to emphasize a class difference between her and her lover — Clemencia is introduced to her lover's wife at an exhibition where the wife is a patron and the artist has brought her students; Inés remarks her father's dislike for Zapata who dresses in a flashy "charro" (cowboy) style in contrast to the peasant dress of the farmers. These contrasts are underlined in "Bread," where the non-Latino lover remarks upon the "charm" of a section of the city where the speaker's small cousin died from eating rat poison.
In each story, a central image is the gaze of the woman; she looks at the sleeping man and thus possesses him. In "Never Marry a Mexican," this is reinforced by the narrator's similar possession of her lover's son and by her use of one or both men as models in her painting, whereby others see them through her eyes.
In their structure, the two stories are very similar. Neither is a traditional linear narrative, and both deliberately blur the usual concept of time — past, present, and future. Inés, in her out-of-body travel, can see all times and places, and her "circling" over Zapata and their lives is, she says, literal. The artist also "circles," reliving past times, addressing Drew and his son alternately in a way that suggests they are sometimes, to her, the same person.
Glossary
[Note: A number of the words in this section, used in "Eyes of Zapata," are from Nahuatl, a Native American language indigenous to central and western Mexico.]
fanfarrón a braggart; a showoff.
carnitas barbequed pork.
paletas slices.
mundo sin fin, amen world without end, amen.
Malinche (also Malinalli, Malintzin, "Doña Marina") historically, an Aztec woman, sold by her people as a slave to the Maya and later given as a gift to the conquistador Hernando Cortés; as Cortés' mistress, she played a huge role in the defeat of the Aztec empire by the Spanish, acting as interpreter and convincing the ruler Moteczoma (Montezuma II) to surrender. Malinche has been regarded as a traitor to her own people, although it is suggested that she acted out of revenge for their having sold her into slavery and also that by persuading the emperor to surrender she saved many lives; here (in "Never Marry a Mexican") Clemencia and her lover use her name playfully apparently in reference to their different skin colors, but the name has a cutting edge when one recalls that Malinalli's other name, Malinche, is used to mean a betrayer of her people.
mi doradita my little brown girl.
mi trigueño, . . . chulito . . . my dark one, . . . cute one . . . .
jaripeos shows similar to rodeos, with demonstrations of horsemanship.
barrancas deep gorges, precipices.
tan chistoso. Muy bonachón, muy bromista so funny. Very good-natured, a real jokester.
"Tres vicios . . . y enamorado . . . ." "Three vices I have, and they are deep-rooted in me: being a drunk, a gambler, and a lover." (Lyrics from El Abandonado ["The Abandoned One"], a popular song; see the Glossary for Part Four, later.)
petate sleeping mat.
campesino a small farmer; a peasant.
chachalaca a pheasant (any bird flying into a house is an omen of death).
ayúdame Help me.
"Ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente" Literally, "Eyes that don't see, heart that doesn't feel"; i.e., better not to know.
milpas cornfields.
jacales small farm houses.
el porvenir the future.
caciques landowners; the political bosses or leaders.
metate grinding stone.
huipil a traditional hand-embroidered blouse.
guacamaya macaw.
mujeriego womanizer.
La madre tierra que nos mantiene y cuida Mother earth who watches over us and supports us.
solteronas unmarried women.
pulqueria a pulque bar (pulque is a fermented drink made from cactus juice).
cielito de mi corazón an affectionate phrase; literally, "little sky of my heart."
