Asterisk denotes entries on real places.
*Mexico
The novel is framed with the question: “Here we abide. And what are we going to do about it? Where the air is clear.” Only in an ironic sense is Mexico City a place where the air is, in fact, clear. The phrase suggests a fatalistic alliance with a place that is changing but whose inhabitants have not yet figured out their role in the changes. There is no optimistic assertion that a movement toward capitalism and a middle class will satisfy the needs of the populace. Instead, the phrase suggests the betrayal of the ideals of the revolution that now finds itself played out in the dramas of citizens caught up in the cultural shift taking place.
Historically, Mexico City was the center of the indigenous Aztec culture and thus signified mythical and spiritual values of the land. The novel plays off this mythical association to suggest a spiritual decline of the citizenry. It calls into question whether a people living in modern urban settings can remain true to historical and mythological roots that have created them.
*Rural Mexico. In contrast to the urban setting of Mexico City, the novel implies a connection to several less urban settings. Many of the characters have roots in outlying areas, but have since migrated to the metropolitan area. The rural landscape is not simplistically viewed as an Eden, but it is associated with the mythical origins stemming from the Aztec culture. This culture, brutally interrupted by the Spanish Conquest, has been lost, but modern Mexicans seem almost subconsciously to act out some of the principal tenets of its system. For example, blood sacrifice and sun worship are ironically continued in modern urban settings in the forms of murder, rape, and sunbathing, suggesting a mythical connection to indigenous origins.
*Acapulco. Port city on Mexico’s Pacific coast where both American and Mexican tourists intermingle in rituals of sunbathing. In these scenes, characters try to avoid the stresses of urban life, and references to these settings show the few times when people gather in collective rituals of celebration. These moments contrast with the individual struggles prominent elsewhere in the novel.
*Europe. Frequent references to the Old World continent are used collectively to suggest that Mexico is still struggling with the class issues of the Old World feudal system that presumed a romantic idealization of society. One character, for example, says that it makes him laugh to live in a “culture Europe had its fill of more than a century ago.” Aristocrats in Mexico still try to live out the values and privileges of a dying culture assumed to be alive in France and other European countries.
The novel also contains allusions to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia whose attempted land and political reforms seem to parallel the ideals of the Mexican Revolution.
*United States. The large and prosperous country to the north of Mexico is referred to collectively and usually negatively. The use of this place suggests a counter system in which capitalism is assumed to be thriving and whose economic benefits lure Mexicans north across the border. Frequently characters discuss the choice of leaving home for economic advancement at the cost of national identity and pride. Finally, the economic concerns squelch the true need of spiritual awareness that Fuentes’s work demands. To play off the title phrase, the air is never clear in any place where materialism dominates.