SOURCE: "The Burning Plain: The Later Stories," in Juan Rulfo, Twayne Publishers, 1983, pp. 43-62.

Some of the fifteen stories collected in 1953 under the title of one of them, El llano en llamas [The burning plain], had appeared . . . in the journals Pan and América between 1945 and 1951. There is no appreciable difference between these stories and the others, either in style or technique. It is not known if some of the latter were written earlier, but not published. It is a possibility but difficult to ascertain, either by internal or external evidence. The problem is not serious, however, since the span of years is not broad, and all fifteen stories must have been retouched before publication in book form.

It is interesting to note that the book opens with the two Pan stories, "Macario" and "Nos han dado la tierra." These in turn are followed by two América stories ("La cuesta de las comadres" and "Es que somos muy pobres") and two unpublished, "El hombre" and "En la madrugada." The other América stories appear next, in the order in which they were published in the periodical: "Talpa," "El llano en llamas," and "¡Diles que no me maten!" Finally, there are six more unpublished stories: "Luvina," "La noche que lo dejaron solo," "Acuérdate," "No oyes ladrar los perros," "Paso del Norte," and "Anacleto Morones." Two new stories were added to the second revised edition of 1970, "El día del derrumbe" and "La herencia de Matilde Arcángel," and one, "Paso del Norte," was eliminated.

It has been observed that the story "The Burning Plain," under which the collection was published, appears precisely in the middle, with seven stories preceding and seven following. From this fact it cannot be deducted, however, that the first seven stories deal with Mexico before the Revolution and the last seven with the postrevolutionary period. That would be too neat an organization. Besides, it could not possibly be determined if the events narrated in the story "Macario" take place before or after the Revolution. And "Nos han dado la tierra," which is placed in the first part, deals with postrevolutionary Mexico. Only symbolically could the stories be interpreted as representing the two Mexicos, those in which the needs of the people are expressed (lack of land, hunger, oppression) and the others showing the failure of the Revolution to solve those problems and tend to the basic needs of the people, the campesinos. But even here, some of the stories from the first part ("The Man," "At Daybreak") do not deal with social conditions, but with psychological problems. In them the living conditions of the people are seen only indirectly; they are expressed implicitly, not explicitly. Rulfo himself has stated, although not positively, that the organization of the stories was left to the editors; the story "Macario," he says, "comes first, but it could be at the end; to be sure, the organization [of the book] was left to the editors, I believe."

"El Hombre"

In "The Man" Rulfo has made use of an archetypal structure, that of the hunt, in this case a human hunt. The hunted "man," José Alcancía, has committed a horrible crime. He has killed Urquidi's entire family in order to avenge the killing of his own brother by Urquidi sometime in the past. Alcancía did not want to kill all of them, but it was dark and he did not want to miss Urquidi. Later he repents of his act, "T shouldn't have killed all of them; I should've been satisfied with the one I had to kill; but it was dark and the shapes were the same size.... I shouldn't have killed all of them. . . It wasn't worth it putting such a burden on my back. Dead people weigh more than live ones.'"

The theme of revenge in this story is better motivated than in "¡Diles que no me maten!" Juvencio Nava's crime had been committed thirty-five years earlier, and he felt that he had paid for it many times over, but Alcancía's has just taken place, and the reader can sympathize with Urquidi, who immediately sets out to avenge the crime. The death of Alcancía is not dramatized, but only verified by a third character, a shepherd who had befriended the fugitive and who later found his body, and who is now reporting the discovery to the authorities. The introduction of this third character, essential to bring together the two interior monologues of Alcancía and Urquidi, softens the impact of the killing of the hunted man by the hunter. This establishment of distance is accomplished by avoiding the description of the actual killing (the shepherd didn't see it), and by the humorous account of the shepherd when relating his story to the Señor Licenciado. Although not as dramatic a confrontation as that related in "La cuesta de las comadres," the impact of the killing of Alcancía, which is left to the imagination of the reader, is nevertheless very impressive. The reader can only conjecture as to the reaction of the hunted man when he saw the hunter, whom he thought he had killed. Since the killing of Urquidi's family had already been described, a description of Alcancía's murder would have been an overstatement. There seems to be a narrative pattern in Rulfo's fiction, since the same thing happens in the story "¡Diles que no me maten!" wherein the killing of Don Lupe is described in detail, but not that of Juvencio. The description of their dead bodies is also similar. Juvencio's face was full of holes as if eaten by a coyote, while "the man" was found by the shepherd with "his neck full of holes as if they'd drilled him."

The archetypal structure of the hunt is reinforced by the imagery. The story opens with a description of the man trying to escape from his pursuer. "The man's feet sank into the sand, leaving a formless track, like some animal's hoof." Alcancía, like some animals, had only four toes on one foot. This is a realistic and not a fantastic motif, for it is explained in the course of the story how he had lost his toe. Urquidi, like a true hunter, studies the footprints and assures himself that he is on the right track, since he knows of Alcancía's deformation. '"Flat feet. . . with a toe missing. The big toe on his left foot. There aren't many around like that. So it'll be easy.'" The expressions he uses soon after are those of a man hunting an animal: "TU go down where he went down, following his tracks until I tire him out.'" And even when he thinks about the past, he compares him to a reptile: "'I waited a month for you, awake day and night, knowing you would come crawling, hidden like an evil snake.'"

"El hombre," like other stories and novels by Rulfo, contains elements of magical realism, from which it acquires its tone. In brief, magical realism, as opposed to the fantastic, can be defined as a confrontation with reality on the part of the characters. Reality, for them, is magical, and therefore it is necessary to interpret its significance, to go beyond its surface appearance and look for a deeper meaning. However, the world in which these characters move is the empirical world, not an invented world like those found in fantastic literature or science fiction. The characters take their world at face value, never believing that what is happening to them is a dream, an illusion, a vision, or any other subjective phenomena. They never doubt that what is taking place is actually happening in the objective world.

The night that his family was murdered by Alcancía, Urquidi had gone to bury a baby of his. Later, while hunting the killer, he thinks: "'I remember. It was on that Sunday when my newborn baby died and we went to bury it. We weren't sad. All I remember is that the sky was gray and the flowers we were carrying were faded and drooping as if they felt the sun's absence.'" At that moment, Alcancía was killing his family. Later Urquidi understands the significance of what had happened to the flowers. Blaming himself for having left his family alone, he thinks: "The burial of my baby delayed me. Now I understand. Now I understand why the flowers wilted in my hand.'" He does not say what it was that he understood, but it is assumed that the withered flowers were trying to tell him that his family was being murdered, and the same can be said of the gray sky.

Other motifs of magical realism are the river, which prevents the murderer from escaping; voices, which do not seem to come from their speakers' mouths; tracks left by the fear and anxiety of the hunted one ("'fear always leaves marks'"); and finally the description of nature: the path that "climbed without stopping toward the sky"; and the river, giving the man a warning that it will swallow him like it "now and then . . . swallows a branch in its whirlpools, sucking it down without any noise of protest."

Another aspect of interest in the story "El hombre" is the narrative technique, which points toward the novel Pedro Páramo. In the short story Rulfo experimented with a dual point of view, moving from the mind of one character (the man who is being hunted) to the mind of the other (the hunter), often without any intervention on the part of the narrator to indicate who is speaking. This technique was to be employed extensively in his novel. Also, the story is fragmented, part being told by Alcancía, part by Urquidi, and part by the shepherd. The reader has to put it all together, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The events are not presented chronologically, but as they come to the mind of each speaker. In general, it can be said that "El hombre" contains certain innovations in content and technique which were to be developed in other stories and finally perfected in the novel.

"En la madrugada"

Rulfo's "At Daybreak" is the story of the death of a farm owner, Don Justo Brambila, at the hands of Esteban, his farmhand, who is now in prison waiting to be tried and trying very hard to remember what actually took place the morning of the accident. The place where the action unfolds has the same name as that where the author himself spent his childhood, San Gabriel; and a farm owner is killed as the result of a struggle over a calf, as in the story "Tell Them Not to Kill Me!" "At Daybreak" opens with a long (long for Rulfo) description of the landscape at dawn, the town in the distance, and the actions of Esteban on his way back to the farm with his ten cows after a night's pasturing. This poetic introduction, in the third person, serves to set the tone of the story. It describes the coming of the new day, the time when the struggle between Esteban and Don Justo will take place. It is the time when nothing is clear yet; it is "at daybreak," and, just like nature, so now is the mind of Esteban, who cannot quite remember what actually took place at that hour. It is the time when the fog lifts, like a curtain, on a drama that is to take place on the stage. "The stars are turning white. The last twinkles go out and the sun bursts forth, making the blades of grass glisten."

When old Esteban reaches the gate of the corral, which has not been opened for him, he is forced to jump over the fence so as to open the gate for the cows. While he is lifting the gate bar he sees Don Justo coming from the loft with the latter's niece, Margarita, in his arms. He hides until Don Justo has crossed the corral to put Margarita back on her own bed, then opens the gate, lets the cows in, and begins to milk them. Becoming angry with a calf, he kicks it. At that moment Don Justo appears and gives Esteban such a beating that he is left, as he says, "'almost out cold among the rocks.'" And that is all he remembers, according to his account to the authorities, for Don Justo was found dead by Margarita and he was accused of the crime.

Through a flashback in third-person narrative the story is retold from the moment Don Justo placed Margarita on her bed. In the next room his crippled sister, Margarita's mother, is sleeping, but awakens just as Don Justo enters, and she asks, '"Where were you last night, Margarita?'" Justo Brambila leaves the room silently. It is six o'clock in the morning. He finds Esteban mistreating the calf and beats him. Then Don Justo feels himself "blacking out and falling back against the stone paving of the corral. . . . He didn't feel any pain, just a black thing that was dimming his thought until the obscurity became total." Old Esteban gets up when the sun is already high and goes home stumbling and moaning. At eleven o'clock Margarita discovers Don Justo's body.

Ambiguity regarding Don Justo's death is purposely introduced in the story. Although it is most likely that Esteban killed him with a stone, as others say, it is also possible, as Esteban says, that Don Justo died from internal causes. "'Well, they say I killed him. Maybe so. But he might've died from anger, too. He was very badtempered. . . . Everything made him angry.'" At the same time, Esteban had reasons for killing him. Inside him, resentment had been building up against his boss. He continues, saying: '"He didn't even like it that I was skinny. And how could I not be skinny when I hardly eat anything. Why, I spent all the time driving the cows. .. . It was just one eternal pilgrimage.'"

There is a great difference in the attitude toward death on the part of Esteban in this story and Juvencio in "Tell Them Not to Kill Me!" Juvencio wanted to live in spite of his age, while Esteban is resigned to die. "'Memory at my age,'" he says, "'is tricky; that's why I thank God that I won't lose much now if they finish off all my faculties, for I hardly have any left. And as for my soul, well, I'll commend it to Him, too.'" There is another great difference. While Juvencio is highly sensitive to his surroundings, loving the earth and life in all its aspects, Esteban is angry and displaces his internal conflicts by directing them against the animals he tends. Since his whole life has been spent with the cows, he treats them as if they were his equals, as when he wanted to enter the corral, he explained that he '"didn't say anything to the cows, or explain anything to them; I slipped off so they wouldn't see me or follow me.'"

In its structure this story is unlike any other by Rulfo. To develop the anecdote he alternates between an omniscient narrator and another narrator, Esteban, who uses the internal monologue. The characterization is done by means of the external portrait, as well as revelations by the personages themselves. There are subjective transcriptions of the characters' thoughts and feelings, a technique seldom used by Rulfo. After leaving Margarita, Don Justo ponders, '"If the priest would authorize this I'd marry her; but I'm sure he'll raise an awful fuss if I ask him. He'll say it's incest and will excommunicate us both. Better to leave things in secret.'" The omniscient narrator adds, "That's what he was thinking about when he found old Esteban struggling with the calf."

The story ends with another description of San Gabriel, this time at dusk, as if a curtain were descending upon the stage where the drama had been presented. "Over San Gabriel the fog was coming in again. The sun still was shining on the blue hills. A brownish spot covered the village. Then darkness came." That night the lights are not turned on in San Gabriel. Don Justo owned the lights.

There are certain aspects of "At Daybreak" that foreshadow the novel Pedro Páramo. Don Justo is very much like Pedro Páramo, a local cacique who becomes angry easily. He is in love with Margarita, a woman he cannot marry, just as Pedro Páramo is in love with Susana, a woman he cannot reach. The motif of incest appears in both works; Margarita is Don Justo's niece, and incestuous relations are suggested between Susana and her father in Pedro Páramo. Don Justo is killed by a cowhand, and Páramo by a mule driver. Both killers have grievances against their superiors. When Don Justo and Pedro die, the two towns mourn. "At Daybreak" could very well have been a chapter of the novel; however, it has the structure of a short story, since the important thing is not the fate of the characters (Don Justo and Esteban) as it is in the novel, but the anecdote, a single incident about the killing of his boss by a servant.

"Luvina"

Of the three types of stories mentioned by critics, those of personage, action, and ambience, "Macario" corresponds to the first, "El llano en llamas" to the second, and "Luvina" to the third. The ambience story (cuento de ambiente) is a narrative form in which turning point and outcome are not the most important elements (in fact, they could even be omitted); the anecdote is so diluted that it often disappears; but the ambience receives all the attention and becomes the central element of narrative. This does not mean, however, that there is no theme or action, that it is a paralyzed story, a sketch, or a verbal landscape. In "Luvina," there is a central character, a teacher who has lived in Luvina for some years and is now at an inn elsewhere, remembering and relating his experiences to another teacher who is on his way to the same town. The teacher's experiences in Luvina constitute the plot, a wellstructured action motivated by the nature of the physical environment of the place, and are told by him in a long díalogue to his silent partner. Luvina, the town where the teacher had taken his wife, Agripina, and his children, had such a powerful influence on him that it changed the course of his life. The story ends when the narrator, who is drinking and finding it difficult to remember, slumps over the table and falls asleep.

There are two types of space in the story, one objective—the inn where the story is being told, and another subjective—Luvina as remembered by the teacher. A contrast is established between the two in order to bring out the stark nature of Luvina, which has become an obsession with the teacher. Luvina is a desolate place, no different from a ghost town, although some people manage to survive there in spite of its deadliness. The stark environment becomes even more fatal by the contrasting description of the place where the story is being told, a place where there is life, food, children playing, and even a river. In Luvina there is only death. In the world of the theater it would appear as purgatory, not far from hell. '"San Juan Luvina. That name sounded to me like a name in the heavens. But it's purgatory. A dying place where even the dogs have died off.'" It is located on the top of a hill, covered by the dust of a gray stone which the constant black wind blows over people and things. When there is a full moon some people can even see that black wind along the streets bearing behind it a black blanket. The narrator says that he never saw it, but he saw something that affected him much more, the ever-present image of despair. And yet, the few inhabitants dreaded the hour when the wind died, for '"When that happens,'" the people say, '"the sun pours into Luvina and sucks our blood and the little bit of moisture we have in our skins.'"

In "Luvina" Rulfo creates a magic atmosphere by combining realistic and fantastic elements and motifs. Luvina is "'the place where sadness nests. . . . And you can almost taste and feel it, because it's always over you, against you, and because it's heavy like a large plaster weighing on the living flesh of the heart.'" The black wind "'scratches like it had nails; you hear it morning and night, hour after hour without stopping, scraping the walls, tearing off strips of earth, digging with its sharp shovel under the doors, until you feel it boiling inside of you as if it was going to remove the hinges of your very bones.'"

As the story unfolds the reader passes from the real to the unreal, from the objective world to a phantasmagoric environment. The motifs of the real world are presented as a counterpoint to the fantastic, unreal world of Luvina. The description of Luvina anticipates, to a certain extent, that of Cornala in Rulfo's novel Pedro Páramo, after the cacique has died and the community has become a ghost town, a dead town.

"La noche que lo dejaron solo"

Among the stories that have the Revolution as a subject are "The Burning Plain," which treats of the struggle against Victoriano Huerta, and "The Night They Left Him Alone," about the Cristero Revolt of 1926-1929, the religious war which was the result of the conflict between church and state during the presidency of Plutarco Elias Calles. In both stories the heroes are men fighting federal troops, and the action is seen from their perspective. In the first story the narrator is a common soldier, "El Pichón," while in the latter the action is presented from the point of view of an omniscient narrator.

Three cristeros, so called because their war cry was ¡Viva Cristo Rey! ("Long Live Christ the King!"), Feliciano Ruelas, a young boy, and his two uncles, Tanis and Librado, are bringing arms to their men, who are led by "El Catorce." Unable to stay awake any longer, Feliciano falls asleep while his two uncles keep on walking. Feliciano sleeps the rest of the night and part of the next morning. When he finally arrives at the place where they were to meet their fellow cristeros, he discovers that the Federales have captured and hanged his two uncles and are waiting for him, for they knew there were three. However, Feliciano is able to flee from them.

This simple anecdote is given significance not by the realistic incidents, as was done in "El llano en llamas," or by the tragedy of the two uncles, but by the way in which Feliciano's life is saved. The story opens with Feliciano ahead, urging his uncles to hurry, "'Why are you going so slow? . . . Don't you have the urge to get there soon?'" In spite of his urgency, he falls behind. Why? Because el sueño ("sleep") gets on his back and forces him to stop to rest. "Sleep clouded his thoughts." Sleep gets on his back and forces him to stop walking. This could be interpreted as a natural happening—Feliciano falls asleep in spite of his desire to get the arms to his companions as soon as possible. However, the boy sees sleep "coming toward him, surrounding him, trying to find the place where he was the tiredest, until it was above him, over his back, where his rifles were slung." He slowly falls behind, starts to nod, and "The others passed him by; now they were far ahead, and he followed, nodding his sleepy head." The weight of the rifles and the weight of sleep on his back finally make him stop, and he falls asleep leaning against a tree trunk. He does not awaken until dawn, but believing that it is night falling, he goes back to sleep and does not get up until the noise of some mule drivers wakes him up, with the sun already high.

If Feliciano is saved from the fate of his two uncles it is because, as the narrator suggests, sleep knew what awaited him if he kept going. Nor can it be said that this was a ruse on the part of Feliciano because he feared what was ahead. There is evidence in the story to show that he was a brave boy. One of the soldiers who caught his uncles says, "'They say the third one is just a boy, but all the same he was the one who laid the ambush for Lieutenant Parra and wiped out his men.'" If he remained behind it was because he was overpowered by a force beyond his control.

A possible interpretation of this story is through the concept of magical realism. The boy sees sleep, feels its weight upon his back, and falls asleep against his will. Unlike the story "El hombre," wherein the perspective is that of the characters, the magical occurrences in "La noche que lo dejaron solo" are told by an omniscient narrator in third person, and not directly by Feliciano in an interior monologue. The introduction of this magic motif gives to the anecdote a dimension that separates it from a simple, ordinary story. If not as powerful as "El hombre" or other Rulfo stories, it nevertheless displays his characteristic style, conciseness, organization of material, and thematic expression.

"Acuérdate"

"Remember" is the story of a maladjusted man, Urbano Gómez, as reconstructed by one of his former classmates, the unnamed narrator, who is trying to stimulate the memory of another classmate, who remains silent. The technique is that of the small-town gossip with total recall who knows the life history of every inhabitant and assumes that others also remember it in every detail. The story opens with "Remember" and the speaker uses "Remember," "Try to remember," "Remember that," or "You ought to remember" throughout the story so that his classmate can recall what happened to Urbano Gómez, a former inhabitant of the village. "Remember Urbano Gómez, Don Urbano's son, Dimas's grandson, the one who directed the shepherd's songs and who died reciting the 'cursed angel growls' during the influenza epidemic. That was a long time ago, maybe fifteen years. But you ought to remember him." Often more details are added to help the listener remember. After describing one of Fidencio Gómez's daughters as being quite tall and having blue eyes, a girl whom the townspeople believed was not his, he adds, "and, if you want any further description, she suffered from hiccups." Thus, by adding one insignificant detail to another, the narrator ends by giving a complete picture of the town's life. Like putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the reader puts together fragments of the story until he gets the complete picture not only of Urbano's family but also of the whole village. An amusing miniature portrait of one of the inhabitants is that of Urbano's mother:

Remember they called his mother the "Eggplant" because she was always getting into trouble and every time she ended up with a child. They say she had a bit of money, but she used it all up in the burials, because all her children died soon after they were born and she always had masses sung for them, bearing them to the graveyard with music, and a choir of boys who sang "hosannas" and "glories" and that song that goes "Here I send thee, Lord, another little angel." That's how she got to be poor—each funeral cost her a lot because of the [cinnamon-flavored] drinks she served the guests at the wake. Only two of them lived, Urbano and Natalia, who were born poor, and she didn't see them grow up because she died in her last childbirth, when she was getting along in years, close to fifty.

After giving the life history of Urbano's family the narrator turns his attention to Urbano's private life, beginning with his schooldays, when he used to get the best of his schoolmates by selling them everything he could get his hands on. The reasons for his turning bad are not clear to the narrator, who says only, "Maybe he was just that way right from birth." Urbano is expelled from school before the fifth year "because he was found with his cousin Stuck Up down in a dry well playing man and wife behind the lavatories." He is punished at school and at home, and as a result he leaves, only to return years later as a policeman and filled with hate. He kills Nachito, his brother-in-law, after Nachito serenades him with his mandolin. Urbano tries to escape but is arrested. "They say that he himself tied the rope around his neck and even picked out the tree of his choice for them to hang him from." The story ends with the narrator telling his listener that he surely must remember Urbano "because we were classmates at school, and you knew him just like I did."

The conversational tone of the monologue adds credibility to the story. A contrast is established between the narrator, who has total recall, and the person to whom he is talking, who apparently cannot remember Urbano. The many details remembered by the narrator, often irrelevant, amusing, and insignificant, also add credibility. By this technique the author restores the life of the village as it was fifteen years earlier, and reconstructs the nature of the personal relationships existing among the inhabitants. Yet, this is not a simple social document, but a wellconstructed short story centered on the character of Urbano Gómez. Although his life is a tragedy, it is told in a light, matter-of-fact style due to the attitude of the narrator toward the events he is remembering. This establishment of distance makes even the death of Urbano humorous, as it is presented in terms that border on the comic rather than on the tragic. The narrator, an expert raconteur, is also characterizing himself, and his personality comes through as clearly as that of Urbano. He is the typical small-town gossip with nothing to do but inquire into the lives of his fellow villagers. Nevertheless, he has a function in the town: remembering its history. He represents the historical consciousness of the village. Without him and his memory the village, like so many small towns everywhere, would not exist. In this character Rulfo has re-created an archetype, the storyteller who is also the small-town recorder of life in the community.

"No oyes ladrar los perros"

Conflict between father and son is common in Rulfo's fiction. "No Dogs Bark" is perhaps one of the most representative stories of this nature. The conflict here is between Ignacio and his father, whose name is not revealed. The structure of the story is made unique by establishing a dialogue between Ignacio, who is wounded, and his father, who is carrying him on his shoulders, at night, to the town of Tonaya. Since Ignacio's legs cover his father's ears, he cannot hear the dogs from the town barking and therefore does not know if they have arrived at the town, or if they are even close to it. He is anxious to hear the dogs, for that means that he can unload his heavy burden and that Ignacio can receive medical treatment. He does not dare put him down on the road for fear that he could never lift him up again. When he finally reaches the town and puts him down, he hears all the dogs barking. "'And you didn't hear them, Ignacio?'" he said. "'You didn't even help me listen.'" With these words the story ends. And the reader assumes, as the narrator suggests, that Ignacio is dead.

While carrying Ignacio, his father scolds him for giving his parents so much trouble. Ignacio's last words are, '"Give me water,'" and "'I'm awful thirsty and sleepy.'" After that, "His feet began to swing loosely from side to side. And it seemed to the father that Ignacio's head, up there, was shaking as if he were sobbing." When Ignacio asked for water, it reminded his father of the time when his son was born and of his being thirsty all the time. In this way a contrast is established between life and death. "'I remember,'" the father tells him, '"when you were born. You were that way then. You woke up hungry and ate and went back to sleep. Your mother had to give you water, because you'd finished all her milk.'"

Not much is revealed about how Ignacio got into trouble. After he is dead, his father feels thick drops, which may be blood, falling on his hair. He thinks Ignacio is crying, and tells him, '"Are you crying, Ignacio? The memory of your mother makes you cry, doesn't it? But you never did anything for her. You always repaid us badly. Somehow your body got filled with evil instead of affection. And now you see? They've wounded it. What happened to your friends? They were all killed. Only they didn't have anybody.'" Although he is angry at Ignacio for causing them so much grief, the father still has affection for his son. This is revealed by the alternating use of the familiar tú and the formal usted. The use of usted serves to establish distance. With usted displeasure can be expressed. When Ignacio begs his father to put him down, for he wants to sleep a little, his father tells him, '"Duérmete allí arriba. Al cabo te llevo bien agarrado'" ('"Sleep up there. After all, I' ve got a good hold on you"'). But immediately after that, the father changes his tone:

—Todo esto que hago, no lo hago por usted. Lo hago por su difunta madre. Porque usted fue su hijo. Por eso lo hago. Ella me reconvendría si yo lo hubiera dejado tirado allí, donde lo encontré, y no lo hubiera recogido para llevarlo a que lo curen, como estoy haciéndolo. Es ella la que me da ánimos, no usted. Comenzando porque a usted no le debo más que puras dificultades, puras mortificaciones, puras vergüenzas.

("I'm not doing all this for you. I'm doing it for your dead mother. Because you were her son. That's why I'm doing it. She would've haunted me if I'd left you lying where I found you and hadn't picked you up and carried you to be cured as I'm doing. She's the one who gives me courage, not you. From the first you've caused me nothing but trouble, humiliation, and shame.")

And then again, "'Mira a ver si ya ves algo. O si oyes algo. Tú que puedes hacerlo desde allá arriba, porque yo me siento sordo'" ('"See if you can't see something now. Or hear something. You'll have to do it from up there because I feel deaf"). Ignacio, on the other hand, uses only the familiar tú when talking to his father.

"No Dogs Bark" reveals Rulfo at his best as a short-story writer. In four pages he presents a drama in which physical and emotional tensions are orchestrated with great skill. By having the narrator recall Ignacio's past life at the moment of his death, Rulfo sets in opposition two climactic moments endured by all human beings. At the same time he touches upon a deep archetypal conflict, that of father and son. By limiting the time, and by placing the events at night, under a full moon, he adds a new dimension to the simple anecdote.

"Paso del Norte"

"Paso del Norte" is the old name of Ciudad Juárez, in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. The protagonist's experiences after leaving Paso del Norte in trying to cross the river and enter the United States without documents are recounted in a díalogue between father and son after the latter returns to his home in Jalisco. Although his trip is not dramatized in the story, there is a short scene that takes place in Tlatelolco, a suburb of Mexico City, where the protagonist works unloading freight cars in order to save up the two hundred pesos needed for the coyote who is to take him into the United States. However, he never reaches his destination, because, as he was crossing the river with some others, "'They peppered us with bullets until they killed all of us . . . while they flashed the lights on us when we were crossing the river.'" His companion, Estanislado, is killed in the middle of the river and he himself is wounded in the arm. He is found on the Mexican side by an Immigration officer, given the fare home, and told never to come back there again.

As do many immigrants to the United States, this man had left his family in Mexico. He entrusted his father with the care of his wife, Tránsito, and their five children, but, upon his return, he finds that his wife has run off with a mule driver and that his father has sold his house in order to take care of the children. And yet, after all these misfortunes, the protagonist has not lost faith. Since his father claims that he still owes him thirty pesos, he promises to get a job and repay him. For the time being, he is going after his wife.

In "Paso del Norte" Rulfo has combined several themes and motifs already present in some of his other stories: hunger, poverty, and the conflict between father and son. But there are new elements: the plight of the rural people who migrate to the United States to escape the misery in which they live; the coyote system, which exploits them by taking advantage of their ignorance; and the creation of a character who, in the face of severe adversity, does not lose his faith. Is he, as his father insists, too stupid to realize that he has been taken in? Or is the story an indictment against the uncaring attitude of the father toward his son and his son's family; or against the whole system that forces rural people, however ambitious and hard-working they may be, to a life of poverty, misery, and despair, without hope except for the abandonment of country, family, and friends? These are some of the questions that Rulfo raises in "Paso del Norte."

Unfortunately, the story was omitted from the second edition of El llano en llamas (1970). When asked why it was not included, Rulfo replied that it was the editor's decision but that he didn't mind since he considered "Paso del Norte" to be flawed. "It had two transitions difficult to unite: the moment when the man goes to look for work as a bracero in the United States and when he returns. There is an internal theme that is not well elaborated, that is not even worked out. I would liked to have worked on that story more."

"Anacleto Morones"

In "Anacleto Morones," a story slightly different from the others collected in this first edition of The Burning Plain, irony predominates. The story centers upon the questionable character of Anacleto Morones, a religious leader and curandero who is either a fake or a holy man, depending upon whose story the reader wants to believe—that of the narrator, who was Anacleto's assistant, or that of the ten church women who want to sanctify him. These women have come all the way from Amula to Lucas Lucatero's home to ask him to testify as to the saintliness of Anacleto, since he knew him well and had married his daughter. Lucas knew Anacleto well enough to believe that he was a fraud and an evil man. His daughter, he tells the women, was even carrying his own child, that being the reason why Anacleto had married her off to Lucas. The women are openly insulted by Lucas and incensed by his blasphemies about Anacleto but insist that he accompany them back to Amula even though they know him to be a liar and a scoundrel. "The priest recommended that we bring someone who had known him well and for some time back, before he became famous for his miracles.'"

The two perspectives in the story are completely contradictory. According to Lucas, the women want to sanctify a lecherous man. Lucas accuses him of being a religious charlatan and a living devil who '"left this part of the country without virgins.'" Before the visit is over, two of the women confess that they had spent the night, although innocently, with Anacleto, and another accuses Lucas of being the father of her stillborn child. Pancha, who had stayed behind after the other women had left, agrees to sleep with Lucas but later tells him, '"You're a flop, Lucas Lucatero. You aren't the least bit affectionate. Do you know who was really loving? . . . The Holy Child Anacleto. He knew how to make love.'" Was Pancha just trying to get even with Lucas, who had insulted her by requesting that she trim off the hairs from her lips before they make love? Or was she really telling the truth?

On the other hand, according to the women, Lucas is a born liar.'"We don't believe you, Lucas, not for a minute do we believe you. . . . You were always quite a liar and a false witness.'" And in response to Lucas's accusation of Anacleto's incestuousness, they say, "'You've always been one for making up tales.'"

However, Lucas does lie to the women when he tells them that he does not know what has happened to Anacleto. The women think that Anacleto is dead. '"He's in heaven. Among the angels. That's where he is.'" But at the end of the story, in a díalogue that had taken place between Lucas and Anacleto, now reconstructed in the mind of Lucas, the reader learns that there had been an argument between them over the property, and that now the Holy Child is buried in his son-in-law's back yard. "And now Pancha was helping me put the stones over him again without suspecting that underneath lay Anacleto and that I was doing that for fear he would come out of his grave to give me a bad time again. He was so full of tricks. I had no doubt he would find some way to come to life and get out of there."

Through a combination of techniques—question and answer; interior monologue; insinuation; ambiguity; and undocumented statements—Rulfo constructs a fast-moving story and integrates the diverse points of view, each with its own credibility, without revealing the true nature of the events that took place in the past. He skillfully treats the sensitive topics of incest and religious quacks with irony and even humor. There is also the use of a technique not often seen in Rulfo: the holding back of information in order to maintain the interest of the reader. The last question—Who is telling the truth?—is never resolved, nor are the circumstances regarding Anacleto's death.

As the longest of Rulfo's stories, "Anacleto Morones" has the characteristics of a short novelette, such as the introduction of several characters who have well-developed personalities, each one of whom would be worthy of using in another story. In 1960 Miguel Sabido adopted the story to the theater, and it was presented with a degree of success. A motion picture based on "Anacleto Morones" and another Rulfo story, "El día del derrumbe," was produced in 1972 under the title El rincón de las vírgenes [The virgins' corner]. Its director, Alberto Isaac, has said that these two stories held a great attraction for him which he could not resist. '"It was a very difficult challenge facing me,'" he says, '"since I had to find the relation between them—in other words, between "El día del derrumbe" and "Anacleto Morones." At first glance they're very different pieces and to find a connecting thread took a lot of work on my part. Certainly the central character of "Anacleto Morones" was played by El Indio Fernández.'" There is no question that there is some relationship between these two stories, especially the humorous aspect, but the differences predominate.

"El día del derrumbe"

"The Day of the Landslide" first appeared in August 1955 in the literary supplement México en la Cultura of the newspaper Novedades of Mexico City. It was added to the stories of El llano en llamas beginning with the 1970 edition. It is the only story in which Rulfo uses humor to present his subject matter. The one closest to it in this respect is "Anacleto Morones," and it was perhaps this element that led Alberto Isaac to combine them into one single story in his movie El rincón de las vírgenes. There is, however, a great difference in the type of humor used in the two stories. In "Anacleto Morones" black humor predominates. Lucas ridicules religion and all it stands for—miracles, church women, saintliness, prayer, and even death. This scorn is directed toward a man who takes advantage of the religious beliefs of the people in order to deceive them for his own benefit. In "El día del derrumbe," the sarcasm centers upon the inflated, insensitive, and often vulgar politician who also deceives the people for his own gain. The characterization in this story borders on caricature. The governor who visits the small town of Tuxcacuexco to survey the damage caused by an earthquake is a politician whose only concern is eating: '"People were breaking their necks straining them so much to see the governor and talking about the way he'd eaten the turkey and had he sucked on the bones and how fast he was scooping up one tortilla after another and spreading them with guacamole sauce. . . . And him so calm, so serious, wiping his hands on his socks so as not to mess up the napkin he only used to whisk his moustache from time to time.'" At speech time he delivers an oration full of meaningless rhetoric: '"People of Tuxcacuexco .. . I, considering the basis of my ontological and human concept, I say: It fills me with pain! with the pain brought on by the sight of the tree felled in its first efflorescence.'" The banquet turns into a free-for-all when the town's drunkard begins to chorus the governor's remarks with the word '"Exactly."' When they try to stop him he takes out his pistol and begins to shoot over their heads, and the fight spreads to the street. The cost of the damage done, plus the money spent by the town to feast the governor, exceed the damage done by the earthquake.

The recounting of this simple anecdote is as important as the story itself. In the form of a díalogue between Melitón and an unnamed narrator, who is apparently talking to a group of people, Rulfo is able to create the illusion of reality. The story is unfolded by frequent inquiries on the part of the narrator, who wants to know if Melitón remembers certain details regarding the event. Melitón seems to have a good memory for he remembers the day better than the narrator and even recites the governor's speech, which he had memorized. When asked if he remembers "'what that guy recited,"' he answers, "'I remember all right, but I've repeated it so many times it's getting to be a pain in the neck.'" The story opens with the narrator's trying to remember when the earthquake took place, "'This happened in September. Not in September of this year but last year. Or was it the year before last, Melitón?'" and ends when he finally remembers, "'Now I'm beginning to remember that the roughhouse was around the twenty-first of September; because my wife had our boy Merencio that day, and I got home very late at night, more drunk than sober.'"

This story is the only one in which Rulfo uses humor to treat a political theme. Criticism of the government, which had appeared in former Mexican short stories, is not common in his fiction. There is a precedent for "El día del derrumbe" in stories by both Gregorio López y Fuentes and Francisco Rojas González, who used the same device of a politician visiting a small town to see how he can help the people. But Rulfo's story stands out over those of his predecessors because of its incisive humor which he applies to his characterization of the governor to a degree still unsurpassed in contemporary Mexican literature.

"La herencia de Matilde Arcángel"

This story first appeared in March 1955 in the periodical Cuadernos Médicos of Mexico City, was added to the collection El llano en llamas beginning with the edition of 1970 (145-52), and translated in 1966 by Margaret Shedd under the title "Matilde Arcángel." As in some other stories by Rulfo, the conflict here is between father and son, but with a variation, for the son triumphs over his father. The scene in which the body of the father, Euremio Cedillo, is brought into town by his son is reminiscent of that found in "¡Diles que no me maten!" However, the action here is seen through the perspective of a third party, Tranquilino B arreto, a mule driver who was Euremio's compadre and therefore the godfather of Euremio, Jr. He has a set mind and is very opinionated. He says to his audience, for instance, that Corazón de María, their town, is where runts come from, and adds, "I hope that none of you will be offended, but that's my opinion and I stick to it." Tranquilino is narrating an incident to these people which had occurred sometime before. He had been Matilde's sweetheart and was planning on marrying her, but he made the mistake of introducing her to Euremio, who was to be his best man. Soon after that Matilde married Euremio and later had their first child, whom they named after the father. Coming back from the church after the baptism the boy, according to the father's story, gave a hoot like an owl which frightened the horse that the mother and child were riding. Matilde fell and was killed, but managed to save the child by protecting him with her body. From that time on the father carried a hatred for his son, whom he blamed for the mother's death. Later the son, who has learned to play the flute, joins a band of revolutionaries; and the father, to get even with him, joins the government's troops. The son survives, but the father is killed, presumably by his son, for the boy brings his father's body back to the town. "He rode the animal's haunches, and in his left hand was the flute, which he played with all his might. With his right hand he balanced a corpse slung across the saddle, his father."

Tranquilino, who never stopped loving Matilde, is biased and blames the elder Euremio for her tragic death. "We buried her. That mouth which for me had been impossible to reach was filled with earth. We watched while she sank into the pit of that grave until we couldn't even see the outline of her body. And there, standing like a tree trunk, was Cedillo. I was thinking, 'If only she had been left in peace in Chupaderos she might be alive. . . ." The father is presented as tall and brawny, and the son as weak, "and some people thought this included his mind." His frailty, according to Tranquilino, was not only the result of the accident, but also of the psychological impact of the atmosphere prevailing in his father's home, for "if he looked limp and disjointed . . . it was because he was crushed under a hate as heavy as a millstone. I think his misfortune was to have been born." On the other hand, the father was a "lusty man, so tall it made you mad just to stand next to him and heft the strength of him, if only by looking at him." The father's hatred is so intense that the mere presence of his son seemed to make his blood curdle. In order to deprive his son of his inheritance, he sells his property bit by bit and spends the money on drinking. Yet, ironically, it is the weak son that survives, and the strong father who succumbs.

In "La herencia de Matilde Arcángel," as in most of Rulfo's stories, there is not only the anecdote that is important, but also the act of narrating. The many rhetorical references to this action, on the part of Tranquilino, constitute a story in itself. He begins, as is customary in traditional stories, by stating that what he is going to tell his audience took place sometime before: "Not long ago in Corazón de María there lived a father and a son known as the hermits." After a short digression about how people felt when in the presence of Cedillo, he says, "To return to where we were, I was telling you about those men who lived in Corazón de María." In order that his audience understand the reason for the father's hatred, he must relate the accident that took Matilde's life: "To understand this we have to go back, before the boy was born." Like the traditional storyteller, common among mule drivers who often have to spend the night outdoors around the bonfire, Tranquilino promises his listeners all the details: "I have to tell you who and what Matilde Arcángel was. I won't leave anything out. I'll tell you slowly. After all, we have the whole of life before us." Often the story concerns himself, and he becomes a participant in the story that he is telling his audience. "I'm a muleteer, and it's because I like it, because I like to talk to myself while I'm walking the mountain roads. But the roads wandering in her were longer than all the others of my life and I knew I'd have to follow them because I would never stop loving her." Apparently, some of his listeners are strangers, for he finds it necessary to introduce himself, "Tranquilino Barreto, your humble servant." As do all experienced storytellers, he repeats some of the details for emphasis so that his audience can savor their full significance. The statement, "But what everybody always knew was that he hated his son," which has to do with the story he is telling, is followed by, "I was telling you about that at the beginning," which has to do with the structure of the tale. After another digression he goes on with the story, "Well, to get ahead with the thing, one quiet heavy night . . . some rebels rode into Corazón de María." From here on he finishes the story without further interruption. These rhetorical devices have the function of establishing distance between the audience and the event related by the storyteller, used so skillfully by Rulfo here and in most of his short stories.