The Mixquiahuala Letters

When she was 17, Alicia got pregnant with Rodney’s baby. At first she wanted to keep the baby, but Rodney stopped visiting her and she didn’t want to raise it alone. She went to a clinic by herself, intending to have an abortion, but was mistakenly sterilized after filling out medical forms while sedated. She’d had to borrow a friend’s identification and pretend that she’d already had children to obtain an abortion, implying that the procedure took place before the passage of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in 1973.

When they’re 27, Teresa visits Alicia in New York. She first recalls the closeness they shared during their time in Mexico and relates how she has slowly climbed out of poverty. In New York she finds Alicia living with a man “like a mean draft to one in the last stages of pneumonia” (129), who is probably Abdel. He squanders their money and brings undesirable people to the apartment, which is neglected and a mess.

Teresa vacations in places where she and Alicia visited, which prompts her to reminisce about their time together. Teresa reveals that she and Alicia have been out of touch, but she knows that when Alicia went to Europe, she was involved with a man in Rome for six months. He left her abruptly one day. Alicia also went to Cuba and was abandoned by a man who danced with other blond women instead of her. Teresa urges Alicia not to associate those places only with unhappy memories and to let go of the past.

The poet Teresa lived with while she was involved with Alexis passes through Mexico on his travels. He reports that he saw Alicia in Puerto Rico with a Brazilian lover, Vicente das Mortes. Teresa recalls introducing the two when she visited New York and Alicia was living with Abdel. Teresa had persuaded Alicia to go dancing, and Alicia danced with Vicente’s cousin. Vicente asked Teresa if she thought Alicia would teach him to dance. Teresa said yes, foreseeing that the two would become involved.

Teresa relates how her son was conceived: She returns to LA to visit Libra. She stays with him, and the two sleep together. Despite his recollection of impotence while they were married, Teresa discovers after she returns to Mexico that she’s pregnant. She doesn’t reach out to Libra, choosing to raise her son as a single mother.

Abdel and Alicia are still living together. He becomes increasingly depressed and listless, although he seems energetic and jovial when he and Alicia go to Mexico for Teresa’s son’s christening. While there, Abdel comments that he’d like to have a baby with Alicia, revealing that he doesn’t know about her sterilization. Shortly after they return New York, Alicia comes home from a class to discover that Abdel has shot himself in their apartment. The police take her in for questioning.