33 pages • 1 hour read
Ana CastilloThe Mixquiahuala Letters
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1986A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Negative Male-Female Relationships
Negative male-female relationships abound in The Mixquiahuala Letters. Teresa’s male relatives all have issues surrounding women. Numerous other male characters pursue Teresa and Alicia sexually without provocation, including the Alvaro, the drag queens, the men who take them to the university and then try to rape them, Ponce, and his bosses. Wolfgang hurts Alicia by using her as a pawn to get to Teresa. The men whose interest they do reciprocate treat them as servile, use them to fulfill their own needs, or otherwise treat them unfairly, including Alexis, Libra, the medical student from Mexico City, and Abdel. Several men get involved with and then leave Alicia on her European/Caribbean trip, and her troubled relationship with her father is likely the foundation for her troubled interactions with other men. In contrast, Teresa’s father is nonexistent until the last section of the book. The feminine body is sometimes seen in startling juxtaposition to the masculine world, as when Alicia changes her tampon at the Mexican ruins, a juxtaposition that implies a fundamental conflict between the two realms. However, the women are bound to men by their need for sexual and emotional fulfillment.
Complicated Female Relationships
Teresa and Alicia harbor complex feelings for one another. On one hand, they are closely bonded to each other because of their extensive overseas travels. On the other, they sometimes misunderstand, seek distance from, and antagonize each other. Teresa alludes to the conflicted mix of resentment and affection that characterizes her friendship with Alicia during their study abroad trip: “We picked, picked, picked at each other’s cerebrum and when we didn’t elicit the desired behavior, the confirmation of allegiance, we reproached the other with threatening vengeance” (29). After parting ways on the study abroad trip, they “begged for the other’s visit and again the battle resumed. We needled, stabbed, manipulated, cut, and through it all we loved, driven to see the other improved in her own reflection” (29). They experience different levels of intimacy throughout the book, tending toward distance as they enter their thirties.
Growing Up
The book follows Teresa and Alicia through a crucial decade of their lives, their twenties. Reflecting as a 30-year-old, Teresa feels that they’ve transitioned away from the ideals of their youth: “Alicia, I don’t know why so many of our ideals were stamped out like cigarette butts when we believed in them so furiously. Perhaps we were not furious enough” (22). The youthful ideals she refers to are never explicitly stated, but it’s implied that social justice, art, and independence are important to them. As the women progress through their twenties, travel in Mexico, and go through a string of relationships, Teresa comes to desire stability and commitment more than the dramatic ideals of her early 20s. The negative qualities of her past relationships with men spur her to seek different partners and expressions of her values. Rather than continuing to travel extensively, she settles down literally and figuratively. She also knows herself well enough to recognize that she wants to be a mother and keeps Libra’s baby, in contrast to the abortion incident with Alexis. Alicia, meanwhile, still seems somewhat bohemian, traveling through Europe and the Caribbean at the end of the book. The trauma of Abdel’s death is fresher for her than Teresa’s ordeals at the hands of her abusive boyfriend and her breakup with Alexis, which may explain Alicia’s unrooted existence.
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By Ana Castillo
