Vampires of El Norte

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-13

Chapters 14-20

Chapters 21-28

Chapters 29-34

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 7-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary: “Néstor”

Néstor approaches Los Ojuelos with Beto, terrified of how Nena’s parents will react to seeing the man who caused their daughter’s death. They talk about the government’s request for men and horses to defend Tejas from the Anglos. Now, the Anglos have taken Tejas and want to continue south.

Néstor finds his uncle, Bernabé, and his cousin, Casimiro, who look warily at Beto because he is half white. People crowd him and ask questions, so Beto steps in and begins telling stories to help Néstor avoid their interrogation. Bernabé brings Néstor to his abuela, who is angry that he has been gone for so long but loving because she has missed him. She asks him what happened and he promises to explain later. She orders him to make it to the meeting of the rancheros and vaqueros. The sights, sounds, and smells of Los Ojuelos elicit the memories he has kept at bay for nine years.

Beto tries to quell his worries, but when they walk into the courtyard of la casa mayor he agrees that everyone is looking at Néstor. Néstor looks at Don Feliciano, Doña Mercedes, and finally Nena. They lock eyes and she stands up to come toward him but her mother calls her name saying it is time for them to leave.

Néstor thought this whole time that Nena was dead, so he wonders if she is a ghost. Involuntarily, he remembers the night he thought she died. Néstor leaves the courtyard, Beto following him, and vomits near the steps of his childhood home. He admits to Beto that he cannot go back. Beto returns to the meeting. Standing there, Néstor realizes that the assumption upon which he built the last nine years of his life—that Nena was dead because of him—was false.

Chapter 8 Summary: “Nena”

That night, Nena reflects upon seeing Néstor for the first time in nine years. Her mother called her name and tried to urge her to leave the meeting, but with Félix’s help, they convinced her mother to let her stay. By the time their debate ended, Néstor was gone from the crowd.

She flashes back to a memory from when she was 14, watching Félix deliver news to Bernabé’s home. She asks if they have news from Néstor and Félix tells her to stop asking. Abuela says it is inappropriate to write Nena’s name on a letter and as the patrón’s daughter, she should not care about one peón. She looks at Nena with pity, and Nena decides to stop thinking about Néstor.

She still thinks about him now, but even when he returns she thinks that nothing has changed. She will still fight the Yanquis for their home and try to convince her father she is worth more than a marriage alliance. Néstor comes to the door and asks to speak with her. She looks at him, reflects on all the pain and fear she has felt for him over the years, and shuts the door in his face.

Chapter 9 Summary: “Néstor”

Right before Nena slams the door in his face, Néstor realizes at last that she is who he is meant to be with. Back at his family’s jacal, Abuela finds him pacing and he admits that Nena died that night. She asks him what happened and he lies saying it was too dark to see, but Nena was hurt, and he took her back to la casa mayor where they told him she was dead. Abuela explains that Nena was poisoned by venom that night, like a lot of others at Los Ojuelos. Abuela healed part of her spirit that night, but the part that lost Néstor remains broken. Néstor realizes that he made a mistake when he left her for nine years. Abuela explains that they are two different griefs, that one person left and one died. When Beto and Casimiro return with food, Casimiro explains that they are meant to keep watch over Nena while they are on the road. Néstor agrees and wants to take advantage of the fact that Nena is alive and tries to right his wrongs.

Chapter 10 Summary: “Nena”

Nena lies in bed unable to sleep, thinking about the fact that Néstor left her and stayed silent for almost a decade. She decides she does not owe him anything. That night, she dreams of Néstor being bucked off a horse, like the time she witnessed in real life when she was afraid for his life. She wakes up to her sister Javiera shrieking and her dog Pollo barking. Javiera says she saw a face in her dream with no eyes and many teeth. Nena hugs her and looks out the open window at which the dog continues to bark.

Chapter 11 Summary: “Nena”

They set off for the nine-day journey to Matamoros with the vaqueros and rancheros, some of whom want to be there and some of whom do not. Casimiro, polite and silent, and Beto, kind and talkative, guard Nena. That night Nena overhears Beto tell stories by the fire about Néstor pursuing women and Nena is bothered by this despite herself.

As they approach Matamoros, the energy in their group is anxious. Nena walks into the forest and Néstor strolls far behind her. He has tried to speak with her but she denies all of his efforts. She is upset that he only wants to make small talk without explaining why he fled. She concludes that he is no longer who she thought he was.

On her journey to collect water, she finds a bull from their company that has been killed recently. It was mauled. She says she has never seen anything like it, concealing that its wounds look like Ignacio’s wounds. Néstor says he recognizes the scene. He whistles for someone to come see and in the meantime tells her about a vaquero who told him this kind of event was the work of spirits. As he talks she becomes angry again that he left, sent no word, and only just returned. She snaps at him, angry that he is carefree while as a woman she is bound by countless rules. He calls her a brat in return. Nena says that he left her, and Néstor tells her that she died and he couldn’t face it. She does not believe him. No one has responded to his whistle and the air around them is eerily still and quiet.

Nena feels a humming and a repulsive scent and Néstor raises his pistol. They stand still and hear a footstep.

Chapter 12 Summary: “Néstor”

Néstor is ready to shoot but instead finds Casimiro and Beto. The eerie feeling disappears. Beto goes to get water while Casimiro and Néstor walk home with Nena. Néstor reflects on a night years ago when he saw a creature in the woods and made a fool of himself pacing around all night in front of other vaqueros. Beto says he got drunk that night and kept saying Nena’s name. The same night, they found a bull who had been brutally killed. There were no other animal tracks around it. The bull’s death does not make sense—it was healthy recently yet it looks like it was killed weeks ago after starving. He remembers another strange vaquero who claimed that El Norte is haunted.

Beto offers to get water instead of Nena, but as they arrive back to their camp they hear Beto scream. They come running back with torches, and Néstor thinks he sees a human-like thing bent over Beto, but it disappears. Beto is left staring blankly ahead and bleeding from a wound in his upper arm.

They carry him back to camp and call for Nena to heal him. Néstor has flashbacks of when he carried Nena after she was attacked. She asks Néstor to grind up plants and provide Beto’s full name. As she works, Beto closes his eyes.

Chapter 13 Summary: “Nena”

Beto is alive but still unconscious, and Nena worries about what will happen. Her father comes, sees her working, and nods in approval. Néstor touches her to tell her that this is what happened to Nena that night. With her brother and other vaqueros watching, Nena turns on him and asks Casimiro to prepare her workstation and ensure Néstor is nowhere near it. She looks at Néstor expecting to see anger but finds only sadness.

She fears she will fail to bring Beto back, but as she works he gasps and wakes up. She asks what he remembers. He says he remembers seeing her angry with Néstor. Then he talks about how Néstor is amazing but cannot express himself well. She asks again what he remembers, and he says just darkness.

As she lies in her tent she tries to remember what happened the night Néstor left. She remembers Elena saying that she thought Ignacio was dead and begins to understand Néstor’s assumption that she was dead. As Néstor approaches and switches with Casimiro to watch Nena’s tent, she feels shame at how sharply she had spoken to Néstor.

Chapters 7-13 Analysis

As Nena and Néstor confront the misunderstandings between them, their conflict reveals the gendered dimensions of the theme of the Importance of Freedom. For almost a decade, as Nena wondered what happened and whether Néstor would return, she became “more and more tightly bound by the ropes of womanhood,” whereas “he roamed free, unburdened by responsibilities” (120-21). She resents Néstor not only for leaving but also for the freedom she cannot attain. To her, he fled their home and broke his promises to take advantage of the liberties available to men and not women: the freedom to work and to explore his sexuality. In Néstor’s absence, Nena’s freedom has been steadily curtailed. She must fight to pursue her vocation as a healer against the expectations of her family that she give up her autonomy to make an advantageous marriage. From her perspective, it seems like Néstor abandoned her to domestic servitude while he indulged his personal desires.

Of course, Néstor left to flee his grief, not to pursue his freedom, and he sees the fact that Nena is alive as a miracle and an opportunity. First, however, he must navigate the complicated emotions that their misunderstanding left behind. Abuela explains: “To you, Nena died. To her, you left. Those are two very different griefs” (105). His abuela’s simplification of their complex emotions gives Néstor the clarity to continue to try to reconnect with Nena. Cañas personifies their grief to make the nuances of the emotion clearer: “His grief had taken root in his legs and kept them running. Nena’s, it seemed, walked hand in hand with anger” (106). For the same reason that Néstor cannot fault his own grief for demanding he run away, he cannot fault Nena’s grief for staying closely tied to anger. Néstor assumes faith in fate: he could either wallow in his mistakes or “take this imperfect, broken miracle that fate had dropped in his lap and do something with it” (107). Here, Cañas personifies fate itself. In seeing emotions and destiny as their own driving forces, Néstor can remove the blame from himself and Nena. By forgiving their past mistakes, Néstor can move forward and truly take advantage of the freedom he has found as a vaquero.

As Nena and Néstor’s experiences become parallel again, their perspectives are expressed through careful choice of diction. When Néstor walks into the room in Los Ojuelos, the author writes twice, from each of their perspectives, that “their eyes locked” (84, 91). This parallel diction serves to show the reader that they feel the same way. In another hint that their realities are merging, when Néstor approaches la casa mayor to speak with Nena, she notices the scar he got when he was thrown from a half-broken mustang. In the next chapter, Néstor compares the evening to a half-broken mustang throwing him to the floor. In the chapter after that, Nena dreams about Néstor being thrown from the mustang once more. Their intertwining memories demonstrate their inextricable link and Nena’s dream forces her to acknowledge what she once felt for Néstor, even if that feeling is coated in fear. In her dream, vampires begin grasping for Nena, reminding her of the link between the vampire’s actions and her and Néstor’s fates.

The fact that both Nena and Néstor process their feelings through the metaphor of an animal points to the way their fates are intertwined with the land as well as to the theme of Connection Between All Living Things. As Nena reflects upon Néstor leaving, she draws several comparisons, saying “She was a tree with its roots ranked violently from the soil. She was a bird without its flock, a colt cut off from the herd and lost to the chaparral” (94). These metaphors communicate the weight of Néstor’s absence. These living beings are stripped of the things they need to survive just like she was with Néstor. Nena’s comparisons also demonstrate her commitment to feeling empathy for all living things, a quality that reemerges as she decides how to deal with the vampires. Néstor also sees his mission as tied to the land and Nena herself: “He was here to protect [Los Ojuelos] from guns and greed. He would place himself between the Yanquis and this place, the soil over which he and Nena raced barefoot as children” (76). By using alliteration to cite the two inanimate driving forces of the Yanquis’ campaign, Néstor reinforces the connection between the Americans’ violence and their desire to take the land to extract wealth from it. For Néstor, in contrast, his love for Nena is inextricably intertwined with his love of the land itself. Both characters see themselves and their relationships as tied to the land and the life it provides.