Signs Preceding the End of the World

“Those were the rules Makina abided by and that was why she was respected in the village. She ran the switchboard with the only phone for miles and miles around. It rang, she answered, they asked for so and so, she said I’ll go get them, call back in a bit and your person will pick up, or I’ll tell you what time you can find them, sometimes they called from nearby villages and she answered in native tongue or latin tongue. Sometimes, more and more these days, they called from the North; these were the ones who’d often already forgotten the local lingo, so she responded to them in their own new tongue. Makina spoke all three, and knew how to keep quiet in all three, too.”

The technological differences between the North and the South, evidence of the wealth gap between the two regions, are first demonstrated by the switchboard that Makina operates. Makina’s role as a translator and her skill with multiple languages carry her through the treacherous world of the South and the alien world of the North.

“Three years earlier one of Mr. Aitch’s thugs had turned up with some papers and told Makina that it said right there that they owned a little piece of land, over on the other side of the river, that a gentleman had left it to them.”

The land that Makina’s father allegedly acquired in the North was enough to tempt her brother into crossing the border, and it led to his disappearance. Land ownership is linked to wealth; Makina’s brother is willing to risk Aitch’s treachery for success. In the three years he has been away, Makina’s brother has only sent three letters.

“She deciphered a letter for a very old man who couldn’t read, in which his son explained how to find him once he’d crossed. She taught a boy how to say Soap in anglo and explained to another that, as far as she’d been told, you weren’t allowed to cook on the sidewalk over there.”

Makina’s linguistic prowess and street smarts allow her to translate not only messages but also situations. Even though she is involved in the criminal underbelly of Little Town, she remains empathetic and uses her skills to help her people, even the boy on the bus who attempted to grope her.

“She didn’t know how long she struggled frantically, and then the panic subsided, and she intuited that it made no difference which way she headed or how fast she went, that end, she’d wind up where she needed to be. She smiled. She felt herself smile. That was when the sound of breaking water replaced the green silence. Chucho dragged her out by the pants with both hands: they’d reached the opposite bank and the inner tube was swirling away in the current as if it had urgent business to attend to.”

Makina surrenders her usual independence to Chucho; she trusts him from early in their relationship. Chucho guides her across the river, much like the dogs of Aztec mythology that guide the soul across the first river of Mictlān.

“First there was nothing. Nothing but a frayed strip of cement over white earth. Then she made out two mountains colliding in the back of beyond: like they’d come from who knows where and were headed to anyone’s guess but had come together at that intense point in the nothingness and insisted on crashing noisily against each other, though the oblivious might think they simply stood there in silence.”

The violent collision of the mountains in the borderlands symbolizes the (often) violent clashes between the North and the South. It also represents one of the obstacles the soul must pass through in Mictlān, where it endures the collision of two mountains.

“And she thought, if that was any sort of omen it was a good one: a country where a woman with child walking through the desert just lies right down to let her baby grow, unconcerned about anything else. But as they approached, she discerned the features of this person, who was no woman, nor was that belly full with child: it was some poor wretch swollen with putrefaction, his eyes and tongue pecked out by buzzards.”

The symbol of a pregnant woman safely resting under a tree represents the false promise offered by the North. In reality, it is a bloated corpse that Makina sees. This passage expresses the deadly conditions of the borderlands—conditions created by the North to keep migrants from crossing the border.

“One of the first to strike it rich after going north came back to the Village all full of himself, all la-di-da, all fancy clothes and watches and new words he’d be able to say into his new phone.”

One of Makina’s greatest fears about traveling to the North is that she will change in some fundamental way. She notices these changes in the villagers who left and later return. In this passage, the man’s cell phone and new mannerisms indicate that he had succeeded materially, but he has lost his connection with his homeland, his culture, and his people.

“You just took your last trip, coyote. 

I’m no coyote, Chucho said.  

Ha! I seen you crossing folks, the man said. And looks like now I caught you in the act. 

Not the act I’m denying, said Chucho, tho I’m no coyote.”

Coyote is slang for human traffickers who are paid to illegally smuggle people across the US-Mexico border. They often exploit the people who pay for their services, as seen in Makina’s brief interaction with the coyotes in the border town trying to use the boys from the bus as bait. Chucho’s assertation that he is “no coyote,” even though he is helping Makina illegally cross, is a pun on his name (“Chucho means “dog,” not coyote) and an allusion to the dog spirits who aid the dead in Mictlān.

“Photos, photos, photos. They carried photos like promises but by the time they came back they were in tatters.”

The backpacks left by migrants are a real feature of the borderlands, where desperate migrants abandon their few possessions to lighten their loads. The emphasis Herrera puts on the abandoned photographs shows the weight of their decision to migrate. They leave behind their lives and loved ones. That the photographs are “in tatters” shows the costs of time and distance on their lives.

“The city was an edgy arrangement of cement particles and yellow paint. Signs prohibiting things thronged the streets, leading citizens to see themselves as ever protected, safe, friendly, innocent, proud, and intermittently bewildered, blithe, and buoyant; salt of the only earth worth knowing.”

Makina’s first experience in the North is of prohibitions that govern Northern culture. These rules contribute to a form of American exceptionalism in the novel. Makina is more accustomed to the South, where the rules are perhaps not stated on signs but are more familiar to her.

“All cooking is Mexican cooking, she said to herself. And then she said Ha. It wasn’t true, but she liked saying it just the same.”

This is the one instance in the novel where the geographic metonymy is broken and “Mexican” is used instead of Southern. Makina observes her countryfolk working in most of the kitchens around the town. This shows both the difficult labor of the Southerners and the fact that they are an integral part of Northern society.

“At the end she was instantly overcome by the sight of a vast expanse, two rival visions of beauty: the bottom an immense green diamond rippling in its own reflection; and above, embracing it, tens of thousands of folded black chairs, an obsidian mound barbed with flint, sharp and glimmering.”

This description of a baseball stadium—the venue of the North’s national pastime—causes the familiar to become foreign. Makina has never seen a baseball stadium, indicating that she is unable to translate this element of culture. Her description of the stadium is reminiscent of the mountain of obsidian blades the soul must traverse in Mictlān, the Aztec afterlife.

“More than the midpoint between homegrown and anglo their tongue is a nebulous territory between what is dying out and what is not yet born. But not a hecatomb. Makina senses in their tongue not a sudden absence but a shrewd metamorphosis, a self-defensive shift.”

Makina notices her countrymen and women speaking an intermediary language, encompassing both Anglo and Latin. Though Makina recognizes that this hybrid language originates in self-defense and survival, she also believes that it represents a new potential for the future.

“I don’t know what they told you, declared the irritated anglo, I don’t know what you think you lost but you ain’t going to find it here, there was nothing here to begin with.”

Makina has at last found the place where the land her brother sought was supposed to exist. There is nothing there. This proves that Mr. Aitch was manipulating her brother, possibly to get to Cora.

“Right, I know, the brother. He’s not here. I’m here. The family that lived here moved. To another continent. They sold the house and I bought it. I don’t know why they left, but times are changing and this is a lovely place to stay put.”

The Black man who bought the house of the family that employed Makina’s brother represents the change in demographics of the North. An increasing number of Black people are moving into the middle class. This man watches the change happen from a comfortable middle-class home that once belonged to a white family that was forced to become immigrants to another country.

“To hell with it all, she thought, to hell with this guy and that one, to hell with all this shit, I’m going to hang myself from a lamppost and let the wind whip me around like an old rag; I’m going to start crying and then I’m going to hell too.”

Makina’s greatest despair comes when she learns that the land her brother came for never existed, and she realizes the trail has run cold. This despair is uncharacteristic for Makina, who usually has a sense that she will end up where she needs to be. The moment of despair, which alludes to a stage in the Aztec myth of the afterlife, passes as she (like the dead person’s soul) continues her journey.

“This was the deal: Makina's brother would pass himself off as the other. On his return, the family would pay him a sum of money. A large sum, they specified. Plus, he could keep the kid's papers, his name, and his numbers. If he didn't make it back, they'd send the money to his family. And you, would they send you back? Makina asked. We didn't discuss that, he replied.” 

The Anglo family sees Makina's brother as a person who can be substituted for their son without any real sense of loss if he were to die in battle. This passage also shows the desperation Makina's brother was driven to due to his pride: he could not bear coming home empty-handed, so he took this risky job.

“He’s homegrown, he said. Joined up just like me, but still doesn’t speak the lingo. Whereas me, I learned it, so every time we see each other he wants to practice. He speaks all one day in past tense, all one day in present, all one day in future, so he can learn his verbs. Today was the future.”

Makina’s brother and his fellow soldier represent the population of non-US citizens serving in the military. There are many reasons why foreign nationals enlist, but one is the opportunity for permanent residency or naturalization through service. The soldier’s use of the future tense is in line with the theme of the uncertain future evoked throughout the novel.

“He leaned in toward her, and as he gave her a hug said Give Cora a kiss for me. He said it the same way he gave her the hug, like it wasn't his sister he was hugging, like it wasn't his mother he was sending a kiss to, but just a polite platitude. Like he was ripping out her heart, like he was cleanly extracting it and placing it in a plastic bag and storing it in the fridge to eat later.”

Makina's brother has begun to assimilate to Northern culture due to his experiences in the war. He has changed so much during the three years he has been gone that he is nearly a stranger to Makina. This scene evokes the trial in Mictlān where the soul of the deceased must sacrifice their heart to a jaguar to advance.

“You think you can just come here and put your feet up without earning it, said the cop. Well I got news for you: patriots like me are on the lookout and we’re going to teach you some manners. Lesson one: get used to falling in. You want to come here, fall in and ask permission. You want to go to the doctor, fall in and ask permission, you want to say a fucking word to me, fall in and ask permission. Fall in and ask permission. Civilized, that’s the way we do things around here! We don’t jump fences and we don’t dig tunnels.”

The police officer is an example of racial profiling used to discriminate against and detain Hispanic people in the United States. His attitude reflects xenophobia toward migrants, ignoring that immigrants perform many jobs that are seen as undesirable in the North.

“We the barbarians.”

Makina's handwritten speech that she gives to the police officer ends with this line. It evokes the status of the Southerners and Latin people as outsiders in the North. Though they may come to the North to perform jobs that Northerners disdain, and though they may learn the language and customs and even become citizens, they are treated as outsiders, “barbarians,” subject to profiling and discrimination in Anglo society.

“She turned to see who had spoken, because they'd said it in latin tongue, and saw that there, sitting on a bench and looking exactly like himself and also quite different—like varnished over, like meaner, or with a bigger nose—was Chucho, grinning at her. First, she saw the ember, then the man who made it glow. Makina felt herself smile though she didn't feel the emotion behind the smile because she'd somehow been emptied of feelings by now.”

Chucho resurfaces to guide Makina on the last stage of her journey. Herrera does not indicate what happened to him following the confrontation with the border patrol and the vigilante rancher, but he appears hardened, indicating he has gone through a difficult experience. Chucho's claim that he was watching Makina's whole journey deepens his connection to Xolotl, the Aztec god.

“Over the door was a sign that said Verse. She tried to remember how to say verse in any of her languages but couldn't. This was the only sound that came to her lips. Verse.”

For once, Makina's linguistic abilities fail her; this passage perhaps alludes to the soul in Mictlān shedding its identity as it prepares to become subsumed into the god of death. “Verse” is translator Lisa Dillman's choice for Herrera's neologism, jarchar. It is used throughout the novel as a word meaning “to leave” or “to exit.”