"Mexico is a nineteenth-century country arranged for gaslight. Once brought into the harsh light of the twentieth-century media, Mexico can only seem false. In its male, in its public, its city aspect, Mexico is an arch-tranvestite, a tragic buffoon. Dogs bark and babies cry when Mother Mexico walks abroad in the light of day. The policeman, the Marxist mayor — Mother Mexico doesn't even bother to shave her mustachios. Swords and rifles and spurs and bags of money chink and clatter beneath her skirts. A chain of martyred priests dangles from her waist, for she is an austere, pious lady. Ay, how much — clutching her jangling bosoms; spilling cigars — how much she has suffered."
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Academics from the United StatesJournalists from the United StatesMemoirists from the United StatesPeople from San FranciscoHispanic Americans
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
"Night and Day" in Frontiers (1990)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Rodriguez
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Richard Rodriguez
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