Latin American literature, with the radiant glow of magical realism, has adorned our continent with an almost mythical splendor. It’s perhaps in its pages where greens radiate exuberance, reds become seductive, and whites are capable of forgiving any sin. I like to think of magical realism as a dragon fruit in our literary fruit basket.
However, Mexico, with its vastness and contradictions, also harbors more arid landscapes where stillness is a curse and gunpowder disturbs the rarefied air. It’s within this latter setting that Juan Rulfo offers us The Burning Plain (El Llano en Llamas), a work that confronts us with a raw reality stripped of illusions.
Revisited in 2025, The Burning Plain remains a book that lays bare the unhealed wounds of our country. First published in 1953, it emerged from a Mexico disillusioned by the revolution and fractured by the Cristero War.
While the world was still clearing the rubble and licking the wounds of World War II, the Mexico of The Burning Plain remained blanketed in the dust of an immeasurable desert, hopelessly waiting for rain.
In The Burning Plain, Juan Rulfo compiled 17 short stories that will pierce the soul of any reader, leaving deep fragments in those of us who share Mexican roots.
From my perspective, the central theme falls under the weight of resignation. Things are as they are because they’ve always been this way, and they will remain so tomorrow.
Throughout its chapters, resignation takes many forms: a future cut short by the allocation of barren lands, the pompous yet hollow speeches of drunken governors, the mundane tasks of mentally impaired children, or death silencing the barking of dogs.
It doesn’t matter if the narrators harbor a flicker of hope in their hearts. The lands of The Burning Plain are uniformly ruthless to all their inhabitants.
In a place like this, moral convictions beyond religiosity become an irresponsible luxury. Anyone can be either victim or perpetrator. One day, you might find yourself orphaned, only to later pass judgment on your father’s murderer.
This book maps out a part of the Mexican genetic code that is hard to accept but impossible to ignore. The mastery of Rulfo’s prose simultaneously softens and enrages, revering death without the need for altars.
For all who love this country, read The Burning Plain. There is no better way to empathize with a Mexican than through the pain woven into its stories, dissolved in a jar of pulque.
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