Antonio Cuitla has a date with destiny. But it's not the showdown he expects. The once fierce revolutionary now must find his way in the modern world – a world he helped to create by overthrowing the old social order. The subtleties of class warfare, of honor and betrayal, all seem beyond the reach of this tragic hero's understanding.
Is Antonio's showdown with a would-be assassin, the cunning aristocrat Don José, or with Death itself? In this novel of taut suspense and psychological conflict, Américo Paredes presents a poetic and engrossing paradox of Latin American life: The caudillo was defined by revolutionary struggle; how does he make the transition to civic life and society-building after the revolution is over?
In Antonio Cuitla and the hacendado Don José María, Paredes has summarized the clashing forces that have characterized Mexican culture since the Spanish Conquest: the native versus European worldview; superstition versus rationalism; the hungry masses versus the privileged few. This confrontation is the stuff of which folk legend and song are made. Antonio Cuitla is the heroic warrior of times past. But can he survive in the modem world?