Macho critical essays

Through these prefaces, Villaseñor suggests that the natural threat of Paricutin, a blessing in disguise for Roberto’s community, has been replaced by the less visible, more insidious threat of airborne industrial pollution. The threat of pollution lingers before being dismissed summarily, like dirt in the wind, at the story’s end.

Books 1 and 3 are short, with the action set in the rural Mexican village of the principal characters; book 2 chronicles the odyssey of the protagonist, Roberto Garcia, into the violent underworld of the illegal migrant farmworker.

Word Count: 728 This fictional account of approximately a year in the life of a young man dramatizes the real plight of the migrant Mexican farmworker attempting to enter and work in the United States. Macho! is divided into three major parts, each labeled as a book and further subdivided into chapters.

The novel itself begins well into Roberto’s seventeenth year, during the planting season of his native Mexican village. Roberto’s father has over the past year begun drinking heavily, leaving Roberto, as the eldest child, to support his mother and seven younger siblings.