42 pages • 1 hour read
Carlos Fuentes, Transl. Alfred J. MacAdamThe Death of Artemio Cruz
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1962A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “1927: November 23”
In 1927, Cruz, now a congressman, finds himself in a room with a man who invites him to play a form of Russian roulette. When Cruz positions himself to fire a potentially suicidal shot, the man moves the gun out of his way, explaining that he was only trying to test Cruz’s willingness to die for his cause. The unnamed man explains that the world is divided between winners and losers, and the important thing is to ensure one is on the winning side. Such words represent the man’s intention of coercing Cruz to switch political sides.
Cruz and a friend of his, Capitán Jimenez, go to a locally famous brothel belonging to Saturno. Here, they meet with Colonel Gavilán as well as the man with whom Cruz spoke earlier in the chapter. The men hold a discussion in which they weigh the pros and cons of switching sides politically. The unnamed man announces that the priests are going to be shot tomorrow. After this discussion, Cruz meets an unnamed woman in the brothel who leads him to find a priest hiding in the basement.
The following day, Cruz receives a phone call informing him that the priest is at the police station for the purpose of being executed. Cruz is invited to come meet the Mexican president to pay his respects. As he drives to meet the president, he reads in the local paper about the executions of men who opposed the president. When Cruz arrives at the Casa de Moneda, a police officer receives him. After paying brief and symbolic respects to the president, the man asks Cruz if he would like anything in return for his support—which is understood to mean the surrender of the priest—to which Cruz responds that he could be repaid with land.
Back in the present (and in the first person), Cruz smells the potent odors from the various medical ointments he is given. Teresa and Catalina persist in asking Cruz about the location of his will, which he refuses to disclose in mockery of them. A man named Mena is in the room, and he and Cruz discuss how they cannot continue to support Batista, who is no longer in power. They must support Trujillo, though it won’t be easy. Cruz gives another man named Díaz some notes to print in his paper with a phony signature. Cruz has another fleeting memory about crossing a river on horseback.
In the second person, Cruz muses on the word “fuck” (in Spanish, chingar), whose plethora of meanings and connotations he lists in a particularly vulgar stream of thoughts. Cruz remembers the first day when he realized he lost his youth.
Chapter 6 Summary: “1947: September 11”
In 1947, the 58-year-old Cruz is in Acapulco in a hotel room with a sex worker named Lilia. She is much younger than him, and Cruz notices the signs of aging on his face while shaving early in the morning. Observing himself in the mirror, he notices the voids where his teeth used to be. After shaving and inserting his dentures, Cruz emerges from the bathroom to observe a youthful Lilia still sleeping. He eats breakfast alone.
Later, the two go out on a yacht, where, because of a mistaken schedule, they must share the yacht with a rich young man named Xavier. Xavier offers to take Lilia waterskiing, something she has not tried before. Cruz observes obvious flirtation between Lilia and Xavier and suspects that the two will have an affair. His suspicions are confirmed when Lilia claims to be too tired to join Cruz for an evening walk. Walking alone, Cruz observes couples lying on the beach and making love in the water. When Cruz returns from his walk, he finds her absent from their hotel bedroom.
In the first-person present tense, a priest in the hospital room says a prayer for Cruz. Cruz meanwhile contemplates the various luxuries that he has enjoyed during his life.
In the second-person future tense, Cruz reveals that he had a son named Lorenzo who looked like him. It is this young man with whom Cruz has memories of crossing a river. The setting is Cruz’s hacienda in the town of Cocuya. This memory of riding on horseback gives way to another memory, this time with an Indigenous Mexican in the province of Sonora.
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
These chapters present the sharps contrasts and unexpected changes that characterize Cruz’s life. First, Cruz switches his allegiances from one revolutionary faction to the other. Then, he changes his class status by marrying Catalina Bernal and becoming a wealthy landowner. The man with whom Cruz plays Russian roulette in Chapter 5 is not identified, but his anonymity is meaningful, as he stands for any corrupt, self-serving political official that Cruz manipulates for his own gain. The man lives in a well-appointed home that features “chandeliers, marble statuary, velvet curtains, high-backed, brocaded armchairs, display cabinets, and gold fillets on the loveseats” (120). He convinces Cruz that they are not so different, as they are both “a pair of real motherfuckers” (121). He encourages Cruz to “always choose the biggest motherfuckers for your friends” because if you’re on their side, no one will mess with you (121). With these words, the unnamed man convinces Cruz to change his political allegiances.
The same men whom Cruz encounters in Saturno’s brothel are those whom he sees the next day at the state building. The men of course don’t discuss their experience at the brothel, but the contrast in setting shows their duplicitous nature.
Another contrast is represented in the character of the priest, whom Cruz finds in the brothel. On the one hand, Cruz has been portrayed as an unsavory character who is willing to enrich himself for personal gain; however, the novel presents mid-century Mexico as a place where even a priest is not above corruption.
A final contrast is between youth and old age. For the first time in the novel (aside from the present-day sections), Cruz feels himself aging. He notes that his “muscles […] still managed to conserve a certain nervous tautness, but tended to sag in a way he thought grotesque” (142). Lilia’s youth heightens Cruz’s awareness of his aging and presages his death in the present day.
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