Colonialism Theme Analysis

The Doyles are a European family who moved to Mexico for the twin purposes of mining silver and harvesting mushrooms that grow in the cave under High Place. In each case, they’re reaping natural resources from the land for their own wealth and power, and they do this at the expense of the local population. Howard Doyle, the family patriarch, refers to the miners who worked for him as mulch—just as mulch is used to improve the soil so that plants may grow, Howard mercilessly abuses the locals who work in his mine so that he can grow rich from the silver that’s extracted. To him the miners are an expendable resource—like mulch. No one knows how many have died under his rule, for no one has ever cared to count. Howard, with his beliefs about superior and inferior races, is a stand-in for old imperial colonizers who thrived from the theft of indigenous resources. His immortality creates a cycle of violence and bigotry that keeps old, racist ideologies alive. Though he claims that High Place has provided wealth and jobs to the people of El Triunfo, his cruel mining operation left the town dependent on the Doyle family’s money. Once the mining ends, everything falls into a state of disrepair. Finally, the person who puts an end to Howard’s long reign is an urban, multiracial woman with liberal and progressive ideas. Noemí’s triumph at the end of the novel represents a long-awaited justice—the colonized have finally overthrown the colonizer, though the fact that at the end of the novel Noemí and Francis still fear the lingering threat of Howard Doyle underlines just how difficult it is to completely move on from the exploitative terrors of colonialism.