Pedro Páramo tells the story of Comala, a small town in rural Mexico, through 68 short fragments that frequently jump between different plots, moments, and narrators. At least initially, the novel can be divided into two main stories. In the first, Juan Preciado narrates his journey to Comala after his beloved mother’s death in an attempt to find his long-lost father, Pedro Páramo. But instead of the lush, fertile town of his mother Dolores’s memories, he finds Comala abandoned, dried up, and full of ghosts. In the second story, set in the distant past and narrated mostly in the third person, the destitute farmer Pedro Páramo manipulates and terrorizes the people of Comala until he seizes nearly absolute power over the town.
At the beginning of the novel, Dolores Preciado tells her son to visit Comala, find his father Pedro Páramo, and “make him pay […] for all those years he put us out of his mind.” Juan meets the burro driver Abundio Martínez on the scorching desert road to Comala, which is practically abandoned and lies “at the very mouth of hell.” Abundio reports that Pedro Páramo is his father, too, and has been dead for years. When Juan arrives in Comala, the town seems empty, but there are voices and strange beings everywhere. A ghostly woman sends him to Doña Eduviges Dyada, an old friend of his mother’s, who offers him a room in the back of her empty, half-destroyed house.
In fragments six through eight, the novel switches to the unrecognizable, lush Comala of the distant past. After a heavy rainstorm, young Pedro Páramo fantasizes about Susana, the girl he loves, and runs errands for his family. Back in the abandoned Comala of the present, Eduviges tells Juan Preciado about his mother’s unhappy marriage to Pedro, which barely lasted a year. Later, they hear the ghost of Miguel Páramo’s horse running around Comala eternally, consumed with guilt over Miguel’s death. Back in the past, young Pedro’s family worries that he won’t work hard enough to pay off their debts, and then he learns that his father, don Lucas Páramo, has died.
Sections 13-16 recount the funeral of Miguel Páramo, Pedro’s malicious son, from the perspective of local priest Father Rentería. Father Rentería refuses to bless Miguel, who killed his brother and raped his niece Ana, until Pedro Páramo brings him a fistful of gold coins. Father Rentería needs the money to survive and keep running the church, so he performs the blessings but is tormented with guilt. He regrets refusing to bless Eduviges Dyada after her suicide; she was generous and pure, but penniless.
The novel briefly returns to the present, where Juan Preciado cannot sleep because the ghost of Toribio Aldrete keeps shrieking in his room. A woman named Damiana Cisneros explains what’s happening and invites Juan to stay with her. The novel then flashes back to Pedro Páramo, still a young man, plotting to wipe out his debts. First, he sends his henchman Fulgor Sedano to arrange his marriage with Dolores Preciado, who owns most of the debts he owes. When she accepts, these debts disappear, and he gets all her land. Then, Pedro sends Fulgor to falsely accuse his neighbor Toribio Aldrete of falsifying land claims. They kill him a few days later, and Pedro takes his land.
Fragments 24-36 return to Juan Preciado, who hears a number of disconcerting voices and echoes during his first night in Comala. He follows Damiana Cisneros until she mysteriously disappears, and he then hears a farmer and young woman recount the Páramos victimizing them. An unnamed woman takes Juan to a dilapidated house, where he sleeps fitfully, unable to tell his dreams from reality. A moody man named Donis and Donis’s sister, who is also his wife, speculate about what he’s doing in Comala.
The next day, Donis’s sister tells Juan that she has locked herself inside for years because she is terrified of the town’s ghosts. Juan rests all day, but the voices—including his mother’s—return at nightfall. Soon, Donis’s sister appears to melt into mud, and Juan starts to suffocate from fear and the stifling August heat. He loses consciousness, then finds himself dead and buried in a grave alongside a poor beggar woman named Dorotea. She explains that he died of fright, and he blames “the murmuring” for killing him. He tells Dorotea that he came to Comala in hopes of finding Pedro Páramo, and she tells him that hope is deadly—she, too, spent her whole life blinded by hope, looking for a son who never existed.
Fragments 37-42 intertwine various moments of death and mourning. Before his death, Miguel Páramo hires Dorotea to bring him women, and Dorotea explains that she gave up on life when Father Rentería told her that God would never forgive her. When Miguel dies, Pedro remembers his father’s death but does not mourn. Meanwhile, Father Rentería is consumed with guilt. He remembers convincing Pedro to care for Miguel after his mother died in childbirth. (Pedro fathered countless children in town but refused to recognize the others.) Father Rentería visits the neighboring town of Contla to make a confession, but Contla’s priest says his sins are unforgiveable. He later tells Dorotea the same thing.
The novel reintroduces Susana San Juan, Pedro’s childhood love, whom Juan and Dorotea overhear murmuring in a nearby grave, reminiscing about her mother’s death. Dorotea tells Juan that Susana was Pedro’s last wife, and Pedro was so devastated by her death that he shut down all of Comala, eventually leading to its ruin. (The last third of the book retells this story in depth.)
In fragments 43-46, Susana and her father, Bartolomé, return to Comala from the remote mountains where they lived for many years. Pedro reveals that he never stopped loving her and wanted to own all of Comala so that he could give her anything she ever wanted. When the Mexican Revolution made it too dangerous to keep mining in the mountains, he persuaded her and Bartolomé to move to Comala, knowing that Susana would stay but Bartolomé would inevitably return to his mine. When he does, Pedro has him killed.
Some time later, Susana is married to Pedro, and her caregiver, Justina Díaz, finds her stuck in bed, as usual, haunted by dreams and hallucinations. When Justina reports that Bartolomé has died, Susana is actually relieved. She remembers once finding a skeleton in his mine. In another scene, Father Rentería (or his ghost) visits Susana to console her after the death of her first husband, Florencio.
Meanwhile, the Mexican Revolution is starting, and rebels kill Fulgor Sedano near Comala. Pedro doesn’t care. He’s mostly worried about Susana, who is always stuck in bed with her seemingly traumatic visions. Actually, she’s reliving memories of freedom: she reminisces about swimming in the ocean and being with Florencio, the only man she’s truly loved. Pedro bribes the rebels with money and reinforcements, even getting his own henchman, El Tilcuate, put in charge. (He eventually gets killed, but not until many years later, when Comala is already on the verge of ruin.)
On the eve of Susana’s death, everyone seems to know what’s coming. Even two old ladies named Angeles and Fausta, who have never met her, figure it out when they see the light out in her window. Father Rentería visits Susana with the communion, but she kicks him out. She wants to die alone, in peace. When she does, the church bells ring for days to commemorate her. But the townspeople throw a wild party because they think the bells are announcing some good news. Pedro Páramo is furious—so furious that he decides to shut Comala down and let everyone die. He sits down in his chair and bitterly resolves never to get up. He spends the rest of his life remembering Susana’s death and murmuring to himself as Comala slowly falls into ruin.
In fragment 67, the narrative suddenly returns to the burro driver Abundio Martínez, whose wife has just died after a lengthy illness. He sold everything to try and help her, so now he can’t even afford to give her a funeral. Worst of all, Father Rentería ran away to fight in the Cristero Wars, so Abundio’s wife didn’t get her last rights and won’t get into heaven. Devastated, Abundio buys liquor and starts wandering around Comala.
On the outskirts of town, Abundio runs into Damiana Cisneros and Pedro Páramo—the father who abandoned him. He’s convinced the Devil sent them (although Damiana says the same thing about him). Drunk and delirious, Abundio attacks them with a knife, killing Damiana and leaving Pedro barely alive. The novel’s last fragment, though, tells a different story. Damiana’s still alive, and Pedro gets up from his chair, thinks of Susana, and realizes he’s dying before “collaps[ing] like a pile of rocks.”
