it is possible to see how the different groupings of letters might produce different effects especially since, when read straight through, the novel presents a constantly shifting picture of the relationship between the two women. Points of difference that are only hinted at in some places are opened out for full discussion in other contexts. Overall, however, the novel is thematically bound very firmly by the contents of letter 3 in which Teresa recounts the events that give the novel its title. Mixquiahuala was a "Pre-Conquest village of obscurity, neglectful of progress" to which the two women escaped from their summer school shortly after their initial meeting (25). There they experienced peace and pleasure as they explored the little town and began their friendship. In subsequent years, as Torres notes, the two women "measured their lack of peace relative to moments like those [in Mixquiahuala], aware that this existential commodity was always too fleeting and never enough" (137).
Thus the name Mixquiahuala came to stand for everything that was good in their friendship. But it also contained the seeds of their eventual inability to fully connect or to remain connected. In Mixquiahuala the differences between them were erased. Both women had first viewed each other through screens of preconceptions and ideas about themselves and the other from which they were able to escape in the little town. Alicia's whiteness and Teresa's brownness were invisible to many of the Mexicans they met in the course of the book. To people living in a town without streetlights, the two were simply gringas and the difference in their appearance was a minor matter. This difference was, to the perception of Mexicans, drowned in the flood of their
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