Vampires of El Norte

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-13

Chapters 14-20

Chapters 21-28

Chapters 29-34

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Background

Genre Context: Mixing Genres

Cañas borrows from several genres in Vampires of El Norte, including romance, horror, historical fiction, and magical realism. The story takes place in a specific moment in history, at the start of the Mexican-American War in 1846, borrowing geography, conflict, and some plot from this historical event. The setting and budding conflict are directly tied to the history of the land. Cañas’s characters at different times throughout the book are star-crossed lovers, enemies, friends, and forced companions, all tropes frequently found in romance novels. The lovers have tragic miscommunications that mirror classic romance stories like Romeo and Juliet, particularly when Néstor believes Nena to be dead when she is not.

The author borrows from magical realism by incorporating vampires into an otherwise realistic historical setting. By having the “Anglos” use mythical monsters as a weapon against the Mexicans, she emphasizes the horror that American colonization inflicted on Mexican people to expand their borders. Vampires are a source of terror only until their role is subverted and they choose not to hurt Nena as she frees them. Creating a mythical monster only to reveal that the source of their evil is the historical evil of colonization fits with the techniques and goals of magical realism, which uses fantastical elements to develop themes grounded in real-world issues. The presence of the vampires also lets the novel cross into the genre of horror. Their human-like appearance and bloodlust put the vampires into the same category as vampires in novels like Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. Scenes in which an unnatural force lurks in the darkness or a monster comes forth from a human body in excruciating detail contribute to the genre of horror, which uses grotesque imagery and situations to explore the fears and horrors underlying modern life.

Historical Context: The Mexican-American War

The majority of the novel takes place at the start of the Mexican-American War (1846-48). The conflict that started the Mexican-American War began in Texas. White Americans had moved in large numbers into the region that would become Texas and eventually declared independence from Mexico. The Americans in Texas wanted to be annexed by the United States so that they could legalize slavery in the state. The war began in earnest when the US troops entered Mexico in 1846 after Mexico turned down the US’s offer to buy the territory, but American settlers began encroaching upon Mexican land long before the beginning of the war. Cañas portrays this encroachment in the book when white men first approach Los Ojuelos to purchase land and cattle in 1837. Even before this, Americans had invaded ranchos farther north like the one Néstor’s family came from. Rumors of white Americans coming south to seize land bring fear and susto, a Latin American cultural illness associated with trauma, to Mexican citizens such as those at Los Ojuelos. Though Vampires of El Norte later reveals susto to be the result of the vampire attacks, the cultural illness is a documented response among Indigenous Mexicans to the ravages of colonization. Cañas uses tropes from magical realism and horror to make the psychological effects of susto literal to draw attention to the various levels of suffering wrought by colonialism.

During the war, the Mexican government implored communities to assemble groups of men to fight, but they were not paid, trained, or valued enough for the soldiers to be loyal. Félix expresses his discontent with these conditions after returning from Matamoros. The political and economic situation in the novel mirrors that of the time: most working men are peóns, indebted, usually forever, to a landowning man who employs them called a patrón. The patróns brought their peóns to fight to protect their land, but without freedom or motivation, the soldiers assembled by Mexican forces struggled to maintain their stand against the US Army.