21
The word males creates an intertextual link with the phrase «las EMES de México» (Cristóbal 183), in which the plural letter M stands for «los males de México», of which el machismo is posited as the worst. (N. del A.)
22
Since birth hasn't yet cut his umbilical link to the World Collective Soul, he says, «ocurre que yo Cristóbal soy capaz de encontrar relaciones y analogías (no adivino: relaciono, asemejo!) que los demás no ven porque las han olvidado» (505). He gives as a metaexegetic example of the way his discourse has symbolically identified his parents' conception of him and the (unrelated) conception of an Indian child by a couple who enter the United States illegally. (N. del A.)
23
Until now, Cristóbal has addressed his reader as Elector (elector/chooser, and el lector/reader). Now he calls us Electra because of his and the novel's acquisition of a feminine half. Fuentes also intertextually links the belatedly revealed brother-sister relationship of Cristóbal and Niña Ba with the classical brother-sister recognition story in Euripides's 413 B. C. drama, Electra, the eponymous sister of Orestes (let us hope Cristóbal avoids his fate). (N. del A.)