Tropic of Orange

Magical realism is a genre of literature, the origins of which are generally traced back to South America. It was popularized by authors such as Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez. Magical realism overlays a realistic setting with fantastic elements and is often used for political critique. Tropic of Orange is set in a mostly realistic version of Los Angeles and Mexico that becomes increasingly stranger as the orange that represents the Tropic of Cancer moves north. The narrative is conscious of the magical events taking place: When Arcangel tows the bus to the border, the event is televised but not actually shown because “[t]he virtually real could not accommodate the magical. Digital memory failed to translate imaginary memory” (169). The elements of magical realism in the novel include the moving line of the Tropic of Cancer, the collapse of realistic geography, the mythic battle between Rafaela and her pursuer, and the wrestling match between SUPERNAFTA and El Gran Mojado.

As the orange from Gabriel’s tree on the Tropic of Cancer moves north with Arcangel, any vestige of realistic geography begins to fall apart. On the bus moving North, Rafaela notices that they seem to not be moving. By the time the bus arrives in Los Angeles, geography is so distorted that it takes hours to get across town, and travel by car is rendered useless. This represents the collapse of standard political geography caused by NAFTA. The Southern Hemisphere’s sudden incursion into the North is a fantastic approximation of the European invasion of South America and the incursions into Mexico made by trade agreements that exploit the labor of the Mexican people, while, at the same time, criminalizing their existence in America.

The two battles in the novel, between Rafaela and her captor and between SUPERNAFTA and El Gran Mojado, are fantastic depictions of an ancient struggle and a modern struggle. While the latter represents the border struggles exacerbated by NAFTA, Rafaela’s fight takes on mythic proportions that represent the violent colonization of Mexico by the Spaniards. The chapter takes place in Aztlán, the place of origin of the Aztecs, appropriated by the Chicano movement as a symbol of the lands that are the birthright of the Mestizo and indigenous people of the United States and Mexico. The fight is a montage of battles in the past, in which Rafaela becomes a serpent, symbolic of the mythical founding of Mexico City on the site where a hawk clutched a serpent on a cactus, and her attacker becomes a wild cat, emblematic of the Jaguar he drove, and the wealth of the North. Their fight is depicted as a “horrific dance with death […] copulating in rage, destroying, and creating at once—the apocalyptic fulfillment of a prophesy—blood and semen commingling among shredded serpent and feline remains” (189). The result is that Rafaela, as the serpent, consumes her attacker. This represents the trauma, violence, and commingling of blood that led to the foundation of modern Mexico.