Little Town Makina Analysis

Makina is literally dead. “Makina was saved,” (11) but her life was not. The first page of Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World describes a sinkhole that settles into a perfect circle as Makina “flailed her feet frantically backward” (11) away from it, saving her. However, Herrera notably never mentions that the sinkhole stopped expanding before reaching her. Makina hated her “slippery bitch of a city” and death was her savior from it. (11) The Cambridge English Dictionary defines “to save” as “to make or keep someone or something safe from danger or harm, or to bring something back to a satisfactory condition.” In her “Little Town [that] was riddled by bullet holes and tunnels bored by five centuries of voracious silver lust,” (11) Makina was evidently not kept from danger, so it is likely that death was a “more satisfactory condition” for her. …show more content…
According to the United States Border Patrol, in 2013, 168 bodies were recovered at the border and many more were never recovered or died before ever reaching it. It is likely that Herrera was trying to convey this through describing the death of an illegal immigrant who had not reached the border yet.
The death of Makina “was the first time the Earth’s insanity had affected her.” (11) Makina most likely never experienced life outside her town and therefore had no reason to think of impoverishment and daily hardship as anything abnormal. Since she experienced suffering on a daily basis, she likely viewed many human behaviors we would call “insane” as natural. Consequently, she describes the insanity of “the Earth” and importantly not the insanity of