In Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo, Juan Preciado travels to Comala to find his father, Pedro Páramo. Before her death, Juan’s mother, Dolores Preciado, makes him promise to go to Comala and demand what Pedro Páramo owes them. Juan initially has little desire to fulfill the promise, but eventually sets out and enters the mysterious town.
Comala is not an ordinary village. As Juan encounters its inhabitants, the boundary between the living and the dead collapses. Voices, memories, and fragmented stories gradually reveal that many of the people he meets have already died. The novel’s nonlinear structure moves between Juan’s journey and the history of Pedro Páramo, a powerful and abusive landowner whose actions shape the fate of the entire community.
Pedro Páramo was published in 1955 and became one of the major precursors to the Latin American literary boom. Readers sometimes confuse Juan Preciado with Pedro Páramo because the title character dominates the novel’s historical narrative, but Juan is the traveler and viewpoint character who arrives in Comala. Dolores is his mother, while Abundio is one of Pedro’s other sons.