A Place to Belong to

of Tepito. He writes about the people of Tepito and portrays Mexican reality as they see it. Between 1972 and 1983, he has published four novels and an extensive profile of the barrio to which he belongs.' Tepito is an area to the east of Reforma Norte that has managed to maintain its particular identity even though it is not a political entity. The barrio is partly in Colonia Morelos; it is known as the cradle of prize fighters and as the location of several famous markets, one of which is as familiar to tourists as it is to Mexicans-La Lagunilla. Tepito is not simply a proletarian neighborhood; it is a tough area. Few nonresidents aspire to live there; on the hand, many who do live there are comfortable with their identity. The cityMexico City as a whole, in some cases, and particular areas, in caseshas become a dominant locale in contemporary Mexican fiction. This circumstance is hardly surprising in view of the capital's important role in the life of the country. More surprising is a way of portraying the city that differs greatly from what we have come to expect in narratives called novelas de la ciudad. In the earlier novels, the metropolis is for the most part an opposing force, something to be conquereda phenomenon at once attractive and forbidding. In recent Mexican fiction, the city-or part of it-becomes home, a place to belong to, one's native soil, so to speak. Gustavo Sainz has made this point with reference to himself, specifically, and to his generation, in a larger sense, by referring to Mexico City as his world that would have to be the locale of his novels.2 In addition to this new appreciation of the city, we now findin the most recent fictionsome recognition of the proletarianization of the capital. To a considerable extent, this phenomenon is an expression of Octavio Paz's other Mexico.3 Sainz also refers to it in his introduction to Ojald te m eras, by Arl6s (Rafael Ramirez), a novel f rst published in 1947 which Sainz considers a forerunner of works by Armando Ramirez and several writers.' The effect of Armando Ramirez's fiction is

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