The Tortilla Curtain

“There wasn’t a trail in the Santa Monica Mountains that didn’t have its crushed beer cans, its carpet of glass, its candy wrappers and cigarette butts, and it was people like this Mexican or whatever he was who were responsible, thoughtless people, stupid people, people who wanted to turn the whole world into a garbage dump, a little Tijuana.”

Right after hitting Cándido with his car, Delaney concludes that he is a criminal, based on nothing other than his race and ethnicity. This indicates that Delaney possesses significant inherent biases and racist ideas that predispose him to see Cándido negatively. He does not differentiate between people from different Latin American countries and has a negative impression of Mexico as a dirty place filled with careless people.

“He’d held up the lure of all those things, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, the glitter of the North like a second Eden; sure, a young girl like her and an old man like himself with gray in his mustache—what else was he going to tell her?”

Cándido had spent a decade working seasonally in the United States and understands that the picture he paints for América is romanticized. However, despite his experience and the many struggles he has faced in the United States, he still decides to return and make a home there. His faith in the American Dream had not been tarnished by the discrimination and inequality he knows exists.

“They were both perfectionists, for one thing. They abhorred clutter. They were joggers, nonsmokers, social drinkers, and if not full-blown vegetarians, people who were conscious of their intake of animal fats. Their memberships included the Sierra Club, Save the Children, the National Wildlife Federation and the Democratic Party. They preferred the contemporary look to Early American or kitsch. In religious matters, they were agnostic.”

This passage describes Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher and is heavy with the irony laced throughout The Tortilla Curtain. The Mossbachers are stereotypical upper-middle-class liberal Americans. They have time for leisure activities and like to show off their values, as well as their ability to give, with memberships to organizations that support their various causes. Their actions, however, contradict the values they signal through their memberships.