In The Old Gringo, Mexican author, Carlos Fuentes, sets his story during the violence and war period of the Mexican Revolution. Peculiarly, instead of focusing on a Mexican protagonist, Fuentes instead chooses to focus the plot of his novel on a North American character named Ambrose Pierce, who was a real historical figure. In his portrayal of Ambrose Pierce, Fuentes depicts him as an adventurer who finds his comfortable life in the United States as a short story fiction writer to be tiring and wishes to return to a romanticized past, both personal and historical. Pierce’s motivation for going to Mexico to fight in the revolution, in Pancho Villa’s guerrilla army, is to return to his past as a young soldier in the Union army during the 1860s North American civil war, for Pierce war and the comradeship that he associates with it, is his ideal past. Indeed, when we look at the way Pierce interacts with the Villista soldiers, we can see how he appears somewhat relaxed despite being an outsider, Pierce sees himself as more of an outsider to the upper middle-class society of the United States than he does in the rural battle hardened Villistas.

Ambrose Pierce’s other passion in the novel, besides his desire to fight for liberty in the Mexican Revolution, is his love for Harriet Winslow, or rather, his reaction to Winslow’s affection towards him. At first, Winslow seems to dislike Pierce for his adventurism and assumes that he is just another gun-ho North American, who is fighting in the Mexican Revolution out of pure opportunism. However, her opinion of Pierce quickly changes when she realizes that they share the same common fondness for education and arts. As Pierce is more than twice Winslow’s age, he is somewhat unsure in how to react to Winslow’s advances towards him, especially when Winslow sometimes reacts to outside external attention with repulsion due to the misogyny of the time. Pierce’s relations with Tomas Arroyo is also interesting, as Arroyo directly competes with Pierce for the affection of Winslow and Arroyo has a mixed admiration and hatred towards Pierce for this. Arroyo needs to put up the persona of a macho leader who takes charge of his men, because that is what his society requires of him, however this persona also makes it difficult for him to meaningly connect with Winslow, but overtime Arroyo learns to become a more open and empathic person because of Winslow. My question is: Would Winslow have fallen for Arroyo if Pierce was not involved?