The Tequila Worm

The story ends when Sofia returns to her old neighborhood and builds a plaza for her much-changed community on the land that once held her old clapboard home. Moved to do so by the sadness of her old barrio and her mother’s feelings of distance from the old neighbors and a lost way of life, Sofia recognizes the importance of the plaza for her people.

Sofia learns about the plaza’s significance early on. Her mama tells her how important La Placita was to her when she was growing up: It’s the place where she met Sofia’s papa, but it’s also a place where the community gathers in times of celebration and in times of grief. The Plaza is where the heart of their community beats. It is where love begins and endings are honored. Sofia’s papa also tells Sofia about the first meeting of her mama in the plaza: “She was wearing a bright red dress and had the brightest smile, the sweetest eyes. She looked so beautiful” (87).

When the plaza is destroyed to make way for a swimming pool for the hotel, something changes in the neighborhood. Sofia’s mother and father mourn the loss of the plaza. But in the end, Sofia brings back the symbol of her community’s social life by resurrecting the plaza in her old barrio. The symbolic power of the new placita comes to fruition when the community opens its doors to the new people who have moved into the barrio. For Sophia, the plaza is a symbol of her entire existence: “I prayed that the rituals I experienced as a child—the very ones that Mama, Papa and the comadres had worked so hard to instill in me—would be nourished and shared and spread from the heart of that little plaza” (197). Her own words capture what the plaza symbolizes: the heart of her culture, her identity, and her community.