Death in the Afternoon by Juan Paolo Villalobos

In the essay, "Death in the Afternoon", by Juan Paolo Villalobos he demonstrates an interesting way on how his family, his culture, kill a calf in order to celebrate something special. The way that Villalobos demonstrated this is by using a reminiscent voice. Villalobos' voice in this essay is reminiscent because he likes to remember the good times. He keeps going back to the past and telling us how things were, and to compare how things are now as well as how things will be in the future. By Villalobos reminiscing, he talks about his childhood and how they would kill a calf when it was born for a family celebration. If the calf was born a male it would most likely have to be sacrificed for the kill in order for the family to celebrate. Even Villalobos had once witnessed a sacrifice and it left him with a memory that was made of dust. "Only once did I witness the sacrifice, and what I remember, more than the blood or the brutal indifference of the act... This memory is made of dust..." He also reminisced on how his aunt would make her famous sauce for the birria which was like a beef stew. By the end of the essay, Villalobos started to talk about how he used to think his father and uncles were crazy for the calf's head. "I still remember my childhood's disgust when I saw my father and my uncles ingesting those parts." Once he experienced it himself, he finally realized it wasn't that bad after all. "And to think that today I wouldn't mind forever falling out with a relative over them."