Pedro Páramo dies thus in the final pages of Rulfo's novel: ‘Dio un golpe seco contra la tierra y se fue desmoronando como si fuera un montón de piedras’ (195). The physical death of a cacique, I contend here, is an illusion, both of the death of this cacique and of the death of caciquismo, a colonial discourse. In the major irony of the novel, we find that the protagonist's ‘desmoronamiento’ does not categorically signify his death, either on a centripetal level (as the character of a novel) or on a centrifugal level (as a representative of caciquismo). In the novel, caciquismo persists in spite of the death of the cacique because the attachment between the protagonist and the inhabitants of his community is so strong that they – and he – are forever trapped by the destiny he commands for them, both before and after they die. On a centrifugal level, caciquismo itself survives beyond the death of individual caciques because it is an institution so firmly entrenched in the Mexican psyche that, rather than die, it merely transforms and renews itself, be it through neo-, urban or national forms of the same system. The end of Pedro Páramo can thus be considered an ironic commentary on the post-Revolutionary rhetoric which boasts of the termination of the ancient, unofficial system of rural relations that is caciquismo.