Where It All Goes Down
Comala, Mexico, Early 20th Century
Where?
If you thought your town was boring in the summertime, you should be glad you never got sent to Comala for summer vacation. The town where all the action of Pedro Páramo takes place is a ghost town, literally: All the inhabitants are dead. It's also freaking hot: Its name comes from the word comal, which is a flat pan used to heat tortillas.
Even though most of the scenes seem abstract and ghostly, they definitely take place in Mexico—Comala is a real place. The novel contains a bunch of references to foods and plants that are particular to the region.
When?
Everything takes place in the first part of the 20th century, since there are reference to the Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910 and lasted for about ten years afterward and the Cristeros war, which was fought between 1926 and 1929.
Weather?
Most of the action takes place either in the town—which is dominated by the Catholic church and filled with ghosts and their booring voices (sorry, we couldn't help ourselves)—or up at Pedro Páramo's Media Luna ranch. The place is extremely hot, but every now and then the rains come to relieve the inhabitants.
This weather makes it easy to remember that most of the characters in the novel are ghosts, wandering souls who can't make it into heaven. The hot, dry setting is perfect: It suggests the fires of hell.