mexican gothic by silvan moreno garcia is an excellent book to illustrate why an anti-colonial approach must necessarily mean an anti-capitalist one. [spoilers ahead]
the doyles build high place and their immortality the backs of women made to squeeze out babies and miners left out to die. this entire system sustains itself because of their endless pursuit of want, above all else. even their family dynamics – especially the francis/florence dynamic – are extractive.
a portion of the discourse I've seen about this book has spoken about howard doyle as a racist villain at the risk of underemphasising how much racism, colonialism and capitalism are intertwined. ofc, racism dictates the logic of who becomes the victim of the doyles' insatiable want. but it's important to understand that the method of ultimately extracting what one wants from others (local workers, women), of mining someone for resources, was economically exploitative. making the doyles mine owners was very on-the-nose in that sense.
i understood noemí's attraction to virgil in this light. yes, it's the enchantments of the house, but the reason he exercises a hold on her is not some freudian death drive. I think garcia is trying to say that the allure of capitalism – the selfish, atomistic pursuit of one's own wants – is a death drive, something which takes root inside of all of us. if the gloom represents mental colonialism, then virgil represents the most seductive part of it. not the transparent evil of howard doyle and his superior and inferior races, but the quiet evil of virgil's amoral pursuit of what he desires. garcia could've portrayed noemí as internally not consenting, but the choice to portray her sexual attraction to virgil is important for this reason.