There is a double meaning to "Custom House," referring to societal "customs" or norms of behavior, the formalities of organized society. These, like the silver, have gone missing in the current breakdown of society and government, and the chapters that follow (around the shell of the Custom House) show human interaction reduced to the essentials of brute power and universal combat. In a sense, each revolutionary party seeks to fill the empty Custom House anew with the "customs" of their way of life.

"The four winds of heaven" might possibly stand for the four power-holding bodies in this section of the novel, whose struggle ends with the birth of the Occidental Republic: (1) the material interests, combining the armies of the mine, the railroad and Barrios, (2) Sotillo, (3) Pedro Montero, allied to Fuentes and Gamacho, (4) Hernandez' bandit army.