In this highly thematic chapter, the narrative cuts away to show Don Pepe and Father Roman at the San Tomé mine, having a conversation that leads to the decision for the miners to march on Sulaco. We later learn that this march takes place and is instrumental in the victory that inaugurates the Occidental Republic.

The chapter is thematic in that it illustrates the rebirth of Unionism: the process by which States form as crusading moral entities. From a triumphalist look at Unionism in Part One (complete with paeans to the railroad in Chapter 1-5 and industrial progress in Chapter 1-6), we have passed through the illustration of Separatism in Part Two, followed by the anarchy of every-man-for-himself combat at the beginning of Part Three, and we now complete the political cycle by returning to Unionism. As in Part One, the mine is deliberately cast as a nascent State, with military and religious leaders (Don Pepe and Father Roman), and a dream-ideal of its own, illustrated by the "fetish" of the native alcalde. However, in the new context of recovery from the nihilistic abyss of total social dissolution, Unionism is given a more cynical look. The dream-ideal of the State is seen to be at first purely defensive, providing protection and security from the anarchy without. But as the chapter progresses, we watch State power turn into a moral sentiment that justifies exterior aggression in the name of "what ought to be done."

The political cycle of Nostromo -- an endless repetition of Unionist and Separatist movements -- reflects the poles of idealism and skepticism. Unions are formed on the basis of illusory dream-ideals, which create a superficial cooperation suppressing the underlying fractures of individual desires. Eventually the fractures tear the union apart, the ideal collapses, and mankind faces the skeptical, primeval anarchy of naked power in the service of naked greed. Unions then arise again as protection, but with them are born the same resurrected dream-ideals of higher morality, that must finally express themselves in crusades of moral conquest.