In two of his best-known essays, The Labyrinth of Solitude, and Postscript, Octavio Paz exposed a set of ideas and reflections to express his view on history, a dimension of his thought and his prose work, to date, little explored. Although there is an interpretation of the Mexican past, notable for its critically, and self-critical sense, on a deeper level that can be found in these two books, the presence of theory of history's own reflections are discovered. In both cases the resource of analogy and the building of metaphors are emphasized to create intelligible images of the past. From a historiographical perspective, The Labyrinth of Solitude and Postscript show the closeness of literature to history, but above all, the poetic dimension that underlies the interpretation of the past.