Announcement

We deeply mourn the passing, on May 15, 2012, of Carlos Fuentes, a member of the Transition Editorial Board. Fuentes was a seminal force, along with Gabriel García Márquez and other luminaries, in the explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and 1970s known as the Boom. Through several expansive novels, plays, and short stories, he inventively engaged with the history of modern Mexico while elegantly exploring deeply human themes of love, memory, and death. In his political nonfiction, however, he directly criticized repressive governments, including not only several in recent Mexican history but also those in other Latin American countries and in the United States (see his essay "The End of Ideologies in Transition #51). He remained prolific until his death at age 83, using his fiction to promote justice and basic human rights worldwide. We will sorely miss his bright and humane light.

La muerte espera al más valiente, al más rico, al más bello. Pero los iguala al más cobarde, al más pobre, al más feo, no es el simple hecho de morir, ni siquiera la conciencia de la muerte, sino en la ignorancia de la muerte. Sabemos que un día vendrá, pero nunca sabemos lo que es.

Death awaits the most valiant, the wealthiest, the most beautiful. But it makes them equal to the most cowardly, to the poorest, to the ugliest; it is not the simple fact of dying, nor even the consciousness of death, but the ignorance of death that equalizes. We all know that one day it will come, but we never know what it is.

—Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012)