The Writings of Carlos Fuentes

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Name /T4984/T4984_FM 06/18/04 06:54AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 9 # 9 P R E F A C E ix Carlos Fuentes is one of the major writers of this century in Latin America. Smitten by the modernity of Miguel de Cervantes and Jorge Luis Borges at an early age, he has written extensively on the cultures of the Americas and those of other places in the world. His work includes more than a dozen novels, several volumes of short stories, numerous essays on literary, cultural, and political topics, and some theater. Just as Cervantes’ father (a surgeon) took his son along on his travels throughout Castille during the reigns of Charles V and Philip II, giving the boy an early introduction to the politics and cultures of sixteenth-century Spain, Fuentes’ father (a diplomat) took him along on his travels. Consequently, Fuentes received an early and broad education on the cultures and politics of the Americas. He has dedicated his lifetime to the further understanding, analysis, and explanation of these cultures and politics. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, I spent several years teaching the writings of Fuentes and thinking about the possibility of writing this book. During that time, I offered three graduate seminars on the fiction of Fuentes and made several trips to Mexico to interview the author and carry out research there. I began writing the biographical chapter in 1989. The idea for the book in the present form, however, finally came together in July 1992 while I was engaged in a dialogue with Fuentes and Fuentes scholars in El Escorial, Spain. A group of twenty writers and Fuentes scholars met that July to dedicate a week to discussions of Fuentes’ work, with the author himself joining in. After a presentation on Terra Nostra by the Mexican writer and scholar Dante Medina, Fuentes and our group be- Name /T4984/T4984_FM 06/18/04 06:54AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 10 # 10 came involved in a discussion on Latin American identity. The Mexican writer Héctor Aguilar Camı́n pointed out that the official histories of Mexico include pre-Columbian Indian civilizations, underscoring the contributions of the Toltecs, the Olmecs, the Aztecs, and other Native American groups to Mexican culture, but these Mexican histories have systematically excluded Spanish contributions to Mexico. Fuentes, Aguilar Camı́n, Dante Medina, and a group of other participants spent the remainder of the afternoon in the lobby and on the veranda of our hotel discussing exactly what Latin America is: Indian? Spanish? Criollo? Fuentes and Aguilar Camı́n were particularly insistent in recognizing Spain along with the other cultures that have contributed to the makeup of the Americas. These questions have been debated in Latin America, of course, for more than a century. The career of Carlos Fuentes has consisted of a lengthy meditation on this question. As I watched Fuentes’ eyes light up over our discussion, I realized that, despite the age-old nature of this debate, the questions are as alive today as they were a century ago, when Domingo Faustino Sarmiento defined Latin American identity within the conceptual framework of the simple Manichaean dichotomy between civilization and barbarism. The next afternoon, Fuentes, Aguilar Camı́n, the Argentine writers Héctor Libertella and Martı́n Caparrós, the Puerto Rican writer Luis Rafael Sánchez, and I had lunch together. Fuentes sat at the head of the table and tended to lead the discussion. The conversation was classic Fuentes: He spent two hours exploring Latin American cultural and political reality, questioning this group of Latin American intellectuals about the recent politics and literature of each of their countries. He moved systematically from one country to another, inquiring and then probing more deeply. This was quintessential Fuentes—the man of the Americas—exploring his Americas once again, from a hotel located above the Spanish town of El Escorial. By the end of that five-day symposium, the multiple directions that this book could have taken had been refined. The two areas of Fuentes’ writing and thought that most urgently required further consideration, I had been reminded, were the problems of Latin American culture and identity. From my reading and teaching of x T H E W R I T I N G S O F C A R L O S F U E N T E S Name /T4984/T4984_FM 06/18...