Fuentes was born inPanama City, the son of Berta Macías and Rafael Fuentes, the latter of whom was a Mexican diplomat.[2][6] As the family moved for his father's career, Fuentes spent his childhood in various Latin American capital cities,[3] an experience he later described as giving him the ability to view Latin America as a critical outsider.[7] From 1934 to 1940, Fuentes' father was posted to the Mexican Embassy inWashington, D.C.,[8] where Carlos attended English-language school, eventually becoming fluent.[3][8] He also began to write during this time, creating his own magazine, which he shared with apartments on his block.[3]
In 1938, Mexiconationalized foreign oil holdings, leading to a national outcry in the U.S.; he later pointed to the event as the moment in which he began to understand himself as Mexican.[8] In 1940, the Fuentes family was transferred toSantiago, Chile. There, he first became interested insocialism, which would become one of his lifelong passions, in part through his interest in the poetry ofPablo Neruda.[9] He lived in Mexico for the first time at the age of 16, when he went to study law at theNational Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City with an eye toward a diplomatic career.[3] During this time, he also began working at the daily newspaperHoy and writing short stories.[3] He later attended theGraduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.[10]
Fuentes fathered three children, only one of whom survived him: Cecilia Fuentes Macedo, born in 1962.[2] A son,Carlos Fuentes Lemus, died from complications associated withhemophilia in 1999 at the age of 25. A daughter, Natasha Fuentes Lemus (born August 31, 1974), died of an apparent drug overdose in Mexico City on August 22, 2005, at the age of 30.[15]
Fuentes described himself as a pre-modern writer, using only pens, ink and paper. He asked, "Do words need anything else?" Fuentes said that he detested authors who from the beginning claim to have a recipe for success. In a speech on his writing process, he related that when he began the writing process, he began by asking, "Who am I writing for?"[17]
Fuentes' first novel,Where the Air Is Clear (La región más transparente), was an immediate success upon its publication in 1958.[2] The novel is built around the story of Federico Robles – who has abandoned his revolutionary ideals to become a powerful financier – but also offers "a kaleidoscopic presentation" of vignettes of Mexico City, making it as much a "biography of the city" as of an individual man.[18] The novel was celebrated not only for its prose, which made heavy use of interior monologue and explorations of the subconscious,[2] but also for its "stark portrait of inequality and moral corruption in modern Mexico".[19]
A year later, he followed with another novel,The Good Conscience (Las Buenas Conciencias), which depicted the privileged middle classes of a medium-sized town, probably modeled onGuanajuato. Described by a contemporary reviewer as "the classic Marxist novel", it tells the story of a privileged young man whose impulses toward social equality are suffocated by his family's materialism.[20]
Fuentes' novelThe Death of Artemio Cruz (La muerte de Artemio Cruz) was published in 1962 and is "widely regarded as a seminal work of modern Spanish American literature".[9] Like many of his works, the novel uses rotating narrators, a technique critic Karen Hardy described as demonstrating "the complexities of a human or national personality".[8] The novel is heavily influenced byOrson Welles'Citizen Kane, and attempts literary parallels to Welles' techniques, includingclose-up,cross-cutting,deep focus, andflashback.[9] LikeKane, the novel begins with the titular protagonist on his deathbed; the story of Cruz's life is then filled in by flashbacks as the novel moves between past and present. Cruz is a former soldier of theMexican Revolution who has become wealthy and powerful through "violence, blackmail, bribery, and brutal exploitation of the workers".[21] The novel explores the corrupting effects of power and criticizes the distortion of the revolutionaries' original aims through "class domination, Americanization, financial corruption, and failure of land reform".[22]
A prolific writer, Fuentes' subsequent work in the 1960s include the novelAura (1962), the short story collectionCantar de Ciego (1966), the novellaZona Sagrada (1967) andA Change of Skin (1967), an ambitious novel that attempts to define a collective Mexican consciousness by exploring and reinterpreting the country's myths.[23]
Fuentes' 1975Terra Nostra, perhaps his most ambitious novel, is described as a "massive, Byzantine work" that tells the story of all Hispanic civilization.[9]Terra Nostra shifts unpredictably between the sixteenth century and the twentieth, seeking the roots of contemporary Latin American society in the struggle between theconquistadors and indigenous Americans. LikeArtemio Cruz, the novel also draws heavily on cinematic techniques.[9] The novel won theXavier Villaurrutia Award in 1976[24] and the VenezuelanRómulo Gallegos Prize in 1977.[25]
It was followed byLa Cabeza de la hidra (1978,The Hydra Head), aspy thriller set in contemporary Mexico andUna familia lejana (1980,Distant Relations), a novel that explores many themes including the relations between the Old world and the New.[26][27]
Fuentes' 1985 novelThe Old Gringo (Gringo viejo), loosely based on American authorAmbrose Bierce's disappearance during theMexican Revolution,[11] became the first U.S. bestseller written by a Mexican author.[5] The novel tells the story of Harriet Winslow, a young American woman who travels to Mexico, and finds herself in the company of an aging American journalist (called only "the oldgringo") and Tomás Arroyo, a revolutionary general. Like many of Fuentes' works, it explores the way in which revolutionary ideals become corrupted, as Arroyo chooses to pursue the deed to an estate where he once worked as a servant rather than follow the goals of the revolution.[28] In 1989, the novel was adapted into the U.S. filmOld Gringo starringGregory Peck,Jane Fonda, andJimmy Smits.[5] A long profile of Fuentes in the U.S. magazine, "Mother Jones," describes the filming of "The Old Gringo" in Mexico with Fuentes on the set.[29]
In the mid-1980s, Fuentes began to conceptualize his total fiction, past and future, in fourteen cycles called "La Edad del Tiempo", explaining that his total work was a lengthy reflection on time. The plan for the cycle first appeared as a page in the Spanish edition of his satirical novelChristopher Unborn in 1987, and as a page in his subsequent books with minor revisions to the original plan.[30][31]
In 1992, Fuentes publishedThe Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World, an historical essay that attempts to cover the entire cultural history of Spain and Latin America. The book was a complement to aDiscovery Channel andBBC television series by the same name.[32] Fuentes work of nonfiction also includeLa nueva novela hispanoamericana (1969; “The New Hispano-American Novel”), which is his chief work of literary criticism, andCervantes; o, la critica de la lectura (1976; “Cervantes; or, The Critique of Reading”), an homage to the Spanish writerMiguel de Cervantes.[23]
His 1994 bookDiana: The Goddess Who Hunts Alone is an autobiograpichal novel that portrays the actressJean Seberg who Fuentes had a love affair with in the 1960s.[16] It was followed byThe Crystal Frontier, a novel in nine stories.
In 1999, Fuentes published the novelThe Years With Laura Diaz. A companion book toThe Death of Artemio Cruz, the characters are from the same period, but the story is told by a woman exiled from her province after the revolution. The novel includes some of Fuentes own family history inVeracruz and has been called "a vast, panoramic novel" dealing with "questions of progress, revolution and modernity" and "the ordinary life of the individual that struggles to find its place".[33][34]
His later novels includeInez (2001),The Eagle's Throne (2002) andDestiny and Desire (2008). His writing also include several collections of stories, essays and plays.[23]
Fuentes' works have been translated into 24 languages.[5] He remained prolific to the end of his life, with an essay on thenew government of France appearing in the newspaperReforma on the day of his death.[35]
Mexican historianEnrique Krauze was a vigorous critic of Fuentes and his fiction, dubbing him a "guerrilla dandy" in a 1988 article for the perceived gap between his Marxist politics and his personal lifestyle.[36] Krauze accused Fuentes of selling out to the PRI government and being "out of touch with Mexico", exaggerating its people to appeal to foreign audiences: "There is the suspicion in Mexico that Fuentes merely uses Mexico as a theme, distorting it for a North American public, claiming credentials that he does not have."[6][37] The essay, published inOctavio Paz's magazineVuelta, began a feud between Paz and Fuentes that lasted until Paz's death.[8] Following Fuentes' death, however, Krauze described him to reporters as "one of the most brilliant writers of the 20th Century".[38]
TheLos Angeles Times described Fuentes' politics as "moderate liberal", noting that he criticized "the excesses of both the left and the right".[6] Fuentes was a long-standing critic of theInstitutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) government that ruled Mexico between 1929 and the election ofVicente Fox in 2000, and later of Mexico's inability to reduce drug violence. He has expressed his sympathies with theZapatista rebels inChiapas.[2] Fuentes was also critical of U.S. foreign policy, includingRonald Reagan's opposition to theSandinistas,[8]George W. Bush's anti-terrorism tactics,[2] U.S. immigration policy,[5] and the role of the U.S. in theMexican drug war.[6] His politics caused him to be blocked from entering the United States until a Congressional intervention in 1967.[2] In 1963, after being denied permission to travel to a book release party inNew York City, he responded: "The real bombs are my books, not me".[2] Much later in his life, he commented that "The United States is very good at understanding itself, and very bad at understanding others."[3]
TheU.S. State Department and theFederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) closely monitored Fuentes during the 1960s, purposefully delaying — and often denying — the author's visa applications.[39] Fuentes' FBI file, released on June 20, 2013, reveals that the FBI's upper echelons were interested in Fuentes’ movements, because of the writer's suspected communist-leanings and criticism of theVietnam War. Long-time FBI Associate DirectorClyde Tolson was copied on several updates about Fuentes.[39]
Initially a supporter ofFidel Castro'sCuban Revolution, Fuentes turned against Castro after being branded a "traitor" to Cuba in 1965 for attending a New York conference[8] and the 1971 imprisonment of poetHeberto Padilla by the Cuban government.[3]The Guardian described him as accomplishing "the rare feat for a leftwing Latin American intellectual of adopting a critical attitude towards Fidel Castro's Cuba without being dismissed as a pawn of Washington."[3] Fuentes also criticized Venezuelan PresidentHugo Chávez, dubbing him "a tropicalMussolini."[2]
Fuentes' last message onTwitter read, "There must be something beyond slaughter and barbarism to support the existence of mankind and we must all help search for it."[40]
On May 15, 2012, Fuentes died in Angeles del Pedregal hospital in southern Mexico City from a massive hemorrhage.[11][41] He had been brought there after his doctor had found him collapsed in his Mexico City home.[11]
Mexican PresidentFelipe Calderón wrote on Twitter, "I am profoundly sorry for the death of our loved and admired Carlos Fuentes, writer and universal Mexican. Rest in peace."[7] Nobel laureateMario Vargas Llosa stated, "with him, we lose a writer whose work and whose presence left a deep imprint".[7] French PresidentFrançois Hollande called Fuentes "a great friend of our country" and stated that Fuentes had "defended with ardour a simple and dignified idea of humanity".[42]Salman Rushdie tweeted "RIP Carlos my friend".[42]
Fuentes received astate funeral on May 16, with his funeral cortege briefly stopping traffic in Mexico City. The ceremony was held in thePalacio de Bellas Artes and was attended by President Calderón.[42]
^abcdefgHoward Fraser; Daniel Altamiranda; Susana Perea-Fox (January 2012)."Carlos Fuentes".Critical Survey of Long Fiction. RetrievedMay 18, 2012.[permanent dead link]
^Maarten van Delden (1993). "Carlos Fuentes: From Identity to Alternativity".Modern Language Notes.108 (2). Johns Hopkins University:331–346.doi:10.2307/2904639.JSTOR2904639.
