A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z
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Life and Works: Mexican novelist, short-story writer, playwright, critic, and diplomat whose experimental novels won him an international literary reputation. He is one of the best-known living novelists and essayists in the Spanish-speaking world. Fuentes has influenced contemporary Latin American literature, and his works have been widely translated into English and other languages. Major themes in Fuentes's work are the limitless power of fantasy, the dilemma of national identity, and the promise and failure of the Mexican revolution. Fuentes has been frequently mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature. Carlos Fuentes Macias was born in Panama City, but his parents were Mexican, and he later became a Mexican citizen. The son of a career diplomat, he traveled extensively with his family in North and South America and in Europe. He learned English at the age of four in Washington, D.C. At the age of 16 he returned to Mexico, where he attended the prestigious Colegio de México. As a posture of rebellion, Fuentes decided to be a writer, but eventually followed the advice of Alfonso Reyes: "You must become a licenciado, a lawyer; then you can do whatever you please, as I did." Fuentes entered the School of Law at the National University of Mexico, receiving his LL.B. in 1948. He also studied economics at Institut des Hautes Études Internationales in Geneva. During his university years Fuentes became a Marxist and joined the Communist Party. He was married to the famous Mexican actress Rita Macedo from 1959 till 1973, although he was an habitual philanderer and allegedly, his affairs -- which he has claimed include film actresses such as Jeanne Moreau and Jean Seberg- brought her to despair. The couple ended their relationship amid scandal when Fuentes eloped with a very pregnant and then-unknown journalist named Silvia Lemus. They were eventually married in Paris in 1976. Rita committed suicide in 1993. Fuentes was a member of the Mexican delegation to the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva (1950-52), was in charge of cultural dissemination for the University of Mexico (1955-56) and was cultural officer of the ministry (1957-59). He also worked as secretary, then assistant director of the Cultural Department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. From 1959 Fuentes devotes himself to writing. During the 1960s Fuentes lived mostly in Europe. Following in the footsteps of his parents, he also became a diplomat in 1965 and served in London, Paris (as ambassador), and other capitals. In 1978 he resigned as ambassador to France in protest over the appointment of Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, former president of Mexico, as ambassador to Spain. He has been a teacher and fellow at various universities, including Columbia University, New York, the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Princeton University, New Jersey, and Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Fuentes has received several awards, including Villaurrutia Prize (1975), Gallegos Prize (1977), Reyes Prize (1979), Mexican National Award for Literature (1984), Cervantes Prize (1987), Darío Prize (1988), New Order of Cultural Independence (1988), Prince of Asturias Prize (1994), Grinzane Cavouch International Prize (1994), National Order of Merit (1997). He has also honorary degrees from several universities. He fathered three children. Only one survives: Cecilia Fuentes Macedo, born in 1962, now working with TV production. A son, Carlos Fuentes Lemus, died from complications associated with hemophilia in 1999 at the age of 25. A daughter, Natasha Fuentes Lemus (born 31 August 1974), died of undisclosed causes in Mexico City 22 August 2005, at the age of 30. Fuentes started his writing career in the late 1940s. Along with Emmanuel Carballo and Octavio Paz he founded the review Revista Mexicana de Literatura in 1954. He edited El Espectador (1959-61), Siempre from 1960, and Política from 1960. Fuentes's first collection of short stories, Los días emmascarados, was published in 1954. La región más transparente (1958, Where the Air Is Clear) was his first novel. It gave a panoramic picture of Mexico City and has been compared to John Dos Passos's novel Manhattan Transfer (1925), set in New York City. The narrator is an Indian, who has a double personality as an avatar of the Aztec God of war and a trickster. He published Las Buenas Conciencias (The Good Conscience) in 1959 which is probably his most accessible novel depicting the privileged middle classes of a medium sized town, probably modelled on Guanajuato and emphasized the moral compromises that mark the transition from a rural economy to a complex, middle-class urban one. His 1960s novels, Aura (1962) and La muerte de Artemio Cruz (The Death of Artemio Cruz, 1962) are well acclaimed for using experimental modern narrative styles (including the second person form) to discuss history, society and identity. (The Death of Artemio Cruz, which presents the agony of the last hours of a wealthy survivor of the Mexican Revolution, was translated into several European languages and established Fuentes as a major international novelist. The novel is told in the first, second, and third person. Artemio Cruz is a poor peon and supporter of revolutionary ideals. He gains wealth and becomes a corrupt, ruthlessness business magnate, a symbol of international capitalist greed. As he lies on his deathbed, Fuentes follows his fragmented thoughts and images wavering between past and present. Aura is told in the second person narrative. Thus the reader and the fictional protagonist are united in a story which deterministically leads to change of identities. A young historian, Felipe Motero, starts to complete the memoirs of General Llorente in a strange, old house. He fells in love with the beautiful young Aura. She is the niece of his employer, Señora Consuelo, the widow of the general. Eventually Felipe finds his reincarnated identity and Consuelo tells him that Aura is the projection of her younger self. In 1967, during a meeting with Alejo Carpentier, Julio Cortazar and Miguel Otero Silva, Carlos Fuentes launched the project of a series of biographies depicting Latin American caudillos, which would be calledLos Padres de la Patria. Although the project was never completed, it set the bases for Alejo Carpentier's Reasons of State (El recurso del método, 1974) and various other Dictator Novels. His third major novel, Cambio de piel (1967,A Change of Skin), which depicted a group of people on a journey from Mexico City to Vera Cruz and defines existentially a collective Mexican consciousness by exploring and reinterpreting the country's myths, won a prestigious prize in Barcelona, Spain. However, the book was criticized as "pornographic, communistic, anti-Christian, anti-German and pro-Jewish" and censors did not allow its publication in the country. Due to his political views Fuentes was persona non grata in the United States and was forbidden to enter Puerto Rico. He protested the Mexican government's brutal repression of student revolution in Tlatelolco Square before the Olympic Games in 1968 and was exiled in Paris. With other leftist intellectuals and labor leaders he attacked in 1971 the dominant Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI. La nueva novela hispanoamericana (1969; The New Hispano-American Novel) is his chief work of literary criticism. Terra Nostra (1975) is Fuentes's major novel on Spanish and Latin American history. It moves freely in time from ancient Rome to the apocalyptic end of the 20th century. One of the main settings is the 16th century Spain, where Philip II constructs the monastery-palace of El Escorial. The novel explores the cultural substrata of New and Old Worlds, using Jungian archetypal symbolism, in which the author seeks to understand his cultural heritage. Burnt Water (1980) is a collection of translations of 12 stories written from 1954. His 1985 novel Gringo viejo (The Old Gringo), the first American bestseller written by a Mexican author, was a triangle drama of an American woman, Harriet Winslow, Tomás Arroyo, a general, and the American journalist and writer Ambrose Bierce, who disappeaed during Pancho Villa's revolution in 1913. The book was filmed by Luis Puenzo in 1989, starring Jane Fonda and Gregory Peck. In 1992 Fuentes' book-length essay on Hispanic cultures, The Buried Mirror, was published simultaneously in Spanish and English. Fuentes also published several more collections of stories. In 1996, he published Diana, The Goddess Who Hunts Alone, a fictionalized account of his alleged affair with American actress Jean Seberg. However, authenticity of this adulterous liaison has been brought up to question several times. In Instinto de Inez (2001) Gabriel Atlan-Ferrara, a symphony conductor, realizes at the age of 93, that the future means for him death but in the past are love and Inez, the eternity. Like Artemio Cruz at the end of his life, Garbriel studies the choices he has made in his life. At the center of the story is a mystic crystal seal which unites space and time. Fuentes dedicated the book to his son Carlos Fuentes Lemus, who died in 1999. Fuentes regularly contributes essays on politics and culture to the Spanish newspaper El País and Reforma. He is a stern critic of what he sees as American cultural and economic situations typically hidden from mainstream Mexican society. |
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