Carlos Fuentes

“One puts off the biography like you put off death, To write an autobiography is to etch the words on your own gravestone.”

~Carlos Fuentes.

These words were by Carlos Fuentes often called as the ‘Mexican Man of Letters’, who died at the age of 83. Carlos Fuentes was one of the the most admired writers in the spanish-speaking world, Latin America. He writings included plays, novels(political non-fiction) as well as fiction many of which were chronicles of tangled love. Fuentes engaged himself in writing for magazines, journals and on political concerns. Although he was a bilingual, he chose to write in Spanish, because he believed that it offered more flexibility than English and that the english literary tradition did not need one more writer. He accredited his grandmothers describing how he was inspired by their tales of ‘bandits, revolutions and reckless love’; all of which connected him to Mexican culture.

His novel, “Where the Air Is Clear,” published in 1958 was a literary sensation which had a mixing of biting social commentary with interior monologues and portrayals of the subconscious. Rather than merely “writing back”, to the colonialists  the approach taken by writes such as Carlos Fuentes and Octavio Paz suggest how cultural differences are constructed by replacing the strong binary opposition “us“ versus “the other“ with concepts of hybridity, inbetweenness and border thinking. Early works by Carlos Fuentes (*1928) can be seen in an intermediate position between these concepts. Theme of otherness and opposition is evident in his work, and can be seen in La frontera de cristal (1995) and his novel Aura (1962). His writings are full of intertextual references which show his appreciation for both European and Latin American literary tradition.

Fuente was associated with the Latin American Boom also called as ‘El Boom’, a literary movement, the authors whose politically critical work broke established traditions. As part of the “Boom“ movement in Latin American literature he also uses supernatural and gothic elements that sometimes make it hard or even impossible to distinguish between reality and illusion. The ‘El Boom’ was influenced by modernist currents from both Europe and North America and characterized by the breaking of literary conventions such as originality, authorship and coherence. Although it had its influence on the literature of that time it was also a movement of political dimensions which tried to break free from colonial influence and create an own and unique Latin American tradition. His work, The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962) talks of the dilemma of national identity, limitless power of fantasy, history of the Mexican revolution. In his works Fuentes maintained a realistic stance of power and politics prevalent in his times – chronicles of the past and wide range of cultural references which he combined with social critique. The ‘Magic Realism’, a merging of reality and illusion emerged where no clear distinctions could be made; this tradition of developing a Latin American self awareness differentiated it from the former colonisers and is considered to be the origin of all Latin American culture. Fuente through his novel, ‘Terra Nostra’ contributes to a rewriting of the modern subject as argued by many scholars. This novel through its metafictional dimensions seeks to change the legacy of recoding subjectivities imposed during colonisation. This novel promotes a diachronic understanding of history into which notions of magic realism and material strands feed in.

After his death on May 15, 2012 numerous newspaper articles talked of how he and immensely contributed in restoring and sustaining the literary tradition of Latin America. Mr Beltran on the death of Carlos Fuentes said, “To speak about Carlos Fuentes is to engage inexorably in Mexican history and culture. We cannot fathom a debate on Mexican literary and humanistic traditions in which his name and work are absent.”