Por Martha Bátiz
I never had the privilege of meeting Carlos Fuentes in person. But I was fortunate to have received the exact same grant that allowed him to work on his first novel, La región más transparente, or Where the Air is Clear, when I was 23 years old and starting my own journey as a writer. When I set foot in what used to be known as Centro Mexicano de Escritores, or Mexican Writing Centre, which was founded in 1951 by Margaret Shedd, with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation, I was aware of the fact that I was being welcomed into a historical institution. Into the place where some of Mexico’s finest and most successful writers had workshopped their first, yet groundbreaking, literary works. Pages from their manuscripts were exhibited on the walls, so we could see the corrections that had been made, by hand, over words typed on yellowed paper, and get lost in the calligraphy of those legends of Mexican literature. The great Juan Rulfo received two grants from the Mexican Writing Centre, where he wrote his two masterpieces, El llano en llamas and Pedro Páramo. Later on, he became a mentor at the Centre himself, and went on to live what could be defined as a very modest, simple life. Carlos Fuentes, in contrast, managed to put the world at his feet and went on to pen and publish 25 novels, 11 short-story collections, 16 essay collections, 5 plays, and 7 screenplays. An impressive corpus which helped shape not only Mexico’s literary taste and fate, but also Mexican identity itself.
In his books, Fuentes captured Mexico’s reality, the people’s struggles, speech, fears, virtues and vices, in order to explore what it means to be Mexican. His quest and the books he produced changed our country’s literature and, in doing so, ended up also being a huge influence for many other important Latin American writers. His impact expanded beyond Mexico’s borders and, in the end, beyond the Spanish language. But what secured Fuentes a well-deserved spot among the world’s most relevant writers? Why should we continue to read, promote, and celebrate his literature?
Sir Francis Bacon gave the following advice: “Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.” As we read Fuentes for the first time, or re-read his work for pleasure, we should be weighing and considering how his words address us —meaning, how they address who we are not only as Mexican (or Latin American) citizens but as human beings. Harold Bloom once said that “we read to strengthen the self,” and I fully agree. When we devote our time to reading writers as talented and sensitive as Fuentes, we not only strengthen our vocabulary and open our minds to a torrent of powerful ideas, voices, and images, but we also strengthen our sense of self. Because we can identify with the characters that are being depicted on paper, because we know someone who is like them, because we have walked down the same streets and have heard of the same ghosts, but mostly because what matters to them will, in the end, too, be important to us. We recognize ourselves in their pages the way a child might recognize itself in his or her mother’s gaze. Fuentes is Mexican, yes, but he is also universal: he speaks about the national experience but mostly about the human experience. He makes us think —weigh and ponder.
Every time I read Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo I know that its mythical ghost town, Comala, still exists. I know it because people are constantly yearning for the past, questioning it, revisiting it, trying to get over it, to rewrite it, and we, as immigrants, even more so. Therefore, we will forever be vulnerable to those ghosts. They live within us, and sometimes, if we remain silent enough, just like in the novel, we might feel their warm breath brushing gently against our ears.
Something similar happens with my personal favourite of all of Fuentes’ books: Aura, a short novel that is based in downtown Mexico City and tells a beautiful, if at times scary, love story. Whenever I roam the streets of downtown Mexico City, I know Aura is there, I can feel her presence, almost see her peeking out a window, waiting for a new set of eyes to fall prey to her eternal spell. This is the magic of great literature: it lives on, it breathes.
Fuentes, the son of a diplomat, was born in Panama and spent his childhood in various Latin American capital cities, an experience he credited with giving him the ability to view Latin America as a critical outsider. From 1934 to 1940, Fuentes’ father was posted to the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C., where Carlos became fully fluent in English. He was ahead of his time. Way before globalization was even a concept, he was already a global citizen, yet he managed to capture that which we call mexicanidad, or mexicanness, with incredible precision. He was a man who knew what he wanted, both at the personal and professional levels. He was 28 years old when he wrote Where the Air is Clear, but he knew exactly what he wanted to achieve by writing this novel:
“En ella, busco la expresión de una serie de temas hasta la fecha casi vírgenes en nuestras letras: la ciudad de México, la creación de una clase media urbana de una alta burguesía en la postrevolución, la vida de diversos grupos sociales, el intelectual, el de la clase alta, el de los aventureros ‘internacionales’ desde el nuevo marco social y el contrapunto de la vida popular de la ciudad. El choque de estos elementos y lo que tal choque nos revela de la conciencia mexicana son, a la vez, mis temas, mis propósitos”.
(In the novel) I strive to express a series of themes that have so far remained untouched by our literature: Mexico City, the creation of a new urban middle class steming from the post-revolutionary era bourgeoisie, the life of diverse social groups, the intellectual one, the upper-class one, the international adventurers, (viewed) from within a new social frame and the counterpoint offered by common people’s life in the city. The crash of these elements and what that crash reveals to us about Mexican conscience are, at the same time, my topics and my purpose.
Fuentes accomplished his goal, because (and I quote from George Iris in “Carlos Fuentes: Mexico coming to terms with itself, published in 1977), in La región más transparente he “gives a microscopic view of a cross-section of Mexico City as it evolved in the first half of the 20th Century. Everything is there: the ruined Porfirian aristocracy; the progressive upper and lower bourgeoisie -bankers, businessmen, lawyers, intellectuals; the lower classes comprised of taxi drivers, labourers, housemaids, bartenders, unemployed young men, ruffians, prostitutes, and newspaper boys; their patterns of behaviour, ways of thinking, prejudices; the influence and presence of the indigenous past; the impact of the Revolution; the evidence of social and economic change; and an interesting, complex situation of interaction between these distinct social classes.”
For those of us who have chosen to live abroad, be it in the USA or Canada, I recommend the short-stories in La frontera de cristal (The Crystal Frontier), where he depicts the lives of people who live alongside the US-Mexico border. For Mexicans in particular, however, reading any book by Fuentes helps us weigh and consider who we were and who we are as individuals and as a nation, and his works will forever remain the backbone of Mexican modern literature. Yet, at the same time, they are universal. Reading his words, getting to know his characters, strengthens the self, our selves. Hopefully, after tonight, many curious hearts will be eager to breathe in the crisp and vibrant región más transparente, or accompany Artemio Cruz as he takes his last breaths. It definitely doesn’t get better than that when it comes to 20th-Century Mexican literary splendour. The many marvels of the worlds Fuentes built are there, waiting in any library or bookstore for us to bring them to life with the caress of our gaze. I invite all of you tonight to celebrate his life and work in the best possible way: by reading, and sharing, the radiance of his prose.
