TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/062992/06299933.000

Text File | 1992-09-25 | 5.3 KB | 113 lines

                                                                                CULTURE, Page 78

Daring Dreamer


Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes celebrates the glory of Hispanic
civilization in a new book and TV series

By GUY GARCIA


    On a cloudless Mexican morning, Carlos Fuentes gazes into
the gilded nave of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a colonial
church built over the ruins of the massive pyramid at Cholula.
As the faithful kneel in prayer, the author of The Old Gringo
and The Death of Artemio Cruz shakes his head in wonder. "It's
a great example of Mexican culture -- the Indian and the Spanish
religion coming together," he says. "What more perfect symbol
than a pyramid topped by a church devoted to the Virgin Mary?"

    Five hundred years after Christopher Columbus' arrival in
the New World, the fruits of Latin culture are very much on
Fuentes' mind. Mexico's pre-eminent novelist is crisscrossing
the U.S., Europe and Latin America to promote his new book, The
Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World. Published
in April, the 399-page, lavishly illustrated volume is climbing
best-seller lists from Washington to Los Angeles. Together with a
five-hour television series that will be aired on the Discovery
Channel in August, the book is Fuentes' answer to Kenneth
Clark's Civilisation, which ignored the Spanish-speaking world.
Aiming to show that the Latin legacy is as rich as anything in
the Anglo-Saxon tradition, Fuentes has condensed five centuries
of Hispanic experience into a multimedia saga that ranges, in
his words, "from the caves of Altamira to the graffiti of East
Los Angeles."

    Tanned and trim at 63, Fuentes proves an amiable and
erudite video guide, equally at ease critiquing a painting by
Goya, sipping coffee in a smoky tango club in Buenos Aires, or
pointing out the erotic audacity of the Spanish torerillos
("Where else can the male strike such provocative poses except
in the bull ring?").

    The Buried Mirror represents an intellectual homecoming
for Fuentes, who conceived of the project as "a fantastic
opportunity to write my own cultural biography." Yet it also
provides a looking glass of sorts for norteamericanos. "I
believe in the Latinization of the United States -- we are going
to resemble each other more and more," Fuentes says. "Take
Detroit or Caracas, Mexico City or Atlanta -- you're going to
find the same problems of pollution, crime, drug abuse,
homelessness. The U.S. must see itself in that buried mirror of
otherness, of tragedy, of bearing up to difficult times, of
survival. Mexico is an expert at survival. The U.S. can learn
much from the Mexican moral."

    Fuentes has learned much from both cultures. The son of a
Mexican diplomat, he was born in Panama City and spent much of
his youth living in Santiago, Buenos Aires and Washington, where
he developed an enduring affection for William Faulkner,
Franklin Roosevelt and Hollywood musicals. Until he grew up,
Mexico remained an almost mythical country, experienced mainly
through the memories of his father or glimpsed during summer
vacations.

    In 1958 his first novel, a vivid tapestry of
postrevolutionary Mexico called Where the Air Is Clear,
galvanized that country's literature. Four years later, The
Death of Artemio Cruz, a Faulknerian tour de force narrated by
a man during the final hours of his life, propelled Fuentes into
the front ranks of "el Boom," the globally acclaimed wave of
Latin American authors that included Colombia's Gabriel Garcia
Marquez and Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa.

    Like other Latin American writers, Fuentes has never
recognized the division between art and politics, and his
readiness to speak his mind has provoked officialdom on both
sides of the Mexican-U.S. border. Stung by his denunciation of
American intervention in Vietnam, the U.S. State Department
refused to grant him an entry visa. Until as recently as 1989,
Fuentes was required to apply for special permission to enter
the U.S. In his own country, Fuentes has drawn fire for his
blunt criticism of his government's failure to control Mexico
City's air pollution; he has also been attacked as a "guerrilla
dandy" who is too European and Americanized for his own good.

    "Fuentes is a polymath," observes his friend and fellow
novelist William Styron, who accompanied Fuentes on a
controversial trip to Nicaragua during the Sandinista regime.
"He's not just a glib organizer of facts. He's an authentic
iconoclast in the good sense, in that like most good writers he
sees through the mask of appearances."

    "I think there are things that deserve to be said,"
Fuentes explains. "I am not a professional rebel or enfant
terrible." Yet he knows that controversy will always dog him.
"In a way it goes with the territory," he says, "because it is
not natural to write. We are created to run and hunt and swim
and make love but not to sit hunched with a piece of paper and
some ink scribbling hieroglyphs. And when we do it, it is an act
of rebellion against God himself, who did not design us to do
that. So I've always said the writer in a way is the brother of
Lucifer -- he is rebellious and arrogant and condemned, but he
is having a good time." Then he adds with a chuckle, "Until the
fires start burning!"