Essays Collections
 A New Time for Mexico In these vigorous essays, eminent Mexican novelist, critic and
ex-diplomat Fuentes calls on Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo to take
definitive steps toward a full democracy?electoral reform; equal access
of candidates to the media; independent, aggressive labor unions; and,
above all, true separation between the ruling party and the government.
Arguing that NAFTA merely institutionalized the growing economic
interrelationships of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada, he charges that
Americans, ever in need of an external enemy, unfairly characterize
Mexico as unreliable, unable to govern itself and financially inept. He
views the recent guerrilla uprising in Chiapas as symptomatic of a
country divided between a relatively modern, prosperous north and an
oppressed, backward south. Adding that the Chiapas rebellion has
revealed the deep-rooted racism and intolerance of many Mexicans,
Fuentes pleads for social justice for Mexico's Indian communities,
devastated by poverty, alcohol and lack of social services. Offering
lapidary, lyrical meditations on Mexico as a land of continual
metamorphosis, Fuentes nostalgically reminisces about his home in
Veracruz, whose port his father defended against a Yankee invasion in
1914. - Review by Publishers Weekly | Myself with Others This is a feast of ideas on a wide variety of subjects that include
Gogol, Kundera, and Diderot as well as the Hispanic authors one might
expect Cervantes, Borges, and Garcia Marquez among them. Fuentes ranges
from the cinema of his friend Bunuel, which he characterizes as one vast
metaphor on the triumphs and defeats of people being with people, to
his experiences as a diplomat's son in Washington, D.C. He recalls
marveling at our boundless energy and innocence of military defeat. On
Nicaragua, he pointedly asks why America is so impatient with a few
years of Sandinismo when it was so tolerant of 45 years of Somocismo.
Indeed, the wisdom that Fuentes proffers on the current political
situation in Latin America is alone worth the price of the book.- Review by Library Journal  |
