A Look at Carlos Fuentes

Mexican novelist diplomat Carlos Fuentes this afternoon's principal Commencement speaker brings a unique background of political involvement and literary reflection to the Tercentenary Theater podium.

Fuentes who served as Mexico's Ambassador to France from 1974 until 1978 and has written 10 novels and three plays, was selected to speak by the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) after Polish dissident Tech Walesa declined the University's Commencement invitation on April 25.

But the Association insists that Fuentes was by no means its "second choice". "We've been considering and thinking about him for several years now," said David A. Alotan '49, executive director of HAA Alotan cited Fuentes's "profound effect on how millions of people view world events as the group's principal reason for seeking Fuentes. And both political and literary expert have praised the University's choice.

Claudio Guillen professor of Comparative Literatures and of Romance Languages and Literature said of Fuentes. "He's the most fantastic lecturer you've ever heard, a sparkling speaker."

"He's a considerable literary figure," said John Womack Jr. 59, Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics. "As a political person he's a notable intellectual in Third World international politics, it really does not matter what he says, because Mexico is a relatively large and wealthy country in the Third World, Womack added.

Harvard Latin American specialists familiar with Fuentes speculated this week that he would speak about U.S. policy in Central America Fuentes has been an outspoken critic of the Reagan administration's support for dictatorships in El Salvador and Guatemala.

Womack characterized Fuentes's politics as "outspoken moderate-left," noting that Fuentes was "part of a generation [of Latin American intellectuals] that came to literary and political maturity in the context of the Cuban Revolution and U.S. hostility to it." Womack also noted that the American Central Intelligence Agency once suspected Fuentes of being a Soviet agent and denied him a visa to enter the U.S. during the 1960s.

But Fuentes was never a "confrontational leftist," Womack said. Instead, the novelist-diplomat is a "traditional Mexican nationalist." Fuentes was "one of the most active intellectuals" in Mexico's National Liberation Movement, an early 1960s coalition of leftists within Mexico's ruling Revolutionary Institution Party (PRI), he added.

Womack noted that Fuentes, whose novels deal with the legacy of Mexico's own 1910 revolution, believes that "other Latin American revolutions must be supported because they offer the best chance for social progress."

Fuentes often speaks in a "warning voice" to North American audiences, Womack said. "He says 'I'm not saying this; it's Latin America saying this'."

Politics has also been a major theme of Fuentes' literature. The Death of Artemio Cruz, his third novel, is a powerful indictment of the failures of the Mexican Revolution to bring social justice to Mexico.

"He sees the role of contemporary Latin American literature as to fill in the silences of history," said Lilvia Soto Duggan, assistant professor of Romance Literatures and Languages and a specialist on Fuentes' fiction. "He wants to say all the things official history does not say--all the unfulfilled dreams of all of Latin American history."

"Fuentes has also said that the writer in Latin America has a special role because of the lack of responsible statesmen--they have to do the thinking and criticism that the press won't do," Soto-Duggan added.

Literature specialists emphasized that Fuentes is uniquely able to speak for all of Latin-America because, since he grew up in the family of a Mexican diplomat, he has lived in the United States, Chile, Argentina and Brazil, as well as his native Mexico.

"He's one of the very cultured writers," Guillen noted, pointing out that Fuentes is part of a "brilliant" group of contemporary Latin American writers including 1982 Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. "He has a tremendously broad view of culture," Guillen added.

Mexican history, and particularly the nation's Aztec origins, form the subject matter and supply much of the imagery for Fuentes's novels. The Aztec god Quetzlcoati is a character in Terra Nostra, a fictionalized account of the Spanish conquest of Mexico that deals with events in eras ranging from feudal Spain to present-day Mexico.

"He wants to portray the relation of the Old World and the New," Donald L. Fanger, a professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature, noted adding that Fuentes is extremely well-versed in European literature, especially French fiction.

Fanger added that Fuentes is intimately familiar with North American culture and literature Fanger, who has corresponded with Fuentes since the two met at a Harvard conference two years ago, called Fuentes "one of a relative few Latin American intellectuals who feel really and deeply at home in America. He knows our habits of thought."

And Jaime Alazraki, professor of Romance Literatures and Languages, listed Americans John Dos Passos, and William Faulkner as two writers who have helped shape Fuentes's own style.

"In The Death of Artemio Cruz, Fuentes used Faulkner's techniques of fragmented point of view and multiple narrators. In Where the Air is Clear he works with Dos Passos's camera eye techniques," Alazraki added.

Fuentes's work has also been heavily influenced by motion pictures. A movie trivia expert and a close friend of the great Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel, his most recent play. Orchids in the Moonlight, tells the story of two aging Mexican movie actresses as they struggle to come to terms with their fading stardom.

"He's interested in the relationship between the image on the screen and reality," Fanger explains Bunuel's surrealism has had a substantial influence on Fuentes's prose style, Soto-Duggan added.

Fanger added that Fuentes' 1978 novel. The Hydra Head, "was a tribute to the film noire. It can't be understood unless you keep in mind that Fuentes was looking at that genre of film."