Carlos Fuentes, a major political novelist and a professor-at-large at Brown, spoke in Spanish about his internationally acclaimed novel "La Muerte de Artemio Cruz," Latin American governments and the effects of globalization on the region to a crowd gathered at Brown Hillel on Wednesday afternoon.
"I can talk about others a lot, but it is always hard to talk about one's own work," Fuentes confessed to the crowd. Yet the lecture seemed to cause him no trouble.
Fuentes was born in Panama City, a son of two Mexican parents who expected him to grow up knowing the history of their homeland. At 16 years old, he moved to Mexico City, which he still calls home. After graduating with degrees from the University of Mexico and the University of Geneva in Switzerland, he followed in his father's footsteps and became a diplomat for the Mexican government in 1965.
His political career sent him to France, London and Venice, while his literary contributions have provided him with teaching opportunities at institutions such as Princeton, Harvard, Cambridge and Columbia universities and the University of Pennsylvania.
Fuentes began his lecture with a crash course on the history of the Mexican Revolution, the central event of his third novel, which in English is called "The Death of Artemio Cruz." He spoke about the motivations for the uprising and the changes instituted by principal Mexican figures like Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata and Venustiano Carranza.
"Perhaps one reason this novel was not immediately accepted in Mexico was because it did not follow in the usual legitimizing of these men as revolutionary 'heroes' as those before it had," Fuentes said.
He continued by explaining his reasons for writing a novel in the first, second and third persons.
"In writing a novel about the revolution, I knew that I was following an established literary tradition by men such as Mariano Azuela Gonzalez, Martin Luis Guzman and Rafael Munoz," Fuentes said, "but I felt that I needed to write it in a new, different way."
Fuentes said one instance in particular led him to use multiple tenses to tell the story of Artemio Cruz, who in the novel recounts his corrupt life while lying on his deathbed. The idea came to Fuentes after he spontaneously decided to swim in Holland on a cold November day when he was in the middle of revising the original manuscript.
"I would love to go swimming and write it all over again, if I could," he said.
The comment solicited laughs from those present and provided a good transition into the lecture's question-and-answer session. Many audience members were eager to ask questions of Fuentes, and some even cut off other questioners, but Fuentes brought order to the crowd with thoughtfully inserted jokes.
One particular audience member was especially eager to ask Fuentes questions, and the author even called her "la maquina de preguntas," or the "question machine." Despite the nickname bestowed on her, Maria Ramos, who has lived in Providence for five months, had only good things to say about the author.
"I admire the way his writing is simple, yet has great depth to it," Ramos said. "He knows how to put our reality into focus and how to express it through words."
Though the lecture was intended to cover his novel, Fuentes touched on other topics as well. He commented on the impact of globalization on a free market society and about the controversy behind the most recent presidential election in Mexico.
"(Losing candidate Andres Manuel Lopez) Obrador should have accepted the votes for what they were," Fuentes said.
He also spoke with conviction about the power of institutions. Fuentes said all of Latin America is in a "transitional period," and citizens must depend on institutions, not challenge them as Obrador did.
Fuentes also spoke about many Mexicans' tendency to shun their Spanish heritage in order to pay tribute to their indigenous roots.
"Mexico has conserved their indigenous heritage at expense of their Spanish heritage, but this tendency to glorify the victims needs to stop," he said. "We must come to accept all of our rich heritage in order to prosper."
Fuentes ended the lecture by answering a question about the theme of resistance to power seen in one of the novel's characters, which he said has much relevance to the world today.
"There will always be resistance. It is visible in our mere existence on this earth that keeps us grounded by the laws of gravity, to the constant resistance we all show against following in our father's footsteps or repeating our past," he said.
Student reaction to Fuentes' message was positive. "We are all very lucky for the opportunity to see such a significant literary figure in Latin America as a professor here at Brown," said Francisco Manriquez '10, who attended the lecture yesterday.
As a Mexican-American man who grew up in Los Angeles, a city with a colorful Mexican culture, Manriquez said he is "awed by Carlos and how much respect he has garnered from so many on campus."
Fuentes will speak at Hillel again today. His second lecture, "In Memoriam: John Kenneth Galbraith, Arthur Miller, William Styron," will be delivered in English at 5 p.m.
