On the surface, Carlos Fuentes` latest work-a lavishly produced book and TV series-is about the quest for Latin America`s rich, troubled, passionate, sometimes even violent identity on the 500th anniversary of Columbus`
landfall.
But you also could say it is an autobiography of sorts, an ancestral epic. For in Fuentes` blood is mixed the diverse strains that give life to the Latin American character.
”I feel as Indian as I feel Spanish, Jewish, German and Arab,” Fuentes said, delineating his ancestry.
It is this mix of cultures that has given Fuentes grist for the hundreds of essays, novels, films and documentaries he has written in the last three decades.
Some, such as ”The Old Gringo” and ”The Death of Artemio Cruz,” have become classics of Latin America`s rich literary inheritance, and have made him a leading candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature.
In the process, Fuentes-a multilingual, globetrotting intellectual-has become North America`s interpreter of culture south of the border.
”The Buried Mirror,” a five-part BBC series that aired this week on PBS, is based on Fuentes` ambitious book of the same name, which tries to excavate the past and recover, buried in the sands of time, the mirror that holds Latin America`s reflection.
Fuentes, who will be in Chicago Friday as part of a book tour, said,
”1992 is an occasion to reflect on the things we have done and the things we have left to do. It is a time to celebrate our culture.”
There is still much to be done in Latin America, where the conquistadors` dreams of wealth have turned into a nightmare of blighted slums, razed rainforests, smog-choked skies and bloody regimes.
But through it all, Fuentes said, the Latin American culture has survived and developed, and the image reflected in the mirror is one in constant flux. ”An identity is always changing,” Fuentes said, his rapid-fire speech shifting effortlessly from Spanish to English (tinged with a hint of accent)
and back again. ”Identity is never something that is retained.”
And therein, Fuentes believes, lies the center of the debate between the purists who want to maintain the United States` ”Americanness” and those who argue for nurturing the rich diversity that is constantly fed by the waves of immigrants that cross our borders every day.
”It is very important for the U.S. to understand that to accept diversity is to gain greater unity,” Fuentes said. ”To reject diversity in the name of unity is to fall apart.
”Mass migrations are already provoking tremendous backlashes in Europe. The only way to avoid that here is to respect our separate identities.”
Juggling ethnic identities in a global economy, he said, is one of the great challenges facing the planet-as great a threat as war and ecological disaster.
The son of a Mexican diplomat, Fuentes grew up among the international power elite in Washington and traveled extensively, dredging up bits and pieces of his past. Making contact with his Indian roots has been a more arduous task.
”I have to make an effort to connect with the Indian, because they are not readily accessible to someone living in the urban areas of Latin America,” Fuentes said. ”But it`s multiculturalism that binds it all.”
The book ”The Buried Mirror” was tailored for English-speaking audiences. Had it been geared to Latin America, it would have taken a harder, more critical look, Fuentes said.
It also was written with the screen in mind, a medium Fuentes is not completely comfortable with, a point driven home during his friendship with the great Spanish director Luis Bunuel.
Fuentes` discomfort with transferring words to the screen is so acute, he has not yet dared to view the 1989 film adaptation of ”The Old Gringo,”
starring Jane Fonda and Gregory Peck.
Still, it is a work whose themes will be echoed again and again as the 500th anniversary of the meeting of two worlds approaches.
As the 1990s unwind toward the millennium, Fuentes joins a growing number of Latin American authors who are looking at their countries` pasts in a bevy of historical novels.
”It`s as if we wanted to take stock of the end of the century,” Fuentes said. ”There is a lot of strife in the world, difficult challenges to the human imagination. Now is the time to do it.”
