Revolution Manana: Carlos Fuentes and the revolutionary potential in law and politics.

• Date: 01 July 2019
• Author: Normey, Rob

For me, Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012) remains one of the great writers of the Latin American Boom. He combined his talents as an imaginative novelist and short story writer with an unwavering dedication to participation in the major political and social debates of his time. He operated as a leading public intellectual and cultural ambassador for Mexico, while spending considerable time teaching in the U.S.A. He was perfectly bilingual and indeed bicultural in his vast knowledge of literature, history and film. Fuentes attended the School of Philosophy and Letters and the Law School in Mexico City. He was greatly influenced by his professors and their idealistic sense of the possibility of using international law and human rights norms to advance a progressive form of politics.

I have long been fascinated by Mexico and its often violent but also hopeful history, particularly its revolutionary heritage. I first travelled there in the early 1980s and was overwhelmed by the strange, vibrant and dynamic country I travelled through by bus (often putting the hammock I acquired in Merida to good use). On those long bus journeys, I was quick to pull out the novels of Fuentes as my foremost guide to the history of the ancient land which had so remarkably maintained its traditions in the challenging transition to modernity and 20th century economic development.

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