Carlos Fuentes

Anthony De Palma euloguizes him in the New York Times: Carlos Fuentes, Mexico’s elegant public intellectual and grand man of letters, whose panoramic novels captured the complicated essence of his country’s history for readers around the world, died on Tuesday in Mexico City. Mr. Fuentes was one the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world, a catalyst, along with Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and Julio Cortazar, of the explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and ’70s known as “El Boom.” He wrote plays, short stories, political nonfiction and more than a dozen novels, many of them chronicles of tangled love, that were acclaimed throughout Latin America. Mr. Fuentes received wide recognition in the United States in 1985 with his novel “The Old Gringo,” a convoluted tale of the American writer Ambrose Bierce, who disappeared during the Mexican Revolution. The first book by a Mexican novelist to become a best seller north of the border, it was made into a film starring Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda, released in 1989.

In the tradition of Latin American writers, Mr. Fuentes was an outspoken public intellectual, writing magazine, newspaper and journal articles that criticized the Mexican government during the long period of sometimes repressive single-party rule that ended in 2000 with the election of an opposition candidate, Vicente Fox Quesada. Mr. Fuentes was more ideological than political. He tended to embrace justice and basic human rights regardless of political labels. He initially supported Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba, but turned against it as Castro became increasingly authoritarian. He openly sympathized with Indian rebels in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, and publicly skewered the administration of George W. Bush. Mr. Fuentes was appointed Mexico’s ambassador to France in 1975, but he resigned two years later to protest the appointment of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz as ambassador to Spain. Mr. Díaz Ordaz had been president of Mexico in 1968 when Mexican troops opened fire on student protesters in Mexico City.
An unusual commitment to his ideals.


Mr. Fuentes is survived by his wife, Silvia Lemus, and a daughter, Cecilia, by a previous marriage to the actress Rita Macedo, who died in 1973. Two children from his marriage to Ms. Lemus, Carlos and Natasha, died before him.

How unusual, that bith children died before him.

Time magazine also eulogizes him. Author Carlos Fuentes, who played a dominant role in Latin America's novel-writing boom by delving into the failed ideals of the Mexican revolution, died Tuesday in a Mexico City hospital. He was 83. Mexico's National Council for Culture for the Arts confirmed the death of Mexico's most celebrated novelist. The cause was not immediately known, said the culture official, who was not authorized to speak to the media. Mexican media reported Fuentes died at the Angeles del Pedregal hospital, where he was being treated for heart problems. The loss was immediately mourned worldwide via Twitter and across Mexican airwaves.

In fact, I learned about his passing via Twitter. And there I also saw the tribute given him by Yaoni Sánchez.