Born in Mexico City in 1928 to a diplomat father, Carlos Fuentes grew up primarily in Mexico and the United States. He was living in Mexico in the 1950s, when his first two novels were published (Where the Air is Clear [1958] and The Good Conscience[1959]). His third novel, The Death of Artemio Cruz, established him as an author of world renown. Fuentes began writing it in 1960 in Cuba, after Fidel Castro’s revolution there. At the time “almost the entire intellectual world of Latin America shared a fervor—or at least a sympathy—for the Cuban Revolution” (Krauze, p. 653). It especially touched Mexicans in Fuentes’s generation, who had been struggling to define their national essence and were disturbed by the course onto which their own revolution had veered.
Dual legacy. Fuentes’s novel begins during the reign of President Porfirio Díaz, first a fighter for reform but then a dictator who monopolized power for his own sake. In the 1870s Díaz seized control of the government from the legitimate president, going on to “win” reelection seven times. He governed for 34 years (1876-80 and 1884-1911) of painful poverty but also blessed peace.
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