A New Time for Mexico - Hardcover

Fuentes, Carlos

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747534020 ISBN 13: 9780747534020

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 1997

Synopsis

This collection of essays examines how Mexico is facing a new time, even as it must stay true to its place in history. Torn between tradition and modernity, impatient with an exhausted political system, but unsure how and with what to replace it. Mexicans are struggling to make the transition from authoritarian to democratic politics. But where will they find the serenity and strength to respond to their political, economic and moral crises? Mexico's history is an amalgam of Mayan mythmakers, Aztec emperors, Spanish conquistadors, Yankee and French invaders, dictators and peasant revolutionaries, who not only play a part in Mexico's past but still provide influences today. This study discusses the origins and nature of the unforeseen, tumultuous events that have recently transformed Mexico's politics and society. The year 1994 began with the rebellion in Chiapas and continued with a rash of assassinations, the break between presidents Salinas and Zedillo, and continual traumas for a society that has never known - yet hungers for - democratic rule. Fuentes takes the reader on his personal quest for the human meaning of this new time. Carlos Fuentes is the author of "Old Gringo", "Where the Air is Clear", "A Change of Skin" and "Diana, the Goddess Who Hunts Alone".

About this title

Review

This collection of essays by Carlos Fuentes, Mexican intellectual, man of letters and erstwhile diplomat, seeks to place his country's current convulsive state in a wider historical perspective. He discusses the Mexican Revolution of 1910 as a liberating moment, counterbalanced by a tendency toward a centralized authoritarianism that created the monolithic ruling party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI. Fuentes considers that the PRI was a progressive force originally, but that it became corrupted by the Mexican ruling class's elevation of Anglo-Saxon forms of government, and the application of "savage capitalism" to the detriment of the Mexican people. Fuentes also talks about recent events, including the assassination of his friend, Luis Donaldo Colosio, the PRI presidential candidate, and he includes an exchange with Subcommander Marcos, the Zapatista leader.

Review

"With his exciting analysis of the future of Mexico, Fuentes presents a stirring invocation of the democratic principles which, he believes, must be promoted if Mexico is to honor both its richest and its poorest citizens, its ancient past and its developed future."--"Hispanic Heritage

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0747534020
• ISBN 13: 9780747534020
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224