Mexican author Carlos Fuentes dead at 83
Source: BBC
15 May 2012 Last updated at 20:40 GMT
The Mexican author Carlos Fuentes has died aged 83.
Fuentes was one of the most prolific Latin American writers known equally for his fiction and his essays on politics and culture.
His most famous works were The Death of Artemio Cruz and The Old Gringo.
He was associated with the Latin American Boom - a literary movement made up of mainly young authors whose politically critical works broke with established traditions.
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Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18081034
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(14,029 posts)Judi Lynn
(160,656 posts)January 1989
Uncle Sam, stay home
By Carlos Fuentes
As the United States inaugurates a new president, this is a good time to look back on mistakes and lost opportunities in Latin America, so as not to repeat the former and so as to recapture the latter.
The primary reason for these recent failures is the United States unique obsession with events in Central America, particularly in Nicaragua. The last administrationdespite eight years of feverish activity, rattling rhetoric, and millions of dollars spentfailed to overthrow the government in Managua. The administration also failed to defeat the rebels in El Salvador. Moreover, the Reagan approach failed to bend the independent will of President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica or to pressure him into abandoning either his own territories or his policies favoring the use of diplomacy over the use of force. It should be noted, too, that all the rhetoric and military spending failed to prevent violent outbreaks against the U.S. presence in Honduras; and in Panama, the Reagan administration put forth a blundering policy which, instead of overthrowing General Noriega, has overthrown the Panamanian economy.
General Noriega would now be out of power if the United States had respected the diplomatic initiatives of November 1987 by the former presidents of Venezuela, Colombia, and Costa Rica. Noriega had agreed to leave in May of 1988, without losing face and without U.S. pressure. But the United States decided that it, and not Latin America, should appear to be the determining factor in Noriegas departure. The Bush Administration must seriously ask itself what it wants in Latin America: peace through security arrangements, diplomacy, and cooperation with independent governments; or war through proxy armies, subservient governments, and alienated populations. And it must ask with whom it is most likely to achieve what it wants.
We share a hemisphere of enormous contrasts and vast inequalitiesnot the least of which is the asymmetry of power between Latin America and the United States. This is why we in Latin America have sought mightily to arrive at diplomatic arrangements that would equalize our relationships with other countries and limit the power of the United States within mutually acceptable bounds. Each country in Central America is struggling to define its own national identity and its own strategies of problem solving. Change is the name of the game, and there is more to come. We are not your enemies; we simply know the ground better than you do; we remember more than you do.
More:
http://harpers.org/archive/1989/01/0058734