Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz as Modern Day Mexican Allegory

Like the other Latin American writers who comprised the “Boom” movement in the sixties, Carlos Fuentes uses magic realism to structure his novel in a moving

 account of the spiritual quest of one man who, in his final hours, finally and somewhat unsatisfactorily reconciles the meaning of his life.   His life, from his ascendancy to power in Mexico, his suppression of the peasants, to his eventual descent, parallels the struggle for independence in Mexico.

            The novel is told in retrospect, starting from present, then 1914 to 1960,  from the unsentimental (sometimes bitter, sometimes poignant) viewpoint of a dying old man, who traces his life, while watching it slip away.  In his final hours, he rages against (and at other times, embraces) the pain that cripples his body, while recounting the path that has led him to a small room filled with clothes he’s never worn, and family who has never really loved him.    

This is a complex and confusing book and asks much more from the reader than simply to be read until the turn of the next page.  There are viewpoint changes that work because of the emotional closeness they evoke which effectively tie us to this man’s life. At times, this unasked for task of the reader seems to be almost too great, yet the beauty and elegance of the prose, the naked savagery of the landscape and the people, beckons those who will to take the journey with him, and seems reward enough.

            There are moments in the book where the reader cannot help but rage against the unfairness and realism of life depicted here; the brutal hanging of an innocent young girl, the sacrifice of one person’s life (and happiness) for another; the corruption and exploitation of people unable to fight back. Within the context of the novel as political allegory, however, it is a pathos that must be acknowledged. 

            It is a disturbing book to read; not because it exposes the ambiguity of one man’s life, but with its unsentimental (daring and beautiful) prose forces the reader to confront both the ugly realism and consequences of life; just as the narrator must eventually accept as his fate the gangrene that eats away at his intestines resulting in the complete destruction of a man’s body (and his country).

            Page (136) is remarkable; never have I seen one small word express so much with the use of  “Mexico’s password”; Motherfucker.  There is a lot of anger here as Fuentes tells it straight- Mexico has been screwed.

            There is the most black and delicious humor as Artemio Cruz watches gleefully from bed the sad sight of his wife and daughter frantically looking for his will-“Seeing the two of them down on all fours on the mound of jackets and trousers, digging through shoes, showing me their fat thighs, shaking their asses, panting obscenely-only then does the bitter sweetness cloud my eyes.” (157).

            Most powerful to me, however, was the parallel of life and birth, starting on page 305 that begins with the narrator’s own birth, “He, curled unto himself, in the center of those contractions, he with his head dark with blood, hanging, held by the most tenuous threads: open to life, at last.”  And finally on page 307, “Artemio Cruz…name… “Useless… “Heart”… “Massage… “Useless”… You will no longer know…I carried you within and I shall die with you…all three…We shall die…You…are dying…have died…

I shall die”

            How should Fuentes' narrative be placed in perspective in the embattled struggle ongoing in modern day Mexico?