where many heard that same tale or believed to recognize it perfectly in the senseless, inarticulate, and unintelligible harangue of the oldest baboon. At last the courtier told me how the Iscobascos, whenever they passed through that region, often remembered to carry provisions for those miserable animals, like the sack that he himself had brought on this occasion, although it wasn’t always guaranteed that they would come out to the path, because during some periods, at the foot of the Meseged wall, where the great curtain of rain that ran down cliff face kept the slope permanently damp, there grew a few nutritious plants that the baboons knew how to identify and collect. But they would end up extinct, in spite of the babies that were born, because the land and conditions were not adequate for their lives, and even more so because, having shaped themselves according to the teachings of man, they’d become more like children, less able to fend for themselves. This oldest baboon that today asked for alms for his own, imitating the role and even the mannerisms of the man who he’d known as father and protector, would perhaps pass down, upon his death, his incongruous speech to the oldest male who would succeed him, and the begging and the reliance on the aid of strangers would be perpetuated among the baboons, undoubtedly, like a human condition from which they no longer knew how to return, with a great reduction in the use of their own unique faculties with which they would be able to survive and prosper. And if, for example, those unhappy creatures would just travel a distance of six thousand horses to the west, along the wall of the Meseged, they would come to the lush and ample walnut groves that extended to the regions of the Aldeas Soberanas, whose production the Atabates or the Aldeanos de Soberanía, in whose territories the forests grew, were unable to exhaust; but the baboons found themselves inevitably tied to the desert and the path where their master, or more precisely, their father had given them a way of life that, as precarious as it was, continued to constitute for them an inescapable condition.
Translated by Will Vanderhyden
2 Each vertical unit equals 2/3 of a horse—measured lengthwise.
WORK
1951, Industrias y andanzas de Alfanhuí, Talleres Gráficos Cies (novel).
1956, El Jarama, Destino (novel).
1961, “Y el corazón caliente” Destino (short story included in Destino’s second edition of Industrias y andanzas de Alfanhuí).
1961, “Dientes, Pólvora, febrero” Destino (short story included in Destino’s second edition of Industrias y andanzas de Alfanhuí).
1966, “Personas y animales en una fiesta de bautizo,” in Revista de Occidente (essay).
1974, Las semanas del jardín, Mauricio d’Ors (essay).
1986, Mientras no cambien los dioses, nada habrá cambiado, Alianza (essay).
1986, El testimonio de Yarfoz, Alianza (novel).
1986, Campo de Marte 1. El ejército nacional, Alianza (essay).
1986, La homilía del ratón, El País (essay).
1992, Ensayos y artículos I, Destino (essay).
1992, Ensayos y artículos II, Destino (essay).
1993, Vendrán más años malos y nos harán más ciegos, Destino (essay).
1993, Esas Yndias equivocadas y malditas, Destino 1993 (essay).
2000, El alma y la vergüenza, Destino (essay).
2002, La hija de la guerra y la madre de la patria, Destino (essay).
2003, Non Olet, Destino (essay).
2005, El Feco, Destino, (stories and fragments).
2005, Glosas castellanas y otros ensayos (diversiones), Fondo de Cultura Económica (essay).
2007, Sobre la guerra, Destino (essay).
2008, God & Gun. Apuntes de polemología, Destino (essay).
2009, “Guapo” y sus isótopos, Destino (essay).
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS
1975, Alfanhui: A translation with critical Introduction of Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio’s Industrias y andanzas de Alfanhuí, translated by Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, Purdue University Press (novel and critical introduction).
2000, The Adventures of the Ingenious Alfanhuí, translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, Dedalus (novel).
2005, The River: El Jarama, translated by Margaret Jull Costa, Dedalus (novel).
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AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS
1955, Premio Nadal for El Jarama.
1957, Premio de La Critica de Narrativa Castellana for El Jarama.
1983, Premio del Periodismo Francisco Cerecedo for his defense of freedom of expression.
1987, Finalist for the Premio Nacional de Narrativa for El testimonio de Yarfoz.
1991, Premio La Comunidad de Madrid.
1994, Premio Nacional de Ensayo for Vendrán más años malos y nos harán más ciegos.
1994, Premio Ciudad de Barcelona.
2002, Premio Mariano de Cavia, for his work as a journalist.
2003, Premio Extremadura a la Creación.
2004, Premio Cervantes.
2009, Premio Nacional de las Letras Españolas.
The life of Carlos Fuentes could write itself on a world map. Born in 1928 in Panama City, where his father, a member of the Mexican diplomatic core, was assigned at the time. He received a cosmopolitan education, attending prestigious prep schools in Ecuador, Uruguay, Brazil, and Washington, D.C., where his family moved in 1933, contributing to his early bilingualism. During those years, his father Rafael and his mother Berta made sure that he spent all his summer vacations in Mexico, in the care of his grandmothers, to whom he owes his mother tongue and the first books he read. As he said on one occasion, “I learned to imagine Mexico before being a Mexican.” After a few years, they left Washington, D.C., this time heading to Chile.
In 1944 they moved to Buenos Aires. The Nazi environment and the proliferation of anti-Semitic prejudices present in Argentine schools in those years prompted the young Fuentes—supported by his parents—to abandon his studies. Throughout his life, political and social engagement were to be fundamental characteristics of his intellectual trajectory: “What a writer can
