Weekly Report - 17 May 2012 (WR-12-19)

Mexico lost its greatest novelist this week: Carlos Fuentes, one of the foremost exponents of the genre of magical realism in the Latin American literary ‘boom’ in the 1960s and 70s. A thorn in the side of successive heads of state for constantly berating the lack of true democracy in Mexico, Fuentes recently described all of the candidates competing in this year’s presidential race as “mediocre” and not equal to the task of addressing the spiralling violence in Mexico or getting to the root of social inequalities in the country. His death came just days after one of the most atrocious massacres in the long-running violent turf wars between drug-trafficking organisations in northern Mexico.

Fuentes, 83, died of heart problems days after false reports on the social networking site Twitter maintained that Gabriel García Márquez, 85, another Latin American literary colossus who Fuentes described as “the American Quijote”, had died. The Colombian novelist responded by saying “What the hell is Twitter?” In a recent interview, Fuentes extolled the virtues of social networking sites such as Twitter for denying authoritarian governments a monopoly on information. All governments are very conscious of Twitter as a powerful political tool, however, and are adapting, especially to try and reach out to the often apolitical younger generation. Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón pointedly used the medium to convey his “profound sadness at the passing of our beloved and admired Carlos Fuentes, novelist and universal Mexican”.

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