The Old Gringo: A Novel
by Carlos Fuentes
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Book Summary Information
Author: Carlos FuentesTranslator: Margaret Sayers Peden
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-02-20
ISBN: 0374530521
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Book Reviews of The Old Gringo: A Novel
Book Review: "To be a gringo in Mexico, that is euthanasia."
Summary: 5 Stars
Though this novel has all the hallmarks of a recognized classic, it is, surprisingly, only twenty-five years old. Set during Mexico's civil war in 1914, the author shows Mexico determined to be independent and true to its own history, while the US wants to create outcomes there which coincide with US goals and political agendas here. For more than forty years, Fuentes has also been fascinated with the story of American author/journalist Ambrose Bierce, who is believed to have vanished in Mexico during that war, and he exploits this long interest by making Bierce the "Old Gringo" of the title.
Bierce, age seventy-one at the time of his disappearance, had traveled the world and had already written most of what he felt he had to say. Drawn to Mexico, where a popular revolution was threatening to change the country's history, Bierce is thought to have gone there to join up with Pancho Villa and his men, who were fighting the federales and the government of President Victoriano Huerta, known as "the Jackal." Bierce never returned, his fate unknown.
On the level of plot, this is a story told by Harriet Winslow, a thirty-one-year-old American from Washington, D.C., who has been hired as a teacher by the wealthy Miranda family. Fuentes uses flashbacks to reveal Harriet's background and that of the Old Gringo, who has just arrived in these lands. Harriet regards the Old Gringo as a father figure, understanding that he has come to Mexico to die, while he in turn sees her as his final temptation before death. Harriet has had a brief but passionate relationship with Tomas Arroyo, the general who has driven out the Miranda family and hanged many of the federales protecting the property, and she is tormented by that relationship.
Fuentes clearly admires the Old Gringo, but he also shows him to be human, a man grappling with his future, even as he believes that he has no future. The sense of each person's connection to the past through family permeates the novel, and as the characters separately try to make their own lives worth living, they parallel the goals of the rebels who, as hard-working poor, are determined to protect their own past and their country's history. The novel's outcome--the Old Gringo's death--looms over all the action from the outset, which begins with a grim scene of his exhumation, but the novel is not just a story on one level. It is also a story illustrating the political differences between Mexico and the US, between a country with a long and complex cultural history and one that is not even two hundred years old, and between the poor and helpless victims of economic and political aggression and their exploitation by wealthy autocrats.
Fuentes spends much time describing the characters' philosophical quandaries (some of them repetitious), but he also suggests Mexican myths related to the sun, moon, and stars. Nature comes to life here, and symbols abound--the desert being the ultimate image of war. These images contrast with artificial excesses of church décor and, on a smaller scale, with the Miranda hacienda and its elaborate mirrored ballroom, in which many soldiers see their full images for the first time. The contrasts between real life and its artificial reflections, between the realities of war and the perhaps unrealistic dreams of its participants, and between remembered history and its loss, add significance and thematic richness to the author's seemingly simple story. Mary Whipple
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