Mexico’s Literary War Is Political

Intellectuals have traditionally posessed a disproportionate weight in Latin American society. They sway public opinion and influence governments in ways unheard of in the United States. Intellectuals are part of the Latin American power Establishment, stars on the political and cultural scene.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Mexico. The absence of other legitimate, fully developed institutions leaves a void that intellectuals, as individuals or as groups, rush to fill. Until its recent elections, Mexico, more than most other Latin American nations, maintained a relative societal vacuum. Political parties never flourished--except for the governing Party of the Institutionalized Revolution--or PRI--that exists as an arm of the state. The media are either honest but marginal, or powerful but corrupt--and thus discredited. Labor unions and other grass-roots organizations are in a similar situation. Intellectuals often serve as a silent society’s self-designated spokesmen.

The consequences are obvious: The intellectual’s role in Mexican society is a constant subject of discussion. When novelists, poets, painters or scholars argue with the state or among themselves, much more is involved than scholarly infighting. The past, present and future of the nation’s soul is often the real issue behind arcane discussions concerning literary innovations or muralism as a national register of the country’s history.

Mexico’s vigorous cultural personality--its marvelous colors and shapes, sounds and fantasies--turns out generation after generation of artists, writers and thinkers. But for the past quarter-century, only two intellectuals can be described as institutions--Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes. Their views and sensitivities permeate the nation’s culture. Yet because they dominate cultural life, they can be the focus of furious debates, unconditional sympathies and violent disagreements.

The most recent chapter in the never-ending discussion about their roles in Mexico involves Fuentes’ politics, his “Mexicanness” and his standing as chief spokesman for Latin America in the United States. The novelist’s foes and defenders have exchanged letters and insults in Mexico’s newspapers and journals for weeks now.

This debate was started by a Fuentes detractor, the up-and-coming, right-of-center biographer Enrique Krauze, who, as managing editor of Paz’s monthly, Vuelta, is acknowledged as the poet’s favorite political disciple. Krauze, commissioned by the New Republic magazine, wrote a lengthy piece on Fuentes that also appeared in Mexico. Because Krauze is little known in the United States, his essay received scant notice north of the border. But in Mexico, the article, in the June issue of Vuelta, was perceived as a hatchet job. Krauze’s colleagues in other publications responded with indignation and reopened the debate on what Fuentes represents in Mexico and the United States.

Fuentes’ critics in Mexico and the United States formulated a three-pronged attack--personal, literary and political--with one purpose: to question Fuentes’ legitimacy as a spokesman for Latin America.

In a sense, they are right in worrying about Fuentes’ influence abroad. Although there are other Mexican intellectuals with a voice north of the Rio Grande, and other Latin American novelists--Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa, to name two--as well-known as he in the United States, only Fuentes has been able to translate his literary prestige into U.S. political clout on behalf of Latin America. Because he speaks from the left of the political spectrum, Fuentes is vulnerable to attack from the right. The best way to criticize him is to question his credentials in Mexico: as a Mexican, a writer and a political figure.

Personal criticism of Fuentes is most easily dismissed, for it rests on a traditional conservative argument used often by the Mexican government against its enemies--but rarely in intellectual circles. It paints Fuentes as not a true Mexican because he spent too much time abroad, first as a child and then again in middle age. He speaks English and French too well and includes too many foreign references in his literature and political writing.

Yet those who know Fuentes say he is perhaps too much a man of his time and country--the quintessential product of Mexico’s National University Law School, class of 1950, where his classmates included President Miguel de la Madrid and opposition leader Porfirio Munoz Ledo.

The literary criticism directed at Fuentes is best left to literary critics. But it should be noted that Paz, who knows literature as few others, felt it necessary to disassociate himself from Krauze’s complaints, in this field at least, with a recently published letter. A generation of Mexican readers owes a debt to Fuentes’ major novels--particularly those of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s--which remain as relevant today as 30 years ago.

But the most important criticism is political. It centers on Fuentes’ stand on Central America and, in particular, U.S. aid to the Contras in Nicaragua. Fuentes has expressed sympathy for the Sandinista cause in the face of Reagan Administration aggression, and conservatives in the United States are upset over his views--both because of his eloquence and because his ideas seem to represent Latin American opinion. This conservative U.S. attitude dovetails with Mexican conservative sentiment, as formulated in such magazines as Vuelta and in the political stands of intellectuals such as Paz or his disciples. Paz and U.S. neo-conservatives emphasize the importance of supporting democracy in Nicaragua and the dangers of Soviet and Cuban involvement.

Fuentes, along with a majority of Mexican and Latin American intellectuals, stresses the illegality of U.S. attempts to overthrow a legitimate government. Paz and Krauze are more in tune with U.S. conservative thoughts; Fuentes with the Latin American mainstream--because of anti-interventionism.

But the most far-reaching aspect of the current debate has to do with the sea change buffeting Mexican society. Intellectuals in Mexico long argued over events in other parts of the world. Now, they increasingly debate Mexican issues. The intellectual elite is divided by the July 6 election, by Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s accession to the presidency on the platform of economic reform, the emergence of a powerful left-of-center opposition led by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas and the widespread perception of electoral fraud. Paz and Fuentes seem to be on different sides of the political dividing line.

Salinas, seen as a young reformist, was regarded as the progressive PRI candidate of the future, while Cardenas was initially seen as a populist candidate of the past. In the fight for the presidency, however, they somehow traded places. Salinas became identified with the private sector and the United States--forces of conservatism in Mexico--and hostage to the most retrograde, traditionalist forces within the PRI Establishment.

He was elected by votes attributed to, though not necessarily cast by, the most backward sectors of Mexican society. To “get out” that vote and be ratified, Salinas cut deals with the most conservative sectors of the PRI machinery.

Cardenas, on the other hand, came to represent hopes for democratization. Without abandoning his somewhat nostalgic economic program, he moved toward the center on many issues and turned into a national symbol of change. This was confirmed at the polls: The educated, urban middle class, together with younger voters, supported Cardenas--nearly 80% of his votes came from urban areas.

Cardenas became the candidate of the future, Salinas of a past few in Mexico want to conserve. With time this may change; for now it is a political fact of life. Paz and Fuentes have both stated--in agreement with most Mexican intellectuals--that what they consider best for the nation is a “social democratic, left-of-center” government, similar to those headed by Francois Mitterrand in France or Felipe Gonzalez in Spain.

But the poet evidently sees Salinas as best-suited for that mission. He has written, “The opposition has not convinced (me) of their claims of electoral fraud.” For Paz, the election itself did not provide sufficient grounds for altering this conviction. Another member of Vuelta’s editorial board wrote: “The country has the right to repudiate (electoral) fraud, but should not exercise that right during these presidential elections.”

This apparent contradiction has led many in Mexico to say conservative Mexican intellectuals are most enthusiastic about free elections and democracy when they concern other nations--or when they favor the Mexican right. They say these intellectuals appear far more adamant when making demands for full democracy in Nicaragua or Cuba, for example. When clean elections favor the left, as seemed to be the case on July 6, or are detrimental to a PRI candidate whose economic policy they espouse, their enthusiasm dampens.

Paz may not be convinced by the opposition’s arguments regarding fraud, but that opposition--left and right--represents half the nation and seems to have convinced nearly everyone else of widespread tampering. There is no agreement in Mexico over whether the fraud determined who won, or if it simply padded Salinas’ tally, but few Mexicans believe Salinas beat Cardenas by nearly 20 points.

The issue then becomes simple: If what Mexico needs is a “left-of-center, social democratic government,” who is best able to bring this about, Salinas or Cardenas?

This is the debate in Mexico today, and in it, Fuentes seems to make a better case than Paz. While not writing off Salinas’ possibilities of overcoming his handicaps and bringing reform, Fuentes points out that a Mexican Mitterrand or Gonzalez has to come “from the left and from below.” He must be legitimate and credible, winning in a clean election. He must also have the support of politically active and aware sectors of Mexican society--the “more modern sectors,” who, Fuentes said in a recent interview, voted for Cardenas. Fuentes supports a full-fledged democracy now, regardless of Nicaragua today or Mexico tomorrow, and whoever it favors: left, right or center.

In the early 1960s, when Jean-Paul Sartre was making life difficult for Gen. Charles de Gaulle over Algerian independence, the question arose whether he should be prosecuted for violating French anti-sedition laws. De Gaulle said no, explaining, “One does not jail Voltaire.” The analogy is relevant: National institutions like Sartre, Fuentes or Paz should be treated with respect; they are the stuff of which nations are proud--and they deserve it.