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Fuentes Carlos 1928 - 2012 (84)

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Carlos Fuentes was a Mexican writer born on November 11, 1928 in Panama City, where his father served at the Mexican Embassy. Carlos grew up in the USA, Chile and Argentina, at the age of 16 he returned to Mexico. He enrolled at the College of Mexico and then at the Law School from which he graduated in 1948. He continued his studies at the University of Geneva in economics and international law and in 1954 returned to Mexico and was appointed to the Press Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At the same time he began to be actively involved in literature, publishing the magazine "Review of Mexican Literature" with collections of his short stories. In 1958 he published his first novel, in 1959 he married the famous Mexican actress Rita Macedo, with whom he had a daughter. The couple divorced in 1966 and while Fuentes had an affair with famous actors and celebrities of the time. In the 1960s, Fuentes lived mainly in Europe, serving in the diplomatic corps, as did his father. In 1962 he wrote "The Death of Artemios Cruz" which is considered his masterpiece. It is the long monologue of a dying distinguished Mexican citizen, with his life story contrasted with the history of Mexico. That year he left the Communist Party of which he had been a member since his student years.

In 1967 he published the novel "Skin Change" which was described as "pornographic, communist, anti-Christian and banned in Mexico. Because of this book, Fuentes was declared an unwanted person in the United States and was banned from entering Puerto Rico. The following year he was exiled to Paris for harshly criticizing the Mexican government for violently and bloodily suppressing student protests shortly before the 1968 Mexico Olympics. In the 1970s he returned to the diplomatic corps and served in France from 1974 to 1978. He resigned from the diplomatic corps and began teaching literature at prestigious US universities (Harvard, Princeton, Columbia). In 1973 he married the Spanish journalist and TV presenter Sylvia Lemus with whom he had 2 children who died before him. The son at the age of 25 from hemophilia and the daughter from a drug overdose at the age of 30. In 1975 h epublished the novel Terra Nostra, which chronicles the history of Spain and Latin America from Roman times to the 20th century. Carlos Fuentes was a regular contributor to the Spanish newspaper El Pais. He died of stomach bleeding on May 15, 2012, at the age of 83, in a private hospital in Mexico City.