In his introduction to this passionate history of Spain and the Spanish-speaking peoples of the Americas, Carlos Fuentes asks the necessary question: What do we really have to celebrate on the five hundredth anniversary of Columbus's historic voyage to the New World? After all, the quincentennial of the "discovery of America" finds the Latin American republics in a state of deep crisis, with inflation, unemployment, and excessive foreign debt threatening their still precarious economic and political institutions. But Fuentes finds much consolation in an amazingly rich cultural heritage, one that has been created with "the greatest joy, the greatest gravity, and the greatest risk" and that lives in art, in literature, and above all in the vital societies of Central and South America.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (Ciudad de Panamá, 11 de noviembre de 1928-Ciudad de México, 15 de mayo de 2012) fue un escritor mexicano. Junto a Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa y Julio Cortázar, es uno de los exponentes centrales del llamado *boom* latinoamericano. Entre sus novelas destacan *La región más transparente, La muerte de Artemio Cruz* y *Aura.* Recibió, entre otros, el Premio Rómulo Gallegos en 1977, el Cervantes en 1987 y el Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras en 1994. Hasta el día de su fallecimiento fue considerado candidato para obtener el Premio Nobel de Literatura por un sector del público y de la crítica literaria.
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Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 – May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are *The Death of Artemio Cruz* (1962), *Aura* (1962), *Terra Nostra* (1975), *The Old Gringo* (1985) and *Christopher Unborn* (1987). In his obituary, *The New York Times* described Fuentes as "one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world" and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the "explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s". He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Fuente/Source: [Wikipedia](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Fuentes)
