Carlos Fuentes - Political Views

Political Views

The Los Angeles Times described Fuentes' politics as "moderate liberal", noting that he criticized "the excesses of both the left and the right". Fuentes was a long-standing critic of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) government that ruled Mexico between 1929 and the election of Vicente Fox in 2000, and later of Mexico's inability to reduce drug violence. He has expressed his sympathies with the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas. Fuentes was also critical of U.S. foreign policy, including Ronald Reagan's opposition to the Sandinistas, George W. Bush's anti-terrorism tactics, U.S. immigration policy, and the role of the U.S. in the Mexican Drug War. His politics caused him to be blocked from entering the United States until a Congressional intervention in 1967. Once, after being denied permission to travel to a 1963 New York City book release party, he responded "The real bombs are my books, not me". Much later in his life, he commented that "The United States is very good at understanding itself, and very bad at understanding others."

Initially a supporter of Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, Fuentes turned against Castro after being branded a "traitor" to Cuba in 1965 for attending a New York conference and the 1971 imprisonment of poet Heberto Padilla by the Cuban government. The Guardian described him as accomplishing "the rare feat for a leftwing Latin American intellectual of adopting a critical attitude towards Fidel Castro's Cuba without being dismissed as a pawn of Washington." Fuentes also criticized Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, dubbing him "a tropical Mussolini".

Fuentes' last message on Twitter read, "There must be something beyond slaughter and barbarism to support the existence of mankind and we must all help search for it."