Book Review: The Eagle`s Throne by Carlos Fuentes

From Monsters and Critics/Kirkus:

First published in Spanish in 2002, the veteran Mexican author`s ebullient revival of the epistolary novel casts a frosty eye on future (and contemporary) geopolitics. In the year 2020, lame-duck Mexican president Lorenzo Terán provokes the U.S. (and its chief executive, Condoleeza Rice) by formally protesting the presence of American troops in neighboring Colombia, and threatening to follow OPEC`s lead in setting prices for oil shipped north.

Mexico`s conduit to the rest of the world—its satellite communication system (which is routed through Miami)—mysteriously goes down. The politically active find they`re able to communicate only by writing letters—and Fuentes`s richly comic premise begins to disclose a teeming little world of interconnected intrigues. Machiavellian beauty Mar'a del Rosario Galván schemes to place her handsome, sexually resourceful young 'protg,' Nicolás Valdivia, on 'the eagle`s throne' (i.e., Mexico`s presidency, limited by law to a single six-year term).

But Nicolás is a front, employed to pave the way for Mar'a`s longtime lover, Secretary of State Bernal Herrera. Meanwhile, a former president fidgets in retirement, hungry for a return to power. A yes-man opportunist is set up as a straw man whom Valdivia can easily topple. Truculent General C'cero Arrunza dreams of establishing an efficient military dictatorship. These and other machinations are seen in the contexts of Mexico`s embattled political history (recently scarred by the cruel fate visited on doomed na™f populist candidate Tomás Moctezuma Moro); skeletons hidden in numerous closets; and Nicolás`s inconvenient independence.

The world outside spins on, blithely unconcerned (nonagenarian Fidel Castro still thrives in Cuba)—and a Downs Syndrome child, an embarrassment locked safely away from public view, speaks the novel`s poignant final words. Of course, the detailed (often redundant) exchanges of letters are anything but realistic. Still, in a gratifying return to form, Fuentes handles the hoary old convention with impressive finesse.

A nerve-grating cautionary tale, and one of his best books.