Carlos Fuentes is a politician-novelist, and “The Eagle’s Throne” is a thoroughly political novel, focused on who will be the president of the Mexican Republic, where the limit of one six-year term and the relative recency and fragility of multiparty democratic government make everything so complicated.
A vision of the near future, “The Eagle’s Throne” is set in the year 2020; as it begins, the Mexican president Lorenzo Terán has precipitated a crisis. Acting on a principled suggestion from his house intellectual, he has challenged the superpower to the north by keeping oil exports to the United States expensive and denouncing the U.S. occupation of Colombia. In instant retaliation the American president (who, it emerges late in the book, is Condoleeza Rice) cuts all electronic communications not just to but within Mexico.
The result is a return to handwritten correspondence, and thus the series of letters from many hands that make up Fuentes’ book.
Though Terán is only two years into his term, the jostling for the succession has already begun, with the leading contenders being two members of his cabinet, one sinister and one more ethical, and the former president, who needs a constitutional amendment if he is to be re-elected. The fervid plotting, scheming, double-crossing and assassination that ensue are vividly evoked in the correspondence among scores of interested participants, none of whom is ever quite honest with any other.
Fuentes’ dedication alludes to “the hope of a better Mexico,” and his picture of a culture characterized by breathtaking corruption, political murder, meaningless legislative gestures and indifference to the public good certainly leaves ample room for improvement. There are frequent comparisons with other amoral political arrangements, ranging from Machiavelli’s Florence to the late Richard M. Nixon’s presidential administration.
The prevalence of names like Tácito, Seneca, Cícero and César among the major players and the echoing of events under Nero and Caligula also invite comparison with the amoral intrigue of imperial Rome.
Fuentes clearly knows his subject and cares deeply about it. What he does not know very well is how to manage epistolary fiction. His correspondents endlessly provide exposition unneeded by the recipients of the letters. One woman writes to her longtime beloved, “You’re the son of humble and honest social activists, Bernal and Candelaria Herrera”; another letter begins “President Lorenzo Terán has died,” before reminding the recipient that he was at the funeral the previous day. Yet another letter includes this evidence that even Fuentes is uneasy; one member of Congress writes to another, “I won’t bother to tell you what you already know. Or perhaps I’ll tell you again so that you get the full picture. The parties are divided (etc., etc.).”
This is hardly a crippling fault, but the clumsiness gets between the reader and the rich material that the letterwriters are pretending to tell each other, very often needlessly, so Fuentes can tell it to us.
This rich material includes some strong characterizations of Mexico’s ruling elite, including not just politicians but behind-the-scenes operators, chiefly the fascinating, manipulative María del Rosario Galvan; the deep history underlying the contemporary, with references to Santa Anna and Moctezuma as routine explanations of the politics of 2020; and copious maxims, along the lines of “Politics is the art of swallowing frogs without flinching.”
By showing us who swallows them most ruthlessly and follows the dead president onto the eagle’s throne, Fuentes dramatizes the almost unbelievable complexities and compromises of his country’s politics.
Merritt Moseley teaches literature at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
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The Eagle’s Throne
By Carlos Fuentes, translated by Kristina Cordero
Random House, 352 pages, $26.95
