Fuentes's bold and timely study discusses the origins and nature of the tumultuous events that have recently transformed Mexican politics and society. The rebellion in Chiapas, a rash of assassinations, the break between Presidents Salinas and Zedillo, the continual struggle for democratic self-rule: These and other developments are addressed by one of Mexico's wisest, most influential commentators. "With his exciting analysis of the future of Mexico, Fuentes presents a stirring invocation of the democratic principles which, he believes, must be promoted if Mexico is to honor both its richest and its poorest citizens, its ancient past and its developed future."--"Hispanic Heritage "No one who is interested in Mexico, its past and its future, can afford to miss this brilliant book."—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. "No one who is interested in Mexico, its past and its future, can afford to miss this brilliant book."―Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Carlos Fuentes , Mexico's leading novelist, is also an essayist and writer of screenplays as well as political commentary. Trained as a lawyer, he was Mexico's ambassador to France in the 1970s. Among his many novels are Terra Nostra, The Death of Artemio Cruz, The Old Gringo and Christopher Unborn . New Time for Mexico (with a New Preface) By Carlos Fuentes University of California Press Copyright © 1997 Carlos Fuentes All right reserved. ISBN: 9780520211834 CHAPTER ONE MEXICO........The Face of Creation To see Mexico from the air is to look upon the face of creation.Our everyday, earthbound vision takes flight and is transformedinto a vision of the elements. Mexico is a creation of water andfire, of wind and earthquake, of the moon and the sun. Not just one sun but the five suns of ancient Mexican cosmogony.First comes the Sun of Water, which presides over the creationof the world and ends in the storms and floods that foretell thecoming eras--Sun of Earth, Sun of Wind, and Sun of Fire--eachending in catastrophe until we arrive at the fifth sun, our own,which awaits the final cataclysm. Sun of Water Coursing through Mexico are serpentine rivers, mere threads offertility in the midst of deserts, opulent tropical undulations pouringslow and wide into the sea Over the flowing waters of thePapaloapan, river of butterflies, over the still waters of Lake Patzcuaro,furrowed by dragonflies, flutters the goddess Itzpapalotl, astar in the Aztec pantheon. Her very name, Obsidian Butterfly,resounds with the ambiguity of all the elements, her fragile multicoloredwing at once a fearful sacrificial knife. She is the first sign of creation, proclaimed by the fleeting liquidelement. It is not the nature of water to be always placid, and whenit lies as calm as a mirror locked in the crater of a volcano, itsimage is ominous indeed, for its supernatural tranquillity promisesan imminent commotion. What are our years when seen againstthe mountains, millennia of stone? Who can really believe thatthese rock-encircled lakes in the craters of Toluca and Puebla alwayswore, and always will, this same metallic, motionless sheen? Now everything moves again. The Usumacinta River flows on,inseparable from the forest it waters, equally inseparable from theclouds that gather over both jungle and river, as if they, too, weredrawn along by the current. We know that all three--sky, river,and jungle--hide and protect the civilizations that slumber beneaththem, pretending to be dead, giving signs of life only in the mysteryof the figures drawn on the rocks beside the Planchon River andin the ghostly processions of the frescoes at Bonampak. The stillness of the waters is illusory. Majestic waterfalls cascade,washing away the land and its history. Mountains collapse into thesea. Sandbars break the very waters of the sea. And the surf on thecoast of Jalisco shows the earth as a dark-clawed monster, besiegedand battered by the fury of the sea. The land is a portrait drawn by the sea. But we have only toturn the picture around to imagine the contrary. Is this not ratherthe portrait of the sea as it is attacked by a hungry, ferocious land,an ambitious, aggressive, imprisoned land that challenges the sea,ruler of the greater part of the planet's surface, for its dominion? Unquiet, tremulous, and insatiable, fearful and defensive, landof teeth and nails, jaws and talons--for a moment the land ofMexico shakes. The earth is about to speak. Earth will come todominate water. The second sun comes to life amid awe and terror. Sun of Earth From the heights, the dead volcanoes--Popocatepetl, Iztaccihuatl,the Nevado de Toluca--signal that their silence is no insuranceagainst catastrophe, but rather a portent of the next tremor. Paricutin,the youngest volcano, smiles like a mischievous child, warningus that one day. curl of smoke may appear in a Michoacanfarmer's field, spiraling up from the bowels of the furrowed earththat shakes its shoulders, vomiting flame and ash until, in a matterof hours, it r