Artemio Cruz is dying, after 71 years. As he dies, in between wishing to hear the conversations his right-hand man audio recorded over the years, or laughing at his wife and daughter's naked desire to find his will, Artemio thinks back to many different points of his life over the decades.
Fuentes doesn't move in a chronological order with the flashbacks. The first is in 1941, when Cruz is a powerful businessman, who uses his newspaper and his influence to grease the wheels for American investors and crush labor dissent. The next is in 1919, when Cruz arrives at the hacienda of his future father-in-law, supposedly bringing a message from his dead son. Only much later does Fuentes reveal the circumstances of the son's death and Cruz's involvement.
Artemio is not a pitiable figure. There is something to be said for his ability to survive, to grasp and claw and pull his way to the position he reached. But it's also true Cruz is not what people around him perceive. He fought in the Mexican Revolution and survived many battles, but as we see, he survived some of these by luck, and others by simple cowardice. Choosing to let another man bleed to death rather than assist him, because he simply had to get away from the battle, even with no immediate danger.
Whatever he may have believed in joining the Revolution, it was buried under his desire to pull himself to the top over the bodies of many people he used and discarded with broken promises. The Revolution becomes something to invoke in an editorial when he wants to push public opinion one way or the other. This thing is what the Revolution was fought for, or this politician is not the sort we fought to elect.
So it's hard to feel bad for him when he bemoans the loss of the women he professes to love, when Laura asks him to marry her and he feeds her excuses. Or when he wonders why his wife Catalina would never be open with him. She may be the only one who knows her father made her do this to try and save his status (which failed), consigning her to a life with a man she can't bring herself to love without feeling like a traitor. But they both know Artemio was using her as an in to ultimately gain that status and power for himself. Just one more stepping stone on a path to gaining the position to crush others.
Fuentes uses a variety of writing techniques repeatedly. The overlapping conversations are effective. Especially in the present day where Artemio is surrounded by people, all with their own motives. A mass of confusion, combined with everything whirling around in the mind of the dying man. Fuentes blends conversations in the present into reminiscences of the past, blurring the line between the two as Cruz's mind slowly falls apart. The repetition of certain quotes - such as the one about crossing the river on horseback - either build the mystery or - in the case of his repeated requests someone open the window to let in air - contribute to the blurring effect. Is it the same time as when he last asked, or another day entirely? Time largely loses all meaning as Cruz feels himself disintegrationg.
On the other hand, the listing of things, Cruz rattling off all sorts of items or foods or places that he recalled in long paragraphs, that became tedious. It's probably meant as a way that lives can be pared down to simple categories if you choose, that memories can rest entirely on such things. It just felt too drawn out. The point was made. Or if it wasn't, I was too ready for Fuentes to move on to a different tack to care.
'Chaos has no plural.'
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