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Things Have Changed In Latin America Now. We Mostly Have Democratic Governments In Latin America, So The Position Of The Writer Has Changed. It Is Not As Neruda Used To Say, That A Latin American Writer Walks Around With The Body Of His People On His Back. Now, We Have Citizens, We Have Public Means Of Expression, Political Parties, Congress, Unions. So, The Writer's Position Has Changed, We Now Consider Ourselves To Be Citizens - Not Spokespeople For Everybody - But Citizens That Participate In The Political And Social Process Of The Country.

-Carlos Fuentes

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Things Have Changed In

Carlos Fuentes

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Things Have Changed In Latin America Now. We Mostly Have Democratic Governments In Latin America, So The Position Of The Writer Has Changed. It Is Not As Neruda Used To Say, That A Latin American Writer Walks Around With The Body Of His People On His Back. Now, We Have Citizens, We Have Public Means Of Expression, Political Parties, Congress, Unions. So, The Writer's Position Has Changed, We Now Consider Ourselves To Be Citizens - Not Spokespeople For Everybody - But Citizens That Participate In The Political And Social Process Of The Country.

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What's Happened At The Abu Ghraib Prison In Iraq Is One Of The Grossest Violations Of Human Rights Under The Geneva Conventions That We Have Record Of. It Is Simply Monstrous.

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No Government Functions Without The Grease Of Corruption.

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I Have Two Children Who Died Before Reaching 30, So Who Am I To Complain About Being Alive?

Here Among My Books, My Wife, My Friends And My Loves, I Have Plenty Of Reasons To Keep Living.

The Language Of Mexicans Springs From Abysmal Extremes Of Power And Impotence, Domination And Resentment.

Don't Classify Me, Read Me. I'm A Writer, Not A Genre.

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I Believe In Books That Do Not Go To A Ready-made Public. I'm Looking For Readers I Would Like To Make. To Win Them, To Create Readers Rather Than To Give Something That Readers Are Expecting. That Would Bore Me To Death.

In A World Torn By Every Kind Of Fundamentalism - Religious, Ethnic, Nationalist And Tribal - We Must Grant First Place To Economic Fundamentalism, With Its Religious Conviction That The Market, Left To Its Own Devices, Is Capable Of Resolving All Our Problems. This Faith Has Its Own Ayatollahs. Its Church Is Neo-liberalism; Its Creed Is Profit; Its Prayers Are For Monopolies.

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Anything Would Be Better In The Us Than What You Have. As A Government It's Really Very Low Quality, Given The Fact That This Country Produces Eminent Intellectuals, Has Great Universities, And Then The People Who Arrive In Government Are Very Mediocre. The Latin American Situation Has Been Very Different In The First Place, Because Writers Have Spoken For Those Who Have No Voice. The Rate Of Illiteracy, Poverty, Joblessness In Latin America Has Been So Great Throughout Our History That If The Writers Didn't Speak Out For The People, Nobody Would.

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