Word: baltasar
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...Baltasar Bustos, Manuel Varela and Xavier Dorrego frequent the cafes of Buenos Aires. They're in love with Rousseau, Diderot, clocks and, like all selfrespecting romantics, the prospect of Latin American democracy. In Carlos Fuentes' The Campaign, Varela reminisces 10 years later...
Varela's remembrance echoes Fuentes's central point. The heroes of his novel, The Campaign, want to own time and control history. Their proprietory quest-mythologized through Baltasar's 15 year journey-is intellectual and material, self-serving in its revolutionary selflessness...
Varela narrates the novel, and his appropriation of Baltasar's adventures signals his assertion of historical ownership. Having risen to power surrounded by the comforts of his publishing business and his favorite fashionable haunts, Varela secretly records an epic version of Baltasar's experience as a revolutionary warrior. His source is his friend's correspondence-which, incidentally, is not reproduced in the text. Varela presents speculative history as documented fact, and Fuentes's reader may begin to question the very notion of historical truth...
...Baltasar Bustos is an odd hero-chubby and unkempt, literally near-sighted and unabashedly romantic. Obsessed with the young, glamorous Marquise de Cabra, he travels thousands of miles across Latin America to satisfy his passion...
...fact that Baltasar has never met the Marquise heightens the intensity and the futility of his quest, which involves him in military campaigns in the Andes, royalist society in Santiago and religious rebellions in Mexico. Fuentes incorporates a colorful display of the players in the struggle for Latin American independence, with a healthy portion of sex, perversion and violence. Advice-stick around for the ending of the book, a truly masterful culmination...