The Eagle’s Throne

Author: Carlos Fuentes
Publisher: Random House

Carlos Fuentes is arguably Mexico’s finest living writer – he has eight major international literary awards that argue his case – and his latest book, The Eagle’s Throne, is without question a brilliant novel. Fuentes probes deeply into the Machievellian machinations of Mexican politics and provides a sharp, astutely detailed picture. But, wow. The scenario he describes is so dark, sleazy, treacherous and murderous that this book is hardly a joy to imbibe. Reading it is a grim slog through the trough of human vice. If you want to read a book of unremitting despair over the corrupting nature of power, this one’s for you. If you seek a little hope from your reading, avoid.

The Eagle’s Throne is the exact opposite of The People’s History of the Mexican States; it’s about what goes on when all the “leaders” of a country are isolated from their citizenry – physically, mentally and spiritually.

It’s the year 2020 and Mexico’s president Lorenzo Teran has dared take a stand against the United States and its steely-hard president, Condoleeza Rice. Teran has opposed the U.S. occupation of Colombia and Washington’s refusal to pay OPEC prices for oil. In retaliation, the U.S. cuts off Mexico’s communications systems – phones, faxes and e-mails. With President Teran already deeply challenged in his own country, the nation plunges into an abyss of power-wrangling. Teran disappears from view and a power-grabbing free-for-all ensues. “Eagle’s Throne,” incidentally, is a term for the Mexican presidency, a corollary of the American term “Oval Office.”

The book is an epistolary novel. Because President Rice has banned electronic communications, the characters write menacing letters amongst themselves and the entire book consists of these missives. It is notable that all the letters are brilliantly written, as if each character were him or her self an overwhelmingly gifted, world-renowned writer. The reader pieces together the plots, counterplots and counter-counterplots as one reads.

One ex-president has a scheme for elevating his hand-picked dark horse candidate to the throne. This ex-president, who seems sagacious at first, turns out to be insanely cruel, and his plan goes tragically awry. Two military officialsbegin as tentative allies against peasants, workers and students, but wind up deadly enemies. The twists and turns of this plot are too numerous to describe.

In the wash of betrayals and murders, ascensions and descents, false identities revealed, etc., the book begins to feel like a Kurosawa film about medieval Japanese bloodletting. I concluded that it really mattered not one bit who actually got to the throne, because the darkness was uniform. And one wonders how, in Fuentes’ view, Mexican society has evolved beyond the Aztecs and Mayans, with their ritual human sacrifices to the gods.

The book ends with more death, tragedy and raw hate. Let’s just say it’s a bitter antidote to sunny illusions. VS

John Hughes is a spiritual sojourner with a penchant for hoary old tunes from before the birth of rock and roll. A single father of two, he's lived in Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Calcutta, India, in search of elusive bliss.