The major literary export from Latin America nowadays seems to be bad historical novels. In 1990 The General in His Labyrinth, Gabriel García Márquez’s slapdash hagiography of Simón Bolívar, appeared in English translation. Now Carlos Fuentes’s latest book, the first part of a trilogy on the wars of independence, has been rendered into English. The Campaign is more intellectually honest than García Márquez’s effort. But it is so hokey in its plotting, so lazy in its characterization, and so labored in Alfred Mac Adam’s translation that this reviewer found herself pining for the at least occasionally enjoyable Bolivarian labyrinth.
Fuentes’s hero is a fictional Argentine named Baltasar Bustos. Baltasar is a high-minded criollo (European-blooded white) who whiles away the hours debating revolutionary theory in a Buenos Aires café. Feeling guilty about a disastrous prank he pulled on a viceregal official, he decides to put his Enlightenment ideals to a more honorable test by becoming a warrior for independence. Conveniently, his travels from one theater of war to another enable Baltasar to pursue the beautiful but elusive royalist he has fallen in love with in the opening pages.
For reasons having to do with the surprise ending, the novel is narrated by one of Baltasar’s friends and debating partners, Manuel Varela. Varela has chosen to remain safely in Buenos Aires, a city liberated early in the struggle, rather than venture inland to fight the Spanish overlords who continue to hold sway over much of the continent. Technically,