November 11, 1928. Carlos Fuentes was born in Panama City to Berta Macias Rivas and Dr. Rafael Fuentes Boettiger, a diplomat attached to the Mexican legation. "The problem of my baptism then arose. As if the waters of the two neighbouring oceans touching each other with the iron finger tips of the canal were not enough, I had to undergo a double ceremony: my religious baptism took place in Panama, because my mother, a devout Roman Catholic, demanded it; but my national baptism took place a few months later in Mexico City, where my father, an incorrigible Jacobin and priest-hater to the end, insisted that I be registered in the civil rolls established by Benito Juarez [Mexican revolutionary and statesman]. Thus, I appear as a native of Mexico City for all legal purposes, and this anomaly further illustrates a central fact of my life and writing: I am Mexican by...