The burnt water of [the collection entitled Burnt Water] is the lake of the Aztecs, drained by the conquering Spanish, who wished to recreate their arid homeland in this high tropic. "Burnt water," Fuentes notes, "atl tlachinolli: the paradox of the creation is also the paradox of destruction." That is neatly put, but Fuentes's vision is ultimately less symmetrical than this sentence suggests. The Spanish substituted their world for that of the Aztecs, but the Mexicans since independence have substituted theirs for that of the Spanish, and the name for these substitutions is not creation but ruin. There are many positive things to be said about modern Mexico, but not in this matter of its active relations with its past, and Fuentes returns again and again to images of damage and decay….

No writer has a better sense of this rambling, uncontrollable city…. (p. 56)

Yet there is no...