by Carlos Fuentes

Born in 1928 in Panama City to a Mexican diplomat, Carlos Fuentes spent much of his youth abroad in Chile, Argentina, and Washington, D.C. He had written more than a dozen novels before completing The Old Gringo, combining his career as a writer with government service and teaching. He is a writer who has fused art with politics, focusing in The Old Gringo on a subject raised but not yet featured in his previous fiction-the subject of U.S.-Latin American relations.

Events in History at the Time the Novel Takes Place

American expansionism. At the end of the nineteenth century, U.S. leaders urged the expansion of American influence over other countries, primarily through the selling of American goods and the spreading of American culture. Sometimes this expansionism turned into imperialism, or the imposition of political or economic control over...