The Campaign, as some critics maintain, may be Fuentes' finest novel. The narrative is both subtle and complex, but does not involve the experimental writing which characterized the author's other major novels. It is comparatively easier to read and is consistently pleasurable throughout. As usual, Fuentes is concerned with understanding history, in this book the history of the wars which made the various Latin American countries independent.

The story is based on the letters sent by Baltasar Bustos, a fighter for the cause, to his friends back in Buenos Aires where Bustos' role in the wars began. He is quixotically myopic as well as physically nearsighted. On the eve of Argentina's May revolution he tries to begin the process of establishing justice in his homeland by substituting a black child for the recently born son of the Marquisa de Cabra, wife of the Presiding Judge of the Rio...