CARLOS FUENTES´ THEATER OF MEMORY THE POSSIBLE UTOPIA IN TERRA NOSTRA

Abstract

Valerio Camillo´s Theater of Memory is one of the central metaphors in Carlos Fuentes´ Terra Nostra (1975). The theater is described in terms that help us to understand both the use Fuentes´ use of history and his textual utopia. The images projected in Camillo´s theater encompass all the possibilities of the past, not only the ones that were fulfilled, but also those that could have been. The goal of this fantastic utopian machinery is to show a way out of the fatalism of history, an alternative to the “permanent catastrophe” that, according to Fuentes, has been the history of Spanish America. This article aims at giving response to one the novel´s main interrogations: is Fuentes´ totalizing utopia achievable or just an exercise in narrative trickery?