The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Crystal Frontier by Carlos Fuentes
Kent D. Wolf

Carlos Fuentes. The Crystal Frontier. Trans. Alfred Mac Adam. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997. 266 pp. $23.00.

Originally written in Spanish in the aftermath of California’s Proposition 187, The Crystal Frontier, as the title suggests, adopts as its theme the paradoxical barrier—reflective, deformative, and transparent—separating the United States and Mexico. Here, Fuentes takes aim at the greed and callousness of both cultures from American CEOs to lecherous assembly-line foremen to racist border guards.
Composed of nine interconnected stories, The Crystal Frontier has as its central figure Leonardo Barroso, a powerful businessman with strong economic ties to the United States. Of the myriad characters, all are in one way or another linked to the enigmatic Don Leonardo. Throughout the novel we see underpaid women toil away in his maquiladoras; a Mexican medical student receives a scholarship from Barroso to study at Cornell; a once wealthy young man finds himself reduced to cleaning office windows as part of Barroso’s migrant workforce; Don Leonardo’s long-forgotten brother, after having suffered a stroke, is abandoned by his family on a lonely highway.
Fate has dealt many of these people a cruel hand, and given the circumstances under which the novel came into being (Mexicans were just dealt the inevitable blind-sided slap from NAFTA), one can sense the anger in these pages. However, The Crystal Frontier’s most powerful moments lie in its humor, as Fuentes uncovers the comic absurdity in Mexican-American cultural differences. This humor is most prevalent in “The Spoils,” a riotously funny critique of American cuisine and our missing sense of moderation, which also serves as a homage to large women before it ends in Don Quixote fashion as two men escape from the plasticity of San Diego and flee, naked, to their patria.
Ultimately, The Crystal Frontier is a novel about identity as it addresses the timely issue of multiculturalism. Fuentes occupies a rather tenuous position between the wish to surpass cultural differences and the desire to preserve them, as he recognizes the impossibility of finding answers in a world of migrations and crossings. [Kent D. Wolf]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction The Crystal Frontier by Carlos Fuentes Kent D. Wolf Carlos Fuentes. The Crystal Frontier. Trans. Alfred Mac Adam. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997. 266 pp. $23.00. Originally written in Spanish in the aftermath of California’s Proposition 187, The Crystal Frontier, as the title suggests, adopts as its theme the paradoxical barrier—reflective, deformative, and transparent—separating the United States and Mexico. Here, Fuentes takes aim at the greed and callousness of both cultures from American CEOs to lecherous assembly-line foremen to racist border guards. Composed of nine interconnected stories, The Crystal Frontier has as its central figure Leonardo Barroso, a powerful businessman with strong economic ties to the United States. Of the myriad characters, all are in one way or another linked to the enigmatic Don Leonardo. Throughout the novel we see underpaid women toil away in his maquiladoras; a Mexican medical student receives a scholarship from Barroso to study at Cornell; a once wealthy young man finds himself reduced to cleaning office windows as part of Barroso’s migrant workforce; Don Leonardo’s long-forgotten brother, after having suffered a stroke, is abandoned by his family on a lonely highway. Fate has dealt many of these people a cruel hand, and given the circumstances under which the novel came into being (Mexicans were just dealt the inevitable blind-sided slap from NAFTA), one can sense the anger in these pages. However, The Crystal Frontier’s most powerful moments lie in its humor, as Fuentes uncovers the comic absurdity in Mexican-American cultural differences. This humor is most prevalent in “The Spoils,” a riotously funny critique of American cuisine and our missing sense of moderation, which also serves as a homage to large women before it ends in Don Quixote fashion as two men escape from the plasticity of San Diego and flee, naked, to their patria. Ultimately, The Crystal Frontier is a novel about identity as it addresses the timely issue of multiculturalism. Fuentes occupies a rather tenuous position between the wish to surpass cultural differences and the desire to preserve them, as he recognizes the impossibility of finding answers in a world of migrations and crossings. [Kent D. Wolf]

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