I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

Mexico is a very complex, mysterious country. I will never understand it fully, and that's why I write so much about it, in order to try to understand it.

chaos: it has no plural.

The Mexicans descend from the Aztecs; the Peruvians descend from the Incas; the Argentineans descend from the boats.

Most writers in Mexico have had posts as ambassadors, secretaries - that is no longer the case. Now a writer can live off writing. He has an audience: there are publishing houses, there are newspapers - so the situation is not as terrible as it used to be when there were no means and he had to go into government service, be an ambassador or a cabinet minister, etc. So, things are changing in the sense that the civil society is now the protagonist. The writer therefore occupies a different position, but no less influential than in the past, in a new, democratic society.

Cuba needs a dose of perestroika.

The United States condoned dictatorships in Latin America for much of the 20th century.