The Buried Mirror

By Carlos Fuentes,

Book cover of The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World

Book description

A best-selling and lavishly illustrated history of Hispanic culture from the "Balzac of Mexico," The Buried Mirror is a classic in its field.

The renowned novelist Carlos Fuentes has crafted a unique history of the social, political, and economic forces that created the remarkable culture which stretches from the mysterious…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Buried Mirror as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The great Mexican author Carlos Fuentes wrote this book as a commemorative reflection of an earlier quincentennial, that of 1492-1992. Fuentes’ book is transatlantic in scope and considers the fraught history of Hispanic heritage in the Americas. The title metaphorically employs the mirror—both of the kind fashioned from obsidian by the Aztecs and the one bringing the viewer into Diego Velázquez’s masterpiece of Spanish golden-age painting, Las Meninas—in reflecting on this mixed inheritance five centuries later. Cultural mixing, or mestizaje, defines the creation of Latin America and its millennial-deep roots in the exchange networks, migrations, political alliances, and colonialism…

From David's list on the Aztec-Spanish War.

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