Carlos Fuentes, the great Mexican writer and intellectual, died today in his home country. I had the privilege of writing his obituary, which is running on The New York Times website and will be in the newspaper tomorrow. I also had the distinct joy of knowing him slightly during my time in Mexico. There has always been much talk about the rivalry between him and Octavio Paz, another stupendous Mexican intellectual. But where Paz was difficult to reach and somewhat ornery in his final years (when I got to speak to him for an article I was writing about the Zapatista uprising and the assassination of the ruling party’s presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, Paz asked if he was going to be paid, and when I reminded him that we did not do that, he declined to participate, saying he would write his own article–which he did). Fuentes, on the other hand, was usually available and willing to cooperate. I interviewed him several times, and one year was invited to his elegant Mexico City home to celebrate the new year. It was a most exquisite event, featuring two live bands, sumptuous food, and of course plenty to drink. Fuentes and his beautiful wife Silvia danced through the evening, while also remaining attentive to all of their guests. I admired his sharp intellect and his outspokeness both during the long reign of the PRI and afterwards, into the term of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon. The Nobel Committee did a great injustice by not honoring him.

The Society of Professional Journalists had named “Terror in the Dust,” the CNN one-hour documentary based on “City of Dust,” the best TV network documentary of 2011. I was a consultant on the project, working closely with producer Stephanie Smith for about eight months, and was interviewed last June by the program host, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, near Ground Zero in New York. You can see the entire list of SPJ awards by clicking here.

Thirty years after it was added to the Superfund list, the Passaic River through downtown Newark is finally being cleaned up. At least the first stage of the cleanup is scheduled to get underway soon. If you pass by on the midtown direct NJ Transit line, look across the river to where the Essex County incinerator sits, and you can see the steel enclosure that had to be erected to make sure the muck they dredge out–contaminated with dioxin and other toxic compounds–doesn’t spread down river and make things even worse. The river is so badly polluted that the state figures the safe limit for eating blue crabs from the waters of the Passaic is one crab in twenty years! Phase one gets underway in March. The rest? Miles and miles of river bottom, and the bay itself, still need to be cleaned. No one’s decided how to do it, or what to do with the muck that has to be removed. I’ll try to follow. In the meantime, here’s the piece I wrote for New Jersey Monthly on this, one of the most contaminated rivers in the world. http://njmonthly.com/articles/lifestyle/the-muck-stops-here.html

GRUPO DE LOS CIEN INTERNACIONAL / GROUP OF 100

December 1, 2011

WRITERS AND ARTISTS ASK MEXICO’S PRESIDENT TO CANCEL MINING CONCESSIONS IN THE SACRED TERRITORY OF THE HUICHOL PEOPLE

Mexico may be the world’s largest silver producing country, but not all that shines is silver. Countries also shine in their myths and rites, their traditions and culture, and the Huichol (or Wixáritari, in their own language) have shone in Mexico and the world by preserving their unique spiritual identity over time.  The annual pilgrimage made by the Wixáritari across the sacred desert landscape of Wirikuta to Cerro Quemado, the mountain where they believe the sun was born, is internationally famous.

In November 2009 the Canadian mining company First Majestic Silver bought 22 mining concessions in the Real de Catorce area, in the state of San Luis Potosi.  These concessions will allow First Majestic Silver to carry out what the company describes as “an aggressive drilling and exploration program” on 6,327 hectares of land.

The problem is that this part of San Luis Potosi lies in the middle of the Wirikuta Natural Reserve. For centuries Huichol men, women and children have made their way here from communities in the western Sierra Madre mountains in the states of Jalisco, Nayarit, Durango and Zacatecas to carry out their religious ceremonies, accompanied and guided by the mara’akate, their shaman-priests.

Handing over the sacred territory of the Huichols to First Majestic Silver to be mined for its own financial gain not only betrays the colonial mentality of the politicians and bureaucrats responsible for selling silver, Mexico’s most emblematic mineral resource, to foreign companies but, far worse, will entail the desecration of the ancestral lands of the Wixáritari.

First Majestic Silver operates exclusively in Mexico, at its La Parrilla, San Martin and La Encantada mines, and expects to produce seven and a half million ounces of silver in Mexico during 2011.

Minera Golodrina, a Mexican subsidiary of the Canadian-based multinational Lake Shore Gold Corp, plans to dig an open-pit gold mine in the sacrosanct core zone of the Wirikuta Reserve, extracting gold using the highly toxic cyanide process. Both mining operations would endanger the scarce local water supply.

When many people speak of a Mexico that is greater and more enduring than the current climate of violence, they are thinking of its history and culture, and mention of Wirikuta brings to mind an ethnic group which is profoundly Mexican and respected the world over for its authenticity and creativity, whereas mention of First Majestic Silver and Lake Shore Gold Corp brings to mind rapacity and colonialism.

We ask President Felipe Calderón — who witnessed the signing of the Huaxa Manaka Pact three years ago by the governors of five states who vowed to preserve the sacred territory of the Wixárika people — to cancel the mining concessions granted to both Canadian companies.  We hope that President Calderón will not go down in history as the man who authorized the destruction of Wirikuta and its holy ceremonial sites.

SIGNED BY:

MExico :Homero Aridjis, Elena Poniatowska, Francisco Toledo, Gabriel Orozco, Jean Meyer, Nicolás Echevarría, Juan Villoro, Rubén Gallo, Manuel Felguérez, Gilberto Aceves Navarro, Lydia Cacho, Jorge Zepeda Patterson, Coral Bracho, Bárbara Jacobs, Vicente Rojo, Gabriel Weisz, Ana Pellicer, Roger von Gunten, Chloe Aridjis, Eva Aridjis, Laureana Toledo, Miguel Calderón, Rogelio Cuéllar, Javier Aranda, Guillermo Fadanelli,  Tedi López Mills, Elsa Cross, Beatriz Rojas, Pablo Meyer, Marina Meyer, Matías Meyer, Jerónimo López/ Dr. Lakra, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Damián Ortega, Rosa Velasco, Gabriel Kuri, Ximena Cuevas, Eduardo Hurtado, Yoshua Okón, José Luis Paredes Pacho, Monica Manzutto, José Kuri, Isadora Hastings García, Natalia Toledo,

Federico Campbell

FRANCE:  Yves Bonnefoy, J. M. G. Le Clézio, Jean-Clarence Lambert, Gérard Titus-Carmel, Georgiana Colville, Pascale Montandon

SWEDEN: Tomas Tranströmer, Kjell Espmark, Per Wästberg, Lasse Söderberg

TurKEY:  Orhan Pamuk

UNITED STATES:  Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Paul Auster, Peter Matthiessen, Rita Dove,

Junot Díaz (& Dominican Republic), Siri Hustvedt, Nicole Krauss,  Jonathan Safran Foer,  Robert Darnton, Michael Scammell, Edward Hirsch,  Pete Hamill, Tom Hayden, Jerome Rothenberg, Terry Tempest Williams,  Francisco Goldman, Bill McKibben, Deirdre Bair, Francine Prose, Molly Moore, Eliot Weinberger, Robert Hass, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Ross Gelbspan, Robert Glenn Ketchum, Dr. Lincoln Brower, Betty Aridjis, Michael Palmer,  Clayton Eshleman, Askold Melnyczuk, Amory Lovins, Charles Bernstein, Alan Weisman,  Amy Evans McClure, Michael McClure, Anthony DePalma, Grace Schulman, Scott Slovic,  Serge Dedina,  Dick Russell, Eric Lax, Edmund Keeley, Mimi Gross, A. E.  Stallings, James Metcalf (&Mexico), Ilan Stavans (&USA), Janet Brody Esser, Elizabeth Ferber

CANADA:  Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, John Ralston Saul,  Linda Spalding,

Graeme Gibson, Terence Gower, George McWhirter  (&Northern Ireland)

UNITED KINGDOM: Simon Schama, Jonathon Porritt, Ali Smith, Simon Winchester, Alan Riding, Anne Stevenson,  Darian Leader, Lisa Appignanesi,  Cornelia Parker, Rosie Boycott,  Michael Schmidt, Mary Horlock, James Lasdun, Ruth Fainlight, Anthony Rudolf, Devorah Baum, Josh Appignanesi

BELGIUM:  Pierre Alechinsky, Ivan Alechine, Wim Delvoye

NIGERIA: Chinua Achebe

CHILE: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Ariel Dorfman, José María Memet

RUMANIA: Norman Manea  (&USA)

SPAIN: Carlos Garcia Gual, Frederic Amat

CUBA: Zoé Valdés (&France)

INDIA: Kiran Desai, Meena Alexander

SOUTH AFRICA: Breyten Breytenbach

COLOMBIA: Fernando Rendón, Cecilia Balcazar, Angela García

NORWAY: Eugene Schoulgin

THE NETHERLANDS: Laurens van Krevelen

CYPRUS: Lily Michaelides, Niki Marangou, Christos Hadjipapas

ITALY: Giuseppe Bellini, Sebastiano Grasso, Patrizia Spinato, Franca Tiberto

NICARAGUA:  Sergio Ramírez, Francisco de Asís Fernández

PanamA: Gloria Guardia (&Nicaragua)

Japan: Satoko Tamura

MAURITIUS: Ananda Devi

BRAZIL: Ledo Ivo

URUGUAY: Carlos Fazio (&Mexico)

GREECE: Vassilis Vassilikos, Anastassis Vistonitis, Ersi Sotiropoulos, Dino Siotis,

Yorgos Rouvalis

AUSTRIA: Peter Stephan Jungk (&USA)

GERMANY: Helga von Kügelgen, Klaus Kropfinger, Fred Viebahn, Tobías Burghardt,

Jona Burghardt

Bangladesh: Hasna Jasimuddin Moudud

ARGENTINA: Octavio Prenz

SLOVENIA: Tomas Salamun, Gregor Podlogar

I’m heading to Seattle, WA to address the opening session of the Council on State Government’s North American Summit. I’m especially looking forward to this event because this is such an important time for us to refocus on energies on setting our own house in order. It’s been ten years since the 9/11 attacks, ten years of the war in Afghanistan, ten lost years when we could have made such progress in cooperating with our two closest neighbors for the benefit of all 445 million residents of North America. Instead, we’ve allowed some of the old animosities and suspicions to creep back in, and we’ve had to struggle hard just to stay where we were and not lose ground. I will be speaking on Thursday, October 20, at 2 pm.