Gringo Viejo

The Old Gringo (Spanish: Gringo Viejo) is a novel by Carlos Fuentes, written from 1964 to 1984 and first published in 1985. Inspired by the historical disappearance of American writer Ambrose Bierce amidst the chaos of the Mexican Revolution, the novel addresses themes of death, cultural exchange, and Mexican identity, among others. Its English-language translation became the first novel by a Mexican author to become a U.S. bestseller.

The novel is framed as the reminiscence of an unnamed female character ("now she sits alone and remembers"), presumably Harriet Winslow.

An elderly American writer and former journalist for the Hearst media empire, who can be shown to be but is not named as Ambrose Bierce, decides to leave his old life behind and seek a glorious death in the midst of the Mexican revolution, taking with him only slight provisions and copies of two of his own works, as well as a copy of Don Quixote. A widower whose two sons are both dead (at least one from suicide) and whose daughter refuses to speak to him, this unnamed old man seeks out part of the Army of the North under Pancho Villa. This particular group, led by "General" Tomas Arroyo, has just liberated a massive land holding hacienda from the wealthy Miranda family, killing the family's remaining servants and destroying much of the hacienda itself (apart from the dance hall with many mirrors, which Arroyo has symbolically kept in order to allow his army, composed of commoners, to see their reflections). Arroyo is mestizo, the product of the rape of his mother by his Miranda father, and carries Spanish papers (which he himself cannot read) granting land to the natives of Mexico as a symbolic justification for the Revolution. The elderly American persuades Arroyo to let him join Arroyo's force by successfully shooting a hole through a tossed silver peso; since the American states that he was in the Indiana Volunteers, his Mexican allies refer to him as "Indiana General."

At that same hacienda, the old man meets Harriet Winslow, a 31-year-old woman from Washington D.C. hired to tutor the young Miranda children. Winslow has left Washington after her older "beau," an army official named Delaney, has become involved in an army financial scandal. However, by the time she arrived there, they had long since fled with their parents from Arroyo's army (it is speculated that Winslow was hired merely as a smokescreen for the flight of the Mirandas). Winslow refuses to leave the hacienda, insisting that she has been paid and will wait for the family's return. At first, she refuses to call Arroyo "General" (insisting that he has merely given himself the title), and has a patronizing view about the revolutionary army and the Mexican people, saying,

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