Bastar Bustos Analysis

The Campaign written by Carlos Fuentes describes the trials and tribulations of the Argentinean creole, Baltasar Bustos. Bustos goes through a series of adventures throughout the years 1810-1820, which were the brutal years of Spanish America’s struggle for independence. Fuentes describes Bustos as being very passionate in both his personal and political beliefs. Bustos along with two other friends including Manuel Varela and Xavier Dorrego liked to follow the philosophies of the famous Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot. Dorrego follows Voltaire, he believes in reason but thinks it should be exercised only by an enlightened minority capable of leading the masses to happiness. Bustos follows Rousseau, he believes in a passion that would lead

The aspiring lawyer, Baltasar Bustos decided to kidnap the newborn son Marquis de Cabra, the president of the superior court for the viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata and his wife Ofelia Salamanca. He then replaces the white baby with the black infant, who belongs to a prostitute who had just been publicly flogged. At the time, Baltasar believes his actions purely to be a revolutionary act of justice. In the middle of his act, Baltasar eavesdrops on the conversation going on between the Marquis de Cabra and his wife, only to find himself being completely smitten over Ofelia Salamanca. Fuentes describes it as “he had carried out the most audacious act of his life without calculating the full effects of his actions, without anticipating, above all, that the vision of Ofelia Salamanca would captivate him with all the force of the inevitable” (22). Baltasar had many mixed emotions, he didn’t know how to deal with the fact that he was starting to fall in love with the women whom he had kidnapped a child from. Shortly after the unexpected happened, either by accident or purpose the building in which the Marquis de Cabra and his wife resided in burned down, and with the fire taking the life of the black baby that Baltasar had exchanged for. Only then did Baltasar realize he had substituted on injustice for another. This event is the

The first prominent theme described is Regionalism. Throughout the book, Fuentes goes into explicit detail on the different regions in the Spanish America’s that Bustos travels through. Each different chapter takes place in a new geographical location all along Spanish America. Upper Peru is one of the locations in which Baltasar starts his adventures. He reminded us that he’d been lost in one of the five thousand tunnels that connect Cuzco with the mines in Potosi, that it takes potatoes hours to cook there because of the altitude, that the lake is merely a track left by the retreating ice, that the lava of the volcanoes whistles as it flows downhill, that Upper Peru smells of the mercury transported in leather sacks to treat the silver (90). During his journey, Baltasar felt the need to talk about laws and the injustice going on around his fellow rebels and guerrilla troops. Lima is described as being, “a city wasting itself in waiting all day, and yet, for the rain which was always threatened but never came, because the real tropical storm would melt away this city with no stone structures” (136). A single spoon and jug of water would be sufficient enough to open a hole in the mud walls of Lima. Another city Baltasar traveled through was Mendoza, the capital of the Argentine province of the Cuyo, which was the revolutionary center of the Americas. Fuentes describes Mendoza as having, “the sweetness of