
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 16, 1991                   TAG: 9104160136
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-8   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                LENGTH: Short

AUTHOR CARLOS FUENTES TO SPEAK AT TECH

Novelist Carlos Fuentes, former Mexican ambassador to France and current member of Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights, will speak on U.S. and Latin American relations Wednesday.

A native of Mexico, Fuentes is a major political participant in the quest for peace in Latin America. He has a multicultural view of the relationship between the United States and Latin America, since he was raised in Washington, D.C., and lived in Chile and Argentina.

His best-known book is "The Old Gringo," the first novel by a Mexican author to become a best-seller in the United States. The movie version starred Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda. Other works include "The Hydra Head," "Terra Nostra" and "The Death of Artemio Cruz."

Fuentes was awarded the Cervantes Prize in 1988 by King Juan Carlos of Spain and was honored by the president of Mexico with that nation's highest literary award. He also has received the Romulo Gallego Prize from the Venezuelan government.

Fuentes holds several honorary degrees from the world's universities, including Cambridge and Dartmouth. He inaugurated the Robert F. Kennedy Chair in Latin American Studies at Harvard.

After his talk will be a question-and-answer session moderated by Virginia Tech professor Joe Scarpaci of the urban affairs and planning department, former director of Latin American Studies at the University of Iowa.

The speech will be in the Donaldson Brown Center for Continuing Education at 8 p.m. It is sponsored by the Virginia Tech Committee for Distinguished Speakers Series. Call Dave Nutter at 231-6669 for information.

by CNB