I accept the Order of the Aztec Eagle with two emotions that don’t usually go together: pride and gratitude. In this way, the deeply affectionate bond that my wife and I established with this country, where we chose to live more than twenty years ago, has been formalized. Here is where my children grew up, here is where I wrote my books, here is where I planted my trees.
In the sixties, when I was no longer happy but was still undocumented, Mexican friends offered me their support and filled me with the temerity to continue writing in circumstances I evoke today like a chapter in One Hundred Years of Solitude that I forgot about. In the past decade, when success and too much publicity were trying to disturb my private life, the discretion and legendary tact of the Mexicans allowed me to find the inner calm and inviolable time to tirelessly pursue with no rest my difficult carpenter’s trade. It isn’t, then, a second homeland but another, different homeland, given to me without conditions, not competing with my own homeland for the love and fidelity I profess for it and the nostalgia with which it unceasingly claims them.
But the honour granted my person moves me not only because this is the country where I live and have lived. I feel, Mr President, that this distinction from your government also honours all the exiles who have found refuge in the sanctuary of Mexico. I know I have no standing at all, and that my case is anything but typical. I also know that the current conditions of my residence in Mexico are not the same for the immense majority of the persecuted who in this past decade have found in Mexico a providential haven. Unfortunately, there still exist on our continent distant tyrannies and nearby massacres that compel an exile much less voluntary and pleasant than mine. I speak in my own name, but I know that many will recognize themselves in my words.
Thank you, sir, for these open doors. May they never close, please, under any circumstances.