Carlos Fuentes Macías was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), Terra Nostra (1975), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, The New York Times described Fuentes as "one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world" and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the "explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s", while The Guardian called him "Mexico's most celebrated novelist". His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor (1999). He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.

The Old Gringo is a novel by Carlos Fuentes, first published in 1985. Its English language translation of the same year was the first novel by a Mexican author to be a U.S. bestseller and was one of three nominees for the Ritz Paris Hemingway Award as best novel of 1985. An unsuccessful adaptation to film followed in 1989. Later criticism has found in the novel a wary consideration of the irreconcilability of United States and Mexican mindsets.