Translating Contemporary Latin American Poets and Writers: Embracing, Resisting, Escaping the Magnetic Pull of the Capital

[Yours Truly and Patricia Dubrava
with a chapbook of my translation of a short story
 by Agustín Cadena. We both translate Cadena.]

For the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) Conference in Tucson late last month, apart from participating on Mark Weiss's excellent panel "Translating Across the Border," I proposed and chaired a panel that addressed a topic that, in truth, could have been considered for translating poets and writers in any of the populated continents:

Translating Contemporary Latin American Poets and Writers:  

Embracing, Resisting, Escaping the Magnetic Pull of the Capital

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The panelists were Yours Truly (transcript of my talk follows), Jeffrey C. Barnett, Patricia Dubrava, and Clare Sullivan. In the audience: several very distinguished literary translators (lotus petals upon y'all). The Q & A was extra crunchy, and in true ALTA fashion, in the sweetest way. (Seriously, literary translators, and especially the crowd that regularly attends ALTA conferences, are angelically generous and encouraging. If any of you reading this have ever thought of trying literary translation and/or attending a literary translator's conference, my recommendation is, YES!) 

[LAS TRES AMIGAS: 

Yours Truly, Clare Sullivan, and Patricia Dubrava.]

[Jeffrey C. Barnett, C.M. Mayo, Patricia Dubrava]

Transcript of C.M. Mayo's Remarks 

for the panel on 

Translating Contemporary Latin American Poets and Writers

ALTA, Tucson, Arizona, 

October 31, 2015

I started translating in Mexico City in the early 1990s. Mexico City is Mexico's capital, but it's not analogous to Washington DC or, say, Ottowa, Canada. The megalopolis, "the endless city," as Carlos Monsivaís calls Mexico City, is like Washington DC, New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles, all piled into one. In other words, its the political capital, financial capital, publishing capital, cultural capital, and television and movie capital. Oh, and business capital, too. Yes, there are other important cities in Mexico, and they have become more important in many ways, and some of them have some excellent writers and poets. But Mexico City is MEXICO CITY.

Back in the early 1990s, the ruling party, the PRI or Partido Revolucionario Institucional or Institutional Revolutionary Party was in power, about to enter the last decade of its more than 70— yes, 70—years in power. How did it last so long? There are many answers to that question but the main one relevant for our topic at hand is that the PRI attempted to bring everyone, whether farmers, campesinos, industrialists or intellectuals, and that would include poets and writers, under its own big tent. It had its ways. Stick and carrot— or bone, as Mexicans like to say.

You may be aware that after two consecutive presidential administrations under the PAN or the Partido Acción Nacional, over the past decade, Mexico's Presidency has since returned to the PRI. But it's not exactly a return to the past. Not exactly.

I'm not going to get all political on you, I simply want to underline the fact that back in early 1990s, the Mexican literary establishment, concentrated in Mexico City, was heavily influenced by and subsidized by the PRI government. Just to give you a notion of this: If you were to go into a library and look at some back issues of the leading Mexican literary and intellectual magazine of the time— of course that would be Octavio's Paz's Vuelta— you would see a large number of advertisements from government-owned entities and Televisa, the party-allied television conglomerate. There were literary gatekeepers, as there are everywhere in this world, but in Mexico City at that time, they were ginormously powerful. Octavio Paz was king.

Though Octavio Paz met his maker some years ago, in some ways things remain the same. Mexico City is where it's at. The government still plays an important, though lesser role. Letras Libres, successor to Vuelta, remains a leading magazine of influence, and in fact it does publish some of the best writing you'll find anywhere.

But since the early 1990s there have been political and economic sea-changes in Mexico. Power is more dispersed. Other political parties have become far more powerful. On the right and the left they rival the PRI and on many an occasion, beat the PRI at the ballot box.

And even more than the political and economic changes, the technological changes have been sea-changes. I'm talking about the rise of digital media, from blogging to YouTube, podcasting, Tweeting, FaceBooking, and publishing— and by the way, amazon is now in Mexico with www.amazon.com.mx.

To find a Mexican writer to translate, you no longer have to travel to Mexico City and get chummy with the powers that be who can make recommendations and, perhaps, invite the anointed to tea. Now, say, from Boston or Hong Kong or Cleveland, you can follow any given Mexican writer's blog, and comment thereupon. Or, say, send her a Tweet!

I would love to tell you the story of how, in the late 1990s, I started my bilingual magazine, Tameme, which published many Mexican writers, and my experiences with putting together the anthology, Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion— no easy task, since the idea of the TLC series is to provide writing about the whole country— and that would include writing from and about Baja California, Yucatan, Chiapas, Chihuahua...

At present I am translating a batch of Mexican writers: Ignacio Solares, a novelist born in Ciudad Juárez, long based in Mexico City; Agustín Cadena, who was born in the state of Hidalgo and is living in Hungary; Araceli Ardón who was born in San Miguel de Allende and lives in Querétaro; and yet another, Rose Mary Salum, who is from Mexico City and now based in Houston, Texas.

But I don't want to take time from my fellow panelists and what I hope will be a rich question and answer session. The main thing I want to emphasize is that, as literary translators, we can play a powerful role in influencing who and who is not read in English. Who to translate? It's good to ask for advice from the powers that be of the literary establishment in, say, Mexico or Cuba or Chile, and maybe even choose to translate one of them. They might be blast-your-wig-to-the-asteroid-belt fabulous! But we also have to recognize that there are power structures in literary communities, some of them entangled with political structures, and we need to acknowledge and examine, in our own minds, and our own hearts, what part we play in that or choose not to play. And why.

#   #   #

We may have been visiting the southwest this year, but ni modo, after the panel we ambled over to Sinbad's for Iraqi tea and babaganoushe. 

Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Patricia Dubrava's blog post on ALTA

My review of Ilán Stavans Octavio Paz: A Meditation

My talk for ALTA 2014:

Why Translate? The Case of the President of Mexico's Secret Book

Translating Across the Border: 

Transcript of C.M. Mayo's remarks for the panel on 

"Translating the Other Side," ALTA, October 29, 2015.

Goodbye Mexico: Poems of Remembrance, edited by Sarah Cortez
(with my translation of a poem by Agustin Cadena)

Mexico City Melissa Garden 

(30 second video)

Cosecha del FIL: In Celebration of "Literal"

Translating Across the Border: Transcript of My Talk for the American Literary Translators Association Panel, "Translating the Other Side," Tucson, Arizona

[C.M. Mayo and Wendy Burk at the "Translating Across the Border" panel
American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) conference,
Tucson, 2015.
Mark Weiss, chair of the panel, is in the back on the right.]

Translating Across the Border
Transcript of a Talk by C.M. Mayo

American Literary Translators Association (ALTA)

Conference 38, Tucson, October 29, 2015

Panel: "Translating the Other Side"

Moderator, Mark Weiss. 

Panelists: Wendy Burk, Catherine Hammond, C.M. Mayo

Muchísimas gracias, Mark Weiss, and thank you also to my fellow panelists, it is an honor to sit on this dias with you. Thank you all for coming. It is especially apt to be talking about translating Mexican writing here, a jog from the Mexican border, in Tucson—or Tuk-son as the Mexicans pronounce it.

I grew up in Northern California and was educated in various places but mainly the University of Chicago. As far as Mexico went, until I was in my mid-twenties, I had absorbed, to use historian John Tutino's term, the “enduring presumptions.” Translation: I had zero interest in Mexico.

You know that old saying, if you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans? 

What brought me to translating Mexican poetry and literary prose was that I married a Mexican—my fellow graduate student at University of Chicago— and we moved to his hometown, Mexico City, in 1986. I am happy to say that we are about to celebrate our 30^th anniversary. 

For me, as a writer, and as a translator, these decades, mainly spent in Mexico City, have been a grand adventure in learning and exploring the cultures, histories, and geography of Mexico and of course, learning Spanish. I cannot claim that I speak and write Spanish like a native—I started learning Spanish when I was 24 years old. But after three decades in Mexico... well, after three decades of living in any country, if you haven’t learned the language, at least to level of conversation and daily business... I was about to say something unkind.

My husband has his own and very distinguished career as an economist but I call him my Translation Assistant. Although I would say I am fluent in Mexican Spanish, as all of you well know, literary translation can be fluky-tricky. Many a time he has rescued me from what would have been toe-curling embarrassment. May we all have our translation assistants. 

It was back in the early 1990s, when I started writing my own poetry and short fiction, that I had two epiphanies. First epiphany: I could do this! I mean, I knew some Spanish and at the same time, I could write literary fiction and poetry myself. I was beginning to get my own stories and poems published in well-regarded literary journals, such as the Paris Review, The Quarterly, Southwest Review. That gave me a shot of confidence. To this day, I really believe that the best literary translators are not necessarily the most fluent, the most perfectly bilingual, but rather, those who can render the work into the same literary level in the target language.

And the second epiphany was that appallingly little Mexican work was being translated into English.There were some books, mainly from university presses, the occasional anthology, and here and there, a poem in a literary magazine, but I was in Mexico City, in Coyoacán, I could see what was going on, the rich, flourishing literary culture. It was obvious to me that this was not registering in the literary communities north of the border, not the way it should. 

For me, getting to know Mexican poets and writers was not difficult. Back in those days of yore, before the Internet ... well, one important poet, Manuel Ulacia, was my neighbor. We would often see each other out walking our dogs. 

But let me back up for a broader perspective.

Mexico shares a 2,000 mile border with the United States, spanning the southern borders of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and the greater part of Texas. And Mexico has some of the richest literary traditions in the world. 

It starts with the codexes of the Maya and the Aztecs, and others—and as a quick side note, there is a book forthcoming in 2016 from University of Texas Press by archaeologist Dr. Carolyn Boyd, in which she argues that the White Shaman rock site near the U.S.Mexico border in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, which is thousands of years old, is actually a codex— and basing some of her arguments on the work of Mexican anthropologists, Dr. Boyd has decoded it. It tells the story of creation. And so we can think about “White Shaman” as the first known book in North America. North America, of course, includes Mexico. And the Texan side of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands was once part of Mexico. 

And speaking of books, you may recall the hullabaloo about the 14.2 million dollar sale of a copy of the first English language book printed in the New World, The Whole Booke of Psalmes of 1640. Well, that was more than one hundred years after the first Spanish language book was printed in Mexico City. That was Breve y más compendiosa doctrina Christiana en lengua Mexicana y Castellana, printed in 1539. And there may have been an even earlier book printed in 1537, Escala Espiritual par llegar al cielo, but no known copies survive.

In the prologue to my anthology of 24 Mexican writers, Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, I write, “Mexican literature—a vast banquet—is one of the greatest achievements if the Americas. And yet we who read in English have gone hungry, for so astonishingly little of it has been published.” 

Mexico: A Literary Traveler’s Companion was published in 2006 and although I know many of you and other members of ALTA, and other translators, have since then published many Mexican works in translation, and anthologies, this scarcity, this appalling scarcity of translations of works from our neighboring country, continues. 

I could go on with names, book titles, and numbers from the publishing industry, but it would be too sad.  To give you the simplest and most concrete sense of how sad this situation is, when the sales team asked for blurbs for Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, I really had a problem. Of course there are many anthologies of English language writing about Mexico. But Mexicans writing about Mexico? I would have to ask a Mexican for a blurb. But what Mexican?

Octavio Paz? Yes, he won the Nobel Prize. But he was dead. 

Carlos Fuentes? He was in the anthology himself, so asking him for a blurb would have been awkward. Anyway, he wasn't answering his email.

Sales reps and bookstore buyers, for the most part, did not recognize the name of any Mexican writer. 

Salma Hayek? I suggested. 

The sales rep answered, “WOW! That would be GREAT!”

(No offense intended to Ms Hayek, an accomplished Mexican actress and producer. But methinks a blurb from her, had I been able to wrangle one, would have carried about as much clout as that of, say-- to scramble it into Texanese, porquois pas-- a rodeo barrel racing champion opining on the national polo team.)

We ended up using a blurb Isabelle Allende had provided for the Traveler’s Literary Companion series itself—a series from Whereabouts Press that includes many countries, among them, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, and as far afield as Australia and Viet Nam.

And I managed to wrangle a blurb from a translator who is a queen among us—I know many of you will recognize her name—Margaret Sayers Peden. She wrote: 

“This delicious volume has lovingly gathered a banquet of pieces that reveal Mexico in all its infinite variety, its spendid geography, its luminous peoples. What a treat!” 

Bless her heart.

Apart from the anthology and various contributions to other anthologies and literary magazines, for a few years I founded and edited Tameme, a bilingual literary journal of new writing from Canada, the US and Mexico. That was a project I did with my dad, Roger Mansell, who had 25 years of experience in the graphic arts and printing business in San Francisco. So if I do say so myself, the three issues of Tameme and two chapbooks were quite beautiful and they should be collector’s items. Unfortunately my dad passed away, and with my own books to write, Tameme was more than I could handle.

But I have continued to translate. A few of the writers and poets I have translated in recent, post-Tameme years include Agustín Cadena for BorderSenses and Chatahoochie Review and various anthologies, most recently, Sarah Cortez’s Goodbye Mexico: Poems of Remembrance. I also recently published a story by Ignacio Solares in Lampeter Review, and am working on a second story by Solares and another by Araceli Ardón. 

A story by Rose Mary Salum was published in a very fine a new literary magazine edited by Dini Karasik called Origins. And I am also working on translating Rose Mary Salum's forthcoming book, El agua que mece el silencio, as The Water That Rocks the Silence. 

Apart from Tameme, the largest translation project I have undertaken to date is a strange one, and I bring it up because I know that for many of you the question of rights is a concern. A book that is out of copyright, you can grab that, you can translate that. Go to it! 

Last year for ALTA, when the topic was “Politics and Translation,” for two different panels I talked about that book, or rather my book about that book. The title of my book is METAPHYSICAL ODYSSEY INTO THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION: FRANCISCO I. MADERO AND HIS SECRET BOOK, SPIRITIST MANUAL. And it does include the complete first translation of Spiritist Manual. 

Francisco Madero was the leader of Mexico’s 1910 Revolution and President of Mexico from 1911 to 1913, when he was overthrown in a coup d’etat and murdered. Madero was a Spiritist medium, that is, he believed he could communicate with the dead—and so can you! His secret book, Spiritist Manual, written in 1910—the year he launched the Revolution—and published under a pseudonym when was president elect in 1911, is... all about that. And I translated it because nobody else had. 

As I said in my panel talk last year,

I cannot deny other motives and the millions of other participants in that Revolution of 1910. But its spark, and the way it played out, and, I believe, Madero's murder, become a radically different story once we take into account his Spiritism.

My aim with my book and my translation of Madero's book is to deepen our understanding of Madero, both as an individual and as a political figure; and at the same time, deepen our understanding of the rich esoteric matrix from which his ideas sprang, in other words, not to promote his ideas nor disparage them, but explain them and give them context. 

It is also then my aim to deepen our understanding of the 1910 Revolution and therefore of Mexico itself, and because the histories are intertwined, therefore also deepen our understanding of North America, Latin America, the Pacific Rim, and more— for as long as a book exists, should someone happen to read it, it can catalyze change in understanding (and other changes) that ripple out, endlessly. 

Such is the wonder, the magical embryonic power of a book, any book, whether original or in translation: that, even as it rests on a dusty shelf for a hundred years, or for that matter, an unvisited digital "shelf," if it can be found, if it can be read, it holds such potential.

To conclude: I mainly translate contemporary Mexican short fiction and poetry. It is a labor of love and, as an English language writer who lives in Mexico City, a way for me to engage with Mexico and with my Mexican colleagues. And finally, translating is a way to bring what I can, whether it be a monster on a platter or algún taquito sabroso, to the literary banquet.

To quote myself again from the prologue of Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, “Throughout Mexico there are so very many writers whose work has yet to be translated, or, though translated, deserves a far wider readership in English.” 

Any and all of you who have an interest in translating Mexican literature— know that you have my heartfelt good wishes.

THANK YOU.



Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.



***UPDATE: See the post about my other talk for the ALTA Conference, Translating Contemporary Latin American Poets and Writers: Embracing, Resisting, Escaping the Magnetic Pull of the Capital

Why Translate? The Case of the President of Mexico's Secret Book

Araceli Ardón Visits La Casa Azul

NPR Interview with C.M. Mayo on the Art of Literary Translation

Preface to Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion

Five Quick Questions for Agustin Cadena, author of Las tentaciones de la dicha

Q & A with ALTA member Roger Greenwald, Translator of Gunnar Harding

Ignacio Solares' Short Story "Victoriano's Deliriums" Translated by Yours Truly in the Lampeter Review

This issue #11 of The Lampeter Review includes
a masterful short story by one of Mexico's
greatest writers, Ignacio Solares.

Ignacio Solares

Just out, the new issue of the Lampeter Review on magic realism and Latin America, edited by Tony Kendrew, which includes a masterful short story by one of Mexico's greatest writers, Ignacio Solares, translated by Yours Truly, on page 22. 

> Read the complete issue on-line here. 
> And for the free PDF download, click here.

Ignacio Solares' masterful short story "Victoriano's Deliriums," enters into the points of view (and what may or may not be some hallucinations) of the dying general and ex-President of Mexico, Victoriano Huerta.

A little background: In 1913 General Victoriano Huerta led the coup d'etat that overthrew Mexican President Francisco I. Madero. A wealthy Coahuilan businessman and ardent Spiritist, Madero had led the 1910 Revolution, then campaigned for and won the presidential election in 1911. As President, Madero had trusted General Huerta, a fatal mistake. Huerta's own rule was troubled and brief. In 1914 he fled for Europe and then on arriving in El Paso, Texas he was arrested. Huerta died there in early 1916 from cirrhosis of the liver, while under house arrest.

It's funny, literary translators are forever grumbling about the crumbs, if that, of recognition we receive for our work. In this instance, however, I believe I've been given too much of the pudding, plus the whole pitcher of the rum sauce, as on the title page my name appears more prominently than the author's!! Happily, his bio is included in the back, and it reads:

 IGNACIO SOLARES is one of Mexico's best-known literary writers. Among his many works are the novels Un sueño de Bernardo Reyes; Madero, el otro; El Jefe Máximo; and El sitio, which won the prestigious Xavier Villaurrutia Prize. Born in Ciudad Juárez, he now lives in Mexico City where he is editor-in-chief of La Revista de la Universidad, the magazine of the Mexico's National University. 

> Your COMMENTS are always welcome. I will be sending out my newsletter shortly; I welcome you to sign up for it here.

Lifting the (Very Heavy) Curtain on the Leader of Mexico's 1910 Revolution

MANUEL GUERRA DE LUNA
C.M. MAYO
ALEJANDRO ROSAS ROBLES
November 18, 2014

Though the recent protests in Mexico City's historic center have made it impossible to continue the lecture series on Francisco I. Madero as originally scheduled in the National Palace, the lectures continue at the same day, same time, right next door in Museo de la SHCP / Antiguo Palacio del Arzobispado, Moneda 4. 

I am quite sure the long-ago resident Achbishops must be a-rollin' in their graves, for the topic of this conference is:

FRANCISCO I. MADERO: 
DE ESPIRITISMO AL BHAGAVAD-GITA Y OTRAS INFLUENCIAS ESOTERICAS
(Francisco I. Madero: From Spiritist to the Bhagavad-Gita and Other Esoteric Influences)
Free and open to the public
(en español, por supuesto)

This is an watershed of a conference. For those of you foggy on your Mexican history, Francisco I. Madero was the leader of Mexico's 1910 Revolution and President of Mexico, 1911-1913. He was also a Spiritist medium, a leading Spiritist organizer and evangelist, and as "Bhima," the name of a Hindu warrior, the author of a secret book, Manual espírita. A handful of Mexican historians, including Enrique Krauze, have written about Madero's Spiritism and how it was the source of his political inspiration and platform. Yet, incredible as it may sound, most historians of the Revolution, apart from a lickety-split footnote, have almost completely ignored it. As I noted in my talk for the American Literary Translators Association, I believe one reason is that most historians, who know next-to-nothing about it, consider Spiritism mere superstition and so beneath their notice. In my book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, I have much to say about cognitive dissonance and the rich esoteric matrix from which Madero's version of Spiritism sprang.

This lecture series, sponsored by Mexico's Ministry of Finance-- which, by the way, has a long tradition of stellar cultural calendar with free book presentation, concerts, theater, childrens' workshops, and much more-- and, among other archives, holds that of Francisco I. Madero-- continues with:

Tuesday, November 25
@ 5 PM
CARLOS FRANCISCO MARTINEZ MORENO will talk about "Masonry, Spiritism and Hinduism: Interconnected Strands in Madero's Trio of Mystic Pillars"

Tuesday, December 2
@ 5 PM
Yours Truly, C.M. MAYO, will talk about my book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual [Odisea metafísica hacia la Revolución Mexicana: Francisco I. Madero y su libro secreto, Manual espírita], and IGNACIO SOLARES, an expert on Spiritism, will speak about his acclaimed novel, Madero, el otro [Madero, the Other].


PREVIOUS LECTURES
Previous lectures were by Dr YOLIA TORTOLERO CERVANTES, author of the deeply researched and pathbreaking El espíritismo seduce a Francisco I. Madero, whom I had the very great honor of introducing; 

LUCRECIA INFANTE on "Spirits, women and equality: Laureana Wright and Kardecian Spiritism in Mexico"; 

and most recently, last Tuesday, ALEJANDRO ROSAS ROBLES talked about "The Revolution of the Spirits" and MANUEL GUERRA, the lost Spiritist writings of Madero.

Manuel Guerra de Luna is the author of Los Madero: La Saga liberal, and of the screenplay for the excellent documentary film directed by Alejandro Fernández Solsona, 1910: La Revolución espírita. Alejandro Rosas Robles, a prolific and very popular historian in Mexico, is the author of many books and editor of the 10-volume series of the collected works, Obras completas de Francisco Ignacio Madero (Clío, 2000).

Guerra de Luna's talk was especially fascinating for me, as he talked about Madero's Spiritist notebooks. Madero was a writing medium, and so his method of receiving communication was to go into a trance and allow the spirits to use his hand and pencil. We know from the notebooks that as Madero sat down to work on his political grenade, La sucesión presidencial en 1910, he would first channel the spirits' advice. These notebooks were rescued from a fire into which a relative wanted to consign them. They are held in the Francisco I. Madero archive in the Ministry of Finance (SHCP) and transcribed in Rosas' Obras completas de Francisco Ignacio Madero, volume VI, Cuadernos espíritas. [Spiritist Notebooks.]

(Mexican history aficionados will note that Rosas Robles has confirmed that on his birth certificate Francisco Madero's middle initial stands for "Ignacio," not "Indalecio.") 

Madero's channeled writings end abruptly in 1908. Based on a comment in one of Madero's letters, Guerra de Luna believes that at that time, Madero stopped "automatic writing," adopting the method of channeling he considered more advanced: direct telepathic communication. 


1910: LA REVOLUCION ESPIRITA
Both Guerra de Luna and Rosas Robles appear in the must-watch documentary film, 1910: La Revolución espírita. > WATCH IT HERE.<

NEXT TUESDAY: 
CARLOS FRANCISCO MARTINEZ MORENO
One of the points I make in my book is that Madero's Spiritism was based on was very different from that of mid-19th century Spiritists, for by the late 19th century, thanks to various occult philosophers, Theosophists and others, Hindu philosophy and in particular, the Bhagavad-Gita, had become an important influence. In addition, Madero was a Mason and Rosicrucian. Next Tuesdays' talk by Carlos Francisco Martínez Moreno, an expert on Masonry, will be sure to be especially illuminating.


EMAIL UPDATES ON MEXICO NEWS
As for the recent political tumult here in Mexico, I steer clear of discussing current politics on this blog, but I will go so far as to suggest that a good source of reporting and opinion in a variety of media in English is via the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute. The email signup is on their webpage.

Your COMMENTS are always welcome.

Una ventana al mundo invisible

(Window to the Invisible World):

Master Amajur and the Smoking Signatures

Why Translate?

The Case of the President of Mexico's Secret Book

(Transcript of my talk for a panel at 

the American Literary Translators Association 

conference, Milkwaukee, November 2014)

Dr Yolia Tortolero Cervantes and Her Pathbreaking work, 

El espíritismo seduce a Francisco I. Madero

Resources for Researchers 

(Madero, Spiritism, esoteric philosophies, history)

Arnoldo Krumm-Heller and Francisco I. Madero:

Some Notes on Sources

Cool Tool for Creating Timewealth:

Why I am A Mega Fan of the Filofax Personal Organizer

(A guest-blog on Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools blog)

A US-Mexico Border Memoir: 

Lisa G. Sharp's A Slow Trot Home

(book review)

Over Burro Mesa

(My essay and a podcast about an adventure in a remote area in 

Big Bend National Park, near the US-Mexico border)

CLICK HERE.