At the FIL or, the Mexican Megabookmashup

This blog post comes with a soundtrack (click here for the YouTube of Vicente Fernández singing "Guadalajara"). 

Back on December 2, I hopped over from Mexico City to Guadalajara for the megabookmashup otherwise known as the Feria Internacional del Libro or FIL. It is so big-- aisle after aisle after aisle after towering aisle, all aflutter with so many book presentations, the aisles and escalators swarming, and auditoriums and meeting rooms cram-packed with readers and editors and marketers and journalists and writers ranging from the internationally famous to shall we say, locally intense (yes, some guy wanted to "share" his poetry), that, well, whew! 

> Read Mexican poet Francisco Hinojosa's reflections on the FIL, what he calls, among other things, "the Pantitlán metro stop at rush hour."

This year the FIL estimates 792,000 attendees, nearly 2,000 editors, more than 20,000 book professionals, 304 lterary agents, and.... do use both your hands to hold your jaw in place while you check out this list. 

Never mind if you can follow the Spanish or not, grok the scene with this official video from the FIL website:

When anyone whinges about how "no one" reads anymore, obviously, they have yet to set foot in the FIL! 

But as for me, what I like to do is sit by myself at my desk and write-- or else ramble around whilst conjuring poetic thoughts in the desert. You know, the shamanic Orphic Journey thing. (My writing assistants model the process.) Although I relish meeting other writers and readers, I cannot endure the windowless crazy-buzz of FIL for more than a couple of hours every other year. Which is, more or less, my track record. 

This was my third presentation at the FIL, the two previous presentations being for my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire in 2009 and, in 2010, for its translation by Agustin Cadena as El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano, plus the anthology Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction (my contribution to that was the translation of a short story by Alvaro Enrigue). I first attended the FIL waaaaaaay back in 1998, when the American Literary Translations Association held their annual meeting there and, providentially, I brought along the first issue of Tameme.

So here I am on this past December 2 with Dr María Teresa Fernández Aceves, left (reading from her talk) and my editor, Rose Mary Salum, founding editor of Literal Publishing, right.

Fernández Aceves is the author of Mujeres en el cambio social en el siglo XX mexicano (2014). The translation of that could be Women and Social Change in 20th Century Mexico, and here's hoping that comes out soon. See my blog post about one of the many biographies in her book: of the Spanish feminist and Spiritist Belén de Sarraga, whose conferences during Madero's administration scandalized Mexican conservative society.

I suppose you could call me an "independent scholar"; I wrote Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution firstly as a translator, and secondly as a literary essayist and novelist, and I consider it both a work of scholarship and of creative nonfiction. In other words, I am not an academic historian, so it is an honor indeed to have such a distinguished Mexican historian present my work in such a forum. I owe my meeting Maria Teresa Fernández Aceves a few years ago to my amiga the historian and biographer Mílada Bazant, who organized a brilliant conference on biography at the Colegio Mexiquense and edited a volume of essays, including one of mine, about fiction and truth and Agustín de Iturbide y Green. (And more in this post.)

Over at the Literal Publishing stand, who of all people showed up in the middle of my radio interview with this kind gentleman from the University of Guadalajara...

... but Raymond Caballero, ex-mayor of El Paso, Texas and the author of the excellent new biography of Mexican revolutionary General Pascual Orozco, and whom I happened to have to just interviewed for my Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project! Well! How about that! Here we are! 

Ray sat down and chimed right in -- so that University of Guadalajara radio show got two biographers on two biographies out of the Mexican Revolution, both Madero's and Orozco's! I hear the interview aired yesterday, Sunday, and I hope they will send a link to the podcast....



>Listen in anytime to my "Marfa Mondays" interview with Raymond Caballero on his new book, Lynching Pascual Orozco: Mexican Revolutionary Hero and Paradox. 

I hope Caballero found a Spanish language publisher in the FIL for his vital contribution to Mexican and Far West Texas history; certainly, this book should be available in Spanish-- like, yesterday.

Also new at the FIL: Here is Rose Mary Salum's new book of short stories set in Lebanon, El agua que mece el silencio, just out from Vaso Roto. And I am both delighted and honored to mention that I am about half way through translating this work into English as The Water That Rocks the Silence. 

> The title story was published earlier this year in English, with a slightly different title, in Origins.

When I see friends' books I always feel like a little band of literary leprechauns is waving "hi"! (I know that sounds like a strange thing to say, but to me, books really do have a life of their own.) 

Here, also at the Vaso Roto stand, is a stack of my ex-Coyoacán neighbor, Anne Marie O'Connor's splendid The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, translated into Spanish as La dama de oro. I will take the teeniest crumb of credit for at least wishing this book into Spanish, for in this book's presentation in Mexico City back in 2012, I did say that:

"My one and only criticism of Anne Marie O'Connor's The Lady in Gold, which is really more an expression of admiration and enthusiasm, is that it is not already available in Spanish."

Well, looky here!

P.S. There is often official FIL hotel-expense support for literary translators who are attending. To get the latest news flashes and be sure to meet up with other translators at the FIL, I can warmly recommend the American Literary Translators Association.

More anon.

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Cosecha del FIL Part 1: 

Literal, Yankee Invasion, Tirofijo, Miriam Berkely, 

Trudy Balch and Gaby Brimmer, Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction

Cosecha del FIL Part 3: In Celebration of Literal: 

Latin American Voices / Voces Latinoamericanas

Highlights From My Landing on Planet Austin

A Conversation with Sergio Troncoso

"Café San Martin": Reading Mexican Poet Agustín Cadena 

for ALTA 2015 at Tucson's Café Passé 

Belén de Sárraga (c. 1872-1950)

The excellent and deeply researched new book by Mexican historian María Teresa Fernández Aceves, Mujeres en el cambio social en el siglo XX mexicano (Women in Social Change in 20th Century Mexico) has one chapter in particular directly relevant to my own book on the Mexican Revolution: a mini-biography of Belén de Sárraga, whom Fernández Aceves calls "one of the most important leaders of her generation." Few people outside of the Spanish-speaking world have heard of or even imagined such a public figure as Belén de Sárraga; that should change.

A Spanish-born Spiritist, freethinker and feminist, differing from but a contemporary of Annie Besant, Sárraga visited Mexico in 1912 as part of an international speaking tour. What she said-- and the fact that her fellow Spiritist President Francisco I. Madero, the leader of Mexico's 1910 Revolution, both welcomed and celebrated her-- caused an uproar. Writes Fernández Aceves (my translation):

"[In a conversation with The Mexican Herald] Sárraga... commented on the Mexican Revolution and said the Catholic Church was responsible for the conditions under which the country lived. The type of education it provided did not allow freedom of thought. The clergy only promoted the masses' fanaticism and made women into slaves." 

Belén de Sárraga

Especially valuable is the detail Fernández Acevez provides about Sárraga's early involvement with and writings about Spiritism-- the French offshoot of American Spiritualism, lead by French educator Alan Kardec. At the same time, Sárraga, a committed anti-monarchist, ardently defended Spanish colonies' rights to independence. In 1896, she protested the execution of the leader of the Philippines movement for independence and she was jailed for protesting against the war in Cuba. For Sárraga, as for Madero, Spiritism led to political action for freedom and social justice.

Fernández Aceves (my translation):

"[In 1912] Sárraga gave a series of conferences in Mexico City's Xicoténcatl Theater. Among the attendees were the President of Mexico, the cabinet officers and their families, Spiritists, intellectuals, Masons, women, politicians, and workers. Most attended in formal dress. Sárraga lectured with great rhetorical eloquence and and attacked the Catholic Church. She covered the following topics: The Evolution of Thought; Religious Congregations; Woman as a Human Being; Education; Progress and Tradition; and Morality."

Francisco I. Madero
President of Mexico
(1911-1913)

In her 1914 book published in Lisbon, El clericalismo en América, Sárraga argued that the counterrevolution that ended in Madero's assassination was a coalition of the old-guard (porfiristas) and the clergy, and that the Zapatists, Madero's one-time peasant allies turned enemy, had a religious fervor and respected the clergy. Writes Fernández Acevez (my translation):

"Sárraga… did not recognize the legacy and neither did she understand the popular, radical and rural ideas of the Zapatistas and Villistas: Land reform. She did not take into account the Anarchist motto of Zapatismo: "land and liberty." From Sárraga's point of view, their fanaticism was incompatible with a liberal and modern revolution. For her, that was central to the Mexican Revolution."

Among those who protested against Belén de Sárragas were more than a hundred Mexican señoras who arrived at Chapultepec Castle, the Presidential Residence, in protest at these "outrages" against the Church and Mexican womanhood. President Madero, then frequently the butt of cartoons portraying him as a midget ghost whisperer, mildly replied that he was dedicated to protecting free speech-- theirs as much as Bélen de Sárraga's.

Nearly a decade later, when Sárraga returned to Mexico, the contratemps between the Mexican Church and State continued, and she because-- my translation-- "more vocal and active."

"She gave talks for Masons, teachers, soldiers, and workers in Aguascalientes, Colima, Chihuahua, Durango, Guadalajara, Morelia, Pachuca, Puebla, Oaxaca, Toluca, Torréon, Tulancingo, Xalapa and Zacatecas. All her talks attracted very large audiences. In Puebla, she had an audience of 20,000 workers."

Plutarco Elias Calles

By 1923 Belén de Sárraga was receiving financial and political support from Presidential candidate Plutarco Elías Calles-- her fellow anti-cleric and Spiritist. After Calles won the presidency, Bélen de Sárraga continued speaking to the same topics and in support of his administration in Mexico, New Orleans and Havana. In 1926 she became a Mexican citizen.

Fernández Aceves recounts in detail Sárraga's efforts with her magazine dedicated to universal freethinking, Rumbos Nuevos, which lasted from 1925 to 1927. But after 1928, suddenly, information about Sárraga dries up. Speculates Fernández Acevez (my translation), "Perhaps she did not approve of the armed violence of the Cristiada"-- that is, the civil war that had broken out between the adherents of the Mexican State under Calles and the Church. In 1931 Sárraga was back in Spain, where she soon fought against the fascists in the Civil War; when the Fascists triumphed in 1939, she found herself again in Mexico. She continued to give talks, though one imagines to less clamor, and was writing her memoirs when she died at age 78 in 1950.

Belén de Sárraga surely deserves a full-length biography, as does this outstanding collection of case studies of women in social change in Mexico an English translation.

>More about María Teresa Fernández Aceves's Mujeres en el cambio social en el siglo XX mexicano (Siglo XXI Editores, 2014).

COMMENTS always welcome.

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SURF ON

>More on this blog about Plutarco Elías Calles: Una ventana al mundo invisible (A Window to the Invisible World) or, Master Amajur and the Smoking Signatures

>My interview with historian Michael K. Schuessler about Alma Reed, Felipe Carillo Puerto, Pita Amor, and Elena Poniatowska.

>My knock-your-huaraches-off interview with historian John Tutino, "Looking at Mexico in New Ways"

>More about my book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual