The Politics of Writing

I only gave him a B. They shouldn’t think getting a doctorate with me is easy. But his is first-class. Did you know that there are just five types of artists? Your guy, Dreyman, is a Type 4, a “hysterical anthropocentrist.” Can’t bear being alone, always talking, needing friends. That type should never be brought to trial. They thrive on that. Temporary detention is the best way to deal with them. Complete isolation and no set release date. No human contact the whole time, not even with the guards. Good treatment, no harassment, no abuse, no scandals, nothing they could write about later. After 10 months, we release. Suddenly, that guy won’t cause us any more trouble. Know what the best part is? Most type 4s we’ve processed in this way never write anything again. Or paint anything, or whatever artists do. And that without any use of force. Just like that. Kind of like a present.

-Oberstleutnant Anton Grubitz, Das Leben der Anderen (2006)

My friend Ira has posted an “open letter” inspired by a writers reunion organized in Oaxaca city by a group of Mexican writers published by Editorial Almadía. Her complete post is here, but I think it is important to copy her letter here:

Carta abierta a quien se ponga el saco, a propósito del encuentro de escritores (de Editorial Almadía) en Oaxaca

Estimados Escritores Publicados:

Además de escribir ficción que tan linda les sale, piensen en la posibilidad de ser un ente político. No hablo aquí de partidismo. Hablo de entender que la relativa notoriedad de que gozan puede ser usada para otra cosa que lucir su incompetencia en las relaciones interpersonales, o sea su (nuestra) nerdez.

La gente espera de ustedes inteligencia (god knows why). Sobre todo cuando participan en una mesa de reflexión. Se vale ser borrachito, coquito o de plano un imbecilazo, pero no se vale perder el tiempo de los demás.

No chinguen.

Quizás piensen que no es su chamba, pero se engañan. El pinche país se está cayendo a pedazos y ustedes usan los foros públicos y las notas en Reforma para hablar de lo mucho que se admiran mutuamente. (Lo mismo va para los periodistas culturales/writers wannabe, que cubren nomás los temas que no confrontan y se la pasan chupando con los escritores en estos encuentros, claro está).

¿Qué mal podría haberle hecho a este país que en este sonado Encuentro alguien hubiera puesto un tema nacional sobre la mesa?

Y me dirán, como algún sabio ex-presidente dijo alguna vez ¿y yo por qué?

En privado y con un par de chelas encima les diría “¡por que hay que tener madre!”, pero como esta es una carta en serio y hay que guardar las formas les doy al menos tres razones:

-la materia antes llamada “Historia” está por desaparecer en el programa de las preparatorias. Así, de golpe y porrazo. Ya no hablamos de arrancar ‘algunas páginas’ de los ya vilipendiados libros de texto, sino de suprimir la materia por completo. Supongo que los nuevos estudiantes sólo necesitan “el presente” para maquilar.

-el petróleo, el gas, la electricidad que nunca fueron nuestras pero que por lo menos tenían una etiquetita con nuestro nombre, ahora nos los van a sacar, como decía mi bienhablada madre, por las nalgas.

-los hijos de puta (ponga usted aquí el nombre de su favorito) siguen cobrando por serlo. Ahí están los gobernadores poblanos, los ministros pederastas de la iglesia, los diputados, el presidente que ya se lleva de a cuartos con el ejército. El conservadurismo está a la alza, los pobres ahora son de derecha. Escritores capaces (Tryno Maldonado) de hacer un escándalo estúpido contra Conaculta por supuesta censura y retractarse con la cola entre las patas un mes después, ahora son antologadores.

¿Les parece de verdad que no hay temas que tratar?

No es cool ni padre ni se ganan premios ni se publican antologías si uno se asume animal político.

Al contrario, uno pierde muchos amigos y quién sabe, quizás después los necesite.

Yo, por lo pronto, me desmarco.

I have to say it here, right from the start: I agree with Ira. We do not always agree on everything. Actually, I think we disagree a lot. We respectfully disagree. Well, sometimes we call each other names: “Pinche Ernesto/Pinche Ira,” but the respect I am talking about is not about being polite, but about being honest. We respect each other’s intelligence and morals. If I had to put it more frankly, I think that the basis of our relationship (as friends, as colleagues) is that we respect each other politically. Now, this is not meant to be a means to prove Ira’s point about writers just talking about how much they like each other. But I think it is important to say, as I have said, right from the start, that we are friends, and that we are not friends because we agree on things.

I agree with Ira. When she was in London recently, she patiently listened to one of my long-winding rants about life. Well, about journalism, and about writing. At first she disagreed passionately with me. She said that I spoke -that I often spoke- from a very comfortable position.

And, well, I agree with Ira. I guess you could say I speak -I write- from a very comfortable position. There are important details about this position, about how I got here, about what I do being here, from here, in here. I suppose that in this time and age most writers write from this “very comfortable position,” just for the mere fact that they can write. Yet again, this “position” is relative: the comfort of Sebastian Faulks is not the same comfort than that of, say, Alan Moore, and the comfort of the two has nothing to do with the comfort of Jorge Volpi, Juan Villoro or Vicente Quirarte, just to drop three random names. And then let us not go into those who are writing from much more difficult -yet comparably “comfortable”- positions, those in Cuba, Africa or elsewhere.

It’s a truism that Karl Marx (no link required) enjoyed said “comfortable position”, even though not as comfortable as that of his younger sponsor, Friedrich Engels. So yes, Marx came back and forth from the British Museum’s Reading Room (then the British Library) to the Museum Tavern across the road, and we know that his comfortable lodgings granted him the excitement and input of London’s Soho. Another truism is that Marx could not have written what he wrote -and thought what he thought, one thinks- without a) Engels’s money and b) the time that gave him.

The root of the problem that Ira addresses is not easy to put in simple terms. It is so pervasive in Mexican society (or at least in the literary and “cultural” circles) that those of us inside it cannot properly see how complex it is. On the other hand, it is quite simple. This contradiction lies at the heart of the matter. It has been said that Mexican society is pure contradiction. “Surrealism” is said to have found its true origin in Mexico, when Andre Breton visited the country. Mexico seems to defy Western logic because it does not answer to the same criteria of order, organization, planning, structure, assessment, et cetera. Deeply rooted in its colonial history, Mexico’s social structure is firmly grounded on the frustration of European imperialism. In other words, mestizaje is the result of this frustrated attempt at imposing a new order. In Mexico we are forever neither here nor there. This mixture can and should be a positive one (no one is arguing in favor of “purity” here!). Nevertheless, the stubbornness of the colonial mentality, still trapped in Western metaphysical thought, only has produced a logic of discrimination, polarization and segregation. In Mexico you are either burgués or jodido, fresa or naco, yuppie or pandroso. You are either with the Right or with the Left. After 2000, and even more so after 2006, the polarization became more than pervasive, more than clear: the new country order was that between the Light and the Dark Force (or vice versa, poles are easily interchangeable): you were either here or here. No in-betweens. O lo uno, o lo otro.

Writers in Mexico, young and old, conservative and liberal, from Mexico City or from other cities, have always been, like the rest of the Mexican population, within this order of things. I call this order of things “structural exclusion”. The way I see it, this term describes what I perceive as the key element that organizes Mexican society, the main obstacle that stops us from advancing towards a more democratic, just, egalitarian society. Writers have enjoyed privileges because Mexico is a country that has traditionally had very low levels of book sales. (It is now vox populi that Mexico spends yearly, per capita, $8 USD in books). Spain has a population of 40,448,191. Mexico alone, 108,700,891. And yet, Spain produces more books than all the countries of Latin America put together.

Writing in Mexico is mythologized. Because the country does not buy many books, because books and reading in general is not a priority or an ingrained habit of the general public, to write becomes a luxury, or an act of madness. Because writing does not sell (or does not sell well), the State has traditionally taken the responsibility of encouraging the production of books and literary activities. Like most of my writer colleagues, I have received funding from the Mexican government to write. Whether it is as grants or money from literary contests, writing as a career is essentially bound to the process of applying for State grants (mainly, from here) and then publishing first here and then, when success and fame come, here. Then there come the spin-offs, literary encounters, workshops, lectures, judging for contests, et cetera, all organized by the same guys: the State.

The thing is, then, that there is no real literary scene in Mexico that is not sponsored by the State. I am writing now as someone who has benefitted from these programs. Because the country as a whole does not guarantee a writer’s survival, the State needs to do “disaster mitigation.” The way I see it, the State is not doing anyone a favor. After all, we had more than 7 decades of widespread political corruption and ineffectual bureaucracy where public funds were -and still are- shamelessly stolen.

I believe that the money that comes from State funds for the arts and culture do not and should not buy consciences. (The problem is, they do, and without making any big fuss about it). They certainly have not bought mine. These funds have not, and will not in any foreseeable future, solve the major problem in the country, which is that of a chronic lack of (distributive or other) justice. The “structural exclusion” that organizes Mexican society separating the very wealthy from the very poor, the overqualified from the illiterate, the globally mobile and plurilingual from the monolingual and dispossessed has played a major role in making Mexico a country where writers are more worried with making ends meet than with writing. They do give us grants to come to pursue graduate studies abroad, but do not guarantee that we will be able to either eat while doing so or find a job back home at the end of it (if we ever make it). The whole system is designed so “the poorest [...] will remain poor while the richest [...] will remain rich” (García Verdú, 2005). Generally speaking, because the State funding for education or the arts is not sufficient to support thoroughly the activities it is supposed to encourage, only those that can already dedicate themselves to these activities (in other words, that already are in that “comfortable position”) can apply for them and use them. The system is not designed to help those who can’t access education or who would need real financial support to write, to live writing or to study full time. In brief, the system works perfectly well to ensure that writing (and higher education, and the arts) remain a privilege of the already-privileged.

This is why we writers from Mexico, like everybody else who can communicate with others, have a real responsibility. Not only with ourselves and our writing, but with our fellow human beings. So though not all writers are equally privileged, it is indeed a privilege to be able to write. One must use it wisely, and ethically. We have a responsibility to be critical. Because our comfortable position does not stop us from critical thought, and, like dear old spectral Karl Marx would have liked it, from action.