A day at the Feria Internacional del Libro (part I)
Looking at the publishing industry in Mexico City
Last month I had the immense privilege of being able to attend the XXIII Feria Internacional del Libro, an international book fair located in the heart of Mexico City. Major Publishers from around the Spanish speaking world were in attendance, as well as a number of small presses located within Mexico.
Not wanting to waste this opportunity, I carried a notebook with me and wrote down the names of different publishers and titles which stood out. Book Fairs like this one provide a glance at the literary culture of the civilization. Since most intellectuals read books, reference books, and get their ideas from books, we can say that the intellectual currents of a society are downwind from the work of these publishers.
It is also true that Anglophone countries tend to have a poor understanding of Hispanic arts and letters. This trend finds its roots in the 16th century with the invention of the Leyenda Negra, and continues to this day. Even seemingly positive representations of Spanish culture portray a kind of exoticized proletariat. This is of course ridiculous, and Mexico, like any other country in Latin America, has a booming industry of bourgeoisie art and letters, as well as a surprisingly rich selection of pulp fiction, noir, and airport novels. I was surprised by the number of small presses and independent publishing in Mexico City, which has a much richer publishing landscape than the Anglosphere.
This post is somewhat different than my previous ones, and I hope it provides a glance into the publishing industry of Mexico, Spain, and Latin America, as well as the current trends and cultural debates which are taking place within the broader Spanish speaking world.
Without further ado, lets look at some of the Imprints active within Mexico.
Editorial Salto de Pagina
An imprint from Madrid belonging to the Biblioteca Nueva group, with a focus on narrative works from across the Hispanic world. They’re making inroads in Mexico, with several new releases by Mexican authors available. These books are manufactured in Mexico (although most of their titles are manufactured in Spain), and they have a bookstore at Tehuantepec 50 esquina con Ures Col. Roma Sur and offices at Alc. Cuauhtemoc C.P. 06760 • Ciudad de México. The tent was run by two middle aged men with a serious and literary ambiance about them. Several of their recent releases jumped out at me:
La guerra del Transvaal y los misterios de la Banca de Londres by Ramiro de Maeztu with a forward from Carlos Piña (The Transvaal War and the mysteries of the Bank of London) ISBN: 978-8415065333
At the end of 1899, as Pío Baroja tells us, it occurred to Ramiro de Maeztu that Valle Inclán, Camilo Bargiela, Baroja and Maeztu himself could write a large folletín based on the Transvaal War and publish it in instalments. From April 1900 to January 1901 a serialised novel was published in El País - ninety-four in all - entitled La Guerra del Transvaal y los misterios de la Banca de Londres (The Transvaal War and the Mysteries of the London Bank), signed by a certain Van Poel Krupp, an alleged journalist and adventurer who had lost an arm to a bullet in South Africa. Years later, in January 1936, in an interview with Eduardo de Ontañón published in the weekly Estampa, Maeztu himself acknowledged the authorship of this text.
We now intend to recover this novel - the only one by Maeztu - which serves not only to approach the most unknown part of the author's oeuvre, but also to intuit the literary context in which the leading figures of Spanish 98 created their first works, in which popular genres, such as the serialised serial with a historical background, were of great importance.
Guerra sucia y pandemia en Mexico by Jorge Gómez Naredo (Dirty War and Pandemic in Mexico) ISBN 978-607-8877-63-8
Dirty war and pandemic in Mexico shows how pharmaceutical companies, most of the media and the opposition sought to derail the actions taken by the left-wing government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.
The book consists of three chapters: the first deals with when and how the pandemic emerged, the actions taken by various countries around the world when they learned of the appearance of t he virus, how the World Health Organisation (WHO) acted, people's reactions, and so on.
The second chapter deals with the specific case of Mexico, when the virus arrived, how the country prepared and what actions were taken. In addition to the above, the chapter refers to the work of AMLO's administration, since December 2018, to improve the public health system. It also analyses the situation of the health system after years of the neoliberal model. It also mentions the interests of several pharmaceutical and health companies that, since before 2020, practically declared war on the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The third chapter deals with the dirty war waged by López Obrador's opponents. From the speeches they established and disseminated in the media, to the creation of "medical influencers" who attacked all the actions undertaken by the Mexican government. The legal war against AMLO's spokesperson during the pandemic, the undersecretary of health, Hugo López-Gatell, is also discussed.
This book is necessary to have a broad and contextualised vision of the pandemic in Mexico, establishing as its main axis the dirty war that the right wing carried out and continues to carry out against AMLO's government.
El Funeral by Mauricio Figueiras (the Funeral) ISBN 978-607-8650-07-1
Alessandro and Annunziata, siblings born in deep Sicily, are separated during childhood for reasons that are never made clear to them. While Annunziata is forced to go into exile in northern Italy with her mother, Alessandro remains with his father in their small hometown dominated by the enigmatic and powerful presence of Mother Aradia, the paternal grandmother, a matriarch who pulls the strings of the community with a hand guided by dark ancestral powers invoked in the meetings of a female conclave. Years after the separation, Alessandro regains contact with Annunziata to begin a correspondence in which the mysterious events surrounding the death and funeral of Mother Aradia are revealed, transformed into an event that forever changes the lives of the villagers. With a fast pace that does not forgo lyrical flashes, "The Funeral" draws a social microcosm governed by the scars of the Second World War and the shadows of the magical mentality, the codes of the mafia and the dictates of religion, against which a story of filial reunion is set against the unfathomable mandates of history.
Fulgor by Alma Mancilla (Luster) ISBN: 978-8418546921
Eva, a young anthropology student recovering from a miscarriage, moves into a cabin to do fieldwork on an indigenous community. But she comes across a disturbing group of silent women in white in the forest, although no one in the village knows about them. Nor of the strange hamlet they inhabit, along with an albino boy, which is haunted by owls. And by the time Eva's medication runs out, the boundary between fantasy and reality will vanish. With refined, twilight prose, Mancilla explores the oppressive terror that lies at the heart of the female condition.
Vodevil Ediciones
Vodevil Ediciones had a tent of young, very friendly authors, and struck me as much more independent and laid back than some of the other places. They had several new releases which seemed interesting, and I made a note of two of them.
Al Filo de la Esquina by Luis Aguilar (On the Edge of the Corner)
"I have respect for people who in one way or another make a living out of the hustle".
Says Francisco, who is kind enough to tell a piece of his existence in the bundle of pages you are holding in your hands.
Francisco likes boxing, the smell left by his female colleagues after taking a shit in the common bathroom of the Human Resources office where he works, and keeping in mind the teachings of his grandfather:
“I remember my grandfather once telling one of his friends, while they were playing cards in the house, that he drank just to avoid listening to bullshit.”
Al Filo de la Esquina will allow you to see that part of you that seeks to "win" at life, to fight that which rubs your fragility in your face.
John Lennon Me Asesinó A Sangre Fría by Arturo J. Flores (John Lennon Murdered Me In Cold Blood)
A collection of columns and periodicals from the music journalist Arturo J. Flores, it is a confessional book focusing on the author’s lifetime relationship with rock-and-roll.
Born in Mexico City on 20 October 1978. Arturo J. Flores studied Communication Sciences, specialising in Written Journalism. He has been a contributor to various magazines and newspapers such as Picnic, Marvin, Indie Rocks!, Eres, Gorila, Gótica, Revista Marvil, Diario Récord, among others; as well as the electronic magazines Diez4.com, Cacoandroll.com and Treff3.net, a publication of the German-Austrian-Swiss-Mexican community, and is currently editor-in-chief of Playboy Mexico magazine.
Fondo Blanco Ediciones / Carabel
Fondo Blanco appears to be an imprint of the Carabel group. Their website states: “Carabel is a publishing house and virtual bookshop based in Mexico City. We provide publishing services to institutions and independent authors and we take care of their distribution.” This particular tent was manned by three serious looking women in their thirties, and the majority of the books seemed to focus on women’s voices and issues of feminism:
Mexicanas 3 Antologia (Mexican Women, Anthology 3) various authors.
In this third part of the Mexicanas series - a series aimed at profiling narratives around the social and personal issues of contemporary women - the protagonists of these thirteen stories face professional challenges that go beyond their skills and knowledge.
Pepitas de calabaza by Alfredo Bojórquez (Pumpkin seeds)
"Scattered plants, incomprehensible graffiti, skinny dogs, bumps without signs, curiously shaped potholes. Everything was full of life. As if Chuburná suddenly took shape. I felt like running, climbing onto a roof and jumping off. The energy was overflowing. The blood in his veins, every muscle, was asking him to break something. Anything."
In Pepitas de calabaza, the characters wander between failed relationships in search of affections overshadowed by grief. Between passions and losses, their lives are gradually and irreversibly transformed
This is the first installment of a multi-part series. Next week I will continue with more imprints and titles, as well as a brief description of several lectures which I attended at the XXIII Feria Internacional del Libro. In any case, I hope this has provided a brief look inside the publishing industry of Mexico and the broader Spanish speaking world.