By Victor Flores Garcia.
(Milenio. Mexico. 19-September-2010)
The writer Eduardo Garcia Aguilar (Colombia, 1953) Weekly Goals goes to the paths of a Latin American fascination with the Mexican Revolution. In the eyes of Latin Americans, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) today still embodies the change of the revolutionary mob epic sad government. They see their myths ruling as embalmed cadavers with their enemies under the same monument revolutionary, bureaucratic and in the hands of intellectuals domesticated for power. García Aguilar lived more than a decade as a correspondent in Mexico, and from 1998 he worked as an editor in Paris, has authored half a dozen novels marked by social violence, translated into English, French and Bengali. Two of them have Mexico as a backdrop: Delirio de San Cristobal, a critical essay on the dizzying neozapatismo and coccyx Tequila, a tribute to the second half of the twentieth century Mexico.
VFG: Your literary work is full of people driven mad by the madness of revolutions and civil wars. How do you react a writer of such tragedies to the annals of the centenary of the first social revolution of the twentieth century Latin America? EGA
: My first reaction is to turn to tradition. The celebration of the Mexican Revolution must be a reason to reread the classics produced by this crucial event and the excellent bibliography historians on the topic in the Anglo world, which are sometimes the most goals. Is studied as a revolution as the Russian Revolution, is present in the world's imagination like few in film, music, painting and iconography. In my case, I reflected on that topic in my book Delirio de San Cristobal. Manifesto for a disillusioned generation (Praxis, 1998), which is about the Zapatista rebellion, which I covered as a reporter, a surprising and strange subterranean pulse failed resurrection of the Mexican Revolution, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Cold War's end.
Coincidence two official celebrations of the bicentenary of the Independence of Latin American countries, faced with the horrible stepmother English, and the centennial of the great Mexican Revolution, we see the approach of both events is very short and modern Latin American history. The violence of both events remains latent in our countries. Now it's even more outrageous, more technical, with the rise of armed gangs in the suburbs of cities, which have no limit to kill, torture, make law and the assassins knife.
: My first reaction is to turn to tradition. The celebration of the Mexican Revolution must be a reason to reread the classics produced by this crucial event and the excellent bibliography historians on the topic in the Anglo world, which are sometimes the most goals. Is studied as a revolution as the Russian Revolution, is present in the world's imagination like few in film, music, painting and iconography. In my case, I reflected on that topic in my book Delirio de San Cristobal. Manifesto for a disillusioned generation (Praxis, 1998), which is about the Zapatista rebellion, which I covered as a reporter, a surprising and strange subterranean pulse failed resurrection of the Mexican Revolution, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Cold War's end.
Coincidence two official celebrations of the bicentenary of the Independence of Latin American countries, faced with the horrible stepmother English, and the centennial of the great Mexican Revolution, we see the approach of both events is very short and modern Latin American history. The violence of both events remains latent in our countries. Now it's even more outrageous, more technical, with the rise of armed gangs in the suburbs of cities, which have no limit to kill, torture, make law and the assassins knife.
VFG: What has changed and what remains of a violent reality that century away? EGA
: These days, reading great biography of Simon Bolivar, the British historian John Lynch, a specialist in the revolutions of independence of the nineteenth century, clearly perceived that we are still immersed in the echoes of those events. Today we are surrounded by new technologies, cable television, cellular, internet, planes, automobiles and skyscrapers, but Latin America remains the same social level, divided by a few rich corrupt politicians, and most miserable before an expectant mass.
also remains a profitable haul of world powers. At the geopolitical level, they were once England and Spain, after the Soviet Union and the United States now and in future the sides will be a waning U.S., Europe in crisis and under-developing the ambitious China and other emerging Asian powers. And the protest movements and reaction forces acting on them are outside interests. Bolivar and his men were agents of the British Empire to capture the phenomenal interest in Latin American markets. The Liberator was surrounded in their campaigns for a nearby army soldiers and British soldiers were much more confidence that the military, soldiers and local rangers. The celebration of the Bicentennial of Independence Bolivarian followed conventional myth, archaic nineteenth century, uncritical. Nobody remembered that Bolívar was the great agent of British interests, a chess piece on the colonial world.
Now we sit to review the consequences of the Mexican Revolution and its realization in government that led to the formation and foundation of the legendary PRI, which remains alive and well. People like Obregón, Calles, Cárdenas, among others, are memorable impersonations of mutation of the coup in government.
VFG MEXICAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION: How was reflected in the American cultural and political movements that Mexican social phenomenon? EGA
: It's funny how, at the time of Zapata and Villa, many intellectuals regarded the rebels counter made him play the Yankee empire then. The Huerta, the Porfiristas nostalgic and followers of General Bernardo Reyes, the father of writer Alfonso Reyes-revolutionary hordes saw the black hand of Uncle Sam, whose child goes back to New York in the War of 1812. But the Mexican Revolution is an extraordinary event, exciting, necessary, after which the country made his originality in the twentieth century and gave great nation of Mexico range voice on the world next to Russia after the Soviet revolution in 1917. Large writers such as John Reed and others, followed step by step this great event. Mexico was another after the Revolution and his example spread throughout Central and South America in those decades of the twenties and thirties, when the United States acted with absolute shamelessness dictators to rise and fall according to their interests. Thus it was assumed that all of Latin America Mexico was his older brother, the most original and daring. The work of intellectuals such as José Vasconcelos and the founding of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) was a cultural revolution which was screened across the continent. UNAM has been a refuge for thousands of exiles pursued by Latin American dictatorships. The Mexican cultural blow, the cult classic book and helped to give voice to our continent, defying the order to the homelands silly and primitive warlordism that prevailed after independence. In this task the role of Fondo de Cultura Economica (FCE) is extraordinary. This editorial is the queen of Latin American publishers. In his catalog have drawn all thinkers, researchers and scholars of the continent over more than half a century, as well as a host of Latin American and English exiles expelled by the Civil War and the Franco regime, coupled with great Mexican authors. All that was the result of the Mexican Revolution.
: These days, reading great biography of Simon Bolivar, the British historian John Lynch, a specialist in the revolutions of independence of the nineteenth century, clearly perceived that we are still immersed in the echoes of those events. Today we are surrounded by new technologies, cable television, cellular, internet, planes, automobiles and skyscrapers, but Latin America remains the same social level, divided by a few rich corrupt politicians, and most miserable before an expectant mass.
also remains a profitable haul of world powers. At the geopolitical level, they were once England and Spain, after the Soviet Union and the United States now and in future the sides will be a waning U.S., Europe in crisis and under-developing the ambitious China and other emerging Asian powers. And the protest movements and reaction forces acting on them are outside interests. Bolivar and his men were agents of the British Empire to capture the phenomenal interest in Latin American markets. The Liberator was surrounded in their campaigns for a nearby army soldiers and British soldiers were much more confidence that the military, soldiers and local rangers. The celebration of the Bicentennial of Independence Bolivarian followed conventional myth, archaic nineteenth century, uncritical. Nobody remembered that Bolívar was the great agent of British interests, a chess piece on the colonial world.
Now we sit to review the consequences of the Mexican Revolution and its realization in government that led to the formation and foundation of the legendary PRI, which remains alive and well. People like Obregón, Calles, Cárdenas, among others, are memorable impersonations of mutation of the coup in government.
VFG MEXICAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION: How was reflected in the American cultural and political movements that Mexican social phenomenon? EGA
: It's funny how, at the time of Zapata and Villa, many intellectuals regarded the rebels counter made him play the Yankee empire then. The Huerta, the Porfiristas nostalgic and followers of General Bernardo Reyes, the father of writer Alfonso Reyes-revolutionary hordes saw the black hand of Uncle Sam, whose child goes back to New York in the War of 1812. But the Mexican Revolution is an extraordinary event, exciting, necessary, after which the country made his originality in the twentieth century and gave great nation of Mexico range voice on the world next to Russia after the Soviet revolution in 1917. Large writers such as John Reed and others, followed step by step this great event. Mexico was another after the Revolution and his example spread throughout Central and South America in those decades of the twenties and thirties, when the United States acted with absolute shamelessness dictators to rise and fall according to their interests. Thus it was assumed that all of Latin America Mexico was his older brother, the most original and daring. The work of intellectuals such as José Vasconcelos and the founding of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) was a cultural revolution which was screened across the continent. UNAM has been a refuge for thousands of exiles pursued by Latin American dictatorships. The Mexican cultural blow, the cult classic book and helped to give voice to our continent, defying the order to the homelands silly and primitive warlordism that prevailed after independence. In this task the role of Fondo de Cultura Economica (FCE) is extraordinary. This editorial is the queen of Latin American publishers. In his catalog have drawn all thinkers, researchers and scholars of the continent over more than half a century, as well as a host of Latin American and English exiles expelled by the Civil War and the Franco regime, coupled with great Mexican authors. All that was the result of the Mexican Revolution.
VFG: What were the reminiscences, and distortions "about the Mexican Revolution that lasted in the popular imagination in Latin America until the last decades of the twentieth century social violence?
EGA: The ranchera music, film, literature, the memory of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa is still alive, especially in the provinces and in remote villages and lonely in Latin America. In these moments, Colombia tours, I've seen that some teachers or members homes or in bars popular in the walls yellowed photos of Zapata or Villa, stressing in particular the photo are sitting in the presidential seat in the National Palace. Also emblematic of the camp follower of Indian face hanging from a train. In fact, in Colombia runs the legend that Villa was in Colombia, since the call Doroteo Arango and that Arango is a symbolic name of the coffee growing region where he was born, is believed to be descended from Colombian and proud of it .
These characters represent the rebellion, dignity, courage of the poor male in all its glory. And the truth is that in the most backward regions of these countries the situation is similar to that of the destitute peasants and Indians who joined the ranks of the armies of these two heroes. Times of the Mexican Revolution are still alive in almost every country in the continent, including those who are governed by the left or your current imagination.
EGA: The ranchera music, film, literature, the memory of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa is still alive, especially in the provinces and in remote villages and lonely in Latin America. In these moments, Colombia tours, I've seen that some teachers or members homes or in bars popular in the walls yellowed photos of Zapata or Villa, stressing in particular the photo are sitting in the presidential seat in the National Palace. Also emblematic of the camp follower of Indian face hanging from a train. In fact, in Colombia runs the legend that Villa was in Colombia, since the call Doroteo Arango and that Arango is a symbolic name of the coffee growing region where he was born, is believed to be descended from Colombian and proud of it .
These characters represent the rebellion, dignity, courage of the poor male in all its glory. And the truth is that in the most backward regions of these countries the situation is similar to that of the destitute peasants and Indians who joined the ranks of the armies of these two heroes. Times of the Mexican Revolution are still alive in almost every country in the continent, including those who are governed by the left or your current imagination.
VFG: Do you think the epic dimension of the emblematic figures, like Villa and Zapata was able to disconnect from the profile's authoritarian political system that emerged from the Mexican Revolution? EGA
I do not think. Mexico, almost like any other country, since the time of Vasconcelos and mural painters, lives ruled by myths and legends tip homelands. Educational and intellectual machine is a machine that molds the original minds of Mexican imagery of the heroes of Independence, the Reformation and the Revolution. It is the only Latin American country that gives scholarships to thousands of writers and intellectuals, an outlay of monies outstanding to the nomenclature in each generation college literary and intellectual, to feed the country mythology. It is curious how little critics who have been and are great Mexican intellectuals, with few exceptions, with respect to its history and its cultural leaders. It is a truly phenomenal Republican pantheon. Perhaps that is similar to France, his heroes and his bombastic rhetoric and epic Marseillaise. Villa and Zapata rule in Mexico as bodies are embalmed in battle, similar to the Mio Cid. And behind them every cultural leader is a saint. All Mexican intellectuals and writers dream of entering the pantheon of patriotism. So are sometimes so gray and formal, like "funeral bureaucrats," as the Guatemalan-Mexican writer Luis Cardoza y Aragón, referring to a character in the wars. So you look with nostalgia to the years of solidifying the cultural revolution in Mexico, Vasconcelos's hand first, and the FCE and the UNAM later. In the chaotic decades that has been bureaucratized great blow at the hands of intellectuals and domesticated captive power. VFG
: At the end of the first decade of century, when a very imperfect democracy "and not" perfect dictatorship "- a prevailing political regime in Mexico, what's left of a century of historical and literary accounts of social violence in Latin America? EGA
: It is for history is a large literature on Latin American conflicts, especially before and after the boom of Latin American literature. All addressed the issue of the dictator and the rebel. This had its genesis in that Mexico: new Vasconcelos, in his memoirs opened with Ulises Criollo, Martin Luis Guzman with the eagle and the snake, Juan Rulfo and classic on Mexican agricultural world, and José Revueltas and others, made the social tradition of literature continue to live in Mexico. In Venezuela, Romulo Gallegos did, in Peru, José María Arguedas, in Colombia, José Rivera Eustasio The Vortex, which begins: "I played my heart and I won random violence." Several of these authors made classics on violence and the tropics. The reality is there and will continue to generate literature.
intellectual regression
VFG: The official mania and ritual celebrations of 200 years of independence from Spain, 100 of the Mexican Revolution, 50 of the Cuban Revolution, in contrast the pessimism in the literature that your generation produces. Is the disappointment and rejection of the historical epic brand of Latin American literature today? EGA
: In my case, yes, but not in the best-selling merchants with patriotic themes. Bicentennial celebrations were characterized by strengthening the classical imagery of the heroes and legends ahistorical patriotic education agencies for the nineteenth century. Those heroes, big or huge ignorant murderers, or double-sided despicable people, are still seen in a theater for use by children's minds a semi-illiterate population. In each country, the writers gave money to officials events, publish books or to blow up balloons, as in Bogota, cost-millionaires. Of course, not invited to the debates of historians, sociologists, anthropologists, theater people, poets, novelists or essayists rebels, but the makers of best-sellers fast and soap operas. Uncut books have proliferated and mediocre on Bolivar, where there is what we all know and, without citing anyone. Books that rain in the wet. Everyone wants to write his rhetorical Bolivar liar, and so does Pancho Villa and Zapata. But yes, serious historians are never invited.
We have gone back even with regard to the intellectual level of the fifties, sixties and seventies of last century when there was an intellectual who struggled throughout the continent at a high level. Now they are all literary vedettes which only interested in selling books and not delving into true drama of our continent.
I do not think. Mexico, almost like any other country, since the time of Vasconcelos and mural painters, lives ruled by myths and legends tip homelands. Educational and intellectual machine is a machine that molds the original minds of Mexican imagery of the heroes of Independence, the Reformation and the Revolution. It is the only Latin American country that gives scholarships to thousands of writers and intellectuals, an outlay of monies outstanding to the nomenclature in each generation college literary and intellectual, to feed the country mythology. It is curious how little critics who have been and are great Mexican intellectuals, with few exceptions, with respect to its history and its cultural leaders. It is a truly phenomenal Republican pantheon. Perhaps that is similar to France, his heroes and his bombastic rhetoric and epic Marseillaise. Villa and Zapata rule in Mexico as bodies are embalmed in battle, similar to the Mio Cid. And behind them every cultural leader is a saint. All Mexican intellectuals and writers dream of entering the pantheon of patriotism. So are sometimes so gray and formal, like "funeral bureaucrats," as the Guatemalan-Mexican writer Luis Cardoza y Aragón, referring to a character in the wars. So you look with nostalgia to the years of solidifying the cultural revolution in Mexico, Vasconcelos's hand first, and the FCE and the UNAM later. In the chaotic decades that has been bureaucratized great blow at the hands of intellectuals and domesticated captive power. VFG
: At the end of the first decade of century, when a very imperfect democracy "and not" perfect dictatorship "- a prevailing political regime in Mexico, what's left of a century of historical and literary accounts of social violence in Latin America? EGA
: It is for history is a large literature on Latin American conflicts, especially before and after the boom of Latin American literature. All addressed the issue of the dictator and the rebel. This had its genesis in that Mexico: new Vasconcelos, in his memoirs opened with Ulises Criollo, Martin Luis Guzman with the eagle and the snake, Juan Rulfo and classic on Mexican agricultural world, and José Revueltas and others, made the social tradition of literature continue to live in Mexico. In Venezuela, Romulo Gallegos did, in Peru, José María Arguedas, in Colombia, José Rivera Eustasio The Vortex, which begins: "I played my heart and I won random violence." Several of these authors made classics on violence and the tropics. The reality is there and will continue to generate literature.
intellectual regression
VFG: The official mania and ritual celebrations of 200 years of independence from Spain, 100 of the Mexican Revolution, 50 of the Cuban Revolution, in contrast the pessimism in the literature that your generation produces. Is the disappointment and rejection of the historical epic brand of Latin American literature today? EGA
: In my case, yes, but not in the best-selling merchants with patriotic themes. Bicentennial celebrations were characterized by strengthening the classical imagery of the heroes and legends ahistorical patriotic education agencies for the nineteenth century. Those heroes, big or huge ignorant murderers, or double-sided despicable people, are still seen in a theater for use by children's minds a semi-illiterate population. In each country, the writers gave money to officials events, publish books or to blow up balloons, as in Bogota, cost-millionaires. Of course, not invited to the debates of historians, sociologists, anthropologists, theater people, poets, novelists or essayists rebels, but the makers of best-sellers fast and soap operas. Uncut books have proliferated and mediocre on Bolivar, where there is what we all know and, without citing anyone. Books that rain in the wet. Everyone wants to write his rhetorical Bolivar liar, and so does Pancho Villa and Zapata. But yes, serious historians are never invited.
We have gone back even with regard to the intellectual level of the fifties, sixties and seventies of last century when there was an intellectual who struggled throughout the continent at a high level. Now they are all literary vedettes which only interested in selling books and not delving into true drama of our continent.
VFG: The Cuban Revolution was able to renew momentum with its epicenter in Mexico and ended in disappointment. EGA
: Regarding Cuba, the historical drama and the failure of their revolution has given rise fashion literature filled the shelves of books in Europe. This country is ruled by the dictatorship of the Castro brothers, the family usurped the word infallible Revolution and serves the island with an iron fist. They are more interested in his megalomania tyrannical American leaders that poverty, backwardness and lack of freedom on the streets. Nobody can deny that Fidel Castro is part of the furniture of Latin American history, but is and has been a tyrant blind to the reality of his country. He owns millions of Cubans, just as the bosses in the rest of the continent of their own serf. There is little to celebrate both the 60 years of the Cuban Revolution, and in 100 of the Mexican Revolution and 200 of the Independence.
: Regarding Cuba, the historical drama and the failure of their revolution has given rise fashion literature filled the shelves of books in Europe. This country is ruled by the dictatorship of the Castro brothers, the family usurped the word infallible Revolution and serves the island with an iron fist. They are more interested in his megalomania tyrannical American leaders that poverty, backwardness and lack of freedom on the streets. Nobody can deny that Fidel Castro is part of the furniture of Latin American history, but is and has been a tyrant blind to the reality of his country. He owns millions of Cubans, just as the bosses in the rest of the continent of their own serf. There is little to celebrate both the 60 years of the Cuban Revolution, and in 100 of the Mexican Revolution and 200 of the Independence.
VFG: Will it survive the fascination dogmatic heroes in literature Latin American and despair prevail and skepticism? EGA
: In my novel, Boulevard of heroes reflect on the various stages of the hero in the English and Latin American literature from Don Quixote on. It is inspired by Voltaire who was a rebel from within the criticism of the guerrilla and revolutionary illusion that led to atrocities across the continent. I do not understand the naive dogmatism of some recent Mexican and Latin American authors of Crack and McOndo that, like ostriches, they say there is nothing to write about Latin American issues, as if our history does not repeat continually. The debate is very poor. Feel a nostalgia for magazines like Myth of Colombia, South of Argentina, Tour of Mexico and many others where the level was higher, independent, critical, irreverent. There is a neo editorial that machines like Planet Alfaguara Mondadori and Latin Americans are dictating to the lesson and in the worst days of the colony. True American intelligence has been ostracized.
: In my novel, Boulevard of heroes reflect on the various stages of the hero in the English and Latin American literature from Don Quixote on. It is inspired by Voltaire who was a rebel from within the criticism of the guerrilla and revolutionary illusion that led to atrocities across the continent. I do not understand the naive dogmatism of some recent Mexican and Latin American authors of Crack and McOndo that, like ostriches, they say there is nothing to write about Latin American issues, as if our history does not repeat continually. The debate is very poor. Feel a nostalgia for magazines like Myth of Colombia, South of Argentina, Tour of Mexico and many others where the level was higher, independent, critical, irreverent. There is a neo editorial that machines like Planet Alfaguara Mondadori and Latin Americans are dictating to the lesson and in the worst days of the colony. True American intelligence has been ostracized.
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