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Latin American Bad Boy: Carlos Monsivais
June 3, 2008
Two of Latin America’s most agile minds, Mexico’s Carlos Monsiváis and Colombia’s William Ospina, were brought together this Monday in Madrid’s elegant Casa de América to discuss the Latin American chronicle. Monsiváis, who was the guest of honor, is perhaps Mexico’s most beloved social pundit and satirist who at 70, still hasn’t lost his punch.
The room was packed with expats, young and old, in a small second floor salon filled with gold-plated fixtures, butter-yellow wall paper, alfresco ceilings, and glistening tear drop chandleries. Very palatial, very ornate: Perhaps too much for the discussion at hand. The Latin America chronicle is known as one of the grittiest forms of non-fiction narrative, depicting a territory’s state-of-mind without any pretense. Monsiváis, a native of Mexico City, chronicles Mexico's lowlife while also being an expert on politics, art, and culture. Monsiváis said to Críticas in an interview in 2002, that he sees himself "not as an essayist but as a cronísta, a chronicler, a connoisseur of dregs and rejects who works as both witness and participant." More like an on-the-road Hunter S. Thompson than a sheltered Octavio Paz.
Mexico's master, Carlos Monsiváis, in the gold room: "I'm a connoisseur of dregs and rejects."
Ospina and Monsiváis agreed that today, the chronicle focuses itself mainly on the drug trafficking world that plagues both Latin America’s cities and dustiest pueblos. Places where regular families and narco families pray to the same saints and virgins, sometimes inventing their own syncretisms like in Fernando Vallejos’ novel based in Medellín, Colombia, La virgin de los sicarios (Our Lady of the Assassins). These days one of Monsiváis’ beats includes the world of Ciudad Juárez’s maquiladoras and Chihuahua’s narcotraffickers. Places where these criminals are buried in “gold coffins’ that get stolen the next day. A surreal world where jewels are thrown on the fresh grave of a narcotrafficker's dead girlfriend and the dedication reads:
“I’ve given you everything doll-face. Death was all that was left.”
Two of Monsiváis' favorite books written in chronicle style are: Martín Luis Guzmán’s El águila y la serpiente (The Eagle and the Serpent). “For writing chronicles whose themes dominate the writing style and not the other way around. So that when he’s writing about the boxing world in 1970's Mexico, he’s writing the story as if it was being told by a boxer.” He then added in pure Monsiváis drollness, “After reading him, I wanted to renounce my profession as a chronicler.” The second: Gabriel García Márquez’ Noticia de un secuestro (News of a Kidnapping): “For giving us a window to what it’s like to live day-to-day with uncertainty and pain.”
Towards the end of the two hour discussion, the erudite Ospina summed up the role and function of the subjectively-written chronicle in our society. It’s too dangerous for most journalists today to go into war zones and slums to cover a story and when they do so, it has to be objective. The first person chronicler, Ospina said, is the witness who tells what happens and confronts the reality. But they don’t correct or impede the crimes done. Monsiváis jumped in to point out: "Well, nor does the police." Too true. Ospina then added, "But when the dry wind comes to cover it all up, it won’t leave the people without a response."
Posted by Adriana V. Lopez on June 3, 2008 | Comments (0)
