The Uncomfortable Dead

by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

  He took off his shoes and nudged them into the middle of the room, tapping them with his big toe. The room was as empty as always. He had never been able to buy furniture, nor had he ever even thought about it. He had his rug, and in the corner of the room a floor lamp, his easy chair where he went to think, and the telephone perched beside it on top of his collection of Mexico City telephone books, past and present.

  He went to the refrigerator to get himself a drink and found an unopened three-liter bottle of Lulu’s Red Currant Soda. What a windfall! When had he bought it? When had he gotten the idea of having a feast of red currant soda, cigarettes, and Mahler? Out on the street, the teenage yuppies had invaded the neighborhood to dine in the local restaurants. They made big noises, little noises, laughing noises, brake-screeching noises, and horn-blowing noises. He wondered what Elías Contreras might be doing at that moment over in Chiapas. Over there, everything was probably a lot clearer, the air more transparent, enemies more defined, things simpler, traps more evident, potholes easier to evade. He poked his head out the window and gazed over the rooftops, over many, many streets, in the direction of the invisible Ajusco, toward the pale lights of Chapultepec Castle, beyond the jungle of television antennas.

  The thought occurred to him to send Elías Contreras a telegram, but if he sent something like, My Morales, fucked, it would get censored.

  Suddenly his telephone rang. Héctor stared at it with mistrust. It was one of those old telephones with the cradle on a slim neck, the kind you could hold between your ring finger and your middle finger without being double-jointed. He’d inherited it from somebody who had stashed it away when they changed over to the ugly modern ones. He let it ring a few more times. Finally, the answering machine kicked in.

  Belascoarán, this is Jesús María Alvarado. Well, what do you know? If you were intending to catch Morales and snatch Juancho from him, you’re too late. He already sold Juancho to the gringos, who took him back to Burbank. Juancho would have been very well-off if he had stayed here in Mexico; he could have kept on making commercials for Gansitos Marinela on Channel 2: Osama bin Laden says that the best chocolate-covered tarts are … I’m just telling you so that the next time you see that guy reading a communiqué on CNN, you can check out the mark under his right eye. It’s a little scar, and the thing is…

  Héctor let the voice ramble on until the minute and a half of recording time was up. Then he moved over to the telephone, picked up the receiver, and dialed a number at random. A pre-recorded voice picked up, speaking for International Financial Investors:

  All our representatives are currently busy with other customers and will take your call in the order it was received. If you want to leave a message, press 1; if you need personal attention, press 2; if you want to be transferred to our main menu, press 3—

  Héctor pressed 1.

  “Listen, this is Jesús María Alvarado, and I’m calling to let you know that if you have a certain Morales on your staff, be very careful because the guy is a delinquent, an expert in fiscal frauds designed to screw the overwhelming majority of the people for the sake of a minority. Well, that’s more or less what you do already, but he does it illegally. Bottom line: Morales is bad news.”

  He hung up feeling immensely satisfied, like a kid with a new ball, like a teenager who’s discovered his father’s secret Playboy collection. He picked up the receiver again and dialed another number at random.

  “You have reached the home of Susana Quirós,” a youthful voice said. “If you wish to send a fax, start now; if you wish to leave a message, wait for the beep …”

  “Listen, this is Jesús María Alvarado and I’ve called to tell you…” began Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, independent detective.

  THE [SECOND] END

  Mexico City

  Late winter, 2005

  AN INTERVIEW WITH PACO IGNACIO TAIBO II

  BY JUAN FELIPE HERRERA

  August 2009. Interview translated by Cristián Flores García.

  Word velocity, rebel story, and a kaleidoscopic scene. This is what hit me as I interviewed Paco Ignacio Taibo II through a tangled-up recording machine in Riverside, California, connected to Spain. A few questions about the novel became life questions—how do we speak of and write about and act for liberation? Since 1970, as a poet, I have been concerned with the lives of Indigenous America, within and beyond national demarcations. The Uncomfortable Dead compresses, for me, four decades of investigation, creation, and spoken word performance—that is, translating the experience of the oppressed, and empowering language (in partnership) to this end, presenting such acts in realms of unpredictable change. In my case, I have addressed these issues as a Chicano from Mexico in El Norte. With Taibo and Subcomandante Marcos, most exhilarating is noticing that here the rebel voices catapult from the “south” toward to El Norte, from Mexico to the U.S. A circle is galvanized and begins a new journey with the twenty-first-century reader. ¡Bravo, Paco! ¡Bravissimo, Marcos!

  Juan Felipe Herrera: How did this unique collaboration with Subcomandante Marcos begin?

  Paco Ignacio Taibo II: A man I had never seen before visited me at my house one day and said, “I bring a letter from Subcomandante Marcos.” And I replied, “Well, give it to me.” He sat in front of me while I read the letter. In it, Marcos asked if I was interested in writing a novel by four hands with him. It was an old project that he had conceived with Manolo Vázquez Montalbán, to be worked out by six hands. However, Manolo had just died that year and he had been the one who was supposed to explain the story to me. Now it was all left up in the air and Marcos wanted to know if I was interested. In case I said yes, there was a second letter. So then I started to think. Counted to ten, and when I got to nine I said, “Let’s do it.” The timing was somewhat complicated for me because I was at about the halfway point in the writing process of my biography of Pancho Villa, but the idea was very attractive, you see. So then we get to the second letter, in which there was a proposal for Chapter One and not much more than that, without a clear idea, really, of where the novel was going and what Marcos wanted. So I told him, “All right, we need some connections. First, we need to change the title,” which I didn’t like. Then I said, “Also, we’re going to write a novel, not a political essay.”

  JFH: So it all started with the concept of an essay?

  PIT: No, no, no, no. But I said this in my reply to his letter, you see. I was suggesting a change of title. The idea was to start publishing the novel as soon as possible in a newspaper, in weekly installments. And there were also some other topics that we had to discuss and agree upon. Marcos proposed that the proceeds from this book go to an NGO within Zapatista territory. And I told him, “Yes, but it has to be an NGO independent from the Zapatistas, right?” So as to make it clear that we were giving our money to an organization of neutral humanitarian character. So we were good, we agreed, and from that very moment the madness began and we started working the following day. I then talked to the editor at the Mexican daily newspaper La Jornada. The editor there said, “All right, let’s go. Let’s do it.” The idea was for La Jornada to publish the full book one chapter at a time. And then I wrote Chapter Two and a race against time started, because I had to send Marcos the chapter and he had to read it before moving on. He had to return Chapter Three, which I would have to read to be able to write Chapter Four, then return it and so on. We only had a cushion of nine days between each chapter.

  JFH: Nine days?

  PIT: Yes. And our communication mechanisms were like those in Chinese spy novels, you see. I remember that in one of the chapters—I think it was number five—Marcos was slow with his writing because it turned out to be longer than he expected. I was getting very anxious. So I sent him a message through our complicated messaging system. I stated my concern: where is Chapter Five so that I can write Chapter Six? I then received a cryptic message: The ass has left La Realidad but it’s raining. So I said, “What’s this?” I thought, Is it a coded message? What the
fuck is this? But no, it was literal. It was raining and the donkey carrying the chapter had left La Realidad to head as quickly as possible to a place where the chapter could be sent back to me.

  We never kept in touch while writing the book; no direct, personal contact. Instead, we used this weird communication web. And so in keeping with our understanding, he had to develop his character in the first three chapters. We had agreed that I would use Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, a character in nine of my published novels, so I didn’t really need to develop my protagonist. I could then concentrate on building the plot in the first three chapters.

  JFH: And he could then come in and interweave his character?

  PIT: And he could then weave his character into the plot, yes. That way the famous Elías, Marcos’s protagonist, would become part of the plot. Within that frame, we worked together along the twelve weeks that the experiment lasted.

  JFH: Twelve weeks?

  PIT: Yes, twelve weeks. Very entertaining. Some very strange incidents occurred, like one day I was at the Guadalajara International Book Fair and all of a sudden someone next to me handed me a cell phone and said, “It’s for you, Paco.” I took the phone and heard a voice saying, “Listen, in Chapter Three, should such and such happen?” It was hilarious. So I replied, “Okay, all right, that sounds good.” I returned the cell phone to the owner and the fellow disappeared.

  JFH: What’s your perspective on the political situation in Chiapas?

  PIT: The problems there continue to be unresolved. The government has not carried out the agreements of San Andrés, you see, and the fundamental demand for the autonomy of indigenous communities has not been dealt with. And there are continuous provocations. The Zapatistas alternate between periods of mass mobilization and public debate and periods of silence. I suppose they are in a period of silence right now, but I can only suppose because my life takes place in Mexico City, which is a jungle of it own, though it’s a jungle of TV antennas.

  JFH: Why choose to tie the story to the political and social upheaval of 1968? I know it was a great historic moment, but why not another great moment?

  PIT: Because it is the moment in which the transformation of the Mexican society really begins, and at the same time the rotten tracks are revealed, the rotten tracks embedded in the system in a latent but clear way. It is also the time when a new political police organization that acts with total impunity is built.

  JFH: That situation continues and you two vent it all out. It still remains basically untold.

  PIT: What happened in ’68 has been told. What happened here … our intent was to create a continuity and tell how there were some dead people who were uncomfortable because their stories from the past were still beating strong in the present.

  JFH: I was thinking about the two protagonists in the novel, Héctor and Elías. What would Héctor ask you if he were here?

  PIT: Héctor ask me? No, no, my friend. That is why I write the novel, so that Héctor doesn’t ask me questions.

  JFH: In the book, you touch on the concept of borders and territories.

  PIT: My intent in the beginning of the novel—in the chapters that I was writing—was to create a counterpoint to the world of the Zapatista rebellion and to give the reader an overall impression of Mexican globalization, starting from the complexities of Mexico City. That, to me, is an important issue to make clear in the novel.

  JFH: And where do the official documents that appear in the novel come from? It is also a book about documents.

  PIT: Yes, it is—it’s about documents both real and fabricated.

  JFH: But which ones are real and which ones are fabricated?

  PIT: The reader decides.

  JFH: And there are satellite transmissions …

  PIT: The reader must decide.

  JFH: I enjoyed it very much. Personally, as a poet, this book threw me off; it allowed me to fly over these new territories, which became new inspirations to continue writing. And you touch on the concept of multiple worlds.

  PIT: Well, it’s not a new theme for me; I have touched on themes such as this many times in my novels. I have tried to show the complexity of Mexico City, the city that has more universities than New York, more abortions than London, and more movie houses than Paris.

  JFH: Do you feel that Mexico exists here in the United States?

  PIT: One of the many Mexicos can be found in the United States. I’ve discovered it in unusual places. Like, for example, on the corner of 46th Street and 6th Avenue in New York City, I ran into twenty-five Poblanos standing there one day. And so I asked them, “What the fuck are you all doing here, my friends?” And they told me, “Well, it’s because … we were just here …” talking gibberish and acting foolish. And then I figured it out—they were there on that corner to flirt and pick up the Korean girls getting off work. So I think very soon there will be a Mexican-Korean community in New York.

  JFH: Let’s discuss one of the more mysterious entities in the novel, El Yunque.

  PIT: There has been plenty of discussion about El Yunque. It’s a subject that was covered heavily in the Mexican media—the emergence of a secret extreme right wing inside the Mexican right wing. In the novel, it’s a lateral theme, not a central one; the darker characters are deeply linked to the repressive system of the state over the last thirty years.

  JFH: How was the novel received when it was first published in Mexico?

  PIT: When it was serialized in La Jornada, their server collapsed. It was published in both their print and online editions, and because of the high demand, their website crashed.

  JFH: The voices in your work, they really come alive …

  PIT: Well, thank you very much. You are very kind. Some stories must be told. Within all these stories, there are some very dark historic episodes that are usually hidden from society. Only in a novel can one speak about them in depth. Journalistic reports stay on the surface, so the novel is the only outlet that can, diagonally, profoundly penetrate the truth of any society. That is why we use the novel as an instrument.

  THE PUNCH CARD AND THE HOURGLASS

  An Interview with Subcomondante Marcos

  by Gabriel García Márquez and Roberto Pombo

  This interview was first published in Revista Cambio,

  Bogotá, Colombia, March 26, 2001.

  Gabriel García Márquez: Seven years after the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) declared that one day it would enter Mexico City in triumph, you are in the capital and the Zócalo is completely full. What did you feel when you climbed the dais and saw that spectacle?

  Subcomandante Marcos: In keeping with the Zapatista tradition of anticlimax, the worst place to see a demonstration in the Zócalo is from the platform. The sun was fierce, there was a lot of smog, we all had a headache, and got very worried as we counted the people passing out in front of us. I commented to my comrade, Commander Tacho, that we should get on with it, or by the time we began to speak no one would be left in the square. We couldn’t see all the way across it. The distance we had to keep from the crowd for security reasons was also an emotional one, and we didn’t find out what had happened in the Zócalo until we read the newspaper reports and saw the photos the next day. But yes, in our view and in the assessment of others, we do think that the meeting was the culmination of a phase, that our words on that day were appropriate and our message the right one, that we disconcerted those who expected us to seize the Palace or call for general insurrection. But also those who thought that we would be merely poetic or lyrical. I think an effective balance was struck and that, one way or another, on March 11 the EZLN could be heard speaking in the Zócalo, not so much about 2001, but about something that is yet to be completed: a conviction that the definitive defeat of racism will be turned into a state policy, an educational policy, into a feeling shared by the whole of Mexican society. As if this has already been settled, yet it still remains a short way off. As we soldiers say, the battle has been won, but a few skirmishes
still remain to be fought. Finally, I believe that the meeting in the Zócalo made it clear that it had been the right decision to put our weapons aside, that it was not our arms which brought us into dialogue with society, that the gamble on a peaceful mobilization was sensible and fruitful. The Mexican state has still to understand this, the government in particular.

  GGM: You’ve used the expression “as we soldiers say.” To a Colombian, accustomed to the way our guerrillas talk, your language doesn’t sound very soldierly. How military is your movement, and how would you describe the war in which you have been fighting?

  SM: We were formed in an army, the EZLN. It has a military structure. Subcomandante Marcos is the military chief of an army. But our army is very different from others, because its proposal is to cease being an army. A soldier is an absurd person who has to resort to arms in order to convince others, and in that sense the movement has no future if its future is military. If the EZLN perpetuates itself as an armed military structure, it is headed for failure. Failure as an alternative set of ideas, an alternative attitude to the world. The worst that could happen to it, apart from that, would be to come to power and install itself there as a revolutionary army. For us it would be a failure. What would be a success for the politico-military organizations of the ’60s or ’70s which emerged with the national liberation movements would be a fiasco for us. We have seen that such victories proved in the end to be failures, or defeats, hidden behind the mask of success. That what always remained unresolved was the role of people, of civil society, in what became ultimately a dispute between two hegemonies. There is an oppressor power which decides on behalf of society from above, and a group of visionaries which decides to lead the country on the correct path and ousts the other group from power, seizes power, and then also decides on behalf of society. For us that is a struggle between hegemonies, in which the winners are good and the losers bad, but for the rest of society things don’t basically change. The EZLN has reached a point where it has been overtaken by Zapatismo. The “E” in the acronym has shrunk, its hands have been tied, so that for us it is no handicap to mobilize unarmed, but rather in a certain sense a relief. The gun-belt weighs less than before and the military paraphernalia an armed group necessarily wears when it enters dialogue with people also feels less heavy. You cannot reconstruct the world or society, nor rebuild national states now in ruins, on the basis of a quarrel over who will impose their hegemony on society. The world in general, and Mexican society in particular, is composed of different kinds of people, and the relations between them have to be founded on respect and tolerance, things which appear in none of the discourses of the politico-military organizations of the ’60s and ’70s. Reality, as always, presented a bill to the armed national liberation movements of those days, and the cost of settling it has been very high.