Mexico, like all of Latin America, suffers from being overly centralized. Over-centralization has been blamed for Mexico’s underdevelopment, inflation and almost every other economic evil; it is also responsible for problems in the literary world. For as long as anyone can remember, almost all the publication, attention, sales, distribution, critical notice and publicity for literature have been concentrated in the capital. If you wanted to write, you had to go to the capital. Yet not everyone can. Women, indigenous writers, and in fact any writer who does not come from money and privilege may not be able to do this. The remaining provincial writers from the regions, representing a population approaching 100 million people, have been left without attention, without resources, almost without hope.

In the 1980s, the Mexican government began an innovative program of sending important writers out into the provinces to coordinate writing workshops, usually meeting one night a week in the town’s cultural center. These workshops yielded fruit in abundance. Since the 80’s there has been a vibrant provincial writing movement which includes many women and indigenous writers. Many of them routinely “workshop” their work; through this phenomenon the word has come to be commonly used as a verb (tallerear).

Regional governments such as Guanajuato and Baja California Norte have created literary prizes. They are called national prizes, and they are sometimes bestowed on writers from the capital as well, but everyone understands that the fact that they come from a regional government means that competitors from the provinces will receive fair treatment. Typically entries are judged under pseudonyms and nobody knows even whether a man or woman has written the work. Even the judges are frequently from the capital, yet there are usually women and provincial writers among the winners.

How could this happen? The judges know that these prizes are supposed to stimulate all of us to shake off our old prejudices and open our eyes, and miraculously, somehow we are able to do it. A look at three novels, successive winners of the 2004, 2005 and 2006 Ibargüengoitia prize, given under the auspices of the government of the State of Guanajuato for the best novel of the annual competition, will demonstrate this.

The 2004 winner, Los empeños de Consuelo, by Maruja González, longtime member of a literary workshop to which I also belonged, is the story of three orphans in misery looking to better their lot by finding a rich husband for the youngest of them. This period piece of Mexican manners includes recipes for home remedies interspersed in its humorous plot.

The 2005 Ibargüengoitia prize winner, Soles bajo la piel, by Carlos Bustos, is a picaresque tale of a man who embarks on a long journey to avenge the honor of his distant cousin, Octavia Esperanza del Pesar y Vanosto, whose name is a joke in itself. (It means something like the eighth hope of weightiness and vanity.) Her honor too turns out to be of dubious value.

The 2006 winner Música para los buitres, by Raúl González Nava, is a mystery story. It won the prize as a novel, not in a special category.

In another regional competition based in the border city of Tijuana, the novel Susurros bajo el agua by Moisés Zamora, a young Mexican provincial writer, won the 2004 Binational Prize for Young Novelists “Borders of Words.” It was also judged a finalist in the Madrid VI Prize for First Works by Young Prose Writers. This poetic novel is truly global. Set in Paris, every character in it is of a different nationality.

The winner of the 2007 Ibargüengoitia prize, Señuelo, by the well-known novelist from the provincial city of Guadalajara, Martha Cerda, has not been published yet. Among her most recent books is La mujer del policía (2005). In this book, her surreal sense of humor reappears, reminding us of one of her early novels, La señora Rodríguez y otros mundos (1990). This book was published in Paris in 1993 as La Señora Rodríguez et autres mondes by Indigo & Côté-femmes Éditions and has been translated to many other languages.

Some recent books of the Mexican provinces resist all efforts at categorization. Antonio Rodríguez Simón, who emigrated to the Mexican provinces from the Canary Islands many decades ago, has published two books, workshopped under the coordinator Gilda Salinas. Rodríguez’ father was a neighborhood poet, a person who wrote poems to commemorate local events in the Canary Islands. Rodríguez came to writing after retiring from a life as a businessman. His books seem to be novels, but in fact they are completely factual, and the last one contains historical photos to document this. The first, Regino (2004), tells the story of a serial killer. The second, El largo vuelo del canario (2007), is about an honorable businessman. Both are émigrés from the Canary Islands whom novelist Rodríguez has known personally; the second is a relative of his wife.

Though there is greater scope and wider tolerance in the regional literature movement, the works nonetheless usually fit somewhere in the great currents of Latin American literature. I will examine a few of these texts more closely to show their relations to two large categories, costumbrismo and magical realism.

Costumbrismo

Costumbrismo, using regional customs and history in literature, has long been a staple in Mexican literature, especially literature of the provinces. (I will use the Spanish word used in Mexico as I am not satisfied with any translated word.) Los empeños de Consuelo, by Maruja González, includes hilarious home remedies of many sorts, some from the countryside, some from her own family. Here is one:

If you get cramps at night (this is what don Serapio used to do and it never failed him):

Drinking chocolate at night weighs very heavily on one, it is likely to produce cramps and also nightmares, and when these attack they do so with great pain. What you have to do is turn your slippers (or sandals or whatever you keep under the bed) around, placing them with their toes pointing inward. The relief is immediate. (p. 86)

Here is another:

Against fright [Fright is a recognized medical condition in Mexican folklore]

When someone has had a very bad fright and you can’t find anti-fright water in the medicine chest -- which tends to happen because people go after it so frequently, then it’s best to take the aforementioned frightened person by surprise and spit a big mouthful of mescal* in his face, until he (or she) is pretty wet. The person will be angry at first but soon after will be grateful. (p.134)

[*Mescal is a strong alcoholic drink made from cactus.]

The material, even when comical, can be gruesome:

For inflammation of the tonsils (another remedy of nurse Trinidad which works, they did it to Consuelo when she fell into the fountain in the garden and her tonsils got really big.)

When a child has a sore throat because he has inflamed tonsils, there is nothing better than this: a frog poultice.

Look for a good-sized frog. You score its stomach with a sharp knife, making sure the animal does not die. You open up and plant the frog with its incision down and its feet aside on the little one, that is, the child, so that the frog’s heart beats against the child’s tonsils. Put a hot cloth on top. Cover with a kerchief or napkin and leave it for quite a while so it absorbs all the pestilence.

If the child is frightened, which is quite probable because the frog might move or even scratch with its feet under the child’s ears, then you have to tell him, that is, the child, that it is for his own good and nothing will happen. If he tries to rebel and move around, then the best is to tie him to the bed until the animal, that is, the frog, finishes its work. ­­( p.53-4)

The best known recent novel of costumbrismo was Laura Esquivel’s 1989 novel, Como agua para chocolate, which was made into a successful movie. This plot-driven novel, a real page-turner, contains many traditional recipes which enhance its romantic and nostalgic tone. It also uses the device of installments, supposedly delivered month by month, a device which Martha Cerda uses in La mujer del policía as well.

An argument could be made that Cerda’s Señora Rodríguez y otros mundos also draws on a form of costumbrismo, though this time the customs are those of the urban middle class of today. In Cerda’s novel, the source of these elements is usually Señora Rodríguez’ mother-in-law.

Susanita and Carlitos were prepared for their First Communion by their grandmother. The good lady was determined to implant in her grandchildren the eternal truths and good customs that she had always practiced, along with endless prayers that they had to recite before getting up, going to bed, eating and even before bathing, which they did with their clothes on for fear of falling into temptation. And so that the children would not forget her teachings, she had some cards printed with an illustration of the Virgin and the following text: Remembrance of Susanita and Carlitos Rodríguez’ First Communion, celebrated May 10, 1965.

“And to think that my mother-in-law had ten thousand printed just in case,” sighed Señora Rodriguez, crossing herself and smacking a kiss on her thumb while she recalled the thousands of novenas and fervent prayers offered by her mother-in-law to guarantee her own entrance in heaven, before the church decided that there would no longer be plenary indulgences.(p.76)

Magical Realism

Many or even most novels in Latin America exhibit some form of magical realism. In Carlos Bustos’ Soles bajo la piel , though it starts out on terra firma, soon exhausts reality and moves to magical places. On the hero’s trip to discover whether his cousin has been carried off by a mysterious ironworker, he stops in Nazarán:

Nazarán, where the rain never stops, is the place of misplaced objects. Its architecture is very irregular because it is constructed of all the materials which have been lost over the centuries. It has Turkish doors, Arabic cloisters, Italian balustrades… The window of that shop is stuffed with watches for selling lost time. Two blocks away they have all the prayers, petitions and promises that never got to God, and down there under the awning they have every sort of rifle and ammunition that missed its mark. You can buy lost loves in installments. (p.69-70)

Susurros bajo el agua, by Moisés Zamora, is not written in the magical realist style; nonetheless the motif of the heart, which runs throughout the book, is approached magically.

A doctor says to Claudio, the main character:

“Look, I’ll show you.” He put one of the x-rays of my chest on a lighted wall and I saw how my heart looked, you could see how timid it was. “Do you see this little white circle on the left side of your heart?”

“Yes, what is it doctor?”

“We are not sure, but we think it is a tumor.”

“Cancer?”

“I’m afraid so.”(p. 122)

This cancer is caused by the hope of an impossible love, the doctor explains. Further medical analyses corroborate the diagnosis:

“Look!” He put down three red stones, crystals which seemed like virgin rubies. “The cancer is affecting your nervous and immunological systems. Because of that, your blood is producing desire salts to cure the lesions, but since the cancer is spreading so rapidly, these salts are constricting the arteries and making deposits in your kidneys. With time they turn into stones.”(pp.178-179)

Finally Claudio undergoes an operation in which butterflies, and even his heart, are taken out of his chest, all apparently to good effect.

The style of The Policeman’s Wife, Martha Cerda’s latest novel, probably should be called magical realism, but though it is definitely magical, it would be hard to say in what sense it is realistic at all. Perhaps the realistic element is its pretext: a young student (whose name we never know) is charged with investigating the allegation that Enedina García, wife of a policeman said to live at Donceles 800, an apartment building in the capital, is a victim of domestic abuse. He sets out to find her.

However, after that, nothing stays on any rational plane. Time, space, character, everything is completely topsy-turvy. The details are wonderful. The student stands outside the building to the point that, for example, someone considers plastering a “Vote for….” poster over him. The neighborhood cats begin to accept him. Yet, as to the plot…Does Enedina exist? Does she live at this address? Is the physical description he has received accurate? What is her marriage like? Does she have children? Does anyone who claims to know her really know her? The reader makes no progress.

The student is drawn into her world, far from the one he came from, until he becomes an inextricable part of it, all this without ever meeting her, without even finding any real evidence of her. The only time it seems that he has found her, the person he has found turns out to be a transvestite prostitute whose stock in trade is pretending to be the fantasy of whomever he picks up. He is Enedina because:

“For you, I am whoever you want me to be, the policemen’s wife, the wife of the pirate, the wife of the representative to parliament. Just tell me who, Daddy.”(p.104)

The novel is structured as a serial with 25 episodes and an epilogue, supposedly delivered (there is no indication to where or what publication) one every Sunday. Each begins with a poem, usually rather playful, about some aspect of the deconstructed story, such as:

The policeman’s wife

Doesn’t arrive in the wake of the Carnival

Like Lent does

She does not arrive in the wake of rockets and fireworks

Like the year 2000

The policeman’s wife

Doesn’t arrive. (p.137)

Adding to the mystery, a note says that the entire manuscript was found in a café in August of 2005 and seems to have been started in 1999.

The world of this novel revolves around a building which, as it happens, does not exist; Donceles Street (a real street in Mexico City where there are used book stores) does not have a number 800. Nonetheless the novel is fairly circumscribed around it. By comparison, Cerda’s earlier novel Señora Rodríguez y otros mundos flies off to infinity in every direction. Not precisely because of Señora Rodríguez herself, who mostly can be found near her house as well, but because of the other worlds with which her world alternates. They are a gloomy lot of worlds with no apparent relation to Señora Rodríguez’ world. They come in at the end of every chapter, identify themselves quickly and depart just as quickly, leaving no evident trace, whereas the happenings in Señora Rodríguez’ own world follow a certain logic, or almost do. The other worlds may serve a function by unsettling us and almost preparing us for the many violations of ordinary logic that will soon take place.

Señora Rodríguez is never seen without a large purse. “There are those who say they would not recognize Señora Rodríguez without her purse, a birthday gift from her mother-in-law.” (p.6) The objects she finds in this purse start out quietly enough with a rosary from her mother-in-law, a recipe, chewing gum etc. They move rapidly to both herald and provoke radical changes in her world. Soon Señora Rodríguez will reach in her purse and find a dinosaur’s tail. (p. 52)

The purse is involved in accidents in which Señora Rodriguez traverses space and time and dimension, leaving the saintly Señor Rodriguez to pick up the pieces of her topological mishaps, a task to which he seems surprisingly well-fitted. For example, one day he comes home to find Señora Rodríguez naked, crawling about the living room floor, dragging her purse, its contents strewn about the house. He hastens to replace everything in her purse, understanding that in cleaning it out, with every item extracted, she lost all memory of its meaning and context. The author complains that

“In his haste he mixed up days with nights, present with past, and joined an Ash Wednesday with a Good Friday,” yet when he finished and closed the purse, Señora Rodríguez recovered her memory, so this seems to me a minor complaint. (pp. 55-56)

In another twist, Señora Rodríguez gets into an even more mathematical problem, an infinite regress. It’s not the only one in the book; Señora Rodríguez definitely has trouble with infinity. But I will close with this one, as it demonstrates how somehow in her world, which perhaps also is all of ours in Latin America, such shenanigans can be beautiful and even exalted:

One night Señora Rodríguez dreamed that she opened her purse, and from it she herself came out, opening her purse; and from this one another Señora Rodríguez came out, opening her purse again: and so on ad infinitum. Señor Rodríguez, on the contrary, dreams that the purse is a bottomless well where what goes in never comes out. He remembers the day Señora Rodríguez accidentally put her mother-in-law’s picture inside the purse and soon after that she died. And also when by chance she put Señor Rodríguez’s watch in the same purse and Señor Rodríguez lost the notion of time forever. That’s why he gets up at three in the morning to bathe and goes to sleep at five in the afternoon, while Señora Rodríguez goes to the movies and out for a cup of coffee with her friends and pulls out the checkbook from her purse, caresses it and puts it back, just like she put away the keys to her house and even to the gates of heaven, so that no one can enter without her consent. Because Señora Rodríguez is not what they make her out to be, says Señor Rodríguez; and he must know her better than I do, for he has lived with her in these pages ever since the story began.( p. 37)

The End

Bustos, Carlos, Soles bajo la piel, Ediciones la Rana, Mexico, 2006

González Nava, Raúl, Música para los buitres, Ediciones la Rana, Mexico, 2007

Cerda, Martha Señora Rodríguez and Other Worlds, trans. Sylvia Jiménez-Anderson, Duke University Press, 1997 (original: La señora Rodríguez y otros mundos, Joaquín Mortiz, Mexico, 1990)

Cerda, Martha, La mujer del policía, Biblioteca de textos universitarios, Argentina , 2005

Cerda, Martha, “Historia de los talleres literarios en Guadalajara,” unpublished article

Esquivel, Laura, Como agua para chocolate, Planeta, Mexico, 1989

González, Maruja, Los empeños de Consuelo, Ediciones la Rana, Mexico, 2005

Rodríguez Simón, Antonio Regino, Editorial Amat, Mexico, 2004

Rodríguez Simón, Antonio El largo vuelo del canario, Ediciones Trópico de Escorpio, Editorial Solar, Mexico, 2007

Zamora, Moisés, Susurros bajo el agua, CONACULTA, Mexico, 2005.