I moved. And of course, this involved oodles of Kondo-ing.
For those who missed the phenomenon of Japanese tidying expert Marie Kondo: She says the way to do it is to pick up each object and ask yourself, does this spark joy? If so, keep it (even if it’s a raggedy T-shirt), and if not (even if it’s a brand new suede sofa that cost a heap), thank it, then chuck it— or donate it or sell it, or whatever, but get it out of your space. Many organizers and sundry pundits have dismissed Kondo-ing as “woo woo.” Too bad for them because, by Jove, by whatever Shinto spirit you want to name, or the god Pan, or Elvis Presley, it works.
My personal and working library is at last in good order, and I am delighted to share with you, dear and thoughtful reader, just a few of the many old friends that sparked much joy:
Sophy Burnham is best known for her works on angels, but she has a sizable body of outstanding work of literary essay / sociology. Her The Landed Gentry was especially helpful for me for understanding some of the characters in one of my books. Doormen by Peter Bearman… that merits a post…
Drujienna’s Harp was one of my very favorite novels when I was first starting to read novels.As for The Golden Key, pictured right, my copy was left for some days by an open window in the rain back in 1960-something, but I have saved it and I always shall.
I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.
Bitter Waters: The Struggles of the Pecos River by Patrick Dearen University of Oklahoma Press, 2016
When I closed the cover of Patrick Dearen’s Bitter Waters: The Struggles of the Pecos River it was with both gratitude and the unsettling sense of having arrived into new territory— raw, rich, appalling—in my understanding of Far West Texas. This is no minor thing to acknowledge; for some years now I have been at work on a book about that very region.
But first, for those who don’t have a jones for, shall we say, Wild Westerie, why bring Far West Texas into the cross hairs? And why give a hoededo about its skinny river so salty, to quote one of Dearen’s informants, that “a snake wouldn’t drink it”?
Texas is one of the most powerful economic and political entities in not only the United States but the Americas. At the same time, “Texas” is so hammered out into tinfoil-thin clichés of popular culture (and many of those informed by warmed-over 19th century war propaganda and Madison Avenue-concocted boosterism), that we have the illusion we know Texas, when in fact it enfolds concatenations of undeservedly obscure histories, stupendenous beauty, and the lumpiest of paradoxes. If Texas—and I mean the real one, not the confection of Marion Morrison aka John Wayne, et al—is still in many ways terra incognita, its “iconic” far west, profoundly moreso. What delineates Far West Texas from the rest of Texas is precisely that skinny, salty river. And a most peculiar body of water it is.
THE PECOS AND THE TRANS-PECOS
In Texas, to set foot on the western shore of the Pecos is to enter the Other Texas, the fritter-shaped, South Carolina-sized chunk of the Lone Star State also known as the Trans-Pecos.
No, Far West Texas / Trans-Pecos does not include Lubbock. Nor San Antonio. Nor South Texas, nor the Panhandle. Nor Austin, nor Dallas. Nor Midland, nor Odessa.
The southwestern border of Far West Texas is the Rio Grande, the border with Mexico; to the north, it shares a stretch along the 32nd parallel of salt fields and the Guadalupe Mountains with the state of New Mexico; and at its extreme west, the Trans-Pecos elbows into New Mexico at El Paso.
With the exception of El Paso, and the miniscule cowtown and artist-cum-hipster magnet of Marfa, few if any towns of the Trans-Pecos can raise an eyebrow of recognition outside the region.
The distances in the Trans-Pecos are stunning, never mind those to get out there from anywhere else in Texas. From the state capital in Austin, a straight shot west on Interstate 10 at the speed limit, no stops, gets you to the Pecos River near Iraan in a shoulder-stiffening four hours and twenty minutes. But the Pecos doesn’t look like much at that point—there’s a tiny sign—the highway sinks down pylons for a moment. Sneeze and you’ll miss it. You won’t catch the Pecos in your rearview mirror, either.
However, if from Austin you are game to drive four hours and thirty minutes southwest into the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, nearing the U.S.-Mexico border past Comstock you could rumble onto the high bridge over a wide and sparkling Pecos, a feat of engineering spanning a bright-walled gorge so spectacular it justifies that marathon of a drive.
And how’s this for an inkling of the scale of the Trans-Pecos itself: To drive from El Paso back to that Pecos River crossing near Iraan, 308 miles, would take at least four hours. El Paso actually lies closer to San Diego, California, on the Pacific Ocean, than to Houston on the Gulf of Mexico. (I Googled that so you don’t have to.)
West of the Pecos Texas becomes less southern, more western and more Hispanic, and drier—although there are notable ciénegas, or oases. In places the landscape rolls on as flat as a tortilla; but in others, especially around the Big Bend of the Rio Grande, the landscape turns so lasciviously volcanic it might belong to another planet.
Even as the Texians and the Mexicans contested the farmlands that became the Republic of Texas (and thereafter the state of Texas), and even as the Confederates drove out the soldiers of the Union, and in turn, a victorious Union imposed Reconstruction, in effect, the remote Trans-Pecos remained part of greater Apachería and Comanchería. (That said, the Comanches did not settle in the Trans-Pecos; they passed through it on the so-called Comanche Trail—more aptly, network of trails—to raid in Mexico.) Spanish mapmakers were not far wrong to label the area the Despoblado, or Empty Quarter. The few Spanish, then Mexican, then other explorers who survived their forays into the Trans-Pecos did not have pleasant stories to tell. And so many straggled up to the bitter waters of the Pecos hoping for refreshment for themselves and their livestock only to find death. (Horse lovers should avoid reading the 1858 report of Waterman Lily Ormsby, the first through-passenger on the Butterfield Overland Mail westbound stage. Suffice to say, Ormsby mentions beating the parched and exhausted animals with rocks.)
The impetus for the U.S. government to remove the indigenous peoples—the brutal Indian Wars—and bring this merciless territory into Texas was simply this: to get to California, it had to be crossed.
A few pioneers saw opportunities in Far West Texas. In this twenty-first century some of their enterprises are still ongoing, but the Trans-Pecos is littered with ghost towns, abandoned farms, ranches, mines, and here and there at lonely cross-roads, and even on the main thoroughfares of surviving towns—Fort Stockton, Marathon, Sierra Blanca, Valentine, Van Horn, among others—there are ruins, some boarded up, most not, of houses, motels, cafés, grocery stores, and gas stations. There are many reasons for these eyesores, but a persistent one is the decline in the quantity and quality of water. All over the Trans-Pecos springs and seeps have been disappearing. As for its rivers, after the Rio Grande, the Pecos is the most important, and of all the rivers in the American West, the Pecos is one of the bitterest, most abused, and most fragile. Writes Dearen, “the Pecos is under seige by problems so vast and varied that resolutions are challenging if not impossible.”
You might assume, as I once did, that given all the movies and novels from Zane Grey’s West of the Pecos to Dearen’s own To Hell or the Pecos, the Pecos would be a well-examined river. More to the point, while there is a library’s worth of nonfiction on the Trans-Pecos—from scholarly tomes on the Paleolithic hunters, to the Spanish conquistadors, to memoirs of cowpokes and modern-day naturalists, and Dearen’s earlier works, including the invaluable history Crossing Rio Pecos— astonishingly, Bitter Waters, published in 2016, is the first book-length environmental history of the whole of this river.
THE PECOS AND THE PERMIAN BASIN
Fed by snow, rain, and freshwater springs, the Pecos gushes down from its headwaters in New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo mountains southeast towards Texas, but before it reaches the stateline it runs into the Permian Basin. For the most part a desolation dotted with mesquites and pumpjacks, the Permian Basin is the remains of what was, some 250 to 300 million years ago, an inland sea. Layers upon layers of its ancient salts cover over yet deeper layers of the fossilized remains of marine organisms—petroleum. Only a western swath of the Permian Basin lies within the Trans-Pecos; the great amoeba-shaped body of it spreads north and east into New Mexico, the Texas Panhandle, and almost as far as central Texas. Oil rigs started popping up in the Permian Basin in the 1920s; today the Permian Basin’s industrial center is the twin cities of Midland and Odessa, about an hour’s drive east of the Pecos River.
It bears underlining that, as Dearen writes, “[s]ince time immemorial, the Pecos and its tributaries have washed across a dead sea bottom and carried away its salts.” Literally, every day, for millions of years, brine springs have been pumping tons upon tons of salts into the Pecos.
But the saltiness varies. Dearen explains that as the Pecos winds though Texas it also drains other watersheds, and freshwater springs feed into it from the Davis Mountains. About two-thirds of its way from the top of the Trans-Pecos to its mouth at the Rio Grande, the Pecos receives yet more infusions of fresh water from creeks and springs originating in the Glass Mountains. It also receives infusions of agricultural run-off and debris, and a litany of other challenges—but this is to get ahead of the story.
“STUPID AND UNINTERESTING”
As a baseline, what was the condition of the Pecos before our time?
In the chapter “The River That Was,” Dearen provides an overview of pre-twentieth-century human encounters with the Pecos, from early peoples (some of whom, close to its source in present-day New Mexico, used its waters for irrigation), to the Spanish explorers who encountered it south of those brine feeder springs and so dubbed it the Salado (Salty River) and later the Puerco (Pig-Like). When mid-nineteenth century U.S. Army personnel encountered the “Puerco,” their reports soon began calling it the snappier-sounding “Pecos,” but they they too disdained it. Dearen quotes Second Lieutenant William F. Smith, echoing others, calling it “muddy, swift and narrow.” U.S.-Mexico boundary commissioner John Russell Bartlett, coming upon it in 1850, called its waters “brackish.” Wherever they drank from the Pecos, men and animals tended to suffer from gastrointestinal upset. In the desert, diarrhea could kill. Bartlett added: “Miserable grass.” One youthful explorer of the 1850s summed it up: “A more stupid and uninteresting river cannot be imagined.”
The first survey and and scientific study of the Pecos in the Trans-Pecos was not made until 1854, under Captain John Pope, whose mission was to find a route for the railroad to California. Pope identified areas for potential for irrigiation in the fertile lands north of the 32nd parallel, above the brine springs, in present-day New Mexico. But little could be done until after the Civil War and the conclusion of the Indian Wars.
In Texas, as early as the 1870s in the relatively less salty stretch below the town of Pecos to present-day Iraan, entrepreneurs began to divert water from the Pecos for irrigation. By the late 1880s farming commenced when the Pioneer Canal Company began to dig extensive ditches, reservoirs and small dams. These early efforts to farm in this northeastern corner of the Trans-Pecos were repeatedly wiped out in flash floods.
In 1907 a visionary rancher named T.A. Ezell decided that what Texas needed was a mega-dam on the Pecos. It would be called Red Bluff, and it would be built nearly three decades later, in the depths of the Great Depression. By that time, the banks of the Pecos River had been utterly transformed, infested by saltcedars.
THE PECOS DAMMED
In the twentieth century the Pecos River underwent a series of dramatic changes that have left it severely compromised and increasingly fragile. Apart from the saltcedars, these largely resulted from three major dams: Red Bluff (near the border with New Mexico, built in 1936); Imperial (between the farm towns of Grandfalls, Imperial and Pecos, 1912); and Amistad (on the U.S.-Mexico border, 1969). Asserts Dearen, “Repeatedly, knowledgable observers point to the damming of the Pecos as transformational.”
Of course, the benefits of dams are substantial: they can provide water for irrigation, municipal needs, hydroelectric power, recreation, and they can help control floods, a vital concern in the Trans-Pecos, where rainfall, however rare, tends to generate devastating flash floods. (Second-order benefits may include higher asset prices, more employment, and, going to the third-order, greater fiscal revenues.)
But dams and reservoirs have ecological impacts, not all of them foreseen at the time of their construction. Above all, they tend to promote salinity. And in the already bitter Pecos, increased salinity quickly became a problem.
In Red Buff, beginning in the 1980s, blooms of golden alga began to appear. Golden alga is an invasive, possibly from England. As Dearen details in his chapter “A Fiend Unleashed,” golden alga attacks fish in two ways: its toxin affects their gills, and it depresses the levels of dissolved oxygen in the water. The fish kills at Red Bluff were so severe that for a time, Texas Parks and Wildlife closed it to fishing.
Decreased flow in the Pecos has also contributed to higher salinity. Some of this decrease can be explained by the proliferation of groundwater pumps and other irrigation wells. Farming in New Mexico draws away much of the water that might otherwise flow down into Texas (and Dearen provides lengthy discussion of the disputes). In the Trans-Pecos in the neighborhood of Imperial, twentieth century irrigation works set off a boomlet in cotton, alfalfa, vegetable and fruit farming. By the 1960s, however, with the water table down and the quality of the soil eroded, farming went into decline. (Area farms still grow the famed sweet Pecos cantaloupe, though in ever-smaller quantities).
Then there are the questions of long-term drought and climate change, which Dearen addresses briefly in quotes from residents offering their personal observations, as well as from experts. The outlook appears grim.
RECLAMATION AND ROCK ART
My two quibbles about Bitter Waters both have to with the context for these dams.
First, the discussion of issues at-hand and scope for future policy for the Pecos River would have been better grounded by an introduction, however brief, to Reclamation. For the uninitiated, The Reclamation Act of 1902 created the juggernaut first called the Reclamation Service, later the Bureau of Reclamation. Its mission is to promote development in the Western states with water projects such as dams, powerplants, and canals, and to undertake water management and water conservation. According to its official website, www.usbr.gov, the Bureau of Reclamation has constructed over 600 dams and reservoirs, including Hoover Dam, and is today the largest wholesaler of water and the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the United States. To quote Patricia Limerick in The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West, Reclamation “put the national government in the center of the control and development of water, the West’s key resource.” The political and environmental implications have been monumental, as Reclamation’s dams, to quote Limerick again, “have changed Western rivers into giant plumbing systems.” In short, it would be impossible to understate Reclamation’s influence over the economics and environment of the West—including that of the Trans-Pecos.
Second, Bitter Waters makes no mention of the rock art of the Lower Pecos, an unparalleled cultural legacy, some of it many thousands of years old, an important portion of which was inundated by the Amistad Reservoir. The rock art sites that survive are imperiled by the rise in humidity, slight as it may seem in the desert air, from that same reservoir. The most spectacular of these sites is White Shaman, so named for its central headless white anthropomorph, which sprawls across the back wall of a rock shelter—from which one can glimpse the high bridge over the Pecos. I refer interested readers to Harry J. Schafer’s anthology, Painters in Prehistory: Archaeology and Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, and Carolyn E. Boyd’s works, including The White Shaman Mural: An Enduring Creation Narrative in the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos. The latter, published in late 2016, makes a brilliant argument that White Shaman tells the story of creation, and hence it should be considered the oldest surviving “book” in North America.
INVASION OF THE SALTCEDARS
Among the most fascinating and valuable contributions of Bitter Waters is the history of the arrival of the saltcedars and subsequent attempts to eradicate them. Also known as the tamarisk, this “tree to admire and loathe,” as Dearen calls it, arrived in Far West Texas in 1886 on the wagon of one C.E. Buchholz, his idea being that saltcedars could help protect against floods. Two years later, the Pioneer Canal Company imported a second species of saltcedar from California. Native to the Levant and Central Asia, the scraggly-looking saltcedars quickly infested the Pecos. Thickets of them also cropped up along the Rio Grande, and indeed everywhere else there might be water. The list of environmental impacts includes displaced alamos (the stately native willow trees); degraded habitat for various species of birds, fish, grasses; and—ironically—a reduction of the Pecos’ ability to channel flood waters, leaving large zones in greater danger of flooding.
Bureau of Reclamation experts believed that saltcedars both raised the Pecos River’s salinity and reduced its flow. In the early 1960s the bureau launched a massive eradication campaign that, in the Trans-Pecos alone, covered 21,000 acres. Writes Dearen, “Amid soaring early expectations for a significant increase in the river’s base flow, something strange happened—nothing happened.”
In the following decades, after the construction of Red Bluff and Amistad Reservoirs, both of which increased the Pecos’ salinity, experts still took it on faith that saltcedars were displacing staggering quantities of water. Dearen quotes one expert claiming that a single large saltcedar could take up two hundred gallons a day. Ergo, so it seemed at the time, eradicating the saltcedars “had the potential to improve both the quality and vitalty of the Pecos.”
In several campaigns beginning in 1999 Red Bluff District authorities dispatched helicopters to dump Arsenal, a herbicide, on some 12,766 acres. But again, the river’s flow did not respond. One of numerous theories to account for this was that the destruction of the canopy promoted algae. Certainly algae had become a problem. In any event, the saltcedars returned, and worse: in torrential rain in 2014, the still unburned debris of those thousands of poisoned-to-death trees swept down the upper Texas stretch of the Pecos, causing half a million dollars’ worth of damage to croplands and infrastructure.
The widely quoted assertion that a single saltcedar could suck up two hundred gallons a day? That was pulled out of someone’s Stetson. As for saltcedars contributing to the Pecos’ salinity, Dearen notes a 2008 study that showed that saltcedars were not, after all, significant.
Nonetheless, a more exotic scheme to attack the saltcedar was afoot. In its Old World native habitat, the saltcedars had insect predators… As I read Dearen’s account of a U.S. government entomologist importing leaf beetles in his land-luggage, I could not help but envision this as the opening scene in a tragicomic novel.
To date, a number of different species of saltcedar munching beetles have been released on the Pecos. Jury’s out.
AN ESSENTIAL FOUNDATION
In his preface Dearen expresses the hope that Bitter Waters might “provide an essential foundation for the next generation of endeavors and policies.” Unquestionably it does, and its detailed maps and photographs help bring an amply-documented narrative into especially crisp focus.
But Bitter Waters also represents a stellar contribution to the literature on the Trans-Pecos itself, and as such, to the environmental history of Texas and the Southwest, for the Pecos River is fundamental to understanding the region in all its many facets, not only ecological, but also cultural, economic, geological, historical, and political.
And more: in the microcosm of this environmental history of the Pecos River, we may more clearly perceive the macro-catastrophe of our planet’s degradation, and, in my view, its three powerful motors: First, what economists call “the tragedy of the commons”—in the absence of well-specified and enforced limits, we to tend to overexploit shared resources; second, ye olde Road to Hell, that is, the one paved with good intentions—interventions that did not anticipate systemic consequences; and third, the advent of the oil industry, for without oil to fuel agriculture, construction, and transportation, such rapacious demands upon this bitter river, and projects to manage it, would never have been viable.
I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.
In the shadow of the National Palace: La Casa de la Primera Imprenta de América, the House of the First Printing Press in the Americas, Mexico City. Photo by C.M. Mayo, 2017.
…There is one more a pearl of a place that cannot go unmentioned in any discussion of our sister republic’s literary landscape…
From the Claustro de Sor Juana, in less than twenty minutes’ walk north and slightly east—weaving your way through the shoppers, touts, tourists, beggars, businessmen—honking cars and buses and motorbikes—and a skate-boarder or two—blaring music, freighters with their trolleys piled to toppling with boxes—don’t get run over by the pedicabs—and once at the Zócalo, wending around the Aztec dancers in feathers and ankle-rattles, the toothless shouter pumping his orange sign about SODOM Y GOMORRA MARIGUANA BODAS GAY, and an organ grinder, and to-ers and fro-ers of every age and size, you arrive, out of breath, at a squat, terracotta-colored three-story high building.
This is where the first book was printed in—no, not just in Mexico—then New Spain—but in the Americas. La Casa de la Primera Imprenta de América.
To step into the foyer of its museum and bookstore is to relax into an oasis of peace.
The uniformed guard hands me a pen to sign the guest book. It’s late afternoon; I am the third visitor for the day.
I take a gander at the exhibition of contemporary textile art—a few pieces reference one of Frida Kahlo’s drawings in the Casa Azul of a tentacled monster of paranoia, each limb tipped with a staring eye.
In the second gallery I find the replica of our continent’s first printing press soaking in sun from the window. The wooden contraption is taller than I am, but so spare, it occurs to me that it might serve to juice apples.
How my Mexican amigos scoffed at the auction of the Bay Psalm Book in 2013. Not about the record sum—14.2 million US dollars—for which that little book, printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1640, went to a private collector, but about the report in the international media that the Bay Psalm Book was “the first book printed in America.”
To Mexicans, America is the continent, not their sister republic. Mexico is part of the same continent, of course, and so the first book printed in America—or, as we estadounidenses prefer to say, the Americas—was
Breve y más compendiosa doctrina Cristiana en lengua Mexicana y Castellana (Brief and Most Comprehensive Christian Doctrine in Nahuátl and Spanish), printed right here, in Mexico City, in this building, in 1539.
Mexico beats out Massachusetts by 101 years! But this sinks to silliness. That printer in Cambridge, Massachussetts, was English, and the one in colonial Mexico City, a native of Lombardy named Giovanni Paoli, Hispanicized to “Juan Pablos.” The technology that found its way to the Americas with these printing pioneers—to the north, Protestants, to the south, Catholics, separated by religious schism and the whirlwinds of European politics, and that century, and moreover, by the staggering distance of desert, swamplands, oceanic buffalo-filled prairies, and sunless and unmapped forests—had one and the same root: the fifteenth-century workshop of a German goldsmith by the name of Johannes Gutenberg.
Gutenberg was inking his little pieces of movable type more than half a century before Christopher Columbus “sailed the ocean blue,” and the indigenous on this continent chanced to hear the first stirrings of vaguest rumors and weird omens.
Still, 1539 is an early date indeed for that first book printed in the Americas: only eighteen years after the fall of Tenochitlán. Three years after Cabeza de Vaca’s miraculous arrival in Mexico City. Fray Sahagún was still a year away from launching the research that would result in the Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, or the Florentine Codex. The lodes that would turn Mexico into an industrial-scale silver exporter had not yet been discovered. The Manila Galleons, treasure ships bringing porcelain, spices, and silks from China to Acapulco, would not begin their annual crossings for another twenty-six years.
In England, Henry the VIII was between wives three and four. It would be sixty-eight more years until the first, disastrous English settlement at Jamestown. The Pilgrims who would land at Plymouth Rock? As a religious community they did not yet exist.
Tucked in the shade of the National Palace and a block east from Mexico’s cathedral, the Casa de la Primera Imprenta was built, it turns out, over the ruin of the Aztec Temple of Tezcatlipoca, Smoking Mirror, trickster god of the night sky, of time, and of ancestral memory.
Aztec snake head on display, 2017.
Who knows what still lies beneath in the rubble? Dug up in the eighteenth century during a renovation, a gigantic Aztec stone snake head was, no doubt with a shudder of horror, reburied. But we live in a different time with a very different sensibility. In 1989 when renovations unearthed that same Aztec stone snake head—elegant with fangs, nostrils, scales, eyes the size of melons—it was carefully excavated and cleaned by archaeologists. This monumental sculpture, heritage of the nation, is now displayed atop a roped platform in the Casa de la Primera Imprenta’s Juan Pablos bookstore, surrounded by a shelf of fiction, a table of poetry, and a sign informing us that the Aztec snake head is carved from grey basalt and weighs approximately one and a half tons.
The Juan Pablos bookstore, named for that original printer Giovanni Paoli, retails books from the press of Mexico City’s Universidad Autónomo Metropolitana (UAM). Such are my interests du jour: I came away with a copy of the first Spanish translation of an eighteenth-century Italian’s journey to Mexico and the 2015 El territorio y sus representaciones.
A splendid and very important book: El territorio y sus representaciones by Luis Ignacio Sainz Chávez and Jorge Gonzlález Aragón Castellanos, winner of the 2016 Premio de Investigación. Published by the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico.
UPDATE: “Dispatch from the Sister Republic or, Papelito Habla,” my long essay pon the Mexican literary landscape and the power of the book, is now available in Kindle at amazon.com.
Mexico has been very much on my mind these past days because I have been working on some translations of works by Mexican writers Agustín Cadena and Rose Mary Salum... more news about those soon… and also (not entirely a digression from the book in-progress about Far West Texas) I have been working on an essay about books in Mexico entitled “Dispatch from the Sister Republic.”
The Dresden Codex was water-damaged in the firebombings of World War II. Fortunately for us, around 1825, a facsimile had been made by the Italian artist Agostino Aglio, commissioned by the Irish peer Edward King, Lord Kingsborough—the latter a believer in the theory, to become an article of faith for the Mormons, that the Mesoamericans were descendants of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel.
Aglio’s facsimile is included in Kingsborough’s colossal multi-volume Antiquities of Mexico. And when I say “colossal” I do not exaggerate. In those days before photography, Lord Kingsborough sent Aglio all over Europe, to the Vatican Library, the royal libraries of Berlin, Dresden, and Paris, and the Bodleian Library at Oxford, among many others, to copy their Mexican codices, painstakingly tracing the elaborate diagrams and glyphics, and then coloring them in. Aglio also made paintings of Mexican sculptures and other artifacts in European collections. The whole project, from making the fascimiles to the state-of-the-art color printing and luxury binding, was at once a visionary contribution to world culture and an extravagance beyond folly. It could be said that Antiquities of Mexicokilled Lord Kingsborough; having exhausted his liquidity before paying for the paper, he was imprisoned in Dublin, where he contracted typhoid.*
[*Sylvia D. Whitmore, “Lord Kingsborough and His Contribution to Ancient Mesoamerican Scholarship: The Antiquities of Mexico,” The PARI Journal,Spring, 2009]
Lord Kingsborough never made it to Mexico, but it was in Mexico City, on a tour of the Biblioteca Vasconcelos, that I saw one of those volumes of Antiquities of Mexico up close. That particular volume was part of the personal library, then recently acquired, of Carlos Monsiváis, one of Mexico’s most esteemed journalists and leftist social critics, who died in 2010. I could not tell you which volume of Antiquities of Mexico it was nor why nor how it was separated from its fellow volumes in its set, nor why nor how Monsiváis, famous for his witty musings on Mexican popular culture, had acquired it.
The librarian, wearing white gloves, strained to lift the volume off its shelf. Bound in navy-blue Morrocco leather, it was the size of a small suitcase. With the grimace of a weight-lifter, he slowly lowered it onto the table. He levered up the cover, then turned a couple of the pages. The colors of the prints of Aglio’s paintings of the leaves from a codex— red, yellow, turquoise, ochre— were as bright as if painted that morning.
I later learned that that single volume weighed some 65 pounds.
UPDATE: “Dispatch from the Sister Republic or, Papelito Habla,” my longform essay on the Mexican literary landscape and the power of the book, is now available in Kindle.
The two volume anthology by José N. Iturriaga, a collection of writings by foreigners in Morelia, from the 16th to the 21st century.
To see one’s own country through the scribbles of foreigners can be at once discomfiting and illuminating. Out of naiveté and presumption, foreigners get many things dead-wrong; they also get many things confoundingly right. Like the child who asked why the emperor was wearing no clothes, oftentimes they point to things we have been blind to: beauty and wonders, silliness, perchance a cobwebby corner exuding one skanky stink. And of course, there are things for foreigners to point at in all countries, from Albania to Zambia.
As an American I have to admit it’s rare that we pay a whit of attention to writing on the United States by, say, Mexicans, Canadians, the Germans or the French. True, we have the shining example of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, which every reasonably well-educated American may not have waded through but has at least heard of (and if you haven’t, dear reader, now you have.) But de Tocqueville’s tome is a musty-dusty 181 years old (the first of its four volumes was published in 1835, the last in 1840– get the whole croquembouche in paperback here.)
José N. Iturriaga, signing copies of his anthology, July 1, 2016, Centro Cultural Jardin Borda, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico.
This past Friday, July 1, 2016, I participated in the launch of novelist and historian José N. Iturriaga’s anthology Otros cien forasteros en Morelos [Another One Hundred Foreigners in Morelos], the companion volume to Cien forasteros en Morelos [One Hundred Foreigners in Morelos], from the 16th to the 21st century.
(For those rusty on their Mexican geography, Morelos is a large state in central Mexico that includes Cuernavaca, “the city of eternal springtime,” which it actually is, and Tepoztlán, a farm town surrounded by spectacular reddish bluffs that, despite an influx of tourists from Mexico City and abroad, still has a strong indigenous presence, and has been designated by Mexico’s Secretary of Tourism as a “pueblo mágico.” The most famous resident of the state of Morelos was Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata.)
The launch was held in the Centro Cultural Jardín Borda (Borda Gardens Cultural Center), an historic garden open to the public in downtown Cuernavaca– about an hour and a half’s drive from Mexico City.
Jardín Borda, entrance patio.
As Iturriaga said in his talk, for almost forty years he has been studying the writings of foreigners on Mexico, precisely for the fresh, if not always kind nor necessarily accurate, perspective they offer on his own country.
I admire Iturriaga’s work, and his curiosity, open-mindedness, and open-heartedness more than I can say. It was a mammoth honor to have had an excerpt from my novel included in his anthology, and to have been invited to participate on the panel presenting his anthology. The other two panelists, whose work is also in the anthology, were poet, novelist and essayist Eliana Albala and journalist and poet María Gabriela Dumay, both of whom came to live in Cuernavaca in the early 1970s, political exiles from Pinochet’s Chile.
Mexican book presentations tend to be more formal affairs than those in US (the latter usually in a bookstore with, perhaps, a brief and informal introduction by the owner or a staff member. I have war stories.) In Mexico, in contrast, there is usually a felt-draped dais, always a microphone, and two to as many as five panelists who have prepared formal lectures about the book. The author speaks last, and briefly. Another difference is that the Mexican reporters, photographers, and oftentimes television cameras crowd the dais, lending the affair a glamor and gravitas rare for a US book presentation. Afterwards, there is a party with white-gloved waiters pouring “vino de honor”– in this case, for Iturriaga’s Otro cien forasteros en Morelos, whoa, mezcal.
C.M. Mayo, Eliana Albala, María Gabriela Dumay, José N. Iturriaga, July 1, 2016, Centro Cultural Jardín Borda, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico
>> Where to buy Otros Cien Forasteros en Morelos? I hope to be able to provide a link shortly.
Here is my talk for the panel, translated into English.
Dear José Iturriaga; fellow panelists, Eliana Albala and María Gabriela Dumay; everyone in this beautiful Centro Cultural Jardín Borda who made this event possible; Ladies and Gentlemen:
First of all, heart-felt congratulations to José Iturriaga on this extraordinary anthology in two volumes, a magnificent and opportune cultural contribution that, no doubt, required endless hours of reading, not to mention the tremendous labor of love that went into selecting and then translating so many writers.
Between the covers of this second volume, Otros cien forasteros en Morelos, I find my fellow Americans Jack London, Katherine Anne Porter, and John Steinbeck– among the most outstanding figures in US literature. There is also the great novelist who arrived, so mysteriously, from Germany: B. Traven; and artists such as Pedro Friedeberg; and distinguished historians such as John Womack, author ofZapata and the Mexican Revolution, Michael K. Schuessler, biographer of the eccentric poetic genius Pita Amor; and the Austrian Konrad Ratz, whose meticulous research on Maximilian von Habsburg was essential, in fact a parting of the seas, in our understanding of the personality, education, and politics of the Archduke of Austria.
In three words, José Iturriaga’s anthology is eclectic, fascinating, and illuminating.
It is a great honor for me to participate in this presentation and an even greater honor that this second volume, Otros cien forasteros en Morelos, includes excerpts from my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire. [In the anthology, excerpts are taken from the Spanish translation by Mexican novelist and poet Agustín Cadena, El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano.]
(*Agustin de Iturbide (1783-1824) led the final stage of Mexico’s war for independence from Spain, and supported by the Catholic Church, was crowned Emperor of Mexico in 1822, deposed in 1823, and executed in 1824. )
In the winter of 1866, Maximilian brought his court here, to the Jardín Borda. And since we are within those very walls and surrounded by those very gardens, in celebration of José Iturriaga’s work, I would like to invoke those foreigners of the past, that is to say, I would like to read the few very brief excerpts from the novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, as they appear in this anthology.
This bit from the novel is the imagined point of view of José Luis Blasio, a Mexican who served as Maximilian’s secretary:
Depend on it: Maximilian is shepherding Mexico into the modern world— so José Luis Blasio, His Majesty’s secretary, has told his family and tells himself. And this is no small task when His Majesty must grapple not only with our backwardness and ingratitude, but that thorn in his side, General Bazaine. The rumor is that, abetted by his Mexican wife’s family, Bazaine schemes to push aside Maximilian; they aim to have Louis Napoleon make Mexico a French Protectorate with himself in charge— not that José Luis would give that a peso of credence. But José Luis does consider it an outrage, the latest of many, that he would wire a complaint that Maximilian has removed his court to Cuernavaca, rather than “attend to business in the capital.”
Yes, they are here in the Casa Borda amongst gardens and fountains, fruit trees, palm trees, parrots of every size and color— a world away from Mexico City. But does not Louis Napoleon go to Plombières and Biarritz? Queen Victoria, who has sterner blood, travels as far as Balmoral in the Scottish Highlands. Dom Pedro II of Brazil retires to his villa in Petropolis. And did not the empress’s late father, Leopold, absent himself from Brussels in the Château Royal at Laeken? It is natural that for the winter, His Majesty should hold court in a healthier clime.
But even here where he siestas in a hammock, drinks limeade from a coconut shell, and wears an ecru linen suit with an open-necked blouse, Maximilian’s work never ceases. It is a wide, rushing river that José Luis can only hope will not overspill its banks. In the past year, José Luis has come to appreciate the uncompromising necessity of working long hours; indeed, his eyesight, never strong, has deteriorated from so much reading in the dim of early mornings. Maximilian arises at four; his valet attends him, and though he might linger over breakfast, by no later than six, he is at “the bridge,” as he says, that is, his desk— or, as here in Casa Borda, a folding table on the veranda. His Majesty’s dispatch box is heavy, and growing ever heavier…
And now Pepa de Iturbide, daughter of the Emperor Agustín de Iturbide, godmother to Agustin de Iturbide y Green, and member of Maximilian’s court:
It is a holy miracle that she got a wink of sleep at all! So appalled she is by Maximilian’s whim to uproot the court to this hamlet two bone-jarring days travel up and down the sierra— good gracious, this is no time to abandon the capital, and go gallivanting about with butterfly nets and beetle jars! Matamoros is under siege; the whole state of Guerrero, from Acapulco to Iguala, is in thrall to guerrillas. And Pepa got it from Frau von Kuhacsevich, who got it from Lieutenant Weissbrunn, that whilst the empress was in Yucatan, Maximilian fancied a visit to Acapulco, but General Bazaine nixed it because it would have been impossible to maintain security for his person. That is the sum of things!
Oh, but in Mexico City Maximilian felt cramped, “an oyster in a bucket of ice,” he said. Over the past two months, the few times Pepa chanced to see Maximilian, he had spoken of the empress’s dispatches from Yucatan proudly but with— Pepa recognized it when she saw it— a glint of green. If Maximilian could not have his expedition to Yucatan, by Jove, he was going to go some place tropical! And Maximilian could not be outshone by his consort, oh no. A mere visit to Cuernavaca would not do; he had to serve himself the whole enchilada with the big spoon: an Imperial Residence with landscaping, fountains, an ornamental pond stocked with exotic fish, and furnishings and flub dubs aplenty, comme ça and de rigueur. Whom did he imagine he was impressing with this caprice? Poor Charlotte, exhausted after Yucatan. And as if the von Kuhacseviches were not already foundering in their attempts to manage the Imperial Household in Mexico City! As if the Mexican Imperial Army could offer its officers anything approaching a living wage! Or keep its depots stocked with gunpowder! It is a monumental waste of time, of effort, of money, and to boot, Casa Borda is a-crawl with cockroaches, beetles, earwigs, and moths— a bonanza for Professor Bilimek!
And now the Austrian Frau von Kuhacsecvich, Mistress (chief administrador) of the Imperial Household:
On the steps to the next patio, Frau von Kuhacsevich must pause to fan herself. Cuernavaca is not the Turkish bath of the hot lands, more, as Maximilian put it, an Italian May. Pleasant for the men, and Prince Agustín, perhaps, but a trial for those who must encase themselves in corsets and crinolines. Oh, poor Charlotte that her father has died, but Blessed Jesus, what would Frau von Kuhacsevich have done had she been obliged to wear mourning black! The thought simply wilts her. She is afraid her face has gone red as a beet. Her back feels sticky, and under her bonnet, she can feel her scalp sweating. Taking the bonnet off is out of the question: her roots have grown in nearly an inch— in all the rushing to and fro, there has not been a snatch of time to touch up the color.
An Italian May: in that spirit, for luncheon, Tüdos has concocted an amuse-gueule of olives, basil, and requeson, a cheese too strong to pass for mozzarella, but toothsome. In addition to coffee, he will be making a big pot of canarino: simply, the zest of lemons steeped as tea. Well, here it has to be made of limes, ni modo, no matter, as the Mexicans say.
Finally, Maximilian himself:
Here, this moment in Cuernavaca, one is happy: perfumes in the air, colors from the palette of Heaven, birds, flowering trees and vines and oranges, the music of the orchestra and of the fountains, this bone-warming sunshine…
No, as an author I’m not all jumping-jacks about self-publishing— publishers can and, on many an occasion, actually do provide important added-value to a book. (My own have been published by Grijalbo-Random House Mondadori, Literal Publishing, Milkweed Editions, Planeta, Unbridled Books, University of Georgia Press, University of Utah Press, and Whereabouts Press— whew, that list is as much a testimony to the diverse genres of my books as to the tumult in the publishing industry.) But as I noted in this previous blog post, the light flashed on for me when I realized, no matter what happens with my future books, because I have self-published several ebook editions and the print-on-demand paperback, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, and because digital bookshelf space is marginal cost zero 24/7 (in other words, click, it’s in the store, and nothing digital is going out of print anytime soon), for the rest of my natural life, I will always play some role, whether large or minuscule, as my own publisher. And towards that end, I realized, it would behoove me to figure out, or rather, continue trying to figure out what the heck I’m doing. Over the past few years, for my imprint, Dancing Chiva, I’ve explored my way around a good part of this newfangled digital labyrinth (PODs, Kindles, iBooks). But of course, there is always more to learn; publishing is a fast-changing game.
Ergo, I signed up for the Independent Book Publishers Association’s 2 day 2015 seminar “Publishing University”. It was, in two words, Austinesquely fabulastic.
Herewith— may they serve you or someone you know— my notes:
1. How Books Sell
The keynote at lunch was by Peter Hildick-Smith, CEO of Codex Group, on “How Books Sell.” I was encouraged to hear that this veteran of the publishing business, who’s crunched more than a few truckloads of numbers, believes that “there is a lot of untapped potential in this industry.” [My comment: Crowd pleasingly encouraging! I confess, this prompted evil thoughts about Pet Rocks.]
Hildick-Smith said there are three pillars to selling a new book, and you must have all three:
(1) Discovery (Readers are aware of the book) (2) Conversion (They decide to buy it) (3) Availability (It is available to buy when, where and how buyers want it)
On Discovery +Most people, when thinking about how to sell a book, conflate discovery with conversion. +The vast majority of book buyers are not even aware of best-selling authors! +Internet promotions (via email, social media, free Kindles, etc) has “generated a lot of low quality discoverability.” +Analog publicity remains very effective. The quality of discoverability is key. +The book needs to get rated. But books must be read before they can be rated. Therefore offering free ebooks as a way to improve discoverability is low quality. + The discoverability source affects 5 star ratings.
Notice that HarperCollins added “author of Bel Canto“
On Conversion +Many times there is a disconnect here. There is no conversion to sales without discovery. “Conversion” is not about liking, it is about acting— actually deciding to buy the book. +Statistics show that the author series brand is the biggest factor. In other words, author brand is key. Ergo, best-sellers are dominated by brand authors. Their fans are 15 x more likely to buy their favorite authors and to give more favorable reviews. “Brand author” = 500,000 fans or more. +An author brand is a “rare and valuable asset” but this is not the same as “being famous.” Lots of famous and even belovedly famous people publish books that tank.
+Readers do not always connect the author with the title of the book. In other words, they may love the book but not remember who wrote it. Key: if the author wrote a book with a recognizable title, it makes a difference to add “Author of XYZ,” to the cover.
[My comment: As a reader, yes, it does influence me to learn that the author is also the author of a book I have read and loved, but mainly when I am browsing in a brick-and-mortar bookstore; on a screen, I have to squint to read that line of text. I plucked out this example, of Ann Patchett’s Run, see image right. The simple design with large font size for the author name and title works well for viewing on a screen. It also says, “bestselling author of Bel Canto,” though that looks like a mushy blur on my iPhone.]
Hildick-Smith then gave a slide show of a study on buyers’ reactions to alternative book covers. Oftentimes it was the ineptly designed books that performed better (!!) And it rarely worked to have the author’s face on the cover, even when that author is both famous and attractive.
[My comment: my notes become a bit thin at this point. He went into a lot of detail about the elements of cover design.]
On Availability The speaker ran out of time, alas, before he could delve into this topic, but I don’t think many in audience minded because his slide show about book covers was so entertaining and full of practical advice. [My comment re availability: yep, it drives me bananas when I visit an author’s website, decide to buy the book, but then cannot find a link to buy.]
Sum up: +Be bold, stand out; +books are an extreme niche business; publish for the untapped 85 million buyers; +recommendations can take 6 months to deliver; +brand authors are a massive sales factor; +it’s not one size fits all; +a book’s message is a mini-story that must connect; +brick-and-mortar bookstores remain the the largest discovery source, not amazon.com; +to sell books, you must have discoverability and convertibility and availability.
2. The Art of Making Books
Tim Hewitt, sales rep for Friesens, gave an excellent and fascinating talk about the elements of a traditionally printed book.
I didn’t take elaborate notes on this one, but I was delighted that he could answer my question, Why is the POD (print-on-demand) paperback so much heavier than an offset-printed similar sized book? I have two editions of my book in Spanish, one printed in the U.S. as a POD under my own imprint, Dancing Chiva, the other offset printed (traditionally printed) in Mexico by Literal Publishing. The editions are the same design and size (only a couple of centimeters of difference), but the Literal Publishing edition is both nicer and substantially lighter weight.
Hewitt’s answer was that the machinery for PODs requires heavier paper, but with offset printing, you can go with lighter weight but still thick paper, which saves money on paper and shipping, and also maintains spine width.
[My comment: It occurred to me at this point that if one has a large enough review copy campaign, because of savings on both shipping and postage, it could make sense to print the review copies traditionally, even if the bulk of sales are expected to be POD via amazon and other online booksellers. Well, of course, that’s a question of plugging in the numbers at the time.]
Hewitt emphasized that, before deciding on your paper, it is key to understand, who is your target audience / the end user of your book?
[My comment: For my latest book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolutionand the Spanish translation Odisea metafisica hacia la Revolución Mexicana, the answer is, primarily students, Mexicophiles, and scholars. That means a good-looking but affordable and easy-to-find paperback edition available on amazon (and on various other booksellers sourced from Ingram). However, in Mexico, where fewer book buyers buy online, this means a traditionally published paperback available in major urban bookstores, hence the Literal Publishing edition. (A hardcover edition for libraries? I’m working on it. Yes, the Kindle edition is already out.)]
[My comment: It’s a mistake to assume digital editions have zero environmental impact. It’s also a mistake to assume digital means immortal; in fact, digital files degrade much faster than acid-free paper. I’ve already had some files and software from the late 90s turn into garbage. Sometimes, dagnabbit, paper is superior.]
3. Book Metadata from Head to Toe
Laura Dawson of Bowker, the ISBN agency, gave this super chewy talk about ISBNs, Library of Congress numbers, BISAC categories, and best practices.
Tanya Hall, CEO of Greenleaf Book Group, gave this riveting talk— it was at the tail-end of this cram-packed conference, so that’s saying a lot.
+ Why video? Discoverability. Video is 52 times more likely to show up on Google search than text results.
+Video gives a personal connection, humans are drawn to other humans, used right it can increase the trust factor, use it to set tone at events.
+It’s memorable.
Some types of video you might produce: animation, behind-the-scenes., book trailer, expert trailer, a reading, talking heads, daily tip, tutorial
Tips [My comment: I didn’t get all of them, I was flagging.]:
+ Subject should face light to avoid being backlit
+ Add your logo to your videos (a watermark or what’s called a “bug”)
+ Consider a personal message and/or opening
+ Use music to set tone / build emotion
+ Transcribe video content to increase searchability [my comment: Jane Friedman convinced me to do transcriptions of my podcasts for this same reason. Transcription, however, is extremely time-consuming and tedious work. If you can afford it, I would recommend hiring someone to do it; nonetheless, you’ll still have to go through it yourself and make corrections. Yes, I know about speech recognition software. I tried it out and there was so much gibberish in there, it turned out to be faster, easier, and far more reliable to get it done by a human being. Yes, that may change.]
+ Commit to a regular schedule [My comment: sounds optimal but not necessarily doable… I’d rather be writing…I’ve committed to regular schedule with this blog, but that’s my limit.]
+ Put your video on your website, a video landing page can increase conversion by up to 80 percent.
+ Participate in the community, comment on other videos on YouTube [My comment: sounds optimal but…I’m out of breath just thinking about it…]
+ Upload your video to amazon and goodreads [My comment: Yes, that goes on my “to do” list…]
+ Keep it short, 60 seconds if possible
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My current enthusiasm is for making 1- 2 minute edited videos that can work like a step-up from a GIF to illustrate an article / book / blog post— although I realize that these don’t necessarily help sell books or “go viral,” as would, say, a baby moose frolicking in a lawn sprinkler. I do have a couple of longer videos about my latest book on my “to do” list— a trailer and a talk about some of the rare esoteric books I consulted, which I’ll get to… oh, lala, one of these days– and maybe sooner rather than later.
The thing is, making videos is a very different endeavor than writing, and it eats up time for writing. Delegate the video-making to a service or a freelancer? Ouch, that’s a bit of a pricey proposition, and frankly, I’ve been underwhelmed by most of the ones I’ve seen. (Translation: I’d really rather make my own.)
More importantly, I doubt my readers, current or potential, are those who spend their free hours surfing around on YouTube.
Do I sound a bit down on video? I do relish learning about the ever-expanding menu of options for marketing books, what others are doing and have found valuable for them. But book marketing is a bottomless abyss of more, more, always something more one can do. After listening to all the ideas and experiences and whatever data there might be about this or that, one simply has to refocus on one’s intentions and priorities, decide what to do and what not to do, and move on.]
5. And a felicitous observation on the emergence of so many new “hybrid” or “independent” publishers
Greenleaf Book Group is one of several new so-called “hybrid” publishers at the seminar, and I am happy to see them because it seemed to me that there was a yawning gap that needed to be filled. On the one hand, there are traditional publishers and on the other, various vanity presses, from CreateSpace to Lulu and all the rest of those that publish anyone and everyone and their uncle’s chinchilla’s macaroni recipes.
What is needed, and so I see from this “Publishing University” seminar is beginning to emerge, is a viable business model that offers not only professional quality editing, design, and marketing, but some curation. So yes, the author does shell out the clams, but his book won’t end up swept up with the roaring river of riffraff.
(Put another way: every book is a needle in a haystack, but the smaller the haystack and the nicer the hay, the easier it will be to find it.)
Of course it would be lovely if the author didn’t have to pay for anything, and instead received Niagaras of royalties and kowtows from all major bookstores, Oprah, and newspapers of national and international circulation. But the fact is, many books are worthy of readers but, for various reasons, cannot be expected to cover their costs if traditionally published. (University presses take on scholarly and some literary works, but their budgets are increasingly constrained. Oftentimes, to publish a given book they require “underwriting,” as they so delicately call the clams, from the author’s employer or a foundation.)
Related to this is the emergence of more accessible a la carte services, including book design, cover design, cataloging and metadata consulting, editing, copyediting, ebook file testing and quality assurance, indexing, and of course, ye olde book marketing. For example, Firebrand Technologies, TLC Graphics, and Philadelphia-based Parlew Associates are now on my radar.
Another of these “hybrid” or “independent” publishers is poet and novelist Michele Orwin’s Bacon Press Books, which has a carefully curated catalog. The latest from Bacon Press Books is the paperback edition of Kate Blackwell’s brilliant collection of short stories, You Won’t Remember This, which was originally published in hardcover by the now sadly defunct Southern Methodist University Press. (Buy your football tickets here.)
There were more panels I attended, all excellent, and, lacking a robotic avatar, many more I couldn’t attend.
Another benefit was the chance to talk with the various vendors, among them, graphic designers, freelance publicists, editors, and many printers, as well as old friends and workshop students. In addition to Michele Orwin, there were several people from She Writes, including Barbara Stark-Nemon, who took my fiction workshop at the San Miguel Writers Conference, and whose historical novel Even in Darkness is just out; and Denise Camacho, President of Intrigue Publishing. Literary, scholarly, cookbooks, Christian, mystery, history, diet advice, bear attack memoir, marketing how-to— participants were publishing an astounding variety of books.
In sum, if you’re at all interested in learning about the nuts and bolts of publishing, whether as a small publisher or as a self-publisher, the IBPA’s Publishing University is an all-star 2 day conference. Next year, 2016, it will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah.
“Assembled from over six hundred submissions, this collection reminds us that our world is dangerous: a man disappears in Argentina, despair reigns in post-Katrina New Orleans, teen bandits attack in Costa Rica, wild boars swarm in a German forest, biker gangs battle in New Zealand, security guards overreact in Beijing, rogue militias run wild in Africa, and more. These are not ordinary travel stories by or about tourists; the contributors are award-winning authors who know their way around—former Peace Corps Volunteers, international aid workers, expatriates—and dig deep beneath the surface. “
FIVE FAVORITE NOVELS ABOUT A DANGEROUS WORLD by Clifford Garstang
Some of my favorite American writers create dark stories set abroad. That’s what I like to read and it inevitably informs my own writing and my selections for the book. Here are 5 of the best:
Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder I also liked Patchett’s earlier novel set in South America, Bel Canto, but this book, set in Brazil, really grabbed me—it has mystery, a heroic structure, and explores fascinating, credible science. One researcher has gone missing and another goes searching for him in the heart of darkness—classic.
Russell Banks’s The Darling Set in Liberia, Banks’s novel (which is said to be based loosely on The Tempest) explores failures of both American and Liberian governments. A former member of the Weather Underground faces exposure back home, but also faces a near-constant civil war in her adopted home.
Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna Kingsolver’s agenda-driven fiction isn’t for everyone, but I was drawn to this novel, set mostly in Mexico. Having grown close to Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in Mexico City, the protagonist settles in the U.S. and attracts the scrutiny of the Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committees.
Robert Stone’s Damascus Gate This is a sprawling book that explores the history of Israel and the forces that would destroy it. The book is a fascinating look at one of the Middle East’s most dangerous flashpoints.
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried Like O’Brien’s fantastic Going After Cacciato, which won the National Book Award, The Things They Carried explores the horror of the Vietnam War and the intense personal toll it takes on all.
As a writer who has been living in Mexico for nearly three decades and, for an ongoing hairy spell, working on a book about Far West Texas, I am tardy in the extreme in reading Susan Shelby Magoffin’s diary of 1846-47. Only recently did I pick it up in a bookstore on a visit to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I promptly devoured it and am still shaking my head that I had not happened upon this marvel of a chronicle before. Indeed, the diary stands an essential document in US and Mexican economic history.
Herewith, a few notes. (In other words, this post is not a polished essay but for my own reference– and may it also serve you, dear reader, as an inspiration for further surfing and reading.)
YEA, VERILY, IN THE PRE-PRE-PRE NAFTA ERA
At the time that Mrs. Samuel Magoffin, or “Susanita,” as she called herself, began her diary on “the Great Prairie Highway,” few people apart from hard-bitten traders, Indians and Indian fighters had traversed the Santa Fe Trail. This was, as historian Howard Lamar writes the diary’s forword, “the West’s newest and most romantic business.” In fact, a best
Josiah Gregg
seller of the day, read and reread by the exuberantly admiring Susanita, was her husband’s colleague Josiah Gregg’s Commerce of the Prairies, published in two volumes in 1844– only two years before Susanita began her diary.
The enticement: furs, and mules, and Mexican silver. From Independence, Missouri, the well-armed caravans of wagons packed with cloth and clothing, books, and other manufactured goods rumbled across the oceanic prairies of not-yet-bleeding Kansas and the southeastern corner of Colorado to the old Spanish city of Santa Fe– then in its sunset days as part of the Mexican Republic. From Santa Fe, some traders then turned south on the old Spanish Camino Real de Tierra Adentro to Albuquerque, El Paso del Norte, Ciudad Chihuahua, and yonder into deepest Mexico.
Mexican silver coin, 1844
According to historian Lamar, the trade began in 1822, when Mexico, having separated from Spain, abandoned its mercantilist trade prohibitions. One Captain William Becknell ventured down from the Plains and reported “fantastic success bartering with the New Mexican at Santa Fe.” By 1825 James Wiley Magoffin had entered the trade, bringing along his younger brothers, including Samuel, the husband of Susanita.
Susanita Magoffin believed that she was the first white woman to traverse the Santa Fe Trial– although that distinction may belong to Mary Donoho, who traversed the trail in 1835. [See the article by Kelley Pounds.] Remarkably for a diary of such careful observation, its author was a teenager: she celebrated her 19th birthday on the trail at Bent’s Fort. Even more remarkably, her journey coincided with the US-Mexican War. More about that war in a moment.
Map of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, from Santa Fe down to Mexico City. From the National Park Service website.
Route of Samuel and Susan Shelby Magoffin, 1846-1847
NO WINDMILLS, NO BARBED WIRE, NO RAILROADS, NO BUFFALO GUNS, AND SCARCELY A COWBOY TO BE SEEN — YET
Susan Shelby Magoffin’s journey with her husband’s caravan was not to Mexico City but Ciudad Chihuahua, and from there, a jog southeast via Saltillo and Monterrey to board a steamer bound for the Gulf of Mexico, thence home via New Orleans. In other words, the Magoffins’ semi-circle of a route took them to cities in the north of Mexico while circumventing the then vast no-go zone known as the Despoblado (Empty Quarter) or Apachería and Comanchería. Even on the Santa Fe Trail itself travelers could anticipate an Indian attack at any time.
Mid-way through their journey they heard that her brother-in-law, James, had been attacked by Apaches, and robbed of everything from his mules to his very clothing. “[H]ow he escaped is a miracle to us,” she wrote. “In robbing they always want the scalps, the principal part of the business.” (p.151)
Nearing what is now the US-Mexico border at the Pass, Susanita and her husband encountered James White, with whom he did some business. Two years hence, White would be murdered, his wife and child captured, the former mortally wounded and the latter never to be found (presumably also murdered). Near the Rio Grande, the attack on her brother-in-law no doubt vivid in her mind, their caravan passed the graves, marked by crosses, of fourteen Mexicans massacred a few years earlier by Apaches.
Apart from the clatter and clop of the caravan itself, the quiet of the sparsely populated the plains, the mountains, and the open desert must have been eerie. Susanita’s diary records entire days without seeing any other travelers or, perhaps, a single person.
She also saw thousands of buffalo. Herds often crossed the road within range of a gunshot (p.49):
“They are very ugly, ill-shapen things with their long shaggy hair over their heads, and the great hump on their backs, and they look so droll running.”
Her dog, Ring, chased after them, to her delight.
BENT’S FORT
Built in the 1830s for trade with Comanches, Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho for buffalo robes, Bent’s Fort was known as the “Castle on the Plains.” It was days upon days upon days of dangerous travel distant from any other permanent settlement. Susanita had been on the road for 45 days and nights– and this only about a quarter of the entire journey– before reaching Bent’s Fort in July of 1846. She found it milling with U.S. soldiers, preparing for the invasion of Mexico.
From Susanita’s diary (p.60):
“Well, the outside exactly fills my idea of an ancient castle. It is built of adobes, unburnt brick, and Mexican style so far. The walls are very high and very thick with rounding corners. There is but one entrance, this is to the East rather.
Inside is a large space some ninety or an hundred feet square, all around this and next the wall are rooms, some twenty-five in number. They have dirt floors– which are sprinkled with water several times during the day to prevent dust. Standing in the center of some of them is a large wooden post as a firmer prop to the ceiling which is made of logs. Some of these rooms are occupied by boarders as bed chambers. One is a dining room– another a kitchen– a little store, a blacksmith’s shop, a barber’s do an [sic] ice house, which receives perhaps more customers than any other.
On the South side is an inclosure for stock in dangerous times and often at night… They have a well inside, and fine water it is– especially with ice.”
Bent’s Old Fort on the Santa Fe Trail.
>>Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site, is about 3 hours’ drive southeast from Denver International Airport near Lamar, Colorado. The adobe fort is a meticulous reconstruction.
According to Pekka Hamalainen in Comanche Empire, Bent’s Old Fort was destroyed after the 1849 cholera epidemic and a new fort built 38 miles downstream on the Arkansas River. But withwith collapse of the bison population, the massive influx of prospectors in the Pike’s Peak or Colorado Gold Rush in 1859, and increasing tensions between American traders and indigenous peoples, as well with the US Army which considered Bent a squatter, Bent closed this fort in 1860, “and with that ended 150 years of organized Comanche trade in the Arkansas Valley.” (p.300)
It was only two weeks before their arrival in Santa Fe that Col. Stephen Watts Kearny had occupied that city, and it was Susanita’s brother-in-law, James Wiley Magoffin, who had rushed from Washington DC to catch up with their caravan — and Col. Kearny at Bent’sFort– and raced past them to Santa Fe in order to negotiate with Mexico’s governor of New Mexico, General Manuel Armijo– fortuitously, a cousin of his late wife– for a peaceful US occupation. (President Polk had chosen James Wiley Magoffin Magoffin’s as his agent for his Spanish skills and good relations with the Mexicans.)
In occupied Santa Fe Susanita notes meeting Col. Doniphan (whom she calls “Donathan”).
Much later, of General Zachary Taylor, whom she met in his army camp outside of Monterrey, Susanita writes (p.253):
“The general was dressed in his famed old gray sack coat, striped cotton trowsers [sic] blue calico neck-kerchief. With all of this I am most agreeably disappointed in him. Most of the wild stories I’ve heard of him I now believe false and instead of the uncouth back-woodsman I expected to have seen I find him polite, affable and altogether agreeable.”
A TAMALE AND A SOUFFLE OR, AN ASIDE ON MRS MAGOFFIN’S CONTEMPORARY, MADAME CALDERÓN DE LA BARCA
One might compare Susanita Magoffin’s diary to the letters of Fanny (Frances Erskine Inglis) Calderón de la Barca, which were published in 1843 as Life in Mexico: Both Magoffin and Calderón de la Barca were educated American women writing about Mexico in roughly the same decade (the latter arriving via Veracruz in 1839), and both had the rare gifts of natural curiosity and the ability to write generously, vividly and perceptively.
But Magoffin and Calderón de la Barca served up experiences as different from one another as say, a tamale for a picnic and a soufflé for a palace banquet. The author of Life in Mexicowas in her mid-thirties and wife of the first Spanish ambassador to Mexico– a uniquely privileged position from which to observe the highest levels of Mexican society and political intrigue, as she so shrewdly and wryly did.
Frances Erskine Inglis de Calderon de la Barca, author of Life in Mexico, 1843
Susan Shelby Magoffin, on the other hand, was fresh off her family’s estate in Kentucky and on the Santa Fe Trail as the 18 year old bride of a prosperous veteran Irish-American trader–Samuel Magoffin. A rustic adventure hers may have been; nonetheless, Susanita was a granddaughter of Kentucky’s first governor and she traveled with her own carriage, driver, personal maid, and other servants.
Of her tent house Susanita writes:
“‘Twas made in Philadelphia by a regular tent-maker of the army… It is conical shape, with an iron pole and wooden ball; we have a table in it that is fastened to the pole, and a little stand above it that serves as a dressing bureau– it holds out glass, combs &c. Our bed is as good as many houses have; sheets, blankets, counterpanes, pillows &c. We have a carpet made of sail duck, have portable stools they are called; they are two legs crossed with a pin through the center on which they turn as a pivot, the seat part is made of carpeting. To be brief the whole is a complete affair.”
A STAY IN SANTA FE
Of Santa Fe Susanita records the tree-lined plazo [sic], delicious durasnos [sic] or peaches, fresh air, and grapes “though quite small are remarkably sweet and well flavored.” At a Spanish ball given by the US Army officers for the traders, she gamely attends, though nonplussed by the custom of women smoking cigars.
“I had not been seated more than fifteen minutes before Maj. Soards [Thomas Swords] an officer, a man of quick perception, irony, sarcasm, and wit, came up to me in true Mexican style, and with a polite, “Madam will you have a cigarita,” drew from one pocket a handfull of shucks and from another large horn of tobacco, at once turning the whole thing into a burlesque.” (pp. 118-119)
Susanita was keenly aware of being a focus of polite if at time inebriated attention from the US Army officers and of intense curiosity to the locals. On her way to a dinner invitation (p. 134):
“We left here at fifteen minutes to 2 o’clock P.M. passed through the plazo [sic], of course attracting the attention of all idle bystanders– my bonnet being an equal object of wonder with the white woman that wore it.”
Camping on the trail south of Albuquerque, no doubt near one of the pueblos (p. 159):
“…how these people annoy me. This whole afternoon I have been sitting here, an object of curiosity to them– querido mio [my darling] was reading to me when they commenced flocking about the tent and we thought for him to continue they would soon leave, but it only attracted them more, and in a few minutes they were peeping under the sides of the tent, which has been raised to let in air–as thick as some flocks of sheep and goats I see. They whispered among themselves, picked at my dress– a great curiosity– fingered the bed clothes, the stools, in short everything “en la casa bonita” [in the pretty house] as they call this. Here they staid and apparently with the intention of remaining till the dark curtain of night should hide me from their view, till mi alma [her husband] got up and ordered the tent to be staked down, nd they went off to think and talk for the next muchos años [many years].”
(I’ve experienced something like this myself: In the early 1980s in China, when it had just been opened to tourists, crowds of Chinese would surround individual tourists and simply stand there, entranced, staring at us as if we were animals in a zoo.)
MORE ABOUT SUSANITA
Her youth and spirited personality tempered with the primness of a Southern belle shine through in so many passages, for example, this early one on the wagon train’s teamsters (pp. 2-3):
“It is disagreeable to hear so much swearing; the animals are unruly tis true and worries the patience of their drivers, but I scarcely think they need be so profane.”
And for example, this entry about a pueblo near Taos (p. 35):
“…it is repulsive to see children running about perfectly naked, or if they have on a chimese [sic] it is in such ribbands [sic] it had better be off at once. I am constrained to keep my veil drawn closely over my face all the time to protect my blushes.”
In Santa Fe (p.114):
“What an everlasting noise these soldiers keep up– from early dawn till late at night they are blowing their trumpets, whooping like Indians, or making some unheard of sounds, quite shocking to my delicate nerves.“
And this entry, towards the end of the journey as her caravan was nearing Mier, having passed by the charred bones and wagons of US soldiers fallen in battle (p.259):
“At this place I made a comadre of an old woman witch, who brought eggs and bread down to the encampment to sell; she stopped at our tent door, she looked up at me, and said, ‘take me with you to your country,’ ‘why,’ said I. ‘le guerro V. los Americans’ [You are at war with the Americans]? She neither answered yes or no, but gave me a sharp pinch on my cheek, I suppose to see if the flesh and colour of it were natural– and said ‘na guerro este’ [there is no war]. The pinch did not feel very comfortable, but I could but laugh at her cunning reply.”
THE FATES OF THE DIARY AND ITS AUTHOR
As far as we know, Susanita did not write with the intention to publish; she kept her diary on the Santa Fe Trail as she kept the diary of her honeymoon in New York and Philadelphia– for herself, perhaps for her children. Her diary ends abruptly in 1847, just before she was struck by yellow fever at Matamoros and lost her baby. Home in Missouri, she gave birth to two more children and then, for reasons unspecified, she died in 1855. She would have been 28 years old.
Her diary might have been another of the untold numbers forgotten in locked trunks of musty attics, and disposed of, willy nilly, a generation or three later. But in the 1920s, in which way is unrecorded, Stella M. Drumm, a librarian in the Missouri Historical Society, discovered the diary and and persuaded Susanita’s daughter to allow her to publish it. The edition with Drumm’s annotations was published by Yale University Press in 1926. My edition with the forward by Howard Lamar, is the 1982 University of Nebraska Press reprint of Yale University’s 1962 edition.
LOS MAGOFFINS & MAGOFFINSVILLE (WHAT WAS TO BECOME THE NUCLEUS OF EL PASO, TEXAS)
James Wiley Magoffin
Writes historian Howard Lamar in the foreword to the diary (p. xxi): “Like the Phoenician traders of old, the Santa Fe traders had broken the cake of custom, caused two distinct peoples and cultures to blunder into contact, and had prepared the way for political as well as economic conquest.”
Apart from Josiah Gregg, famous for his book Commerce of the Prairies, the best-known Santa Fe traders were James Wiley Magoffin and his younger brothers– among them Samuel, Susanita’s husband. James, known as “Don Santiago,” opened stores in Chihuahua and Saltillo, and made advantageous marriage to Doña María Getrudes Valdez de Beremende, daughter of a leading family in Chihuahua and a cousin of Manuel Armijo, a wealthy trader who would become New Mexico’s governor.
James had several children, including Joseph Magoffin (1837-1923), who became one of the leading businessmen and bankers of El Paso, and a civic leader, elected mayor of El Paso four times. (The house he built in 1875 is now the Magoffin Home State Historical Park.)
Back in Susanita’s day, the city we know as El Paso did not yet exist. The “El Paso del Norte” she passed through is now the neighboring Mexican city now known as Ciudad Juárez (renamed in honor of President Benito Juárez, who led the victory of the Republic over the French Imperial Army and its puppet monarchist regime under Maximilian von Habsburg).
James had several children, including Joseph Magoffin (1837-1923), who became one of the leading businessmen and bankers of El Paso, and a civic leader, elected mayor of El Paso four times. (The house he built in 1875 is now the Magoffin Home State Historical Park.)
Back in Susanita’s day, the city we know as El Paso did not yet exist. The “El Paso del Norte” she passed through is now the neighboring Mexican city now known as Ciudad Juárez (renamed in honor of President Benito Juárez, who led the victory of the Republic over the French Imperial Army and its puppet monarchist regime under Maximilian von Habsburg).
James had several children, including Joseph Magoffin (1837-1923), who became one of the leading businessmen and bankers of El Paso, and a civic leader, elected mayor of El Paso four times. (The house he built in 1875 is now the Magoffin Home State Historical Park.)
Joseph Magoffin
Back in Susanita’s day, the city we know as El Paso did not yet exist. The “El Paso del Norte” she passed through is now the neighboring Mexican city now known as Ciudad Juárez (renamed in honor of President Benito Juárez, who led the victory of the Republic over the French Imperial Army and its puppet monarchist regime under Maximilian von Habsburg).
Inside the parlor, which is to the left just inside the entrance: a piano, the portrait of his father, James Wiley Magoffin and, for mysterious reasons, a puffer fish hanging from the chandelier:
THE ALCHEMY OF SPECIFICITY: SOME EXAMPLES FROM SUSAN SHELBY MAGOFFIN’S DIARY
Just past the border into New Mexico Magoffin writes (p. 79):
“Many a one of these long hills do I walk up and down, beside rambling thought the bushes, along the banks of the little streams & c. in search of ‘what I can find.’ Some times this is a curious little pebble, a shell, a new flower, or the quill of a strange bird.”
Of buffalo, Magoffin saw thousands, and herds often crossed the road within range of a gunshot (p.49):
“They are very ugly, ill-shapen things with their long shaggy hair over their heads, and the great hump on their backs, and they look so droll running.”
Of a church altar in Saltillo (p. 242):
“The center of it is covered with a curtain and on sight contrasts strangely with the rich trimming of the altar, it was raised (by our attendant– a little boy) in a moment by means of a pully, and opened to our view an image of Christ crucified as large as life, made of a highly polished wood, and inclosed [sic] in a large glass case gilted and decked with flowers, it looks so like a human figure I shuddered as I looked upon it: his accusation* is written above on a plate of solid gold, some ten or twelve inches by six. When we had looked at it for some time, the little boy lowered the curtain with deep respect– shutting the sacred image from our view.”
*”INRI,” the acronym for Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum or “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
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P.S. In case you were wondering, dear reader, ayyy…. yes, I am still working on the Marfa Mondays Podcast #21. And in case you don’t already know what that’s all about, these podcasts, exploring Marfa, Texas and environs, are apropos of my book in-progress on the Trans-Pecos or Far West Texas. Twenty of a projected 24 podcasts have been posted to date. I invite you to listen in to the podcasts anytime >> here.
Una ventana al mundo invisible. Protocolos del IMIS Editorial Antorcha, Mexico City, 1960. [A Window to the Invisible world: Protocols of the IMIS]
I was a long ways into into the labyrinth of research and reading for my book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, when I happened into Mexico City’s Librería Madero, expressing a vague interest in Francisco I. Madero and “lo que sea de lo esotérico.” When the owner, Don Enrique Fuentes Castilla, set this book upon the counter, I confess, the cover, which looks like a Halloween cartoon, with such childish fonts, did little to excite my interest. But oh, ho ho (in the voice of the Jolly Green Giant):
A Window to the Invisible World: Protocols of the Mexican Institute for Psychic Research Mexico City, 1960
This book, Una ventana al mundo invisible, is nothing less than the official, meticulously documented records of the dozens and dozens of research-séances of the Instituto Mexicano de Investigaciones Síquicas or IMIS (Mexican Institute of Psychic Research) from April 10, 1940 to April 12, 1952, members of which included– the book lists their names and their signatures— several medical doctors and National University (UNAM) professors; an ex-Rector of the UNAM, the medical doctor and historian Dr. Fernando Ocaranza; several generals; ambassadors; bankers; artists and writers, including José Juan Tablada; a supreme court justice; an ex-Minister of Foreign relations; an ex-director of Banco de México, Carlos Novoa; Ambassador Ramón Beteta, ex Minister of Finance; and… drumroll… both Miguel Alemán and Plutarco Elías Calles. *
Close up of the subtitle. Madam Mayo disapproves of the font. (Dude, what were you smoking?)
*I hate giving wikipedia links but as of this writing, the official webpage for the Mexican presidency doesn’t go back more than four administrations.
For those a little foggy on their Mexican history, Plutarco Elías Calles served as Mexico’s President from 1924-1928, and Miguel Alemán, 1946-1952. At the time of the séances documented in Una ventana al mundo invisible, Calles was in retirement, having returned from the exile imposed on him by President Cardenás in the 1930s.
President of Mexico, “El Jefe Máximo” Plutarco Elías Calles. In retirement he joined the IMIS and was a regular participant in the research-séances documented in Una ventana al mundo invisible
When Una ventana al mundo invisible was published in 1960, Alemán was long gone from power, and Calles had passed away.
I had heard, as has anyone who goes any ways into the subject, that Alemán and Calles and other Mexican “public figures” were secret Spiritists, but here, dear readers, in the Protocolos del IMIS, are the smoking signatures.
Yes, There are Other References to Una ventana al mundo invisible
Mexican historian Enrique Krauze was one of the first to cite Una ventana al mundo invisible in his chapter on Calles in Biography of Power, as does Jurgen Burchenau in his biography, Plutarco Elías Calles and the Mexican Revolution. But, as I write these lines, Una ventana al mundo invisible remains surprisingly obscure.
The Revolution as dolor de cabeza
Of course, I googled. A Mexican writer, Héctor de Mauleón, had discovered Una ventana al mundo invisible in a different Mexico City antiquarian bookstore and written up a summary for the October 2012 issue of Nexos. (But he complains of his copy’s missing the picture of the conjured spirit, “Master Amajur.” More about that in a moment.) And also recently, Grupo Espírita de la Palma, a Canary Islands Spiritist blog, which has posted several important bibliographic notes as well as a bibliography of Spanish works on Spiritism, posted this piece about the Jesuit Father Heredia’s involvement with the IMIS–thanks to his friend, none other than Calles–and about this book.
(A research project for whomever wants it: to delve into the Mexican hemerotecas of 1960-61 for any newspaper coverage, and 1979 and 1994 for anything about the Posadas and Planeta editions. My guess is, not much, for the press was largely under the thumb of the ruling party and this sort of information about Mexican Presidents would have been, to say the least, unwelcome. But that’s just my guess.)
So, Now, Delving into the Contents…
Rafael Alvarez y Alvarez (1857 – 1955), Mexican banker and founder of the Instituto Mexicano de Investigaciones Síquicas (IMIS)
The copy Don Enrique was offering, and for a very reasonable price, still had its dust jacket, small tears in places along the bottom and the top, but intact (the image on this blog post is a scan of my copy). The rest of it was pristine; the pages had not even been cut. Don Enrique slit open a few for me in the bookstore, and once home, I continued with my trusty steak knife (read about my other steak knife adventure here.)
I dove right in and learned that the founder of the IMIS, to whose memory the book is dedicated, was Rafael Alvarez y Alvarez (1887-1955), a distinguished Mexican banker, a president of the Monte de Piedad, and a congressman and senator. (Looking at his portrait with my novelist’s eye– that gaze! the bow tie!– yes, the intrepid maverick.)
The introduction is by Gutierre Tibón, an Italian-Mexican historian and anthropologist, professor in the National University’s prestigious faculty of Philosophy and Literature, and author of numerous noted works, including Iniciación al budismo and El jade de México.
A Brief Bit of Background on 19th Century Parapsychological Research
The goal of the IMIS was to progress in the tradition of pioneer American, English, and European parapsychological researchers. From my book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, the first chapter, which provides 19th century background for Madero’s ideas about Spiritism, which he considered both a religion and a science:
“The exploits of mediums such as the Fox sisters, D.D. Home, the Eddy Brothers, and later in the nineteenth century, prim Leonora Piper (channel for the long-dead “Dr Phinuit” and the mysterious “Imperator”), and wild Eusapia Palladino (whose séances featured billowing curtains, floating mandolins and, popping out of the dark, ectoplasmic hands), spurred the studies of investigators, journalists and a small group of elite scientists. Noted German, Italian, and French scientists, such as Nobel prize-winning physiologist Charles Richet undertook the examination of these anomalous phenomena, but the British Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882, and the American Society for Psychical Research founded three years later, led the fray. Though their ranks included leading scientists such as chemist William Crookes, naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, physicist Oliver Lodge, and William James (the Harvard University professor considered the father of psychology). Yet their researches almost invariably met not with celebration, nor curiosity on the part of their fellow academics, but ridicule, often to the point of personal slander.”
Medium Luís Martínez and “Spirit Guide” Dr. Enrique del Castillo
Luis Martínez, Mexican medium
As James et al had Leonora Piper, and Richet and Lombroso, Eusapia Palladino, the IMIS employed the medium Luis Martínez, who was able to evoke a broad spectrum of phenomena, from ringing bells to apports, ectoplasm, breezes, raps and knocks, levitation, and so on.
In séances with Martínez, the IMIS heard from its spirit guide on the “other side,” one Dr. Enrique del Castillo, a Mexican doctor of the 19th century. According to Dr Tibón in his introduction to Una ventana al mundo invisible (p. 20, my translation):
“The way he looked was perfectly well known because once he “aported” his photograph, which was later made into a larger size, framed and displayed the Institute’s workroom. Another aport of Dr. del Castillo were his spectacles, identical to those in the portrait. He brought them on October 24, 1944, at 10:30 pm, in a séance that was documented in Cuernavaca, and he said these words, directing them to Rafael Alvarez y Alvarez: ‘In leaving my spectacles to you, dear son, it is with the wish that you will see clearly the future road we must take. May these spectacles take you on the path where we will always be companions.'”
Enter “Master Amajur”
Of special note was the séance on the evening of September 24, 1941, when Plutarco Elías Calles invited Carlos de Heredia, S.J., author of a book debunking Spiritism– and Father Heredia, sufficiently awed (and according to Calles, converted) affixed his signature as witness to genuine phenomena. That séance is documented in its entirety in Una ventana al mundo invisible. From Dr. Tibón’s introduction (p.21, my translation):
“That memorable night there materialized another spirit guide for the circle: an oriental doctor named Master Amajur; and he did not only show himself completely to Father Heredia, he also spilled a glass of water, saturated it with magnetic fluid, and gave it to him to drink. Then there appeared the phantom of Sister María de Jesús and, before the astonished cleric, illuminated her face in a most unusual manner. Finally, Dr Enrique del Castillo appeared, surrounded by many tiny lights. These levitated the medium, chair and all– the equivalent of raising almost 100 kilos– and silently left him in the other end of the room. This phenomenon was verified for the first time. Later, I had the fortune to attend its repetition and I literally saw the medium fly two meters into the air.”
Master Amajur started showing up from the first documented séance of May 8, 1940 (p. 89, my translation of some of the highlights):
“Master Amajur [appeared] very clearly, he touched all of us and he wrote a message which says: Go forward and I will help you. When we asked him [for a message] he left a message for Colonel Villanueva that says: It would be good for you to attend a séance. [… ]The first materialization produced an electric spark above the lightbulb that was loose in its socket[… ] There was an aport: a small bottle of perfume and its essence sprinkled above us. The music box passed over our heads. The Master gave us his cloak to touch, which seemed to all of us a piece of gauze. One again he produced a fresh breeze: it smelled of ozone.
On June 12, 1940 (p.90, my translation):
[…] the Master came in. This manifestation appeared first as a human hand covered with a veil, imitating a human figure. Then it increased in size and luminosity until it came txo a height of about 1.5 meters. Only the head and bust could only be seen. It was covered in a bluish white veil which I touched with my face. It gave me the impression of being a cotton fabric… It gave me a large glass of water to drink… It put flowers in our hands, it gave us a perfumed air, and when luminous blobs passed near my face I perceived the smell of phosphorous.”
On June 22, 1941 (my translation, p. 92):
“In front of all of us, Amajur left on the wall an inscription that said: Go forward. Upon request, he gave fluid to a magnolia and then he began to cut the petals. One by one these were deposited in the mouths of the participants.”
And so on. Séance after séance after séance–96 in all–with sparks, music, levitations, ectoplasmic this & that, perfumes, flowers, and frequent appearances not only by Master Amajur and sundry others, but also a childlike spirit, “Botitas” (Little Boots), who would tug on the participants’ pant legs.
Photographing Master Amajur
Close up of “Master Amajur” From the cover of Una ventana al mundo invisible
Skipping ahead to the séance of June 17, 1943– which Plutarco Elías Calles attended– Master Amajur has agreed to pose for a photograph. At first this doesn’t work; the photographer only captures a hand and then, suddenly, falls into convulsions. But then, after some further bizarre phenomena and friendly intervention by the spirit Dr. del Castillo, the photograph is achieved (p. 194, my translation):
“According to Mrs. Padilla [wife of Ezequiel Padilla, ex Minister of Foreign Relations, also in attendance on this occasion], and in agreement with all the other participants, at the moment of the explosion or flash from the photographer’s lamp, in the shadow could be seen the complete figure of the master, as if a statue of about 2 meters covered in a cloak, from head to foot. It was also noted that Master Amajur received a powerful shock and on asking him if he would permit another photograph to be taken, he said no.”
According to the dust jacket flap text, this is the very photograph that adorns the cover of the book. But, um, it looks more like a drawing to me. (As, by the way, many purported “spirit photographs” do. Google, dear reader, and ye shall find. Lots on eBay, by the way.)
Madame Blavatsky. The monumental figure of modern esotericism. Author of The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled, etc. Founder, Theosophical Society
For historians of the metaphysical, it is interesting to note that Master Amajur claimed to be a member of the Great White Brotherhood, a term which came into use in the West with Madame Blavatsky, co-founder of the Theosophical Society, in the 19th century. She claimed that her teachers, who often met with her on the astral plane, were the Great White Brothers or Mahatamas, the Ascended Masters Koot-hoomi (Kuthumi) and Morya. Later, her follower A. P. Sinnett expanded on this topic in a sensational book of its day, The Mahatma Letters (1923). Over the decades, other psychics claimed to receive channeled messages from various Ascended Masters, most notably “St. Germain” and Alice Bailey’s “Djwahl Khul” or “The Tibetan.” It would seem that “Master Amajur” falls into this rather blurry and ever-morphing category.*
*So are the terms Great White Brother, Mahatma, and Ascended Master one and the same? In this article in Quest, modern-day Theosophist Pablo B. Sender elucidates.
Interesting to note also that a google search brought up the tidbit that “Amajur” was the name of an astronomer of 10th century Baghdad– though I hasten to add, according to the IMIS reports in Una ventana al mundo invisible, “Master Amajur” spoke Mexican Spanish. And of further note: there are Spiritist groups that continue to channel messages from Master Amajur today.
Dear readers, conclude what you will, and whether this finds you embracing a gnosis that “resonates” with you, cackling like a hyena, or just numbly confused, surely we can agree that this is all very remarkable.
So What, Pray Tell, Does All This Have to Do with Don Francisco I. Madero?
Francisco I. Madero, President of Mexico 1911-1913; leader of the 1910 Revolution; and as “Bhima,” author of the 1911 Spiritist Manual
My book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, is about Madero as leader of the 1910 Revolution and President of Mexico, 1911-1913 and how his political career was launched as an integral part of his Spiritist beliefs. (The book includes my translation of his secret book of 1911, Spiritist Manual, which spells it all out– all the way to out-of-body travel and, yes, interplanetary reincarnation.)
Not all– Enrique Krauze, Yolia Tortolero Cervantes, Javier Garciadiego, Alejandro Rosas Robles, Manuel Guerra de Luna, among others, are important exceptions– but most historians of Mexico and its Revolution sidestep, belittle, or even ignore Madero’s Spiritist beliefs. In my book, I have quite a bit to say about why I think that is (key words: cognitive dissonance), but in sum, few have any context for Madero’s ideas which, for most educated people in the western world, fall into the category of absurd nonsense and “superstition.”
My aim in my book– and this blog post– is not to convince the reader of the truth or falsity of any religious beliefs (ha, neither do I poke tigers with sticks for the hell of it), but to provide a sense of the history and richness of the matrix of metaphysical traditions from which Madero’s beliefs emerged. And with this context, I believe, we can arrive at the conclusion that Madero was not mad, nor so naive and weak as many have painted him, but that, in fact, he was a political visionary of immense courage who found himself on a counterrevolutionary battlefield of such rage and chaos that, if it was fatal for him, would have been for almost anyone else as well.
Madero did not, like some mad alchemist, cook up his ideas by himself; they fit into what was then and is now a living tradition. Madero’s Spiritism was French, itself an off-shoot of American Spiritualism, and with roots in occult Masonry and hermeticism and mesmerism; in the early 20th century, Madero also adopted ideas from a wide range of difficult-to-categorize mystics, such as Edouard Schuré, and from the Hindu holy book so beloved of the Theosophists, Thoreau, and Mohandis Gandhi: the Baghavad-Gita.
After Madero, on the one hand, we see Spiritism melding with folkloric and shamanistic traditions, as with the mediumistic healers Niño Fidencio, Doña Pachita, and the “psychic surgeons” of Brazil and the Philippines. On the other hand, a very small and adventurous group of what was primarily members of the educated urban elite– as we see in Una ventana al mundo invisible– continued the international tradition of parapsychological research that, as we know from his Spiritist Manual and his personal library, Madero greatly admired.
Still revising the introduction for my translation of Francisco I Madero’s Spiritist Manual of 1911… and the introduction is turning into a book itself… meanwhile, here’s a brief excerpt from a new bit about the Theosophists— it’s the part where I go through Madero’s personal library. (For those of you new to the blog, Francisco I. Madero was the leader of the Mexican 1910 Revolution and President of Mexico 1911-1913. His Spiritist Manual has never before been translated.)
. . . . One book apparently did not belong to Madero:Las últimas treinta vidas de Alcione, Federico Climet Terrer’s 1912 Barcelona translation of Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater’s Lives of Alcyone, inscribed to Sara Pérez Vd. de Madero, Habana, Oct 18 1918. (Sara Pérez, Widow of Madero).
Now, as we see in Madero’s own library, Spiritist and Theosophical ideas so overlapped and intertwined, it behooves us to venture a little ways down another rabbit hole for the answer to the question, Who, pray tell, was Alcyone?
Alcyone (and Other Lives) in the 20th Century
Greek answer:A star-nymph, daughter of Atlas and lover of Poseidon. Literal answer: Jiddu Krishnamurti, a sickly Brahmin boy. The Theosophists’ answer: As revealed by the Mahatmas, the vehicle for the Lord Maitreya, the Christ, the World Teacher.
It was C.W. Leadbeater who had discovered the adolescent Krishnamurti playing on a beach in 1909, identifying him as said vehicle by clairvoyant means. Alas, no story of the Theosophical Society gets told without the taint of Leadbeater’s, shall we say, intimate involvement with other young boys. Prior to this, in 1906, after vociferous complaints from parents, Leadbeater was obliged to resign. By 1909, however, his old friend and fellow Initiate before the Mahatmas, and expert on the Bhagavad-Gita, Annie Besant, had taken the reigns of the Theosophical Society and readmitted Leadbeater. In the Theosophical Society’s headquarters in Adyar, together Besant and Leadbeater arranged Krishnamurti’s care and education, and almost immediately, Leadbeater, by psychic means known only to himself, began researching the “Akashic” or astral records, on the lives of “Alcyone,” that is, the previous incarnations of Krishnamurti, in which Annie Besant appeared under the code-name “Heracles,” Leadbeater as “Sirius,” and various other Theosophists under various other names in mind-numbing permutations reaching back to 22,662 B.C. Mary Lutyens, daughter of the Theosphical Society’s benefactress Lady Emily Lutyens, and both childhood friend and biographer of Krishnamurti, in her memoir, To Be Young, recalled of the Lives of Alcyone, “a great deal of heart-burning and snobbery.”
“Are you in the Lives?” Became the question most constantly asked by one Theosophist of another, and, if so, “How closely related have you been to Alcyone?”
At night, by means of their astral bodies, Leadbeater took Krishnamurti to study with “Master Kuthumi,” that “Great White Brother” first introduced to this world by Madame Blavatsky, and in the morning, in his octagonal office, Leadbeater obliged Krishnamurti, whose English and writing skills were what one would expect of a little boy whose first language was Telegu, to record what he could remember of those lessons. Flash forward two decades to 1929, and the world traveling, English-educated World Teacher, venerated Head of Leadbeater and Besant’s creation, the 43,000 member-strong Order of the Star in the East, took the stage at Erde Castle in Holland before 3,000 members and, with a solemn salaam, dissolved that order. Krishnamurti did not deny being whatever they conceived him to be; he said:
“I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect… I do not care if you believe I am the World Teacher or not… I do not want you to follow me… You have been accustomed to being told how far you have advanced, what is your spiritual status. How childish! Who but yourself can tell you if you are incorruptible?… You can form other organizations and expect someone else. With that I am not concerned, nor with creating new cages, new decorations for those cages. My only concern is to set men absolutely, unconditionally, free.”
That, as one might guess, signaled the decline (though not the disappearance) of the Theosophical Society, as well as Annie Besant’s health. But fantastically, Krishnamurti’s career, unmoored from official disciples, continued to flourish. Like Teresa Urrea and the Niño Fidencio, Krishnamurti had a serene and childlike quality and an ability to draw and mesmerize crowds, but unlike them, Krishnmurti exuded an urbane polish, and he wrote some 30 books that articulated a philosophy of freedom and that appealed to such diverse figures as physicist David Bohm, writer Aldous Huxley, Indira Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama.
On YouTube, I found an old film of the white-haired Krishnamurti holding forth in a tent in Ojai, California, and what struck me was not anything he said—he sounded halting and vapid to my ears— but the faces of the hundreds of people sitting on the lawn before him, eyes shining, jaws slack. I could not help but think of Niño Fidencio— and the strange power I had seen in Francisco Madero in the films and photographs of his political rallies.
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