Sparkling sky and only a jeans jacket on the night before Halloween, University of Arizona students everywhere, in witches’ hats and zombie makeup: that’s how it was in Tucson when, as part of the American Literary Translators Conference “Café Latino” bilingual reading fiesta at Café Passé in Tucson, I read my translation, together with the Spanish original, of Mexican poet Agustín Cadena’s poem “Café San Martín.” That translation appears in poet Sarah Cortez’s recent anthology, Goodbye Mexico (Texas Tech Press).
Alas, Cadena could not be in Tucson because he lives in Hungary, where he teaches Latin American Literary in Debrecen. Follow his blog, El vino y la hiel.
Cadena’s name and many works — he is incredibly prolific and writes in almost every genre–were mentioned many times over the course of this year’s ALTA conference. My dear amiga Patricia Dubrava, who also translates Cadena’s poems and short fiction, shared a panel with me on the following day.
And a very special thank you to Alexis Levitin, my favorite Portuguese translator (and, by the way, editor of Brazil: A Traveler’s Literary Companion), who organized and MC’ed the reading.
In the audience: several very distinguished literary translators (lotus petals upon y’all). The Q & A was extra crunchy, and in true ALTA fashion, in the sweetest way.
(Seriously, literary translators, and especially the crowd that regularly attends ALTA conferences, are angelically generous and encouraging. If any of you reading this have ever thought of trying literary translation and/or attending a literary translator’s conference, my recommendation is, YES!)
LAS TRES AMIGAS: Yours Truly, Clare Sullivan, and Patricia Dubrava.
Jeffrey C. Barnett, C.M. Mayo, Patricia Dubrava
Transcript of C.M. Mayo’s Remarks for the panel on
Translating Contemporary Latin American Poets and Writers: Embracing, Resisting, Escaping the Magnetic Pull of the Capital
ALTA, Tucson, Arizona, October 31, 2015
I started translating in Mexico City in the early 1990s. Mexico City is Mexico’s capital, but it’s not analogous to Washington DC or, say, Ottowa, Canada. The megalopolis, “the endless city,” as Carlos Monsivaís calls Mexico City, is like Washington DC, New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles, all piled into one. In other words, its the political capital, financial capital, publishing capital, cultural capital, and television and movie capital. Oh, and business capital, too. Yes, there are other important cities in Mexico, and they have become more important in many ways, and some of them have some excellent writers and poets. But Mexico City is MEXICO CITY.
Back in the early 1990s, the ruling party, the PRI or Partido Revolucionario Institucional or Institutional Revolutionary Party was in power, about to enter the last decade of its more than 70— yes, 70—years in power. How did it last so long? There are many answers to that question but the main one relevant for our topic at hand is that the PRI attempted to bring everyone, whether farmers, campesinos, industrialists or intellectuals, and that would include poets and writers, under its own big tent. It had its ways. Stick and carrot— or bone, as Mexicans like to say.
You may be aware that after two consecutive presidential administrations under the PAN or the Partido Acción Nacional, over the past decade, Mexico’s Presidency has since returned to the PRI. But it’s not exactly a return to the past. Not exactly.
I’m not going to get all political on you, I simply want to underline the fact that back in early 1990s, the Mexican literary establishment, concentrated in Mexico City, was heavily influenced by and subsidized by the PRI government. Just to give you a notion of this: If you were to go into a library and look at some back issues of the leading Mexican literary and intellectual magazine of the time— of course that would be Octavio’s Paz’s Vuelta— you would see a large number of advertisements from government-owned entities and Televisa, the party-allied television conglomerate. There were literary gatekeepers, as there are everywhere in this world, but in Mexico City at that time, they were very few and ginormously powerful. Octavio Paz was king.
Though Octavio Paz met his maker some years ago, in some ways things remain the same. Mexico City is where it’s at. The government still plays an important, although lesser role. Letras Libres, successor to Vuelta, remains a leading magazine of influence, and in fact it does publish some of the best writing you’ll find anywhere.
But since the early 1990s there have been political and economic sea-changes in Mexico. Power is more dispersed. Other political parties have become far more powerful. On the right and the left they rival the PRI and on many an occasion, beat the PRI at the ballot box.
And even more than the political and economic changes, the technological changes have been sea-changes. I’m talking about the rise of digital media, from blogging to YouTube, podcasting, Tweeting, FaceBooking, and publishing— and by the way, amazon is now in Mexico with www.amazon.com.mx.
To find a Mexican writer to translate, you no longer have to travel to Mexico City and get chummy with the powers that be who can make recommendations and, perhaps, invite the anointed to tea. Now, say, from Boston or Hong Kong or Cleveland, you can follow any given Mexican writer’s blog, and comment thereupon. Or, say, send her a Tweet!
I would love to tell you the story of how, in the late 1990s, I started my bilingual magazine, Tameme, which published many Mexican writers, and my experiences with putting together the anthology, Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion— no easy task, since the idea of the TLC series is to provide writing about the whole country— and that would include writing from and about Baja California, Yucatan, Chiapas, Chihuahua…
At present I am translating short stories by four Mexican writers: Ignacio Solares, a novelist born in Ciudad Juárez, long based in Mexico City; Agustín Cadena, who was born in the state of Hidalgo and is living in Hungary; Araceli Ardón, who was born in San Miguel de Allende and lives in Querétaro; and yet another, Rose Mary Salum, who is from Mexico City and is now based in Houston, Texas.
But I don’t want to take time from my fellow panelists and what I hope will be a rich question and answer session. The main thing I want to emphasize is that, as literary translators, we can play a powerful role in influencing who is and who is not read in English.
Whom to translate? It’s good to ask for advice from the powers that be of the literary establishment in, say, Mexico or Cuba or Chile, and maybe even choose to translate one of them. They might be blast-your-wig-to-the-asteroid-belt fabulous! But we also have to recognize that there are power structures in literary communities, some of them entangled with political structures, and we need to acknowledge and examine, in our own minds, and our own hearts, what part we play in that or choose not to play. And why.
Remote as they are, the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of the US-Mexico border have a strangely magnetic pull. That may sound like a wild assertion, but the evidence comprises over 200 shamanistic rock art sites, many of them thousands of years old, and the fact that dozens of rock art enthusiasts, including myself, find themselves returning again and again.
It was on a meltingly hot August day in 2014 that I made my first foray into the canyonlands for the Rock Art Foundation’s visit to Meyers Spring. A speck of an oasis tucked into the vast desert just west of the Pecos, Meyers Spring’s limestone overhang is vibrant with petrographs, both ancient, but very faded, and of Plains Indians works including a brave on a galloping horse, an eagle, a sun, and what appears to be a missionary and his church.
I took home the realization that with Meyers Spring I had taken one nibble of the richest of banquets. In addition the rock art of the Plains Indians—Apaches and Comanches— of historic times, the Lower Pecos Canyonlands are filled with prehistoric art, principally Pecos River, Red Linear, and Red Monochrome. Of the three, Pecos River is comparable to the best known Paleolithic rock in the world, the caves of Lascaux in France.
I would have to return to the canyonlands— alas for my book’s time and travel budget! Not that the Rock Art Foundation charges more than a nominal sum for its tours. The individual tour to Meyers Spring, which lasted four hours, cost a mere 30 dollars. Everyone involved, including the guides, works for the foundation for free.
By December of 2014 I was back for another Rock Art Foundation tour, this one down into Eagle Nest Canyon in Langtry. Apart from rock shelters with their ancient and badly faded petrographs, cooking debris, tools, and even a mummy of a woman who—scientists have determined— died of chagas, Eagle Nest Canyon is the site of Bonfire Shelter, the earliest and the second biggest bison jump, after Canada’s Head Bashed-In, in North America. Some 10,000 years ago hunters drove hundreds of prehistoric bison—larger than today’s bison—over the cliff. And in 800 BC, hunters drove a herd of modern bison over the same cliff, so many animals that the decaying mass of unbutchered and partially butchered carcasses spontaneously combusted. In deeper layers dated to 14,000 years, archaeologists have found bones of camel, horse, and mammoth, among other megafauna of the Pleistocene.
DESCENT INTO EAGLE NEST CANYON, DECEMBER 2014
Then in the spring of this year I visited the Lewis Canyon site on the shore of the Pecos, with its mesmerizing petroglyphs of bear claws, atlatls, and stars, and, behind a morass of boulders, an agate mirror of a tinaja encircled by petrographs.
LEWIS CANYON PETROGLYPHS, MAY 2015
LEWIS CANYON TINAJA SITE WITH PETROGRAPHS, BY THE PECOS RIVER, MAY 2015
Not all but most of the Lower Pecos Canyonland rock art sites— and this includes Meyers Spring, Eagle Nest Canyon and Lewis Canyon— are on private property. Furthermore, visits to Meyers Spring, Lewis Canyon, and many other sites require a high clearance vehicle for a tire-whumping, paint-scraping, bone-jarring drive in. So I was beginning to appreciate the magnitude of the privilege it is to visit these sites. At Lewis Canyon, as I stood on the limestone shore of the sparkling Pecos in utter silence but for the crunch of the boots of my fellow tour members, I learned that less than 50 people a year venture to float down its length.
This October I once again traveled to the Lower Pecos, this time for the Rock Art Foundation’s annual three day Rock Art Rendezvous. Offered this year were the three sites I had already visited, plus a delectable menu that included White Shaman, Fate Bell, and—not for those prone to vertigo— Curly Tail Panther.
WHITE SHAMAN, OCTOBER 2015
Just off Highway 90 near its Pecos River crossing, the White Shaman Preserve serves as the headquarters for Rock Art Rendezvous. After a winding drive on dirt road, I parked near the shade structure. From there, the White Shaman rock art site was a brief but rugged hike down one side of cactus-studded canyon, then up the other. I was glad to have brought a hiking pole and leather gloves. No knee surgery on the horizon, either. When I arrived at White Shaman, named after the central luminous figure, the sun was low in the sky, bathing the shelter’s wall and its reddish drawings in gold and turning the Pecos, far below, where an occasional truck droned by, deep silver.
The next morning, at the Rock Art Foundation’s tour of the Shumla Archaeological and Research Center in nearby Comstock, I heard Dr. Carolyn Boyd’s stunning talk about her book, The White Shaman Mural: An Enduring Creation Narrative in the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos, which is forthcoming in 2016 from University of Texas Press. Dr. Boyd, whose work is based on 25 years of archaeological research in the Lower Pecos and a meticulous study of Mexican anthropology, argues that White Shaman, which is many thousands of years old, may represent the oldest known creation story in North America.
FATE BELL, OCTOBER 2015
From the White Shaman Preserve, Fate Bell is a few minutes down highway 90 in Seminole Canyon State Park. More than any other site, this shelter in the cake-like layers of the limestone walls of a canyon, reminded me of the cave art I had seen in Baja California’s Sierra de San Francisco. Inhabited on and off for some 9,000 years, Fate Bell is the largest site in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands. It has various styles of petrograph, including a spectacular group of anthropomorphs with what appear to be antlers and wings.
CURLY TAIL PANTHER, OCTOBER 2015
Curly Tail Panther is a scoop of a cave about the size of a walk-in closet, but as if for Superman to whoosh in, set dizzyingly high on a cliff-side overlooking the Devils River. The back wall has an array of petrographs: red mountain lion, anthropomorphic figures, and geometric designs. The only access to Curly Tail Panther is by way of a narrow ledge. Drop your hiking pole or your sunglasses from here, and you won’t see them again. You might lose a character, too—in the opening of Mary Black’s novel, Peyote Fire, a shaman stumbles to his death from this very ledge. The Rock Art Foundation’s website made it clear, Curly Tail Panther is not for anyone who has a fear of heights. But who doesn’t? My strategy was to take a deep breath and, like the running shoes ad says, Just do it.
C.M. Mayo and Wendy Burk at the “Translating the ther Side” panel American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) conference, Tucson, 2015. Mark Weiss, chair of the panel, is in the back on the right.
American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) Conference 38, Tucson, October 29, 2015 Panel: “Translating the Other Side” Moderator, Mark Weiss Panelists: Wendy Burk, Catherine Hammond, C.M. Mayo
Edited Transcript of Talk by C.M. Mayo
Muchísimas gracias, Mark Weiss, and thank you also to my fellow panelists, it is an honor to sit on this dias with you. Thank you all for coming. It is especially apt to be talking about translating Mexican writing here, a jog from the Mexican border, in Tucson—or Tuk-son as the Mexicans pronounce it.
I grew up in Northern California and was educated in various places but mainly the University of Chicago. As far as Mexico went, until I was in my mid-twenties, I had absorbed, to use historian John Tutino’s term, the “enduring presumptions.” Translation: I had zero interest in Mexico.
You know that old saying, if you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans?
What brought me to translating Mexican poetry and literary prose was that I married a Mexican—my fellow graduate student at University of Chicago— and we moved to his hometown, Mexico City, in 1986. I am happy to say that we are about to celebrate our 30th anniversary.
For me, as a writer, and as a translator, these decades, mainly spent in Mexico City, have been a grand adventure in learning and exploring the cultures, histories, and geography of Mexico and of course, learning Spanish. I cannot claim that I speak and write Spanish like a native—I started learning Spanish when I was 24 years old. But after three decades in Mexico… well, after three decades of living in any country, if you haven’t learned the language, at least to level of conversation and daily business… I was about to say something unkind.
My husband has his own and very distinguished career as an economist but I call him my Translation Assistant. Although I would say I am fluent in Mexican Spanish, as all of you well know, literary translation can be fluky-tricky. Many a time he has rescued me from what would have been toe-curling embarrassment. May we all have our translation assistants.
Includes my translations of work by T. López Mills
It was back in the early 1990s, when I started writing my own poetry and short fiction, that I had two epiphanies. First epiphany: I could do this! I mean, I knew some Spanish and at the same time, I could write literary fiction and poetry myself. I was beginning to get my own stories and poems published in well-regarded literary journals, such as the Paris Review, The Quarterly, Southwest Review. That gave me a shot of confidence. To this day, I really believe that the best literary translators are not necessarily the most fluent, the most perfectly bilingual, but rather, those who can render the work into the same literary level in the target language.
And the second epiphany was that appallingly little Mexican work was being translated into English.There were some books, mainly from university presses, the occasional anthology, and here and there, a poem in a literary magazine, but I was in Mexico City, in Coyoacán, I could see what was going on, the rich, flourishing literary culture. It was obvious to me that this was not registering in the literary communities north of the border, not the way it should.
Includes my translation of a story by Alvaro Enrigue
For me, getting to know Mexican poets and writers was not difficult. Back in those days of yore, before the Internet … well, one important poet, Manuel Ulacia, was my neighbor. We would often see each other out walking our dogs.
But let me back up for a broader perspective.
Mexico shares a 2,000 mile border with the United States, spanning the southern borders of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and the greater part of Texas. And Mexico has some of the richest literary traditions in the world.
It starts with the codexes of the Maya and the Aztecs, and others—and as a quick side note, there is a book forthcoming in 2016 from University of Texas Press by archaeologist Dr. Carolyn Boyd, in which she argues that the White Shaman rock site near the U.S.-Mexico border in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, which is thousands of years old, is actually a codex— and basing some of her arguments on the work of Mexican anthropologists, Dr. Boyd has decoded it. It tells the story of creation. And so we can think about “White Shaman” as the first known book in North America. North America, of course, includes Mexico. And the Texan side of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands was once part of Mexico.
And speaking of books, you may recall the hullabaloo about the 14.2 million dollar sale of a copy of the first English language book printed in the New World, The Whole Booke of Psalmes of 1640. Well, that was more than one hundred years after the first Spanish language book was printed in Mexico City. That was Breve y más compendiosa doctrina Christiana en lengua Mexicana y Castellana, printed in 1539. And there may have been an even earlier book printed in 1537, Escala Espiritual par llegar al cielo, but no known copies survive.
My anthology of 24 Mexican writers on Mexico. Read more about this book, including excerpts, here.
In the prologue to my anthology of 24 Mexican writers, Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, I write, “Mexican literature—a vast banquet—is one of the greatest achievements if the Americas. And yet we who read in English have gone hungry, for so astonishingly little of it has been published.”
Mexico: A Literary Traveler’s Companion was published in 2006 and although I know many of you and other members of ALTA, and other translators, have since then published many Mexican works in translation, and anthologies, this scarcity, this appalling scarcity of translations of works from our neighboring country, continues.
I could go on with names, book titles, and numbers from the publishing industry, but it would be too sad. To give you the simplest and most concrete sense of how sad this situation is, when the sales team asked for blurbs for Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, I really had a problem. Of course there are many anthologies of English language writing about Mexico. But Mexicans writing about Mexico? I would have to ask a Mexican for a blurb. But what Mexican?
Octavio Paz? Yes, he won the Nobel Prize. But he was dead.
Carlos Fuentes? He was in the anthology himself, so asking him for a blurb would have been awkward. Anyway, he wasn’t answering his email.
Sales reps and bookstore buyers, for the most part, did not recognize the name of any Mexican writer.
Salma Hayek? I suggested.
The sales rep answered, “WOW! That would be AWESOME!”
(No offense intended to Ms Hayek, an accomplished Mexican actress and producer. But methinks a blurb from her, had I been able to wrangle one, would have carried about as much clout as that of, say– to scramble it into Texanese, porquois pas– a rodeo barrel racing champion opining on the national polo team.)
We ended up using a blurb that Isabelle Allende had provided for the Traveler’s Literary Companion series itself—a series from Whereabouts Press that includes many countries, among them, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, and as far afield as Australia and Viet Nam.
And I managed to wrangle a blurb from Isabelle Allende’s translator, a translator who is a queen among us—I know many of you will recognize her name—Margaret Sayers Peden. She wrote:
“This delicious volume has lovingly gathered a banquet of pieces that reveal Mexico in all its infinite variety, its spendid geography, its luminous peoples. What a treat!”
Apart from the anthology and various
contributions to other anthologies and literary magazines, for a few years I
founded and edited Tameme, a bilingual
literary journal of new writing from Canada, the US and Mexico. That was a
project I did with my dad, Roger Mansell,
who had 25 years of experience in the graphic arts and printing business in San
Francisco. So if I do say so myself, the three issues of Tameme and two
chapbooks were quite beautiful and they should be collector’s items.
Unfortunately my dad passed away, and with my own books to write, Tameme
was more than I could handle.
Apart from Tameme, the largest translation
project I have undertaken to date is a strange one, and I bring it up because I
know that for many of you the question of rights is a concern. A book that is
out of copyright, you can grab that, you can translate that. Go to it!
Francisco Madero was the leader of Mexico’s 1910
Revolution and President of Mexico from 1911 to 1913, when he was overthrown in
a coup d’etat and murdered. Madero was a Spiritist medium, that is, he believed
he could communicate with the dead—and so can you! His secret book, Spiritist
Manual, written in 1910—the year he launched the Revolution—and published
under a pseudonym when was president elect in 1911, is… all about that. And I
translated it because nobody else had.
As I said in my panel talk last year,
I cannot deny other motives and the millions of other participants in that Revolution of 1910. But its spark, and the way it played out, and, I believe, Madero’s murder, become a radically different story once we take into account his Spiritism.
My aim with my book and my translation of Madero’s book is to deepen our understanding of Madero, both as an individual and as a political figure; and at the same time, deepen our understanding of the rich esoteric matrix from which his ideas sprang, in other words, not to promote his ideas nor disparage them, but explain them and give them context.
It is also then my aim to deepen our understanding of the 1910 Revolution and therefore of Mexico itself, and because the histories are intertwined, therefore also deepen our understanding of North America, Latin America, the Pacific Rim, and more— for as long as a book exists, should someone happen to read it, it can catalyze change in understanding (and other changes) that ripple out, endlessly.
Such is the wonder, the magical embryonic power of a book, any book, whether original or in translation: that, even as it rests on a dusty shelf for a hundred years, or for that matter, an unvisited digital “shelf,” if it can be found, if it can be read, it holds such potential.
To conclude: I mainly translate contemporary Mexican
short fiction and poetry. It is a labor of love and, as an English language
writer who lives in Mexico City, a way for me to engage with Mexico and with my
Mexican colleagues. And finally, translating is a way to bring what I can,
whether it be a monster on a platter or algún taquito sabroso, to the
literary banquet.
To quote myself again from the prologue of Mexico:
A Traveler’s Literary Companion, “Throughout Mexico there are so very many
writers whose work has yet to be translated, or, though translated, deserves a
far wider readership in English.”
Any and all of you who have an interest in
translating Mexican literature— know that you have my heartfelt good wishes.
The now deactivated Facebook page (If you find another C.M. Mayo on FB that would not be me)
Plus, FB has been an unexpected
pleasure: I could keep up with family, both close and distant, and friends,
new, old and previously long-lost. I smiled wide to see photos of a relative’s
80th, jokes and memes posted by cousins and neighbors, videos of the antics of
one of my old book editor’s puppies, and so on.
In that torrent of FB feed arrived many treasures
too, such as artist Hope Swann’s daily door picture; gorgeous paintings by
other artist friends including Mariló Carral, Kelley Vandiver and Edgar
Soberon; a video— I forget who “shared it”— of
a 90 year old yoga teacher; links to read about fascinating books; political
news in Mexico and abroad which I might have missed otherwise; news of a dear
friend’s book prize (yay, Leslie Pietrzyk!!);
and oodles more.
I am grateful to FB for providing this platform,
and grateful to my FB friends (and friends of friends) who have helped make it
such a richly interesting experience. (And muchas gracias, Mikel Miller,
for recently forming the Mexico writers group on FB and so energetically
championing my writing there—and including a chapter from my book
on Baja California in your Kindle anthology, Mexico: Sunlight
& Shadows.)
In sum, as many of you well know, there are
excellent reasons to participate on FB. Nonetheless, after months of dithering,
I deactivated my
account.
Here’s why:
1. I
find it increasingly unsettling that a corporation not only mediates my
interactions with my friends and family but also shapes them by its algorithms,
then harvests and sells the data on those interactions to third
parties. (Translation: it’s looking a mite too 1984.)
2. Not
all, certainly, but much of the FB feed is trivia—(I love you,
N., but I don’t need to see the sandwich you ate yesterday in Barcelona)— or upsetting (I agree with you, J.,
that animal abusers should be punished, but I’d rather not have been slammed
with the photos). Some of the FB feed is assuredly not trivia— the
passing of a beloved grandfather, the birth of a baby, a child’s graduation,
the adventure of a lifetime— but because of FB’s algorithms, posts are
broadcast to “friends” its bots deem relevant, and it can become so.
I mean, if S. didn’t invite me to her birthday party, why did she imagine I
would want to see a photo of her blowing out her birthday candles?
(I’ll admit, maybe I never “got” FB in
this regard; I rarely posted anything from my personal life. In the real,
meatspace world, social networks are intricately nuanced; FB, for all its
“groups” and feed settings and ever-morphing privacy options, turns
it into a one-size-fits-all spew. Adding nuance: I guess that’s what the
algorithm engineers will be working on from the dawn of FB ’til Kingdom Come.)
3. FB
is annoyingly addictive, albeit for some people more than others. For me,
staying off FB like trying to diet with an open box of chocolates at arm’s
reach.
UPDATE: And it’s addictive by design, of course. It’s all about hooking your brain into the machine zone.
4. If
I’m going to get this out the door before I’m 94, I need more time and mental
energy to finish writing my book about
Far West Texas.
5. As far as book promotion goes, FB isn’t the “wow” it first seemed (especially after, for reasons known only to itself, FB changed its algorithms). Furthermore, although many of my readers are on FB, many are not, or don’t follow me there. Yes, one can create author and book “fan pages,” but that is a form of “sharecropping”— after all, FB owns the digital platform— with all the attendant disadvantages for the sharecropper. (My current philosophy: “Likes” on FB are given so promiscuously, they don’t mean much, if anything. From my own platform, that is, my website, true fans of my work, legion or scant may they be, are always welcome to subscribe to my newsletter.) Moreover! As noted above, FB sucks up time and energy that I could apply elsewhere to better effect. (In case you were wondering, for book promotion, apart from writing the next book, that would include blogging, sending out that newsletter, freelancing for magazines, podcasting, an occasional postcard campaign, and… drumroll… answering ye olde email.)
UPDATE: Speaking of “sharecropping, yes indeed, this blog is sharecropping on Google’s platform. It has been on my to do list for an age to move the whole enchilada over to WordPress. Stay tuned.
UPDATE, January 2019: Dear writerly reader, you are now reading this blog on self-hosted WordPress. Viva!
6. Though
I will miss the casual interactions of “liking” and
“sharing” on FB, I prefer to meet friends, family and colleagues in
person, that is, on our terms, not FB’s, and also to talk on the phone
or by Skype, and… more drums… answer my email.
Speaking of email: friends,
family, students, readers: I am sincerely happy to hear from you! As always,
you can write to me at cmmayo (at)
cmmayo (dot) com. And now that I’m free of Facebook, I shall be able
to answer you in a more thoughtful and timely manner.
P.S. To deactivate a FB account, log in, then go
to “settings,” then “security,” then click on
“deactivate your account.” Oh, but FB doesn’t let you go that easily!
The whole ooey-gooey-extra-velcroey process made me shake my head and laugh out
loud several times. By the way, this is not the same action as deleting
the account. I can imagine that I might need to log on again in order to
contact someone whom I couldn’t contact otherwise, or possibly, for some other
very good reason. But to participate as I did before? Definitely not.
FURTHER UPDATE:
November 2017. Still massively relieved to have deactivated FB. In case
you were wondering. But still have not yet moved this blog over to WordPress…
It will happen.
Francisco I. Madero, leader of the 1910 Revolution, President of Mexico (1911-1913) and author of Manual espírita (Spiritist Manual), 1911
The astonishing thing about Francisco I. Madero’sManual espírita of 1911 is that it lays out his philosophy so passionately and precisely, and yet, with counted exceptions (among them, Mexican historians Tortolero, Guerra de Luna, and Rosas), apart from cursory mentions, historians have told us nearly nothing about this text, its origins, broader esoteric cultural context, and profound implications for understanding Madero’s actions as leader of the 1910 Revolution and as President of Mexico. My translation of Madero’s Manual espírita— the first into English and, as far as I have been able to ascertain, into any language— is included in my book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual.
>>Click here to view a one minute-long Mexican government video which gives a very basic idea of the official version of Madero’s importance in Mexico.<<
Madero was a medium in the Spiritist tradition of the late 19th and early 20th centuries of France and Mexico. While Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution is a scholarly contribution, I write about Madero and his Spiritist Manual not as an academic historian, but as his translator and as a creative writer who has lived in and written about Mexico for many years. I presumed that most of my readers would encounter Madero’s ideas about communicating with the dead extremely peculiar, even disturbing. For the most part this has been the case. To give one of several (to me, amusing) examples, one prominent Mexico expert who shall remain unnamed felt moved to inform me that, though he very much enjoyed my book, he would not be reading Spiritist Manual.
That said, I am grateful to have been invited to speak about it at the Centro de Estudios de la Historia de México CARSO, Mexico City’s National Palace, Rice University, Stanford University, UCSD Center for US-Mexican Studies, and elsewhere, and to date, historians of Mexico and other scholars in these audiences have been both thoughtful and generous in their comments.
To my surprise, however, the Internet has brought my and Madero’s books another, very different audience, one that encounters the Spiritist Manual as, shall we say, a vintage text out of a well-known and warmly embraced tradition.
Rev. Stephen A. Hermann www.stevehermannmedium.com
In his review for the National Spiritualist, Rev. Stephen A. Hermann writes, “Anyone interested in the history of international Spiritualism as well as as mediumnistic unfoldment will find this manual invaluable.”
With the aim of providing further historical and philosophical context for Francisco I. Madero and his Spiritist Manual, I asked Rev. Hermann if, from the perspective of a practicing medium and teacher of mediumship— and author of the just-published Mediumship Mastery: The Mechanics of Receiving Spirit Communications— he would be so kind as to answer some of my questions about Madero as a medium and about his philosophy.
ON MADERO AS MEDIUM
C.M. MAYO: In your book, Mediumship Mastery, you distinguish between two broad types of mediumship, mental and physical. “Automatic writing” you categorize as both. Francisco I. Madero was a writing medium, that is, a medium who channeled messages from the spirit world through his hand and pen onto paper. Can you explain this? And, is this type of mediumship still common today?
STEPHEN A. HERMANN: Madero practiced automatic writing in which spirit personalities would control the movements of his arm and hand to write messages. It is common for many people, not knowing the difference, to confuse automatic writing with the phase of mediumship known as inspirational writing. With inspirational writing the medium’s conscious and unconscious mind are very much involved with the process. Genuine automatic writing occurs typically quite rapidly with the medium unable to control the movements taking place. The conscious mind of the medium is not involved in the process and the medium could even be engaged in a conversation with others while the writing is produced.
In the period that Madero developed his mediumship the practice of automatic writing, the use of planchette and table for spirit communication was quite common for many mediums. Madero was heavily influenced by the writings of the French Spiritualist Kardec, whose classic Medium’s Book was widely used by students of spirit communication as a standard for mediumistic unfoldment.
As a phase of mediumship automatic writing is not commonly practiced the way it would have been a century ago. In most countries around the world most mediums practice mental phases of mediumship such as clairvoyance, clairaudience and clairsentience (psychic seeing, hearing and sensing). There are also many mediums who practice controlled speaking or trance channeling.
C.M. MAYO: How how would you, as a medium, evaluate Madero’s mediumnistic notebooks? (These are preserved in his archive in Mexico’s Ministry of Finance; in my book, I quoted from some of them, communications in Madero’s handwriting signed by “Raúl,” “José” and “B.J.”).
STEPHEN A. HERMANN: I was impressed by Madero’s dedication to God, the spirit world and his mission to help Mexico. He certainly appears to have lived by higher spiritual principles. The communications that he received I feel were genuine and indicate the great effort of teachers in the spirit world to use him as a positive influence in the material world. I would love to see all his notebooks published and your book distributed even more as Madero’s work is an excellent example of a politician motivated selflessly out of love and duty.
[C.M. MAYO: The mediumnistic notebooks have been transcribed and published in volume VI. of Obras completas de Francisco Ignacio Madero, edited by Alejandro Rosas Robles, Editorial Clío, Mexico, 2000. For more about the work of Alejandro Rosas Robles and other Mexican historians on Madero and esoteric philosophy, see my post Lifting the (Very Heavy) Curtain on the Leader of Mexico’s 1910 Revolution].
C.M. MAYO: It seems that by the time Madero became president he was no longer channeling written messages but instead relied on “inspiration” or telepathic communication from spirits. My understanding is that Madero considered this an advance in his mediumnistic abilities. Would you agree?
STEPHEN A. HERMANN: A student of mediumship is always progressing and as such the manner that his or her mediumship functions will evolve accordingly. I assume that Madero would have put considerable effort into growing as an individual as well as enhancing his own mediumistic skills. It is not that one phase of mediumship is better than another. All spiritual gifts are ways for the spirit personalities to bring love and healing to people in the material world. It is very common for mediums to develop new phases of mediumship as they gain experience and are ready. Madero was very progressive in all aspects of his life.
C.M. MAYO: One of the questions I invariably hear in any presentation or conference about Madero and his Spiritism is that, if he really were hearing from spirits, why did they not warn him about the coup d’etat of 1913, so that he could save himself? (Perhaps because as President coping with the challenges of governing, he no longer had the peace of mind to listen?) In Mediumship Mastery (p. 154-155) you write, “While warnings might be given in order to prevent a mishap, telling the recipient negative information such as he or she is going to die next week or be involved in a serious accident, generally would not come through with controlled regulated mediumship.” Can you explain and/or elaborate?
STEPHEN A. HERMANN: Madero would have been under great stress so it is very possible that his own mind would not have been receptive to warnings given by his guardians in the spirit world. On the other hand, we do not know the full picture in terms of his karma or lessons in this lifetime. Madero performed great works when he was physically present. I am sure that these great works would have continued in other realms after his physical death.
C.M. MAYO: In the introduction to your book, Mediumship Mastery, you mention that you trained as a hypnotherapist. From his personal library we know that Madero was intensely interested in hypnotism. Would this knowledge have enhanced his abilities as a medium and as a political leader? And if so, how?
STEPHEN A. HERMANN: Kardec and many of the pioneers of the Spiritualist movement studied Mesmerism and altered-states-of-consciousness. The awareness of inducing trance states is crucial for the development of mediumistic ability. For example, with clairvoyance the more the medium is able to place his or her mind into a receptive state and get the analytical mind out of the way, the easier it will be to receive as well as accurately interpret spirit messages given in this manner. Mediumship mastery requires considerable discipline on the part of the medium. Hypnosis is an effective tool for helping student mediums train their minds and open up as instruments for the spirit personalities to work through.
ON SPIRITISM, SPIRITUALISM, THE PHILIPPINES, AND PSYCHIC SURGERY
C.M. MAYO: Spiritism developed in France from the root of Anglo-American Spiritualism. As a medium who has practiced and taught in various countries from the U.S. to New Zealand and including in the Philippines, do you see important differences in these traditions, Spiritualism and Spiritism, today?
STEPHEN A. HERMANN: Spiritism and Spiritualism are branches of the same tree. A Spiritist is a Spiritualist who follows primarily the doctrine found within Kardec’s writings. Anglo-American Spiritualists do not limit themselves to Kardec’s writings and as a whole have not officially embraced the concept of reincarnation. The Spiritist approach generally places more emphasis on higher philosophy and less on phenomena or providing evidence of survival as the Spiritualist approach emphasizes. I think as a whole the Spiritist approach tends to be more progressive than what is found in many Spiritualist churches. However, Spiritists can be a bit dogmatic in adhering to Kardec’s writings.
C.M. MAYO: In your chapter “Spiritiual Healing” you discuss psychic surgery in the Philippines. Though Madero does not discuss psychic surgery in the Spiritist Manual, in my book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, I mention the Filipino and Brazilian psychic surgeons as well as some Mexicans including Niño Fidencio and Doña Pachita because they are well-known in Mexico and I felt they represented traditions that could claim at least some tangly bit of roots in the early 20th century Spiritism of Madero. Would you agree? Also, have you practiced and/or witnessed any psychic surgery yourself?
STEPHEN A. HERMANN: There have always been mediums or healers in all cultures. The Philippines were a Spanish colony for almost three hundred years. Many of the leaders of the revolution against Spanish rule were involved in the practice of Spiritualism. Kardec’s writings were again a major influence in this part of the world.
I teach mediumship and healing worldwide and the Philippines is one of the countries I regularly visit. Over the years I have witnessed and experienced many remarkable physical and emotional healings with my own mediumship as well as the mediumship of others. With healing God is the healer and we are only vehicles for God’s unconditional love to work through. Yes, I practice psychic surgery with the help of spirit doctors. However, I do not pull blood and guts out of people and drop it in a tin can as many Filipino healers do.
C.M. MAYO: My understanding is that Spiritism arrived in the Philippines with Spanish translations of Kardec’s works. Presumably many of these came out Barcelona, an important center for esoteric publishing (and indeed, many of the books in Madero’s personal library were from Barcelona). When I discovered that Madero’s 1911 Manual espírita had been reprinted by Casa Editorial Maucci in Barcelona in 1924, I immediately wondered whether any copies had made their way to the Philippines and so played some role in the spread of Spiritism there. Do you know anything about this?
STEPHEN A. HERMANN: I do not know anything about this. Don Juan Alvear in 1901 founded the first Spiritist center in San Fabrian, Pangasinan. I have worked at this center many times and the energy is amazing. Alvear was a great political leader, educator and prominent intellectual. Like Madero, Alvear authored a book on mediumship and was a hero of the revolution. His statue is outside the government building and across the street from the Spiritist center he founded.
[C.M. MAYO: See Hermann’s blog post about some history of Spiritism in the Philippines here. And for more about Spiritism in the Philippines, a subject on which I am admittedly very foggy, one place to start is Harvey Martin’s The Secret Teachings of the Espiritistas.]
ON THE BHAGAVAD-GITA AND REINCARNATION
C.M. MAYO: In many places in your book, Mediumship Mastery, you quote from the Bhagavad-Gita.This was a work that fascinated Madero; he not only mentions it in his Spiritist Manual, but under the pseudonym “Arjuna”— the name of the warrior in the Bhagavad-Gita— he wrote articles about it and was planning a book about its wisdom for the modern world. The Bhagavad-Gita also had an important influence on Gandhi, Emerson, the Theosophists, and many others. One of its many teachings is about reincarnation. In your book’s chapter “Past Life Readings,” you mention that you have recollections of some of your past lives and also have received communications from spirits about others’ past lives. Would you elaborate on reincarnation as explained in the Gita?
STEPHEN A. HERMANN: The Bhagavad Gita is a conversation between the Supreme Personality and Arjuna. I try to read it as much as possible. Life is eternal as the personality continues into the world of spirit. The Bhagavad Gita explains the science of connecting with the Godhead and how to cultivate devotion or love of God. Every seven years pretty much all the molecules in our physical bodies change. So we are always changing physical bodies. Based on our consciousness at the end of this physical life we will end up having to take another physical birth. The Gita explains the process of transmigration and how we can ascend to higher levels.
C.M. MAYO: Like Madero in his Spiritist Manual, in your book, Mediumship Mastery, you advocate a vegetarian diet. Is this an idea that came to Spiritualism / Spiritism from Hindu philosophy?
STEPHEN A. HERMANN: Higher teachers on both the physical and spiritual worlds always advocate vegetarianism as it is very bad to hurt animals and cause suffering to others. A true follower of Jesus would not want to hurt others as would a true follower of Buddha. There is only one God and we are all God’s children. I am sure Madero was influenced by Vedic teachings which is why he loved the Bhagavad Gita.
MORE ABOUT MADERO’S SPIRITIST MANUAL
C.M. MAYO: What surprised you the most about Madero’s Spiritist Manual?
STEPHEN A. HERMANN: I really loved reading the Spiritist Manual. It didn’t really surprise me as I am familiar with everything he wrote already. However, I especially loved reading the extra sections about your research and his notes, etc. I think you did a fantastic job.
C.M. MAYO: In terms of his understanding of mediumnistic unfoldment—or anything else—are there any points where you would disagree with Madero’s Spiritist Manual?
STEPHEN A. HERMANN: Madero approaches mediumship heavily influenced by Kardec’s Medium’s Book. Nothing wrong with that as Kardec’s work was way ahead of it’s time when it was published in 1861. However, the methods and approaches used by the spirit personalities to communicate, train and interact with mediums have greatly improved.
Back in the early years of Spiritualism there were no teachers of mediumship. Mediums learned through trial and error and with the assistance and input of teachers in the spirit world overtime created structured approaches to the unfoldment of the various phases of mediumship.
Madero was brilliant and had he not have been murdered his mediumship would have expanded even more. Love, harmony, enthusiasm, and higher purpose are the qualities needed to create the best conditions for successful mediumistic communications. Madero possessed all these qualities and more.
In the early years of Spiritualism there was much physical phenomena or manifestations of spirit power that could be directly experienced through the five physical senses. Nowadays, people are much more intellectually oriented and as such the mediumship practiced is mainly mental or telepathic in nature. It is not that one method is better but just better suited for the age. The methods for training mediums have greatly improved and expanded in the last 168 years.
C.M. MAYO: As you were reading Madero’s Spiritist Manual, or before or afterwards, did you ever sense that you were in communication with / sensing Madero’s spirit? Is there anything you would like to say about that?
STEPHEN A. HERMANN: I would think that Madero most likely would have been around you a lot when you were researching and writing the book. I do not know if he was around me when I was reading the book, but I do feel that he and I would have a lot in common if we were to meet. I think we would get along pretty well as I can relate to where he was at in terms of his mediumship and his spirituality in general.
C.M. MAYO: In your book, Mediumship Mastery (p. 9) you introduce the subtle bodies that interpenetrate the physical body. As I read it, this is a somewhat different explanation from given by Madero where he, following Kardec, talks about the “perispirit.” Can you explain?
STEPHEN A. HERMANN: The perispirit is the subtle or astral covering. Madero uses Kardec’s terminology. We have a physical body with subtle bodies interpenetrating it. After physical death the soul continues to function through the astral body and travels into the spirit world.
ON MEDIUMSHIP AND ENERGIES
C.M. MAYO: My experience has been that not all but most people either dismiss mediumship as impossible or, believing it possible, are frightened that, in calling on the spirit world, they might encounter negative entities. In particular, the Catholic and many other churches sternly warn against dabbling in conjuring spirits, especially with Ouija boards. In the introduction to your book, Mediumship Mastery, you write, “In all my years of working as a medium, I have never experienced anything negative or that made me feel uncomfortable. My experience of mediumship has always been genuinely positive, loving, and comfortable.” It would seem, from my reading of the Spiritist Manual, that Madero would have agreed. But has this been the case for others you know?
STEPHEN A. HERMANN: Mediumship is all about love and healing. However, training is important as is proper motivation. Someone could have a bad experience with mediumship if they dabble in it or go about doing it in a superficial way. Spiritual mediumship is completely orchestrated by higher spirit personalities. Mediumship is not a board game for drunk teenagers to play at 2 AM. Like attracts like.
C.M. MAYO: In your book’s final chapter, “Dealing with Skeptics,” you write, “People who are closed off and negative for any reason, which would include hardcore skeptics, are exceptionally more difficult to work with as the energies are not as strong, the links to the spirit world weaker, and the connections more incomplete and vague.”
It seems to me that U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, who disdained Madero as mentally unbalanced and who, for his support for the coup d’etat that ended with Madero’s murder in 1913, has gone down as one of the archvillians of Mexican history, had much in common with the rigidmindedness of celebrity skeptics such as the Amazing Randi. Would you agree?
STEPHEN A. HERMANN: I don’t know Randi personally nor do I know the US Ambassador of that period. Who knows what motivates people on a deeper level? However, Randi does seem very closed off to higher consciousness and intuitive ability. I suspect that Ambassador Wilson was motivated completely by lower, selfish interests and as a result would have cut himself off from higher spiritual influences.
Skeptics are not necessarily immoral or callous individuals. They just do not often believe in the mystical and are highly suspect of claims that do not fit their rationalist view of the world. I appreciate skepticism as many people are completely gullible and easily misled. It is important to not throw out your intelligence when dealing with mediumship as there is a fine line with genuine psychic impressions and your own imagination.
Flora and Vegetation of the Solitario Dome by Jean Evans Hardy, Iron Mountain Press, 2009 (Whoa, call the chiropracter, I brought this one home in my carry-on!)
Geology of the Solitario by Charles E. Corry, et al. Geological Society of America Special Paper 250, 1990.
“Igneous Evolution of a Complex Laccolith-Caldera, the Solitario, Trans-Pecos, Texas: Implications for Calderas and Subjacent Plutons” by Christopher D. Henry, et al.Geological Society of America Bulletin, August 1997 (Super-crunchy PDF)
The Solitario: Sentinel of the Big Bend Ranch State Park” Megan Hicks, The Big Bend Paisano, Winter 2004/2005 (PDF)
“Geology at the Crossroads” By Blaine R. Hall, Big Bend Ranch State Park (PDF)
Entering the labyrinth of the Solitario via Los Portales (That’s my guide, Charlie Angell, he’s the best, check him out on Tripadvisor.com). Photo: C.M. Mayo, March 2015
How Texas Will Transform America By Richard Parker Pegasus, November 2014 pp. 352 ISBN-10: 1605986267 ISBN-13: 978-1605986265
Book Review by C.M. Mayo
Texas Exceptionalism (TE): I would give it the knee-jerk reject but for the fact that after more than 25 years of living in another country (Mexico), if I’ve learned anything, it’s that empathy for others’ notions of themselves, off-kilter as they may seem, is not only the more politic but oftentimes the wisest stance (because the other thing I’ve learned is that there’s always more to learn). Plus, as my birth certificate says, I’m a Daughter of the Lone Star State, so nudge its elbow and my ego is happy to hop along, at least a little ways, with that rootin’- tootin’ idea. But I was not raised in Texas and, to put it politely, I’ve yet to grok TE. The way I see it at present, yes, Texas is a special place full of proud and wonderful people, with a unique history and an awesome landscape, and once we look with open eyes, ears, intellect, and heart, so is just about every other place, from Baja California to Burma.
That said, though in Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America, Richard Parker serves up a heaping helping of gnaw-worthy TE, it is an elegantly-written and important book examining trends and challenges for Texas — Texas first, Parker argues— and the nation.
“an elegantly-written and important book examining trends and challenges for Texas — Texas first, Parker argues— and the nation.”
Migration is changing Texas at warp-speed, and
here, with an overview of the history of migration into the area, Parker makes
the most vital contribution.
It was the Fifth Migration, from the Rust Belt of
the 1970s and 1980s, that brought northerners with their Republican-leaning
politics; the Fourth, Southerners, many of them Yellow Dog Democrats, coming in
to work in the oil and related industries in the early 20th century; and the
Third, Southerners arriving in the 19th century to farm and ranch in what was
originally Mexican territory, then an independent Republic, then a slave state,
then a member of the Confederacy, then, vanquished, reabsorbed into the
Union. (The Second and First Migrations telescope thousands of years of
immigrations from elsewhere in indigenous North America and, originally, from
Asia.)
The current wave of migration, the Sixth, is
bringing some 1,000 immigrants into the state each day, from Mexico, points
further south, East Asia, South Asia, Europe, and all across the United States
itself. And because of this, the over a century-long “Anglo”
dominance is about to crumble. Soon the idea of Texas itself may
morph into something denizens of the 20th century might no longer
recognize.
J. Frank Dobie (1888-1964) was considered the first recognized and professional literary writer in the state. From the Wittliff Collections biography: “Many Texas writers openly credit Dobie with giving them the inspiration not only to be a writer but also to feel comfortable using their home state as a subject.”
Yet where did that idea of Texas— this great
state for big men in cowboy boots— and the related TE— come
from? How did it become an image fixed in not only the Texan imagination, but
the national and international? I would have ascribed it merely to a mash-up of
anti-Mexican Texan and US-Mexican War propaganda, the tales of literary legend
and folklorist J. Frank Dobie,
Southern wounded pride, and splashy bucketfuls of Hollywood fantasy, until I
came to Parker’s riveting detour into the history of the marketing of the
World’s Fair of 1936. That fair, held the same year as Texas’ centennial, was
celebrated with all get-out in Dallas. For its leading citizens, this was,
Parker writes,
“the opportunity to recast Texas: No longer a broken-down Southern state of impoverished dirt farmers, but one with oil and industry— an inspiration if not a beacon to hungry Americans looking for opportunity in the midst of the Great Depression…. Copywriters, journalists, and artists were hired to tell tales of cowboys, oil, and industry in the years leading up to the World’s Fair.”
But alas, this came with the racial nonsense of
the time. Parker:
“Gone was the Mexican vaquero, the African American, and the Native American, or at least they were relegated to the role of antagonist…. A centennial exposition [Theodore H. Price, a New York PR man] argued, would teach attendees that the cowboy story was really a story of racial triumph…”
Giant, the 1956 movie based on Edna Ferber’s novel, starred Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean.
Some of Texas history is painful to read, painful
as those punches Rock Hudson’s character, Bick Benedict, took at the end of Giant,
in defending his Mexican-American daughter-in-law (from being refused
service in a café because of the color of her skin). Parker doesn’t shy away
from discussing some ugly and enduring racial problems in Texas, including in
Austin, its capital and haven of liberalism, music, and righteously organic
breakfast tacos.
At the time Lone Star Nation went to press
in 2014, according to Parker, “nearly one in three people who call Texas
home have arrived from elsewhere in the United States in the last year.”
The gas and oil boom have since collapsed along with the price of oil, so I
would expect those numbers to have dropped; nonetheless, as Parker stresses,
the overwhelming majority of immigrants end up not in the oil fields, but the
“triangle,” the area in and around Dallas, Austin-San Antonio, and
Houston. The draw? “Better-paying jobs and bigger homes for less
money.”
Parker argues that better jobs are a function of
education, and that therefore one of the challenges Texas faces is adequately
funding its schools and universities while keeping tuition at affordable
levels, especially for the working class and recent immigrants. But the
political will may not be there; neither has it been adequate to cope with
water shortages, both current and looming.
Parker’s political analysis is seasoned but
unabashedly biased. My dad, a California Republican, would have called it
“Beltway Liberalism,” and indeed, until returning to Texas, Parker, a
journalist, was based in the Washington DC metropolitan area. I happen to agree
with much of what Parker argues, but as someone trying to get my mind around
Texas, I would have appreciated his making more of an effort to explore, if not
with sympathy then at least empathy, the various strains of conservatism.
To illustrate the trends and challenges for
Texas, Parker offers two scenarios for 2050: one in which Texas has not
invested in education, nor maintained a representative democracy, nor addressed
environmental issues, and so degenerated into a nearly abandoned ruin (think:
Detroit meets Caracas meets the Gobi Desert); in the other, challenges
addressed, Texas is a super-charging China-crushin’ hipster Juggernaut. My own
guess is that the Texas of our very old age will fall somewhere in between,
vary wildly from one region to another, and be more dependent on developments
south of the border than the author or, for that matter, most futurists,
consider.
On this last point, in discussing the tidal wave
of migration from Mexico, Parker mentions the Woodlands, a once upscale Anglo
suburb outside of Houston, still upscale, but now predominantly Mexican. I
would have liked to have learned more about this slice of the sociological pie,
for in my recent travels in Texas, and from what I hear in Mexico, I’ve also
noticed that a large number of well-off Mexicans have been moving to Houston,
San Antonio, and Austin. I’m talking about Mexicans who speak fluent English,
play tennis and golf, and have studied and traveled abroad in, say, New York,
Vancouver, Paris. There’s a bigger story there, for many of them are the
wives and children, but not so many husbands, who spend weekdays at their offices
in Monterrey, Guadalajara, or, say, Mexico City. These families have not come
to Texas for the jobs, nor the wonders of that great state (whose loss still
makes many Mexicans bristle), but primarily for their safety— and,
in many cases, for business opportunities. Should security improve in Mexico, I
would expect many of these families to return and quickly. Whether that is
likely or not is another question.
In sum, Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America is a rich, vivacious read that provides a sturdy framework to think about the past, present, and prospects of a state that is as much a place as it is, in the words of John Steinbeck, “a mystique approximating a religion.” And if the author is a true blue believer in TE, well hell, bless him. Highly recommended.
At ALTA, I spoke on two panels and read an excerpt from my translation of a work by Mexico’s great novelist and short story writer Ignacio Solares. (Had the scheduling permitted, I would have loved to have also shared new translations of works by Mexican writers Agustin Cadena and Rose Mary Salum. Here’s to ALTA in Tucson, Arizona in 2015!)
Herewith the transcript of my talk for the second panel, “Why Translate?”
WHY TRANSLATE? THE CASE OF THE PRESIDENT OF MEXICO’S SECRET BOOK
A (slightly edited and expanded) transcript of C.M. Mayo’s talk for the panel “Why Translate?” American Literary Translation Association (ALTA) Conference Milwaukee, November 15, 2014
I translate for the same reasons that I write. There are many, but we have limited time, so I will focus on two, which are: I want to understand, and I want to share that understanding.
Sharing might just be with myself, as in a diary entry, or with a cadre of of loyal readers and any Internet surfers who happen onto this blog, Madam Mayo. Sharing ramps up, of course, when we start talking about books.
People have many different and varied motivations for writing and publishing books— and for some, one of them is nothing less than to change the world. Or maybe, to change our understanding of some aspect of the world— and so change the world.
FRANCISCO I. MADERO, President of Mexico, 1911-1913
TWO SYSTEMS: THE HEAVILY INTERMEDIATED AND THE RELATIVELY DIRECT
Whether in its original language or as a translation, a book is a vector for a set of ideas, a very unusual and efficient vector, for it can zing ideas from mind to mind, spreading out over great distances and, potentially, far into the future.
Books can travel through two systems, or rather, an array of systems: at one extreme, the heavily intermediated, and at the other, the direct.
Our commercial publishing industry constitutes that first extreme. To give a stylized example, a book comes into the hands of an agent, then an acquiring editor, perhaps a developmental editor, a copyeditor, a book designer, a formatter, a cover designer, the proofreader, the printer, the delivery truck driver, the warehouse employees, the distributor, the sales rep, the bookstore’s buyer, and so on and so forth until, finally, the cashier hands the book to its reader. Very possibly multiple corporate entities and dozens of individuals play some role in bringing a book to any given reader.
At the other extreme, I scribble on a piece of paper and hand it to you.
I submit that we tend to over focus on this heavily intermediated system; we often overlook the fact that it is not the only or even necessarily the best way for a book to fulfill its purpose.
TWO BOOKS BY FRANCISCO I. MADERO
I’m going to focus on two books, both political, both by Francisco I. Madero.
If you are at all familiar with Mexican history, Francisco I. Madero needs no introduction. If Mexican history is a mystery to you, the main thing you need to know is that Madero was the leader of Mexico’s 1910 Revolution and President of Mexico from 1911 to 1913.
His first book, La sucesión presidencial en 1910, or The Presidential Succession in 1910, published in 1909, served as his political platform in challenging the old regime. Though it was after the stolen elections of 1910 that Madero declared the Revolution on November 20, 1910, informally, we could say that the Revolution was launched with this book.
The first page of Madero’s La sucesion presidencial en 1910. “To the heroes of our country; to the independent journalists; to the good Mexicans”
Francisco I. Madero’s secret book, Manual espírita, written 1909-1910 and published in 1911.
Apropos of Madero’s two books and the two systems to bring a book to its readers, the heavily intermediated and the relatively direct, a bit from the opening of chapter 2 of my book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution:
When we talk about a “successful book,” usually what we mean is one that has a brand-name publisher, enjoys prime shelf space in bookstores, and earns its author buckets of royalties. In other words, we talk about it as a commodity—or, if we’re a mite more sophisticated, a hybrid commodity / work of art / scholarship. I say “we” because I am writing and I presume you are reading this in a time and place where books are no longer banned by the government, their authors no longer casually imprisoned—or worse. Lulled by endless streams of made-for-the-movies thrillers and romances, we forget that, as Ray Bradbury put it, “A book is a loaded gun.”
Francisco I. Madero intended his Manual espírita to be a beam of light, to heal Mexico and the world with his consoling concepts of the nature and meaning of life. However, it is a book that stands on the shoulders of his first book that was, indeed, a loaded gun: La sucesión presidencial en 1910, published in the winter of 1909 when Don Porfirio Díaz, the dictator who had stolen the presidency in a coup d’état and ruled Mexico on and off for over thirty years, was about to celebrate his eightieth birthday and, as Mexico’s so-called “necessary man,” take for himself a seventh term.
Madero had no interest in the capitalist concept of a book’s success; he wanted La sucesión presidencial en 1910 in people’s hands, and as fast as possible, and for that he did not need bookstores, he needed a jump-start on Don Porfirio’s police. He paid for the printing himself (a first edition of 3,000, and later more) and, as he noted in a letter:
[T]he first precaution I took was to hand out 800 copies to members of the press and intellectuals throughout Mexico, so when the Government got wind of the book’s circulation, it would be too late to stop it. . .
MADERO’S SECOND, SECRET BOOK
Now when we come to Madero’s second book, Manual espírita, or Spiritist Manual, there are two reasons the subtitle of my book calls it his “secret book”: First, he wrote it under a pseudonym; second, incredible as it may sound, for the most part, historians have ignored it. A few have begrudged it a footnote; only a very few— so few that I can count them on one hand— have dared to write about it in any depth and seriousness.
The 1924 edition published by Casa Editorial Maucci in Barcelona
In 1911 five thousand copies of Madero’s Manual espírita went into circulation, one assumes, among Spiritists. It was reprinted in part by Madero’s enemies, the Reyistas, as an attack– their message being, “Madero is the true author, you see what a nut he is.” And I discovered that in 1924 Casa Editorial Maucci in Barcelona brought out a reprint (print run unknown). I do not know what influence the Manual espírita may or may not have had in spreading Spiritism, whether in Mexico or abroad—it would make a fine PhD dissertation to delve into that question— but as far as historians of Mexico are concerned, until very recently, and apart from a very few and very hard-to-find editions published in Mexico, essentially, the Manual espírita disappeared into the ethers.
I hasten to clarify that I did not self-publish after a string of rejections. I have already published several books, two with university presses and two with major commercial publishers, among others, so I know that, with patience and persistence, should those have proved necessary, my work would have found a home. My decision to self-publish was a deeply thought-out strategy, specific to my circumstances and specific to this title. In short, I decided to skip the heavily intermediated system, which for this book probably would have been a university press. My three reasons:
First, I am not an academic angling for tenure, and as I have already published several books, as a writer and a translator I did not see much to gain by going to a traditional publisher, and in fact I had a lot to lose, mainly time and control;
Second, in English, alas (would that it were otherwise) books on Mexico are not particularly commercial, which makes me suspect that, whatever its merits may or may not be, mine would have taken a shoulder-saggingly long time to bring forth a contract I would have been willing to sign;
Third, for many readers, Spiritism is at once disturbing and beneath their notice. Let’s say, all this concern with the Afterlife and communicating with the dead creeps them out, as would a book on, oh, alien abductions or crop circles. And I believe this explains why even many of the leading historians of the Mexican Revolution do not know about Madero’s Spiritism, or know next to nothing about it. To give you an idea, one major textbook does not deign to mention it, while another textbook, also published by an important university press, blithely labels Madero an atheist, which is rather like calling the Pope of Rome a Protestant.
In our day, what we think of as self-publishing usually includes intermediaries such as amazon.com. In my case this would be amazon.com and Ingram. Ingram’s recent move into the realm of self-publishing is really the topic for another panel, but suffice it to say that for traditional publishing, no exaggeration, this is as momentous as Hiroshima. Ingram is a major book distributor and now also an on-demand book printer, and what listing with Ingram means is that all major on-line booksellers can now, on demand, easily source that self-published book. Libraries can order it, just as they order many of their books from Ingram, and while Barnes & Noble as well as many other major bookstore chains and independent bookstores may not necessarily stock it on their shelves, it’s right there, as easy to order as any other book, on their webpages—again, sourced from Ingram.
As for getting my book into people’s hands, that is a challenge, for without a publisher, I do not have a marketing staff and sales reps. Like Madero with his La sucesión presidencial en 1910, I simply identified key individuals and gave each a copy. These individuals, mainly but not exclusively academics, are experts on Madero, on the Mexican Revolution, Mexican history in general, the history of metaphysical religion, and Masonry (Madero was a Mason).
The process of the book, my little turtle, finding its readers may be a long and winding one, but it is underway [see reviews] and I feel no urge to hurry. Unlike a traditionally published book, which must dash out like a rabbit, digitally available books (ebooks and print-on-demand paperbacks sold on-line) are not so heavily dependent on “buzz” generated to coincide with the fleeting moment when a book, thanks to the efforts of marketing staff and sales reps, might be available on physical shelves in brick-and-mortar bookstores. Like grocery stores, brick-and-mortar bookstores must move their merchandize with the seasons and oftentimes, as with the proverbial cottage cheese, even more quickly. Digital bookshelves, however, are of a different nature; at the click of a button, they can unfurl vast dimensions, additions to which impose a marginal cost approaching, or in fact, zero. Now if, on a Tuesday at 4 am, say, seven months or, say, seven years in the future, someone in Oodnadatta, Australia wants to download my Kindle or order my print-on-demand paperback, with a click, he can do just that.
BLASTING THE SOMBRERO OFF THE PARADIGM OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION
Will my book with its translation of Madero’s Spiritist Manual change our understanding of Mexican history? Well, I do think it blasts the sombrero off the reigning paradigm to consider that Francisco I. Madero, the leader of Mexico’s 1910 Revolution— an absolutely transformative episode in Mexican history and the first major revolution of the 20th century—was a not only a Spiritist but a leading Spiritist and a Spiritist medium (and, it all relates, a devoted student of the Hindu holy text known as the Bhagavad Gita).
Madero believed that he was channeling written instructions and encouragement from spirits in writing both of his books, and furthermore, in his Spiritist Manual, he detailed his beliefs about such esoterica as astral travel and interplanetary reincarnation, and the moral duty of political action.
For anyone who chooses to open their eyes and look at the overwhelming evidence, the connection between Madero’s beliefs and his politics is clear. As Mexican historian Enrique Krauze writes in his seminal 1987 biography, Francisco I. Madero: Místico de la libertad, in the case of Madero, “Politics does not displace Spiritism; it is born of it.”
I do not deny other motives and the millions of other participants in that Revolution. But its spark, and the way it played out, and, I believe, Madero’s murder, are a radically different story once we take into account his Spiritism.
My aim with my book and my translation of Madero’s book is to deepen our understanding of Madero, both as an individual and as a political figure; and at the same time, deepen our understanding of the rich esoteric matrix from which his ideas sprang, in other words, not to promote his ideas nor disparage them, but explain them and give them context.
It is also then my aim to deepen our understanding of the 1910 Revolution and therefore of Mexico itself, and because the histories are intertwined, therefore also deepen our understanding of North America, Latin America, the Pacific Rim, and more— for as long as a book exists, should someone happen to read it, it can catalyze change in understanding (and other changes) that ripple out, endlessly.
Such is the wonder, the magical embryonic power of a book, any book, whether original or in translation: that, even as it rests on a dusty shelf for a hundred years, or for that matter, an unvisited digital “shelf,” if it can be found, if it can be read, it holds such potential.
C’est moi on (whew) August 30, 2014 at Meyers Spring, an important rock art site of the Lower Pecos, on the US-Mexico border near Dryden, Texas. As you can see, in my left hand, I am carrying a white umbrella. So I didn’t need the hat. And that black backpack wasn’t the best idea. I also should have worn a lightweight bandana. Oh, and more sunblock. Always more sunblock. The long-sleeved white shirt and hiking trousers were both excellent choices, however.
Just returned from hiking with the Rock Art Foundation in to see the spectacular rock art at Meyers Spring in the Lower Pecos of Far West Texas (yes, there will be a podcast in the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project, in which I exploring the Big Bend & Beyond in 24 podcasts. More about that anon).
I got a few things very right on this trip and a few things, well, I could have done better. Herewith, for you, and for me– this will serve as my own checklist for my next rock art foray– 12 tips for summer day hiking in the desert:
1. Don’t just bring water, lots of water, more water than you think you can possibly drink– bring it cold and keep it cold.
Everest Lumbar Waistpack
Of course, not drinking enough water can be seriously dangerous. But warm water when it’s this hot is just bleh–and if you’re carrying a plain old plastic water bottle in your hand, out here in Texas, boy howdy… (Last year, I hiked this way over Burro Mesa in the Big Bend National Park. Six hours. Head-slapper.)
The thing is, you don’t just want to hydrate; you want to keep your core from overheating, so every swig of cold water really helps. Before heading out, fill your insulated water bottles with lots of ice. In your car, keep them in an ice chest or, if that’s not possible, wrapped in a blanket, or whatever’s handy, until the moment you have to take them out. I did this for the first time, and wow, what a difference.
Yes, sun block stinks and feels gross, but if you’re like me — a descendant of those who once roamed the foggy bogs of the British Isles– if you don’t, you may end up helping your dermatologist buy his ski condo. And no, he probably won’t invite you.
> Watch this fun video, “How the Sun Sees You.”
> For those with actinic keratosis (that’s the fancy term for seriously sun-damaged skin), try Perrin’s Blend. If that doesn’t work, off to the dermatologist you must go.
This protects you against the sun, keeps you cool (the white reflects the sun), protects you from bug bites and scratches. Light clothes always beat dark! Flip the collar up to protect your neck. About scratches: the desert tends to be filled with cactus and thorny scrub.
4. Knot a light-colored scarf around your throat.
This protects you from the sun. A bandana works fine. Mike Clelland (more about the guru in a moment) suggests cutting the bandana in two, so it’s lighter. Porquoi pas? But I didn’t do this. Alas. Bring on the Perrin’s.
5. Wear tough but lightweight trekking trousers.
For the same reason you want to wear the long-sleeved white shirt: trousers protect your body parts, in this case, calves and knees, from sun, scratches, and bugs. Do not wear shorts unless, for some reason you probably should be working on with your psychiatrist, you don’t mind scarring and blood.
And do not wear jeans. I repeat, do not wear jeans.
6. Keep your pack as light as possible, in both senses.
Hey, you’ve not only gotta stay cool, but you’ve gotta hump all that water!
A few specifics:
> Use a lightweight pack and carry it on your hips, rather than the flat of your back (see photo of lumbar waist pack above). This helps keep your back cool. But I don’t speak from experience on this one: I’m going to try this for next time.
> Carry lightweight insulated water bottles.
> Ditch the hat and ditch the heavy hiking boots (more about that below. There are, of course, other places and times when a hat and hiking books would be advisable).
> Skip the camera or use a lightweight camera (I use my iPhone).
> Eat a light breakfast and bring only a little food– since this is a day hike, you can eat a big dinner when you get back. But you will need sustenance on the trail. I recommend date, fruit and nut bars– love those Lara bars— that is, food that is high in energy but won’t spoil in the heat, and that doesn’t require any dishes or utensils. Don’t bring anything with chocolate in it. (I brought a Snicker’s bar. Ooey… gooey.)
>Bring a white plastic grocery bag and use it to cover your pack. Two advantages: the white reflects sunlight and keeps it cooler than, say, an unprotected black or other dark-colored pack, and, in case of rain, will help keep it dry.
> Highly recommended: Mike Clelland’s Ultralight Backpackin’Tips, a superb resource for keeping it lighter-than-light, yet making sure to bring what you need for comfort and safety.
> And be sure to visit Clelland’s blog for many helpful videos and more.
7. Watch out for killer bees!
Africanized bees have arrived in some desert locales north of the Mexican border. What do bees want? Sweet things and water. So don’t carry around open cans or bottles or suddenly pick up open cans or bottles– bees may smell the water or soft drink from afar, crawl inside, and then, if you do anything they don’t like, such as pick up that can, they will go bezerk, and call in their buddies who will also go bezerk and might sting you hundreds of times.
No kidding, people and animals have died from killer bee attacks.
So be especially careful around any blooming plants where bees might be feeding. Ditto any open water, such as a tank, spring, or any puddle. And whatever you do, if you see a hive, don’t go anywhere near it. Normal honey bees, however, are not a problem. Unless you have a severe allergy, a few stings might actually be good for you! (Read more about bee sting therapy on the Apitherapy Association webpage). Your real problem is, it’s hard to tell the killers from the honeys until they attack.
8. Wear gaiters.
I followed Mike Clelland’s tip and bought a pair from Dirty Girl Gaiters (they’re for guys, too). They weigh about as much as a feather, they’re easy to attach to your lace-up running shoes and indeed, they keep the dust out.
Their biggest advantage is that you can therefore avoid wearing those ankle-high and heavy hiking boots. You’ll exert yourself less and therefore, on the margin, stay cooler. (I’ll admit however that on this last hike, a loose ball of bubble-gum cactus went right through the gaiters and stabbed me in the ankle. Oh well!)
www.dirtygirlgaiters.com
9. Forget the hat and trekking pole; use a white umbrella.
Really! Who cares if it looks nerdy? It’s nerdier to pass out from heat stroke or end up looking like a tomato. So let those guys in jeans, black T-shirts, and baseball caps cackle all they want, as they sweat & burn & chafe.
The white umbrella protects you from sun and the rain and– crucially– helps keep your head cool. A hat will trap heat on your head– not what you want out here. Plus, in a tight spot, you can also use the umbrella as a trekking pole. Added bonus: scares mountain lions. I would think. Don’t take my word for that, however. Also good, once folded, to toss a rattlesnake or tarantula. Not that I’ve had to do that, either. Just saying.
In shade, if possible. (Oh, right, you have your umbrella!)
12. In your car, leave a reflector open on your car’s dashboard and another over your stash of cold water.
If you’ve had to park outside, after a day of baking out in the desert, it’s going to be an authentic Finnish sauna in there– unless you use a dashboard reflector. In which case it will still be a chocolate-bar-melting warm, but infinitely more bearable. I picked up my pair of dashboard reflectors at Walgreen’s for $3.99 each and I was glad indeed that I did. Certainly, you could also just use ye olde roll of aluminum foil.
