This year the second Monday is dedicated to a post for my writing workshop students, except when not. This post is a “not”– or rather, not exactly; I would hope that my workshop students, and indeed any and all English-language readers, may find it of interest.
This interview was an honor, and a most welcome opportunity to say some things that have been looming ever larger in my mind.
MEXICAN WRITER LUIS FELIPE LOMELÍ ASKS QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH; LA ESCRITORA ESTADOUNIDENSE C.M. MAYO CONTESTA EN ESPAÑOL
DECEMBER
2018
LUIS
FELIPE LOMELÍ: Where you were born and where have you lived?
C.M. MAYO: Nací en El Paso, Texas, en la frontera, pero crecí en el norte de California, la parte ahora conocida como “Silicon Valley.” He vivido en Chicago, Washington DC, y otros lugares pero puedo decir que he pasado el mayor número de años de mi vida en la Ciudad de México.
[I was born in El Paso, Texas, on the US- Mexican border, but I grew up in northern California, in what is now “Silicon Valley.” I’ve lived in Chicago, Washington DC, and other places, but at this point I have lived more years of my life in Mexico City than anywhere else.]
LFL:
Your profession?
CMM: Soy novelista, ensayista, poeta y traductora literaria.
[I am a novelist, essayist, poet, and literary translator.]
LFL:
What drove you to Mexico, to live in Mexico (where and for how long) and to
write about Mexico, to embrace Spanish as part of your culture?
CMM: ¡El amor! Me casé con un mexicano, un compañero de la
Universidad de Chicago, y recién casados vinimos a vivir a la Ciudad de México.
Han sido 32 años, la mayoría de ellos en la Ciudad de México.
[Love! I married a Mexican, a classmate at the University of Chicago, and directly after we got married we came to live in Mexico City. We’ve been married 32 years now, and most of these years we have been in Mexico City.]
LFL:
What do you think about U.S. immigrants that live in Mexico, what do they do
there, why are they there? Do they chose particular places to live?
CMM: Conozco mucha gente como yo, que venimos a residir en México por motivos personales. Otras también han venido por motivos profesionales, por ejemplo en la academia, en los artes y en las actividades empresariales, en todo tipo de empresas. Por supuesto allí están las comunidades de jubilados y artistas, en lugares tales como San Miguel de Allende, Ajijic, Los Cabos, y demás. A mí me parece que les ha convenido venir a México porque el clima invernal es más suave, el costo de vivir es menor que en Estados Unidos, y también por la aventura. ¡Algunas personas tienen mayores aventuras que otras!
[I know many people such as myself, who came to Mexico for personal reasons. Many also come for professional reasons, especially in academia, the arts. And others for business, all sorts of businesses. Then there are of course the retirees and artists living in San Miguel de Allende, Ajijic, Los Cabos, and so on, and it seems to me that most of them have come south because the winter weather is better, it’s cheaper to live there than the U.S., and for the adventure. Some have more adventures than others!]
Los norteamericanos han estado viniendo a vivir en México desde hace mucho más de un siglo. En los 1840s empiezan a llegar algunos comerciantes a través del Santa Fe Trail, el camino que conecta la ciudad de St Louis, Missouri con el Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, esto es, el camino real desde Santa Fe hacia a Ciudad Chihuahua, Durango, Querétaro, y la Ciudad de México. Y después, en la segunda mitad del siglo 19, por ejemplo, muchos ingenieros estadounidenses vinieron a México, ingenieros de minas, de ferrocarriles, de petróleo. Periodistas, rancheros, hacendados, novelistas, hoteleros, misioneros. Y aún mercenarios. Por ejemplo, muchos estadounidenses lucharon en varias facciones de diversos conflictos en México, incluyendo en la Revolución. Y en algún momento inmigró un grupo de mormones. Otro de menonitas.
[Americans have been coming to live in Mexico for well over a century. We start to see a few traders coming to live in Mexico in the 1840s, coming down on the Santa Fe Trail, connecting St Louis, Missouri with the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, that is to say, the old royal road down to Ciudad Chihuahua, Durango, Querétaro, Mexico City. And later, in the second half of the 19th century, many U.S. engineers came to Mexico—mining engineers, railroad engineers, petroleum engineers. Journalists, ranchers, planation owners, novelists, hotel owners, missionaries. And even mercenaries. For example, many Americans fought in conflicts in Mexico, including in the Mexican Revolution. At one point Mormons migrated into Mexico. And Menonites.]
Uno de los personajes de mi novela está basado en Alice Green,
la hija de una familia prominente de Washington DC. Su abuelo fue un ayudante
del General Washington en la Guerra de Independencia. En Washington ella se
casó con un diplomático mexicano, Angel de Iturbide, quién era de casualidad el
segundo hijo del emperador de México, Agustín de Iturbide. Ella y su esposo
vinieron a residir a la Ciudad de México en los 1850s.
[One of the characters in my novel is based on Alice Green, who was the daughter of a prominent family in Washington DC. Her grandfather was an aide-de-camp to General Washington in the American Revolution. In Washington she married a Mexican diplomat, Angel de Iturbide, who happened to be the second son of Mexico’s Emperor, Agustín de Ituride. She and her husband came to live in Mexico City in the 1850s.]
Otra historia del siglo 19, muy diferente, sobre la cual estoy escribiendo actualmente, es la de los negros seminoles, quienes eran los esclavos de los indígenas Seminoles, originalmente de Florida. Pues si, es poco conocido pero algunos indígenas tenían, compraban y vendían esclavos de descendencia africana. Poco después de que el gobierno de Estados Unidos obligó a los Seminoles a mudarse a Territorio indio, los negros seminoles se escaparon, caminando a través del desierto de Texas hacia México. El gobierno mexicano les otorgó terreno en cambio de que los hombres ayudaran al ejercito mexicano en la persecución de los apaches y otros indigenas nómadas en el norte de México. Con la conclusión de la Guerra Civil en Estados Unidos y la Emancipación de los esclavos, muchos de los seminoles negros migraron de regreso a Texas para hacer lo mismo, ayudar al Ejercito de los Estados Unidos en cazar a los apaches, comanches y otros indigenas nómadas en las Guerras Indias. Todavía existe una comunidad de los descendientes de los negros seminoles en Brackettville, Texas y otra en el norte de México.
[Another very different story, one I’m writing about now, is that of the Seminole Negros, who were the slaves of the Seminole Indians, originally in Florida. It’s little known but it’s a fact, some Indians kept and bought and sold slaves of African descent. Soon after the U.S. government forced the Seminoles and their slaves to Indian Territory, the Seminole Negros fled, trekking from Oklahoma over the Texas desert, into Mexico. In exchange for land, their men worked as scouts for the Mexican Army, which was hunting down Apaches and other nomadic indigenous peoples in northern Mexico; and after the U.S. Civil War, with Emancipation, many Seminole Negroes migrated back into Texas, to do the same work for the U.S. Army, in the Indian Wars. There is a community of the descendents of the Seminole Negroes in Brackettville, Texas, and another in northern Mexico.]
La inmigración de estadounidenses hacia México es una historia
extraordinariamente rica y compleja, pues cada persona, cada familia tiene su
propia historia. Es más, en México hay inmigrantes de varias partes del mundo.
[U.S. immigration to Mexico is an extraordinarily rich and complex history, or rather, many histories, for each person, each family has their own. Moreover, Mexico has immigrants from many parts of the world.]
LFL:
What is your impression and/or conception about this cultural exchange?
CMM: En cuanto la comunicación intercultural entre Estados Unidos y México, yo diría que hay muchos enlaces, muchos acercamientos, mucho que tenemos en común, mucho que podemos celebrar, pero no es lo que podría ser. Creo que algunas razones de eso—algunas—tienen sus raíces por allá en el siglo 16, en la rivalidad entre la España católica y la Inglaterra protestante.
[As for US-Mexico intercultural understanding today, I would say there are many connections, many bridges, much that we all have in common, and can celebrate, but it’s not what it could be. I acually believe that some reasons for this—some— have their roots all the way back in 16th century, to the rivalry between Catholic Spain and Protestant England.]
Pero enfocamos en cuestiones literarias. Hoy, un elemento, el
cual es tanto una causa como un síntoma de la falta de comunicación
intercultural, es que relativamente pocos libros se traducen del español al
inglés o del inglés al español. Como porcentaje de libros publicados es
minúsulo. Como resultado, muy, muy pocos escritores mexicanos se conocen en
Estados Unidos. Octavio Paz, quién ganó el premio Nobel. Carlos Fuentes… quizá
Juan Rulfo… algunos pocos lectores en inglés han oído de Carlos Monsiváis,
Elena Poniatowska, Angeles Mastretta, Ignacio Solares, para nombrar unos de los
distinguidos escritores contemporáneos mexicanos cuyos libros han sido
traducidos al inglés. La lista de nombres conocidos disminuye en un parpadeo.
[But to focus on literary questions. Today, one factor, which is both a cause and a symptom of problems with intercultural communication, is that relatively few books are translated from Spanish into English, or from English into Spanish. As a percentage of what original work is published it’s minuscule. As a result, very, very few Mexican writers are known in the US. Octavio Paz, who won the Nobel Prize. Carlos Fuentes…maybe Juan Rulfo… a very few will have heard of Carlos Monsiváis, Elena Poniatowska, Angeles Mastretta, Ignacio Solares, to name a few of Mexico’s distinguished contemporary writers who have had books translated into English… The list of recognizable names dwindles in a blink.]
Y por cierto un escritor mexicano destacado quién debe de ser más conocido en inglés es Luis Felipe Lomelí.
[And by the way, an outstanding Mexican writer named Luis Felipe Lomelí should be much better known in English.]
En México cuando voy a una librería mexicana, en cuanto a libros
de literatura traducidos del inglés, por lo general encuentro best-sellers,
Harry Potter, y así, y quizá algunos clásicos. Shakespeare, por ejemplo. Ay,
acabo de mencionar dos obras británicas. Edgar Allen Poe. Ernest Hemingway.
Ahora que lo pienso, conozco un par de poetas mexicanos quienes les encantan
los Beats, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac. El último grito en los 1950s. Hay
muchos ejemplos per, a grandes rasgos, así es la situación.
[In Mexico when I go into a Mexican bookstore, as far as books of serious literature translated from the English, I generally find best-sellers, Harry Potter, and the like, and a few classics. Shakespeare, for example. Ha, I just mentioned two British works. Edgar Allen Poe. Ernest Hemingway. Now that I think about it, I know a few Mexican poets who love the Beats, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac. Hot stuff in the 1950s. There are many more examples but, in general terms, this is the situation.]
Podemos señalar el prejucio, la ignorancia, el conservativismo
de los editores, pero podemos avanzar más por el camino de la comprehensión en
reconocer, primeramente, que lectores—en todo el mundo—prefieren leer libros
originalmente escritos en su propio idioma. Segundo, reconocer el gran sapo
gordo del hecho de que la traducción literaria es cara. Y así debe ser, puesto
que traducir todo un libro es una labor que requiere muchos conocimientos y
mucho tiempo. Aún así, los traductores literarios ganen muy poco. Cuando
traduzco poemas y cuentos cortos para revistas literarias, como la mayoría de
los traductores literarios, no cobro, o más bien no recibo nada más que dos
ejemplares de la revista. Lo hago como labor de amor, por lo general. Existen
becas y otros apoyos, pero son escasos.
[We could point a finger at prejudice, at ignorance, at publishers’ conservativism, but we can go further down the road towards understanding by acknowledging firstly, that readers—all over the world— prefer to read books originally written in their own language. Secondly, there is the big fat toad of a fact that literary translation is expensive. And rightly so, because it takes a of skill to translate a book, and it takes a lot of time. Even still, translators are poorly paid. When I translate poems and short stories for literary magazines, like most literary translators, I usually do it for free, or I should say, I don’t receive anything other than a couple of copies of the magazine. I do it as a labor of love, usually. There are grants for literary translators, for publishing literary translations. But these are few.]
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Para mí, ésta historia nos dice todo:
Tengo entendido que “Primero Sueño,” el magnum opus de Sor Juana Inés de la
Cruz, la gran poeta mexicana del barroco, una monja quien fue una figura
literaria monumental en las Americas del siglo 17, se traduce al inglés por
primera vez hasta 1983. Afortunadamente fue hecha por John Campion, un
traductor y poeta excelente. El libro está agotado no bastante puedes
Googlearlo y leerlo en su página web, worldatuningfork.com. John Campion, Sor
Juana Inés de la Cruz.
[Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. For me, this sums it up: “Primero Sueño,” the magnum opus of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Mexico’s great poet of the Baroque, a nun who was a monumental literary figure in the Americas, was first translated into English only in 1983. Fortunately it was by John Campion, a fine translator and a poet himself. The book is out of print but you can Google that up and read it on his webpage, www.worldatuningfork.com. John Campion, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.]
Mi mensaje para las escuchas de esta entrevista es que una manera en que tú, como lector, puedes mejorar la comunicación intercultural, es buscar libros más allá de los best-sellers, más allá de los libros que todo el mundo lee, y en especial, buscar traducciones. Por lo general las traducciones se publican por editoriales pequeñas quienes no cuentan con muchos recursos para hacer mercadotécnia. Si no tienes el dinero para comprar un libro, es probable que la biblioteca de tu escuela o universidad o tu biblioteca pública pueda conseguirte un ejemplar. Si no lo ves en su catálogo, no seas tímido, pregúntale al bibliotecario si lo puede conseguir mediante préstamo interbibliotecario o comprarlo para la biblioteca. No pierdes nada en preguntar. Podrías ser felizmente sorprendido.
[My message for those of you listening to this interview is that one way that you, as a reader, can help improve intercultural communication is to look beyond the books on the best-seller table, read beyond the books everybody else is reading, and in particular, hunt for translations. Translations are often brought out by small presses that don’t have much marketing muscle. If you don’t have the money to buy a book, your school, university, or public library can probably get you copy—if you don’t see it in their catalogue, don’t be shy about asking the librarian to get you a copy on interlibrary loan, or even to buy it for the library. It doesn’t hurt to ask. You might be happily surprised.]
Y si tienes ganas de hacer una traducción, que sea al inglés o
al español ¡házla! Por supuesto, si la obra original se encuentra en copyright
y quieres publicar tu traducción, es necesario conseguir el permiso.
[And if you feel moved to translate a text, whether into English or into Spanish, give it a try! Of course, if the original work is still in copyright and you want to publish it you will need to get permission.]
Como lector, tus esfuerzos son importantes. No todo el mundo lee
libros, así que para mucha gente la lectura no les parece una actividad
importante. Pero los lectores tiendan a ser gentes pensantes y de acción. Un
libro, aún leído por poca gente, aún por una sola persona, tiene el
potencial—el potencial— de un poder enorme. Un poder para cambiar el mundo. No
exagero.
[As as reader, your efforts matter. Not everyone reads books, so it might not seem all that important an activity. But those who read books, they tend to be thinkers and doers, so a book, even if read by a few people, even by one person, holds the potential—the potential— for enormous power. Power to change the world. I do not exaggerate.]
En esencia, un libro es un pensamiento grande y complejo
empaquetado en un recipiente hiper-eficiente capaz de llevarlo a través del
tiempo y del espacio.
[A book is, essentially, a large, complex thought packed into a hyper-efficient vessel that can carry it across time and space.]
Déjenme regresar al ejemplo de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Si no
has oído de esta monja del siglo 17, en este instante a través de tu laptop o
smartphone, o aún mejor, yendo a la biblioteca, lee tantito sobre su vida,
algunas líneas de su poesía. Con este pequeño esfuerzo, yo creo que cambia tu
concepto de México, de mujeres y del mundo. Vas a llegar a tus propias
conclusiones, por supuesto, pero tu mundo será ya diferente.
[Let me return to the example of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. If you have not heard of this 17th century nun, and you take a moment on your laptop or smartphone, or better yet, to go the library and read up a bit, and you read some lines of her poetry—just that little—I think your whole view of Mexico, of women, and of the world will change. You will draw your own conclusions, of course, but your world will be changed.]
LFL:
And what was your intention or the goal you pursued in editing the Mexico: A
Traveler’s Literary Companion?
Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, edited by C.M. Mayo. Visit the book’s webpage here.
CMM: Es un retrato de México a través de la ficción y prosa de 24
escritores mexicanos, muchos en traducción por primera vez. No es un Who’s Who,
un Quién es quién de los escritores mexicanos, aunque de hecho incluye
varios escritores muy distinguidos. Más bien ofrece a los lectores en
inglés una introducción a la deliciosísima variedad de la literatura mexicana y
en México mismo: desde los puntos de vista cultural, social, regional. La meta
fue ir más allá de los estereotipos.
[This is a portrait of Mexico in the fiction and prose of 24 Mexican writers, many in translation for the first time. It’s not meant to be a Who’s Who of Mexican writers, although it does include some distinguished writers, but rather, to provide for English-language readers an introduction to the delicious variety in Mexican writing and Mexico itself: cultural, social, regional. To blast beyond clichés!]
Armar el tomo fue para mí un reto nada fácil puesto que la mayor
parte de la literatura mexicana contemporánea, por cierto la más visible,
proviene de la Ciudad de México. No obstante, encontré varias obras
espléndidas, por ejemplo, “La Dama de los Mares” por Agustín Cadena, un relato
ubicado en la costa de Baja California, “Día y noche” por Mónica Lavín en
Cuernavaca, y el relato de Araceli Ardón “No es nada mío” de Querétaro. Les
invito a leer más en mi página web, www.cmmayo.com
[This was quite a job for me as editor because much of contemporary Mexican literary writing, and certainly the most visible, comes out of Mexico City. But I did find many splendid pieces, for example, Agustín Cadena’s “Lady of the Seas,” set in Baja California, Mónica Lavín’s “Day and Night” in Cuernavaca, and Araceli Ardón’s “It Is Nothing of Mine,” set in Querétaro. I invite you to read more on my website, www.cmmayo.com.]
eA bouquet of bienvenidos for new readers of this blog in 2018. And as you long-time readers know, I post here at “Madam Mayo” blog on Mondays. For 2018, Monday is still the magic day, and every fourth Monday of the month will feature either a post on cyberflanerie or a Q & A with another writer, poet, and/or literary translator.
This first Q & A for 2018 is with crackerjack literary novelist, short story writer, and essayist Leslie Pietrzyk who has a new novel out this month, which I cannot wait to read. Silver Girl is the title, and it has already been garnering outstanding reviews, including a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. (For the unititiated, a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly is a B-Freaking-D for which, lest you own a wine shop, you do not have enough champagne.)
C.M. MAYO:You have been a consistently productive literary writer for many years. How has the digital revolution affected your writing? Specifically, has it become more challenging to stay focused with the siren calls of email, texting, blogs, online newspapers and magazines, Facebook, Twitter, and such? If so, do you have some tips and tricks you might be able to share?
LELSIE PIETRZYK: Oh, yes, yes, yes…I’m a sucker for that siren song of the online world. I’m not sure I’ve come up with the answer for maintaining focus, but sometimes I’ll try setting timers (say, no Facebook until two hours have passed) or working late at night (fewer people online to chat with). I don’t answer email on the weekends.
But what works better for me (unless I’m kidding myself), is that I’ve become more open to working WITH social media and the wide world of Google available while I’m writing. Why knock myself out trying to imagine the color of nail polishes in 1982 when I can simply Google for an answer and see an array before me? Why berate myself for dipping into Facebook for five minutes? Why not just accept that distractions are part of our world now and try to retrain myself to write deeply amidst them?
CM: Are you in a writing group? If so, can you talk about the members, the process, and the value for you?*
LP: For many years I was in an incredible, high-level writing group of 6 women who shared novels-in-progress…dear Madam Mayo belonged to this group! I think I learned how to write a novel from these monthly meetings.
When the group dissipated after 10 years, I was—honestly—tired of having critical voices in my head. Plus, I was in the beginning phases of putting together a story collection that was linked unconventionally, by incident (in each story, a young husband dies suddenly; the book became This Angel on My Chest). Because what I was doing was so difficult, and because I didn’t know how on earth I was going to make this premise work, and because I didn’t want to hear one word about my flailing, I decided that it was time for a different kind of group.
I started my neighborhood prompt writing group, and we meet once a month and write for 30 minutes to open-ended, one-word prompts. We can read out loud or not, and there are no critiques, only admiration. We’ve been meeting for more than 5 years now, and chunks of Silver Girl emerged from these meetings.
CM: Did you experience any blocks while writing this novel, and if so, how did you break through them?
LP: My biggest block actually came right at the beginning. I had been writing character sketches and scenes in my prompt group for at least eighteen months before I started the book in earnest, so I had all this material. My two college girl characters were dark and edgy and complicated, and I’d teased out a ton of fascinating history to their relationship. When I finally finished This Angel on My Chest I thought it would be a simple glide right into the new book…but I realized immediately that my complicated, interesting characters had no plot! It was a humbling moment.
I started doing more research into the Tylenol murders in the early 80s (which is the backdrop for the book) and focused on brainstorming potential connections between my girls and that event. I won’t say I ended up with an outline per se, but eventually I found a path for the book’s events. (Nor will I say that anything about writing this book was a “simple glide”!)
CM: Back to a digital question. At what point, if any, were you working on paper for this novel? Was working on paper necessary for you, or problematic?
LP: I never thought I’d say this, but paper was very important! I’m usually all-computer-all-the-time, but I’ve found that writing to prompts on paper feels freeing and takes my mind to riskier, more interesting places. So I wrote about Jess and the unnamed narrator many, many times across several little notebooks. The problematic parts came in trying to locate scenes I was sure I’d remembered writing, and when I had to type into the computer, a task I despise. Perhaps even more problematic is the constant fear that I’ll lose one of my notebooks to carelessness or fire before I transcribe its contents!
CM: Do you keep in active touch with your readers? If so, do you prefer hearing from them by email, sending a newsletter, a conversation via social media, or some combination?
LP: I’m far too disorganized to send a newsletter. Also, I retain enough Midwestern upbringing to wonder, who wants to hear from me? An email from a reader is always a fun surprise or a tweet…but I’m still loyal to Facebook. I generally post publically so anyone can follow me. I’ve actually come to know many readers and writers through my FB scroll. And for real old-school types, I’ve still got my literary blog!** I used to be very reliable about posting and am erratic now, but I hope the site still retains a scrap of personal flair: www.workinprogressinprogress.com
Email access is on my website (along with some of my favorite recipes): www.lesliepietrzyk.com
*CM: I too left our writing group, and for similar reasons. (I was about half way into an epic and epically complex historical novel, and after I got rolling with that, receiving critiques from other writers who were, of necessity, reading 30 pages out of context, was turning into more trouble than it was worth to me– and, to further complicate matters, I was transitioning to living in Mexico City again.) Nontheless I remain immensely grateful for members’ critiques of the beginning drafts of this novel, as well as of several other short stories and literary essays. And I miss the comraderie of those meetings with such excellent friends and esteemed colleagues. Those years for me personally, and for my writing, were a rare blessing.
**CM: For anyone interested in writing and publishing literary fiction, Leslie Pietrzyk’s Work-in-Progress blog is a read well worth your while.
I am still turtling along in writing my book about Far West Texas, which has involved not only extensive travel in the Trans-Pecos and some podcasting but reading– towers of books!– and what a joy it was to encounter one so fascinating as Paul Cool’sSalt Warriors: Insurgency on the Rio Grande.
A meticulously researched and expertly told history of the El Paso Salt War of 1877, Salt Warriors is essential reading for anyone interested in US-Mexico border and Texas history, and indeed, anyone interested in US history per se.
The El Paso Salt War of 1877 was sparked by
“Anglo” businessmen staking claim to the massive salt
bed that lies just west of what is now the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Local
Mexican-Americans, known as Paseños, considered the salt deposits community
property, in accord with Spanish Law.
While the salt may have been free to anyone who
would shovel it up, that required an arduous journey across the desert with
carts pulled by oxen, and under constant threat of Indian attack. For
Paseño farmers who eked out a living in this drought-prone region, the salt
they could harvest was vital for curing food, pelts, for livestock licks, and
above all, as a cash commodity– much of it sold to mines in Mexico, where it
was used for refining silver. The Paseños were outraged when Judge Charles H.
Howard, a recent arrival from Virginia, informed them that they would have to
start paying his father-in-law, a German businessman based in Austin, for the
salt.
From behind the windshield, approaching Guadalupe Mountains National Park from US 62, which goes through the salt lake. Photo by C.M. Mayo
In the wake of the El Paso Salt War, several people on both sides of the conflict had been killed, some horribly (Judge Howard was murdered, and his body mutilated and thrown down a well), the town of San Elizario sacked, several reputations ruined– some fairly and others unfairly, as Cool argues– and a wedge of suspicion and resentment driven between communities that is still, more than a century later, not entirely healed.
Paul Cool is a former Army Reserve officer and resident of Arizona with an avid interest in the US-Mexico borderlands. He kindly agreed to answer my questions via email.
C.M. MAYO: When and why did you develop your avid interest in the US-Mexico border?
PAUL COOL: It came late in life, but traces back to growing up in Southern California and marrying a young lady whose paternal grandparents came to El Paso during the Mexican Revolution. Unfortunately, I spent nearly two decades trying to write a book about the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic era, and only recently turned to the borderlands for material.
C.M. MAYO: What prompted your interest in the Salt War?
PAUL COOL: I have always been drawn to historical eras marked by the collapse or relative absence of order, justice, and social restraint, periods when ambitious or unscrupulous individuals are more able to give free rein to their personal desires and vices at the expense of the larger community. The late Roman Republic. Revolutionary France. The frontier West.
In 1999, I drove from Seattle to
Baltimore via El Paso, where I happened to purchase Walter Prescott Webb’s
history of the Texas Rangers. His book contains a chapter on the Salt War. It
was obvious there was an interesting story here, but it was buried beneath the
ethnic bigotry running through Webb’s take. I then read C. L. Sonnichsen’s
little book on the Salt War. The writing was vivid, and his account grabbed me
in a way Webb’s had not. I felt closer to what happened, but the characters
were still archetypes and stereotypes.
C.M. MAYO: Outside the region this conflict is almost unknown. Why do you think this is?
PAUL COOL: Several reasons. The Spanish-speaking losers in the conflict disappeared into Mexico, and were in no position to write the history. As for the Anglos, many of the protagonists died, and they were soon replaced as by others who came to El Paso with the railroad, lacking any concern for the past. The story was buried because it was about a world that no longer existed, and no one cared about.
Second, the story did survive as a
chapter in Texas Ranger history, but since the Rangers surrendered to an enemy
repeatedly characterized as a “howling mob,” Texans generally considered the
Ranger performance a thing of shame and no one made any effort to expand our
knowledge of the episode for that reason.
Third, from the perspective of
Anglo sources, no iconic Anglo figure arose to grab our attention and turn the
story into the stuff of legend north of the border. I think the 1916-1918 Arab
Revolt illustrates what can happen with a hero. Think of Lawrence of Arabia’s
impact on Western understanding of the Arab Revolt. Without Lawrence, no
newspaper coverage by Lowell Thomas, no Seven Pillars of Wisdom, no
David Lean film, no Omar Sharif as Ali or Zhivago! Lawrence’s story, and
all that followed, is a misreading, to be sure, but corrective history is now
available. It is possible that Mexican sources will reveal the existence of a
hero, possibly Barela, possibly someone who we don’t yet know, and the
information needed to provide the foundation of a heroic narrative. The
romantic in me hopes that further research uncovers such a figure who can raise
awareness of this popular yet tragic rebellion, south of the border first, then
migrating up here.
Latino historians are and have long
been aware of the Salt War and its place in Mexican American history. When I
asked Dr. Arnoldo De
Leon, a preeminent authority on Tejano history, why Latino scholars
had never tackled the subject, he explained that they are playing catch-up,
that there are so many stories still in need of telling, so many that continue
to wait their chance.
C.M. MAYO: Of the results of the war, you write (p. 4) “In the long term, the distrust and marginalization of Paseño citizens by Anglos was deepened.” Your book does an excellent job of showing why this was but at the same time, you show that the insurgency was not “a bloody riot by a howling mob but in reality a complex political, social, and military struggle.” After your book came out, did your argument meet any notable resistance?
PAUL COOL: The academic community has generally applauded the appearance of Salt Warriors, although some reservations about my approach have been expressed. For example, one reviewer justly criticized the book for its reliance on north-of-the-border sources, to the exclusion of any archival material inside Mexico. I do not speak or read Spanish, and did not have the resources to hire others to dig through material that might or might not tell the story I wanted to tell. I had a choice: I could leave the story untold because I could not do a so-called “definitive” version (which is always elusive anyway), or I could tell this story to the best of my ability and hope that others would follow up to provide new perspectives.
One other criticism I will mention
is that I gave my opinion of the key participants, of their individual
responsibility for the chaos and destruction that took place, and even of their
moral failings. Some said that is not the historian’s job. It is best to just
state the facts and let the reader decide. That may be true, but in this case,
I felt that the story of the Salt War had been so repeatedly twisted over time
that a clear statement of who was responsible was in order. One can never
really know the hearts and minds of people who died more than a century before,
but I feel confident in my opinion of who was most responsible for the tragedy.
C.M. MAYO: What lessons does the Salt War offer us today? I am thinking of some of the dynamics we see played out with other insurgencies and their repression, and the dynamics that ensure. On p. 235 you write “‘Throughout history,’ today’s U.S. Army and Marine Corps officers learn, many defeated insurgent movements ‘have degenerated into criminality.'” My understanding is that this would apply both to some of the defeated Mexican-American and allied Mexican insurgents, as well as to many ex-Confederates who were then coming into the Southwest and taking up careers as rustlers, and bank and train robbers.
PAUL COOL: Any population is always going to include “hustling individualists” who are most interested in getting what they want, whether it is inordinate power or wealth at the expense of the larger population, or the satisfaction of some baser need, including taking something from someone else in a violent or disturbing manner.
The question is, does the presence
of an equally applied law and a just order prevent or at least put a damper on
that?
In the first instance, one group,
whether it’s Gilded Age entrepreneurs and their political allies, or their 21st century heirs on Wall Street and
in government, uses “law” to corral wealth and power at the expense of the
general population.
In the second, violent criminals
trade on the lack of “order” to achieve much the same ends, perhaps more
bloodily, but not necessarily on a smaller scale.
What transpired in post-Salt War El
Paso, in terms of increases in criminal activity by gangs and individuals, was
probably not much different in nature than what happens any place the authority
structure collapses, whether in Iraq, Revolutionary France between Louis XVI
and Napoleon, or the Soviet Union after Gorbachev.
But something additional happened
in El Paso, new to the American West but not uncommon in world history. There,
the sheriff hired mercenaries to enforce order against perceived enemies, in
this case the Mexican American population. Those mercenaries included career
criminals led by John Kinney. What happened in El Paso became, for a few years,
the way sheriffs did business in the American borderlands, and was repeated
during the Lincoln County War (again with Kinney leading a band of criminals)
and in Cochise County, Arizona during the final stage of the so-called
Earp-Cowboy troubles.
C.M. MAYO: You were a former Army Reserve officer. How did this inform and color how you saw some of the individuals in this story?
PAUL COOL: The event had largely been treated as an ugly civil disturbance requiring military policing. I decided to approach it as a “war” brought on by clashing cultures, economic drivers, and untrammeled ambition.
My own military career was slender,
but my first thirty years were spent as the son of a decorated combat hero and,
as a Reserve officer, in close association with officers and men who also met
that definition. The military is made up of people from the general population.
Soldiers, sailors, and airmen are, in that sense, much like the rest of us. But
in addition to military knowledge, i.e., how to fight and win, the military honestly
attempts to inculcate certain ideal qualities, including honor, integrity,
reliability. People, whether the population you’re sworn to protect or your
buddy in the next foxhole, suffer and die unnecessarily when these qualities
are forgotten or ignored. The military I knew does try to adhere to them.
There is, of course, so much more
to the military ethos, but I mention these factors because they influenced the
course of the Salt War. There were army officers, such as Lieutenant Rucker and
Colonel Hatch, who attempted to use their influence and authority to prevent
violence and to quickly, peacefully put a lid on it. But it just so happened
that, at the critical point, the officer on the scene, Captain Thomas Blair,
possessed probably less integrity than any other officer in the U.S. Army. He
was a smooth charmer, and no one realized his lack of character. Had Rucker not
been replaced by Blair, or had Blair possessed ordinary integrity, it seems to
me likely that some of the violence might have been short-circuited. Who knows?
It was only later, through Blair’s bigamy, that the value of his word was
revealed to all.
The military also attempts to
instill discipline, to convince young soldiers to follow the rules, something
that goes against the grain for many, from teenagers to independent-minded
middle-age men. Discipline enables a unit to carry out its missions and
prevents the naked exercise of power in service to personal wants. The Salt War
illustrates the importance of discipline and leadership. We read that the
various companies of the Ninth Cavalry occupying the Mexicano towns
carried out their pacifying mission without any complaints, whereas soldiers
from the company of the Tenth Cavalry engaged in a variety of violent personal
and property crimes. The difference was the discipline instilled by the leaders
of the Ninth Cavalry, but not the Tenth, both prior to and during the military
action.
C.M. MAYO: A modern recounting of the Salt Wars usually makes Judge Charles H. Howard into a simple character, an arrogant, stubborn and greedy villain, the outsider who swiped the community’s salt and then, even to the point of endangering both himself and others, insisted on pressing his client’s claim. One of the things I appreciated about your book is that you explained in more depth some of Howard’s probable motivations and, in particular, the mid-19th century Virginian concepts of honor to which he would have ascribed. The fact that he was bereaved after the death of his wife and deeply indebted to his father-in-law, the purported owner of the salt lakes, was another crucial factor you point out.
It seems to me that you have made a powerful effort to objectively present the different points of view in the conflict. Was this something that came easily or did it take a while?
Were there any individuals whose motivations were particularly obscure to you, or even now remain so?
PAUL COOL: While I don’t subscribe to the “great man” theory of history, I do believe that individuals make a difference, whether it’s Jean-Paul Marat steering the French Revolution along a more violent course or young Charlotte Corday who feels bound to save France from Marat. I believe that the Salt War was filled with such characters, whose personalities and behaviors were instrumental in leading the county into a downward spiral. That was not fully evident from the published record, because Salt War history was for decades largely a matter of historians regurgitating the same tale: largely nameless, faceless, hapless Texas Rangers surrender to a Mexican mob led by the evil Chico Barela. Nothing worth investigating further. But once I dug into sources not previously used, such as the federal government’s records, or personal correspondence that popped up in newspapers or located in the governor’s records, a different story emerged. At some point, for some reason, I decided to investigate the lives of key players before and after the Salt War. And that’s where I found the keys to their actions in 1877, most notably in the cases of Blair and Kerber.
Howard is a figure out of Greek
tragedy. He wore his arrogance on his sleeve, but arrogance is a trait, not a
motive. What was his motive? What impelled him to send a county over a cliff?
It had to be something deep and personal. Howard himself spoke and wrote of his
debasement by the Paseños, of his overriding debt to his father in law, of his
depression after the loss of his wife. Losing his honor, he wanted only to
regain it, and it did not matter who he harmed in the process. He was raised in
a society that educated him to believe that personal honor trumped all. I
don’t believe that he saw that he had any choice. He could only act as he
did.
I am afraid that, despite the best
efforts of New Mexico historian, Dr. Rick Hendricks, I never quite got a handle
on Father Antonio Severo Borrajo, the man most demonized by contemporary Anglo
sources. Toward the end of my work, I did add a paragraph that attempted to
make sense of Father Borrajo, based on Dr. Hendrick’s guidance, but then in the
final flurry of chopping and editing the manuscript, the passage got deleted
from one spot and not replaced in another. I didn’t notice until the book was
published. I tell myself that these things happen, but it’s a mistake I’d
rather sweep under the rug. I’d love to revise Salt Warriors after Dr.
Hendricks publishes his Borrajo biography. I think that would fill a large gap
in the story I’ve told.
The Paseños were a tough nut to
crack. They did not write the histories, their thoughts are largely absent from
the written record, and the victors universally denigrated their motives and
characters. I got past that in two ways. First, I decided to make the Paseño
community a character. Who were these people at the Pass of the North?
Faced with a century-long relative isolation from Spanish, Mexican, and
American authorities and support systems, what kind of community did they
establish and build? How did it function? What did that maintenance and
development of a community say about its leadership? Guesswork on my part was
necessary, but traits did present themselves and a portrait I trust did emerge.
Second, in the case of the Paseno’s
leaders, I was able to draw conclusions about their leadership skills based on
their military actions, which were quite elaborate. One thing that the evidence
revealed is that the Paseños had a long history of self-defense, whether
against Apache raiders or the demoralized Confederates who retreated from New
Mexico. It was obvious that the Paseño community had a core of leaders they
turned to, men who had previously considered how best to respond to threats,
and had put their lives on the line to lead those efforts. I had no direct
evidence enabling me to get inside the minds of Chico Barela (or “Varela”),
Sisto Salcido, or other leaders, but the reports of what actions they took was
very revealing. For example, the traditional Anglo account is that Barela was a
man not given to keeping his word. A different reading is that he was a master
of using deception to misdirect his enemy’s attentions and actions. He could
spot an opponent of weak resolve and then guide his actions by telling that
opponent what he wanted to hear. He played his opponents no less than Napoleon,
Robert E. Lee, or Rommel. That’s something you do in war, if you can.
Ultimately, Barela and his little army bit off more than they could chew, but
they conducted a skillful military operation that achieved short-term results
no one among the Anglos expected.
C.M. MAYO: About Father Antonio Severo Borrajo, who as you say was “most demonized by contemporary Anglo sources,” would you like to share the lost paragraph?
PAUL COOL: Unfortunately, whatever paragraph I had on Borrajo was in some unknown spot in some unknown draft that never got indexed. However, whatever I put in was influenced by this 2002 corrective view by Dr. Hendricks, who, since 2010, has been New Mexico’s State Historian. I do think Borrajo’s intolerance of the Protestants and the French-based Catholic teachings of the then current parish priest, Father Pierre Bourgade (later archbishop of Tucson), helped to keep the population stirred up, even if he was not the greedy demon falsely portrayed by his enemies. Unfortunately, Borrajo’s appearances during 1877, the climax of the crisis, are few and references to him at that point are probably less reliable than usual.
C.M. MAYO: Louis Cardis, the Italian-born businessman and stagecoach owner is a most intriguing character. Was it possible to find out more about his origins other than that he was from Piedmont and might have served as a captain in Giuseppe Garibaldi’s army?
PAUL COOL: There was more about his life story and others that just had to come out to get the book down to size. Anything I found that explains his actions did stay in the book. He is another character who, where the written record is concerned, is largely seen through the eyes of others. I detect no bigotry toward his constituents, none, but he did not do all he could to protect them from the power structure that was moving to seize their grandfathered rights in the salt lakes. For example, he signed his name to the 1876 Texas Constitution that enabled private citizens to own saline deposits, but never after, as far as I can tell, spurred his constituents to take legal action to forestall Anglo ownership.
C.M. MAYO: As you proceeded with your research, what most surprised you?
PAUL COOL: This project started as a planned 2-3 chapters in another book. I was surprised by the complexity and the epic sweep of the story, and by the characters who could leap off the page in the hands of writers much better than me. (If there were a viable market, this story deserves a ten-hour TV miniseries starring Russell Crowe and Edward James Olmos, among others.) If I could have made Salt Warriors twice as long, I would have. Pity the poor reader had I owned my own publishing house.
C.M. MAYO: You were able to talk to several of the descendants on both sides of the conflict. Were you surprised by how they saw it?
PAUL COOL: The families that remain in San Elizario knew they had reason to be proud of their ancestors, but over the years, exposed only to increasingly vague oral tradition and the Anglo-centric writings of later historians, they had largely lost the details of what really happened. In some cases, I had to reject the tradition, but in other instances, I thought tradition held up and explained what the records obscured. It was the first time I had to make sense of oral tradition, to treat it as evidence that deserved to be weighed rather than ignored.
On an early visit to San Elizario,
a leader of the local historical and genealogical society showed me where
tradition said certain key events happened. My research often showed otherwise,
and a few years later I was happy to return the favor, incorporating the
written evidence. We still had doubts about this and that event and had a great
time trying to make sense of the surviving evidence, including tradition.
C.M. MAYO: In reading about the organized crime in El Paso in the wake of the Salt War– in particular of cattle rustler John Kinney and his alliance with Sheriff Kerber– it’s tempting to make modern day comparisons with modern day drug trafficking, etc. Would you? Or was it something very different?
PAUL COOL: Well, it was much, much, less organized, and the crimes much more impromptu than we see with modern drug traffickers. My subsequent research has led me to believe that a better analogy would be the Bahamian pirates of the early 18th century, those who established a base of operations on Nassau temporarily free of British authority. (El Paso had a government, but totally ineffective keeping order.) There were criminal leaders (Blackbeard, for example), but individual pirates were more or less free to sign on to this piratical raid or that. They had to strictly follow orders during any voyage—at sea, everyone’s life depends on it—but otherwise were independent contractors who, between “jobs,” had no duty to follow anyone. Likewise, men might follow Kinney or not. That they raided with Kinney today did not prevent them from riding off to commit their own crimes tomorrow, or just sit around playing cards and drinking rot-gut till they went broke.
C.M. MAYO: One of the most astonishing things to me about the entire episode is that nearing the end of the book (p.280) we learn that the government never granted Zimpleman ownership of the salt lakes! So what happened after that? Who took possession of them? Who owns them now?
PAUL COOL: I too was astonished by that. I did learn that some business did extract salt into the 20th century, but more than that could not tell you. I simply had to move on.
C.M. MAYO: Anyone who drives east out of El Paso en route to Carlsbad NM passes right through the salt lakes. But to really see them, what is the best place to view them?
PAUL COOL: If one is simply traveling east or west, on the way to or from El Paso, one can get a good view at several points along Highway 62/180. My book’s cover painting, by artist Bob Boze Bell, is based on a photograph (found inside on the page facing the Introduction) that I took from this highway. A more immersive experience can be gained at the Gypsum Salt Dunes inside Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The lakes stretch for 100 miles, so I imagine there are any number of good sites for viewing.
C.M. MAYO: One of the stops on one of the routes from the Rio Grande out to the salt lakes is Hueco Tanks, an oasis with some important rock art that is now a State Park and Historic Site. For anyone interested in the history of the Salt War, is there any place there that would be especially relevant to see?
PAUL COOL: Among the signatures carved into the rocks of Hueco Tanks is that of Santiago Cooper, one of the Texas Rangers who survived the siege and battle of San Elizario.
A walking tour of San Elizario is essential. Many of the buildings date from 1877 and before.
With the benefit of the bird’s eye view painting in my book, it is possible to
follow the course of the actual fighting, as well as place other events that
took place in town. A walking tour guide is also available at the museum,
giving historic and architectural details on surviving structures.
In the city of El Paso, a very few
buildings survive, most notably the Magoffin House. One should also visit
nearby Mesilla, New Mexico, near Las Cruces, where A. J. Fountain published the
newspaper that gave the fullest, if one-sided, reporting of the events inside
El Paso County. The town square dates from before the salt war.
C.M. MAYO: Anything else you think I should have asked?
PAUL COOL: There was one other sound criticism of my book that deserves comment. In part because I did not use Mexican sources, I did not link the Paseños to Mexican national thinking and traditions regarding liberty, property, justice, and the right to rise in defense of one’s rights. Instead, I quite clearly linked them to traditions of New England’s minute men and the adoption of the U.S. Constitution.
I did that for two reasons. First, I know more
about U.S. traditions, and can stand on more solid ground. Second, I
intentionally attempted to make a point to an American audience. The
political philosophy driving the Paseños was of a universal nature but could be
and was expressed at the time by them (page 141) in terms that New Englanders
of 1775, Continental Congress delegates of 1789, and the Anglos who moved to El
Paso could understand, had their minds been open. However much the Paseños
acted within the traditions of the long Mexican quest for justice within the
law, they certainly acted within the U.S. tradition.
