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mediocre. Interview with Enrique Serna


Critique of mediocre culture. Interview with Enrique Serna
*

Ariel Ruiz Mondragón

The life of Mexican culture has in its levels-from academia to the middle of the show, the burlesque to the opaque intricacies literature, where it has been necessary to penetrate to appreciate their miseries and their wealth, their changes and their permanence.

Several of these aspects have been described and analyzed, with good humor, by Enrique Serna in many articles that have been set up in various publications, cultural affairs, and have been collected in his book Turns Black (Mexico, Cal and Arena), which performs a critical dissection of some dark aspects of cultural, political, social and literary Mexico.

recent book on that we had a chat with the author, with which we address, inter alia, the following topics: changes in the dissipated nightlife of the city of Mexico, changes in sexuality in recent years, the cultural status of Mexican cultural continuities and transformations generated by democratization and the role of literature in cultural change.

addition, we address the role of academia in the training of writers, the conservative aspects of certain transgressive practices, excessive pain and literary creation and the value of the counterculture. Serna

studied English Literature at UNAM, and has worked in various media: Links , Free Lyrics , Criticism and Confabulario , among others. He is the author of 6 novels, two collections of short stories and one of essays. He has won awards Mazatlan Narrative Literature and Colima.

Ariel Ruiz (AR): Why collect and publish essays gathered here in this book?

Enrique Serna (ES): Because the literary journalism wants to survive on the reader's mind, but it is very difficult to dig up stories and articles from the archive. Then, precisely to facilitate this task my editors and I thought it would be interesting for some people to publish this book, that happened when I was gathering this material to make a selection of the best reviews of what I posted in the last 10 years in various media. I realized that many of them had ideas that were evolving from one text to another, which focused at a different angle, so I decided to group them thematically so that readers perceive this line of continuity.

AR: At the beginning of the first chapter you dedicate some articles to the subject of the clubs, the passing of the old cabaret burlesque striptease . The past does not like much, but it is also not a natural cultural change, as you mentioned that occurs in the language, although it is a degeneration?

ES: Of course it is a change, but changes can be made forward or backward, and I think this is a setback in the sense that it has dehumanized the environment, the consumer of those dens plucked out most of the time, and I think also the way to the girls is quite inhumane. Slums of old allowed a more close, more conversation, he could make friends, and that I miss dearly. I think that also favored such friendships, for example, the emergence of the bolero in the thirties and forties. Consider, for example, Agustín Lara, who fell in love a lot of prostitutes in the clubs where he played.

So I think that tradition is all I see is lost, it really hurts me, I feel nostalgia for it.

AR: Would it make any sense to try to revive today, these shows, cabaret burlesque?

ES: Yes I would, but I do not know if it could really, because usually most of the clientele of these clubs is youth. Those who already passed the 40 we're removing a bit of nightlife usually for health reasons, and the young who never knew this, they have different tastes, including music (such as reggaeton and similar horrors), and probably also feel they are treated well in the slums today, let them.

AR: Another part of the book contains a set of views on the evolution of sex: androgynous beauty, the happy life of couples in separation or "virginity on." What are the major changes in terms of sexuality in the period in which he wrote the articles?

ES: Well, it's a period of liberal attitudes, which is accompanied, paradoxically, one of the terror of AIDS. This really has me very worried lately, because I just saw an online video that is circulating a lot, which is called AIDS myth, in which several prizes Laureates and leading scientists argue that the AIDS virus is an invention that does not exist, nobody has been able to isolate, which is not scientifically proven its existence, that HIV testing does not work for absolutely nothing (in fact, already in countries like England did not make it), and the treatment of HIV positive people only serves to further destroy their health. I really think that is something that should be vented so much more in the public because, according to the opinion of all these scientists, it is likely that this has been a campaign to benefit large companies that have patented HIV testing and especially for a repressive offensive tremendous which is what we had in the last five years.

AR: Something that runs through the book, I found in several trials and especially in the past, is the condition of the Mexican: the oppressed and dominated, endorses racism and discrimination that are imposed. Does this cultural condition can be reversed?

ES: Yes, it has to do with historical oppression. Finally there is a trauma and some injuries that we have not had time to heal because I believe that the conditions of marginalization and exclusion remain. There can be no recovery of the self-esteem while this happens.

I do not claim that the Mexicans have a patriotic pride, to feel superior others, in fact, I think this pride mask an inferiority complex (and not only have told me, but many people). But what is that Mexicans want us to feel inferior or not superior to anyone, but they really made us feel equal to anybody, because I think that's what you can counter this culture of self-loathing, which, moreover, serves much the mafias that control the political and economic power in Mexico.

AR: You do in the "Poderdumbre" a very serious cultural criticism, which also reaches the same company in the article "Sociolatría" and there is another where it is disappointed that citizenship has not made the leap to adulthood in 2000. What are the most critical aspects that you find in Mexican society in cultural terms?, Is the democratization of the country changed in some culture?

ES: I think just from the transition to democracy in 2000-that many thought it was going to bring a much more substantial social and political life of Mexico, we discovered that a change of party in power actually does not mean much. I think it has meant, above all, because neither the government of Fox and this administration have dared, or wanted to "dismantle the corporate structures of the old regime.

But there is something worse, and that is something that we're seeing in all fields of social life: the PRI is not just the ideology of a party, but a culture which is imbued with all of Mexican society : the culture of the swindle, that things have to get through influence, illegality, does not deprive the state of law in Mexico, the privileges of a few corporations labor, business, and so on.

So this is a culture that has spread to the other parties, ie, PRI is in the PRD, PAN PRI is so that we are facing a problem that is tucked inside the company itself. Is a educational problem and a cultural problem.

overcome is the main campaign to confront society in a self-healing process, of course, has to start being much more demanding the accountability of rulers, and try to build games that truly represent our interests and not seek power for power, as at present.

AR: In the process of political and cultural change, what role can the literature?

ES: Literature can raise concerns and disagreements in some individuals. I really do not think I can bring about social change, but waking complaints, contributes a little to probably these individuals begin to take action and to demand their rights, and in that sense maybe can help a little, but in the long term, there are changes that are levied on the overnight.

AR: There is an article called "The thesis introverted", which indicated that grade academic work in literature are more concerned with methods and parameters that actually produce something of quality. In that sense, what is the role of academia in the training of writers?, What writers are giving us the academy?

ES: Well, despite the fact that academia is a meritocracy where usually the patients and more cutters come to complete their doctorates, has always been valuable and creative people in the academy. In my view I had as a student of Literature, I had superb teachers at the same time were good writers and essayists, as Ernesto Mejía Sánchez, Gonzalo Celorio, César Rodríguez and José Pascual Buxó Chicharro.

It is also true, unfortunately, that academia is a world that tolerates and overlaps much mediocrity, and a way of overlap is giving so much importance to the methodology, rather than focus more on inputs and ideas.

I think this is not only national academic environment. In another Articles in this book speak of gender studies at universities in U.S. and Europe, which obviously I think they are a big factory scrap, they are based on preconceived ideas that try to convert the civic merit academic merit , and I think this is a transgression.

AR: In several of the articles there is also a criticism of certain attitudes and behaviors that we go through offending, such as swingers, Satanism, body piercings. But what is the conservative streak is finally behind these behaviors "transgressive"?

ES: I think it's curious to see: how, sometimes, people who want to be free, to subvert the order, just falling into something more repressive, or just turning and following the moral game attempting to challenge.

This happens a lot in the field of subversion, drug violations, for example. I talk a lot of people, to reach a point of his office, begins to see his addiction as a penance rather than a pleasure, and from there it becomes a self-harm similar to that practiced by the saints.

This is something that has to do partly with my own personal experience, and also with literary experiences I've tried to mix in these items.

AR: It struck me that scores on the authoritarianism that exudes feminism. How does it manifest in the supposedly progressive causes authoritarianism?

ES: The is no doubt, just look what they have done in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Academy, have taken over many departments of many universities. I think this is a principle of corruption within his movement. But that does not mean that I'm really anti-feminist, I prefer a thousand times an intelligent woman who works, a submissive housewife and cloying.

So in that sense I am a feminist. The criticism that I am doing is to certain aberrations, some deviation of feminism, which I think redound to their own detriment.

AR: You also make a claim of pain, of grief, excess to the creative process. What is the role of it in literature?

ES: also commented in another section of the book, called "Transgressions of office", I really do not believe in the myth of the bohemian artist. I, of course, that life must be enjoyed, I had times of being a party animal, strong enough, but for literature it should be clear-minded. So the idea that the media spends a lot of the counterculture, to believe that simply taking a position is transgressive aesthetic value, I think is false. We see it all the time, I cite examples such as Molotov, they do a song where they say "Puto, puto, puto ..." and that trying to sell it as an interesting innovation.

I think it should be within the same self counterculture that is made of high culture itself.

AR: In this direction, what value gives you the counterculture in the cultural landscape of the country? In the book there are some signs.

ES: I think he had the courage to remove stagnant water, putting into question the gap between popular culture and high culture. In Mexico has been very harmful to have this gap in other countries Latin America, including Brazil, has been cleared, some of the best poets have been Brazilian popular music composers such as Vinicius de Moraes, Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque. That is something that greatly benefits the song.

does not happen in Mexico, I think he would do a lot more need to have good novelists who were pianists, good poets who were composers of popular music, etc., to make themselves more these communicating vessels. And that is something that has been proposed in Mexico, especially the counterculture, because high culture becomes castor and cultural establishment does not want to ever mix with the people that we have to have had this culture elite, the Upper Room, which hosted many intellectuals who had an awareness of cultural leadership and living in a minority.

So in that sense it has brought the counterculture very interesting things, for example in the narrative, as in the novel by José Agustín, several of his works opened up a huge avenue for all writers who came later. Just compare that with the way the writers wrote the generation of so-called Casa del Lago, to whom he was as embarrassed to say they took to the streets of insurgents, or took a taxi on Avenida Obregon. As they were afraid they were going to seem parochial if they made an accurate picture of your circumstances and this I think was a very absurd. This broke

"I think very rightly, José Agustín, who also liberalized the use of colloquial language. But I've also noticed, for example, that the Mexican readership is mostly very conservative: the historical novel is a genre much more read than any other novel. I compare, for example, among my novels The seducer of parental and green fruit, the first is a historical novel that many people will read because you feel while being educated, while the other is a intimate novel that addresses the issue of homosexuality, and I knew from the time of publishing was going to have far fewer readers.

But I think we should insist on these issues, but is confined to a minority audience, because they are windows that can open people.

AR: On the other hand, what is in the counterculture excesses?

ES: to be too self-indulgent, and fall into the vulgarity.


* A shorter version of this interview was published in Millennium weekly, no. 594, March 9, 2009. Reproduced with permission of the director.

How To Get Rid Of My 8th Month Old Mucus

Links and discussion of Mexico's public life. Interview with Hector Aguilar Camin


Links and discussion of Mexico's public life
Interview with Hector Aguilar Camin *

Ariel Ruiz Mondragón

After the blow to Excelsior July Scherer in July 1976 who were part of the activities of the newspaper founded new publications that critical speech constituted the reality of the country. Among them would be found not only journalistic issues, but also literary and academic spirit.

In this regard, undoubtedly one of the political-cultural magazines in the country it is Links . Founded in 1978 by a large group of intellectuals, primarily identified with the left-has been an essential reference of national debate for three decades, which has sometimes led it to be, itself, a discussion item.

Earlier this year the magazine has been the fourth change of direction: Hector Aguilar Camin has resumed, and before he had led, with whom we talked about the history of the publication and its future plans.

Aguilar Camin, a PhD in History at El Colegio de Mexico, recently received a doctorate honoris causa of the Universidad Veracruzana. Contributor to newspapers as Unomásuno , La Jornada (which was deputy director) and Millennium newspaper, received the National Journalism Award in 1986. He has authored over 11 books, which include the novels and stories, as well as Mexican history and politics. He was also the host of television open area, which was broadcast on Channel 2.

Ariel Ruiz (AR): Broadly speaking, what are the major changes that have occurred since Nexus was founded in 1978?

Hector Aguilar Camin (HAC): I see several lines of continuity, but I have no clear major changes. Has a change of address: Enrique Florescano directs from 1978 to 1982, I, 1983 to 1995 Luis Miguel Aguilar, 1995 to 2003, and José Woldenberg, 2003 to 2008.

I think the magazine was a magazine Florescano more academic, intellectual, with a very important component of scientific thinking, much more oriented towards the world of academia. The magazine that I did was much more oriented towards political and literary discussion. I think of Luis Miguel, who was with Rafael Pérez Gay, "was perhaps the finest magazine we've done: a highly refined intellectual, thematic design, but with little strength in the public debate. It was a magazine full of treasures, great authors, great books.

Then I think the magazine that made José Woldenberg was much more oriented towards the issue of public policy agenda of the fundamental problems of the institutional life of Mexico, was a magazine more reflective, more balanced, more measured, also taking an insertion important literary and cultural. The

we want to do now Mauleón Hector, Cesar Blanco, Kathi Millares, I and the editorial board is a magazine that holds the best of them all, and have a very clear emphasis journalism high register, and a touch literary feel throughout the magazine.

AR: There were also changes Links promoted in the Mexican press, and in tandem with Unomásuno in its infancy, what is your contribution?

HAC: I think what really brought Links back to the Mexican press was the attention to what they had to say about the day to day politics, people who did not come from journalism or politics, but had been formed in academia, in the cloisters of intellectuals in the literary life of the country but had not done (with exceptions) in a systematic critique of public life.

From Links (not the magazine, but from that time) began to be very frequent what is now the everyday currency, which hardly has an intellectual, a scholar of repute or a scientist with some recognition, which has no involvement as a critical observer of public life. There is more to see the pages of newspapers. Links think was a trigger for this process.

AR: It was also a magazine that accompanied the Mexican transition to democracy. In this sense, what was the influence, in his opinion, had the magazine in the democratization process in our country?

HAC: In many ways. The magazine had actually originated in concern inequality, and on it mounted after the issues of democracy and electoral transparency. Is a continuous fountain of ideas, controversies, debates around two central issues: the political economy of the country, the source of its crisis and how to cope, and the problem of Mexico's democratic transition.

came to have a major influence as a magazine, and also by the fact that many of the authors pass to public life and become officers, and as such gain, then some ability to implement their ideas . Is the paradigmatic and exemplary José Woldenberg, who after having been a excellent observer and critic of the country's electoral reality, ended up becoming an expert through his academic and journalistic concerns, and eventually became an officer in the electoral arena for years. I think he left in his personal performance, an extraordinary legacy of efficiency, simplicity, institutional commitment, intellectual quality. It is, perhaps, the character who best embodies this double aspect of the contributors to Links , who were intellectuals, academics, and at the same time they were hungry for political participation, public administration and government.

Also, for example, Enrique Florescano was editor of the magazine first, and then made a very illustrious career in the field of public administration, culture: it was long time director of INAH, and then has coordinated many areas of CONACULTA, with an enormous number of publications . Always, in all things he has done, has been on these two things: intellectual, prolific historian, full of editorial initiatives with a very impressive bibliography, while the maker, the officer in the field of culture want promote open, build new things.

AR: You are one of the most prominent intellectuals who have accompanied the country's democratic transition. What changes have produced the democratization process in the intellectual?

HAC: I think the election issue and the political transition took too long, but ultimately fruitful too, in our heads and our writings. It is now clear that we were a lot of things out, and that the electoral and democratic transformation of the country is not enough to make a just, equitable, efficient.

now lags behind the agenda of the democratic transition, and begin to appear equally fundamental topics: the institutional design of the powers, insecurity, growth of organized crime and the issue of modernity in the sense of how the country compares with the global process of modernization.

So, I have the impression that we have come a long way and yet very little that the country has lost many opportunities. I have self-criticism that perhaps we were not smart enough to pose problems early and watch them clearly. I feel that we are still clouded the horizon nationalist revolutionary and nationalist pedagogy throughout the PRI, and that prevented us from seeing clearly problems such as oil, the state's role, the role of the company, the role of law, and there we have the head taken by many taboos. Tolerate unlawful because we believe that there is some justice in the cases of people who break the law, we believe that PEMEX is the bastion of our national dignity (to me seems rather an enterprise worthy of being passed to the scale to see what is being .)

So, I think we are still a lot of cobwebs, and perhaps in this new stage of Links would be good to make a list of taboos to be attacked without mercy, we will do, to see how many enemies we got.

AR: From the History of Links , and in this new era, what has been the political-ideological definition of publication?

HAC: Always I thought of the orbit of social democracy. If I had to define the type of guidance that I like for me and for a magazine Nexos cone is a Azaña Manuel said when told that was defined, whether it was socialist or liberal, and said: "I am strong socialist liberal. "

I believe in collective guarantees given by socialism, because I think it's the only way that everyone can get to enjoy the freedoms that are the essence of what we want from a citizen: to be free at all orders, physical freedom, mental freedom, religious freedom, as well as economic freedom and social freedom, which are the most difficult because they are full of restrictions. Probably pure liberalism can not guarantee the latter two freedoms, social and economic, needs a socialist or socializing component. Then, in order to fulfill the ideal liberal socialist need a floor.

AR: Seeing the first issue of the brand new direction, I think they're doing a magazine with another player profile, I also looking to attract other groups, as well as can be seen in the online version: the young. What the reader profile you envision for this new phase of the magazine? HAC

I do not know if we were thinking of a reader, but While the quality of what we were doing. We had, for example, a group of movie was, of course, young people who had their own interests, and there was not even to consider what the reader wanted to go.

When I started thinking about this, I remembered something that dates back to 1978. When Enrique Florescano founded the magazine, I was the deputy editor. The following year came to be part of the drafting Rafael Pérez Gay. Florescano was then 41 years, I was 32, Perez Gay 21, and the dean of the Editorial Board, which was Pablo González Casanova, was 63. I would like a magazine that could talk to all those generations, I would like to have partners in the journal all these ages. That would make them a natural way we speak, at least in parts of the magazine, all these ages.

AR: What are the main challenges of Links into the future?

HAC: I think the main challenge is the quality of content. If we follow where we begin, this is a number of high-quality, improve and grow in terms of quality, the rest will come alone, in the sense that we will be very acceptable to advertisers and readers.

would put the number one challenge in the quality of magazine, I think that means making each section as done by hand, with an intensity and a microscopic search for quality, detail by detail. It seems that if we do that, readers will feel it, you'll see it, and advertisers will too.
Then, with a magazine that is connected with readers is very easy to approach advertisers in search of resources.

AR: One of the fronts where it has been questioned more Links is its relationship with political power. What has been the relationship of Links with the government, and now with the government?

HAC: It's a fairly magnified by the newspapers, which is currently nonexistent, there is no relation to governments beyond the treatment that may have to invite someone to work, or find a sponsorship advertising. Actually, it was so long in the magazine.

Another thing that was very visible is my personal relationship with President Salinas, and then as all that covered the magazine, as if it reflected this relationship. I, for anniversary number 30, I checked the magazine of those times with great care, and found quite diverse and so wide in its records as it had been before. I did not see the actual content of these magazines is nothing to what some in the press said, those who did so in part because they wanted to beat Salinas, and I sort of criticizing me for doing so. Actually, I think the really existing magazine was far from what the image that those of the press built.

Nor do I think that too many changes now. I never thought or acted, of course, in a magazine in the service of any political interest, sufficient to prove that I have never held public office in my life. Would have to be very awkward to have put something in the service of political power without having benefited from that.

Well, it's part of the literary quarrel, as well as cultural and political dispute, which one has to take the case. As I said President De la Madrid when they came criticism of their children in the imminence of the election: "They are rotten fruits of the season."

is impossible not to, but far from reality.

AR: We talked a lot of changes, but what do you consider the great continuities sen, the permanence of the proposed magazine Nexos ?

HAC: We want to remain the political magazine, cultural and literary doyenne of Mexico. We want to remain part of the discussion of public life, we want to be a part intelligent, thorough, balanced, but also intense and critical the reality of our country and respect the reality that our country and the reality of the world.

In that sense, Links was from the beginning intended as a critical review to discuss and promote changes in Mexican society, a critical review for change. We are in the same, so we have not changed anything.

* A shorter version of this interview appeared in Millennium weekly, no. 599, February 9, 2009. Reprinted with permission from the director.