Venezuelan Authors in Spain
Towards the end of the 1980s, thanks to the efforts of Katyna Henríquez, Siruela published the complete works of José Antonio Ramos Sucre. There are no copies left of that beautiful edition, and today the great poet from Cumaná is once again unknown. A decade later, in an effort that owes a great deal to Ana Nuño, Lumen published the collected poetry of Juan Sánchez Peláez, that served for many years as the point of entry for global readers into that strange and hallucinatory voice of ours. But no trace remains on the bookshelves of that austere edition with a brown cover. More recently, few people have known that an edition of the complete short stories of José Balza, published thanks to the efforts of a top-notch researcher from Granada named Ernesto Pérez Zúñiga, was left trapped in the deposits of the publishing house Paréntesis, after it quietly went bankrupt.
But not all the news is about omissions, of course. Luckily, there is evidence of a sustained though sometimes imperceptible ascent. The publishing house Candaya, for example, which is celebrating its first decade these days, has published books by José Barroeta, Ednodio Quintero, Victoria de Stefano, Marina Gasparini and María Auxiliadora Álvarez, to mention some of the more well-known names. Just a few years ago, Paginas de Espuma welcomed the complete short stories of Arturo Uslar Pietri, edited by Gustavo Guerrero. And Guerrero, for Galaxia Gutenberg, dedicated a beautiful anthology to the poetry of Rafael Cadenas, Vicente Gerbasi, Eugenio Montejo, José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Juan Sánchez Peláez and Guillermo Sucre. The prestigious Anagrama has awarded prizes recently both to Alberto Barrera Tyszka for his novel The Sickness, and to Gustavo Guerrero for his study of the “commissioned” novel La Catira, by Camilo José Cela. Finally, the case of Boris Izaguirre, with several novels under his belt, already enters the circuit of authors who are sought and venerated by the general public.
Special mention should be given to the publishing house Pre-Textos from Valencia, which has been noting the quality of Venezuelan poetry for several years, at first with initial editions of Vicente Gerbasi and Juan Liscano, and more recently with the systematic pulication of works by Rafael Cadenas and Eugenio Montejo, who are already authors of reference for global poetry. In 2012 Pre-Textos maintained that lineage by publishing the selected work of Alejandro Oliveros along with a poetry collection by Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas. For the end of 2014 they’ve announced the collected works of Yolanda Pantin and Igor Barreto.
Additionally, the Venezuelan authors who have migrated to Spain, a type of secret diaspora that’s no longer so, not only publish their own work with Spanish houses, but are authentic promoters of their fellow countrymen. Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez and Juan Carlos Chirinos stand out as perhaps the most major voices, but right beside them are Slavko Zupcic, Armando Luigi Castañeda and the precocious Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles. All of this constitutes a map of powerful voices that continue to add meaning and to open a path for themselves by the force of their talent within a demanding and competitive publishing world. There are many others who, in the field of fiction or poetry, are just starting to make themselves known, but the phenomenon responds to a line of expansion, and not regression.
It’s worth remembering that these Venezuelan cultural landscapes in foreign lands are a symptom of our times. Venezuela has gone from being a country that welcomed immigrants to a country that expels its citizens and their talents. All the effort that can be seen in Spain, by vigorous publishing houses and writers, is the work of a chain of impulses, of enthusiasm and no small amount of faith. On that shore they are reconstructing the face that is being undone on this side. A country that is not the one that is drowning us right now will recognize what these sons of the diaspora did to keep alive the pulse of a culture that refuses to weaken amidst empty proclamations and military parades.
{ Antonio López Ortega, El Nacional, 5 June 2014 }
Showing posts with label Gustavo Guerrero. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gustavo Guerrero. Show all posts
8.28.2013
La extranjería se hizo un tema esencial de la literatura venezolana / Michelle Roche Rodríguez
Foreignness Has Become An Essential Topic In Venezuelan Literature
Images of the journey, nostalgia and hybridity are the contributions of migration to the work of Venezuelan authors.
Since the end of the 20th century immigration has become a reality for the country that up until then had received with open arms the European diaspora that survived wars and dictatorships, as well as those Latin Americans coming from nations suffering from violence and poverty. Approximately 40% of Venezuelans today dream of establishing themselves somewhere else and nearly half a million of them accomplished this last year, which means that the separation from friends and family has become a national trauma and, of course, this has also occurred in the literary material of many writers, especially those who have established themselves in other places.
Proof of the centrality that understanding the phenomenon has acquired in Venezuelan letters is the publication in 2012 of the poetry anthology Exilios: poesía latinoamericana del siglo XX, edited by Marina Gasparini. In this book, uprooting, as well as nostalgia and diaspora, construct the metaphors of contemporary authors. Another example is the panel that represented Venezuela in the 2012 Guadalajara International Book Fair, entitled: “Venezuela: Migratory Narratives,” where the conversation focused on migration as an element in writing. Definitive proof is the recent publication of Pasaje de ida: 15 escritores venezolanos en el exterior, a selection of texts compiled by Silda Cordoliani in which the fiction writer —who still lives in Caracas— interviews various authors about what Venezuela feels like from abroad.
Literary Turtles. The move made by Venezuelan authors is noted in their work through the use of the metaphor of the journey, the description of estrangement in certain characters and the use of nostalgia as an emotional atmosphere in texts. The language also changes, because the autochthonous is amplified by what is heard in new everyday encounters. And yet, Venezuela remains a trademark in the background.
“In the majority of the writers who have left, the center of their literary imaginary continues to be Venezuela. Authors like Israel Centeno, Gustavo Valle, Camilo Pino, Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez, Juan Carlos Chirinos and Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles are turtles who have taken their country with them on their backs,” points out the literary critic Violeta Rojo.
The editor Luis Yslas, for whom the sensation of foreignness —“that feeling of being far from a place that might grant a sense of belonging”— is inherent to the creative person, explores Rojo’s idea further: “To the movement from one register to another —the literary exercise— is added the movement beyond a territory. That second movement, for private or public reasons, might install itself (or not) in their works, although this might not necessarily happen in every case.”
Although he recognizes that Venezuelan writers abroad belong to different generations and realities, he points out: “The migratory experience has given them a vision that, without abandoning the references of the native land, expands, enriches, multiplies the notion of belonging.”
The Projection of the National. Many critics see the change of residence of national authors as opportunities for the projection of Venezuelan literature, as was the case with Argentine literature due to the diaspora that originated in the Dirty War, or with Colombian literature as a result of the conflict of the drug wars. But not everyone agrees: “I’m not sure that the departure of writers from the country will help internationalize our tradition. I think that process is moving in another direction, I get the impression that Spaniards publish themselves and have a quota of minorities,” says Rojo.
For the poet and essayist Gustavo Guerrero, who lives in Paris, recommending Venezuelan books and participating in the dissemination of his country’s letters are means of assuming his identity in his work as literary adviser at the Gallimard publishing house. “I’ve contributed to creating dossiers, to organizing round tables and to editing works that might allow one to influence that unity within the university,” he explains. Like Guerrero in France, Méndez Guédez and Chirinos are active promoters of Venezuelan literature in Spain, where they live.
In a world that is more and more globalized, the opportunity exists for establishing links between Venezuelan authors in and out of the country, so as to finally crystallize a solid literary tradition.
{ Michelle Roche Rodríguez, El Nacional, 24 August 2013 }
Images of the journey, nostalgia and hybridity are the contributions of migration to the work of Venezuelan authors.
Gustavo Guerrero: “Without ceasing to be Venezuelan, I feel as close to France as a recruit for the Foreign Legion.” Photo: Alexandra Blanco
Since the end of the 20th century immigration has become a reality for the country that up until then had received with open arms the European diaspora that survived wars and dictatorships, as well as those Latin Americans coming from nations suffering from violence and poverty. Approximately 40% of Venezuelans today dream of establishing themselves somewhere else and nearly half a million of them accomplished this last year, which means that the separation from friends and family has become a national trauma and, of course, this has also occurred in the literary material of many writers, especially those who have established themselves in other places.
Proof of the centrality that understanding the phenomenon has acquired in Venezuelan letters is the publication in 2012 of the poetry anthology Exilios: poesía latinoamericana del siglo XX, edited by Marina Gasparini. In this book, uprooting, as well as nostalgia and diaspora, construct the metaphors of contemporary authors. Another example is the panel that represented Venezuela in the 2012 Guadalajara International Book Fair, entitled: “Venezuela: Migratory Narratives,” where the conversation focused on migration as an element in writing. Definitive proof is the recent publication of Pasaje de ida: 15 escritores venezolanos en el exterior, a selection of texts compiled by Silda Cordoliani in which the fiction writer —who still lives in Caracas— interviews various authors about what Venezuela feels like from abroad.
Literary Turtles. The move made by Venezuelan authors is noted in their work through the use of the metaphor of the journey, the description of estrangement in certain characters and the use of nostalgia as an emotional atmosphere in texts. The language also changes, because the autochthonous is amplified by what is heard in new everyday encounters. And yet, Venezuela remains a trademark in the background.
“In the majority of the writers who have left, the center of their literary imaginary continues to be Venezuela. Authors like Israel Centeno, Gustavo Valle, Camilo Pino, Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez, Juan Carlos Chirinos and Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles are turtles who have taken their country with them on their backs,” points out the literary critic Violeta Rojo.
The editor Luis Yslas, for whom the sensation of foreignness —“that feeling of being far from a place that might grant a sense of belonging”— is inherent to the creative person, explores Rojo’s idea further: “To the movement from one register to another —the literary exercise— is added the movement beyond a territory. That second movement, for private or public reasons, might install itself (or not) in their works, although this might not necessarily happen in every case.”
Although he recognizes that Venezuelan writers abroad belong to different generations and realities, he points out: “The migratory experience has given them a vision that, without abandoning the references of the native land, expands, enriches, multiplies the notion of belonging.”
The Projection of the National. Many critics see the change of residence of national authors as opportunities for the projection of Venezuelan literature, as was the case with Argentine literature due to the diaspora that originated in the Dirty War, or with Colombian literature as a result of the conflict of the drug wars. But not everyone agrees: “I’m not sure that the departure of writers from the country will help internationalize our tradition. I think that process is moving in another direction, I get the impression that Spaniards publish themselves and have a quota of minorities,” says Rojo.
For the poet and essayist Gustavo Guerrero, who lives in Paris, recommending Venezuelan books and participating in the dissemination of his country’s letters are means of assuming his identity in his work as literary adviser at the Gallimard publishing house. “I’ve contributed to creating dossiers, to organizing round tables and to editing works that might allow one to influence that unity within the university,” he explains. Like Guerrero in France, Méndez Guédez and Chirinos are active promoters of Venezuelan literature in Spain, where they live.
In a world that is more and more globalized, the opportunity exists for establishing links between Venezuelan authors in and out of the country, so as to finally crystallize a solid literary tradition.
{ Michelle Roche Rodríguez, El Nacional, 24 August 2013 }
3.14.2013
¿Qué literatura tras Chávez? / Gustavo Guerrero
What Literature After Chávez?
A couple days ago, Beatriz Lecumberri, the author of La revolución sentimental (2012) —undoubtedly one of the fairest and best informed works of journalism on Venezuela’s recent history— wrote in this same newspaper: “Chávez, over the years, also continued to leave an important part of the citizenry outside his project for the country. With me or against me. And political exclusion substituted social exclusion.”
Literature has not been an exception to these discriminatory practices. Today there is an abundance of testimonies of the gap they have created among many writers and people within the world of letters. More so considering that, before the arrival of Chávez to power, the world of Venezuelan literature, as visitors from abroad would notice with surprise, was a very small space, civil and familiar. Under the protective shade of our oil-producing State, the struggles for symbolic capital were basically resolved through aesthetic positioning and the distribution of administrative positions and national prizes, without the ideological positions of individuals disturbing a certain climate of respect and cordiality. Many of the current directors of Chavista cultural institutions and many of their current opponents were thus able to share, for many years, identical benefits and they enjoyed relatively balanced dealings.
The radical nature of how things change starting in 1998 modifies within a few years this relatively strange landscape in Latin America. Towards 2006, the novelist Ana Teresa Torres can’t avoid confirming it: “Today, at the principal activities organized by the government (writers conferences, book fairs, poetry festivals) and the international events with official invitations for Venezuela, the only required writers are ones aligned with the government, almost always the ones who form part of the bureaucratic payroll. Opposition writers publicly denounce that their participation has been excluded; others, the majority, exclude themselves voluntarily and their absence is notorious in the events and celebrations of government-aligned writers (and vice-versa). National prizes tend to orbit suspiciously among the unconditional ones...”
I don’t think that, in the seven years that separate us from the Torres citation, the discriminatory drift has ceased or diminished. But one of the collateral effects it has produced, has been to push many authors to go in search of other instances of intellectual and literary legitimation and, in particular, that decisive instance of readers. As opposed to what would happen about 20 or 30 years ago, today their numbers have increased with the reading campaigns and moreover today their interest continues to grow for everything that Venezuelan literature might be able to say about the country. Not in vain have some spoken of, until about two years ago, a small fiction boom that was related to the double conjunction highlighted by the development of the editorial market and the educational policies of the government. Authors such as Alberto Barrera Tyszka, Federico Vegas or Francisco Suniaga, for example, today enjoy en independence that allows them the dissemination of their novels among an important group of readers and they are not subject, like others, to only depending on the institutional acknowledgment of the cultural apparatus of the State.
The few attempts that have been made up until now to reunify the field and reconcile the writers from both factions have been unsuccessful. Thus, the II Internacional Encounter of Fiction Writers in Venezuela organized by the Ministry of Popular Power for Culture last November ended with an exchange of accusations and an open confrontation between opposition novelists, such as Gisela Kozak, and Chavista figures, such as Carlos Noguera and Humberto Mata.
However, no one is unaware that sports and culture have traditionally been privileged circles for minimizing differences and negotiating consensus in situations of extreme political polarization. If the fervor for the national soccer team, the Vinotinto, continues to be one of the few factors capable of gathering Venezuelans together, it isn’t naive to think that sooner or later literature might be able to open one or another space for dialogue. Because there is nothing more urgent in a divided country, full of hatred and where weapons circulate in large quantities.
A la pregunta ¿qué literatura después de Chávez?, la respuesta, en la coyuntura actual, es, pues, una que busque afanosamente las palabras, las narrativas y los símbolos que nos devuelvan a todos el respeto, la sensatez, la tolerancia y el espíritu crítico; una que cree las condiciones mínimas para restablecer los vínculos comunitarios en una nación hecha pedazos.
To the question “What literature after Chávez?”, the answer, at the current juncture, the answer is one that might laboriously seek the words, the narratives and the symbols in order to give us back respect, common sense, tolerance and the critical spirit; one that creates the minimal conditions for reestablishing community ties in a nation that has been torn to pieces.
Gustavo Guerrero is Editorial Consultant for Latin America at the publishing house Gallimard in Paris.
{ Gustavo Guerrero, El País, 13 March 2013 }
Venezuelan citizens wait to receive a free copy of Don Quixote, Caracas, 2005./EFE
A couple days ago, Beatriz Lecumberri, the author of La revolución sentimental (2012) —undoubtedly one of the fairest and best informed works of journalism on Venezuela’s recent history— wrote in this same newspaper: “Chávez, over the years, also continued to leave an important part of the citizenry outside his project for the country. With me or against me. And political exclusion substituted social exclusion.”
Literature has not been an exception to these discriminatory practices. Today there is an abundance of testimonies of the gap they have created among many writers and people within the world of letters. More so considering that, before the arrival of Chávez to power, the world of Venezuelan literature, as visitors from abroad would notice with surprise, was a very small space, civil and familiar. Under the protective shade of our oil-producing State, the struggles for symbolic capital were basically resolved through aesthetic positioning and the distribution of administrative positions and national prizes, without the ideological positions of individuals disturbing a certain climate of respect and cordiality. Many of the current directors of Chavista cultural institutions and many of their current opponents were thus able to share, for many years, identical benefits and they enjoyed relatively balanced dealings.
The radical nature of how things change starting in 1998 modifies within a few years this relatively strange landscape in Latin America. Towards 2006, the novelist Ana Teresa Torres can’t avoid confirming it: “Today, at the principal activities organized by the government (writers conferences, book fairs, poetry festivals) and the international events with official invitations for Venezuela, the only required writers are ones aligned with the government, almost always the ones who form part of the bureaucratic payroll. Opposition writers publicly denounce that their participation has been excluded; others, the majority, exclude themselves voluntarily and their absence is notorious in the events and celebrations of government-aligned writers (and vice-versa). National prizes tend to orbit suspiciously among the unconditional ones...”
I don’t think that, in the seven years that separate us from the Torres citation, the discriminatory drift has ceased or diminished. But one of the collateral effects it has produced, has been to push many authors to go in search of other instances of intellectual and literary legitimation and, in particular, that decisive instance of readers. As opposed to what would happen about 20 or 30 years ago, today their numbers have increased with the reading campaigns and moreover today their interest continues to grow for everything that Venezuelan literature might be able to say about the country. Not in vain have some spoken of, until about two years ago, a small fiction boom that was related to the double conjunction highlighted by the development of the editorial market and the educational policies of the government. Authors such as Alberto Barrera Tyszka, Federico Vegas or Francisco Suniaga, for example, today enjoy en independence that allows them the dissemination of their novels among an important group of readers and they are not subject, like others, to only depending on the institutional acknowledgment of the cultural apparatus of the State.
The few attempts that have been made up until now to reunify the field and reconcile the writers from both factions have been unsuccessful. Thus, the II Internacional Encounter of Fiction Writers in Venezuela organized by the Ministry of Popular Power for Culture last November ended with an exchange of accusations and an open confrontation between opposition novelists, such as Gisela Kozak, and Chavista figures, such as Carlos Noguera and Humberto Mata.
However, no one is unaware that sports and culture have traditionally been privileged circles for minimizing differences and negotiating consensus in situations of extreme political polarization. If the fervor for the national soccer team, the Vinotinto, continues to be one of the few factors capable of gathering Venezuelans together, it isn’t naive to think that sooner or later literature might be able to open one or another space for dialogue. Because there is nothing more urgent in a divided country, full of hatred and where weapons circulate in large quantities.
A la pregunta ¿qué literatura después de Chávez?, la respuesta, en la coyuntura actual, es, pues, una que busque afanosamente las palabras, las narrativas y los símbolos que nos devuelvan a todos el respeto, la sensatez, la tolerancia y el espíritu crítico; una que cree las condiciones mínimas para restablecer los vínculos comunitarios en una nación hecha pedazos.
To the question “What literature after Chávez?”, the answer, at the current juncture, the answer is one that might laboriously seek the words, the narratives and the symbols in order to give us back respect, common sense, tolerance and the critical spirit; one that creates the minimal conditions for reestablishing community ties in a nation that has been torn to pieces.
Gustavo Guerrero is Editorial Consultant for Latin America at the publishing house Gallimard in Paris.
{ Gustavo Guerrero, El País, 13 March 2013 }
7.19.2005
Réquiem para un premio / Gustavo Guerrero (*)
Requiem for a Prize
At the beginning of this year, when the members of the jury for the XIV Premio Internacional de Novela Rómulo Gallegos were announced, many of us Venezuelans felt that, without warning, a long stage in the history of our central literary contest was closing. Simultaneously, and just as brusquely, another one or other ones seemed to open, announcing themselves as more uncertain, more ill-fated and more disquieting. Created in 1964 to honor and perpetuate the memory of the author of Doña Bárbara—and at the same time as an alternative and counterweight to the growing influence of the Casa de las Américas and Cuba’s cultural politics—, the Rómulo Gallegos Prize had been one of the most prestigious events for the field of fiction in our language throughout four decades.
Just as an undoubtedly impressive list of winners shows, many people passed through Caracas to claim that distinction, including the Mario Vargas Llosa of La casa verde in 1967, the Gabriel García Márquez of Cien años de soledad in 1971 or the Carlos Fuentes of Terra Nostra in 1977. More recently, and to cite another three examples, the award was given to Javier Marías in 1995 for Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí, to the ill-fated Roberto Bolaño in 1999 for Los detectives salvajes and to Enrique Vila-Matas in 2001 for El viaje vertical. It’s true that the juries were not always correct, and it’s also true that the prize faltered in status and regular recurrence on several occasions; but it’s no less true that, over the last 40 years, it had been one of the most solid and accredited institutions of our literary republic, a dignified, liberal and open contest which, in contrast to its Cuban rivals, was proud of its independence and did not require its juries nor its winners to follow a determined political affiliation. If these could just as well be conservatives, Marxists or Social Democrats, they represented, year after year, a living and impeccable example of pluralism and diversity. As proof we can refer to the jury from 1993, which consisted of Arturo Uslar Pietri, Lisandro Otero and Fernando Alegría, or the one from 1999 made up of personalities as different as Saúl Sosnowski, Antonio Benítez Rojo, Hugo Achugar and Carlos Noguera.
The 2005 edition marked a clear rupture with this healthy tradition.
I remember that, when the list of jury members was published, a Cuban friend of mine said to me, half-jokingly: “Man, El Comandante has arrived and he’s ordered for things to stop.” And it’s just that one would have to be blind or naïve, or be in bad faith, to not see that, of the five members of the tribunal, three were old and hardened guardians of the Castro revolution and the other two fervent partisans of the Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez Frias and his Bolivarian revolution. I ask myself and I ask the learned reader, who can ignore today, in our literary sphere, who the ex-director of the magazine Casa de las Américas Antón Arrufat obeys; who Neruda’s former secretary Jorge Enrique Adoum obeys, and who the veteran paladin of Marxist criticism, Nelson Osorio obeys. And who in Venezuela ignores that professor Cósimo Mandrillo publicly denounces people on the left who don’t cheer the madness of our president, or that professor Alberto Rodríguez Carrucci signs manifestos in support of Castro and travels to Havana as a guest of the Casa de las Américas.
For the first time since its creation, the five jurors for the Premio Internacional de Novela Rómulo Gallegos constituted a single political front and represented the guarantee of an unquestioning adhesion to revolutionary ideology. With them, Castrismo and Chavismo placed a flag in the very heart of an institution that had until then enjoyed a small margin of enviable freedom and whose prestige proceeded precisely from the unhindered autonomy of its decisions.
It’s not unlikely that Fernando Vallejo’s provocations when he received the prize in 2003 for El desbarrancadero might have precipitated these events, forcing Hugo Chávez Frias to fix his cards ahead of time in the matter. That the Colombian had the nerve to pronounce a lecture in Caracas in which he ridiculed both Christ and Castro, that he declared Bolívar and the Independence had been an evil imposed on our nations, and that he ended up giving his $100,000 dollars from the prize to the Society for the Protection of Animals, these were all much more than our president and his Cuban ally could stand. Within a context of live political tension, Fernando Vallejo seemed to offer them the ideal excuse on a silver platter to tightly control the organizing entity of the prize and to gain power over it. And it is simply that, even though Hugo Chávez Frias, in the best military tradition, feels a deep disdain toward writers, he couldn’t allow for the spectacle of Vallejo to repeat itself, nor another worse one, with more criticism and more threats toward the regime’s ideology. This is why nothing was left to chance in the selection of the new jury, the one made up of those five unconditional supporters who, just as expected, have perfectly accomplished the mission that was given to them when they announced their verdict on July 8 in Caracas.
The first finalist is predictably Cuban and a writer from the publishing house Letras Cubanas: Jorge Angel Pérez with his novel Fumando espero; the winner, on the other hand, coud well have been a divine surprise if no one had found out that the young and talented Isaac Rosa, author of El vano ayer, has not hesitated in his efforts to make public his sympathies toward the Castro regime. Although his novel is a brave attempt to critically reconsider the Franco era, assuredly the Sevilla native still believes, like his friend Belén Gopegui, that there are good dictatorships and bad dictatorships, good repression and bad repression, good political prisoners and bad political prisoners, accordingly and depending. Last summer, along with many other critics and editors, I took the time to read his novel and, without arriving at the extreme of saying that his is a necessary novel, nothing stops me from acknowledging it seemed brilliant to me and that’s what I wrote to its French translator. But with the same honesty I say that, while it’s true another jury could have awarded him the prize, this one made up of the five unconditional judges couldn’t not give it to him, since, from the start, it had been conceived, designed and prepared not to judge a novel without prejudice but rather to guarantee the triumph of an ideology and those who support it. I’m left with the extremely uncomfortable suspicion that other finalist novels, and in particular Juan Villoro’s excellent El testigo, did nothing but play the role of back-up band; I’m left with the almost intimate conviction that, behind the final decision, there is no “intense aesthetic debate” to be found.
I close by saying something obvious: all this leads to the thought that, in its new Bolivarian phase, the Premio Internacional de Novela Rómulo Gallegos is being summoned to become an instrument for rewarding loyalties and raising up servitude, a sort of substantial appendix to the awards of the Casa de las Américas (let’s not forget that the prize brings $100, 000 dollars). Just as the Supreme Court fell in its moment, just as the National Electoral Council and the National Museums and so many other institutions of the Venezuelan State which I won’t even mention fell, this is how the Premio Internacional de Novela Rómulo Gallegos seems to have fallen now beneath the shield of the personal power of Hugo Chávez Frias and Fidel Castro. It’s not easy to drown all the sadness and shame that one feels at the sight of those two uniformed soldiers presiding over the destiny of a contest that carries the name of one of the symbols of the struggle of Venezuelan intellectuals throughout the XX century, a man who preferred exile, opprobrium and jail before receiving honors from two of our most fierce dictators, General Juan Vicente Gómez and Colonel Marcos Pérez Jiménez. Those of us who can raise our voice to say this are conscious there’s little we can expect from the effects of our words for now. But despite that, we will not cease denouncing the advances of the hegemonic and autocratic project of Hugo Chávez Frias. May these lines serve to establish a testimony. So that no one tomorrow may tell us they didn’t know what was happening in Venezuela.
(*) Venezuelan editor and literary critic
{ Gustavo Guerrero, El Nacional, 19 July 2005 }
At the beginning of this year, when the members of the jury for the XIV Premio Internacional de Novela Rómulo Gallegos were announced, many of us Venezuelans felt that, without warning, a long stage in the history of our central literary contest was closing. Simultaneously, and just as brusquely, another one or other ones seemed to open, announcing themselves as more uncertain, more ill-fated and more disquieting. Created in 1964 to honor and perpetuate the memory of the author of Doña Bárbara—and at the same time as an alternative and counterweight to the growing influence of the Casa de las Américas and Cuba’s cultural politics—, the Rómulo Gallegos Prize had been one of the most prestigious events for the field of fiction in our language throughout four decades.
Just as an undoubtedly impressive list of winners shows, many people passed through Caracas to claim that distinction, including the Mario Vargas Llosa of La casa verde in 1967, the Gabriel García Márquez of Cien años de soledad in 1971 or the Carlos Fuentes of Terra Nostra in 1977. More recently, and to cite another three examples, the award was given to Javier Marías in 1995 for Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí, to the ill-fated Roberto Bolaño in 1999 for Los detectives salvajes and to Enrique Vila-Matas in 2001 for El viaje vertical. It’s true that the juries were not always correct, and it’s also true that the prize faltered in status and regular recurrence on several occasions; but it’s no less true that, over the last 40 years, it had been one of the most solid and accredited institutions of our literary republic, a dignified, liberal and open contest which, in contrast to its Cuban rivals, was proud of its independence and did not require its juries nor its winners to follow a determined political affiliation. If these could just as well be conservatives, Marxists or Social Democrats, they represented, year after year, a living and impeccable example of pluralism and diversity. As proof we can refer to the jury from 1993, which consisted of Arturo Uslar Pietri, Lisandro Otero and Fernando Alegría, or the one from 1999 made up of personalities as different as Saúl Sosnowski, Antonio Benítez Rojo, Hugo Achugar and Carlos Noguera.
The 2005 edition marked a clear rupture with this healthy tradition.
I remember that, when the list of jury members was published, a Cuban friend of mine said to me, half-jokingly: “Man, El Comandante has arrived and he’s ordered for things to stop.” And it’s just that one would have to be blind or naïve, or be in bad faith, to not see that, of the five members of the tribunal, three were old and hardened guardians of the Castro revolution and the other two fervent partisans of the Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez Frias and his Bolivarian revolution. I ask myself and I ask the learned reader, who can ignore today, in our literary sphere, who the ex-director of the magazine Casa de las Américas Antón Arrufat obeys; who Neruda’s former secretary Jorge Enrique Adoum obeys, and who the veteran paladin of Marxist criticism, Nelson Osorio obeys. And who in Venezuela ignores that professor Cósimo Mandrillo publicly denounces people on the left who don’t cheer the madness of our president, or that professor Alberto Rodríguez Carrucci signs manifestos in support of Castro and travels to Havana as a guest of the Casa de las Américas.
For the first time since its creation, the five jurors for the Premio Internacional de Novela Rómulo Gallegos constituted a single political front and represented the guarantee of an unquestioning adhesion to revolutionary ideology. With them, Castrismo and Chavismo placed a flag in the very heart of an institution that had until then enjoyed a small margin of enviable freedom and whose prestige proceeded precisely from the unhindered autonomy of its decisions.
It’s not unlikely that Fernando Vallejo’s provocations when he received the prize in 2003 for El desbarrancadero might have precipitated these events, forcing Hugo Chávez Frias to fix his cards ahead of time in the matter. That the Colombian had the nerve to pronounce a lecture in Caracas in which he ridiculed both Christ and Castro, that he declared Bolívar and the Independence had been an evil imposed on our nations, and that he ended up giving his $100,000 dollars from the prize to the Society for the Protection of Animals, these were all much more than our president and his Cuban ally could stand. Within a context of live political tension, Fernando Vallejo seemed to offer them the ideal excuse on a silver platter to tightly control the organizing entity of the prize and to gain power over it. And it is simply that, even though Hugo Chávez Frias, in the best military tradition, feels a deep disdain toward writers, he couldn’t allow for the spectacle of Vallejo to repeat itself, nor another worse one, with more criticism and more threats toward the regime’s ideology. This is why nothing was left to chance in the selection of the new jury, the one made up of those five unconditional supporters who, just as expected, have perfectly accomplished the mission that was given to them when they announced their verdict on July 8 in Caracas.
The first finalist is predictably Cuban and a writer from the publishing house Letras Cubanas: Jorge Angel Pérez with his novel Fumando espero; the winner, on the other hand, coud well have been a divine surprise if no one had found out that the young and talented Isaac Rosa, author of El vano ayer, has not hesitated in his efforts to make public his sympathies toward the Castro regime. Although his novel is a brave attempt to critically reconsider the Franco era, assuredly the Sevilla native still believes, like his friend Belén Gopegui, that there are good dictatorships and bad dictatorships, good repression and bad repression, good political prisoners and bad political prisoners, accordingly and depending. Last summer, along with many other critics and editors, I took the time to read his novel and, without arriving at the extreme of saying that his is a necessary novel, nothing stops me from acknowledging it seemed brilliant to me and that’s what I wrote to its French translator. But with the same honesty I say that, while it’s true another jury could have awarded him the prize, this one made up of the five unconditional judges couldn’t not give it to him, since, from the start, it had been conceived, designed and prepared not to judge a novel without prejudice but rather to guarantee the triumph of an ideology and those who support it. I’m left with the extremely uncomfortable suspicion that other finalist novels, and in particular Juan Villoro’s excellent El testigo, did nothing but play the role of back-up band; I’m left with the almost intimate conviction that, behind the final decision, there is no “intense aesthetic debate” to be found.
I close by saying something obvious: all this leads to the thought that, in its new Bolivarian phase, the Premio Internacional de Novela Rómulo Gallegos is being summoned to become an instrument for rewarding loyalties and raising up servitude, a sort of substantial appendix to the awards of the Casa de las Américas (let’s not forget that the prize brings $100, 000 dollars). Just as the Supreme Court fell in its moment, just as the National Electoral Council and the National Museums and so many other institutions of the Venezuelan State which I won’t even mention fell, this is how the Premio Internacional de Novela Rómulo Gallegos seems to have fallen now beneath the shield of the personal power of Hugo Chávez Frias and Fidel Castro. It’s not easy to drown all the sadness and shame that one feels at the sight of those two uniformed soldiers presiding over the destiny of a contest that carries the name of one of the symbols of the struggle of Venezuelan intellectuals throughout the XX century, a man who preferred exile, opprobrium and jail before receiving honors from two of our most fierce dictators, General Juan Vicente Gómez and Colonel Marcos Pérez Jiménez. Those of us who can raise our voice to say this are conscious there’s little we can expect from the effects of our words for now. But despite that, we will not cease denouncing the advances of the hegemonic and autocratic project of Hugo Chávez Frias. May these lines serve to establish a testimony. So that no one tomorrow may tell us they didn’t know what was happening in Venezuela.
(*) Venezuelan editor and literary critic
{ Gustavo Guerrero, El Nacional, 19 July 2005 }
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