Los muertos indciles

Estefana Acosta Pitta

On May 11
th
, I attended to the presentation of the book "Los muertos indciles"
written by Cristina Rivera Garza in the forum La casa del Lago. Cristina Rivera is
a Mexican columnist, historian, essayist and well-known contemporary novelist
from Matamoros, Tamaulipas. She presented a collection of various texts most of
them about the violence in Mexico, which she calls "writings of pain." For the
author, the literature is closely linked with the place where it grows. Literature
belongs to everyone; it is not hidden inside ivory towers or prestigious academies.
She pointed that we live in a serious period full of violence and capitalist pressure
and in her book she wonders how valid is to appeal to the narrative devices in
painful circumstances for the communities in Mexico. The answer she gives is that,
in fact, it is a really important matter and the objective of her literature is precisely
the reflection in times of what she calls necropoltica and violence.
Cristina said that is very symptomatic of our Mexican culture to reflect the horrors
of life as they appear. The essays of "Los muertos indciles" were originally written
for journalistic purposes but later they became into a series of texts about all
surrounding daily life of Mexican people. She explained that nowadays we live in a
Digital Revolution. One chapter of the book focuses on the perception some
people have of digitization of literature as a way of destroying it. Cristina does not
believe that digitization interfere with writing, that degrade it or destroy it. We live in
the XXI Century and we have multiple possibilities thanks to digital platforms, those
who disagree tend to be conservative or elitist people. What is important is to
answer the question: What kind of writing is really relevant to our existence? And
then just read and read as much as we like.
After her exposition of ideas, moderator Magaly Velasco asked her what was her
position about the Academy. Rivera laughed and answered that in Mexico there is
a suspicion among the Academy and Literature. The Academy conform a series of
rules that reduces creativity; that is what many people think. Rivera said that it is
believed that everything that is free of rules is truly creative but we cannot be sure.
What we have outside the Academy is fierce trade law but literary production does
not always serve the god of money. There is a difference between commercial
and non-commercial publishers.
A very important question in other chapter that was placed into discussion was if it
is possible to teach people how to write. The novelist answered that writing is an
exercise that concerns all of us. Writers are not people chosen by God, they put a
lot of effort and does not have special powers to write. She said you can learn to
write every day but there is something we need to take into account: we need to
create good instruments to improve the writing skills of people. Writing has been
modernized. The teaching - learning should not be traditionalist and vertical, where
only the teacher knows and others do not. Into this digital era we cannot measure
the literary quality with traditional rituals of scanning. We cannot compare
contemporary literature with works of the nineteenth century. It is perverse to use
the same rules and make literary judgments based on those ideas. The important
thing would be to build modern criteria to analyze the modern literature and this is
the most responsible attitude we can assume.
About modern literature, moderator Magaly mentioned that there are valuable
things in social networks but they disappear by the time. She asked the writer what
can we do to retain its value and if we should move to the traditional paper and
pencil in order to do not forget. Rivera Garza points out that even on paper there is
a process of disappearance, you only remember certain fragments of a book,
certain images that caused you a strong impact when you read it, so it is very
difficult to remember. She was not very negative at this point and finished her
participation saying that when a book is able to go beyond the territory of the vigil
the writers achieves their goal: live into the dreams of the people who read their
works.