Film based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez book prompts protest in Mexico [Updated]

If you look at the culture pages in Mexico’s newspapers these days, there is little question about what’s the talk of the town in literary circles — old men having sex with young girls, writes Andres Oppenheimer.

He's referring to a debate currently raging here in Mexico about whether a planned movie based on Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez's book "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" would glorify the sexual exploitation of children.

As the Huffington Post reports, the Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean filed a criminal complaint with Mexico's attorney general's office on Oct. 5.

The complaint does not specifically name Garcia Marquez, but instead "whoever is responsible for acts that could be constituted as the crime of condoning child prostitution."

Coalition Director Teresa Ulloa told the Associated Press that a movie adaptation of the Colombian author's novel would promote pedophilia and be accessible to a wider audience.

Read the full column from Oppenheimer here and go here for more from the Huffington Post.

[Updated at 11:57 a.m.: An earlier version of this post said the Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean had filed a criminal complaint with Mexico's attorney general's office today. It was filed Oct. 5.]

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Henry Ford's utopian adventure in the Brazilian rain forest

Historian Greg Grandin has taken what heretofore seemed a marginal event -- Henry Ford's failed attempt to establish a gigantic agricultural-industrial complex in the heart of Brazil's Amazon Basin -- and turned it into a fascinating historical narrative that illuminates the auto industry's contemporary crisis, the problems of globalization and the contradictions of contemporary consumerism.

For all of that, this is not, however, history freighted with political pedantry. Grandin is one of a blessedly expanding group of gifted American historians who assume that whatever moral the story of the past may yield, it must be a story well told.

"Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City" is precisely that -- a genuinely readable history recounted with a novelist's sense of pace and an eye for character. It's a significant contribution to our understanding of ourselves and engrossingly enjoyable.

Read the rest of Tim Rutten's review of Greg Grandin's book Fordlandia.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Prominent Mexican women, private thoughts, in 2nd volume of essays

When political scientist Denise Dresser had the seemingly simple idea to invite 38 Mexican women to write a series of personal essays, the book that resulted was a surprise best-seller. Now, five years later, Dresser has released a second volume of “Gritos y susurros” (“Cries and Whispers”) with another batch of women (39 of them, this time).

The point, Dresser says, is to give voice to the harrowing, humorous and intimate experiences of women in a country that remains socially conservative and staunchly Roman Catholic. “I hope this will be read by the partners, the children, the colleagues of these women,” Dresser said, “to better understand the experience of the Mexican woman.”

Dresser spoke at the book’s formal launch here in Mexico City, to a standing-room-only audience at the Lunario, a concert hall that is part of the National Auditorium. The 39 women — politicians, writers, activists, a chef — whose essays fill the book also attended, all dressed in black and assembled on a stage decorated with white gladiolas.

Many of the essays are candid and unexpected. Hard-charging journalist Lydia Cacho, known for her crusading and often dangerous reporting, writes about the delight of falling in love at the age of 40. (“Even the words smile as I fling them to paper,” she writes.) And prominent feminist Maria Teresa Priego writes, with great difficulty and emotion, about enduring an abusive husband: “I am afraid to try to understand that woman who I was. … I’ve never known whether I forgave her.”

“Gritos y susurros II” is in Spanish, runs 490 pages and is published by Aguilar Althea Taurus Alfaguara.

— Tracy Wilkinson in Mexico City

Image: Denise Dresser, from Quien.com

Reviewing 'Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know'

Julia E. Sweig's book, "Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know," is reviewed by the Los Angeles Times' Marjorie Miller, who writes:

"For most of Cuba's history, and certainly since the revolution that brought Fidel Castro's Communist government to power, U.S. policy has penetrated nearly every facet of life in Cuba, making it virtually impossible for average Cubans to forget about the superpower next door. 

"This is driven home in `Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know,' Julia E. Sweig's forthcoming portrait of the country, where even chapters on domestic issues are as much about Cuba's relationship with the United States as they are about Cuba itself. Beginning with the Cuban war of independence from Spain through the end of Castro's rule in 2006, the long arm of the United States has reached across to the island."

You can read more from writer Sweig in the Washington Post earlier this month, where she wrote: 

"President Obama has promised to shut down the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, seeking to erase a blot on America's global image. He has also reached out to Cuba, easing some travel and financial restrictions in an effort to recast Washington's approach to the island. These two initiatives have proceeded on separate tracks so far, but now is the time to bring them together. Hiding in plain sight, the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay is the ideal place for Obama to launch a far-reaching transformation of Washington's relationship with its Communist neighbor."

--Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Two sides of Mexico's best short fiction

Carolyn Kellogg writes on our Jacket Copy blog:

The new anthology of short stories "Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction," edited by Alvaro Uribe, is out now from the Dalkey Archive Press. Nothing unites the writers "beyond the quality of their work," Uribe writes in his introduction. "I decided to reverse the usual chronological order so that the reading begins in the present day and ends in a vanishing point in which today's Mexican narrative merges with the rich tradition it inherited." The book begins with Vivian Abenshushan (born in 1972) and ends with Héctor Manjarrez (born in 1945). 

At more than 500 pages, it's a big book for containing only 16 stories -- but that's because they are printed in both Spanish and English, side by side (Spanish on the left-hand pages, English on the right).

Read the complete blog post here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Daveness98 via Flickr

Guillermo del Toro: Tried to make them as disgusting as possible

Here on La Plaza we're big fans of the Mexican mastermind behind such fantasty-fueled films as "Hellboy"  and "Pan's Labyrinth": Guillermo del Toro.

Del Toro has recently turned his attention to writing novels -- vampire novels -- and the launch of his first book, called "The Strain," is scheduled for June 6. 

Veteran journalist attacks the trade in Latin America

Mexican journalist and author Alma Guillermoprieto, a contributor to publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, has a pretty low opinion of journalism in Latin America, according to an interview with the Mexican newspaper Milenio.

As we've reported repeatedly, journalists working in the region suffer persecution and harassment, and Mexico is considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists.

Ni Modo. Guillermoprieto maintains that no matter what the conditions many journalists are working under, they still need to have standards, and she believes that journalism in the region is practiced with "low rigor and a lack of imagination."

Hostages' stories fill bookshelves in Colombia

Hostage stories are hot property these days.

Bookstores in Colombia are full of gripping tales by former hostages detailing how they survived forced marches, military bombing runs, jungle-borne parasites and the abuse of sadistic guards, writes Juan Forero for the Washington Post in Bogota.

A few of the authors, explains Forero, have gone deeper, explaining their frailties under harrowing conditions or "recounting the inevitable human drama that unfolded in the jungle, from rivalries in makeshift prisons to the romances that blossomed between some hostages."

And Colombians are awaiting the release of a book by former hostage Ingrid Betancourt, the French-Colombian former presidential candidate who was liberated last year after being held for more than six years by the Colombian rebel force FARC.

The books have generated a swirl of controversy in a country where people tend to be wary of airing intimacies in public. Some critics have strongly rebuked the trend.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Image: In "Out of Captivity," three Americans describe their experiences as hostages of FARC. The book was launched in New York late last month but is selling well in Bogota. Credit: HarperCollins

Writer picks top 10 tales of Latin American journeys

Writer and filmmaker Hugh Thomson has led numerous research expeditions to Peru. The books which have resulted include "The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland" and "Cochineal Red: Travels Through Ancient Peru." His latest book, "Tequila Oil," tells of a wild and dangerous adventure through Mexico's past and present.

In this article, Thomson picks his 10 favorite accounts of travels and adventures across Latin America.

They are:
1. "The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey Around South America," by Ernesto Che Guevara
2. "Mad White Giant," by Benedict Allen
3. "Tristes Tropiques," by Claude Lévi-Strauss
4. "Travels With a Circus," by Katie Hickman
5. "Robbery Under Law: The Mexican Object-Lesson," by Evelyn Waugh
6. "Love in the Time of Cholera," by Gabriel García Márquez
7. "Mornings in Mexico," by D.H. Lawrence
8. "In Patagonia," by Bruce Chatwin
9. "The Lawless Roads," by Graham Greene
10. "Keep the River on Your Right," by Tobias Schneebaum

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: From the official website of the movie "The Motorcycle Diaries," http://www.motorcyclediariesmovie.com/home.html

Book review: 'The Accountant's Story,' a tale about narco baron Pablo Escobar, by his brother

If you speak a little Spanish and recently have spent a bit of time anywhere near the border, you've probably heard a narcocorrido, a ballad sung to danceable norteño-style music with lyrics that romanticize the drug trade, writes Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times book section.

Rutten writes that "The Accountant's Story: Inside the Violent World of the Medellín Cartel" is the literary equivalent of a narcocorrido -- "without the redeeming virtue of a catchy, polka-inflected beat."

The book's cover bears two additional subtitles: one informing us that this is "the true story of Pablo Escobar"; the other that the author, Roberto Escobar, is his brother.

But the reviewer is unimpressed with Escobar's account of his brother's cocaine empire which, according to Forbes magazine, accounted for 80% of the world's cocaine traffic:

This oddly flat and, frankly, repellent book is certainly not confessional and is, in fact, less a memoir than it is an apologia for the brother Roberto quite obviously admires still. Pablo's drift into criminality is, in his brother's mind, at least, the inevitable consequence of growing up poor and ambitious in a violent, underdeveloped society. The fact that hundreds of thousands of other young men growing up in similar circumstances didn't elect to better themselves by profiteering on misery and death is airily passed over; Pablo, after all, was 'a born leader.

Read the full review here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: A visitor tours a Colombian ranch once owned by Pablo Escobar. Credit: Luis Benavides / Associated Press