Paco Ignacio Taibo II: Pancho Villa, roman d'une vie (Pancho Villa: una biografía narrativa)

Sébastien Lapaque reviews Paco Ignacio Taibo II's Pancho Villa, roman d'une vie (Pancho Villa: una biografía narrativa)

Depuis que des conquistadors espagnols ont traversé l'Atlan­tique en emportant le Quichotte dans leurs bagages, l'Amérique latine n'en finit pas de s'inventer des personnages de chevaliers redresseurs de torts. De Simon Bolivar à Hugo Chavez, le fil est romanesque et l'écheveau littéraire. Entre Mexico et Buenos Aires, des millions d'hommes et de femmes soupirent au souvenir de guerriers romantiques et de bandits révolutionnaires droit sortis des grands livres hispaniques.

Romancier prolixe et lecteur passionné de littérature d'aventure, Paco Ignacio Taibo II a naguère magnifié la geste d'Ernesto Che Guevara, «dernier de nos illustres hommes à cheval, si chers à la tradition héroïque de l'Amérique latine» dans une biographie monumentale. Il raconte aujourd'hui Doroteo Arango Arámbula (1878-1923), héros de la révolution mexicaine connu sous le nom de Pancho Villa. Quatre ans de travail ont été nécessaires pour démêler la masse immense des sources et des témoignages. Plus encore que le Che, Pancho Villa a des allures de personnage de fiction. Il a raconté son histoire ; certains l'ont retracée après lui en ajoutant des détails, d'autres ont continué en insérant des chapitres inédits. De sorte qu'il est difficile aujourd'hui de distinguer le rêve et la réalité. «L'historien est bien obligé d'être fasciné par un tel personnage», constate Paco Ignacio Taibo II. Bandolero et voleur de bestiaux à quinze ans, incendiaire et assassin à vingt-cinq, Pancho Villa avait trente-deux ans lorsque ­Francisco Madero, l'apôtre de la révolution, le lança à la conquête de Ciudad Juárez, la plus grande ville de l'État du Chihuahua, posée sur la rive droite du rio Bravo, face à la ville texane d'El Paso. Au même moment, Emiliano Zapata se rendait maître du sud du pays.

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Reading others

a reader’s words on The Uncomfortable Dead by the Mexican Paco Ignacio Taibo and Subcomandante Marcos and Amulet by Chilean Roberto Bolaño.

1968 for Mexico, as for many countries around the world, marked a year of student protests, culminating in what has come to be known as the Tlatelolco massacres. Wishing to change the oppressive one party rule of the PRI students revolted in the backdrop of persistent, if not rising social inequalities.

Two recently published novels are on this theme: The Uncomfortable Dead by the Mexican writer of mysteries, Paco Ignacio Taibo and the leader of the Chiapas’ revolt, Subcommandante Marcos and the other one is by the Chilean writer who lived in Mexico in those years Roberto Bolaño- Amulet.

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Latin American Literature, Mexican Literature, Chilean Literature

Book Review: The Uncomfortable Dead, by Subcomandante Marcos & Paco I. Taibo II

Two years ago, the masked, pipe-smoking leader of the Zapatista army — Subcomandante Marcos — sent a hand-carried proposal from his jungle headquarters to one of his favorite writers. “El Sup,” as Marcos is called by his admirers, invited Paco Ignacio Taibo II, an internationally celebrated crime-fiction writer, to co-author a mystery novel. But not just a run-of-the-mill whodunit. This one would be written pingpong style, each writer pursuing his own storyline without consultation and the two bound together only by the promise that their respective protagonists would meet up about two-thirds of the way through the book.

Taibo, a devilishly provocative literary anarchist who relishes spurning the cultural establishment, immediately agreed. Within weeks, the chapters came cascading out and started appearing in serial form, as a work in progress, inside the pages of Mexico City’s leftist daily La Jornada (which experienced a 20 percent growth in its Sunday readership as a result). Now translated into English, The Uncomfortable Dead reads as an uproarious, dizzying, purposefully incoherent plunge into the multiple ironies, absurdities and injustices of present-day Mexico.

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Mexican Literature

Book Review: The Uncomfortable Dead, by Subcomandante Marcos & Paco I. Taibo II

This so-called "four-handed book" has alternating chapters written by Marcos and the Spanish author Paco Taibo. It is self-referential even in its cops. Taibo's limping, one-eyed private investigator, Hector Belascoaran Shayne, gets to tackle a historical murder with El Subco's indigenous campaigner, Elias Contreras. Another equally fictitious sleuth - Pepe Carvalho - puts in an unexpected starring appearance, proving himself just as real as his creator, the late Vasquez Montalban.

The crime Elias and Hector coincide in resolving dates back to 1968 - which in Mexico meant something different to peace and love, and rather more like its opposite. The plot's intention to track down the murderer of a left-winger, imprisoned in a government swoop on those student activists not massacred in Mexico City, takes in much of that generation's history, and a lot more besides.

El Subco remains much given to philosophising; hence the whole chapters on distinctions between Bad and Evil. From the part of the world that brought us "magical realism", he explores the varieties of magic, otherwise known as sleight of hand by politicians. "There's black magic, which is the one you do with demons, and there's white magic... and then there's dirty magic, which is the one the politicians do."

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Mexican Literature