The Scream, the crying of Fernando del Paso
The exciting and wonderful full speech of the writer, painter, Mexican academic and diplomat, Fernando del Paso, 79 years, upon receiving the José Emilio Pacheco Award for Literary Excellence:
Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear family, Dear Rafael Morcillo López, director of the FILEY, Dear Jury of the José Emilio Pacheco Award for Literary Excellence, distinguished professor Sarah Poot-Herrera, distinguished Merida hosts, dear Cristina Pacheco and Cristina Ruvalcaba, Dear Rafael Tovar and Teresa, dear Elena Poniatowska, dear Vicente Quirarte and Elizabeth Corral: I don't love my country.
its abstract glow
it is ungraspable.”
So says one of the most beautiful and courageous poems I know, Its author is José Emilio Pacheco. Then the poet adds:
"But (even if it sounds bad)
I would give my life
for ten places of yours,
certain people, ports, forests, deserts, strengths,
an undone city, Grey, monstrous,
various figures in its history,
mountains
-and three or four rivers.”
On this occasion, in which i come here, to Merida, to accept and collect a literary award that bears your name, jose emilio, I want to take advantage of it to tell you some things, to you who were my friend and my colleague for so many years and above all who were a great poet admired by me, my dear vate.
I want to tell you that I also loved in your own way that homeland of the many forests and rivers and the monstrous city that was your birthplace and mine..
I want to tell you what you already know: that today it also hurts my soul that our small homeland, our soft homeland, seems to fall apart and return to being the mitotera homeland, the unruly and wild homeland of the history books.
I want to tell you that at almost eighty years of age I am embarrassed to learn the names of the Mexican towns that I never learned in school and that today I only know when a tremendous injustice occurs in them.; only when blood runs in them: Chenalhó, Ayotzinapa, Download, petaquillas…. What a pity, yes, what a shame that we only learn their name when they go down in our history as peoples bathed in tragedy!
too bad, That we learn when we are old that the Rarámuris or the Mazatec Triques, They are the names of Mexican towns that we had never been told, and that we only met for the first time when they were victims of abuse or dispossession by foreign companies or by our own authorities!
sounds like a lie, jose emilio, that so many years have passed and we still have not learned not to sully that abstract brilliance that fueled our passion for the homeland.
What a pity, yes, What a shame!
Dear Jose Emilio: don't ask me how time flies; It's been a little over a year since you left and I didn't have the chance to talk to you about as many things as I would have liked.. I have been a bad reader of your work and I regret it. But now I'm willing to fill this void with the memory of your words, of your presence and your lucidity. Never like today I wonder what we did, jose emilio, of our country, At what time and when did that sweet homeland that cost others so much work to build and sustain slip out of our hands?. ¡Month, jose emilio! Yes, tell me when we start to forget that the homeland is not a possession of a few, that the homeland belongs to all its children equally: not only to those of us who sing it and who are very proud to do so: also to those who suffer in silence.
you said it yourself: the poor, sooner or later they, mass, they will inherit the earth. You invited us to admire your patience. But… until when José Emilio, even when? That day never seems to come: the apocalypse, as you say, has yet to make way for several commercials and the centaur and the unicorn have not been resurrected yet.
When I found out that I had been honored with the award that bears your name, jose emilio, a barrage of memories came over me. We were very young and we had our whole life ahead of us and the whole country too… but what country tell me, that of our parents, that of our grandparents or our only homeland?
We were young, yes, and we had a huge responsibility to fulfill: that of taking care of the patrimony that we had inherited and whose integrity has been threatened so many times. Dime, jose emilio: do we comply? Today that the country suffers from so much corruption and crime, Is passive denunciation enough?? Is it enough to tell and sing the facts to make justice triumph? Is it ethical to accept awards for our work and limit ourselves to thanking them in public?, how do i do it right now? I do not know. But it is worth asking if our position is useful for something.
“Something is breaking everywhere”, you said in one of your poems. Something, yes, my heart before everything that happens around us, and my words break, ¡Month, José Emilio I don't know why I get into these straits, if it would be enough to come here and accept the prize! But I cannot remain silent in the face of so many things that have broken us. What happened to Mexico post-68? What country project do we have now?… What project do those who claim to govern it have?? Allow me to quote you once more, "I know your country," said the gringo- I spent a night in Tijuana / these are the words I know of your language: /out, thief, help, I've been robbed". How are these words different from “political, authority, socorro, they extorted me"?
¡Month, jose emilio!: What have we made of our impeccable and adamantine homeland. I insist José Emilio: don't ask me how time flies. What I can and want to tell you now is that I am old and sick, but I have not lost lucidity: I know who I am, who you were and i know what i'm doing and what i'm saying. The only thing I don't know is what country I'm living in. But I know the smell of corruption; tell me Jose Emilio: what time, when, we allowed Mexico to be corrupted to the bone? At what time did our country fall apart in our hands to become a victim of organized crime, drug trafficking and violence?
¡Month, jose emilio! What good is it for us to collect prizes and awards here and there while our country is discredited in the eyes of the world?…. while Mexico Mexicanizes itself to agree with its films and the blackest of its legends?
¡Month, jose emilio! What we do, what can be done with twenty-three thousand disappeared in a few years? Or is it twenty three thousand and forty two? And how do we know who's guilty? Or are we going to fabricate culprits through torture, as is our custom?
¡Month, jose emilio! I do not know what else to tell you. You don't know how sad I am. I accept the prize that has your name on it, because I know that it is given to me in good faith, Not without first emphasizing that the most important thing in life is not receiving awards – even if they are deserved- but to denounce the injustices that surround us.
I speak to you José Emilio, of course in Spanish, the language that was imposed on us by blood and fire by the conquerors, and that now it is so yours and mine, as it is of any inhabitant of Spain itself, but I think it is also a shame that we have to live many years to find out about the existence of more than sixty languages in our territory, for example the wixarica or kickapoo, every time the indigenous group that speaks one of those languages, be a victim of plunder, of an insult to the sacredness of their territory, or when the river or rivers that sustain it are contaminated by a mining company or by the irresponsibility of the authorities, or by wild fracturing in search of shale oil or gas that threatens to consume millions of liters of its aquatic reserves.
I only have to say goodbye to José Emilio and for this I will use the second language spoken in this beautiful host city of Mérida: the mayan:
Thanks, José Emilio and thanks to all of you, I hope we will meet once more when our country is ours again.
And just in case my words weren't explosive enough, I end up with a real bomb: “In the corner of a pond/ there was a toad/ I wanted to grab it/ but it escaped me/”.
