Today, February 15, in 1950, a “literary” event destined to change Mexico forever occurred.
An impressively talented young poet, his friends had said, was going to bring out a book of prose. The author called it “a small book ... a minor book ...” But few harbored any idea of the significance of the book. By the time the corrected manuscript was in the printer’s hands a good number of intellectuals knew Cuadernos Americanos was bringing out an “essay” called “El Labertino de la Solidad” – the “Labyrinth of Solitude.” To many people both here and abroad that title gave the impression that it might be about poetry, possibly a history of Mexican, or Spanish language verse. Certainly no one sensed the impact, both positive and negative, the text would have, not just in Latin America, but north of the border and across the Atlantic.
Only Octavio Paz “would have fastened on the word ‘solitude’ as anything like a formative, essential characteristic of [this] country and its people,” one journalist would declare. Paz, 35 when he wrote “Labyrinth,” was known for his exceptional, exploratory poetry, Not for book-length “essays” of penetrating cultural, sociological and political analysis. Many intellectuals initially believed this oddly titled book would be nothing more than a poet’s airy view of the country, employing an odd metaphor on which to hang his opinions.
But Paz’s 1950 book was not the poetic contrivance that many expected. It was a groundbreaking, startling, often unforgiving, analysis of the Mexican culture and character. It was something that outraged Mexico’s monied and political elite. The Catholic Church didn’t like it. The conventionally educated, many of whom graduated thanks to business or political connections or purchased grades, didn’t like it. This ”small ... minor” book, as Paz called it, also offended that thin slice of the population that was, or believed it was, middle class. They had recently attained that narrow economic ledge, and discovered that it wasn’t anything like what they believed it should be, Paz noted. And their shaky grasp of that frailest of rungs of the economic ladder would prove short-lived. The history of that attainment and its demolishment was to be repeated over and over – the demolishment coming at the end of every sexeñio orsix-year presidential term. That brutal cycle was orchestrated by cruel greed and disregard for the citizenry openly expressed by each outgoing chief executive for a quarter century. Economic disasters seemed endless to a majority of Mexicans: 1976, 1982, 1988, 1994.And if Paz didn’t pull the rug out from under Mexican society, and its accepted history, as many people irritably believed, he clearly changed the weave and parameters of that roughly-used, ancient petate. He did this in part by noting the 1910 Revolution’s failure, (as demonstrated, for example, by the Institutional Revolutionary Party), an idea that was considered, in 1950, an apostasy; to merely utter – or print – it was considered traitorous. Mexican culture, its psychology as a nation and as a people, of whatever class, could not bear criticism. If one told a hired worker that he was doing something wrong it often ended up with the worker stomping off the job, often not even waiting for the wages he’d already earned. Criticism ended millions of friendships, often even marriages – though because women were not considered being of equal rights, any assets she brought to a marriage belonged to her husband. Paz even had the “temerity” to devote an entire chapter to the cultural phenomena surrounding the universally used but never printed word chingar (fuck) and its various guises. In the midst of a fiesta one might hear the fervent shout “Viva Mexico, hijos de la chingada!” Which morphs into an examination of the then – and often still – traditional concept of “woman” held by Mexican society. It was a society that pretended confusion about that puzzling loved and hated female being. When my wife and I arrived here from California in 1963, the concepts, ideas, most of them imaginary about that being, “woman,” so blatantly extraordinary, so simply imaginary as to be laughable. Much of that weird myth is mere history now, but not all of it. Thus Labyrinth’s chapter titled “The Sons of Malinche” remains instructive.
Just as today for the enlightenment of those dazzled, but not dazzling, “modern” minds that believe from an electronic perch that “Labyrinth” is no longer “relevant,” celebrations of the centenary of Paz’s birthday, March 31, 1914, have already begun in a number of countries. These call up for the forgetful or uninitiated not only the fact that Paz was one of Mexico’s greatest prose stylists, he also was one of its most lucid and daring thinkers, one of its most useful, long-running political analysts and most exquisite poet, This year in Mexico will initiate an emblematic series of events focusing on the country’s intellectual culture by celebrating the centenary of the birth of Paz. The same with Spain, and of course with much of Latin America.
If the familiar forked-tongued habits of yet another (now self-described “converted,” and “transformed”) Institutional Revolutionary Party regime baffles some, Paz’s political gaze sheds much light on the PRI’s unbecoming lineage. It’s brutally anti-Catholic beginnings in 1929 and those first (theoretically) post-caudillo hand-picked presidents – selected and supervised by a dictator, former president Elias Plutarco Calles. It is history starring not only the presidents who are now seen as ruling the distant past, but spotlighting the fact that several of the craziest, most savage chief executives held office in the 1970-1994 era of Mexican government under the PRI.
Such facts, of which Paz wrote and spoke publicly, will be obvious at this year’s international cultural events, such as the Guadalajara International Book Fair November 29-December 3. The Fair honors one country each year. This year the guest of honor is Argentina and the centenary of the birth of one of that country’s greatest novelists, Julio Cortazar, born August 26, 1914, in Brussels of Argentine parents. In the run-up to the Book Fair and the already growing media attention on the centenary of Paz’s birth, it will be interesting to see what strategy both the government and today’s writers will take regarding, say, his book, ”The Other Mexico,” and the long 1985 essay “The Philanthropic Ogre” (now gathered together in one edition with “Labyrinth.”) Part of Paz’s problem with the PRI was the fact that he believed that “despite having (become) the prime agent of modernization, it (the government) has not succeeded in becoming entirely modernized itself.” In many aspects, he seemed to believe, especially in its dealing with the public and its manner of conducting business, it continues to be paternalistic. The head of such a government frequently missteps, and exposes his inclination to “consider the state his personal patrimony.” Understandable when within the state – even when the vote is fairly well counted, beginning in 2000 – there still exists a more or less modern bureaucracy claiming to seek to modernize the country – even though its set of values is not comprehensively modern. Side by side in this bureaucracy, “sometimes as its rival, sometimes as its associate, stands a mass of friends, relations and proteges united by a bonds of a personal nature. This courtly society is partially renewed every six years – each time a new president comes to power. By virtue of their situation as well as their implicit ideology and method of recruitment, these bodies of courtiers ... are remnants of patrimonialism. The contradiction between the courtly society and the technocratic bureaucracy does not (totally) immobilize the state, but it does make its progress difficult and tortuous.”
“Another sign of modernity is corruption,” he wrote, And then proceeds to trace its roots to Spain. There, during the regency of Mariana of Austria (1634-1695), who found herself with a near empty treasury, consulted with “the theologians whether it was admissible to sell to the highest bidder ... important positions of the kingdom, including the viceroyalty of ... New Spain. The theologians found nothing in divine or human laws that was contrary to the practice.” Thus, he wrote, Mexico’s endemic practice of what is seen as a scandal at home and abroad.
This Wednesday, as government claimed Mexico was about to enjoy “good times,” Forbes magazine reported that growth has fallen sharply short of expectations. It has performed poorly, several studies show, because of its blatantly inefficient and corrupt justice system. Weak rule of law has inhibited investors unable to make sense of Mexico’s tangled bankruptcy proceedings (so often blurred by corruption) and lack of confidence in the court’s ability to impose appropriate punishment on delinquent borrowers. The necessity of private security costs about 2.2 percent of annual business sales. Extortion, which studies show affect up to 38 percent of the middle class, creates multi-million dollar losses. Police must learn to reduce theft of merchandise during transportation (instead of abetting it). The lack of confidence in coherent and honest contract enforcement costs Mexicans each day. So does the lack of a reliable nationwide cadre of professional and honest prosecutors, public lawyers and local judges. “It has to be recognized that the approval and implementation of antitrust law is crucial to allowing smaller firms to thrive,” Forbes reports. In sum, Mexico must enforce rules against economically damaging activities: corruption and predatory behavior.
Paz, were he here would have a lot to say about all this. He would probably imply that very little economic reform would come about. He might suggest that the current regime believes economic reform boils down to more taxes for ideological opponents, the middle class and the poor. Peña Nieto vowed there would be no taxes on medicines. January showed a hike of between 24 to 29 percent for what are over-the-counter doctor prescribed remedies. Paz wouldn’t be surprised.