There were no bookshelves in the home where I grew up and I can’t remember a single instance of seeing either of my parents reading a book.
They did read other things, though, with the daily newspaper and the Readers Digest at the very top of the Pint popularity poll.
We children, however, all turned into avid book readers, principally, I think, because our mother introduced us to the neighborhood public library at a tender age and probably transported us between house and library thousands of times.
None of this may have occurred, however, if Benjamin Franklin had not founded the first lending library in the United States. Today, of course, Franklin would be jailed for “piracy,” but that is another story.
The point I want to make is that Mexicans do not benefit from a nationwide system of neighborhood libraries, which may account for statistics claiming that Mexicans read an average of only 2.8 books per year, according to a list published in 2014 by UNESCO, in which Mexico ranked 107 out of 108 countries.
While I suspect these statistics might be accurate if you divide books read by total population in Mexico, I’m sure you would get very different results if you looked only at college graduates. My own experience, based on many a conversation with my Mexican relatives and friends over nearly 50 years, is that all the people I know who had a normal schooling are avid book readers. And what sort of books do they read? Well, I mostly read novels, while my Mexican friends seem to devour a much broader range of titles, often in the fields of biography, sciences, personal improvement and serious literature.
Therefore, it comes as no surprise to me that Mexico’s oldest book fair was started right here in Guadalajara and is, this year, celebrating its 49th birthday. I am not referring to the FIL (International Book Fair) which has demonstrated Tapatios’ love for books to the whole world, but to the Feria Municipal del Libro, which has been displaying the works of local publishers downtown at the Palacio Municipal, every spring, for nearly half a century.
This year the Municipal Book Fair runs from April 29 to May 14 with 18 bookstores participating. Simultaneously, there is an hourly program of speakers on a wide range of subjects, including everything from poetry and comic books to critical thinking – on May 10 there was a full day of talks on feminist themes.
Among all these presentations was my own, on the curiosities of the Teuchitlán Civilization, promoting my Guide to the Guachimontones, published by Editorial Acento. To my great surprise, nearly every seat was taken for this talk, even though it was given at noon on a Tuesday and I had seriously expected a very small audience.
According to the owner of Editorial Acento, Alfredo Gutiérrez, this annual book fair is very popular among traditional Tapatios interested in subjects related to this region.
“Here you can find books on locally popular subjects, books which might never find their way to the big bookstore chains because of the distribution problems that independent publishers have to deal with,” Gutiérrez says.
So, if you are interested in old mines, nearby haciendas, the Cristeros or the scandalous Anima de Sayula, and you can read Spanish, you’ll probably enjoy poking around these stands.
In case you would like to catch the book fair next year, Gutiérrez says it usually begins on the first Saturday after World Book Day (April 23) and lasts nearly 20 days.
“This can be rather heavy on us publishers,” says Gutiérrez, “but it allows people to browse books on several occasions before eventually deciding on which they are going to buy. This contrasts with the FIL, which many people visit only once each year. This local book fair is much more relaxed and intimate and doesn’t require a lot of walking, like the FIL. Here you can take advantage of the fact that you are in the very heart of the city, wander about among the fountains and have a look inside some of the beautiful old buildings around the Cathedral.”
I can add one more advantage this book fair has over the other: It doesn’t cost a centavo!