The silence of the tens of thousands of disappeared people in Mexico is a thunderous cry that demands justice. It is a collective cry, a permanent mourning. There are more than 100,000 people who are not there, who have been kidnapped, disappeared, kept silent, and that absence influences the character of a society that encounters horror every day, even if it does not want to admit it. That is what the Mexican poet Mercedes Alvarado alerts in her most recent collection of poems, Own names (Editorial Elefanta), a collection of verses that hurt because they are the portrait and denunciation of an everyday horror. It is a war, warns the book, that nobody wants to assume. “There are many things that we have been forced to do to survive. Because if you thought every day about the number of femicides, violence, disappearances, it’s because you don’t leave your house,” says Alvarado (Mexico City, 1984).
Denial as a way of survival, although at the same time we see thousands of women with shovels and picks looking for the bodies of their loved ones in mass graves. “On Saturdays, with other mothers, holding on like orchids on the trunk: clinging to collective survival,” she writes. And it is that this book, which will be presented on August 17 at the La Increíble bookstore in the Condesa neighborhood, is also a call for care among all, a hug in the face of so much pain. And it is also a complaint, because as Alvarado affirms in this interview, “literature is also a trench. Yes, I am very convinced of that, there is also a moral obligation to say things”.
Ask. You say in one of your poems: “At least the war is far from here, says my mother.” Most Mexicans think that this country is at peace, when violence bleeds it dry. Is denying that violence a way to avoid so much horror?
Answer. I think it’s a way to survive. There are many things we have been forced to do to survive. Because if you thought every day about the number of femicides, violence, disappearances, it’s because you don’t leave your house. So, the mind has had to compartmentalize, because we have been forced to survive and continue life. The point is that if you think about this consciously every day, then you don’t make life. We could not.
Q. As you highlight in a poem, the war in Mexico is in the fear of going out at night, in the decision of a woman to wear a skirt or not, in avoiding certain places. “One would like to know that the silence of the night will end when one arrives, complete, anywhere”, she writes. It is terrible to live with a permanent fear.
R. And yet you get used to it. You start to modify your routine. You think: ‘I wear pants instead of a skirt. I don’t go to such a place alone. Where do I walk? Where on the bus am I going to sit? You learn to modify your behaviors, which is terrible because they become normal events.
Q. Has violence normalized in Mexico?
R. Yes of course. Because if not, we don’t survive. We wouldn’t if we still saw it as something extraordinary. It is a common, everyday thing. But if we kept thinking about it consciously and wondering, not being in front of it, then you don’t live, or how do you do it? I think it’s a way to face that fear. From the community we know that something is wrong and we are going to help each other. How many times have you not seen that you are going down the street and a girl approaches and of course, you let her walk next to you. We know, we are aware that we have to help each other, because we are all in danger. But I insist, you do not carry it consciously all the time, but it is there established as part of our reality.
Q. In this book he touches on a subject that affects him directly. One of the poems is dedicated to David, a friend of his who has disappeared since 2011. Disappearance is the most terrible form of torture in this violence that Mexico is experiencing. How do you live that duel?
R. Yes, a lot of interesting things happen there. On the one hand, you cannot close a duel when you are expecting. That’s why the poem is called Lament for the life of David and that is why it begins like this: “I am not going to mourn your death, David, because nobody has told me about it.” The most important rites that we have as humanity are those around death, they are a fundamental thing for a civilization. So, when you take away from a mother, a son, a father, or a sister the right to have that rite, what happens is that you dehumanize. There is a process of dehumanization that is very strong, because people get stuck in a duel that they cannot close, because they do not actually have a body to carry out those rites. And to that add a lot of obligations. The moral obligation to keep looking, the moral obligation not to give up. But you are suspended all the time in that mourning that is collective, that is going through all of us and that we have not stopped to look enough, because there is no recognition that this is a country in mourning. We are a country that is mourning its dead permanently.
Q. In your poetry you recognize the women who are looking for. Thousands of them travel this country with picks and shovels looking for their relatives. And you write that the work of caring for women is joined by this new one: the search.
R. What else do you do? What are the options? That’s where this phenomenon of brotherhood and this collectivity that occurs among the seeking mothers, who say ‘I support you’. Although there are also cases of mothers, of wives, who say ‘well, I can’t take it anymore because I need to continue’. Each one assumes it as he can, not even as you want. But yes, I think that this action of continuing to search is a way of sustaining oneself from the collective. It was not at all premeditated, no, they sort of found ways by themselves and that community was generated that is very beautiful, but is deeply painful.
Q. A few days ago there was a controversy because the president received the president of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo from Argentina, but during his term he has not wanted to receive the mother seekers from Mexico. How do you see this double standard?
R. I believe that this issue has to be taken as a matter of national importance. If we continue to think that it is a minor issue, we are not going to get out of it. In other words, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people who are not there. It is an issue that completely crosses society. And once again, as long as it is not recognized, we are hardly going to arrive at any series of actions that solve the matter. The point is that we are not officially acknowledging it, that we have a crisis. It is not normal.
Q. The poet Ernesto Cardenal said that poetry is an announcement and a complaint. Does he believe that poetry has an important role in denouncing societies like Mexico, which suffer from all these strong problems of violence?
R. Clear. Mexico has a tradition of committed, social, political, activist poetry, whatever you want to call it. But it is also that you cannot escape from that reality. Juan Carlos Mestre says that the true commitment of the poet is to return to put the word at the service of the people. I think so. You cannot not say what is in your reality, because in the end this issue of whether literature affects reality or reality affects literature is a reciprocal relationship. And, furthermore, the creative exercise is always a political act. So, thinking that we are going to write things that do not correspond to our reality is not logical, because even if you talk about science fiction, that science fiction is totally influenced by that reality. And a reality as terrible as that of hundreds of thousands of disappeared, well, how can it not be included in the poem? The issue is not the politics of the event, but how it affects our humanity. And yes, of course, that literature is also a trench. Yes, I am very convinced of that, there is also a moral obligation to say things.
Q. Should writers, poets, have a political commitment?
R. I think they are two different things. The work from the intellectual and the function of poetry, although they are close together, go hand in hand. There is this thing of having to reflect and say this is happening, let’s turn to see it. And there is also the function of poetry, which in this specific case, that is: ‘hey, let’s hug each other, let’s realize that we are all hurting’. It is a function that has more to do with the collectivity and the community than with political reflection. However, it seems to me that both are necessary. And yes, of course, that the artists and creators of a country have a moral and ethical commitment to their time. In other words, there’s no way we were just writing about how beautiful the Lerma River is.
Q. Can poetry also be a way to exorcise pain?
R. It is always. The moment you name something, it is easier for you to handle it. The theme is not only disappearance, but also everything that those of us around us were left with, as a question, as hope, as anger, as despair or, above all, as uncertainty. I am not interested in writing about violence. I am interested in writing about what happens around the event, from the human point of view. Yes, it is a way of saying here we are, this is what is happening to us and this is what we are feeling.
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