Carlos Aganzo: Carlos Díaz, books for the 21st century

For Carlos Díaz (Buenos Aires, 1974), General Director of 21st century, Life has always been, in one way or another, related to books. When the school and the university ended, in which he studied sociology, fate led him to work in a specialized bookstore in Social Sciences.

Today the figure of the bookcase, he says, is perhaps somewhat devalued, covered by the computer and administrative work, but in the 1990s that was a fabulous job, ideal at least for a young person. The same destiny, however, did not allow him to continue a career either as a sociologist or as a bookseller, but also led him to the editorial world. Something that does not regret at all.

XXI Century Editors, the seal in which his father worked before leaving exile, had been founded in 1965 in Mexico by Arnaldo Orfila, former director of the Economic Culture Fund. Orfila, who had been retaliated by President Díaz Ordaz, then decided to open his own editorial, with the historical support of more four hundred Spanish -American intellectuals, among which were firms such as those of Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes or Elena Poniatowska. A more cultural than business project, says the current general director, who sixty years later still does not distribute dividends. And from the Mexican publishing house immediately, in 1966, the Argentine subsidiary was passed.

And in 1967, to the Spanish. Closed with the dictatorship, when Orfila died the shareholders sold the publisher to Akal, until ten years later passed to their current property. In 2000 Carlos Díaz applied to the task of reopening “almost from nowhere” the old label in which his father worked. With the non -small aspiration, of course, to make it “that great editorial of the leftist of the 21st century,” after the fall of the Berlin wall.

Twenty -five years later, and for two, 21st century editors it works with three heads: Argentina, Mexico and Spain. It maintains, as since its inception, “an academic, but modern profile.” No niche books or doctoral theses converted into books, but there are books of intellectual and literary quality, next to “more popular collections”, such as the scientific dissemination catalog ‘science that bricks’, with millions of copies sold, in addition to children’s titles, history, politics, journalism or social sensitivity. Or education, such as the series ‘Education that learns’. “We never lost identity,” says the editor, “but we knew how to adapt to the time, after a very hard transition.”

Past dictatorships, crisis, editorial whirlpools and pandemics, 21st century editors lives, according to its director, an exciting moment. A moment of world turbulence in which it plays, through books, explain it and give the keys to understanding it. A good moment, in general, in Spain and in Mexico, but clearly adverse in Argentina, for obvious reasons. Times to order production in each and every three countries, seeking editorial development with local authors of diverse profiles, coinciding with the growth of a reading audience (especially in Spain) very supportive of the essay.

The ‘middle size’ of the publisher places its editor in “one of those uncomfortable places” that involve a permanent challenge: the art of publishing valuable works of important authors before losing them at the hands of stamps with greater power and volume.

Twenty -five years of experience they give to be optimistic, especially when verifying that the book has been able to accommodate the times in the face of the threats of the agorers who talked about the disappearance of the role, precisely with the arrival of the 21st century. At fifty, Carlos Díaz has seen the encyclopedias and dictionaries disappear, surely the school manuals or bibliography books will also be vanished, which now “travel in Dropbox.”

But he has also seen a new reader arise in Argentina, in Mexico and Spain, who trusts the book as a way of approaching and interpreting the world. With all your challenges. We will have to trust it.