Mexico City —
He is one of Mexico's most famous writers, historians and left-wing activists. But Paco Ignacio Taibo II is best known for his fictional alter ego: Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, a unique private detective who deals with injustice, corruption and crime in the noir depths of 1970s Mexico City. The gumshoe's exploits, peppered with suspense, dark comedy and a colorful cast unique to the Mexican capital's demimonde, have been made into films and a Netflix series and translated into English and other languages.
Taibo, 75, has written more than 40 books, including nine Belascoarán mysteries, biographies (subjects include Ernesto “Che” Guevara and General Francisco “Pancho” Villa) and ruminations on major historical events such as the student protests in Mexico City 1968, in which he took part.
The prolific author also serves as a cultural commissioner of sorts, heading the government publisher El Fondo de Cultura Económica, which has published more than 10,000 titles of various genres in its illustrious 90-year history. El Fondo has bookstores in Mexico – the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world – and others throughout Latin America and Spain.
Taibo's long-time friend and left-wing companion, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico's former president, won him over for the publishing position. López Obrador's successor, President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office in October, reappointed him to the post.
Taibo spoke to The Times at a cafe outside El Fondo's main bookstore in Mexico City. The author, in jeans and a red polo shirt, smoked Marlboros and sipped Coca-Cola – staples of a US culture he often despises – as he discussed literature, politics, reading in the digital age and mortality. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What is the Economic Culture Fund?
El Fondo is a publishing house with a certain independence from the government, which is co-financed by the state apparatus and has its own book sales. At the same time, it is a center for promoting and stimulating reading.
We publish 40 books per month and reach readers using Librobuses (libraries on wheels).
El Fondo has changed since you took charge.
We inherited (in 2019) a structure with a lot of corruption, incompetence and ineptitude. We had more than 100,000 books – many by young authors – that were not distributed and were sitting in a warehouse. We said, “We're going to publish, promote, and distribute these books at a reasonable price so that they find their readership.” We changed all the rules of the game.
Some have criticized you for changing El Fondo's focus from academic texts to more populist—and less expensive (some El Fondo booklets cost $1 or less, and relatively few books cost more than $25)—fiction , children's literature and illustrated works.
That's not true. A very important part of the books we publish every month has to do with science. … But our priority is to make books accessible to people who often don't have access to them – because of price, distribution network, whatever.
Is supporting young authors a priority?
It is a natural source, but it is not quota. My brother always joked, “Until when can someone be considered a young poet?” Until age 50.” But we have a special collection of young writers from outside the capital (Mexico City). We want to expand our reach to authors who don't have access to publications.
How big is the challenge of promoting books in the digital age, especially to young people?
Obviously, this is a time with a very strong push for distraction, the cell phone. We (publishers) are no longer the bosses of the game. We have to fight. We now have six programs on television every week about books and seven on the radio. We do TikToks and whatever else we need to do to convince teens that reading is fun.
The Mexican writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II.
(Cecilia Sanchez Vidal / For The Times)
El Fondo has a distribution center for its collection in San Diego and also has a mobile “book truck” that visits schools, libraries, etc. in the area. Could El Fondo expand its reach among Spanish speakers in the United States?
I have to go to Los Angeles to see what possibilities there are to make a good bookstore and a cultural center. We can't do it alone. We would need to partner with independent Hispanic booksellers.
One has the impression that the current era of Latin American literature pales in comparison to the “boom” years of the 1960s and 1970s, the heyday of Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, etc. What do you think of it?
You really can't compare. Give it time. Maybe it's not as brilliant as the boom, but you need distance to judge. I was very, very lucky: I read Latin American literature like crazy when I was young. …And of course there have been some advances since then, some genre expansions. … In the 1980s, Latin American authors took on the dimension The crime novel (the “noir” or dark novel), police mysteries that mixed the criminal with the social milieu. I am part of this movement.
Belascoarán Shayne is somewhere on the gumshoe spectrum between Sam Spade and Columbo – but is definitely one punishmentor native Mexican. In an atmosphere of moral decay that sometimes borders on the surreal, he clings to a sense of decency. His faithful Dr. Watson is a plumber. The detective's unique family tree: He is the son of an Irish folk singer and a Basque captain.
But he is absolutely Mexican.
As a child you emigrated from Spain to Mexico with your family. That was after the Spanish Civil War. Did this epoch-making conflict also resonate in your home?
My grandparents took part in the war. One died and one was sent to prison.
They were Republicans against Francisco Franco?
Republicans of course! If not, I would die of shame.
You are a strong supporter of former President López Obrador and President Sheinbaum and their proclaimed “transformation” of Mexican society. What about critics who say Mexico is To a path to an authoritarian one-party state?
Really authoritarian? Have you forgotten something? The time in Mexico when there was a congress with 315 (ruling party) representatives and one independent? That wasn't that long ago. And a time when the president was elected through fraud? A country that has resolved its conflicts through violent repression? That was authoritarian.
Is political polarization increasing?
Is this a polarized country? Yes? Is it more polarized than before? No. Was this country less polarized than it is now when they fired on the campesinos in Aguas Blancas (a police massacre of 17 farmers in the western state of Guerrero in 1995)? No. It was polarized differently.
Does the international resistance to left-wing political rule in Mexico bother you?
Conservative thinking in the United States and Spain doesn't like what we're doing in Mexico. I understand it. We represent the left and are not hiding in a cave. We prefer social programs to capital. Andrés Manuel (López Obrador) expressed it very clearly: “We have no problem with big capital in Mexico – but with fair salaries, full freedom and without looting.”
How do you see Mexico's future?
Complicated. And hopeful.
Fans expect new stories about Belascoarán as he navigates the dark depths of the capital. Have world-weary Shamus and the former Aztec capital lost their noir juju?
I lost it because I grew old. I don't write novels from that perspective anymore. At night I now write a crime novel – not with Belascoarán, but with Olguita, my favorite character. She is a journalist, 22.
Do you ever get tired? Time to sit back and enjoy the smoke and Coca-Cola?
El Fondo requires enormous energy – but it is an interesting energy. We give people something they haven't had before: access to the world of books.
Do you ever think about the Reaper?
No. This is a waste of time. You have enough time on this earth, and when it's over, it's over. If you're an author who writes noir novels and run a publishing company, you're faced with two choices: be optimistic or kill yourself.
Special correspondent Cecilia Sanchez Vidal contributed to this report.