Sunday, May 20, 2007
Strangers of Fiction
It is often said that life is stranger than fiction, but in the case of Mexico's two most famous personalities, it might be argued that life is fiction.
Last fall, a detective novel co-authored by the internationally acclaimed novelist Paco Ignacio Taibo II and the world renowned Subcomandante Marcos was published. More recently, the Zapatista commander/former philosophy professor announced the forthcoming publication of his new sex novel. While the field of literature is clearly in better hands with the journalist/historian Taibo, the mingling of politics with fiction in the surreality that comprises Mexico is perhaps inevitably linked with the revolutionary Marcos, who once remarked, "If I removed my balaclava, I'd disappear."
Yet, for the ghosts of '68--those 300+ student demonstrators shot and bayonetted to death by the Mexican military in the Tlatelolco Massacre during the Mexico City Olympics--the reunification of their spirits in the embodiment of these two raconteurs of resistance is bound to haunt even the decaffeinated aristocracy.
Last fall, a detective novel co-authored by the internationally acclaimed novelist Paco Ignacio Taibo II and the world renowned Subcomandante Marcos was published. More recently, the Zapatista commander/former philosophy professor announced the forthcoming publication of his new sex novel. While the field of literature is clearly in better hands with the journalist/historian Taibo, the mingling of politics with fiction in the surreality that comprises Mexico is perhaps inevitably linked with the revolutionary Marcos, who once remarked, "If I removed my balaclava, I'd disappear."
Yet, for the ghosts of '68--those 300+ student demonstrators shot and bayonetted to death by the Mexican military in the Tlatelolco Massacre during the Mexico City Olympics--the reunification of their spirits in the embodiment of these two raconteurs of resistance is bound to haunt even the decaffeinated aristocracy.
