November - December 2002

MÉXICO: GETTING THE WORD OUT
By Guillermo Murray & Judy Goldman

Just a bit over two decades ago, production of children’s books in México was done sporadically and they were usually destined for school use. From the 1930’s to the 1970’s, the government produced most children’s books and a few were imported from Spain, Venezuela, Colombia and Argentina. Only after the first International Children’s Book Fair, held in Mexico City in 1981, were books in this genre produced in the country.

In México illiteracy is rife. The majority of children don’t learn to enjoy books and reading and school desertion—usually for economic reasons—is a tremendous problem. According to data from the UNESCO, the average Mexican only reads between half and two-and-a-half books per year. According to Reforma, a national newspaper, there are only about 400 bookstores in the country and most are in the capital, Mexico City. Reforma also noted that there are only three or four bookstores dedicated exclusively to children’s books in a country where there are more than 100 million people, half of which are under the age of fifteen. These bookstores are also in Mexico City.

In México there exists the phenomenon of the “free text book,” a program that started with the then-ruling party, the PRI, which governed the country for over seventy years. This brought with it the idea that culture should be free: in other words, as the Romans said, “bread and circus,” where the State must finance all cultural projects and, because of this, all must be free. This, by association, means that all that is free has no value. From that same period, there is also the idea that fairy tales, science fiction and other stories and books of this type are “evasions of reality.” The major problem is, then, the lack of comprehension by the public as to what a child is and what the benefits of reading are. The so-called “moral and didactic literature” has been a constant and only serves to make children run away from anything that smacks of literature. Just recently (August of 2002), when the government imposed a National Plan for Reading, this phenomenon repeated itself: the list of books selected was “fixed” and politically correct but very far from the reality of Mexican children and the creators of books for young readers who live in this country.

But even with this situation, from the 1920’s on today there have always been groups of intellectuals interested in the artistic education of children. This is the case of the Yucatec writers Ermilo Abreu Gómez and Antonio Mediz Bolio, who, with Alfonso Reyes, produced some of the best work in the genre until the middle of the twentieth-century. Pascuala Corona was also one of the most important Mexican writers until the 1970s, when authors like Gilberto Rendón, Francisco
Hinojosa, Hugo Hiriart and Emilio Carballido appear. As to illustration, there are a lot of talented artists in México: Felipe Dávalos, Felipe Ugalde, Fabricio Vanden Broeck, Gerardo Suzán, Gloria Calderas and Rosario Valderrama are just a few that we can mention.

In the last twenty years, international publishers like Scholastic from the U.S., SM from Spain, Editorial Norma from Colombia, and Alfaguara from Spain (and part of the Santillana Group) have begun to work in a practically untapped market. Actually, production is intense and there are new authors, like M.B. Brozón (pen name of Mónica Beltrán), Jaime Alfonso Sandoval, Norma Muñoz Ledo, and they are making their mark, as well others like Berta Hiriart, Margarita Robleda, Margarita Heuer, Becky Rubinstein, Juan Villoro, Elena Dreser, Guillermo Murray and Judy Goldman, to name a few.

There are Mexican stories and others that are so universal that they can be enjoyed by any reader; poetry, novels for any age level and, as something fresh, bilingual stories in Spanish and native Indian languages, especially in Nahuatl, Zapotec and Maya.

The problem facing many writers and illustrators in the country is that we are not recognized for dedicating ourselves to this genre and there are people who say that we don’t even exist! Even so, because of their good quality and artwork, Mexican books for young readers are being exported to Latin America and, more every day, to the U.S., where there is an enormous market for these books. There are, in the U.S., more than 35 million people with Latin American roots and this number will increase in the coming years. Books in Spanish will benefit these children, strengthening their bilingual education as well as helping to preserve their culture and traditions.