R.I.P.: Montemayor, Mexican Literary Giant, Renaissance Man
In a world of clipped discourse and fleeting images, Carlos Montemayor stood apart from the mainstream. A student of ancient and modern languages, Chihuahua’s native son promoted Maya, Zapotec, Guarani and other indigenous poetry of the Americas. The 62-year-old scholar wrote acclaimed books, received prestigious literary awards and contributed regularly to publications including the daily La Jornada and the national news magazine Proceso. A lover of the musical arts, he found time to sing opera.
Mexico’s literary giant and Chihuahua’s Dean of Letters is now dead. Born in Parral, Chihuahua, in 1947, Montemayor succumbed to stomach cancer early on the morning of February 28 in Mexico City. Less than three months earlier, in December 2009, Montemayor was handed Mexico’s National Arts and Sciences Award by President Felipe Calderon.
A novelist, poet, essayist, teacher, translator, researcher, and tenor, the multi-lingual Montemayor was perhaps most of all a defender of the dispossessed.
As a young university student in Chihuahua City in the 1960s, Montemayor witnessed first hand a mass movement of small farmers for land. He even met youths who felt compelled to take up arms for the first guerrilla movement in Mexico after the Cuban Revolution.
Later, while residing in Mexico City, Montemayor was stunned to hear the idealistic young people in Chihuahua who were willing to lay down their lives for a greater cause officially described as bandits, cattle rustlers and delinquents.
“This is what really affected me, because I knew their honesty, their cleanliness, their integrity, their militancy, their generosity, ” Montemayor once told a Mexican reporter. “This impression of how the official version can brutally destroy the truth of human life marked me forever.”
Coming of age in a time of social and political upheaval, Montemayor was considered by many to be Mexico’s leading expert on left-wing guerrilla movements. After carefully researching the movements from all angles, and talking directly to survivors of the struggles, Montemayor wrote two novels that dramatically retold the stories of the armed uprisings of the 1960s and 1970s.
Montemayor’s classic 1991 work The War in Paradise relived the guerrilla movement and dirty war that jolted the southern state of Guerrero in the 1970s. A later novel, Arms of the Dawn (2003), employed the same technique of historical fiction to retell the story of the 1965 attack on the army barracks in Madera, Chihuahua, by revolutionaries led by Arturo Gamiz and
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By: La Bloga,
on 3/6/2010
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By: La Bloga,
on 12/5/2009
Call for essays on Latin American literaries
Got something you've always wanted to share about where La Raza Cósmica is now? Never found a home for your piece on the Latino hero Subcomandante Marcos? Now's your chance:
ANTIQUE CHILDREN, which bills itself as "a mischievious literary arts journal," is preparing a special issue for February on Latin American Writers. (When you go to the site, click on "Quarterly" to see this info.)
"We’re looking for writers to pen creative essays on Latin American Writers or review their books. You may write a piece of fiction but it must envelop one of these writers and their selected book."
The writers and books include, among many others, Jose Donoso - Hell Has No Limits; Juan Rulfo - Pedro Paramo; José Vasconcelos Calderón - The Cosmic Race; Guatemalan writer Rigoberta Menchu; and Subcomandante Marcos.
Deadline is January 20, 2010, but for details you need to click here.
You'll also find the story Kind of Blue by La Bloga's own Daniel A. Olivas there.
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Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: creative non-fiction, Michael Sedano, award, Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, Rene Colato Lainez, Latin American writers, call for essays, Crafty Chicana, Add a tag
Over on Latino Books Examiner you can read more about La Bloga's own René Colato Laínez and his new children's book, René has two last names.
And check out Mayra Calvani's interview where Colato talks about his books, his writing habits, and his road to becoming a published author.
* * * * *
Call for essays on Latin American literaries
Got something you've always wanted to share about where La Raza Cósmica is now? Never found a home for your piece on the Latino hero Subcomandante Marcos? Now's your chance:
ANTIQUE CHILDREN, which bills itself as "a mischievious literary arts journal," is preparing a special issue for February on Latin American Writers. (When you go to the site, click on "Quarterly" to see this info.)
"We’re looking for writers to pen creative essays on Latin American Writers or review their books. You may write a piece of fiction but it must envelop one of these writers and their selected book."
The writers and books include, among many others, Jose Donoso - Hell Has No Limits; Juan Rulfo - Pedro Paramo; José Vasconcelos Calderón - The Cosmic Race; Guatemalan writer Rigoberta Menchu; and Subcomandante Marcos.
Deadline is January 20, 2010, but for details you need to click here.
You'll also find the story Kind of Blue by La Bloga's own Daniel A. Olivas there.
* * * * *
1 Comments on News on La Bloga contributors; Call for Essays, Chica stories; & Latino poetry wanted, last added: 12/5/2009
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Rudy, nice roundup of literary news and opportunities. Mil gracias.