A benevolent editor / Elena Poniatowska

Elena Enriquez smiles. She is a do-gooder editor. She hugs everyone and treats them well; she encourages the first-time author to keep going, laughs easily. Since she has a cute smile and an encouraging look, dealing with her is a gift, because being kind is the essence of her. Very pretty, she paves the way and eliminates obstacles and insecurities. For a young author, dealing with her must be heaven.

“Books changed my life, I started reading when I was eight years old because – says our editor, who for several years was a pillar of Era (Espresate, Rojo, Azorín) – an aunt, who was like my second mother, took me to live with her in Huehuetla, Puebla, ahead of Cuetzalan. With her, I started reading when I was eight years old. It was fantastic for me to go with her, because she was a rural teacher.

“My aunt did not study at the Normal School, but rather received literacy training; She was a bilingual teacher, she spoke Totonaco and taught children to read in Totonaco and Spanish. She told me: ‘Let’s see, Elena, read me aloud’, and she got furious when she heard me: ‘You read so badly, girl! If you already went to first grade, how can you read so badly?’

“Every day, a little before it started to get dark, because then there was no electric light, we used some cans of oil and a lighter for light, and I read for at least an hour. He told me: ‘Also look at where there are errors and mark them so that you don’t comment on them.’ My aunt didn’t know the word ‘errata’, which we use now. I fell in love with reading. One of the books I read aloud was Ana Frank’s diary. It shocked me to know that they had killed her.

“Throughout my life, books were a constant, and I decided to be an editor. I also published a text in high school 4 Gabriel Gutiérrez Nájera, and they congratulated me. At that time, the bands of the Bugs, los Panchitos, and they were our companions. We made a little newspaper in which everyone could give their opinion to understand the band kids, Integration Project, and we publish texts from high school boys. Some teachers gave us money and I was in charge of editing it. At that time I didn’t know what being an editor meant.

“Professionally, I will have started my career at 19 years old. My first jobs were in the The citizen, by Teodoro Césarman, president of the Advisory Council of Mexico City. We still had regent, Manuel Camacho Solís. There I had contact with many writers: Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz, Gutierre Tibón, Bárbara Jacobs. In addition to proofreading texts, I did the central reporting on emblematic sites. I wrote about Tepito, Garibaldi, la Lagunilla, Paseo de la Reforma, the Zócalo, all those places that later appeared in the book Image and mirror: The neighborhoods of the Mexico City, which were previously published in The citizen.

“They called me to work in Macropolis, magazine by Juan Pablo Becerra Acosta, son of Don Manuel. I did chronicles and interviews when I was 22 years old. The time came when the magazine could not continue and they invited me to work on Inland.

“I was 24 years old when my career as an editor really started. My role was to publish the first novel of young authors so that larger publishers would be interested in their work. I was in charge of production, I was responsible for the Tierra Adentro Editorial Fund, the magazine and the published books. Víctor Sandoval was actually the one who started that program; I got the second season. The intention was precisely to go inland, leave the capital, tour the country and make new voices known. The requirement was that it be the first work. We received hundreds of manuscripts that were read by various critics. We couldn’t publish all of them and I learned to make opinions and establish a very careful selection process.

“There were other readers, whose names I cannot reveal, but together we decided what to publish. My direct boss was Juan Domingo Argüelles, to whom I am grateful, because he taught me how to be an editor. Nobody teaches you to be an editor, no school in Mexico; There is no training for editors, those of us who do it learn in practice. It is a beautiful profession, because it combines an aesthetic taste, that of design, the love of paper, the visual proposal and a technical knowledge of the language, of what is creative, originality. Years later I had to combine that technical knowledge with business work, since for many years I was an editor for the State, for academic institutions.

“The Tierra Adentro cultural program belonged to Conaculta; At the time, I was an editor who worked for the State. Conaculta had just been formed and those of Inland we were not properly part of a structure; Most of us workers were paid by fees.

“Rafael Tovar y de Teresa was the director of that institution. I worked there for several years and they never registered me with Social Security, or anything, and I was left without a pension. I always charged fees, but I loved editing and I owe a lot to my teacher there, Juan Domingo Argüelles, a generous and absolutely meticulous professional. He repeated to me: ‘There is no editor who does not suffer from gastritis, because if you are not careful enough, your mistake is reproduced by the thousands. You can’t go wrong here.’

“I have always worked with very great tension. He and I read all the books we published in tests at least twice aloud, checking them against the original to check that there were no jumps or errors. We spent a lot of time comparing the already formed book with the original. When they were translations the work was much more difficult. The beautiful thing about that time is that many of the authors who were published at that time today are great writers recognized on an international scale, such as David Toscana, Cristina Rivera Garza, Socorro Venegas, Juan José Rodríguez, the notables of Inland.

“Sari Bermúdez was the president of Conaculta during the Fox government, and she changed many programs, I don’t know why she did it, because I left. The exceptional designer of the magazine and books, Natalia Nieto, is the sister-in-law of Jean Meyer, the historian. Jean told Natalia that at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) they needed an editor, Natalia gave my name and sent my resume and I interviewed Blanca Heredia, Carlos Elizondo and Leo Zuckerman, and I stayed to work with them.

“At CIDE I worked with Jean Meyer, María Amparo Casar, Ignacio Marván, Layda Negrete. When working at CIDE, I went to the meetings of the Chamber of the Publishing Industry, I interacted with other editors, because we did co-editions; There I met Marisol Schulz, then director of Alfaguara and now director of FIL Guadalajara, editor of Saramago, Orhan Pamuk and Marcelo Uribe, deputy director of Era, who published my book Image and mirror: The neighborhoods of Mexico City. Then I met Carlos Monsiváis, who was wonderful with me, and Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, who told me a lot about Tinísima, and he sent me to Neus, who was going to leave the publishing house due to illness.

“She and Marcelo Uribe hired me to see everything related to copyright, manuscripts and press. When Neus retired, I was promoted to deputy director and worked at the Madero printing press, because we made the magazine there. Inland. He had a halo and published the writers that I admired: Monsiváis, Sergio Pitol, Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, Pablo González Casanova, Carlos Pereira, my teachers. Political Notebooks It was our Bible.

“Being an editor allowed me to deal with great authors. I didn’t get Fuentes, because in Era, we only had The masked days y Aura, but I treated Monsiváis, Pitol, José Emilio Pacheco, Eduardo Antonio Parra, Bárbara Jacobs and many more. The wonder is being close to their creative process, being close to how they construct their work and, above all, the great life lessons of seeing that these writers are the simplest, most humble people, more open to learning than anyone else; When they had to tell them something, make some suggestions, they were deeply grateful. José Emilio Pacheco said: ‘It’s good that they saw it, because if not, what a stupid thing they would have done! Thank you so much’. It was absolute humility.”