Alaíde Foppa / Elena Poniatowska

I research contemporary Mexican poetry and that’s how I found a manuscript by Alaíde Foppa, Memories and transfigurations, that was published recently and that I think Paula Mónaco brought you – the young Diana del Ángel tells me, brought to the house by Marta Lamas.

“I started working on the archive that Julio Solórzano has in Guatemala. There I have found another unpublished collection of poems, many letters, many articles, many scripts from the feminist magazine Fem, and also many of the scripts for his radio programs that were not recorded on Radio UNAM. I collected her articles on women’s literature and on art.”

–Yes, Alaíde Foppa was a very good art critic. He competed with Raquel Tibol and Teresa del Conde, and above all with Luis Cardoza y Aragón, one of the great Guatemalan refugees alongside the storyteller Tito Monterroso.

–It is very exciting to know her entire archive, because there are also copies of many letters that she wrote. Alaíde has several Josefina Vicens, because she did an entire analysis of The empty bookand he greatly promoted that novel that Octavio Paz praised. The archive also has intimate correspondence with Miguel Ángel Asturias and with President Arévalo, father of Julio, his eldest son.

–Diana, I felt affection for the two Solórzano brothers, Carlos, married to Beatriz, Alfonso Caso’s eldest daughter, and Alfonso, Alaíde’s husband and father of her three children.

–Elena, there is a lot of Alaíde material still to be discovered. Many of his notebooks are still in storage. I have read some and there are parts that I have a hard time deciphering because I wrote very quickly. His manuscripts also contain unpublished poems, in addition to the collection of poems Memories and transfigurations that was published. I found five chapters of a novel that is about a woman who wants a divorce and plans to separate; I guess it has a lot to do with his reality at that moment. I found four stories, but they are in Italian. I understand that she started writing in Italian, because it is her native language.

–Alaíde did simultaneous translation from Italian for the embassy of that country in Mexico, and translated interviews and conferences. When Alberto Moravia came with his wife, the feminist Dacia Maraini, the Italian embassy organized conferences at the Italian Institute of Culture on Francisco Sosa Street, in Coyoacán, and offered dinners at which Alaíde was the hostess. He carried the entire conversation. She was instrumental in Moravia’s visit to Mexico; He led his conferences at the Italian Cultural Institute and established schedules for public events and press conferences. The entire Moravian agenda was Alaíde’s responsibility.

I tell Diana del Ángel that Elsa Morante, the first Moravian woman, marked me before the feminist Dacia Maraini, who was much younger than him. Elsa Morante wanted to go to the preventive prison, or Palacio Negro de Lecumberri, and I was very interested in accompanying her, because when she entered she had to take off several overlapping sweaters, as well as a jacket; in total four garments. Elsa was afraid of the cold under the blazing Mexican sun.

He spoke with great respect to several prisoners and I realized the similarities between the Italian and Spanish languages. He paid close attention to the homosexual issue and asked questions that I couldn’t answer. He wanted to see the punishment cells, which are like cages, and asked about the kitchen. He was struck by the fact that Lecumberri smelled like bread, because that year a prisoner responsible for the kitchen made the crispiest bolillos I have ever tasted.

Perhaps Elsa Morante wanted to write a text about the living conditions of prisoners in Mexico; I never knew if he did.

–When we talked about the disappeared in Latin America (then there was not yet the number left by the guerrilla), there was already talk of the solidarity of the missing poet, Alaíde Foppa. I studied at high school 4 of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), which is in Tacubaya.

“A teacher told us about Alaíde and read us the poem ‘Mujer’, already published. From that reading I was very interested, but it was not easy to get his work. I couldn’t read more than what I found on the Internet and in the library of the faculty where I studied. There I found an anthology of his: Wind in spring.”

–She was a very beloved teacher at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters.

–Neither at the UNAM nor in the National Library are his works, but at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters I only found that copy of Wind and spring. There is nothing in the Central Library. The typescript of his that I found was in the library of Antonio Castro Leal; I have not found any reference to whether Alaíde knew him or if they were friends; I guess so, right?

–Surely you knew him, Diana. Furthermore, all the persecuted people from Latin America took refuge in Alaíde’s house, on the corner of Francia Street, in the Florida neighborhood, because she and her husband, Alfonso Solórzano, were a pole of attraction, and the couple was very generous. Thanks to them I was able to interview Miguel Ángel Asturias and Mario Monteforte Toledo.

–I imagine that she gave the typescript to Antonio Castro Leal expecting a ruling or a critical opinion. I don’t know if he answered her, but he kept it and it is very certain that he had it bound.

“At first I thought it was a homemade or artisanal edition, but then I realized that none of the texts that talk about Alaíde mention it, and that there is not one in another library either. Then I verified that everything was original in the sense that everything was written on onion paper type sheets, which are the ones she used.

“That’s why I looked for Julio – his eldest son – to be able to publish it and he agreed.”

–Marta Lamas could also have material from Alaíde, as well as the magazine’s archive Fem.

–Marta Lamas gave everything to her children, and only kept their memory in her heart.

–Diana, I remember that those who must have known a lot are the Giménez Cacho family, very good friends and hosts of Alaíde some weekends. I also remember the reaction of Luis Cardoza y Aragón, art critic, who hit himself in the head and shouted: It’s not possible!upon hearing the news. That disappearance affected him greatly. Like him, Alaíde was an art critic in the cultural supplement of the newspaper News, Although I felt that Cardoza y Aragón had a bit of a tendency to feel superior to her, but she lost that attitude immediately when Alaíde disappeared.

“I loved Alaíde immediately, because she was endearing, and her disappearance knocked out not only Marta Lamas, but the entire UNAM and those of us who participated in Fem.”