FCE’s greatest achievement is being popular: Taibo

The greatest achievement of the Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE), as it celebrates its 90th anniversary this Tuesday, is to be popular at street level and to be known as far away as the Sierra de Oaxaca, said its head, Paco Ignacio Taibo II.

The historian, in an interview with The Day, He stressed that if you ask someone in Querétaro, Puebla or in the Sierra de Oaxaca about the Fund, they say that they do know it, that The Librobús passed by yesterday. You really notice this popularity. It is the just reward for our effort..

He said that he will soon have a meeting with the president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, to define what the fund will be like in its second stage. There are some ideas, but I do not want to give too much away because the programming of the FCE and the major efforts will depend on this long conversation..

The director was adamant that The Fund is very Fourth Transformation, very much with a logic of the book for the service of the majority of the population. Taking care of the need for a catalogue like ours to be in continuous reprint, and at the same time it is the Vientos del Pueblo collection, with millions of books sold per copy for less than 20 pesos..

Taibo II commented that the balance of his administration is good: “We have transformed the Fund. We took it out of the mausoleum in which it was located, from the bisneo and the logic of favors; we lowered the price of books, improved distribution chains, reached places where we had not been able to, and carried out very solid work to promote reading and communication.

Today, the FCE communicates very well. When we arrived there was no advertising for its books, they were just comments in some newspaper or cultural supplement. Now we have a dissemination machine through public television.

He said that The network of clubs and reading rooms has grown in an astonishing way, which implies a continuous effort to send the books, talking with its members and discussing the experience, because it is a network built from the bottom of society with volunteers..

The writer also added: “The editorial selection we have made is good, but it could be better. We need more time to read, to get in touch with foreign publications. In some cases it goes very well and in others we need to push harder.

In everyday life you always see the small problems and details.

He welcomed the consolidation of a Latin American project. We already have subsidiaries or houses of the Fund or agreements or half-way bookstores or distribution agreements, but we are already established throughout the Spanish-speaking world..

He pointed out that there is wear and tear on the team that We have to resolve and renew in the coming months. There will be some changes in the team, not fundamental, but to prevent us from hanging from a hammock.

Activities for the anniversary

Regarding the activities for the 90th anniversary, Taibo II explained that after “the very powerful Great Night Sale, in which we sold 40 thousand books in two days (last weekend), we have a couple of important conferences about the two figures at the origin of the fund who inspire us with deep respect, the founder Daniel Cosío Villegas and Arnaldo Orfila Reynal, tomorrow and Thursday.

Then, an exhibition that is going to be different (it will open today at the Rosario Castellanos bookstore); curiously, it will be about the illustration in the Fondo, the paintings, the drawings that we have in our archive and library, which over the years became important..

To show what the FCE is like now, Taibo II continued, they thought of “putting 90 books at half price until September 8, in order to establish a symbolic character in the celebration: to reinforce the idea on a national and international scale that this label is different and that we are a publisher that celebrates, not by raising the prices of a book or launching a best seller international, but by offering 90 key books from its catalogue at half price.”

Among the texts offered is The damned of the earth, by Frantz Fanon. The narrator commented that this, along with Listen, Yankee, by Wright Mills, the first book in favor of the Cuban revolution written by a gringo, and Sanchez’s children meant the dismissal of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz from the Orfila project, The one I feel most identified with in the history of the FCE; an admirable character with a very interesting idea of ​​what and how to edit.. All three titles were re-released.

The official acknowledged that the Fund is a publishing house with commercial objectives: we have to produce, distribute and sell books, but it is also a social project, and this is the balancing act every day.

He concluded: I’m happy. Doing this for another six years? Well, I volunteered. I wouldn’t have done it, because then at night I have nightmares: that I should be writing this book and I wake up and I’m working at the Fund. That book that I should be writing is going to take up who knows how many years of my life at night..