Warm welcome to Poniatowska at the FIL-Zócalo

The writer and journalist Elena Poniatowska said that it was a moving surprise, the memory of which she will always preserve, the reception that the public and her friends gave her during the presentation, yesterday afternoon, of the second volume of a selection of her texts published in The Day.

The author was the center of a festive and affectionate talk from the beginning, because as soon as the 2013 Cervantes Prize winner was present, she was received with a standing ovation by the majority of the almost thousand attendees at the Elvia Carrillo Puerto Forum of the International Fair of the Book (FIL) Zócalo.

During the activity, copies of Elena Poniatowska: Her work in La Jornada (volume II). The first was published in 2022 as a mini homonymsin the context of the narrator’s 90th birthday.

The Brigade to Read in Freedom then stated that it was a way to celebrate “his life, his struggle, his solidarity, his talent, his letters, making this book in which you will find some of his opinions and interviews, which appear daily in the newspaper The Day, to which we appreciate all the support.”

The book presented addresses topics such as the National Democratic Convention, the life of the social activist Evangelina Corona, the tragedy of the ABC daycare, the union struggle of the Pascual Cooperative, the cartoonist rivers, the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, the singer and composer Juan Gabriel, the student leader Raúl Álvarez Garín and the chronicler Carlos Monsiváis.

The journalist was the center of a festive and affectionate talk at the Elvia Carrillo Puerto Forum. Photo Cristina Rodríguez

Jesusa’s teachings

Poniatowska asked for a minute of silence so that she could give thanks, and think that my mother and my father, who are higher up on this canvas, see us all and see me herewhere she was accompanied by the historian Paco Ignacio Taibo II, the feminist researcher Marta Lamas and the chronicler Fabrizio Mejía Madrid, as well as Argel Gómez Concheiro, head of Great Community Festivals of Mexico City.

He remembered that it was a girl from a nunnery, asking for forgiveness for the sins that she had not yet committed, but that she would later commit, surely, with singular joy.

He highlighted the solidarity and teaching of Marta Lamas, as well as When I started in journalism and literature, Jesusa Palancares taught me in another field. Everything he told me seemed luminous to me. I had never heard anything as extraordinary as her stories, because she was in the Mexican Revolution. He rode a horse. He was in many battles. He didn’t love Pancho Villa, and he did love Emiliano Zapata very much..

He added that Palancares opened the doors to a world that was not his, the of the girls well, of beating their chests and taking ballet, piano and singing classes. I was very prayerful. I knelt all day and asked for forgiveness. I don’t know exactly what my youth was, but it was very beautiful..

Fabrizio Mejía referred to the importance of information management exception of this newspaper, as former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador said, printed matter that has accompanied many social movements, since its foundation, such as after the 1985 earthquake, the 1988 electoral campaign and the fraud, the denunciation of Fobaproa and the horror of calderonate.

Regarding Poniatowska, he mentioned that his public life has passed between horror and wonder, which highlights his call to ask questions and the texts he has published in which there is a vocation to handcraft the voices of many people, as well as such as its resistance to scourges such as racism, classism and misogyny.

In her speech, Marta Lamas commented that Poniatowska It has become a symbol. Her denunciation, which is a cry of love for Mexico, is also a demand for the subjugated women and praise for the untamed ones who, individually or socially, have inaugurated spaces and paths of struggle.. Es the most famous and most beloved writer in Mexico.

It personifies, the writer added, a fundamental purpose of feminism: for a woman to give productive channel to her desire for fulfillment. In Elena’s case, writing.

Paco Ignacio Taibo II recalled that in his adolescence he said to himself: When I grow up, I want to be like Elenawell she over and over again he did what the rest of us should do.