Martín Caparrós received the honorary doctorate from the UdeG in Madrid

Madrid. With emotion overwhelmed by this “hug made of papyrus, gold, cordiality and smiles,” the Argentine writer and journalist Martín Caparrós received the degree of doctor at the Institute of Mexico in Madrid. for the sake of honor from the University of Guadalajara (UdeG), in a ceremony that was scheduled in the Guadalajara capital, along with the other two greats of art, Joan Manuel Serrat and Leonardo Padura, but which he could not attend due to travel impediments since he suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

In his speech he recalled his “30 or 40 trips through Mexico”, a country that gave him “decisive influences”, among them, and very prominently, his long and deep friendship with Carlos Fuentes, whom he discovered at the age of 12 when reading The death of Artemio Cruzwhich opened his eyes for the first time to his own condition as a writer.

Caparrós (Buenos Aires, 1957) arrived at the headquarters of the Mexican embassy in Madrid, where the Institute of Mexico is located, in a wheelchair and with a smile from ear to ear. Not even the difficulties in moving his hands and holding the recognition diploma without help or touching the commemorative medal prevented him from remembering his adventures and learnings in Mexico.

“I am excited about this because it is like a hug made of papyrus, gold and, above all, cordiality and smiles. I like it and it impresses me, and I feel it not only as a hug from Guadalajara, but as a hug from Mexico in general,” he said, his voice breaking with emotion.

Experience with Claudia Sheinbaum

Then he began a speech that was as if he were telling a story about his life experience in our country and his great references, among them, in addition to Carlos Fuentes, his “great friend in life” Juan Villoro.

“I missed Mexico in my life. The first time I went I was attracted to it; it was in 1980 and it was a difficult arrival, because it started in the food market in Mérida, Yucatán, where I ate something I shouldn’t eat and for which I spent 10 days eating boiled red snapper. Since then I have gone 30 or 40 times!, and I have been in a good part of the country, in cities on the Atlantic and the Pacific, in various points on the southern and northern borders, and in many of the other Mexican states.”

He even remembered when he met the current president, Claudia Sheinbaum, when she was head of government of Mexico City. “They made me go to the government house in the Zócalo at six in the morning, and it turns out that she was already meeting with her security group who were giving her the report of everything that had happened the previous day, among which there were important crimes and crimes.

“I listened to her for a long time talking about hard things; I remember that afterwards, the first thing I asked her was if it was tolerable to start every day of your life hearing about crimes. She laughed and simply told me that that was so.

“Someone recently told me that they still start their day like this, not only in Mexico City, but in the entire country.”

Caparrós, who has written chronicles, essays and novels, and is the author of fundamental books in the contemporary literature of our language, such as Hunger o America, He explained that when he says that he “missed Mexico” it is because he was left wanting to have lived in Mexico City for a while.

“I was always intrigued and very attracted to the city. However, I think I know it and what impresses me and what I remember most is a small scene, when I was trying to enter the Metro at six in the afternoon, when compact human masses turned against my direction. I never had such a sensation of unleashed energy as seeing that mass advancing in my direction, compact and impenetrable; for me, that is a form of synthesis of Mexico City, with that energy always visible and in motion.”

A mustache attached to a man

As for the “decisive” Mexican influences in his life, Caparrós cited two: the first, more mundane, when he became “a mustache attached to a man” during a trip to Mérida in 1980, in which a barber cut his hair and beard and cut his mustache as he has it until now, 45 years later. The second, crucial, was his discovery of Carlos Fuentes: “My true discovery as a writer was when I was 12 or 13 years old and I read The death of Artemio Cruz, which for me was a revelation, to see that there was a narrator in first, second and third person. That absolutely marked me; I didn’t know you could tell something like that. Since then I always read Fuentes with the greatest intensity and interest.

“My debt to him was such that on the first page of my first novel, after the first 10 lines he is not only named, but it is written in that second person.”

He also recalled that he was dazzled by his generosity and perseverance. “There was a time when the four or five writers who made up the famous boom Latin America began to be at the pinnacle of literature in the 60s, and it was supposed to lead to a renewal or avant-garde movement in literature. It is very clear that of all the greats of the boom, The only one who continued searching was Carlos Fuentes, he never forgot that for him literature was the search, not having found,” he noted.

So “with this recognition I thought a lot about him. I remembered our last meeting, on May 1, 2012, when we ate together at the hotel where he was staying in Buenos Aires.

“I found him very skinny; when I walked out I stopped at a traffic light and I came up with phrases about him, I wrote them down and when I wrote them I realized that they were phrases for an obituary. He died 15 days later. And now, for you to come from Guadalajara and bring me this diploma, this medal and this love, it seems to me as if, in a rare magical act, Carlos Fuentes came and told me: ‘well, it wasn’t that bad.'”

On behalf of the UdeG, Mara Nadiezhda Robles, rector of the University Center for Economic-Administrative Sciences, traveled to Madrid for the ceremony, who stated in her speech: “we love you, Martín, because you are a spokesperson for the cause, for the causes, even if you did not pretend to be an activist, for what you write and because what you write has an impact”; Marco Antonio Núñez Becerra, rector of the Ciénega University Center, stated: “with the appointment we come to tell you some things; the first, and most important of all, is thanks for having appeared in our lives. To you, your parents and your circumstances that gave us to the entire world a human being who has been able to entertain us, move us, make us reflect and cultivate us.

“Thank you for the enormous number of pages written, well written, full of intelligence, commitment and emotions. Thank you for the chronicles, novels, reports, essays and other writings that you have left us and that are already part of one of the most valuable relics of humanity, that of the written word.

“You are, along with Serrat and Padura, one of the people we admire and follow to try to do things better.”