Élmer Mendoza is awarded the Jorge Ibargüengoitia Prize

The writer Élmer Mendoza (Culiacán, 1944) was awarded the Jorge Ibargüengoitia Prize for Literature, awarded by the University of Guanajuato (UG), in “recognition of his outstanding career in the crime novel category.”

Considered one of the most prominent writers of contemporary literature, he recently published his novel The mermaid and the pensioneredited by Alfaguara, a story that follows the steps of Carmen Larrañaga, who has suffered from sexist violence and drug trafficking since she was 18, and who is running as an independent deputy in Sinaloa to banish corruption and improve the living conditions of women.

The writer from Sinaloa chatted with The Day about this new literary adventure, in which she expresses a reflection on the strong presence and struggle of women in today’s society:

“During the pandemic I watched the news and I realized that many things had to do with our weaknesses. There was talk of suicides and they linked that to a lack of hope. I already had the idea of ​​a play with a female protagonist and I thought: ‘there are two: or I do it with Gris Toledo, my detective, and I put Édgar The Lefty I snack on vacation, or I invent something new, and that’s how it turned out,” he commented.

Carmen’s story is a reflection of the resistance to the brutality experienced in territories dominated by drug trafficking. At 18 years old, a criminal intimidates the girl’s parents into selling her to him. Forced and violated, she escapes from her captor and, after hiding for a while, decides to study political science at UNAM. Then he returns to Sinaloa, where he seeks to change the landscape of machismo, oppression and corruption.

“I saw it as something very likely in the country’s politics. On the one hand, a candidate super tied to power and financed with black money. And, on the other, a woman at the head of a group of individuals with great enthusiasm and hope of solving problems as difficult as femicides and economic violence,” he explained.

Élmer proceeded to “draw line”, to shape his narrative universe. “The story was being born, although I reached a point where I didn’t like it and I started again. That’s why it takes me years to write my novels. When I’m ‘fine-tuning’ the text is when the considerations come and that’s when I realize what I have. That’s when the realpolitik that I perceive.”

When Élmer Mendoza finished the book, the 2024 elections were underway. The panorama of political violence at the national level alarmed him so much that he knew that “there was the bond of my story,” that the center of his new narrative was women:

“There are a lot of attacks against them. They have been relegated throughout their lives and in recent years they have become very aware of their role. Some have a difficult history, but they have overcome it and have arrived. That is the case of Carmen Larrañaga, who has had a hard time since she was very young, but is very intelligent and realizes where she has to go. She goes to university, they give her the means and she does not waste them.”

Carmen is not alone, she is accompanied by her friend Chocowho encourages her not to give up. His other great ally is Néstor del Valle, a retired museum guard who still grieves the loss of his deceased wife and who finds a new reason for life in his work as a bodyguard.

Tributes

At 77 years old, Élmer Mendoza will receive two tributes for his career. The first, today at 7 p.m. at the Lido Cinema of the Rosario Castellanos Cultural Center, in the Condesa neighborhood. And tomorrow they will deliver the second one at 8 p.m., on the Carol Wilson stage of the Coyoacán International Book Fair.

“I feel very good because they recognize me for ‘modernizing’ the crime and noir genre. When I published my first work, a lone killerin 1999, I wanted to be someone different. I talked about it a lot with my teacher Fernando del Paso, to whom I said: ‘after you, I want to be the Gaga of the novels’. And he responded: ‘work, take the bull by the horns and start writing.’”

His next project will be a science fiction story, as if it were a nod to his youth. “When I started writing I had in mind doing one, that’s my big thing. I wanted to be a physicist, so it goes hand in hand, but whenever I make progress I destroy the work that I feel is of no use. I hope to have it in the next two years, to see how it goes.”

To new writers, he recommended: “everything is achieved with work, when you arrive strictly through relationships, authors disappear. Projects have to be put together in the long term. A good author is not a mountebank, he must have a big project and modify it. Life is not that long and I think you only have the opportunity to write one or two good novels.”

Élmer Mendoza will receive the Jorge Ibargüengoitia Prize for Literature during the inauguration of the 68th edition of the Guanajuato International Book Fair on March 19. The jury, made up of crime novel specialists Ainhoa ​​Vásquez, Carlos René Padilla and Felipe Fuentes Kraffczyk, awarded him the award because his literary proposal “fulfills an important social role since its stories and characters translate the feelings of a population that struggles to survive in the midst of the structural violence of contemporary Mexico.”