If this lean, silent writer, smiling at times, as if the next word embittered him, had been born and remained in one of the capitals of the world, in New York or Madrid, to name two cases in which he could have been born, it would be regular front page culture page and would make those of us who make supplements drool. For his prose, for the music of his prose, for the quality of his genius to invent about the reality he knows, for turning water into wine, prose into poetry, writing into a challenge that is in line, for example , of rulfo from ‘Pedro Páramo’.
It is Rodrigo Rey Rosa, and it is likely that they do not have to know, because it is not usually published, that he is one of the best narrators that the Spanish language has produced in this part of the 20th and 21st centuries.
He was born 63 years ago in Guatemala, his recent books are ‘The country of To’ó and ‘Letter from a Guatemalan atheist to the holy father’. Both are impressive investigations into the reasons why his country is a territory tormented by the threat of violence and death.
From those two books our questions turned. Talk to him, something we did in the Cafe Gijonat noon on a Sunday, is to learn that this proper name must be underlined with the same intensity with which in other times we put at the beginning of the lists Virginia Woolf or Gabriel García Márquez.
Q. You have always had an affective relationship with writers. Is that admiration or search?
A. It’s luck. Literature has allowed me to get closer to people I have greatly admired. Chance has also intervened. With Bolaño, for example. But I am very shy. I would have loved to have met Bioy Casares, for example. But I never dared to knock on his door.
Q. So there are admirations.
R. Well, yes, admiration and shyness or fear. I saw Borges, for example, once in New York. He came to give some talks and I found him dazzling. I remember that time I saw him very shy. He began to speak and his hands were shaking badly.
P. Shy him and shy you.
A. Yes, I am shy. I am not released.
Q. And what does your literature have to do with that?
A. I think so. In general, shutting yourself away to write and not being so in contact with the outside world makes you go into exile, right? Writing requires solitude. And if you are shy, you tend to be more lonely.
Q. Your literature is on the verge of saying a lot, but it only says the exact thing. Where does that containment come from?
R. It is something natural for me. I do not try to extend myself more than necessary. I think so. And style has to do with thought.
Q. When you were researching to write ‘Human Material’ you ran into evil.
R. Yes. But in the books, as a theme. It’s not like someone did something to me (laughs). Although in Guatemala… there is a lot of material for that.
Q. What hurts you the most about your country?
R. The irresponsibility and infantilism of the ruling classes, their lack of contact with reality. Guatemala is a country that does not work, that is dangerous, socially toxic. Today more people are going into exile than in the 80s because of social insecurity. The ignorance and selfishness of the powerful hurts me. And it seems like there’s no way that’s going to end. That’s sad, isn’t it?
Q. It is something from all of Latin America.
A. Yes, but Guatemala has peculiarities. The Mayan world, so powerful and rich, would have to be a hope. It makes us different. But the Mayan world is not well represented in the country’s ruling classes. And that makes it all the more tragic about the future.
Q. One day, in Colombia, a reporter asked a child what the future was for him and he told him: “The future is what there is not.” In his books there is that expression “there is no future”.
R. Well, future regarding progress. There is none of that. But I don’t remember where I say it exactly.
Q. How did you decide to count like that? With such precision without losing the solidity of the style.
R. It was not a decision. You do what you can with what you have at hand. I did this book without premeditated. The cases came to me and it arose. And this other one came after the death of a friend, I started to pull the thread and found all the elements of a narrative. And in this other one I owe a lot to some friends who defend indigenous peoples. For a long time their lands have been expropriated irregularly. I found out that they had just excommunicated a group of confreres because they were winning a lawsuit over land. I saw the case papers and just pulled the narrative thread.
Q. But you could have opted for fiction.
R. Well, there is also fiction, huh.
Q. But it all seems true.
R. That is the job of the novelist: that everything seems true. That is my job.
Q. In ‘El país de Toó’ there are very dramatic anecdotes. For example, the child who is about to be drowned. How does something like this come about?
R. To tell you how I would have to invent it. I do not know. I watch it, daydream… When I wrote it, a boy drowned near my sister’s house and that helped me. When you write, your own environment gives you ideas that can be useful to you.
Q. How long does it take you to make those architectures?
A. It is quite fast. I feel a kind of urgency to go deeper, to find out what’s going on, and in about four months I have the first draft. By hand, I always write first by hand. But it’s because I spend all day writing a story.
Q. One reads these books and, in effect, realizes that Guatemala is a small and wretched country. All that counts, does it really exist?
R. Not everything is literal, but yes. Systematic evil is part of our history. It is a very tough country. You try to improve things, but you can’t.
Q. There is an episode that caught my attention: when the brother’s son suffers an accident in a valley. It is a drama full of evil that counts as if it were happening at that moment.
R. When I was writing it, the projection of evil was taking place. It is almost a conflict of race. Therein lies the tension of it all.
Q. Fear produces suspicion in people. It is the case, isn’t it?
R. Yes. Fear or ignorance. That is why literature always tries to be a kind of approximation to the other.
Q. Does fear or ignorance create the character of a population?
R. Yes, due to mistrust, above all. In Latin America people are very friendly, but they can also shoot you. It is a society with fear, in which that fear produces violence. Have you ever been to Guatemala?
Q. No. But I have met some very interesting Guatemalans, including Miguel Ángel Asturias.
R. Oh, well, from his time to mine, violence grew a lot. Now, any grocery store has a guard: a twenty-year-old boy with a gun. There are areas where you feel like you are in Kurdistan. You see a lot of armed people in many places. You arrive at a hotel and have to go through a metal detector before checking in. Going to the bank or getting on a bus is a big risk. In other words: you live in anxiety.
Q. You live in Athens, now you are in Spain. A journalist is asking him about his books. What is he feeling right now?
R. That I am very lucky. But I also feel a little guilty for having the privileges that others don’t.
Q. In ‘Letter from an atheist’ the blame and fear and uncertainty are shared and…
A. I like that, as a reader, you realize that! That is the function of a no-frills style. I think that direct and plain writing helps the story to be swallowed without thinking that it is an artifice. In that sense, I think this style is more effective than a more cultured one.
Q. In Latin America there is an imperious presence of the Church. Or the churches. What role does religion play in the drama you narrate?
R. That drama, as you call it, pretends to be realistic. The role of religion has changed. Before it was much stronger and now it is more in retreat, trying to keep some of what it is losing. But in Guatemala it has always been part of power. In the most negative sense of the word: privileges, land ownership…
Q. Here you also denounce it.
A. Yes. But it must be recognized that in Guatemala the first guerrilla movements were led by priests and nuns. Sure, they were branded as communists.
Q. And there are assassins specialized in murdering communists.
R. Yes, there was a whole school of that. Anti-communist brainwashing was an American heritage and led to things like that.
Q. What role does politics play in the history of a troubled country?
R. Politics is the weapon and instrument of the ruling classes. Unfortunately, almost all politicians have been instruments. They are not the ones pulling the strings. Before, the landowners ruled and then, with some industrialization, the businessmen.
Q. Did Guatemala get screwed when the United States intervened?
R. He kept screwing around, you mean. Because she was already screwed (laughs).
Q. Does that interference still produce anger?
R. In Guatemalan society there are still those who are grateful for that interference. Because he managed to create a psychosis against communism. There are educated people, who have read, who say that.
Q. In ‘El país de Toó’ you describe what happened and is happening in Guatemala.
A. Yes, you are right. Things have happened that are still happening. As if we did not learn or there was no desire to solve many things. Today, the justice system no longer kills you, but puts you in jail. Today, as you surely know, the director of ‘El Periódico’ is in jail accused of money laundering, how absurd. Well, that’s my country.
Q. If reality is like fiction, what can save that difficult country?
A. An ocean change. A change of order. For the country to become truly democratic and representative. May the Mayan section, so badly treated, rule. That would be quite a revolution. Or if not… the Spanish reconquest (laughs). That you come back to put order (laughs). It’s a joke. Look: the Central American countries have always been like country-farms. There is not a country mentality, but a farm one. After the colonization, others took care of appropriating the land and exploiting the people.
Q. You say that Guatemala City is the capital of the Little Failed Republic.
R. Well, I say it there, but many people say it every day.
Q. How have you managed to grasp reality and turn it into your own story?
A. That is a great compliment! I believe that the style is the only thing that is ours, the songs, no. The themes are available to everyone. Styling is more about stripping away than building up.
Q. You have been associated with many writers: Le Carré. Kafka, Borges… Maybe they don’t know where to put it, right?
R. Maybe (laughs). I have read more Anglo-Saxon fiction than any other. I suppose, of course, that it will have influenced me in my style.
Q. And your father told you not to give up medicine.
R. Well yes, but I had a vocation. My father wanted to avoid it, worried about my future. But he already sees. By the way, I stopped medicine when I started reading Borges.
Q. All your books, in some way, deal with current events.
R. Yes. I think the strength of the novel is reality. And also the fact of counting our subjectivity. At least, that’s what my novels are for me.
Q. You love your country. But she has also let him down. It is the country that now has you in Athens.
R. I can thank you for that! Look: it is a beautiful country, but with a tragic destiny. With a legacy of violence and blindness too.
Q. Guatemala has you to thank for writing all this!
A. Well…. These books have not been reviewed in Guatemala. They have reproduced the press release in the newspapers, but they have not read it. It will be because it is too realistic. Someone I know has come to tell me: with what you have in your books, no one is going to want to come to Guatemala anymore (laughs).
‘Letter from a Guatemalan atheist to the Holy Father’
Rodrigo Rey Rose
alfaguara
192 pages
18,90 euros