When the murders first began to be reported, the authorities were openly discriminatory in their public statements. According to Amnesty, sometimes ‘the women themselves were blamed for their own abduction or murder because of the way they dressed or because they worked in bars at night’.

Often, the victims are young women who work in the region’s maquiladoras. For many impoverished women in Mexico working in these sweatshops is their only option. The assembly plants have been in operation since the 1960s but rapidly spread during the 1990s after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force and created a trading bloc between Canada, the United States and Mexico. Those unfortunate enough to work under sweatshop conditions make clothes for US -based companies such as Levi Strauss and Gap.

Juárez is now the most heavily populated city in Chihuahua State and given its proximity to the US there are also high levels of drug-trafficking and crime. The women have become a lot more visible as they travel to and from work, and their new found independence inevitably breeds resentment amongst local men. Most of the murders remain unsolved and violence against women continues to this day. The city has been dubbed the ‘femicide capital of the world’.

This is the backdrop to Sam Hawken’s assured debut novel The Dead Women of Juárez. Texan boxer, and a recovering drug addict, Kelly Courter works in Juárez as a human punch bag for Ortíz, a shady boxing promoter. Kelly always loses to the up-and-coming native Mexicans. He has few friends, except for his girlfriend, Paloma, who works for the human rights organization, Mujeres Sin Voces (Women without Voices) and her drug-dealing brother Estéban. When Paloma’s horrifically mutilated body is discovered in a stretch of wasteland, Kelly is implicated in her murder and he is brutally tortured to extract a confession by the sinister Captain Garcia.

Rafael Sevilla, a middle-aged narco-cop, has his own reasons for wanting to become involved in the investigation. Joining forces with Enrique, Garcia’s disillusioned assistant, Sevilla sets out to find the real perpetrators of the crime.

Hawken draws a devastating landscape of poverty and corruption. He contrasts the innocence of the victims and their families with the arrogance of those wielding power; the deprivation of the poor with the opulent, gated-accommodation of the rich; the inexorable spread of the drug cartels with the apparent inability of state officials to halt the never ending violence in the region.

Rumours and speculation about who is responsible for the killings run rampant and many believe that the people behind the murders are being protected. As well as the suspicion that drug-traffickers and organised criminals are involved there are also theories that the crimes are the work of wealthy businessmen killing for kicks. Hawken’s taut, brutal thriller intertwines all these suppositions and powerfully demonstrates that violence against women, corruption and lawlessness are all closely linked.

Media attention surrounding the feminicidios has been eclipsed by the violent war between the drug cartels. Hawken’s politically-edged novel draws a welcome focus back to the killings. There are no easy answers but readers can get involved via Amnesty International who continues to lobby the Mexican government. As Hawken points out in his Afterword: “this problem will be solved not with a bullet, but by bringing all those responsible for the abuse and murder of Juárez’s daughters to judgment before the law.”

Originally published by Latineos.com

It was originally written in 1993 to support the opposition movement in Burma and was circulated among dissidents. The brutal Burmese regime recognised its importance by sentencing those found in possession of the booklet to seven-year prison terms. Since then, it has inspired opponents of oppression the world over. The work has travelled, as a photo-copied pamphlet, from Burma to Serbia and from Egypt to China, and contributed to numerous peaceful uprisings including the Arab Spring.

This updated version is drawn from more than 40 years of research and writing on peaceful methods of protest, totalitarian systems and political theory. One of the key tenets of Sharp’s analysis is that non-violent struggle has a greater chance of success than violent resistance, because tyrannical regimes will, invariably, have the superior military power with which to suppress armed risings. The solution, Sharp contends, is “political defiance” – a term first coined by Robert Helvey, a retired US army colonel with whom Sharp worked in Burma.

In emphasising the need for strategic planning, Sharp puts forward four important stages: the first, Grand Strategy, directs the use of all available resources and offers a basic framework for the other three – strategies, tactics and methods. Sharp also offers suggestions to ensure a dictatorship is not merely replaced by another tyrannical regime. Alongside the resistance movement, he advocates the development of independent social, economic, cultural and political institutions which can contribute to changing the power relations within a society.

Sharp refers to his work as “a heavy analysis” and “not easy reading”, but I found it hugely accessible. To support his arguments, he adroitly blends a 14th-century Chinese parable and the Classical Greek myth of Achilles into his formal analysis.

The book is a must read for all those interested in human rights and democracy, but those supporters of totalitarian regimes should also pay heed to it for, as Sharp points out: “All dictatorships have weaknesses, internal inefficiencies, personal rivalries, institutional inefficiencies and conflicts between organisations and departments.”

As Sharp demonstrates, identifying these vulnerabilities is the first step towards liberation from tyranny.

Originally published in the Sunday Indpendent

Instead of focusing on the country’s wider civil unrest, Néspolo hones in on the deprived barrios of Buenos Aires, underlining the fact that in any economic crisis it is always the poor who are the hardest hit. In these outlying slums, hunger is the norm, violent mobsters rule the streets and impoverished children deal in drugs and carry guns.

The story is told from the perspective of twenty-year-old Gringo, who hangs out with his friend Chueco, smokes dope and indulges in petty crime to fund his addiction. The novel opens with Chueco telling Gringo: “There’s seven ways to kill a cat”. When you haven’t eaten for a week a cat’s meat is “a gift from God”. Its subsequent slaughter chillingly conveys the desperation of life in the slums.

When Gringo and Chueco rob and beat up the local barman, Fat Farías, they find themselves drawn into the sinister underworld of local drug lord, El Jetita, who co-opts them as his ‘messengers’ in an escalating conflict with a rival drug gang. Gringo dreams of escape and, after a visit to Buenos Aires, where he bumps into his long lost cousin Toni, he starts thinking of ways he can make a new career as a street vendor. But the boys are already in too deep, caught in an endless round of intimidation, violence and despair. They soon become marked men, embroiled in a bloody gun battle between the rival gangs.

Gringo retains our sympathy because his emotions are not yet dulled by drugs and barbarity, because of his affection for Mamina – who raised him when his mother disappeared – his conflicted feelings for his friend, Chueco, his desire for Farías’s niece, Yanina, his friendship with a young neighbour, Quique, and his attempts to understand Melville’s novel, Moby Dick, which he picks up on his trip to the capital. These are all stark reminders of his humanity in a world where violence is entrenched.

In 2010, Néspolo was selected by the British literary magazine Granta as one of the best young Spanish-language novelists writing today. It’s not hard to see why. With echoes of Paolo Lins’ City of God, Néspolo’s street-slang prose cuts like a knife and this taut thriller brilliantly captures the alienation and despair of the dispossessed.

Originally pubished by Latineos.com

A sense of national identity came late to Belarus, with religious divides predominating until 1914. Wilson claims: “It was military campaigns that shifted the border backwards and forwards, rather than politicians or ethnographers.” The Second World War established Belarus’s current borders. Many Poles were deported or fled the region and the Jewish population was almost completely wiped out, leaving the Belarusians as the dominant ruling class.

After being absorbed by the Soviet Union, the myth of a heroic partisan movement was exploited to the full, allowing Belarus to benefit from post-war reconstruction. Its geographical position made it an important energy transit state and it was rewarded with generous Soviet subsidies.

Following the Soviet Union’s collapse, Lukashenka won the first presidential election in 1994. By claiming that he was an “ardent Russophile”, he ensured Russia’s continued support but, in order to consolidate his power, Lukashenka systematically dismantled all the state institutions and organs set up by the previous constitution. As Wilson contends, “Divide-and-Rule and the use of masses of government informers and agents became his favourite methods of control.” He also privately sponsored political candidates so that no real opposition could emerge and, later, applied the same tactics to NGOs.

Many independent organisations were closed down or replaced with Government Organised Non-Governmental Organisations (GONGOs); a perfect example of his contempt for human rights. More worryingly, in 1999 and 2000, Lukashenka’s political opponents began to “disappear”.

I witnessed for myself Lukashenka’s repression in 2002 when, on behalf of PEN, the international writers’ association, I observed the trial of newspaper editor Victor Ivashkevich and visited another journalist, Mikola Markovich, who was detained in a forced labour camp miles from his family in the remote town of Osipovichi. Both were charged with “slandering the president”.

Lukashenka’s flagrant abuse of human rights has not significantly diminished his baseline support – the latest poll gave him a rating of 39 per cent. Wilson focuses more on his troubled relationship with Putin. Between 2001 and 2004, Lukashenka declined to open up the Belarusian economy to Russian capital despite media support and a sizeable pre-election loan. He misled companies such as Lukoil and Gazprom, who had invested in Belarus. Not surprisingly, Russian subsidies have declined in recent years.

Wilson’s depth of knowledge is impressive and his detailed analysis of Lukashenka’s economic policy illuminates how he has managed to hold onto power for so long. However, by maintaining high levels of spending on welfare, education and health, external debt has increased. Wilson suggests that Lukashenka “no longer has the money to keep both elites and masses happy indefinitely”.

In December 2010, around 50,000 Belarusians gathered peacefully to demonstrate against the unfair elections. Lukashenka responded with another brutal crackdown. There are no easy answers to how his tight grip on power might be weakened but, as Wilson concludes, “Lukashenka will not last forever.” The economic policies and state repression that have served him so well in the past may yet be his undoing.

Originally published in the Independent on Friday 30 December 2011

When her partner disappears, a young veterinary assistant drifts from the city towards Open Door, a small town in the Pampas named after its psychiatric hospital. Embarking on a new life in the country, she finds herself living with an ageing ranch-hand and courted by an official investigating her partner’s disappearance. She might settle down, although a local girl is also irresistible . . .

 

Lucy Popescu: What was the inspiration for Open Door?

Iosi Havilio: There is an anecdote which I like to think of as the starting point of the story. When I was eight years old my father took me on vacation and we went through a small town called Open Door. He told me that nearby was a hospital for the mentally ill where the inmates were free to go about the place. I was frustrated because we did not stop to visit it. Hence, I was prompted to imagine a place where crazy people could walk in and out without restrictions. For many years, I remembered this fantasy of a dark, gothic and miraculous village. In addition, my later readings, experiences and obsessions contributed to my writing of the story.   There was no plan or any clear purpose behind it. The novel is pure invention, much in the same way as the memory of my childhood voyage probably is.

LP: In his Afterword to the English edition of Open Door, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera writes “Borges contended you couldn’t approach truth, ultimate meaning or ideal beauty directly because doing so, and being able to experience such things as the face of God, the meaning of the universe, or truth, would turn out to be a nightmare. The experience would be blinding and destructive.” Guardiola-Rivera goes on to compare you to Borges – in your ability to subvert reality. There is a nightmare quality to Open Door. In what other ways do you think this statement relates to your novel?

IH: No, please not Borges.  Guardiola-Rivera is very imaginative as well as generous. Anyhow, I believe that mystery is everywhere. There is a misunderstanding which leads us to look for deep revelations of the soul when analysing important literature. As I see the world, it is a never ending spiral which I observe upwards, from the bottom. Such an experience serves as an entrance and exit to any story. 

LP: There is a tension between city and country in Open Door. Can you say a little more about this?

IH: People talk a lot about such tensions. They sometimes draw a map of fictions where such differences are expressed, starting from classical literature to today. I believe these to be futile categories, resulting from considering a part instead of the entire text, thereby misinterpreting the real world. Tensions never occur in time nor space, but only in the eyes of the observer. Otherwise, we risk falling into over simplified antagonisms and arrive at faulty language and communication. The worlds exist and that’s it. In fact, for the narrator in Open Door, the city is not fully a city and the country is not fully a country.

LP: On the back cover of the Spanish edition of Open Door, you mention capitalismo + salvese quien pueda (capitalism + every man for himself). What relevance does this have to your novel?

IH:  It was my editor in Spain who made the remark. I have an inkling of why he wrote it, but since they are only inklings I prefer to keep them for myself.

LP: There is a lot of explicit sex in Open Door and scenes that some readers may find off-putting. What were you hoping to achieve in these passages?

IH: Absolutely nothing else then what they say. I don’t know of any other sex then the explicit one. Paraphrasing Bataille, I would ask: what is more scandalous in a scene of lesbianism under the sky, the pussies or the stars?

LP: When did you start writing and why?

IH: I could date it to my adolescence. But as I grow older I am inclined to believe that it was a long time before, even before I could read and write. Indeed, I am convinced that most of my writings need not be put into words.

LP:  Do you believe in Ricardo’s Piglia’s assertion that “All great literature is political”?

IH: Of course, either by action or by omission. In fact I believe that the best political literature is the one that doesn’t speak of politics. Just as the best love stories don’t need to speak about sentiments.

LP: Who inspires you and why?

IH: All living things, including books.

LP: Do you think you are difficult to translate and do you participate in the translating process?

IH: I had no part whatsoever in the translation and I believe that was a very good thing. I think that the difficulties lie not so much in translating meanings into words as in the task of uncovering the underlying universe. In this sense, I am grateful that Beth Fowler has done a wonderful job in making the novel her own.

LP: Describe your writing space and your writing routine.

IH: Impossible. Chaos is my only method.

LP: What are you reading now?

IH:  After many previous frustrating experiences, I finally read with great pleasure James Joyce’s Ulysses.  It was great fun. I still hear the music, the breathing and the dissonances.  Also, I went back to Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le Noir and I am reading again Facundo by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. I tried Michel Houellebecq again after a while. The Map and the Territory is amusing and caustic but, in my opinion, it lacks the strength of his earlier books.

Extract from Open Door by Iosi Havilio, translated by Beth Fowler

Shortly before seven, I saw her for the last time. She was wearing faded jeans and a black T-shirt, she’d put her hair up in a kind of bun. She seemed happy, normal. Her breath was bitter, from an empty stomach.

We had gone to La Boca. We were bored, the walk had been a failure. Too many people around, too many noises all at once and nothing much to do.

At some point Aída went into a bar. She gestured with her hand, she barely moved her lips, she seemed to say I’ll be right back, or something like it. I lit a cigarette. With my back to the street, I caught my reflection in a long and narrow mirror with traditional painted designs around the edge. People passed to and fro and I disappeared and reappeared between them.

A blond boy stopped in front of me. He had a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He smiled at me and mimed lighting it with an imaginary lighter. I gave him mine. He couldn’t have been skinnier, or dirtier. He was that type of blond whose hair is the only blond thing about him. A tough street kid, tanned skin, full lips, theatrical stare, aged about fourteen or fifteen. He lit his cigarette with the tip of mine and lingered longer than necessary in handing it back. A tough street kid, tanned skin, full lips, theatrical stare He had a scar snaking between the knuckles of one hand. He didn’t take his eyes off me. He looked at me the way some brats do, unintentional and yet intense.

‘Fancy a smoke?’ he said bringing his face closer, all his teeth on show. I just looked at him, a bit lost.

Do you want to or not, the boy pressed me and, because it was Sunday, because I was bored and because Aída still hadn’t come out, I hunched my shoulders as if to say: Why not? The boy jerked his head for me to follow him.

First I glanced into the bar and amongst the crowd I saw Aída going into the toilets. What had she been doing all this time? It didn’t surprise me, Aída did that sort of thing, disappeared, played hide and seek. The blond boy was waiting for me at the corner.

We took a diagonal lane and came to a yard that doubled as a basketball court, a few parked cars around the edges. The blond boy guided me to an out-of-sight corner where there were two other boys, even rougher looking and much younger. One was rather chubby with the look of an obedient dog, his face camouflaged in the hood of the tracksuit he was wearing. The third boy was much taller than the other two, wearing denim from head to toe, a proper show-off. Did you get it? the blond boy asked the one in denim, who immediately took a long, fat joint out of his pocket, twice the size of a normal joint. The blond boy lit up, took two deep drags and passed it to me. We smoked, each taking our turn, in perfect harmony. They asked me my name and I asked theirs. They told me that they lived round here and that they played in a band. They wanted to know where I was from. From far away, I replied.

Drugs don’t always act the same way, it all depends on the person and the circumstances. The lad in denim, who had struck me as the most laid-back of the three, was retreating into himself. The fat one, on the other hand, had taken down his hood and was getting more and more excitable by the minute. The blond boy, like a good leader, didn’t seem to be affected.

‘We want you to suck us off,’ the little fatty said out of nowhere, projecting the not-yet-fully-formed voice of an overweight adolescent.

The blond boy released a smoke-filled laugh. The one in denim turned pale, then red. All the blood rushed to the fat boy’s head, enough for the three of them. And he laughed too, through clenched teeth. As I didn’t say anything, didn’t even move, their nerves finally got the better of them and they passed me the joint again. The round continued without comment. When the joint had finished, we said goodbye with a kiss on the cheek, like good friends.

Published in English translation by And Other Stories: www.andotherstories.org

Interview originally published by Latineos.com