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30 The Americas The Economist December 16th 2017
2 coax into politics young Brazilians who Rede, to be vehicles. “We want to be a new Their efforts may fail. New candidates
had shown leadership skillsin otherfields. political force,” says Ms Szabó. fret about finances and some are already
Until now it has largely focused on devel- October’s elections are perhaps the running low. Mr Oliveira used to help his
oping policy ideas. “Politicians here think most important since democracy was re- parentsoutwith the bills. Since deciding to
about getting elected first and then worry stored in 1985 after20 years ofdictatorship. run for office he has had to stop. With cor-
about their agenda...it should be the other They are also unpredictable. Fewer Brazil- porate donations banned, the candidates
way around,” says Marco Aurélio Marra- ians than ever identify with the old left- must rely on individual contributions, and
fon, one of the group’s 150 members. Ag- right model. Most want to try something no one knows how generous Brazilians
ora! has working groups on everything new. That can favourextremists: Jair Bolso- will be. Lackofbroadcast time will hurt.
from health to homicide. It initially had no naro, a congressman who says harsh “Next year might not be the tipping
plans to run for congress, but “things are things about gays and women, is second in point,” warns Mr Oliveira. “But we have to
getting out of control”, says Ilona Szabó, a the polls for the presidency. But it could open a trail. Ifnot, there will be no hope of
co-founder. Next year it plans to field 30 also help moderate newcomers. Four out renewal in 2022.” Political renewal may
candidates forcongress by persuading two of five Brazilians say they want “ordinary not happen overnight. But Brazil’s Young
parties, Partido Popular Socialista and citizens” to run forcongress next year. Turks are makinga start. 7

Bello The literature of fear

Juan Rulfo’s darkness speaks to a newgeneration ofwriters
ORa writer, he wasa man ofextraordi- town of ghosts. “Have you ever heard the
Fnarily few words. Juan Rulfo produced groaning of the dead?” an old woman
only one short novel, “Pedro Páramo”, asks Preciado.
and a collection ofshort stories, “El Llano “Pedro Páramo” is ultimately about
en Llamas” (translated as “The Burning myth, notrealism, and aboutthe presence
Plain”). Together they comprise fewer of death in the midst of life. Preciado is
than 300 pages. And that, apart from a overcome by fear of the supernatural
couple of fragments and a few film whispersfilteringthrough the walls ofthe
scripts, was it. Yet not only does Rulfo en- town square. The reader gradually real-
joy a towering reputation in Spanish-lan- ises that all the novel’s characters are
guage letters. In addition, as has become dead. Itismodern because itframes a real-
clear during the commemorations this ity rather than merely describing it, and
year marking the centenary of his birth, because time in it is simultaneous, not se-
hisworkhasatleastasmuch relevance for quential, as Carlos Fuentes, a later Mexi-
many young Latin American writers as can writer, noted.
that of successors such as Gabriel García Read Rulfo today and it is impossible
Márquez or Mario Vargas Llosa, who are notto hearechoesofcontemporaryMexi-
far better known to English-speaking is “living rancour” and “pure evil”. Yet he co and the cruelty and arbitrary violence
readers. wins the absolution of the town priest in of its drug gangs and, sometimes, of the
Rulfo was marked indelibly by his return for a few gold coins. When guerril- state forces that confront them. There are
childhood. He was born into a family of las turn up in Comala, Páramo offers them still too many Páramos who make their
landowners in the western Mexican state money and men: “You have to be on the own law. One ofthe storiesin “El Llano en
of Jalisco. They lost their lands in the tur- winning side.” He is defeated only by a Llamas” recounts the murder of migrants
moil of the Mexican revolution (1910-17) childhood sweetheart who goes mad rath- seeking to cross the Rio Grande; another
and the counter-revolutionary Cristero erthan succumb to him. tells of a dispute over grazing rights end-
war of the late 1920s. His father was mur- In other hands, “Pedro Páramo” would ingin murder.
dered, shot in the back when Rulfo was have been merely a social-realist denun- Many contemporary Latin American
six. His mother died when he was ten. ciation ofrural injustice, a “regional novel” writers have grown up hearing “the
After a spell in an orphanage, at 16 he of a kind fashionable in Latin America in groaning of the dead”. Rulfo’s terse, spare
moved to Mexico City, where he worked the firsthalfofthe 20th century. Two things poetics and his liking for the short story
asa civil servantand latera tyre salesman make it much more than that. The first is are back in fashion in Latin America to-
while attending courses on literature at the lyricism of Rulfo’s writing. He is acute- day, after the baroque prolixity of García
the university. After publishing his two lysensitive to the earth, itsfruits, itsbarren- Márquez or Roberto Bolaño. Writers now
books in the mid-1950s, he carried on ness and the changing seasons. Preciado’s touching 40 who acknowledge the influ-
working as an editor at Mexico’s National mother describes the lost Comala of her ence of Rulfo include Samanta Schwe-
Indigenous Institute. He died in 1986. youth as “a town that smells of spilt hon- blin, an Argentine whose short novel of
Rulfo’sstoriesdrawon the rural Jalisco ey”; she inwardly sees “the horizon rise psychological terror, “Fever Dream”, was
of his childhood. Pedro Páramo, the main and fall with the wind thatmovesthe ears” shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize this
character of the novel and the unmet fa- ofgrain. year; and Emiliano Monge, a Mexican
ther of its narrator, Juan Preciado, is a ca- A second quality makes “Pedro Pá- who says his stories “take place with vio-
cique (boss), who by violence and threat ramo” perhaps the first modern novel in lence as an ecosystem”.
appropriates all the land in the fictional Latin America of universal significance. That death can be arbitrary is part of
town of Comala, along with many of its Rulfo had read William Faulkner and was the human condition. That this is too of-
women. He tells his foreman: “From now aware of surrealism with its emphasis on ten the case in Latin America, a century
on we are going to make the law.” Páramo dreams and the unconscious. Comala is a afterRulfo’s birth, is an indictment.