Rescuing the Hispanic JournalismIn times of rapid and brief writing, a book defending the chronic Villoro the genre called "literature under pressure". Editors, writing in the bowels, seeking escape from the trivial, the urgent and the aseptic


   These two books in one actually, because this anthology of contemporary Latin American Chronic Dario Jaramillo Agudelo (see important points) consists of a first part chronicles compiled by different authors can be read as stories. And a second presentation made by the compiler itself (Collage on twentieth-century Latin chronicle) plus a series of trials in which these same writers reflect on their craft. Answers to chronicle what is it, that they may serve as a manual for aspiring journalists.
 The whole book is a tribute to the journalism of "immersion" that needs to escape the relentless deadlines to produce a material that, well done, reflecting the reality beyond the news. A subjective journalism, but not so dishonest, written with the perspective and the personal stamp of an author who, though not to use the first person, is a reporter present, contrary to the usually prescribed supposedly objective news journalism.
 Jaramillo Agudelo acknowledges a Parnassus of authors who are referenced in this type of writing, as Tomas Eloy Martinez, Carlos Monsivais, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Elena Poniatowska, among many others. The Argentina, for instance, Homer had Alsina Thevenet, Henry Raab and Rodolfo Walsh, but also the Etchings of Roberto Arlt and, going back even further back, Sarmiento's Facundo or an excursion to the Indians ranqueles, Lucio Mansilla that although literature or testing, are also chronicled his time.
 Colombia says Jaramillo Agudelo, Daniel Samper Pizano has and Alfredo Molano Bravo, Puerto Rico, Ana Lydia Vega and Luis Rafael Sanchez and, similarly, every country in Latin America has given exalted representatives of this genus that the brilliant Mexican writer Juan Villoro compared with a platypus, that oviparous mammal duck-billed, beaver tail and legs in otter.
 The "platypus of prose," says Villoro, draws on several genres of the novel, takes the subjectivity of the report, the data, the story, the dramatic sense in short time and actually made the story; of the interview, dialogues, the theater, the multiplicity of parliaments and their assembly; the test, the argumentation of autobiography, memory and personal reworking the facts.

 A boom, in spite of everything
 Jaramillo Agudelo continues to Norman Sims, author of literary journalists (or the art of the staff report) to highlight the four fundamental forces of the chronicle: immersion, voice, accuracy and symbolism.
 The first takes time, so the vortex information and the requirements of the closures conspire against him. Just as the widespread idea that Leila Guerriero discusses-in on some lies of journalism, one of the essays in this anthology-that people do not read or only read the brief and leads to condemn the texts only "long" .
 Still, says Jaramillo Agudelo, Latin America is "a narrative journalism boom" and "today there are very good writers in our continent because there are very good magazines chronic collect their works (see related photos) Black Label ( Peru), Leopard (which began in Colombia and now exists in Argentina and Mexico), El Malpensante and Soho (Colombia), and Orsai Lamujerdemivida (Argentina), Left foot (Bolivia), Pacemakers (Venezuela), Letras Libres (Mexico) The Clinic and Paula (Chile). "
 The Chronicle claimed the first-person voice, the recognition of the impossibility of neutrality, which does not involve deception, by contrast, can be much more honest than the proclamation of objectivity impossible. Whenever you follow a few rules that Jaramillo Agudelo making Mark Kramer, "Do not make scenes, not to distort the chronology, not invent quotations, not to attribute ideas to the sources, unless they (the have expressed), and not dealing undercover involving payments or editorial control. "
 This list does not define what should be the accuracy of the chronicle, which, unlike literature, staged characters and real events.
 As for symbolism, that the above: the chronicle must answer the question of "what lies beyond the facts, and what lies, what does history tells you that your observation?"
 To quote from Martin Caparros, another of the writers invited to this book, "information (as applicable) is to tell many people what happens to very little: the one with power. (...) The Chronic rebels against this when he tries to show, in their stories, the lives of everyone, either: what happens to those who might be his readers. "

 Prohibited bore
 Despite an unnecessary digression to clarify that, when he says "great writers" refers to "them" as "them", the introductory notes of Jaramillo Agudelo are an excellent reflection on the work as a journalist and a good presentation and defense of a genre which, when well made, high honor of Woody Allen: "All styles are good except the boring."
 His criteria for selecting the chronic form the book was, he says, Caparrós (for whom the compiler does not hide his admiration, citing it several times, including four of his writings): "The magic of a good story is to get a reader interested in an issue that, in principle, no interest at all. "
 The result is a selection that reads like a compilation of gripping stories, only that it is not fiction. The authors - Juan Jose Hoyos, Pedro Lemebel, Carlos Martinez D'Aubuisson, Josefina Licitra, Frank Baez, Hernán Casciari, Alvaro Sierra, Juan Pablo Meneses, Jose Navia, Juan Forn, Julio Villanueva Chang, among others (see related photos) - lead the Pinochet coup in Chile in the fifth of Pablo Escobar at the height of his career as head of a powerful drug cartel, the Carnival of Rio to the kidnapping of undocumented Mexican border, a classic-Mouth River at swinger clubs of Barcelona, ​​through-known portraits of Carlos Gardel, Argentine painter Guillermo Kuitca or Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho, or not, a fighter, a magician, the mother of Hugo Chavez ... In short, a tour of Latin America, history and, above all, the human soul. Especially compelling is the story about the murder of Monsignor Romero, archbishop of San Salvador, Carlos Martinez D'Aubuisson, a relative of Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, the mastermind of this political crime.
 In others, Jaramillo Agudelo gives them the consolation prize of place in a list of excluded from the book, although they expressed their admiration and ensures that there will be room for them at a later complication; dubious honor, if we also consider that some chroniclers included more than one job.
 But we must recognize that, given the abundance of good writing that this book points out, the selection is not easy and surely leave unhappy. But the texts included are high quality, like the chapters in trial. Among them, the soon to be a classic article by John Villoro (The Chronicle is the platypus of prose) retain this genre "practiced an artifice: it transmits a real person" in his "attempt to give voice to others." De Julio Villanueva Chang that "a writer has the privilege of not only what happens, but above all it seems that does not happen." Similarly, Caparros proposes "to tell the stories that taught us not to consider news." Leila Guerriero says "worst sins" of a journalist: "make boring texts, monotonous, without weather or nuances." Boris Muñoz claimed the chronicle as "being of being of Latin American literature" from the Royal Commentaries of the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega to the authors of today. And Alberto Salcedo Ramos argues that "fiction writers are not more important, per se, than those of non-fiction, just because they imagine their arguments literally instead of sticking to the facts and characters from real life."
 Indeed, this genre, well practiced, it is worth aspiring to literary range. In the words of Gabriel García Márquez, "a chronicle is a true story," and in John Villoro, "a chronicle literature is achieved under pressure."