Urban Chroniclers in Modern Latin America: The Shared Intimacy of Everyday Life

Afterword

On June 19, 2010, Carlos Monsiváis passed away in Mexico City after a long fight with pulmonary fibrosis. Although he had been ill for many months, his death caused a collective shock in Mexico. A multitude of heartfelt testimonies from fellow writers, artists, and activists, as well as from regular readers, were published in national dailies such as La Jornada, El Universal, Excélsior, and Milenio. The chronicler’s neighbors left flowers and posted messages on the walls of his home in the Portales neighborhood. Readers and admirers traveled for hours by bus to pay their respects in person. Monsiváis’ wake was held at the Museo de la Ciudad de México, a museum devoted to the history of Mexico City and located in the historic district. On the morning of June 20, his casket was taken to the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the nation’s most important cultural center, for a public homage. As a crowd overflowed outside, his family and friends— composed of many of Mexico’s most respected writers and intellectuals— stood guard, surrounded by news cameras. Monsiváis’ longtime friend and fellow chronicler Elena Poniatowska spoke, eloquently summarizing the sense of loss and bewilderment that was being felt by so many. “What will we do without you, Monsi?” she asked. “How will we understand ourselves?” Meanwhile, the crowd that was unable to enter Bellas Artes grew restless. Frustrated cries rang out: “Let the people in!” “Monsi is of the people!” “Monsi is of the underdogs!” “This is not a show!” Afterword 161 | Afterword The collective grief that was manifested after Monsiváis’ death attests to the chronicler’s omnipresence in Mexican public life. But the tension that surfaced between the official homage given to one of the nation’s most admired and respected intellectual, and the many who felt excluded from this ceremony, also showed that he was a familiar figure whom diverse sectors of society claimed as one of their own. Monsiváis was mourned as a daily interlocutor, as an admired mentor, even as an intimate friend, by the many people who read him regularly, listened to him on the radio, or saw him on television. He was the one people turned to when they needed to understand major public events, and at the same time, he remained an idiosyncratic guide to the everyday street culture of the Mexican capital. With his death came not only a collective sense of loss but also a sudden, disorienting silence. Monsiváis condensed, perhaps more so than any other contemporary chronicler, the characteristics of the rhetoric of accessibility that I have traced throughout this book. His interests indiscriminately spanned all areas of urban culture; his tone was witty and self-deprecating yet astonishingly confident, and he participated in a variety of facets of Mexican culture, making appearances at the most unlikely moments. Here was Monsi giving a talk in the bustling metro station La Raza, interviewing Subcomandante Marcos in Chiapas, and opening El Estanquillo, a museum in Mexico City that houses his private collection of eclectic artifacts. There he was, making a cameo appearance in the final episode of Nada personal, the political soap opera that parodied the absurdities of the Salinas presidency in the 1990s; reading jokes on El circo, an album by the Mexico City rock group Maldita Vecindad; or showing his support for left-wing candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2006, after a dubious election gave the presidency to the right-wing party of Felipe Calderón. Monsiváis was ever present in Mexican cultural life, but in many ways he was also impossible to reach and difficult to decipher. Monsiváis gave the rhetoric of accessibility that characterized the chroniclers from the 1920s a postmodern twist. He was much more than an everyman who doubled as writer. He was a cultural and political actor who remained remarkably self-conscious about the ironies implied by his visibility in the media. This was made obvious in the illustration that appeared on the cover of his 1995 collection of chronicles, Los rituales del caos (The Rituals of Chaos), a book that focused on collective rituals through which mass culture is lived and practiced. The cover illustration depicts what first appears to be a fairly typical image of Mexico City: Urban Chroniclers in Modern Latin America | 162 a crowded subway car during rush hour. But a closer look reveals that...