Book Fair In Buenos Aires

In a café in La Recoleta I meet Juan José Sebreli, whom I have always respected, even in times of frenetic liberalism. When we first met in Paris many years ago, we had a heated argument about Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar, which I defended and he attacked as a somewhat superficial game. I have to admit that he was right and that the glow that this novel inspired in me lost a lot of its prestige at the time, like all books dedicated to gaming, like Julio Cortázar’s. I tell him that the books by Cortázar that seem most important to me now are the fantastic stories. I don’t know if he nods.

Born in 1930, Juan José Sebreli, who has just published a book with Marcelo Gioffré, Civil Discipline and Responsible Freedom, is 92 years old and defends his ideas as firmly as he did 20 years ago, with resolution and effectiveness. His last battle – but there will be others – is for the victims of the coronavirus, those who have fought back, lest they be forced to follow doctors’ orders to fight back against the virus.

In the second chapter, undoubtedly written by Sebreli, he remembers his parents, very humble immigrants who slowly rose to the top only to later fall victim to the economic crises that this country was experiencing. And Sebreli remembers first-hand many of those crises that destroyed in his pockets what few savings the articles brought him. Here, in these few lines, Sebreli recounts the Argentine tragedy, that country’s sudden impoverishment just when it seemed to stand out. And yet the love of books is not disfigured or impoverished. As I can see those happy days when Argentina celebrates the return of books.

I’ve always admired the things Sebreli defends, and now more so since he accepts that liberalism saves us from the dictatorship of Marxism and helps us move forward. “What is unacceptable,” he says, “is that the liberals are responsible for the market because they would ruin it.” He’s in perfect form and his arguments are solid, as they almost always are. It would be wonderful to reach that age with the beliefs that Sebreli holds and how he does it: with judgment and a wealth of information from books and newspapers.

It is true that newspapers in Buenos Aires are solid and very well written. As far as I know, only La Nación published Pérez Galdós’ mailings on Sundays, like today. They are a pleasure to read because they almost always come from a great intellectual background.

For many years I have wanted to spend a year or two in Argentina, especially since my friend, José Emilio Pacheco, was here as Mexican cultural attache and would show me around the antique shops – he knew them all – and discover all sorts of wonders among the old editions on those shelves that they showed. I wasn’t able to find a job that would allow me to do that and it was one of my biggest frustrations because I know I would have been happy in this city because of its cafes and its newspapers, among other things, essential for me and that now, I hear people say, gradually disappearing.

I’m here with great excitement for the book fair which was closed for a couple of years and has just reopened as old and young alike – the latter especially – fill the seminars and new rounds where the books are on display before they are going to be published . I am surprised that large gatherings are exceptionally respectful.

Autumn is coming to an end and no one would say that winter is coming because there is a sun early to warm people and lift spirits. Nobody seems to concern themselves with politics in this paradisiacal weather, and yet Latin America is experiencing one of its most difficult times and is threatening to reach the bottom of its downfall, for example the Peruvians with the illiterate president they came up with elect for us the rule for five Years.

And yet here the bookstores are full of people and books, and it seems that everyone has started to read. When I first came to Argentina, this city seemed to me the most literary in Latin America and I remembered my childhood in Cochabamba, where the postman would come loaded with books, always Argentinian, for my grandparents and my mother and even for me: Leoplán for my grandfather, For You for my mother and grandmother and Billiken for me. Argentina got us all Latin Americans to read, and then it was logical and natural to dream of Argentina – Paris would come later – which had the best publishers in Latin America. What happened to the Argentina that made all Latin Americans read? Where did it hide and go out?

But these days it is reborn thanks to the Book Fair. There are seas of young people and the truth is that they fill the stages and all the presentations of new books and the debates are full of people. The sessions shouldn’t last more than an hour, according to the doctors’ recommendation, and the truth is that, despite the sad and long faces of the spectators, they end on the hour. Even Spain is represented, in a reprint of the book by former People’s Party spokeswoman Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, which I heard last night at the Spanish Club, which by the way has a great venue in central Buenos Aires.

An author who is also a businessman, Alejandro Roemmers, has acquired the manuscripts of Jorge Luis Borges around the world and will exhibit them in the space dedicated to the defense of the free economy, from this determined struggle for individual autonomy and the Market led by Gerardo Bongiovanni. Many visitors to the book fair have registered for this visit. The case of Jorge Luis Borges, the most widely read and followed writer of our language in the world, is remarkable. And yet, by the time he became known, he was already blind, and that limitation which invalidated him in his last years had begun. But his widow, María Kodama, who has organized several exhibitions of Borge’s work halfway around the world and is determined to found a museum in Buenos Aires commemorating his memory, was an exemplary widow, a patron of her husband’s books and without No doubt she will be in Rosario at the exhibition of her manuscripts.

In the cafe where Sebreli and I are sitting there are some zombies that people recognize Borges and Bioy Casares in and they take pictures with them because apparently they both lived around here and have breakfast together every morning hit. There is a long line of people waiting to be photographed alongside these local glories that people remember and don’t let die. Here, in all devotion, is the secret of this city, the most literary I know after Paris. Borges and Bioy Casares are one of the best things that have happened to this country and anyone born here is proud of them and will not allow them to be forgotten. Of course you are doing the right thing. Writers are no less important than military successes. One and the other make up that brotherhood that keeps a nation alive.

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