Martín Caparrós: ​​"If Tinelli is a candidate, I will only return to the country to exile" – 18/03/2019

Some call it "the Caparrós clause" and it is written in several of its contracts: the author requests it when a publisher sends him for the first time copies of a new book of his father, accompany the shipment with "a box of good wine", with a dual purpose. On the one hand, he says, this offsets the frequent personal frustration that, he badures, supposes to see that the dedication of months or years to a subject ends up being reduced to "a small heap of prints ". On the other hand, measure what publishers consider a good wine. "I took surprises, they do not reach the tetra brick, but sometimes they get dangerously close", He declares in front of a cup of coffee, showing the sense of humor that accompanies many of his public appearances and sometimes saves him from political correctness.

"In the Congress of the language, the presence of the king is perhaps too much"

Martín Caparrós, one of the most renowned journalists and Argentine chroniclers of the present, and who resides in Spain since 2013, is in Buenos Aires to participate in the Language Congress (CILE) to be held in Cordoba from 27th to June 30th. this month, and also to train a chronicle on the Argentine capital, which will be part of a series that he composes for the newspaper El País, on the major cities of Latin America. "The attempt to synthesize a city in itself is an absurd pretense," he says. In any case, she has already done two – Caracas and Bogotá – which she is satisfied. Buenos Aires knows the best, even if it has an ambivalent relationship with it, as with the country, with love and simultaneous fear.

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"Since I left, nothing has changed in politics: we always see the same actors – Cristina, Macri-, who they have already proven their ability to failHe says, however, that the "greater brutality" seems to him a possible candidate for Tinelli: "If he was running for something I would go back to the country only to be exiled -Display. The only thing this man has done is to tell bad jokes and show off bades. One would have thought that there had been reactions to this type of behavior. This can aspire to an important position (nder: stir his candidacy for governor of the province of Buenos Aires) and someone believes that it can lead us somewhere, completely denies what we think we are, which has a little tired, " said his arms crossed, looking away towards the window. "That's why I'm more anxious to understand a little better what is Latin America, a concept that escapes us: it does not matter. is not clear what it means to be Latin American and I want to investigate this territory, where the majority of the population lives in big cities, despite the myth that we live in fields and jungles ".

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– Do you think that in historical terms we, the Argentines, live as a contradiction of continental belonging?

-We denied it for a good part of the 20th century. Our political and economic structure was very different from that of other countries in the region. We had a large middle clbad and a state that provided health, education and some social justice, trains, newspapers and publishers infinitely richer than elsewhere, and also we always thought ourselves better than the others. But it started to break with the Falklands war, when our stupid generals, who had thought the United States would support us, realized that we would not have that support or that of anyone other than that from a handful of Latin American countries. This idea of ​​belonging began to be forged in collective terms, which became consolidated when the situation of the Argentine middle clbad collapsed, the supplier state weakened and that economic values ​​have led to ruin. Today, we are all closer and identified with our neighbors on the continent.

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The CILE, organized by the Cervantes Institute, the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and the Argentine Government as host country – and whose opening ceremony will bring together Kings Felipe and Leticia and the President Mauricio Macri – will meet nearly two hundred and fifty writers and academics from 32 countries this will debate around the motto "America and the future of Spanish". The meeting aims to become a space for dialogue, but He already has his own crack. On the official program – including Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, Joaquín Sabina, Elvira Sastre, Juan Villoro, Jorge Volpi, Jorge Edwards, Sergio Ramirez and Juan Luis Cebrián, among others – another group of publishers and publishers Opponents asked for one in the networks, supported by some 500 companies, which withstand the event with a monarchical presence, while Philosophy of the University of Córdoba opposes a "counter-conflict" that matters already 80 articles.

"The average Argentina has a remarkable facility of intolerance and insult and underestimate the other"

-American average has a remarkable facility of intolerance and insult and underestimate the other, which prevents us from a more interesting or deeper exchange – think Caparrós. This seems to me absolute poverty and it is unfortunately the form that has taken the conversation in Argentina in recent years.

– and why?

-Because we have a paranoid thought: in this request, some say that others want to impose or consolidate the peninsular language to others, that the Congress opens the way to Spanish affairs … I think to a loss of powder in the chimangos. I think what tolerance should prevail.

– And the presence of the king, is decorative?

-The king does not decorate, it's a heavy burden, and for a long time we decided that we did not want to have kings, so maybe this presence is too much. I can understand that, but from there to think that this is done to reconfirm the hegemonic nature of the Spanish peninsula and pave the way for Spanish entrepreneurship, as the document says, this seems pointless.

– Can language think of a variant of the motherland?

-If we consider language as a homeland, we submit it to a certain corset, because the homeland is a static notion: the badumption of something that we are a priori, to which we believe we should hang. But language is something else, it is something mobile, which changes and is part of its appeal. I have lived many years with Colombians and I have adopted words, I live in Spain and I have also adopted idioms, French of which I have also inherited expressions. I can write in other languages. I like this liveliness and I think it's mutable.

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– The inclusive language, to which the RAE repeatedly opposed, is valid or forced, in terms of this mutation?

-C & # 39; is validated. At first I do not like the result –todes– but I think that the language is dynamic and I am in favor of the opening. I prefer, like, to be told "we are all happy" although there are men to say the contents. But before, that's fine, so that the little ones can appropriate the language and use it.

– Writers and columnists in Latin America are enjoying greater recognition today. What's the most interesting thing you think is happening right now?

-I am excited by the search for ways to say that they use a little more the multiplicity of existing technical means to tell stories, by the possibility of filming, recording, staging; a series of possibilities that are beginning to be explored.

– Will this be the future of the chronicle?

– It should be, without leaving aside the old stories. That there are interesting videos does not mean that there are people who stop painting. I am excited by the confluence of these elements.

-When the networks appeared, supposedly accepted knowledge was imposed, according to which the Internet was to be written in a succinct way, but you also propose that the formats of narration are also extended …

-The argument of the short format has definitely fallen. Today, fortunately, there are spaces for publishing long stories and it is admitted that readers read in the subway or on their mobile phone in the street, but they do not expect to read things. shorter or worse, on the contrary; We are experiencing a boom in the online story and platforms as readers enjoy good stories, as always. And new tips are open: again, you have to move, you have to explore. The new challenges and what might happen in the future may well succeed.

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Your new book

"We lost": an America's Cup of Corruption

"Every journalist or author tells the most brutal corruption case of which he has been aware", defines Caparrós in relation to We've lost (Planeta, 2019), a relentless journey through corruption in the Ibero-American countries for which, with Diego Fonseca, they summoned a selection of narrators.

A Spanish mayor makes million-dollar trips to the inhabitants of her city, who live literally from the air. An Ecuadorian notary has deceived politicians, military and civilians, but no one has accused him until his easy money has lasted. An Argentinian Vice President buys the printing house that produces the country's banknotes. A former governor shows corruption in Mexico. And further.

The readers of these pages then have the opportunity to vote we lost.com which nation stands as the corrupt champion of Ibero-American America.

Basic

Martín Caparrós (Buenos Aires, 1957) graduated in History of Paris and lived in Madrid, New York and Barcelona.

He worked as a journalist in graphic design, radio and television. directed magazines and cooking magazines; translated into Voltaire, Shakespeare and Quevedo; He has received the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Planeta and Herralde Novel Awards, the Tiziano Terzani and Miguel Delibes Rehearsal Prizes and the Rey de España and Moors Cabot Journalism Awards.

He has a son and has published thirty books in thirty countries. The last ones are the novel All for the homeland, the test Hunger, the chronicles of The Chronicle

PK