PT Data wrangler

Tag: Lydia Cacho

  • 'No se mata la verdad' / 'You cannot kill the truth'

    Translated from Spanish by Sara Mellor

    A couple of weeks ago I got a phone call from a young colleague. Rubén Espinosa asked me how one spends so many years living in fear, how one learns to process an endless succession of death threats – some of them veiled, others direct and crystal clear.

    For this young photo reporter (a correspondent for Cuartoscuro photographic news agency and Proceso magazine), sleeplessness, loss of appetite and depression (which he called sadness in an attempt to downplay its punishing daily presence) were enemies he had to get used to living with.

    I recommended a therapist specializing in posttraumatic stress (PTSD), a disorder that is so often the collateral damage of the work of journalists and those professionally involved in defending human rights.

    PTSD is that shady figure who takes up residence in the life of anyone who experiences either sudden instances of violence or intense and systematic forms of it. PTSD puts both the bodily integrity and emotional wellbeing of the victim at risk.

    Rubén had learned to coach his colleagues in matters of security: how to graphically document injustices and civil protests, employing strategies to safeguard both their personal safety and photographic material (the hard evidence of reality).

    Along with some colleagues, both male and female, Rubén received help from the organization Article 19 to escape Veracruz and go into exile. Together with the other brave photojournalists who formed part of the #FotoperiodistasMX group, he decided not to give up, despite the very real and disturbing death threats he had received over the previous years for doing a good job in Veracruz; it’s all documented.

    Along with some colleagues, Rubén was forced to move to México City where he lived with a group of close friends, including the activist, artist and anthropologist Nadia Vera, who was part of Xalapa’s #YoSoy132 movement.

    ‘Considérate enemigo del pueblo [Consider yourself enemy of the people],’ Veracruz’s government spokesperson said to Rubén as he blocked his entry into a press conference in which governor Javier Duarte was due to speak.

    This happened after the publication of the now famous front cover of Proceso magazine, which depicts Duarte pulling a threatening, contemptuous face, and wearing a police cap. At the time the photo was taken, the people of Veracruz were already protesting against terrible government practices, corruption, impunity, and the lack of public safety. Their protests were vocalised in now well-known slogans which, according to Espinosa himself, enraged the governor’s security team: many of the slogans made reference to Duarte’s weight problem, and his irascible, violent, racist and sexist nature.

    The truth is that Rubén Espinosa was a good photographer. He took hundreds of important photographs. With a single image he achieved what no amount of words could have achieved in any serious way on a news page: without filters, he let the real Duarte shine through: the clenched-fist metalanguage, the furious gaze, his name and station embroidered onto his shirt. ‘Javier Duarte. Governor,’ read the red letters across his chest – and let no one question it.

    ‘Governor’ reads his cap, complete with police badge: a gold star, symbol of power and social control. Yet, according to the photo’s author, this wasn’t the root of Duarte’s anger: for the governor, the real affront was the close-up that clearly exhibits his morbid obesity (a source of insecurity to Duarte, who has always feared being the target of mockery). Hence why he has an official photographer, whose responsibility it is to always photograph him from favourable angles.

    It might seem trivial or ludicrous to state that many leaders take personal offence at the journalists (both male and female) who expose those unmistakable aspects of their personality that make them feel insecure, and which they take pains to conceal. We’re not only talking about physiology, but about the gestures that betray everyone, no matter how hard one tries to conceal them.

    Rubén told me that the same spokesperson relayed to him the governor’s outrage at another famous Cuartoscuro close-up in which Duarte’s eyes appear to be popping out of his face, like a kind of incensed gargoyle; in the same photo he can be seen launching his body at a group of journalists who are questioning him, and baring his teeth in a clear sign of attack.

    Over and over again, they warned Rubén not to stay in Veracruz, that he was on the enemies’ black list.

    Rubén never received therapy for his angst, or got to work through the anxiety he took on hearing the fears of countless colleagues and the daily threats they received, for being journalists or human rights activists. He was murdered on Friday 31 July alongside activist Nadia Vera – a brave young woman with a firm voice and a spark in her eyes – who challenged the powers that be and injustices in Xalapa, Veracruz. Their bodies, along with those of Alejandra Negrete, Yesenia Quiróz and Mile Virginia Martín, were found tortured and shot. The weapon used was a military 9mm firearm and the shots were clean: both firm characteristics of hired assassins.

    Only those who live under death threats know how the clock marks the hours differently. Not only does it imply living with fear, but it also goads the spirit of self-censorship that makes us ask: Is it worth it? Is exposing yet another atrocity in a country of despicable leaders really worth the risk? I can only answer that it is always worth telling the truth, always worth fighting against ignominy and trying to build a country in which it is worth growing up, living, loving.

    And then there is the ever-present guilt of us men and women who survive: we wear that guilt like a tattoo when the threats are shared, until one terrible night you learn of the openly forewarned death of that person you just spoke to on the phone; a person who had faith, who believed in ethics; a person with whom you repeated like a mantra: They won’t dare kill you: not after all the denunciations against him; not after you’ve openly pointed the finger at your potential murderer. They won’t dare kill you.

    I can hear Rubén’s voice, and the voices of many other colleagues singing along side by side at a solidarity march: ‘No se mata la verdad matando periodistas.’ / ‘You cannot kill the truth killing journalists.’

    You can read this piece in the original Spanish on Aristegui Noticias: http://aristeguinoticias.com/0308/mexico/no-se-mata-la-verdad-articulo-de-lydia-cacho/

    English PEN members have joined writers from around the world in condemning the murder of Rubén Espinosa. Read the letter here.

  • ‘No se mata la verdad’ / ‘You cannot kill the truth’

    Translated from Spanish by Sara Mellor

    A couple of weeks ago I got a phone call from a young colleague. Rubén Espinosa asked me how one spends so many years living in fear, how one learns to process an endless succession of death threats – some of them veiled, others direct and crystal clear.

    For this young photo reporter (a correspondent for Cuartoscuro photographic news agency and Proceso magazine), sleeplessness, loss of appetite and depression (which he called sadness in an attempt to downplay its punishing daily presence) were enemies he had to get used to living with.

    I recommended a therapist specializing in posttraumatic stress (PTSD), a disorder that is so often the collateral damage of the work of journalists and those professionally involved in defending human rights.

    PTSD is that shady figure who takes up residence in the life of anyone who experiences either sudden instances of violence or intense and systematic forms of it. PTSD puts both the bodily integrity and emotional wellbeing of the victim at risk.

    Rubén had learned to coach his colleagues in matters of security: how to graphically document injustices and civil protests, employing strategies to safeguard both their personal safety and photographic material (the hard evidence of reality).

    Along with some colleagues, both male and female, Rubén received help from the organization Article 19 to escape Veracruz and go into exile. Together with the other brave photojournalists who formed part of the #FotoperiodistasMX group, he decided not to give up, despite the very real and disturbing death threats he had received over the previous years for doing a good job in Veracruz; it’s all documented.

    Along with some colleagues, Rubén was forced to move to México City where he lived with a group of close friends, including the activist, artist and anthropologist Nadia Vera, who was part of Xalapa’s #YoSoy132 movement.

    ‘Considérate enemigo del pueblo [Consider yourself enemy of the people],’ Veracruz’s government spokesperson said to Rubén as he blocked his entry into a press conference in which governor Javier Duarte was due to speak.

    This happened after the publication of the now famous front cover of Proceso magazine, which depicts Duarte pulling a threatening, contemptuous face, and wearing a police cap. At the time the photo was taken, the people of Veracruz were already protesting against terrible government practices, corruption, impunity, and the lack of public safety. Their protests were vocalised in now well-known slogans which, according to Espinosa himself, enraged the governor’s security team: many of the slogans made reference to Duarte’s weight problem, and his irascible, violent, racist and sexist nature.

    The truth is that Rubén Espinosa was a good photographer. He took hundreds of important photographs. With a single image he achieved what no amount of words could have achieved in any serious way on a news page: without filters, he let the real Duarte shine through: the clenched-fist metalanguage, the furious gaze, his name and station embroidered onto his shirt. ‘Javier Duarte. Governor,’ read the red letters across his chest – and let no one question it.

    ‘Governor’ reads his cap, complete with police badge: a gold star, symbol of power and social control. Yet, according to the photo’s author, this wasn’t the root of Duarte’s anger: for the governor, the real affront was the close-up that clearly exhibits his morbid obesity (a source of insecurity to Duarte, who has always feared being the target of mockery). Hence why he has an official photographer, whose responsibility it is to always photograph him from favourable angles.

    It might seem trivial or ludicrous to state that many leaders take personal offence at the journalists (both male and female) who expose those unmistakable aspects of their personality that make them feel insecure, and which they take pains to conceal. We’re not only talking about physiology, but about the gestures that betray everyone, no matter how hard one tries to conceal them.

    Rubén told me that the same spokesperson relayed to him the governor’s outrage at another famous Cuartoscuro close-up in which Duarte’s eyes appear to be popping out of his face, like a kind of incensed gargoyle; in the same photo he can be seen launching his body at a group of journalists who are questioning him, and baring his teeth in a clear sign of attack.

    Over and over again, they warned Rubén not to stay in Veracruz, that he was on the enemies’ black list.

    Rubén never received therapy for his angst, or got to work through the anxiety he took on hearing the fears of countless colleagues and the daily threats they received, for being journalists or human rights activists. He was murdered on Friday 31 July alongside activist Nadia Vera – a brave young woman with a firm voice and a spark in her eyes – who challenged the powers that be and injustices in Xalapa, Veracruz. Their bodies, along with those of Alejandra Negrete, Yesenia Quiróz and Mile Virginia Martín, were found tortured and shot. The weapon used was a military 9mm firearm and the shots were clean: both firm characteristics of hired assassins.

    Only those who live under death threats know how the clock marks the hours differently. Not only does it imply living with fear, but it also goads the spirit of self-censorship that makes us ask: Is it worth it? Is exposing yet another atrocity in a country of despicable leaders really worth the risk? I can only answer that it is always worth telling the truth, always worth fighting against ignominy and trying to build a country in which it is worth growing up, living, loving.

    And then there is the ever-present guilt of us men and women who survive: we wear that guilt like a tattoo when the threats are shared, until one terrible night you learn of the openly forewarned death of that person you just spoke to on the phone; a person who had faith, who believed in ethics; a person with whom you repeated like a mantra: They won’t dare kill you: not after all the denunciations against him; not after you’ve openly pointed the finger at your potential murderer. They won’t dare kill you.

    I can hear Rubén’s voice, and the voices of many other colleagues singing along side by side at a solidarity march: ‘No se mata la verdad matando periodistas.’ / ‘You cannot kill the truth killing journalists.’

    You can read this piece in the original Spanish on Aristegui Noticias: http://aristeguinoticias.com/0308/mexico/no-se-mata-la-verdad-articulo-de-lydia-cacho/

    English PEN members have joined writers from around the world in condemning the murder of Rubén Espinosa. Read the letter here.

  • PEN Atlas – One Year On

    PEN Atlas editor Tasja Dorkofikis looks back at a year of dispatches from around the world, and looks forward to more cutting-edge literature, essays and articles in translation in 2013

    Dear Readers,

    The looking back and summing up season is upon us, and I’d like briefly to look at the PEN Atlas as it nears the end of its first year of life. Our main aim has been to look at new voices and literature all over the world and to introduce them to an audience in the UK by commissioning new and original blogs written by writers, critics and translators.

    English PEN itself has a translation programme helping both the promotion and translation of international literature via two Writers in Translation Awards – PEN Translates! and PEN Promotes! – and some of the books featured in the Atlas come to us through these grant schemes.

    In many of our 2012 blogs we looked at how writers dealt with political problems and conflicts in their countries, in this way supporting the core PEN activity of defending and promoting the freedom to write and the freedom to read. We will be returning to many of these countries again next year, as unfortunately most of the conflicts covered by the Atlas are still underway. These continue to make it difficult for writers to express themselves freely as well as endangering their lives. Samar Yazbek wrote to us from Syria about the perils of reporting from a war zone and in January we will have another Syrian, Nihad Sirees, one of the winners of a 2013 English PEN Writers in Translation Award, writing about Aleppo and its incomprehensible destruction. And later in the year we will be covering another of the PEN Award Winners: Writing Revolution: The Voices from Tunis to Damascus, which compiles some of the most exciting new writing borne out of the Arab Spring.

    Hassan Blasim discussed the aftermath of the war in Iraq and the role literature plays in how society deals with tragic events. The Devil’s Workshop by Jachym Topol, again one of the winners of a Writers in Translation Award, deals with the more distant past of concentration camps in Belarus. We will be talking to Jachym Topol later this year.

    Selma Dabbagh wrote very movingly from the Palestinian Literary Festival about the fragile situation in Gaza. Alas, the crisis there has deepened and we will return to the festival next year to look at the response of writers to the events there. Lydia Cacho’s reporting from Mexico has won awards and accolades. For us, she wrote about taking risks and being afraid. She is still reporting and still in danger.

    We hope that as the reviewing space in print media shrinks, PEN Atlas, like some other literary websites, is filling that gap and providing more outlets for literary criticism and debate. 

    We also have been following trends and reported on developments in international publishing by featuring specialists’ opinions. We have looked out for new writers who might be interesting for a British audience and for publishers here. In this way, we have introduced Alisa Ganieva from Dagestan, Yuri Herrera from Mexico and Park Wan-Suh from South Korea among others.  

    PEN Atlas dispatches in 2012 took us all over the world, from Mexico and China to Greece, the Netherlands, Croatia and Russia. And as we continue to explore the world’s literature in the New Year, we hope to bring you closer to interesting places and introduce you to new writers.

    And if you still have any presents to buy, you might find inspiration here in our list of books recommended by publishers, writers and festival organisers. And for literary inspiration look at one of our most moving stories this year – Santiago Gamboa’s ‘Of Poets and Aviators’.

    In the meantime, happy festive reading and all the very best in the New Year!

    Tasja Dorkofikis,

    Editor, PEN Atlas

     

  • PEN Atlas recommends: ITD2012 speakers on their favourite translated books

    To celebrate the annual International Translation Day symposium, taking place tomorrow at King’s Place, London, Tasja Dorkofikis asks speakers to recommend their favourite books and writers in translation

    Amanda Hopkinson, experienced translator, academic, and co-curator of Notes & Letters, recommends…

    Raised from the Ground  by Jose Saramago, trans. Margaret Jull Costa and published by Harvill Secker this month.

    This early work by Portuguese Nobel Prizewinner Jose Saramago, translated by perhaps our most garlanded Portuguese literary translator Margaret Jull Costa, shows intellectual inventiveness and political militancy blended in a profound and humorous historical novel. The theme is the landless peasantry that were Saramago’s own immediate forebears and was written at a time when he was suffering persecution and then exile at the behest of the Salazar dictatorship. Raised from the Ground is at once a vivid depiction of rural poverty and a rallying cry for activism.

    Slavery Inc: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking by Lydia Cacho, translated by Elizabeth Boburg  and published by Portobello Books.

    Lydia Cacho is a one-person expert/ investigator/reporter on that most confusing of crimes: human trafficking. She is categorical, and has the facts to back her, that this is globalised big business run by consortia of criminals, corrupt police and politicians. Women and children thus exploited may be deluded but are not willing victims of their own transportation and degradation. Rarely has a book had a more appropriate title than $laveryInc.

    Briony Everroad,editor at Harvill Secker, recommends…

    Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City by Guy Delise, translated by Helge Dascher and published by Jonathan Cape and Vintage.

    I first came to love graphic novels, or perhaps I should say graphic memoirs in this context, when I read Ethel & Ernest by Raymond Briggs. Then I was swept away by Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. So I was delighted to discover Guy Delisle a few years later through his graphic travelogue Pyongyang.

    Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City is a powerful documentation of Guy Delisle’s year in Jerusalem with his family. His partner works for Médecins Sans Frontières and he tries to sketch and write, in between taking his kids to school.  Delisle isn’t religious, so it comes across as even-handed observations of this most incredible and perplexing of places. He’s also strikingly honest, admitting when he doesn’t know the history behind certain zones and boundaries or the events that led to them, and so the reader learns as he learns.  I work on (non-graphic) fiction for the most part, and speaking as someone who can’t even draw a stick figure, I am fascinated by the techniques he uses: the powerful wordless frames, the sparing but effective use of colour, his son’s speech bubbles crammed with letters which spill to the end of the frame. His writing style is direct and at times very moving, and Helge Dascher captures it perfectly in the translation. In Jerusalem Delisle offer a wonderful new perspective on a city which is so often the focus of the world’s attention.

    Sarah Hesketh,Events and Publications Manager at the Poetry Translation Centre, recommends…

    Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius, translated by Jamie Bulloch and published by Peirene.

    It’s rare that I’m able to read a book in one sitting, but Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman is structured as just one, single, book-length sentence, and so it invites complete immersion for a few hours. It’s a book that happens in real time – it takes just the length of the narrator’s walk to church on a January afternoon in 1943, and it captures perfectly that suspension of time that a heavily pregnant woman feels when she is waiting to give birth, as well as the sense of a whole continent on the cusp.  

    Alexandra Buchler, Director of Literature Across Frontiers, recommends…

    Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke, translated by Cindy Carter and published by Corsair.

    I recommend this book because it is a must-read for anyone interested in China’s recent transformations and the corruption of a regime which did the unimaginable: fuse the political doctrine of communism with capitalist license, and because it is a such a powerful example of high-quality literature making a political statement. Like some of the masterpieces of 20th
     century literature this book is the opposite of a “good read”: it is sad and heavy, it speaks about a situation of surreal absurdity, conveying a truth that must be said and cannot be shirked.

    Geraldine D’Amico, co-curator of Notes & Letters and curator of Folkestone Book Festival, recommends…

    To the End of the Land by David Grossman, translated by Jessica Cohen and published by Vintage.

    Grossman movingly captures the pain of a mother fearing for the life of her son but above all it is a book about the deep damage caused by war onto people and landscape alike. Lovers are destroyed, innocence is impossible, death is lurking everywhere. One woman alone tries to fight this, rekindle love, give birth to a father and keep her son alive through the magic of words. The fact Grossman’s son was killed as he was writing this book obviously makes it even more poignant but regardless of his personal tragedy, this is a true masterpiece.

    Rosa Anderson, coordinator of Fiction Uncovered, recommends…

    School for Patriots by Martin Kohan, translated by Nick Caistor and soon to be published by Serpent’s Tail.

    Set in Argentina during the Falklands War, it’s an intriguing – and unsettling – investigation into the relationship between power and sex.

    Sophie Lewis, editor-at-large at And Other Stories and translator from French, recommends…

    Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector, translated from Brazilian Portuguese by Alison Entrekin and published by New Directions.

    I read this book in a state of guilt at being settled in Rio for more than a year yet knowing so little of Lispector’s writing – she is considered one of the greatest 20th century Brazilian writers. Yet what I found in reading this book (and now others by her) was very little to tell me about Brazil and so much to think about, both bigger and smaller than this country,: mood, sensation, place vanishing into specks under the microscope, dialogue in a vortex of thought – genuinely transcendent writing. 

  • PEN Atlas – Editor's Round Up

    In the first of a monthly series, PEN Atlas editor Tasja Dorkofikis rounds up some of the highlights so far, and suggests some great further reading for our literary travellers

    Dear Readers,

    We launched the PEN Atlas over six months ago and have now 30 pieces published online, all newly commissioned and written for us. I would like to highlight the most recent blogs and books we mentioned.

    At the beginning of September we published dispatches from two exceptional women.

    Samar Yazbek wrote from Syria about the dangers of reporting and writing from a conflict zone. Yazbek, a writer and a journalist, was active in the first four months of the Syrian uprising in 2011. She witnessed and experienced cruelty and torture from the Assad regime. During that time she kept a diary of her own reflections as well as of oral testimonies from other opposition fighters. In her book, Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution, she shows the reality of what’s happening there and brings us stories of many people who risk their lives in the struggle for freedom. The insight that Yazbek offers into the complex and bloody conflict is both incredibly valuable and inspiring.

    Her novel, Cinnamon, will be published by Arabia Books later this year. Fearing for her daughter’s life she was forced to leave Syria and she is now in hiding. 

    Lydia Cacho wrote from Mexico about censorship and about the power the government and media over journalists and reporters. Her new book Slavery Inc; the Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking, just published in the UK, follows the trail of the traffickers and their victims from Mexico to Turkey, Thailand to Iraq, Georgia to the UK, and exposes the trade’s hidden links with the tourist industry, internet pornography, drugs and arms smuggling, money laundering,  and terrorism.  Cacho’s powerful first-person interviews with mafiosi, pimps, prostitutes, and those who managed to escape from captivity make us aware of the terrible human cost of this exchange. Shocking and sobering, Slavery Inc, is an exceptional book, both for the scope of its investigation, and for the bravery with which Cacho pursues the truth.

    English PEN has also been busy this month promoting a biography of Ryszard Kapuscinski by Artur Domoslawski, one of the winners of its Writers in Translation award (PEN Promotes!). You can read on our site a conversation with the author and some further recommendations of Polish reportage recently published in the UK. It is worth remembering that Polish reportage has an established and celebrated tradition from Ryszard Kapuscinski and Hanna Krall to Mariusz Szczygiel (winner of European Book Award for Gottland) and recently to Andrzej Dybczak, who has just won the prestigious Koscielski Prize for his reportage on the nomadic tribes of Evenks in Siberia. And one more piece of Polish literary news – many Polish writers are touring UK this autumn: the details are here.

    Our other dispatches took us to the Netherlands where Michele Hutchison examined the success of The Dinner by Herman Koch, a novel full of suspense and middle-class anxiety, and to the Edinburgh Festival where Daniel Hahn considered the issue of translation and Krys Lee looked at how migration and displacement encourages creativity.

    As we know, there is far too little literature in translation published in English. Our aim at the PEN Atlas is to introduce new international writing to readers in the UK and to encourage publishers to bring that writing to the British market. We hope to give new insights into the rich literary landscape beyond the English language and to inspire people to seek out new writers in translation. I hope that you will enjoy reading our site and our writers, and will find them enriching and inspiring.  

    Tasja Dorkofikis

    Editor, PEN Atlas

    Tasja Dorkofikis is the editor of the PEN Atlas as well as a freelance editor and publicist. She used to work as Publicity Director at Random House and most recently at Portobello Books as Associate Publisher and Commissioning Editor. Tasja shares her time between London and a small village in Vaud in Switzerland.

     

  • PEN Atlas – Editor’s Round Up

    In the first of a monthly series, PEN Atlas editor Tasja Dorkofikis rounds up some of the highlights so far, and suggests some great further reading for our literary travellers

    Dear Readers,

    We launched the PEN Atlas over six months ago and have now 30 pieces published online, all newly commissioned and written for us. I would like to highlight the most recent blogs and books we mentioned.

    At the beginning of September we published dispatches from two exceptional women.

    Samar Yazbek wrote from Syria about the dangers of reporting and writing from a conflict zone. Yazbek, a writer and a journalist, was active in the first four months of the Syrian uprising in 2011. She witnessed and experienced cruelty and torture from the Assad regime. During that time she kept a diary of her own reflections as well as of oral testimonies from other opposition fighters. In her book, Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution, she shows the reality of what’s happening there and brings us stories of many people who risk their lives in the struggle for freedom. The insight that Yazbek offers into the complex and bloody conflict is both incredibly valuable and inspiring.

    Her novel, Cinnamon, will be published by Arabia Books later this year. Fearing for her daughter’s life she was forced to leave Syria and she is now in hiding. 

    Lydia Cacho wrote from Mexico about censorship and about the power the government and media over journalists and reporters. Her new book Slavery Inc; the Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking, just published in the UK, follows the trail of the traffickers and their victims from Mexico to Turkey, Thailand to Iraq, Georgia to the UK, and exposes the trade’s hidden links with the tourist industry, internet pornography, drugs and arms smuggling, money laundering,  and terrorism.  Cacho’s powerful first-person interviews with mafiosi, pimps, prostitutes, and those who managed to escape from captivity make us aware of the terrible human cost of this exchange. Shocking and sobering, Slavery Inc, is an exceptional book, both for the scope of its investigation, and for the bravery with which Cacho pursues the truth.

    English PEN has also been busy this month promoting a biography of Ryszard Kapuscinski by Artur Domoslawski, one of the winners of its Writers in Translation award (PEN Promotes!). You can read on our site a conversation with the author and some further recommendations of Polish reportage recently published in the UK. It is worth remembering that Polish reportage has an established and celebrated tradition from Ryszard Kapuscinski and Hanna Krall to Mariusz Szczygiel (winner of European Book Award for Gottland) and recently to Andrzej Dybczak, who has just won the prestigious Koscielski Prize for his reportage on the nomadic tribes of Evenks in Siberia. And one more piece of Polish literary news – many Polish writers are touring UK this autumn: the details are here.

    Our other dispatches took us to the Netherlands where Michele Hutchison examined the success of The Dinner by Herman Koch, a novel full of suspense and middle-class anxiety, and to the Edinburgh Festival where Daniel Hahn considered the issue of translation and Krys Lee looked at how migration and displacement encourages creativity.

    As we know, there is far too little literature in translation published in English. Our aim at the PEN Atlas is to introduce new international writing to readers in the UK and to encourage publishers to bring that writing to the British market. We hope to give new insights into the rich literary landscape beyond the English language and to inspire people to seek out new writers in translation. I hope that you will enjoy reading our site and our writers, and will find them enriching and inspiring.  

    Tasja Dorkofikis

    Editor, PEN Atlas

    Tasja Dorkofikis is the editor of the PEN Atlas as well as a freelance editor and publicist. She used to work as Publicity Director at Random House and most recently at Portobello Books as Associate Publisher and Commissioning Editor. Tasja shares her time between London and a small village in Vaud in Switzerland.

     

  • Why we keep going

    In this week’s PEN Atlas piece, Lydia Cacho writes about the post-traumatic stress of being a persecuted journalist, and the media’s appetite for titillation rather than indignation

    This is an edited and updated version of the piece ‘Reluctant Heroes’, which originally appeared in ‘Beyond Bars: 50 years of PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee’, a special issue of Index on Censorship.

    The first call is the one you never forget. The person uttering the death threat has spent days preparing for this moment – to let you know that your fate is sealed. Up until this phone call, or email, threats were something ethereal and alien, something that happened to other people.

    Over time, I learned what many journalists and writers have learned before me: acquiring powerful enemies as a result of revealing deeper truths unsettles us and sets us apart from our colleagues and loved ones. Against our will the threats somehow become as important as the original story we wrote.

    This dilemma dominates the rest of our lives, because for us to come through safely we need to be out there, in public, and never be silenced. At the same time, we have to always remain on guard, watching our backs, alert whenever we see a police or military patrol, reacting instantly to any sound resembling a gunshot, tensing every time a motorcycle accelerates or approaches, permanently on the lookout for a weapon in case the rider is a hitman. And on and on, we have to proclaim to the four winds, until we’re fed up with doing so – and everyone else is fed up with us too – the name of the mafioso, the politician, the policeman or the corrupt businessman who has put a price on our heads. Yet we yearn for the privacy and anonymity that would allow us to move around without being recognised, for those times when we used to have no need to conceal the names of our family members (for they are now vulnerable too).

    As well as the threat of death, there is the threat of imprisonment. Many of my colleagues, from Iraq to Colombia, Cambodia to Kenya, have published memoirs that deal with post-traumatic stress they have suffered as a result of their experiences in jail. Once out of jail, there is the coming to terms with working and earning money, no longer now simply to feed our children, to pay for fuel and water, or for cinema tickets, but to pay lawyers in whose hands – like a small fish out of water – our provisional freedom rests. We spend years in courtrooms, gathering evidence and convincing witnesses to risk their lives by coming on board with us. Cases of defamation are regularly brought against us with the intention of exhausting us emotionally and financially. The courts become yet another weapon the mafia or corrupt politicians can use against us.

    There are lessons to be learnt here. As more journalists become victims of the courts, those whose plight they are trying to expose also become victims. We must learn how to interview a victim without obliging them to relive their suffering. Let us learn to show compassion for those who dignify us with the confidence of their personal histories. Let us discover how to conduct investigations so that we do not hurt further those who have already suffered. Let us develop methods of inquiry that protect those victims (of war and the mafia, of natural disasters and domestic violence) whom we interview.

    We need to learn to operate in a world where mainstream media has been captivated by the spectacle of cruelty, by a morbid fascination with pseudo-pornography of violence, in which there is no pain without blood. In the fabulous world of ratings, to survive and maintain one’s dignity is hardly good news. There are always those who demand drama: a few tears from the Mexican journalist who was tortured and imprisoned, then raped in order to ensure her silence, feeds the morbid desire for titillation, not for indignation.

    In Uganda, the reporter whose hands were mutilated by the military in order to stop him ever writing again is asked to display his stump as if begging for pity. The media ask the Iraqi journalist to recount a hundred times over how US soldiers murdered her children to quell her voice, and how she herself washed their little bodies alone in her house. They insist the South African poet stops reading his verses of love and hope and instead relives the darkness of his cell, shows the camera the marks of the torture he has spent the last ten years trying to forget, and explains how the love of his family faded to the point where, one autumn afternoon, nobody at all came to visit him in prison. And they ask Anna the Russian female journalist – only two months before she dies – “Are you afraid that they’ll kill you? Have you ever thought what might become of your children?” To which she stoically replies, as one who recognises her struggle as moral as well as political must reply, that for as long as the lives of others are not secure, then neither is our own. Later, alone in her hotel room, she calms her sobs by burying her head in a feather pillow. In her dreams, she begs her children’s forgiveness and visualises a world in which those who tell the truth – about shameful acts of war and humanity’s incapacity to negotiate conflict, about the rapaciousness of the powerful, who use war to exterminate or for the acquisition of material goods – do not pay with their lives.

    When I was abducted and incarcerated by corrupted police, during the 20-hour torture I kept thinking “if this is it and I will die at least I did what was right for the children I interviewed”.

    I love being a journalist. I believe it is useful to society and I am proud of it, it’s a privilege to be able to publish my investigations and to stay alive. Our role as journalists is to push people beyond complacency; journalism is not about fame or ratings, is about offering an echo to the voices of otherwise voiceless people.  Every morning, I remember that if I do my job well I will help citizens acquire reliable, accurate information to make decisions in their community, and that is truly powerful; it makes me remember my job is meaningful and useful to society.

    Lydia Cacho would also like to mention other journalists whose work helps to give voice to the voiceless:  

    Carolin Emke from Germany, Amal Jumah Khamis from Palestine, Blanche Petrich, Lucía Lagunes from Mexico, Natasha Walter from the UK,  and Renee Nowtarger, photojournalist from Austria.

    About the Author

    Lydia Cacho is an award-winning author, journalist and women’s rights activist. Following the publication of her book on child pornography inMexicoin 2005, she was illegally arrested, detained and ill treated before being subjected to a year-long criminal defamation lawsuit. She was cleared of all charges in 2007 but has continued to be the target of harassment and threats due to her investigative journalism. In August 2012, she was forced to temporarily flee her native Mexico in the wake of particularly terrifying death threats.

    In addition to her work as a journalist, she founded and directs the Refuge Centre for Abused Women of Cancun and is president of the Centre for Women’s Assistance, which aids victims of domestic violence and gender discrimination.

    Lydia Cacho was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize for an International Writer of Courage in 2010.

    About the Translator

    Amanda Hopkinson has been active in Human Rights and literature throughout her life. Much of her writing has been concerned with and for, and influenced by publications on, human rights and freedom of expression. She has contributed, through writing, translating and editing, regularly to the magazine Index on Censorship. As an academic, she has been involved in establishing both Swansea and Norwich as ‘cities of refuge’, offering a haven to refugee writers. She has long supported the goals of PEN, a founding and enthusiastic member of PEN Writers in Translation committees, both in the US and UK, and is an active member of English PEN’s Writers at Risk Committee.

    Launch of ‘Slavery Inc: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking’

    Published by Portobello Books: 6 September 2012

    ‘Illegal, inhuman, and impervious to recession, there is one trade that continues to thrive, just out of sight. The international sex trade criss-crosses the entire globe, a sinister network made up of criminal masterminds, local handlers, corrupt policemen, wilfully blind politicians, eager consumers, and countless hapless women and children. In this ground-breaking work of investigative reporting, the celebrated journalist Lydia Cacho follows the trail of the traffickers and their victims from Mexico to Turkey, Thailand to Iraq, Georgia to the UK, to expose the trade’s hidden links with the tourist industry, internet pornography, drugs and arms smuggling, the selling of body organs, money laundering, and even terrorism.’ 

    English PEN will be co-hosting the launch of Lydia’s latest book Slavery Inc: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking (translated by Elizabeth Boburg) and belatedly presenting her with her PEN Pinter Prize at the Free Word Centre on 29 August.  Please join us for what promises to be a fascinating discussion, and to show your support for Lydia.  Event details here. 

  • Lydia Cacho has gone

    In this week’s PEN Atlas piece, Sanjuana Martinez pays tribute to her friend and colleague Lydia Cacho who has been forced to temporarily flee their native Mexico in the wake of terrifying deaths threats. 

    Translated by Amanda Hopkinson and Cat LucasI am writing this from the heart. There is no other way for me to do it. Lydia Cacho is not just a colleague and fellow journalist, but has been a friend of mine for years. We are united by a passion for our profession, by our commitment to the causes both of women and human rights, and of course by a friendship filled with affection and solidarity.The work that Lydia Cacho does in Mexico is as indispensable as the air we breathe. Her investigative journalism aims to remove the decadent layers of political corruption, both in business and in government.We know that nowadays independent and critical journalism has become a high risk profession, but Lydia has spent seven years living under impending threats from the people in power that she has so bravely identified in her work.Her books are her evidence of it. The most recent, Esclavas del Poder: un viaje al corazón de la trata sexual de mujeres y niñas en el mundo edited by Grijalbo (Slavery Inc: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking) is an in-depth investigation not only into human trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation and financial gain, but also into the people in power who profit from it. In addition there are her newspaper columns, which have become essential reading due to the amount of information they contain, stuffed with facts that shed light on subjects that normally would remain concealed because of the vested interests of differing sources of power.When a journalistic career is characterised by constant criticism and denunciation, it is sadly not unusual to be treated as a discomforting presence, and so become persecuted and banned from numerous professional outlets.  What is unusual is for the State to remain impervious to all the death threats that Cacho and so many other journalists have received. And what is shameful is that a journalist like Lydia Cacho, under threat of death, is forced into temporary exile to save her life and her life’s work.She is not the only one. A number of Mexican media professionals have found themselves forced into exile thanks to the indifference of Felipe Calderon’s government has shown towards more than 100 crimes against journalists that have gone unpunished.In Lydia’s case the lack of governmental action is particularly alarming. Since 2009, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights (IACHR) has been calling on the government to take precautionary measures for her protection, but Calderon and his negligent officials (from the Ministry of the Interior and the failed Special Prosecutor for Crimes Committed Against Journalists) have consistently ignored the urgency of adopting such measures.  It is obvious that they would prefer not to come to the defence of a critical voice.In the meantime, the journalist has been subject to accusations and persecution from one source after another.  On this most recent occasion [29 July 2012] the message was clear: “We already told you, vile bitch, don’t mess with us. We can see that you haven’t learnt from that little trip that we gave you. Next time we get you, you’ll be cut into little pieces, and that’s how we’ll send you home, idiot.”No prizes for guessing where the threat comes from. It originates in organised crime linked to political power. Lately, Lydia has been highly critical of the PRI [Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or Institutional Revolutionary Party]and of other parties in government in the many different states of the Republic, whilst her work on the networks that deal with sexual exploitation have revealed the disgusting abuses of many famously corrupt PRI officials.Mexico is now second only to Thailand in the extent of its sexual trafficking. It is a haven for traffickers who collaborate with regional governors in order to maximise their already substantial profits, then expend them in the exploitation of thousands more women and children.Lydia has always worked on a wide range of issues: she denounces paedophiles, but also corrupt politicians, members of the State who abuse human rights, authorities that exploit migrants, and legislators who refuse to review the law in favour of women’s rights. With her pen, she defends the most deserving of social sectors: indigenous communities, children, homosexuals, migrants, sex workers, and a whole range of other vulnerable groups. Her information sources have enabled her to build up a comprehensive archive of predators.As independent journalists, we know that difficult times are approaching regarding freedom of expression. The PRI has never been a model of respect for our members or our craft. Hindsight is revealing. And one only needs to look at what has happened in the last month for examples of attacks on the media, for example on the daily Monterrey newspaper El Norte. Censorship is the monster with a thousand heads, which never reveals its actual self but appears in myriad forms, such as that of the news service MVS, whose pressure on leader-writer John Ackerman led him to resign rather than yield to the silence of political complicity.Persecution is still in its earliest stages. The swords of Damocles drawn in order to silence independent or critical voices are advancing stealthily. The silence among colleagues who benefit from the present power structure is palpable. Pathetic attempts to cover up corruption, crimes and abuses are apparently far more important that the life of a single journalist, which counts for nothing in Mexico.No doubt there will be many who dream of a country without independent journalists; others will breathe a sigh of relief when critical journalists are exiled; and the rest of the shameless lowlifes will rejoice at the prospective demise of investigative journalism. But it won’t happen, make no mistake.Some of us have decided to continue the fight. Lydia Cacho will soon return. She is not prepared to leave her home, her loved ones, her friends. Nor will she abandon her country. This break is simply to allow her to work on a security strategy that will allow her to sustain her work in future.To those who dream of a Mexico where journalism submits to political power, I warn you: do not let yourselves be deceived. Such a day will never come. There will always be voices prepared to defend the truth, to fight to uncover the dark corners of the power structure, and to expose the content of its filthy sewers. All in good time. Only lies are in a hurry.Insisting on freedom, independent journalists like us are answerable only to our sources, to the human beings who trust us to tell their stories; not to the government, nor to politicians of any party. We owe it to the quest for truth, for justice, and to the victory of the common good.Sensing the fetid breath of evil at our backs only serves to give us the wings to fly higher. To the prophets of evil, to those governors that prefer silence, I suggest you don’t become over-confident. I remind you of the words of Bertolt Brecht: When truth is too weak to defend itself, it has to go on the attack.So it will be.The original version of this piece, ‘Lydia Cacho, se va’ was published on SINEMBARGO.MX, and has been translated and published on the
    PEN Atlas with the permission of the author.

    About the Author

    Multi-award winning Mexican journalist Sanjuana Martinez was born in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico in 1963. Her work focuses on issues related to the defence of human rights, gender violence, terrorist activity and organised crime in Mexico, the United States and Europe. Martinez has been subject to threats, harassment and persecution for her reporting since 2006, in retaliation for writing about alleged links between child sexual abuse and the Catholic Church in Mexico, and was the focus of a PEN International action to mark Women’s Day in 2009.Martinez, who has worked for a range of major media outlets in Mexico, now works as a freelance journalist, and is also a regular contributor to one of Mexico’s leading daily newspapers, La Jornada.

    About the Translators

    Amanda Hopkinson has been active in Human Rights and literature throughout her life. Much of her writing has been concerned with and for, and influenced by publications on, human rights and freedom of expression. She has contributed, through writing, translating and editing, regularly to the magazine Index on Censorship. As an academic, she has been involved in establishing both Swansea and Norwich as ‘cities of refuge’, offering a haven to refugee writers. She has long supported the goals of PEN, a founding and enthusiastic member of PEN Writers in Translation committees, both in the US and UK, and is an active member of English PEN’s Writers at Risk Committee.Cat Lucas is Writers at Risk Programme Manager at English PEN, responsible for campaigning on behalf of PEN’s cases of concern around the world. She graduated from University College London in 2007 with a BA in French and Spanish. Her translations of poetry and short stories by Cuban writer Jorge Olivera Castillo have been published in the magazine Index on Censorship and online.

    Additional Info

    Lydia Cacho is an award-winning author, journalist and women’s rights activist. Following the publication of her book on child pornography inMexicoin 2005, she was illegally arrested, detained and ill treated before being subjected to a year-long criminal defamation lawsuit. She was cleared of all charges in 2007 but has continued to be the target of harassment and threats due to her investigative journalism. In August 2012, she was forced to temporarily flee her native Mexico in the wake of particularly terrifying death threats.In addition to her work as a journalist, she founded and directs the Refuge Centre for Abused Women of Cancun and is president of the Centre for Women’s Assistance, which aids victims of domestic violence and gender discrimination.Lydia Cacho was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize for an International Writer of Courage in 2010.

    Slavery Inc: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking

    Published by Portobello Books: 6 September 2012‘Illegal, inhuman, and impervious to recession, there is one trade that continues to thrive, just out of sight. The international sex trade criss-crosses the entire globe, a sinister network made up of criminal masterminds, local handlers, corrupt policemen, wilfully blind politicians, eager consumers, and countless hapless women and children. In this ground-breaking work of investigative reporting, the celebrated journalist Lydia Cacho follows the trail of the traffickers and their victims from Mexico to Turkey, Thailand to Iraq, Georgia to the UK, to expose the trade’s hidden links with the tourist industry, internet pornography, drugs and arms smuggling, the selling of body organs, money laundering, and even terrorism.’English PEN will be co-hosting the launch of Lydia’s latest book Slavery Inc: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking (translated by Elizabeth Boburg) and belatedly presenting her with her PEN Pinter Prize at the Free Word Centre on 29 August.  Please join us for what promises to be a fascinating discussion, and to show your support for Lydia.  Event details here.