Tuesday, Dec 21, 2004
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By Jo Tuckman
MEXICO CITY, DEC. 20. Mexico's best-known crime writer, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, opened his front door one Sunday to a messenger from the country's best-known guerilla, holding an envelope bearing his name and the words, ``For Your Eyes Only.'' Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, the former philosophy lecturer who now leads the Zapatista armed group in the southern state of Chiapas, had written to propose that they co-author a novel. ``I counted to 10,'' recalls Mr. Taibo, a long-time admirer of Mr. Marcos and the Zapatistas. ``I started off thinking, `This is ridiculous'. But then I said to myself, `Paco, when have you ever shied away from something crazy'.'' Within a week, Mr. Marcos' first chapter of Muertos Incomodos (The Awkward Dead) appeared in the Sunday edition of the national newspaper La Jornada. The second, written by Mr. Taibo, ran the next week. The third, penned by Mr. Marcos again, was published last Sunday. Mr. Marcos writes of a Zapatista detective called Elias Contreras, whom we first meet travelling around the jungle on his mule under orders from a character called Subcomandante Marcos, who smokes a pipe — just like in real life. Contreras' alter ego is the quintessentially urban private eye, Hector Belascoaran Shayne, the protagonist of past Taibo novels. Early on in The Awkward Dead, Contreras reveals that he is dead himself, while Shayne takes on the case of an old murdered leftist who begins leaving messages on answering machines. The two investigators are due to meet in Chapter 9. Mr. Taibo says he has no idea where the story will go from there but, for the moment, he is more concerned about what to do with a gay Filipino with a Basque surname who worked in a Barcelona garage. Marcos introduced him in Chapter 3, playing football in Zapatista territory. Writing a whodunit may sound odd thing to do when you are running an insurgency, but Mr. Marcos has never fitted the traditional Latin American guerilla mould anyway. Almost as soon as the Zapatistas burst on to the world's front pages with their 10-day uprising for indigenous rights a decade ago, the mask-wearing Mr. Marcos' poetic communique and off-beat charisma were drawing more attention than the limited military prowess of his ragtag army. Over the years, Mr. Marcos' writings have remained centre stage in this conflict, where the guerillas' guns have seemed largely symbolic and the authorities have held back from openly attacking a group with sympathisers around the world. But the conflict in Chiapas has seemingly fallen off the national agenda, while the once-fervent international solidarity network is dwindling. Some observers see Mr. Marcos' reinvention of himself as a crime writer as a strategy to recapture the limelight. If so, it may just be working. La Jornada's Sunday sales have risen 20 per cent, and the novel is to be published throughout the Spanish-speaking world and in Italy. An English version may follow. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
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