Rebel Writer: Xavier Velasco

-- Criticas, 8/1/2003

Velasco’s hip and unapologetic novel Diablo Guardián (Guardian Devil) wins Alfaguara’s 2003 prize for fiction and introduces a new voice in contemporary Mexican fiction

I spent a long time looking for a woman who was somehow infected by a sense of hurry. After a bunch of years watching, listening, and haunting women around me, I felt the character was ready for a tour de force, which entailed answering (or at least exploring) many old questions about women. In the movies, characters jump into cabs and say to the driver: "Follow that car." For this novel, I never felt like writing the story out of the blue, so the imperative was: "Follow that chick." The goal? Getting lost behind her, following not my will but hers, even if the price was to give up most of my original plans and become her hostage. In that sense, Violetta’s only real privilege is that she never surrenders. There may be thousands of male heroes in literature, but I see women as the real heroes: They’re scared of nothing and are always ready to break the rules! Moreover, there is rhythm. As Violetta speaks, her words start dancing, so if I had to explain it all in a single concept; the word would be seduction.

When I was a teenager, literature teachers were the ultimate enemies. Their whole mission seemed to be showing us how boring books could be. But I knew they were wrong, since I had Mario Vargas Llosa’s Pantaleón y las visitadoras (Captain Pantoja and the Special Services) hidden under my table. The novel was not only amazingly funny but also perfect for virtually walking out of the classroom and into a secret world, where names like David Bowie, Roman Polanski, or Billie Holiday meant happily surrendering to a sort of breathtaking fascination. Later, in college, I would run away from campus to watch movies by Herzog, Kurosawa, Lynch, and many other prestigious madmen who, just like Nico, Iggy Pop, or Siouxsie and the Banshees, had an intense approach to some magnetic atmospheres where I preferred to breath. I developed a passion for street life, night lights, hookers, inmates, all that was once forbidden to a protected child who grew up with no brothers or sisters around, but with very close ties to a couple of loving and ever-caring folks. One sometimes seeks to jump over one’s own barriers, especially after getting hooked on fiction.

The character Violetta is not a common wetback. She jumps over the U.S.-Mexico border with more than 100,000 stolen bucks and a nice, lusty body. Hence, she finds it easy to cross over and even get to New York without facing the usual troubles of illegal immigrants. But Violetta faces personal borders and must keep on breaking them to survive. She betrays her own family, changes her name, wears all kinds of wigs, picks up men in hotel lobbies, snatches goods and money, and deals with coke and smoke. Her language is not plain Spanish but a personal, cheesy blend of Mexican and American slang in a permanent search for rhythm and linguistic adventure. Anyway, she’s an alien and knows it, mainly because there is no way to hide it. On the other hand, the character Pig, her alleged Guardian Devil, lives the life of a foreigner even within the limits of his own country. Writers are always aliens, as Jews or gypsies have been in the past. That is our utmost privilege.

Violetta shows mercy for neither Mexicans nor Americans. She looks at things in a crude way, with the kind of black humor one usually needs to keep on surviving. As the first reader of this novel, I feared some kind of rejection by conservative Mexicans who might hate such a naked vision of reality, but I was later surprised by what Violetta did on her own. Of course, she’s not the kind of girl one would love to have at home, but I would say she manages to be twistedly lovely. The mesmeric rhythm of her speech and the big dose of vertigo from word to word somehow appeal to younger readers. Also, remember that Violetta is confessing as she speaks, so she wants to seduce her confessor, which in the end turns out to be the readers, to be forgiven. Violetta wants readers to fall in love with her, not despite her sins but because of them. She doesn’t look for friends but for accomplices. So if I had to say which readers are bound to fall in love with her, surely the chosen ones would be not only sympathizers but coconspirators or devil’s advocates. Providentially, Mexico and the United States are always full of them.

Editor’s Note: Diablo Guardián (Alfaguara: Santillana) is reviewed on p.43 of the print issue.