Tijuana's literary side celebrated at Book Fair - Runs through June 16
From The San Diego Union Tribune
By Sandra Dibble
TIJUANA - "Publishers, bookstore owners, writers and readers are converging at Tijuana's Cultural Center this weekend, celebrating the
little-recognized literary side of this city where musicians and visual artists have been winning much of the attention.
Tijuana's 31st Book Fair, which opened Friday and closes June 16, is one of the city's main annual cultural events, underwritten this year by the
Municipal Institute of Art and Culture with support from the Cecut and city's Booksellers' Union.
More than 130,000 people are expected to gather for readings, storytelling, concerts, or just the chance to quietly wander among many book stalls. On
Saturday, the crowds flowed through tented corridors of books set up outside the federal Cultural Center.
"The Book Fair is the enormous party that Tijuana deserves," said Luis Humberto Crosthwaite, a Tijuana-born fiction writer who depicts border life
with irony and humor and is currently a visiting professor at the University of Iowa.
Crosthwaite was the fair's honored author this year. "He writes about the city, the good and the bad," said Magdalena Jiménez, the fair's literary
coordinator. In Tijuana, where much the population was born outside the city, "this gives people a sense of belonging, whether you were born here or
not," she said.
The fair has been an itinerant event in recent years, held in a range of locations that include Avenida Revolución, Plaza Río Shopping Center and
Tijuana City Hall. For the first time since 1992, the event has returned to the Cecut.
"We want artists to be the new face of the city," said Pedro Ochoa, director of the Cultural Center. Ochoa said he is currently reading an
autobiography of Miguel Martínez, the legendary trumpet player of Mariachi Vargas who is among the 120 authors expected to present their books at the
fair.
Saturday's presentations included "Coronada de moscas" (Crowned With Flies), a travel memoir set in India by the Mexico City-based writer and academic
Margo Glantz, as well as "El embajador," which features interviews with United States ambassadors to Mexico by journalist Dolia Estevez, who is based
in Washington, D.C.
Baja California has one of Mexico's highest adult literacy rates. Statewide, 97 percent of the population is able to read and write, compared with the
national average of 93 percent, according to Mexico's 2010 census. Still, in Baja California and across Mexico, writers, booksellers and cultural
officials bemoan the fact that too few Mexicans are buying - or reading - books.
But at the Tijuana Book Fair, few seemed prepared to give up hope: Tijuana "is an important market that's changing, and it has a cultural movement
that is generating many consumers," said Hugo Marroquin, marketing director for Grupo Planeta, a Mexico City-based publisher.
"There are readers in Tijuana, we have to go out and find them, we have to seek them out in fairs, at shopping centers, at factories," said José Luis
Sánchez, president of the city's 12-member Booksellers' Union. "We're helping to build a better society."
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness.”
—Mark Twain
\"La vida es dura, el corazon es puro, y cantamos hasta la madrugada.” (Life is hard, the heart is pure and we sing until dawn.)
—Kirsty MacColl, Mambo de la Luna
\"Alea iacta est.\"
—Julius Caesar
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