Elena Poniatowska Quotes

Of course, imaginative writing always contains elements of the writer’s lived experience, but there is a ­different sort of freedom in it than there is in reporting or in novels based on interviews.

I have always been drawn to characters like Jesusa Palancares. María Sabina, the one who performed the ceremony of the sacred mushrooms (LSD in Oaxaca), Juan Perez Jolote (the Chamula peasant from Chiapas), Demetrio Vallejo (the railroad leader), all popular heroes, even if they are not recognized. I admire them because of their wisdom and the way they impart it, with great patience, great prudence, with respect for the ignorance of the person who asks the questions.

The question of being encouraged or discouraged by this or that event cannot be asked if one is to go on with a certain moral conviction.

Nellie Campobello, a great writer, published Cartucho (Cartridge) in 1931. Her explosive book was more like a grenade that laid bare the tragedy of the Mexican Revolution. In a succession of brief chapters, Nellie sketches a cruel, stark picture of the uprising as seen through the eyes of a little girl who was born before original sin. There are dead men-killed in battle or executed by firing squad-on every page. The girl eagerly watches from her window as men are shot down, and their corpses become her toys. When her favorite one is finally taken away, she misses it because it has entertained her for five days…If Nellie Campobello had not recorded her experiences, we would have been deprived of the most creative view of the Mexican Revolution ever written. Yes, I know, we have the writers Mariano Azuela, Martín Luis Guzmán, Rafael F. Muñoz, and the boring Francisco L. Urquizo, but there is no one as authentic as Nellie, no one who could say, as she did…Nellie Campobello-who wrote two novels, Cartucho and Las manos de mamá (A Mother's Hands)-was never granted the legendary status she deserves despite the fact that she is the only woman to have authored works about the Mexican Revolution. Her colleagues never acknowledged her nor paid her tribute of any kind, so much so that we are unsure exactly when and how she died.

I learned, as they say, by doing. I began as an interviewer for the society pages of Excélsior—the only sort of thing a young woman could expect in those days...Since Excélsior is a daily paper, I had to produce these pieces every day with almost no time for review. Then I would read them in print and see that I had spent too much time on things of little importance and failed to ask about what mattered most. And so,with frequent embarrassment, that is how I learned. One also learns ­humility doing interviews, because people may not want to give you much time and so keep you waiting in an anteroom or are dismissive or in a bad mood, and all this has to be accepted.

Without realizing it the maids provided me with a version of Benito Juárez; they were all like Benito Juárez. Like him they vindicated themselves: "Dirty foreigners." Like him they defended Mexico, as stubborn as mules. Like him they had no roof of their own and had eaten only poor people's food, and for me, a girl raised on French mashed potatoes, discovering them meant entering into "the other."

According to the El Paso Morning Times, in 1914 there were seventeen thousand men and four thousand women in Pancho Villa's army, but there are many other statistics that show that, without the soldaderas, there would have been no Mexican Revolution.

Carefully I asked them questions, visited them in their crowded neighborhoods, watched their kites cross the sky in February, treated them like kites, because that's how testimonial literature is. It fills one with anxiety, with insecurity. One handles very fragile material, people's hearts; their names, which are their honor; their work; and their time. And one tries to turn it into memorable material.

There is an immense abyss between the very few who have money and the vast number who are poor—and there is scarce concern on the part of those who have for those who do not. The politicians can be numbered among those who have. So my being a Mexican writer and loving my country has come to find its expression in opening up this reality to other Mexicans and to the larger world, expressed through the voices of the least empowered—women, especially, and poor people of both genders.

I have always had questions, and to this day, I don't have a single answer.

That the poorest Mexicans don't deserve their ruling class is a truth that leaps out at once.

I have always responded to challenges, followed apocalyptical personalities, apostles, Rasputins, Joan of Arcs who hear voices that come from Heaven, illuminated guides of humanity, holders of truth, priests.

I would like to return to earth because I love life.

We have all been made bad, we are all needy, all unwanted guests around the feast, invited at the last minute. In recognizing this lies our creativity.

To this day, if I ask so many questions, it is because I don't have a single answer. I believe I will die like this, still searching, with a question mark engraved on my eyelids.