Mario Santiago never conceived of a life without writing. "He spent the day developing the ideas that came to his mind. If he had a notebook at hand, he wrote there. But if not, any surface was good for him: a napkin, a pack of tobacco or the margins of a book", recalls the poet Orlando Guillén, by telephone, about who was one of the visible faces of infrarealism, the movement countercultural poet who was born in Mexico in the seventies and which also included Roberto Bolaño, Rubén Medina and José Vicente Anaya.
"The blank corners of one of the works of my youth give a good example of this practice," continues Guillén. It refers to the copy of unpublished Poesía (1970-1978) that the fellow poet Virgilio Torres Hernández keeps in his library. It was given to him by Mario Santiago in the early eighties. But this is not just any volume. Two works coexist inside it: Guillén's, and the verses that the infrarealist wrote around it. At first glance, the lack of free space on each page can be a bit overwhelming for the reader. But the publishing value is important, as the publisher Ana María Chagra, at the head of Ediciones Sin Fin, was able to see.
"I went to visit my friend Virgilio and he showed me this gem. I took a lot of photos and, when I returned to Barcelona, with my publishing partner, Bruno Montané – another infrarealist – we decided to transcribe Mario's part and respect the title he himself gave it: La historia it will absorb us”. At the moment the volume is on sale in some selected bookstores in Barcelona and Madrid and they are a sample of what are known as "linguistic darts", so characteristic of the author. Verses and short ideas ranging from parodies to ethical crossroads and sporadic erotic encounters.
It is not the first time that the publishers have a work of these characteristics in their catalog. "Sueño sin fin", the first book we published, is the result of the compilation, by Bruno Montané and Roberto Bolaño, of the texts that Mario embodied in the margins of different books. The two friends did this painstaking work a long time ago, but did not publish it. In 2012, the publishing house was born with the idea that the texts would see the light of day. It was not our intention to continue with more works, but we are staying here".
Unlike this first publication, “History will absorb us is created within a single book, that of Guillén. And this is significant, since, since he is from a previous generation, they had him as a point of reference", points out Chagra.
Orlando Guillén made friends with all the infras, although his closeness was special with Mario Santiago, with whom he even shared a flat in Mexico in the early eighties. "Our life was bohemian beyond measure. We devoted ourselves to poetry and didn't care about anything else. It was good to live with someone who shared ideals and lifestyle at that time, which is not easy".
They met at Casa del Lago, a cultural center located in the Chapultepec Forest, in Mexico City. Since then, they shared evenings in the gatherings of the La Habana café and at the house of the Mexican poet and journalist Efraín Huerta, two meeting points for the intellectuals of the time and where the infrarealist poets borrowed, as the saying goes, the phrase of painter Roberto Matta "make culture's head fly".
In these first meetings, Guillén learned that Mario was actually called José Alfredo Zendejas, but that he had changed his name after arguing that "there is only one José Alfredo", referring to the actor and Mexican singer-songwriter José Alfredo Jiménez. Another sign of his intention to endure over time, despite the fact that he probably did not imagine that these marginal texts would end up forming a work.
He even had a third name, that of Ulises Lima, one of the main protagonists of Los detectives salvajes (1998), by Roberto Bolaño and also his alter ego. Although there are many readers who give him this nickname today, he did not get to hear anyone call him that, since he was hit and killed before the book went to print. He was 44 years old. “it became a cult work and readers became interested in its protagonists when they learned that they were inspired by real people. Thus, there were many who ended up making their way to Mario's work and stayed there forever. He was another wild detective", remembers Guillén of his verse companion.
Mowgli, the son the poet had with Rebeca López, acknowledges by phone from Mexico that his father "then became the legend he never dreamed he would be. Many revisited his work and stayed with it. But he did not experience this success". Something that, without a doubt, "he would have liked and, at the same time, surprised. There was a time when, after multiple editorial rejections, he resigned. But that doesn't mean he gave up. He never stopped writing. He simply accepted that it would be difficult to publish his work. That's why he ended up setting up his own publishing house, Al Este del Paraíso, with which he published some of his works, such as Ullido de cisne. Both his legacy and that of his companions, added to an untimely and accidental death, have allowed him to live on in posterity.
"It is a particular death because he was a very good walker. He absorbed the cities like this and then imbued his writings with everything he saw", recalls Bruno Montané. There are several anecdotes they have together, such as "the day he decided he would be a waiter. He got a job in an orchateria on Carrer Gran Via with Aribau. We all went to visit him on his first day, and when he saw us, he dropped the tray with all the glasses. We returned home together because they kicked him out." In some way, life itself reminded him that his destiny was among the folios, clean napkins and book margins.
"Of everything he wrote, the public has only seen 10% of it. There is much left to read about this man who was born to be a poet and died as one", concludes his son.
