History of Infamy by Piccato Pablo

Author:Piccato, Pablo
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520292611
Publisher: University of California Press

THE POLICE COMEDY

At first, Mexican crime fiction opted for satire instead of technical accuracy and realism. The works of Antonio Helú and José Martínez de la Vega parodied the classics and mocked the justice system, setting up the baseline of skepticism that would define the national narrative. The first writer to embrace the genre was Helú (1900–1972). Of Lebanese immigrant parents, he was forced to leave the country after his participation in José Vasconcelos’s 1929 presidential campaign. Vasconcelos was the founder of the Secretaría de Educación Pública under Álvaro Obregón. After the caudillo’s death, he mounted a strong challenge to the candidate supported by Plutarco Elías Calles. Vasconcelos’s followers included many students like Helú, whose hopes for a democratic and enlightened end to the rule of revolutionary caudillos were frustrated by the violence and electoral fraud of 1929. In exile in Los Angeles, Helú learned about movies and worked as a journalist. Upon his return in the thirties, he wrote for different media, but crime fiction remained his passion. In 1946 he founded the Club de la Calle Morgue along with Rafael Bernal, Enrique F. Gual, and other aspiring writers. The reference to Poe was clear in the group’s name, but there was also inspiration from the Mystery Writers of America and the English Detection Club. The latter, once presided over by G.K. Chesterton, required members to swear an oath in which they promised “never to conceal a vital clue from the reader.”25 The goal of the Mexican Club, as Helú wrote to Frederic Dannay, editor of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, was simple: “Few are those in our country who write detective fiction. We want many more writers of this ‘genre,’ and many more readers.”26 Helú was instrumental in achieving both goals by founding the magazine Selecciones Policiacas y de Misterio in 1946, which he edited with some interruptions until the fifties. He also established the publishing house Editorial Albatros, which sold detective and mystery novels as well as books on diverse popular topics.27

Helú was able to eke a living out of his passion. In 1944, he thanked Dannay for the seventy-five dollars he received in payment for a story and explained why he had to engage in other professional activities: “You can not make your living, here in Mexico, by writing short stories, not even detective short stories. I wrote six. . . . and I got about $50.00 (Mexican money) for each one. I was 25 then and I was ambitious, so I left short stories and began writing plays which met with some success. Then, the Mexican era of the movie picture started, and here I am now writing and directing for the movies.”28 Between 1936 and 1960, Helú worked on eighteen movie scripts and directed seven films, including one based on a story he wrote (“La obligación de asesinar,” 1937). His texts were also published in magazines, newspapers, and edited books.

Helú simultaneously played with the conventions of the genre and used the detection plot to criticize contradictions in the Mexican cult of honor.

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