The Mexicans by Patrick Oster

Author:Patrick Oster [Oster, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Latin America, Mexico, Social Science, Sociology, General, Social History, Essays, Social Theory
ISBN: 9780061951879
Google: ae2g8N1uuGoC
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2009-06-23T22:33:20+00:00

Faced with such manipulation of ideas and expression, it’s a wonder that anyone in Mexico bothers to try to get the truth out. It’s particularly improbable that Julio Scherer is one of those trying. Now a grandfatherly sexagenarian with wispy gray hair, he hardly looks the part of a to-the-barricades rebel. An affable man in relaxed settings, he is painfully shy when asked to state his views on anything.

Scherer hardly ever grants an interview, a bizarre posture for a professional journalist. He can get violent in his zeal to avoid them. Once, when a Mexican television crew set up an ambush-style interview, he grabbed the crew’s camera cable, pulled the camera forcefully to the ground, and stalked off. In my own case, after numerous unsuccessful requests by phone for an interview, Scherer finally agreed to let me talk to his associate Froylán López Narváez to see if Froylán could answer my questions. I got quite a bit about Scherer’s personal and professional life from Froylán, whom I had known before. But some questions required personal responses. I narrowed them down to one typed page.

Reluctantly, Scherer agreed to see me a few days later and answer my questions. When I arrived, he came out of his office, in shirtsleeves and casual pants. We chatted briefly. I asked if we could begin the interview. At the last minute he begged off. “I’m too embarrassed,” he said. “I don’t like interviews.”

As a compromise, we agreed that I would leave my list of questions and my tape recorder. Froylán would later turn the recorder on and ask the questions for me. Later, I could pick my recorder up. After a few days, Scherer said even a tape recorder was too intimidating. He preferred to write out his responses. I knew he had written two books, one on his experiences with the last four presidents of Mexico, the other a biography of the Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros. Maybe, I thought, he only feels comfortable giving his views in print. I humored him. But after two weeks of excuses as to why he couldn’t find the right words to write down, I went back to talk to him personally. I caught him in the hallway on his way to lunch.

He was terribly apologetic. “I know I’ve been a pendejo (“asshole”) about this. But I wanted to get the answers right. It’s hard for me. I’m searching inside me for the proper way to say it. I’m not finding what I need.”

My questions had really boiled down to two. I wanted to know why he had passed up government bribes to journalists when all his contemporaries had not. After reading his writings, talking to his friends, and meeting him in person, I thought I had the answer to that one. He was just a decent man, the victim of a good upbringing by parents of integrity. The second question was more important, for I wanted to know if he thought there would be more freedom of the press in Mexico in the future.

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