/ARTS WEEKLY/ BOOKS-MEXICO: Library Rides the Rails

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Pilar Franco

MEXICO CITY, Jan 20 2004 (IPS) - An anthology of nine authors is being made available this month to passengers on the Mexican capital’s train lines, the first phase of a library programme that has the double purpose of fomenting the reading habit and curbing crime.

Some 250,000 copies of short texts – essays, stories and poems – by Mexican writers are being handed out to passengers, with the only condition being that after they have read the booklets, they return them to any of the “metro” stations.

The project began Jan. 16 on the 3 Line of the combined three-level train route that transports 4.7 million people a day.

Without having to pay a thing, or show any identification, public transportation users can select a book from the stands set up at each of the 22 stations on the 3 Line, train spokesman Mariano Cruz told IPS. The entire system covers 201,388 km in a city of more than 20 million people.

The national average in Mexico for number of books read per year is just 1.2 per person, according to figures from UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation).

The “books on the rails” initiative of the Mexico City government, run by the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) “is a partial but very significant antidote to the lack of reading,” author Carlos Monsiváis said in a conversation with IPS.

Amidst the rushing bodies, the fatigue and the pushing and shoving that characterise a ride on the metro, one cannot always get into a position to read. However, the project promotes a specific mode of reading, says the author of “Nuevo Catecismo para indios remisos” (New Catechism for Reluctant Indians).

“And the expropriation of a copy should be reason to celebrate,” because if a reader does not return the book upon arrival at his or her destination, it means he or she is reading it, says Monsiváis, whose writing is included in this first anthology, alongside Emilio Carvallido, Vicente Leñero and Thelma Nava.

The public transport system’s reading programme is based on trust, but also expects losses of book copies, which were published by the Fondo de Cultura Económica at a cost of around 50 cents on the dollar each, said spokesman Mariano Cruz.

Stealing a book that has such an economic price would never have any other purpose but for reading, he said.

Three million pamphlets have been distributed and 10,000 signs posted to explain the plan.

Over the next two year, the objective of the project, which emerged as part of the search for ways to fight harassment of women and theft on the train lines, is to convince at least 500,000 people to become regular readers.

Cruz explained that the advisers of former New York mayor Rudolph Giulianni, hired by the Mexico City authorities, recommended applying a “zero tolerance” plan in this crime-ridden capital.

But in the case of the train system, what emerged was the idea to provide books, not necessarily more police.

“Reading will gradually change the modes of coexistence in such a way that it will improve respect for women, children and the elderly,” said Cruz, stressing that the metro is the safest means of transportation in Mexico City.

According to official figures, in the second half of 2003 there were 510 reports of assault involving microbuses and 314 involving taxis, compared to 11 reported in the 175 stations of the metropolitan train lines.

Author Monsiváis considers the free book plan a breath of fresh air after the alarm caused in the Mexican intellectual community by the Vicente Fox government’s attempt to slap a 10-percent value-added tax on books, magazines and newspapers.

The economic package that the Fox administration presented to Congress included a tax on these products, but in the end it was excluded from the bill approved by the lawmakers.

The writer also criticised the federal government’s plan to build a “mega-library”, which would have a stock of a million bocks within its first 10 years, located on a 43,000-square metre plot in a western district of Mexico City.

Library scientists, researchers, architects, political scientists, historians, writers, editors and politicians have all been caught up in the controversy surrounding the giant construction project, which would begin in April – and has been touted as a sign of the “megalomania” of the government.

The aim of “a nation of readers”, proclaimed by Fox, will not benefit from a gigantic library, but rather from specific measures, like the campaign just begun on the metro, comments Monsiváis. The mega-library is slated to open in early 2006.

A Senate study indicates that “all statistics on the relation between the number of libraries, bookshops and books in the country, and the number of inhabitants clearly reveal a situation that is on the downslide.”

There is one bookshop for every 170,000 people in Mexico, and they are concentrated in the big cities.

By December, the books on the rails programme will have distributed six anthologies of 250,000 copies each. The selection will be expanded to include other Mexican authors as well as foreign writers.

This alternative library will be up and running in all metro stations, with 600 youths assisting at the book stands.