La discapacidad y los derechos humanos.

Like Villoro, Hinojosa begins by foregrounding the era in which he is writing by way o f a heavy-handed riddle which also sets the playful, irreverent tone o f his approach. He writes.

Esta crônica abarca nueve dias y ocho noches - como suelen manejarlo las agendas de viajes -, del 21 al 29 de Junio, cincuenta anos después de que partiera el Escuadrôn 201 a tierras lejanas y apenas diez del mundo imaginado por George Orwell.

Y también a doscientos trece anos (1781) de la fundaciôn de La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciüncula, el pueblo en el que los gabrielinos y otras tribus del sur de California llegaron a establecerse y a proyectar su futuro. (p. 13)

The reader grasps that the date is 1994 and the destination Los A ngeles, an undeniably postmodern combination. Hinojosa makes further nods to the ‘post’ era through his style with the deliberately ham-fisted, playful prefixing which he had previously used in the title o f his ‘Cronica prepostolimpica’: ‘las culturas yuppies y posyuppies’ (p. 16), ‘casas estilo posiglu (p. 39), ‘el DF posnafta’ (p. 73), and even ‘ese disenador preposmodemo de ropa deportiva’ (p. 25). Hinojosa’s liberal use o f other prefixes, especially ‘pre’, amounts to an absurd mimicry of the ‘postmodern’ fashion for getting more out of one’s adjectives and is one way H inojosa has o f signalling his unw illingness to follow trends and his un- politically-correct attitude. He simultaneously acknowledges the postmodern and denies it by relegating it to being simply the ‘in’ prefix; one which is permanently liable to be superseded and negated.23

Hinojosa also provides a brief metatext (neatly tucked into the prologue and double postscript) which, while not as overtly concerned with the travel-chronicle’s grand history and current quandary o f options as V illoro’s, does address some o f the key issues to do with the fusion o f the travel-chronicle and postmodernist literary practice, in particular the use o f fiction and textual games. Nevertheless, before looking at the metatext itself, it is worth noting that many o f the matters which Villoro externalised in his metatextual enquiry remain embedded in the form and style o f Hinojosa’s text. The assumed purpose o f the journey - the desire to interview a third-rate popular Chicano singer - is obviously insufficient, thus im plicitly revealing the lack o f purpose o f these com m issioned travel- chronicles. The structure o f the itinerary is the same as Villoro’s, but instead of quibbling about the lack o f interest in narrating plane journeys, Hinojosa exaggerates the personal circumstances of his departure in the paranoiac visions o f the fugitive. Instead of lamenting 22 Hutcheon, The Politics o f Postmodernism, quoted on page 88, footnote 9, o f this thesis.

23 Hinojosa revels in the question of political-incorrectness - another example of his playful attack on fashions which he undoubtedly associates with postmodernism.

the obsolescence of chronological ordering in the random-selection itinerary he structures his narrative along the all too obviously chronological progress o f the 1994 World Cup football matches. Instead o f balking at the lack o f possibilities o f anything new to describe he invents neological adjectives ( ‘el camino de Oz color verde dolar’, ‘rojo-catsup’, ‘amarillo-queso-para-untar’) and the absurd statement which conveniently inverts causality, thus investing the uninteresting and unauthentic with fresh vigour: o f A lfonso Morales, Hinojosa writes that, ‘cantaba com o Chelo Silva mientras la susodicha trataba de imitarlo desde el tocadiscos’ (p. 22); o f ‘dos montanas de com ida’ he comments that they were ‘apenas suficientes para alimentar a dos fam ilias de cuatro miembros cada una’ (p. 58). Hinojosa also narrates much of his chronicle from a childish point o f view , thus reviewing the ordinary adult world with a ‘mirada fresca’ (interview), while criticising certain of the experiences o f modem travel for treating adults as children. Everything has the potential to turn into a game, to be reappropriated for play and this ubiquitous presence o f games has implications for Hinojosa’s text at all levels.

To return to the metatext, like Villoro, Hinojosa has problems with reality: the dearth of interesting reality, the triviality o f daily life, the inherent mediation o f it all through other texts and other media. The two quotations w hich Hinojosa places as epigraphs to the chronicle reveal his attitude to these problems. Both quotations underline the fictional liberties with reality which are the preserve o f all literature, including non-fictional and inherently realist travel-writing ( ‘En la calle se aprende lo que realmente son los seres humanos, de otro modo, o mas adelante, uno los inventa. Lo que no esta en m edio de la calle es falso, derivado, es decir literatura.’ (Henry Miller); ‘N o hay libros que menos conflanza inspiren que los libros de viajes; ningun rigor historico les résisté; ningûn drama, ningûn personaje los acapara; sino el capricho.’ (Jorge Cuesta)). Both serve as warnings not to take Hinojosa’s chronicle too seriously (including the metatext); not to expect from it the same kind o f factual information that travel-chronicles had previously claimed to offer. In the prologue Hinojosa reiterates these fictional liberties, making clear the playful relationship he wishes to establish with the conventions o f the old genre:

Lo que sigue, paginas abajo, es un diario de viaje que narra muchas cosas vividas y otras tantas sonadas, lefdas o inventadas; reproduce la voz de muchos entrevistados y entrevista a otros en ausencia, viaja al pasado y se deja seducir por la ciencia ficciôn, imprime y retoca las instantâneas tomadas, calla lo necesario y exhibe los secretos amables que algunos de sus informantes le ban confiado en exclusiva, le hace guinos a la academia y luego desconfia de ella, teje y zurce chambritas al tiempo que un sastre de Dolores Hidalgo le confecciona un traje a la medida. (p. 19)

Hinojosa is here demonstrating his knowledge o f what is expected o f him and how he hopes to disappoint these expectations. Unlike Villoro, he does not find it necessary to reel through the history o f travel-writing to ascertain what other people are doing and compare his insufficiencies with their achievements - or, at least, he silences his research into this matter. Whereas Villoro is tempted to offer his lack-lustre life as the truth o f his chronicle, Hinojosa reiterates his warning about the lack o f truth in his (the retouched descriptions, the invented documentary evidence); challenges the assumptions o f what should be

included (the ‘necessary’ lacunae in opposition to the indelicate details normally missed out o f even the most naturalist representations o f reality - visits to the toilet, for example); and alludes to the slippery relationship that the discourse o f his chronicle establishes with that source o f authority and truth that is a c a d e m i a . 24 His inclusion o f the second postscript,

supposedly written by his travelling-com panion A lfon so M orales, also reiterates the dubious claim to truth o f the chronicle, by making an appeal for Hinojosa to have opted for a more flattering fictionalisation o f his own ‘reality’.

Hinojosa goes on to define his travel-chronicle as a ‘relatoria’ - a word which he appears to have adapted for his own purposes, m eaning a collection o f anecdotes, sketches o f characters in motion. Aware that the ‘historia [de los Chicanos] ya ha sido investigada y escrita’ (p. 15), he resists the travel-chronicler’s desire to research and revise the (hi)stories o f his target society and concentrates his entire chronicling field o f investigation on what can be gathered about Chicano Los A ngeles from the limited point o f view o f a visitor (tourist) who is only ‘disfrazado de cronista’ (p. 25) and for whom the Angelino authorities have not catered. His decision to include only what information can be gleaned in situ

accentuates the limitations o f personal experience, forcing the chronicle to depend more on fiction, and hence on literary style.

Reiterating Henry M iller’s statement about the literary depiction o f human subjects, Hinojosa asserts that while some o f his characters have real, live counterparts in East Los A ngeles, ‘Los demas son ficticios, falsos, derivados: yo a la cabeza’ (p. 20). Although the border between fact and fiction is one o f the most fruitful generators o f travel-narrative, Hinojosa’s chronicle never stops looking inadequate, even if it is does also qualify as ‘light entertainment’ for the thirty-second-attention-span generation, which is a category the postmodern cannot deny. Y et even Hinojosa recognises in his postscript that he has produced a disappointing chronicle, despite its initial proposal to disappoint:

Ya en prensa esta crônica gruyère, sus edi tores accedieron a una süplica del autor, que pedia meterle algo de sustancia a la pompa de aire mâs vistosa. Supongo que la decisiôn no fue dificil: era preferible parar las mâquinas y retrasar la publicaciôn con tal de que el cocinero le echara un poco mâs de liebre al guisado de gato. (p. 121)

Hinojosa suddenly back-tracks and displays a desire to give his travel-chronicle some historical weight: his literary finger-print is manifestly not enough...

H ow ever, the fact that this metatext appears only in the prologue and postscript to Hinojosa’s chronicle should be fair warning that it is an afterthought, a means o f signalling the chronicle’s failures and oversights in order to exempt them from criticism. In fact it is a stylistic feature as duplicitous as any other in Hinojosa’s writing: if it is fashionable to have a metatext, he will include one that deliberately overstates, and in so doing, undermines its own validity. Again, it is a postmodern metatext.

* * * * *

24 Academia might also refer to the standard literary format for the travel-chronicle as analysed by literary critics.

^Un estilo de viaje?: Intertextuality

Villoro comments in his metatext that he wants to find a new style in which to write travel- chronicles, rather than suggest a style of travel for his reader to emulate. Nevertheless the intertextual practice of travelling ‘in the footsteps’ o f previous travellers and travel-writers seems to be a permanent imposition o f ‘un estilo de viaje’ ; one which also places limitations on the author’s search for a new style o f travel-writing.25 Where can a contemporary travel-writer go to avoid the footsteps o f his predecessors? And how can he or she describe and narrate the experience in terms which are substantially different from those of previous travel-chronicles? Intertextuality, then, poses one o f the most serious hindrances to the creation o f ‘new’ travel-chronicles, threatening to deprive them o f both original style and content.

It is, however, inevitable that intertextuality should remain a part o f the travel-chronicle as the generic definition o f the practice becom es more diffuse: it has always been one of the defining characteristics o f the literary travel-chronicle. Villoro and Hinojosa, thus, select intertextual relationships which give them critical leverage on their sense of lack o f ‘real’ experience; and which, although at times threatening to swamp the new chronicles, actually provide them with the means to define themselves in a new era.

For both Villoro and Hinojosa, intertextuality is a game. Moreover, literature in general is a game. In Hombre en la inicial!’, his brief chronicle on how he became a writer, Villoro plays on an extended metaphor between baseball, voyages o f discovery and literature, asking, ‘^Como pasamos de un libro a otro, quién tiene el mapa de todo el archipiélago, las bases dispersas que forman nuestro juego?’ 26 His use o f intertextuality is at once a voyage o f discovery and a game o f literary dexterity. Hinojosa plays a similar game, but on a rather more cynical level. He does not want to guide or teach anyone anything: for him the game resides in his ability to confuse his reader about the relationship between fact and fiction, and in the case o f intertextuality, about the relationship between originality and plagiarism.

Neither Hinojosa nor Villoro has much time for specifically Mexican travel-writing. These works, in most cases, appear to be outweighed or superseded by works written by non- Mexican writers. Nevertheless, Villoro actually stays in the same hotel in Merida (Posada Toledo) as did José Revueltas in 1950, and the same hotel in Rio Lagartos (Hotel Maria Nefertiti) as did M onica Mansour only two years prior to his visit - he is apparently unaware of these facts. 2V Villoro comments in his metatext on his desire to avoid what has already been written (pp. 57-58), yet faced with a lack o f anything more interesting, more personal to narrate, the ‘estilo de viaje’ o f nineteenth-century archaeological travel-writers,

25 In interview Villoro contradicted himself, claiming that his chronicle offered both a ‘viaje a un estilo’ and ‘una propuesta de un tipo de viaje’...

26 Las once de la tribu, p. 20.

27 See Revueltas, Las evocaciones requeridas. I, 291; and Mansour, ‘Reconozcase quien pueda’, pp. 76-77. Other illustrious Mexicans to write about the peninsula, not mentioned in Villoro’s text, are Marfa Luisa Ocampo, Martin Luis Guzmân, José Vasconcelos, Salvador Novo, Octavio Paz and Fernando Benitez.

such as John Lloyd Stephens and Frederic Catherwood, proves inescapable.

In his postscript to Hinojosa’s travel-chronicle, A lfonso Morales indicates that Hinojosa has no aspirations to contribute to the literary tradition o f M exican travel-writing: ‘Por mi no quedo para que esta cronica se sumara al robusto arbol que cultivaron madame Calderon de la Barca y el Duque Job, antier la prosa de Guillermo Prieto y hoy la de Jaime A viles’ (p. 134). Neither is he apparently interested in taking on board more academic views o f the inhabitants o f L os Angeles: ‘Se quedaron sin abrir las tesis doctorales sobre flujos y reflujos, pizcas y transculturizaciones’ (p. 134). This postscript may or may not have been written by Hinojosa’s travelling companion. In either case, by virtue o f its inclusion in the book, it ironically indicates that Hinojosa knows w ell what the M exican travel-writing tradition is, and what literature has been written specifically about L os A ngeles: he ostensibly goes out o f his way to avoid all this intertextuality. H ow ever, two brief references to Baudrillard’s America reveal a much more substantial intertext.