They were ten women determined to change the course of culture in Mexico in the midst of the convulsive decade of the 1980s, when the cultural canon was marked and undeniably macho. They just wanted to write, eat, and look good. They decided to call themselves “The Elegant Ones” because they all shared a taste for good dress and good taste too, so they had to be obese women to belong to the privileged group, and on top of that they were proud and content with it. Didí Gutiérrez (Mexico City, 1983) brought them together in a book of stories to complete what they were unable to specify, partly because of the earthquake that shook the country in 1985 and because they were all kept in a drawer from the bedside table by Gutiérrez, for more than a decade.
Wendy Tienda, Susana Miranda, Tania Hinojosa, Lola Herrera, Julia Méndez, Roberta Marentes, Fidelia Astorga, Aurora Montesinos, Ali Boites and Nora Centeno make up this special group of extraordinary women whose stories are unveiled page by page throughout the book. Before each story, Gutiérrez gives a brief description of how she found each author and adds some details about their personalities: “The first time I saw them was in a boutique in one of Mexico City’s uptown neighborhoods. He called me there under the pretense of helping him choose his outfit for a funeral,” reads the first story by Panamanian-Mexican Wendy Tienda. “Julia’s case is strange, everyone knows her but nobody wants to talk about her, probably because of her links to organized crime,” she says before the scatological story Las tipas duras se lan las mano by Julia Méndez, who was a fan of Lucía Berlin and used the name to commit a crime.
All the stories take place in Las Bonitas, a sort of shared universe, a town of feral dogs from which only one of the compiled stories escapes, that of Montesinos (The Days, a Cafeteria),—and the only erotic one that is of Gutiérrez as described as “the rebel of the group”. In Las Bonitas, that kind of female, Mexican and eighties Macondo, the stories of these rising stars are developed, obliterated by tragedy and the fate almost every author or artist suffered during those years: anonymity and forced editorial assignment.
Gutiérrez has summarized the origin of The Elegant Women in three acts: The first, when she was a cultural journalist ten years ago and wanted to write fiction. The second, when reading the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño involved and fascinated him, which in turn was dazzled by another of the great universal Latin Americans: Jorge Luis Borges. “For him (Borges) the urge to tell was everything. I wanted to tell the world. That everything had a story form,” says Gutiérrez. Then everything started.
Didí Gutiérrez, anthologist of The Elegant Ones, in a shop in downtown Mexico City.José Pablo Díaz
Cling to fiction to deal with reality
In 1936, Jorge Luis Borges included in his Brief History of Eternity a critical review of a book entitled The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim or The Approach to Almotásim. In his text, Gutiérrez says excitedly, Borges described this work by an Indo-British author with such care, detail, and fine and wonderful narration that probably whoever read it was intrigued and eager to obtain a copy. This happened to one of the great friends of the Argentine writer, also an author of great works: Adolfo Bioy Casares, who, stunned, commissioned the book from the publisher, which turned out to be non-existent. A ghost book invented by Borges.
Like Bioy Casares, many readers of Las elegantas can search for the names of the writers anthologized by Gutiérrez without much success. It happened to Juan Becerra, a librarian and promoter of reading for more than two decades: “I was so addicted to reading the stories that I consulted the Encyclopedia of Mexico and found nothing. I was wondering why there is no data on her,” he says. On July 15, after reading the book and reviewing it for various media, Becerra invited Gutiérrez to present it at the Polytechnic University of the Valley of Mexico. “It was a very important moment for me to be able to speak about Las elegantly in front of a university forum. Plus the documentary rescue in fiction that Didí does … and that female gaze that is rarely talked about, for example the 1985 earthquake: it has always been said that the only one who died there was Rockdrigo González, but she also”.
The 1985 earthquake and the pottery that fell on the writing women
In the prologue of Las elegant, one of the best written in recent years according to Becerra, Gutiérrez explains that these women began a literary workshop with the Uruguayan poet Leonor Enciso, who had just arrived in Mexico in 1983, with the purpose of “creating a mythical world through several hands to accomplish”. A year later they published the Elegant Manifesto, the first postulate of which relates to the desire to produce the first teamwork.
On September 19, 1985, the book project directed by Enciso was interrupted by the tragedy of the earthquake. The title would actually be Las Bonitas and would summarize the stories they wrote during the time they met to write and eat. Both Enciso and Nora Centeno died in their homes on the morning of that day. “The Elegant” no longer met and the project fell into oblivion. This book is the reconstruction of what the earthquake buried. And an attempt to name the longings of artists who could not see the light.
Copy of the “Elegant Manifesto” Didí Gutíerrez
Didí Gutiérrez wrote this story ten years ago, but it wasn’t until 2021 that the Paraíso Perdido publishing house published it. After consulting EL PAÍS, the author reported that she designed each of the characters: the lives, concerns, families, styles, motivations and passions of each one of them, individually and separately. “I don’t think I would do all the work I did more than a decade ago again. Without a doubt I put a lot of time into it and I think now I wouldn’t have that energy,” he says.
This bet was also on the editorial page. Lost Paradise director Sandra Liera assures that the work has a long way to go and is grateful that it continues to be received with great surprise and anticipation. “In several presentations, Didí has appeared as an anthologist and researcher and renounces authorship, which initially seems risky to me as an editorial decision. But I think that’s also part of the genius of this book. Didí is stepping away from authorship of his own stories to take fiction a step further,” he assures.
Gutiérrez even reports that more aspects of the authors’ works have emerged, emerging from the various fictions now being created by their readers.
In the story of Roberta Marentes, the sixth in the book, the friend of the protagonist, Gertrudis, who narrates her story, gives a speech in which she states: “As they read the text, they celebrated my ability to recreate the moments that they shared Gertrude. They say that writers are liars, and tonight, at the urging of these gentlemen, I confess to you that I saw fit to invent a little. I had no other choice.”
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