Artists’ books from Cuba

The Latin American and Iberian Collections team has recently acquired a small but utterly compelling collection of books published by Ediciones Vigía. These are beautiful and hugely imaginative hand-made artist books created in Matanzas, Cuba. Although in nature very different to the Cartonera collection we have built over the years, Vigía books also help us ask questions about the possibilities of creating and disseminating art and literature in a context of material scarcity.  

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  A purse…

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  …and a book. Las memorias vacías de Solange Bañuelos, by Maité Hernández-Lorenzo (2014).

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  Available at CCB.75.20. Full description here: https://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/t9gok8/44CAM_ALMA21581461540003606

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  The back of the purse-book, with the oil-lamp, the publisher’s symbol, as a zip.

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  Canto a Matanzas, by Carilda Oliver Labra (2014).

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  The back cover of the portfolio.

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  The publication celebrates the 60th anniversary of the poem the prestigious Cuban poet wrote in honour of her hometown, Matanzas.

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  The opening of the portfolio…

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  … and the unfolding.

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  More details here: https://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/t9gok8/44CAM_ALMA21581461650003606

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  Lydia Cabrera en su laguna sagrada, by Natalia Bolívar Arostegui (2015). A rich collage made of bark chippings, cloth, cardboard, jute cord and hand-coloured paper cut-outs.

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  Title page. Book available at CCA.75.4. Lydia Cabrera was a renowned author and anthropologist specialised in Afro-Cuban religions.

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  More info here: https://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/t9gok8/44CAM_ALMA21581461310003606

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  Cristóbal Colón y otros locos, by Pedro R. Monge Rafuls (2016).

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  The work is a play that explores the theme of discovery, conquest, and the “encounter of two worlds”.

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  Available at CCA.75.3. More details here: https://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/t9gok8/44CAM_ALMA21581461380003606

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  La flor del cactus, written, illustrated and desgined by Frank David Valdés (2015). Available at CCC.75.211. See https://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/t9gok8/44CAM_ALMA21581461440003606

Ediciones Vigía was founded by the poet Alfredo Zaldívar and the artist Rolando Estévez in 1985 but did not originally start as a publisher: it began as a cultural association organizing events for the local community to learn about Cuban and international authors. They would produce invitations for such events held in the then named Casa del Escritor (The Author’s House) in the Plaza de la Vigía square in Matanzas.  

The first comprehensive study of the cartonera phenomenon

We are very pleased to announce the launch of the book Taking Form, Making Worlds: Cartonera Publishers in Latin America, on Friday 10^th June at 4pm at Centre of Latin American Studies (Alison Richard Building, Seminar Room 204). 

Lucy Bell (Senior Lecturer in Spanish and translation studies, University of Surrey), Alexander Ungprateeb Flynn (Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Contemporary Art, UCLA) and Patrick O’Hare (UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, University of St. Andrews) have collaborated with the University Library in the building up of our cartonera collection . They will be presenting and discussing their new book, the first comprehensive study of cartonera, in conversation with David Lehmann (University of Cambridge) and Clara Panozzo (Latin American and Iberian Collections, Cambridge University Library). The book is published by the University of Texas Press and is available online for Cambridge users here.

Drawing on interdisciplinary research conducted across Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, the authors show how this hands-on practice has fostered a politically engaged network of writers, artists, and readers. More than a social movement, cartonera uses texts, workshops, encounters, and exhibitions to foster community and engagement through open-ended forms that are at once creative and social.  

(from the publisher’s description) 

You are all kindly invited to attend! 

Clara Panozzo 

Good things come in small packages

A colourful display of books at Taller Leñateros (from Wikimedia Commons)

This post is about two small, beautiful publications that come packed with great significance. These are two books by the publishing collective Taller Leñateros (translated as ‘Firewood Collectors/Peddlers Worskhop’) in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. Taller Leñateros publishes the first books produced, written, illustrated, printed and bound entirely by Mayan people in 400 years¹, and was founded in 1975 by Mexican poet Ambar Past.

Chiapas, as the perifery of the perifery, is known to the world because of the EZLN (the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, or Zapatista Army of National Liberation) who democratically control a substantial part of this Southern Mexican territory in the name of local indigenous rights. The geographical position of Taller Leñateros in this rural area is of high importance in this context², considering as well that most of the publishing industry of the country is located in Mexico City, where literary production is mandated by big national publishers, some of them linked to mainstream publishing multinationals. 

Expanding rhizomes: cartoneras unlocking voices this side of the Atlantic

In their article Latin American politics underground: Networks, rhizomes and resistance in cartonera publishing¹, Lucy Bell and Patrick O’Hare (two of the researchers leading the two-year AHRC funded cartonera project ) use Deleuze’s, Guattari’s and (one of the Argentinian cartonera precursors) Javier Barilaro’s theories on rhizomes to explain the course by which, since their beginning in the early 2000s, cartonera publishing networks developed and multiplied (to around 250 currently) across Latin America, forming underground horizontal alliances in similarly fertile social and cultural soils. 

Not one ‘shhhh’: children making cardboard books at the University Library

Children proudly showing their work

On Thursday 1^st of August the University Library opened its doors to an enthusiastic bunch of children aged 7-13 invited to create their own books at the Cardboard publishing in the courtyard event, part of the Summer at the Museums series.

The morning and afternoon workshops in the North Courtyard were led by Dr Lucy Bell and Dr Patrick O’Hare, researchers from the Cartonera Publishing project  (cartón meaning cardboard in Spanish), of which Cambridge University Library, the British Library and Senate House Library are partners.