Interview with Josefina Licitra
Considered one of the exponents of the new Argentine journalism, Licitra talks about his successes, their pasts and their projects. Chronicle of a skeptical reporter.
By Matías Ortega
eleven o'clock in the morning in Palermo. In coffee Delicity everything seems decorated by a fastidious housekeeper, the pastel colors on the walls, checkered tablecloths on small wooden tables and dishes as white as the apron of the waitresses. Located at the corner of Sanchez de Bustamante y Guemes, coffee has large windows allowing bystanders rushed to see the impending rain, even some cautious and hold umbrellas and hoods over their heads. Inside, you breathe the scent of croissants while she cut the smoking stir in well with a waiting room parsimony.
"I do not know what it was a chronicle until you win an award from the Fundación García Márquez.
I did not know what it was chronic. I always wrote as I liked, then I know. The way I wrote Chicken Run arose from the editor of Rolling Stone, who said "do not be afraid to direct dialogues and conversational situations. You come on to do what you're looking. " After the photographer who worked with me told me to submit to the Foundation Award and I sent over the Internet without many expectations. So when I found out he had won, I started reading immediately upon not to make newsprint chronic. Imagine if in Colombia, I wondered: what is the record for you? Says imitating a Caribbean-tune and I do not know! So I read and was great to see what was what I enjoyed doing. Now I know are chronic.
The speaker is Josefina Licitra, a journalist. Their work is complex, indescribable transcribing real world to a sheet of paper. And he does an exceptional way. According to the cultural supplement Babelia the English daily El Pais, Licitra is "one of the boldest voices chronicled in Argentina." In fact, his journalistic work earned him the highest recognition in Latin America. In 2004 he received the Award of the New Journalism Foundation of Gabriel García Márquez, by chronic Chicken Run, the story of Silvia, a 15 year old girl leading a band of kidnappers, published in the vernacular version of Rolling Stone . - Gabo? It is a love ... "replied the old man when asked about the Colombian writer who presented the award" I remember once having lunch with him and laughed at the woman who was shitting. ***
Josefina has black eyes, dark wavy hair dipping over her thin shoulders and crooked smile, as if the corner from the right side was higher than the left. This is part of the "problem"-and called him by his parents, who had to endure several visits to the operating room. For her being born with the right ear unfinished, with one of the jaw shorter than the other and the facial nerve branch operating in forty percent of its possibilities, it meant four operations in seventeen years.
- Do the operations that you've had are the reason that the theme of the body is a constant in your reviews?
I do not know if it is a constant, but in the more personal question had to do some writing operations of girl I had, also having a child. These changes and body markings were converted into stories. I think stories can be beautiful when I say stories also include a photograph, not limited to textual, which show a status of beauty beyond the parameters established by the aesthetics. Something that is not naturally beautiful, you can go through a beautiful story. For example what did Gabriela Lifftschitz-portrait photographer is highlighting the female nude in her left breast, "has a strong poetic charge. She not only took care of the photographs, but the lighting and the texts and produced some shocking but beautiful.
As for the things I write about my body, I served as a kind of catharsis, had some liberating but that was not his first target. I found it interesting to chronicle the self, what can count as one talking about himself? without doing something patronizing the kind of "barbaric what I am". In this case I wanted to chronicle my own and it sounds schizoid would unfold. It was interesting and painful at a time. But I think the past have meant to minimize the role that subject, because a really terrible things can not or name.
marks
But life is not just physical. They are also invisible. Josephine spent her early years in La Plata during the military dictatorship and his days were a constant escape repression. Along with his mother, a twentysomething university militant, were arrested in this journey without a compass that many Argentines suffered.
"We had to move several times where we lived, go home, because it was too risky. My mom tells me that he spent whole days traveling by bus, from terminal to terminal or from train to train to pass the time because I could not stop anywhere, so I fed in the streets. My old self, as militants continued to Trotskyism. At night we slept in a friend's house. It was a very itinerant life, without spending much time anywhere. Also, they were re concerned, his best friends began to disappear, so my dad went into exile, first in Montevideo and later in Madrid.
She talks about her past-factly. Perhaps because those years and are distant. "And we did not have a handle" says while breaking with long thin fingers the packet of sugar into the well again.
"Not that we were poor and I want to make a tragedy about it, but my parents were very young and never had the help of his parents, Licitra recalls without intention of dying of misery family history. I remember one day my mom went to get me to school and had led a Lola, a candy of the moment, and I remember that did not want, do not know why, then she said "I do not take collective to buy this. " I was very angry. After he threw up a placard and was a months there for me to know value.
Josefina What I appreciated were the letters. He began writing fiction and stories close to the literary. But during his adolescence, was her teacher's language that marked the path of writing and advised to read the cultural magazine La Maga. Licitra remember where he found the notice of the School of Journalism TEA, which was the perfect excuse to explore a career that allowed him to develop his pen.
From there all was an escalation in the journalistic world. With only twenty years and was part of the editor of the newspaper Clarín. I also work as a freelance journalist and national media Rolling Stone, Twenty and Lamujerdemivida, and international as Soho, Black Label and Leopard. Now part of the permanent staff of the journal Critique of Argentina, in the Society section. Occasionally, chronic or soliloquies given his readers. Usually in the form of cover. They thank their way:
"artte s healthy - 40 years - said: grasias Josefina finally a drop of Uman in the midst of so much garbage, I do not mean the paper but the reality that leaves whore crack of light But things are hasi. when you least expect in the decierto is a rose. "(27/08/2008) ***
It's past noon. In a Delicity second coffee became a desert wells and open day on the tables. Not overlook the pale waitresses behind the bar. They probably are having lunch in the kitchen. I notice that there is not a wrinkle on the face of Josefina, your skin looks smooth as silk. Outside, raindrops slide down the windows facing Sanchez de Bustamante.
- Also you write a lot about the passage of time. More than anything about the different stages of life, or childhood, adolescence and old age ...
- Yes This is a recurring theme that I sparked interest from the arrival of their son Joaquin, four years Today days. Did you see that says that kids come with a loaf under his arm? Well, actually come with a clock! The time begins to run differently, faster. For example, I think that Joaquín has twenty years, I'll be at fifty! And that I appear old ... Yes, indeed. I have an obsession about how I will achieve all my life to make plans. In addition one is aware that death happens. So I try to measure myself because if I went to my always write on the subject of time.
The weather is disturbing to those who live between the letters. Is Julio Cortázar, "untimely", who defines games time as "billiards" and claimed the fact of non-coincidence in time of the posting that pass next to each other without meeting. Are these adventures of the odd times that make up the contradictions of life.
For Josefina Licitra, non-coincidence in time comes from a black vision of the world in sharp contrast to political activism - utopian? - From their parents. Two generations antagonistic, two political views, in the same family group.
- The interesting thing is that I come from a very strong political tradition: my father was a Trotskyist all his life, he was forced into exile during the dictatorship in Madrid, but I see a game left and it makes me laugh, "says Licitra with sparing face, was not amused skepticism. Thus, I'm so black and gloomy with political parties and with the rest of the world in general.
- However, the chronicle is a political form of writing. So says Martin Caparros. It is a way to give voice to the voiceless, a way of changing power structures from journalism.
"Yes, I do not share that vision. I do not believe in people doing something to change the world. I think people who want to change the world waste time, because nothing will change. So this is not my intention when I write a chronicle. For me the chronic form of telling a story narrative tools. Nothing more. I have a very cool looking theme, which does not mean that I do not engage emotionally when I do some work. To me what interests me is telling a story and tell it as fully as possible, then it results in a change, as a side effect, but I do not thinking about changing something, I do because I'm interested in stories nonfiction. It's more personal and less bombastic. That does not mean that then help change public opinion on certain issues, destigmatize some issues. That is, the chronic can bring change, but not what I want.
"Perhaps, although you will not propose in the first instance, you end up generating a debate ...
"Yes, well what you say. It's just that I worry about recreating a scene that the reader will "make the movie" the topic I'm trying. The chronicle is a literary pleasure given to the journalist, is telling a story with real data. Because journalism is a craft very cynical when I made notes on Romina Tejerina, Silvia, the quinceañera of abductions and trafficking in women, to me what interested me was to tell the story as completely as could be . I was not interested Romina help, or you go down the sentence to Silvina, and appeared Marita Veron-victim of trafficking in women. That was not my goal.
- What happens after you heard the stories so powerful?
-I affects ... of course I'm concerned. But did you see the doctors to operate do not think they are operating at a person, but have to see it only as a body and work on that? Well I think so is journalism. If there is anything I can move or touch me I can not tell, because to tell you something I have to have distance. In my notes and sentimental tear irritated me greatly. For example, I thought they did foul journalists League linyeras disguise, I disagree ideologically with that. Is that the immersion journalism, believe that you can get into other territory and pretend to be part of it, is a lie to the people around you because you're not one of them. For more views you bum, you do not wash your hair for twenty days, you're not that, if after you return to your house and you have a clean bed and everything else!
- What do you think of that fascination is so marginal journalism?
"It seems easy and morbid fascination for all that matters is to display and show situations of poverty, marginalization. That is not bad if you follow my premise of not seeking social change, but to tell a story a justification of why you have to tell it. The stories I choose to always have a theme behind. For example, in the note by Marita Veron want to show the white slave trade, in the case of Romina Tejerina a theme of femininity and motherhood very deep, so with gay and lesbian adolescents. Unlike this, in the fascination of the marginal, dark and dingy there is a reason behind that is not mere display. ***
Josefina Licitra also has a book under his belt, "the unwary. Stories of gay and lesbian adolescents in Argentina "was published in 2007 by the editorial Tusquets. The journalist was proposed to reconstruct the stories of six young gay and find out their fears and pride in the midst of a conservative society. The most illustrative case is that of Santos, a teenage high society of Buenos Aires that surprised his parents by announcing their status as gay and in return they asked prudence with a dismal and hypocritical gesture. Currently, Licitra working on a new book of chronicles.
- What do you want to have in your next book?
"I want to illustrate the Greater Buenos Aires, telling different stories without falling into the sordid stories and marginal. Estimated that 23% of the population lives there, making it a very interesting area to investigate. But it is very hard work, dense and sometimes sad.
- What part of you?
"Now I'm doing the research process, I have to deliver it to editorial in June next year. Just as I have defined what I have in each chapter. In general the structure is more complicated to assemble.
- How are you working to cover all the Suburbs?
"I delineate chapters and themes, if not you know you can go through life stories. I have two friends who are in "Cops in Action" and toured the conurbation with them, because they know it well because years ago coming out to patrol the area. Also free is the per diem not to invest in transport costs. So they helped me make a picture and now I know where I want to address in terms of issues.
"For example ...
want to talk to the police, but not from the complaint, but rather from the idiosyncrasies of Buenos Aires, speaking of contrasts towns / countries ..." Then she falls silent. "I swear that I do not want to do the enigmatic, but I have very bad memory" clear as the latter takes up the explanation, also on informal trade, pointers politicians, the media coverage and especially the transition from television's most impoverished areas. ***
are almost one. Inside the cafe, the maids cleaned the tables with these scented detergents blue disinfection. There is a kind of dark suit reading a newspaper in one of the white leather couches local. Josephine looks to pass, you may call attention to his crooked smile, perhaps the recognition. Outside, the sky is gray. After the dismissal, she is lost people wandering around Palermo with a brisk walk. As if to get away from the cynical that just interviewed. http://laescafandria.blogspot.com/
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