Mastretta, Clooney and Pompeu Fabra

BarcelonaMany years ago, almost thirty, I read the novel Mal de amores, by the Mexican writer Ángeles Mastretta (Puebla de Zaragoza, 1949) and I fell in love with this author—a love for life—and that passionate love story set in Puebla during the Mexican Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century, that of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa. The inescapable love of young Emilia Sauri for a childhood friend, the rebellious and incorruptible Daniel Cuenca, has now arrived on the Netflix platform, in a series also titled Mal de amores. It was directed by Catalina Aguilar Mastretta, the author's daughter, and from my point of view this makes the adaptation—with the inevitable loss of depth that almost always exists between the book and the audiovisual—exude great affection and respect for the original work. If you want to watch the series I won't tell you not to; but if you want to accept a recommendation, read the novel by Mastretta, one of the great Mexican voices, who always places at the center of her stories female figures who fiercely defend their longing for independence.

Her first great literary success was Arráncame la vida and nine years later, with the aforementioned Mal de amores, she won the Rómulo Gallegos prize. After many years of writing fiction, Mastretta gifted her loyal public two especially recommendable books: La emoción de las cosas (2013) and El viento de las horas (2015), where she mixes childhood memories, family secrets, and reflections on the craft of writing and a lot of digressions on motherhood, death, and the readings that impressed her the most. Ángeles Mastretta's gaze is experienced and wise, lucid and generous. "El deseo de esperanza en que me crecieron me obliga a responder con lo mismo que recibí", she writes, as an authentic declaration of principles.

I cling to these words to force myself, like Mastretta, to desire hope in these very dark times. And I reread Mal de amores to remember that just causes will always find stubborn revolutionaries who will defend them tooth and nail, on foot and on horseback, above their own interests and particular passions.

Not long ago I heard George Clooney, who after expressing his horror at the period the United States is currently living through, added that his country has gone through other moments as terrible as this one: “We are obligated to have hope,” he said.

Mastretta, Clooney, and we can also remember the master Fabra with his well-known and still valid recommendation: “One must never abandon the task nor the hope”.