review of
Paco Ignacio Taibo II's Returning as Shadows
- by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 31, 2016

This bk is SUBSTANTIAL, therefore, my REAL REVIEW is also SUBSTANTIAL. What follows is just the beginning of that. For the FULL THING go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/467386-those-who

This is only the 2nd bk by Taibo that I've read & once again I'm very impressed. For my review of Return to the Same City go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/456816-return-to-the-same-old-shit . Most (or all?) of the odd-numbered chapters are titled "Interruptions and Invasions" & at 1st it wasn't clear to me whose voice they were written in, where they writing from, & what the significance of the numbering of the paragraphs was:

"4. A corollary (though this is not what's interesting): Fascism is filled to no end with eagles, bronze statues, plaques, and the rest of this sort of paraphernalia; its caustic symbols fill our eyes, its torchlit parades and militarized children burn our pupils. But the truly important thing here is that this plaque was invariably cleaned every morning with a buffer and, sometimes, with polish. The buffer was a "Limcream" bran, while the polish bore no mark." - p 3

The story gradually revealed itself w/ an incredible command of writerly skill. It's a bizarre one but it's even got some 'facts' mixed in w/ its 'fiction' - in fact, the 'facts' are the main well-spring. Were nazis killing the indigenous people of Chiapas in 1941?

""They're not Castilians, and they're not the ranchers. So who are they?" asked Múgica, gently pressing the issue. "You're trying to take other indigenous communities upon yourselves. If you are Tzotziles, then you're taking on Choles. Who, then, are the instigators, the ones causing the problem?"

"The envoy shook its collective head. Didn't the general understand anything?

""They're of the cross. The ones doing the killing are of the cross."" - p 22

The broken cross as it turns out. Sometimes it seems like using nazis as the bad guys is too easy but we're not talking Dean Koontz here. This is profound literature. It might seem predictable & easy too to have the nazis be disrespectful & destructive of nature but ain't that the way of things?:

"They were fast hikers, but they scorned the jungle: they didn't bury their shit, they hacked at young shrubs for no reason, they shot birds and jackrabbits for sport, and they stripped the bark from trees." - p 27

If there's a system to the numbering in the "Interruptions and Invasions" sections I never found it. I interpret it as something to make the reader feel as if we're stumbling across fragments following a logic we're never to know. Chapter 13 on p 32 begins w/ "10":

"10. Writing a novel is fundamentally and act of shamelessness. Combing one's hair is also an act of shamelessness, if only because you're trying to cover up deep scars with a thick head of hair. But this is only a minor act, whereas writing is something much more grave. It's a masking of reality, an obscuring of fears, a reinvention of things said and, ultimately, of those who said them."

Does that make this particular narrator the author of the bk? If so, as we discover who this person is, there's significance to be read into it.. While chapter 13 ends on the number 11, chapter 15 begins w/ 16 & ends w/ 17 while chapter 17 goes from 6 to 7.

"7. What do I see through the Galileico telescope fitted with 300X Zeiss lenses which they let me keep in my cell?" - p 38

At 1st I thought this particular narrator was in jail. Then an insane asylum became more likely:

"10. Casavieja relates films to me. He understands that the iron seclusion of prison deprives a man of his most important approximation of reality: the dark theater and its magical silver screen. He's told me, with a surgeon's detail, if two films that I can only describe as being superficial and nearly illiterate: the final two films of Veronica Lake.

"He also knows that I like the novels of Hammett, and so he narrates the film versions of The Glass Key and, above all, I Married a Witch." - p 46

I have a modest collection of at least 7 movies based on Hammett stories & characters wch includes The Glass Key, wch is the title of a Hammett novel. But I Married a Witch? I don't find that title in any of the novels or in the The Continental Op or The Big Knockover short story collections, the only 2 I have. SO, I look up "I Married a Witch" & discover that it was directed by René Clair & stars Veronica Lake & not written by Hammett so I misunderstood that Hammett had anything to do w/ it.

Alas, Lake only made it to 50 yrs old before her alcoholism caught up to her & killed her. I've never pd any attn to her until Taibo got me interested. Her last 2 movies were Footsteps in the Snow (1966) & Flesh Feast (1970). I cd easily fall in love w/ her but she's been dead for 43 yrs so I don't think it'll work out too well.

By p 56, "Interruptions and Invasions" has reached 1. Is the chronology jumping around? Apparently not, b/c p 66 also begins w/ 1. One might think that there's in-fighting on p 63 but it's, shucks, all in fun:

""Strange, dark, and certainly winding is the proletariat's path. You who are a populist romantic liberal and even a bit of a libertarian . . . you have to prefer the straight and narrow, right?"

""If it weren't for the fact that I like how you write, Pepe, I'd tell you to go fuck yourself. Listening to you makes me think that maybe Marxism is a step backwards in terms of political thought, a breakdown of intelligence."

""I'd better go before you decide to take your ribbons back.""

Typewriter ribbons, ie. The person sponging the ribbons is named Revueltas:

"Revueltas was a tragic figure; he came from a family of geniuses who had all died young. Manterola remembered Silvestre the musician and especially Fermin the painter, one of Mexico's greatest muralists" - p 63

For a tiny bit more about Silvestre see this webpage of mine: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/mmm058.html .

Bit by bit, the reader pieces together the plot & deduces who's who & what they're doing:

""Tomás was too much of an anarchist to ever sing on with the Communist party.""

[..]

""Verdugo disappeared. After the whole thing with his wife, he just up and vanished. Maybe five years ago."

""I read what you wrote about that. What a story."

""Verdugo was always close to tragedy. Flirting with it."

""But he's not in prison, is he?"

""Frankly, I don't know. One day I asked about him, and nobody knew anything. No word about prisons, about morgues, nothing."" - p 68

It's interesting to think that in today's world of rapid travel between very different environs that not only do diseases travel fast but so do immunities to them. It hasn;t always been this way:

"in the corner of the state of Chiapas and on the border of Guatemala, lies the region of Soconusco, isolated and unpopulated, devoid of roads and ports, forever condemned to be the periphery of the periphery.

"Here a simple virus, a flu, brought unknowingly by the conquistadors, devastated the indigenous population." - p 73

When it comes to some types of historical detail I assume that there's an attempt to have accurate background:

"Behind this miracle of coffee were thirty-two German plantations on which lived no more than three hundred German citizens and their families, the twenty-five haciendas, property of their Mexican partners, but above all the hundreds of ill-fated farmhands who lived in slavelike conditions and the thirty or forty thousand contract laborers paid in slave wages.

"The Mexican Revolution never reached this region, whose agrarian order remained intact. As far as ranch towns go, Tapachula was cosmopolitan, even European: the Castillian and French languages were used to transmit orders, originally in German, to workers who spoke the various Mayan dialects." - p 75

But let's not assume. Here's what a promotional website for one of the coffee companies of the region has to say for itself:

"It all began...

"...more than 60 years ago: In 1941 the late Don Juan C. Luttmann, an outstanding coffee producer and promoter of Mexican coffees, founded the coffee exporting company Exportadora de Café California in Tapachula, Chiapas, one of Mexico's leading coffee regions close to the Guatemalan border. Now, in their third generation, the Luttmann family's dedication to coffee has not wavered. Being a reliable partner to both farmers and roasters is still one of the most important aspects of their company's philosophy.

"In 1993 Neumann Gruppe, Germany, and the Luttmann family decided to combine their know-how, creating one of today's largest green coffee exporting companies in Mexico.

"Being a part of Neumann Kaffee Gruppe, Exportadora de Café California has benefited over the years from the expertise of the world's leading green coffee service group. The combination of a traditional and reliable business with modern risk management makes our company unique in the Mexican coffee sector.

"Exportadora de Café California plays a central part in the Mexican coffee export business with a market share of around 20%. At the same time the company is a main supplier to the local industry." - http://www.eccmexico.com/aboutus/history

&, gosh, there's no mention of slave labor or any connection between the German families & naziism. Another website does little more than describe the coffee:

"Located in the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, Turquesa, which is located in the southernmost part of the Chiapas coast extending south from the Ulapa River to the Suchiate River. The dry mill is located in the town of Tapachula, Chiapas, “between the waters.” In native Aztec Nahuatl and Tapachula it’s “between the waters” due to the area’s persistent flooding.

"This is one of those coffees that doesn’t necessarily bowl you over, but just because of that can be enjoyed without burning out on it. The prep is outstanding, and the flavor leans a little more toward nutty than our organic option which is a bit more chocolate. It’s a subtle, balanced coffee you can drink all day." - http://www.cafemuertos.com/mexico-tapachula-chiapas/

Let's see what Wikipedia has to say about Tapachula:

"About eighteen percent of the working population works in agriculture and livestock. About twenty three percent of these workers are not paid a salary." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapachula

Of course, I deliberately picked that tiny excerpt from a much longer & more balanced entry just to show something relevant to the plot of this bk & to hint at the possibility that some outrages might be intrinsic to the economic system even to this day. An article from "Counterpunch - The Fearless Voice of the American Left Since 1993" gets into substantial detail about more current-day problems of coffee workers in Mexico:

"December 15, 2004

"Migration and Coffee in Mexico and Central America

"by Luis Hernández Navarro

"Reyno Bartolo Hernández died of heatstroke in the Arizona desert near Yuma on May 22, 2001. He wasn’t the only Mexican farmer who lost his life that day trying to cross the border. Thirteen of his countrymen and -women perished along with him in one more of the migratory tragedies of modern history.

"Reyno and his companions were small coffee growers from the township of Atzalan, Veracruz. Atzalan is a formerly rich region but in recent years it has been impoverished by senseless policies. Until just a few years ago, few of its residents migrated to the United States. Then the price of coffee fell, and so did the price of citrus fruits and cattle. To make matters worse, bananas were attacked by fruit flies and the coffee crop was overcome by a devastating plant disease.

"So little by little, the inhabitants of Atzalan set out along the route blazoned by small farmers from the states of Michoacan, Zacatecas, and Jalisco decades earlier. The coffee farmers began to look for a way to cross the 3,107-kilometer border that separated them from the United States, hoping to get to “the other side.” In desperation, they hooked up with the infamous polleros, the smugglers who led them to their deaths.

"Thomas Navarrete, long-time adviser to the cooperative that many Atzalan growers belong to, notes that the crisis in the region is dramatic and tragic. In many communities, around 70% of the residents have left, most to the United States. Navarrete points out that before people didn’t need to leave their communities, at least not like now. “Even Celso Rodríguez, the president of the cooperative, left to work in Arizona,” he says.

"The border has become a magnet for these coffee growers. If they get over–and many do–they earn $4-5 an hour, compared to the less than $4 a day they earn at home, if they’re lucky. In the coffee communities, the success stories from the other side are impressive. Migrants come back and remodel their houses; they pour a new roof, replace wooden planks with concrete blocks. Everyone can see and envy the changes."

[..]

"In 1989 the economic clause setting country export quotas of the International Coffee Organization was abandoned with the strong support of the Mexican government. Immediately, the price fell through the floor. Prices have gone up and down since the quota system ended, but since 1997 they have mostly gone down.

"The only ones who win in this situation are the large companies and speculators on the commodities markets of New York and London. Coffee-growing communities, already poor, have grown poorer. As a response, thousands of farmers and laborers who cultivate and harvest the crop have decided to leave their homes permanently.

"The old migration of laborers to harvest was marked by hardship. They went to the large plantations because they had to, not by choice. There they suffered abuse, hunger, and sickness. The journey was hell.

"Indigenous peoples of the highlands remember the suffering: “We’d get an advance from the plantation so when we got there we already had a debt to pay off. Then the debt just gets bigger because the plantation doesn’t give you anything, you have to pay for everything, even food In addition to the hard work, we suffered from other things on the plantation. The boss doesn’t care about the workers–if they’re sick, it’s not his concern. So they don’t give us good food and we’re always hungry Before, the foremen mistreated workers a lot, they whipped them, beat them with branches, with belts, with the flat blade of the machete, kicked them. You got punished for anything we were afraid of the plantation but we put up with it because we were poor.” - http://www.counterpunch.org/2004/12/15/migration-and-coffee-in-mexico-and-centra...

In short, in my cursory looks online for substantiation of Taibo's history of the abuses of German immigrants perpetrated on the indigenous population I didn't find much although I'm confident it's out there somewhere. I did, however, find substantiation of reasons for understanding the more general plight of migrant workers.

Some readers might poo-poo Taibo's story as overly sensationalist, as pandering to the public's taste for the lurid, as 'too conspiracy theory' or mythological. I'm convinced it's well-researched.

"The ever-cold rabbi with stained hands began again: "In the beginning, two lunatic Austrians met, Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels and Guido von List. Proto-Templars, admirers of runes, occultists, holders of castles. Hitler met the former in 1909, when he had formed a neopagan organization to practice magic, promote anti-Semitism, defend racial purity, and dabble in esoteric cults. There was a magazine called Ad Astra which Hitler subscribed to."" - p 84

Ad Astra? Sound familiar anyone? It did to me & I was fairly sure it had something to do w/ the AAA (Association of Autonomous Astroanuts) or, perhaps, Stewart Home. SO, I looked for a magazine of that name in my personal library & didn't find it, I looked for a file card of my correspondents under that name & didn't find it, I looked for anything under that name in my AAA file &, Bingo!, Ad Astra! was/(is?) the name of "The newsletter of Raido AAA".

In The First Annual Report of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts ("Published April 23rd 1996"), Raido's mailing address was given as "BM Box 3641, London, WC1N 3XX". On my file card for Home his mailing address as of September, 1994, was given as "BM Senior, London, WC1N 3XX". So, yeah, naming a newsletter after an occult one that Hitler reputedly subscribed to is the kind of prank Stewart wd pull. After all, he repurposed the so-called "Protocols of Zion" used by nazis to defame Jews as a manifesto for something neoist related.

I'm reminded of a prank that my father told me about. Shortly after 'WWII', the Baltimore City Council was having a meeting in wch it was discussed about what to name the plaza in front of City Hall. One of the participants proposed that it be called "Albert Speer Plaza" or some such. The others present apparently didn't care what it was called & just voted in favor of the proposal w/o knowing who Speer was. Presumably, the prankster then revealed that he was the main nazi architect, imprisoned as a war criminal, & the voters retracted.

This type of esoteric dark humor is given further background in informative passages of Taibo's such as this:

"["]Dietrich Eckart intervened in the operation; he was a strange journalist, an admitted Satanist who, at the end of the war," [ie": 'WWI'] "edited a weekly magazine in Munich where he argued, among other things, that any Jew who tainted German blood through marriage should be sentenced to three years in prison and that any Jew convicted of a second offense should be executed. He was also a theater critic and would later go on to produce some of his own works, including In Old Bavaria and Springtime for Hitler."" - p 85

Sound familiar?

"Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp With Eva and Adolf at Berchtesgaden is a fictional musical in Mel Brooks' 1968 film The Producers, as well as the stage musical adaptation of the movie, and the 2005 movie adaptation of the musical. It is a musical about Adolf Hitler, written by Franz Liebkind, an unbalanced ex-Nazi played by Kenneth Mars (then by Brad Oscar and Will Ferrell in the stage musical and the 2005 film respectively).

"In the film, the play is chosen by the producer Max Bialystock and his accountant Leo Bloom in their fraudulent scheme to raise substantial funding by selling 25,000% of a play, then causing it to fail, and finally keeping all of the remaining money for themselves. To ensure that the play is a total failure, Max selects an incredibly tasteless script (which he describes as "practically a love letter to Adolf Hitler"), hires the worst director he can find (Roger DeBris, a stereotypical homosexual and transvestite caricature), and casts an out-of-control hippie named Lorenzo St. DuBois, also known by his initials "L.S.D.", in the role of Hitler (after he had wandered into the wrong theatre by mistake during the casting call -- "That's our Hitler!"). ( )

"Returning as Shadows" is undoubtedly an entertaining read. The plot is, at times, difficult to follow as the author willfully plays fast and loose with historical events and characters. Yet, the result is an enjoyable fictionalized recounting of Nazi activities in Mexico at the beginning of WW-II. The characters are unique and the writing is smart. If you find the topic and concept appealing, this is a great read. ( )

Ancora meglio di "Ombre nell'ombra" di cui questo è il seguito ambientato vent'anni dopo. Mette insieme aztechi, ribellioni nel Chiapas e inghippi politici, l'esoterismo nazista, arraffoni dei tesori messicani, Hemingway, ebrei e indios, in una trama abbastanza improbabile che però risulta verosimile se si tiene conto delle barbarie mondiali accadute in quegli anni.

"E racconto tutto questo perché la vita, nella sua meravigliosa complessità, sta diventando sempre più strana, e a volte non sono superflue informazioni che poi, anche se non dicono niente, servono a farci sentire informati." ( )

Lesung im Mehringhof ( )