Without knowing it, Rodrigo Rey Rosa wrote in Tangier a book about experiments with people in a secret center in the jungle of Guatemala that did exist in reality. The novel is called Jail of Trees (Seix Barral), the same title as the documentary that also directed on that later. "We heard the screams from here," says a peasant with scary eyes in that movie. Rodrigo Rey Rosa signed, in a state of grace, Severina (Alfaguara), a story about the disturbing irruption of a book thief in the peaceful life of a bookseller. And now, Letter from a Guatemalan atheist to the Holy Father (Alfaguara), also fiction but not quite, a novel about the expropriation of some lands of Mayan cofrades by the Church of Rome .
"I never worry why I write about this or that," says Rodrigo Rey Rosa (Guatemala, 1958). He only wonders if what catches his attention gives him to write. «In this case it is a very topical issue in Guatemala, but very little aired in the press. I heard an extraordinary case, the ex-communion of some faithful for a land conflict. In the context of Guatemala it is explained by racism. In all the courts the reason was given to the Kaqchikel brotherhood but upon reaching the Supreme Court of Guatemala, which is completely white, that ruling was reversed.
The letter to which the title of the book refers, addressed to the current Pope Francis , implies a certain "note of hope, the intervention of someone who was not too interested in earthly goods but in the good of his parishioners." One of the changes that took place after "the armed conflict" in Guatemala is the one with the greatest freedom towards the Mayan cult. «That didn't happen before, it was repressed or hidden; and at the time of the colony, prohibited and punished.
A veil of unreality seems to cloud or blur some passages in the novel. Suddenly, everything was dark. It was not an eclipse, as he thought a moment before, at the beginning of the change. It had been as if an immense veil or a filter had spread across the entire width of the sky. "I think," says Rey Rosa at the Wellington hotel bar in Madrid in the middle of the morning, "which is a phenomenon of perception that can happen to anyone. It has happened to many that they have not been able to explain a visual experience ». Surely, but there are other moments in the book that escape the usual perception. «I believe that the reality is mysterious, there are many things that are very difficult to explain and especially when two forms of beliefs, or ways of seeing the world, are very different depending on the damage».
In an atheist's letter ... there is a presence of men with hair cut "in the military", as if the presence of the Army in such a fragile country is still there, stalking. In the past, « soldiers were forcibly recruited , suffered a deep brainwashing. Today is a way to survive, find employment and have some power, a social and economic exit to a dead end. There is still a fairly numerous and feared army. It is also said in the book that General Ríos Montt, who sowed terror in the 80s, was convicted but once dead. «He was sentenced to 80 years in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity, but for socio-political pressures that trial was declared void for any technical irregularity by the Constitutional Court of the country. Then he was found guilty again, but he had already died. Guilty for genocide ».
Guatemala, along with Honduras and El Salvador, is one of the most violent countries in the world . «The number of private security guards there is double, if not triple, and there are those who say that fivefold, the number of national police. Those guards go with shotguns and large caliber weapons. The homicide rate in 2013 was 39.9 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to a UN report. And Rey Rosa adds that a UN rapporteur said in 2012 that there were more deaths in the country (in peace) by firearms than during the war.
They also appear in an atheist's letter ... a mixture of witchcraft, beliefs. And it reads: "But what harm could there be in the supposed idolatry of these people?", Which leads us to consider that everything can be possible, inexplicable. «I see reality that way. There are many inexplicable things that are possible. Idolatry ... From the Muslim point of view, we are idolaters because we worship objects. That is very relative. What is idolatry and what is a genuine religion . That's what the book is about. As it is not our religion is idolatry ».
Rey Rosa, who has lived in Tangier and the United States (where he studied for a year and a half), directed the film What Sebastian dreamed (2004), based on his novel of the same name, premiered at the Sundance Festival and presented at the Berlinale. But above all he is the author of Jail of Trees , the documentary based on that long story located in the Guatemalan jungle of Petén, largely destroyed. "I found out 10 or 20 years later." The hospital operated between 1974 and 1988.
He has also been King Rosa translator of a dozen books. "Is a good exercise". He translated, for example, Paul Léautaud's personal diary . «They were intimate, very scabrous diaries of his sex life. Pere Gimferrer suggested it for Seix Barral. I met Láutaud through The Other Adventure, a book by Bioy Casares about his favorite readings that should be reissued. Rey Rosa is rereading Conrad, and specifically Nostromo . In the last five years he was soaked in Le Carré, who previously disdained by prejudices. "I guess because he was a best seller , when he is one of the most interesting authors of those still alive." But who really fascinates him is Borges. «For me it is like what he said about other authors, almost synonymous with literature. He made me want to try my luck ».
"Novelists are not taken seriously," reads the novel. Can this be an advantage? «Today fiction is in the doldrums. The need for stories, for narrative fantasy, goes more to the movies or television. Writers are a bit unnecessary class, we have become a little superfluous ». Disbelieved of the schools of letters ("they are more interesting for people that you can know more than for what they can teach you"), consider: "The recipe is to read thoroughly to the writers you like, reading is the best school ». And he agrees with another passage from an Atheist's Letter ... : "Art is the frustrated effort to capture the essence of life." "Yes, an inevitably frustrated effort."
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