Argentinian transexual novelist Camila Sosa Villada, 39, experienced a great moment of recognition for herself and the trans community by receiving the Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz award in Guadalajara.

"I am convinced that writing is the terrain of cross-dressing", declares to AFP the author of the novel "Las Malas" ("The bad ones"), chronicle of the underground and group portrait of the transvestites of Cordoba, in Argentina.

"Literature, when it becomes stiff, when it heals, begins to bother".

Its literary recognition is "historic" and represents a reason for "pride" for Mexican singer Luisa Almaguer, 30, transgender activist.

Mexican transgender singer Luisa Almaguer, at the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, Mexico, December 2, 2021 Ulises RUIZ AFP

A priori, the big questions of general policy represent the least of the worries of Argentina.

At the FIL, Camila Sosa Villada preferred to discuss the evolution of love affairs with her compatriot Tamara Tenenbaum, 32, author of the successful essay "The end of love".

The FIL also gave pride of place to young authors born on typical self-publishing sites like Wattpad.

Emerging from the web, the Mexican Flor M. Salvador, 22, was recruited by Penguin Random House after the success of her book "Boulevard".

Its rosewater stories are nourished and enriched by the feedback and comments of its readers, teenagers and young girls between 15 and 20 years old.

A revival of station novels?

"It doesn't matter if the stories are not written to win the Nobel Prize. Literature is for everyone, not just intellectuals," says Mariana Palova, 31, author of "fanfiction" (stories written from books , series or cult films).

Mexican Flor Salvador, author recruited by a major publishing house after the success of her novel on a self-publishing site, signs her books at the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, Mexico, December 1, 2021 Ulises Ruiz AFP

Faced with the young guard, writers of the old or of the older generations keep alive a literary quasi-style in its own right in Latin America, the "Compromise" (commitment).

The Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa described as "lamentable" the delegation of his country, Peru, guest of honor in Guadalajara after a very tense presidential election.

This delegation chosen by the new government of the pro-indigenous left-wing president Pedro Castillo does not include "any real writer", launched in September the very liberal Vargas Llosa, absent from Guadalajara.

The new Peruvian government has sidelined a dozen authors, under the pretext of giving a chance and visibility to indigenous writers or writers from within the country.

"It is no longer even ignorance but stupidity," Vargas Llosa added after supporting Castillo's opponent Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori who is serving a 25-year prison sentence for two massacres.

- "I would like to be a Swedish writer to write quietly" -

The FIL also offered a political platform to a Chilean novelist, Diamela Eltit, against the ultra-liberal far-right candidate, Antonio Kast, in the second round of the presidential election in Chile scheduled for December 19.

The committed Chilean novelist Diamela Eltit, also awarded at the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, Mexico, November 30, 2021 Ulises Ruiz AFP

"We are working hard to prevent a rapacious government based on contempt," said Diamela Eltit, receiving an award in Guadalajara.

At 79, the Nicaraguan novelist Sergio Ramirez has been living in exile in Madrid for several months.

In Nicaragua, an arrest warrant was issued against him for "incitement to hatred" by the justice of President Daniel Ortega, to "autocratic regime" for the European Union.

The writer, vice-president of the same Ortega in the 1980s in the midst of the Sandinista revolution, thinks that his ex-comrade in arms has not forgiven him for his latest novel "Tongolele doesn't know how to dance".

This work tells of the repression of the 2018 protests in Nicaragua which resulted in several hundred deaths.

"Sometimes I would like to be a Swedish or Danish writer, because I wouldn't have to worry about public affairs and I could lock myself in to write quietly," Sergio Ramirez told the FIL.

"But at the same time, I wonder what I would write, because what makes me a writer is what turns me off as a citizen."

© 2021 AFP