Mexican poet David Huerta wins FIL prize for Literature

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The Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) This Monday he recognized the literary trajectory of Mexican poet and translator David Huerta, who was awarded by a jury composed of six writers, translators and critics from America and Europe for the 2019 Romances Languages Literature Prize.

Huerta (Mexico City, 1949) has been honored by the “impetus, ambition and fraternal intelligence” of his work and by the “domination and assimilation of the most diverse traditions of modernity and Latin American literary avant-garde,” said the jury.

The prize, endowed with $ 150,000, will be presented in November, during the inauguration of the fair that is organized year after year in the capital of the Mexican State of Jalisco, one of the largest meetings of the Spanish narrative in Latin America.

“It is a lesson in humility. I feel authentically honored. What I have done is write constantly throughout my life, ”said the poet after knowing the ruling.

In a youthful and vital voice, David Huerta said that when he turns 70 he lives with great enthusiasm and sees the world "with very bewildered eyes, very fresh", although he acknowledged that "it is very difficult for true writers to write."

Tireless creator, Huerta is the author of a vast poetic work. Among his books stand out Incurable (Era Editions, 1987), The garden of light (UNAM, 1972), and The ball and the breeze. Recently he has prepared two books that will be released soon: The instruments of passion and the essay book Leaves. He also works on a new anthology of his unpublished poems ("I want to empty my drawers," he said).

Huerta acknowledged Monday that poetry comes "by genetic means", since he is the son of the renowned poet and journalist Efraín Huerta, with whose work he shares "similarities and contact points". “He taught me a lot. He was my teacher and my interlocutor. ”

The poet and translator has been recognized with important literary awards such as the Carlos Pellicer Poetry Prize (1990), the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize (2005), the National Science and Arts Award (2015) and the José Emilio Pacheco Award for Excellence in Letters , awarded by the International Reading Fair of Yucatán. In the ruling known on Monday, the jury of the Guadalajara FIL prize has also highlighted what he considers the “indeclinable civic vocation” of Huerta, who referred to the violence that Mexico suffers in the brief conversation he had with the press for phone. "Politics in this country is a battlefield of murky interests," he said.

“Mexico is a country in a continuous breakdown. There are no immediate reasons for optimism. ” He criticized, for example, the decision of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to deploy thousands of military personnel across the country to face crime, forces that, he said, "are used to mistreat migrants." He also criticized the cuts made in sectors such as culture, which he classified as "mistakes" of the current administration. "If we have done something well, Mexicans are in the field of arts and culture."