‘Bookstore diplomacy’ helps link D.C. with Mexico
Shops reaching out so border wall won’t be able to divide them
As President Trump fuels tension with Mexico with his plan to construct a wall across the shared border, a cluttered used bookstore on Capitol Hill has taken diplomacy into its own hands.
Capitol Hill Books has signed a Memorandum of Understanding creating a sister store relationship with Librería a Través del Espejo (Through the Looking Glass) in Mexico City. The agreement is mostly symbolic, store employees said, but is part of a broader effort to create friendships with Mexicans in the Trump era.
Dan Cullen, media relations manager for the American Booksellers Association, said he knows of no other agreements like this between bookstores across international borders.
“When small bookstores and citizens like this engage in small acts of citizen diplomacy, it makes a big difference to break ( barriers) down,” said Katie Levey, senior director of communications for PYXERA Global, the parent organization for the Center for Citizen Diplomacy.
Citizen diplomacy between the bookstores can create momentum for other outreach, Levey said, adding that bookstores are “mini meccas of knowledge” that often hold deeper understandings of a variety of cultures.
“It’s part of a bigger trend of people reaching across boundaries and borders to understand what other cultures look like,” she said.
Countries have been exchanging historical pieces and art for years, said Deirdre White, CEO of PYXERA Global.
The stores plan to exchange Spanish and English books as the first act of diplomacy and hope the friendship develops into the stores becoming greeting points for travelers from the other country.
Jim Toole, 80, owner of Capitol Hill Books, said it’s fitting the Mexico bookstore is named after an English story, promoting the solidarity that comes with a shared love of literacy.
“We’re going around, over and through (the wall),” Toole said. “We’re going through that wall from an intellectual and not a physical standpoint. The physical standpoint is the books.”
“With all of the nonsensible talk, and the kind of silly talk, about building a wall between two countries … it seemed like a really good time to respond to that in a small way,” said Kyle Burk, social media manager for Capitol Hill Books.
Burk also is a contract employee for the Mexican Embassy in D.C., where he writes and translates for the communications team.
Toole, a two-star rear admiral during the Vietnam War, took ownership of the bookstore about seven blocks east of the U.S. Capitol in 1994 and filled every corner of the building with a clutter of used books and snarky book descriptions.
Customers browse mystery books upstairs in the room where the former owner, an ex-priest, died of a heart attack, and on the lower level they find a bathroom stuffed with foreign language books.
“Since this country’s foreign language (use) is in the toilet, I took my toilet room and made it my foreign language room,” Toole said with a laugh.
More seriously, Toole explained he hopes the memorandum will stimulate an influx of foreign language books from Mexico to the shop and bring in more Spanish-speaking residents from the Capitol Hill neighborhood.