Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

/ARTS WEEKLY/BOOKS-ARGENTINA: Rubbish to Read

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 17 2004 (IPS) - Nothing is as it should be at a small publishing house that has been hailed as one of Argentina’s great cultural successes. Today, the offices smell of garlic and onion, there is no money to print books and the editor himself is the one cutting the book covers, made with cardboard scavenged from the garbage.

But despite its precarious circumstances, Eloísa Cartonera publishers, an idea of editor-author Washington Cucurto, has put out more than 35 titles by authors from several countries, including many original manuscripts.

Since the publisher opened its doors last August – offices that double as a green-grocer – its sales in Argentina and abroad have surpassed the one-thousand mark. A small-scale achievement that has heads turning nonetheless.

The book pages are photocopies that are fastened inside a cover made from cardboard that has previously serving as packaging for bottles of cooking oil, Champaign, biscuits, or canned goods, or other merchandise that has ended up on supermarket shelves..

This variety of cardboard, collected by ‘cartoneros’ (the local name for those who scavenge rubbish for recyclable cardboard) and the namesake of the publishing house, makes each book unique. Customers may choose from several different covers for the title they have selected to purchase.

The cultural supplement of the Argentine daily ‘Página 12’, after consulting its readers, named Eloísa Cartonera publishers the “cultural happening of the year” for 2003. Some of its books received most votes in the categories for “revelation of the year” and “unfairly ignored”.

And ‘Clarín’, the newspaper with greatest circulation in Argentina, described Eloísa Cartonera as a “publishing boom”.

“This is a small, alternative publisher, like another avenue for disseminating young, unknown authors,” Santiago Vega, who prefers the pseudonym Washington Cucurto, told IPS.

Nevertheless, the tiny company has also convinced some well-known authors to grant publishing rights for new and original stories, which have turned into Eloísa Cartonera’s best-sellers. The prominent Argentine authors include Ricardo Piglia, César Aira and Rodolfo Enrique Fogwill.

The family of Brazilian poet Haroldo de Campos (1929-2003) gave Eloísa Cartonera the rights to publish posthumously one of his books that has not even been released in Brazil. It is a two-volume edition of “El ángel izquierdo de la poesía” (The left angel of poetry).

Cucurto also obtained authorisation in Chile to put out a large portion of the works by Chilean author Enrique Lihn (1929-1988). Those books sold out quickly, and the publisher has not issued another edition.

The Eloísa Cartonera books are already being sold in bookstores in Chile and Uruguay, although they are a bit more expensive there than at the unassuming “headquarters” in the densely populated Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Almagro.

The publishing house also has something by Peruvian author Oswaldo Reynoso, issuing an edition without permission. “We don’t know if he’s alive, but you can’t get this anywhere and it’s very good,” says Cucurto by way of justification, referring to the renowned author who lives in Lima.

The idea for Eloísa Cartonera emerged as a result of the brutal economic and social crisis that led to Argentina’s social, financial and political collapse in December 2001.

The devaluation of the Argentine peso with respect to the dollar made it impossible to import paper from Brazil or print books in Chile, as the publishing houses had been doing throughout the 1990s, when the peso was pegged one-to-one to the dollar.

The crisis not only wiped out small publishers but also drove up poverty and unemployment, and pushed many people into the streets to scavenge through rubbish for anything of value or recyclables, like cardboard, to eek out some sort of subsistence.

The Ramos brothers, David and Alberto, were cartoneros who became experts in making books. They have left the street to work every day in the Eloísa Cartonera workshop.

The publishers aim to provide a living wage for their workers. The payment for the bookcover material provided by the cartoneros is more than seven times what the rubbish collectors are paid by other recyclers.

The Eloísa Cartonera offices are courtesy of Fernando Laguna, an artist and financial partner in the publishing house. In the beginning, to draw in people from the neighbourhood, the shop sold potatoes, onions, garlic and eggs.

But, given that nothing is ever as it seems at Eloísa Cartonera, that business did not prosper, and what is left today are a few heads of garlic and many, many books.

Cucurto stands next to the metre-wide board supported by sawhorses that serves as his worktable. Enduring the heat of the southern hemisphere summer, he cuts book covers from cardboard while he talks with IPS.

He hasn’t a moment to lose because he just received an order for 300 books to be distributed to bookstores.

“As far as Aira, Piglia and poet Fabián Casas alone, we have sold 800 books,” said Cucurto, author of “Cosa de negros” and “20 pungas contra un pasajero”, both published by a firm that he now considers a competitor. “They’re expensive books,” he says disparagingly about the ones he himself assembles.

The “image” of Eloísa Cartonera is in the hands of Fabián Barilaro, another partner in this little company that has four employees, including the Ramos brothers, plus 10 cardboard suppliers.

The conversation with Cucurto is interrupted by the arrival of Casas, one of the most successful authors in Argentina at the moment, and recipient of numerous literary prizes.

“I came to get some books to give away during my trip to Córdoba (a city in north-central Argentina),” he says as he selects some texts. He is evidently very pleased with the project.

“I don’t think there are many writers (in this country) who are able to survive on copyrights or book royalties. I live from my work in journalism and some prizes I have won, but my satisfaction comes from writing, publishing and knowing that what I write is being read,” Casas told IPS.

In this sense, Eloísa Cartonera is serving as an effective vehicle for bringing his writing to the people, particularly poetry and some of his short stories. “Many young people come and buy them, and then the send me e-mails,” says the author, whose honours include the prestigious Cuban Casa de Las Américas prize.

Aira also stops by often to buy books, and Piglia sends friends to pick up copies to mail to him in the United States, where he currently lives.

Image man Barilaro explains that the goals of the project, in addition to disseminating literature, include providing jobs, achieving something that the founders felt like doing, and helping the cartoneros realise that they can do something more than collect cardboard.

“We need the project to succeed commercially to be able to continue making books, because we don’t have any subsidies or credits. If we don’t sell, we can’t produce,” he added.

“We sell cheap so that the books circulate, so that they are read and so money returns to the business. The inexpensive price is fundamental in our policy,” Barilaro told IPS.

For now, the publishing house is not seeing any profits, and with sales at about 1.3 dollars per book, revenues are barely enough to cover expenses, inputs and wages.

Cucurto’s personal income is from his job at the municipal library that operates in the old house where poet Evaristo Carriego lived, now also serving as a museum. But Cucurto’s dream is for Eloísa Cartonera to grow.

“I don’t know which way it’s going, because it is only now beginning. It could be a civil association; it could be taken up by the state if it decides to compete with the publishers by providing jobs to the cartoneros. For now, it’s a social, community project, which has culture as its core,” he said.

If he were to go further with his original idea, he would like the books to be sold by the cartoneros through an alternative channel, like booths at the street markets, and to set up a literacy campaign based on these publications. He has not ruled out publishing textbooks or even cookbooks if necessary to keep sales up.

“We could teach the cartoneros skills, get them to meet the authors with whom we work… For the moment what we are doing is just taking a bit from the garbage, what is in the street and which nobody values, and we ‘revalue’ it, converting rubbish into books."