RIP Carlos Monsivais (1938-2010)

"I formulate a wish: that my ashes be scattered all over the Zócalo [the main square of Mexico city] so that I can brag in the great close or on the great beyond of a centric funeral."

It seems that the curse of the paired deaths has struck once again. Another great intellectual of the Left has moved on to the next level:

Carlos Monsivais, Mexico's preeminent man of letters and a highly regarded critic of the nation's social and political adventures for half a century, died Saturday after a long struggle with lung disease, the government health ministry announced. He was 72.

As a prolific writer and unflagging activist, Monsivais was one of his nation's most lauded and consulted commentators and a leading intellectual of the Mexican left who championed causes but also fought back when ideals were betrayed.

Who was Carlos Monsivais? Who *wasn't* Carlos Monsivais! Monsi —as people fondly called him— was a man of multiple interests and almost infinite knowledge, who left his impression everywhere and always had something wise to say about anything.

A precocious child prodigy who read the Greek classics when he was 8 with the same voracity as the Dick Tracy comics; an intellectual who knew that the difference between the popular culture and the so-called hich culture is illusory at best & snobbish at worst; a passionate film critic who even served as extra in various movies and telenovelas; a fan of lucha libre eventhouh he never exercised himself; a prolific  author of so many books and newspaper articles nobody has been able to keep count of them all; a friend of the most influencial men & women of Mexico, who got used to his eternal tardiness & his irreverent attire of blue jeans even to the most solemn of occasions; a strong defender of social causes & a witty ironist, who was able to remain friends with other people that didn't share his leftist political views; a cronist of the citizens of Mexico who favored the company of cats for the psychological restoration they provided to him.

Monsivais was none other than the conscience of a Nation.

"Violence evicts us from the streets, jails us in our houses, multiplies our worries and modifies the intuition until turning it into a deposit of ancestral fears. Thus, the City becomes progresively of the others, the other & the Otherness."

May 1997

To finish this highly inapropriate eulogy, I would like to dedicate this next song, which was part of the soundtrack of the movie Los Caifanes —where Carlos appeared briefly as a drunken Santa Claus:

Hasta luego, Monsi.