I first read the work of Margarita García Robayo (Cartagena, Colombia, 1980) in translation. Unable to buy a copy in Europe of the author’s first novel, Hasta que pase un huracán (Tamarisco, 2012), I settled for an edited and translated volume featuring two short novels – the previously unpublished Sexual Education and the novel I was originally interested in – as well as a collection of short stories for which the author won the prestigious Casa de las Américas Prize in 2014. The volume is titled Fish Soup (Charco Press, 2018): un poquito de todo, a little bit of everything in one bowl (or volume).
I read Hasta que pase un huracán in its English translation: Waiting for a Hurricane. Years passed before I could purchase the novel in its original language, and even then, I was only able to get access to a second edition e-book. I thought the experience quite comical: I had only ever read books in translation when I wasn’t fluent in their original language of publication. But at the time I was living in Amsterdam and urged to read Latin American literature, even if that meant reading in translation or paying extra customs fees for shipping.
Fortunately, Charco Press, the Edinburgh-based publisher responsible for Fish Soup, has since released its “OriginalES” series: titles published in Spanish alongside their English translations. As a publisher focused on Spanish-English translation, it’s quite revealing to have the original-language editions published in the UK. But what about those first editions at the other side of the pond, el charco? Who is publishing those?
García Robayo’s Hasta que pase un huracán was first published by the Argentinian independent publisher, Tamarisco (no longer in business) in 2012. Three years later, the Bogotá-based independent publisher, Laguna Libros, published the short novel in its second edition. After vigorously searching for Laguna’s print edition at both independent bookstores and commercial bookstores in Bogotá, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that it is permanently out of stock. In the Spanish-speaking world, one can now best get a hold of this novel in the volume El sonido de las olas (Alfaguara, 2021), which features Hasta que pase un huracán alongside the novellas Lo que no aprendí and once again, Educación sexual.
The trajectory of this rather short novel is exemplary of the global networks that govern trade publishing in the Spanish-speaking world today. The case of Charco Press shows its growing, albeit mediated, extension to the English-speaking world. Yet when we go back to the first and second editions of Hasta que pase un huracán, we find they’re published by small independent presses struggling to survive in a market dominated by global publishing houses.
In the last two decades, independent publishers in Latin America have gained recognition for their aesthetic publications, valued less for their profit-making performance than for the type of cultural and ideological practices that these publications represent. The literary scholar, Ana Gallego Cuiñas, attributes this “boom” to publishing practices enabled by technology, precarious forms of self-employment, and the gradual marginalisation of certain genres and low-profile authors by the commercial practices of global publishing conglomerates. The margins have been occupied by small independent publishers.
“Independence” can take on multiple forms, as small publishers build their own relation to the label. The traditional functions within publishing – including editorial, distribution, and circulation – interact with “independence” in order to build new – and in some cases radical – publishing models. “Independence” may stand for a radical opposition to the larger publishing industry, and it can also offer a position from which publishers take distance from the industry, while still being linked to pervasive economic and cultural logics.
In the case of Laguna Libros, what may have begun as a niche publisher of art books in 2007 has now expanded to an “editorial laboratory” that collaborates with government initiatives that promote creative output and seeks to grow and develop a “national independent editorial industry.” Felipe González, the co-founder and director of Laguna, also sits as the Director of the newly founded Cámara Colombiana de la Edición Independiente, a public body with just under one hundred affiliated independent publishers.
Between 2007 and 2011, Laguna only published one art book per year. Today, the press publishes a range of literary genres including poetry, cookbooks, and comic books (their comic book imprint, founded in 2016, is Cohete Comics). With just over seventy books published, Laguna has built a diverse catalogue characterised by emerging authors in Colombia, more established Latin American and international authors for which they have acquired the rights to print in Colombia, a strong emphasis on female authors, and a desire to build dialogues across art forms and literary genres. These characteristics are highly valued in the field of independent publishing; most of them feature in the ten “valores ECOEDIT” [ECOEDIT values] assigned to independent publishing projects by the ECOEDIT platform, a project by the University of Granada (Spain) led by Gallego Cuiñas. One of the aims of the ECOEDIT platform is to identify practices of independent publishing that challenge the concentration of cultural capital by global publishing groups.
When Laguna first published Margarita García Robayo’s Hasta que pase un huracán, García Robayo was still a novel author (ECOEDIT value #4). Today, the writer is one of the most prominent faces of Colombian literature, particularly literature from the Colombian Caribbean, her home region. This recognition can be largely attributed to the publication of Fish Soup and, more recently, El sonido de las olas. The imprint responsible for this volume – Alfaguara – was one of the most prestigious Spanish-language presses across the globe (famously known for the annual Alfaguara Novel Prize founded in 1998). Alfaguara was acquired by Penguin Random House in 2014 and carried over its prestige to the publishing giant. When small competitors struggle to survive, the big fish offers them a place in its shoal.
Some independent publishers seek to distance themselves from this dynamic by establishing their own place in the publishing industry – perhaps their own industry altogether. One way to do this, as Laguna demonstrates, is by forming alliances – whether with government projects or with other independent publishers and bookshops in the region. For instance, the distribution of titles remains one of the biggest challenges for independent publishing. Global print distribution for small houses based in Latin America is often impossible; national reach proves challenging enough, as not-for-profit models cannot meet the costs of third-party distribution. Against this backdrop, local distribution efforts become an integral part of independent publishing: Laguna is part of La Diligencia Libros, the first distributor “founded by editors and for editors” in Colombia, which today represents nineteen independent imprints. La Diligencia also recently began distributing to Mexico (Mexico City and Guadalajara) and Spain (Madrid and Barcelona). Although unable to compete with the global outreach of the conglomerates (Penguin Random has offices in twenty-two countries), this distribution network, at the very least, makes a statement: we’re here too.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the effects of local print distribution is a local public. Cráter Invertido, a collective workshop in Mexico City, embraces this limited reach as a means for building community. Cráter does not define itself as a publisher. It is rather a “casa común” [shared house] that incorporates self-publishing strategies. Using Xerox and Riso printers, this house established a workshop for collaborating on fanzines in 2011. In conversation with Irene de Craen, Editor-in-Chief of the Berlin and Amsterdam-based Errant Journal, Jazael Olguín Zapata, a member of the cooperative, described the processes of cutting, pasting, drawing and re-drawing as allowing a space of shared learning and experimentation. Cráter embraces the format of workshops and self-publication for an “intimate” audience. The collective works under the assumption that “books don’t sell.” So, rather than attempting to configure a space within an independent publishing industry, they stand apart from the industry altogether.
Cráter’s publications are not only easily accessible to their local public: they are intrinsically collective. One fanzine will be drawn by four or six pairs of hands; translation projects are done in “study groups”: translation-through-discussion, translation as a collective effort. It would be rare for Cráter’s publications to be picked up by larger publishers in a way that resembles the trajectory of Hasta que pase un huracán. And yet Cráter forms part of a “translocal network,” Arts Collaboratory, which was established in the Netherlands in 2007 and facilitates funds and relations between creative projects from the Global South. Cráter’s presence in Arts Collaboratory allows the cooperative a multifaceted international outreach based on collaborative encounters such as residences and international workgroups. The process of publication – including these workshops – are far more valuable than the finished product.
Subversive and independent publishing strategies continue across the Latin American region. We may think about the systems of relation – and valorisation – that occur as these strategies interact with groups across the pond. That is the point, after all: to create new relations in (or outside) a book industry in which a select few have a rather dominant say on what we read, globally. In this landscape, Charco Press stands in a rather unique position. As the publisher continues to bring “outstanding Latin American literature” to English-speaking audiences, it is tapping into a register of Latin American authors that, in many cases, the big conglomerates have yet to discover. Whether for better or worse, García Robayo was eventually sought by Alfaguara, and the first editions of her works are now being forgotten quickly. Beyond nostalgia, these editions show us exploratory and novel publishing strategies that enrich our cultural landscape. The projects that push the boundaries of this landscape are those that, like Cráter, bring collectivity and the translocal to the forefront.
By Verónica Copello-Duque
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