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   Vol.64/No.47            December 11, 2000 
 
 
Pathfinder draws interest at Mexico book fair
(front page)
 
BY CHESSIE MOLANO AND ROBERTA BLACK  
GUADALAJARA, Mexico--A large turnout has marked the first four days of the Guadalajara International Book Fair, which opened here November 25. The Pathfinder Press booth at the fair has been a center of political discussion, especially for those seeking revolutionary answers to how to change society.

Held at the modern Guadalajara Expo, this fair attracts book buyers, distributors, and librarians from throughout the Americas. The featured nation at this year's event is Spain, resulting in larger than usual participation from that country. During the fair's opening weekend, all sessions were availablen to the public and thousands poured into the sprawling facility.

On several days of the fair, the hours of activity were divided. From 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. it was accessible only to those active in the book trade. These were busy times for booksellers and librarians, many who went from booth to booth. Then the doors opened to the public at 5:00 every evening.

Many youth and others have congregated at the Pathfinder stand during the public hours. A total of 235 books and pamphlets were sold from that booth the first four days.

The Pathfinder stand is being staffed by volunteers from several U.S. cities. Several visitors who stopped by ended up staying for an etended period. In a few instances, the discussions continued over coffee after the fair ended for the night.

At last year's book fair a frequently asked question was, "Who are you and where do you come from?" The new Pathfinder pamphlet Pathfinder Was Born with the October Revolution, just published in English and Spanish, has helped address that question and we have steered many visitors to this title and others for an explanation.  
 
Questions about U.S. politics
At this year's book fair, the question often asked has been, "How can a publishing house that prints socialist and revolutionary books operate in the United States," the dominant imperialist country? The implication is that the United States is one reactionary bloc with a passive working class. We have answered by explaining that in the United States there is growing hunger for these kinds of books among workers and farmers as the resistance to the employing class and its government increases.

An attractive display of the cover of the Spanish-language edition of Che Guevara Talks to Young People has drawn many to the booth. A number of youth who came over, however, said they identified with the image of Ernesto Che Guevara but not with Cuban president Fidel Castro or the Cuban revolution today. Some echoed a slander, propagated by opponents of the Cuban revolution, that Fidel Castro "stabbed Che Guevara in the back" by supposedly not supporting the guerrilla front Guevara led in Bolivia in 1967 when the Argentine-born revolutionary was captured and killed by CIA-trained Bolivian army troops.

We have pointed to the range of Pathfinder books that present the facts about the Cuban revolution and help refute those charges. These books describe the example Cuba's revolutionary leadership sets in the world by standing up to imperialism, and what it means for workers and farmers to hold power, as they do in Cuba. We have urged the youth raising these arguments to study in particular the writings and speeches of both Guevara and Castro, which show their common revolutionary outlook.

One useful illustration of Cuba's internationalist course that we referred to was the stance Castro took in refusing to join in the imperialist "antiterrorist" campaign during the recent Ibero-American summit held in Panama in mid-November, and pointing to imperialism as primarily responsible for terrorism in the world.

Many visitors at the Pathfinder booth wanted to discuss fascism. Several were drawn to Leon Trotsky's Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It. A few youth from a fascist group, Mexican Eagle, attended the book fair in uniforms wearing large swastiskas around their necks. This sparked much discussion among youth attending the fair.

Daniel, a communications student at the Jesuit University in Guadalajara, explained that Mexico has many problems, but he did not initially view them in relation to other Latin American nations and their common exploitation by the wealthy imperialist powers, particularly the ruling families of the United States. Some of the Pathfinder books on display helped present this bigger picture.

Paco García was a regular visitor to the Pathfinder booth during the 1999 fair, purchasing numerous titles. Born in Baja California in northern Mexico, García is now a student at the University of Guadalajara. He was interested, like many other visitors, in the fact that some of those staffing the booth are meat packers.

García spoke extensively about the brutal conditions that workers, particularly women workers, face in the maquiladora plants that dot the Mexico-U.S. border from California to Texas. He especially spoke of how the large number of women workers in these plants are a target of physical and verbal abuse.

García and many others have described the minimum wage structure in Mexico, which he said is different in various regions of the country. He said many are paid less than 1,000 pesos--US$95--a month. A worker who buys a Pathfinder book typically has to pay a big portion of his or her wage, and even a slightly better-paid worker has to sacrifice financially to get a book. This reality has brought home to the volunteers at the Pathfinder booth how important these revolutionary books are to the workers and youth who are buying them here at a 50 percent discount off their U.S. cover prices.

Pedro, a student at the Jesuit college, had met Pathfinder volunteers last year and said he was interested in forming a Young Socialists chapter here. He was particularly interested in issue no. 5 of Nueva Internacional because it includes the Young Socialists Manifesto and features the article "U.S. Imperialism Has Lost the Cold War," which among other questions explains the roots of the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the problem this creates for Washington and the other imperialist powers.

Many who visited the booth were industrial workers. A young worker hanging the display lights above our booth just prior to the opening of the fair told us he had recently returned from a few years of working at an Excel meatpacking plant in Dodge City, Kansas.

Another visitor explained that she had worked in the early 1990s at the Swift packing plant in Worthington, Minnesota.

The Pathfinder best-sellers in the first four days of the book fair have been the Spanish editions of Che Guevara Talks to Young People, with 45 copies sold; The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning, with 20 sold; Capitalism's World Disorder, with 18 sold; and Pathfinder Was Born with the October Revolution, with 16 sold.

There has also been a strong interest in the writings of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Leon Trotsky, and V.I. Lenin, and in books on women's rights.

Roberta Black is a packinghouse worker in Minnesota. Chessie Molano is a student at the University of Arizona. Both are members of the Young Socialists.  
 
 
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