Day of the Dead Campaign 2011

Posted November 7th, 2011 by English PEN staff & filed under Campaigns.

PEN’s Day of the Dead campaign aims to focus public attention on the appalling violence and impunity affecting journalists and writers in Mexico and to mobilise pressure on the Mexican authorities to bring an end to it. In the last five years, 35 journalists have been murdered and eight have gone missing; this year alone, nine journalists have been killed, four of whom were women. Most of the dead were involved in investigating corruption or reporting on organised crime, and the level of violence against writers and reporters has soared since 2006, when President Calderón began a militarised campaign against the drug cartels. Mexico is currently one of the most dangerous places in the world in which to practise journalism. For more details of our murdered or disappeared colleagues, please click here.

PEN’s Day of the Dead campaign aims not only to commemorate the writers, but also to celebrate Mexico’s vibrant culture. Award-winning Mexican writers José Emilio Pacheco and Homero Aridjis have written poems especially for the Day of the Dead campaign, in an effort to expose the violence Mexican writers have suffered, and the threats they still face. For more details of PEN International’s campaign for Mexican journalists and writers, please click here.

This atrocious month has finally passed
And left us so many dead
That even the air breathes death
And death is drunk in the water.

I can’t resist the wound of so much death.
Mexico cannot be the plural cemetery,
The enormous common grave
Where our hopes lie exhausted.

We already drown the future
In the abyss that opens each day.

José Emilio Pacheco, ‘The Altar of the Dead’

As part of PEN International’s 2011 Day of the Dead Campaign, PEN
centres around the world have created altars to pay tribute to Mexican
colleagues that have been murdered or disappeared in recent years. In
Mexico, traditional Day of the Dead altars are built in private homes or
public spaces as a way of honouring the life of an individual, or to
offer remembrance to a person’s family. The lost soul is believed to
return to the altar to enjoy the feast left there by its loved ones.

English PEN’s Day of the Dead altar, which will be on display at the Free Word Centre in Farringdon throughout November, incorporates the following traditional items: photographs of the print journalists and writers killed and disappeared in Mexico since 2006; a bowl of water to represent life and purity; candles to represent light, faith and hope; a feast of fruit for the returning spirits to enjoy; brightly coloured flowers to guide each soul to its own altar; and skulls and skeletons to represent the dead souls and to honour the return of the spirit to the altar.

Credit: Stephen Brayne / PEN International

Translators Rosalind Harvey and Tom Bunstead read extracts from Roberto Bolano’s 2666 and Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos outside the Mexican Embassy in London on 2 November 2011, as part of English PEN’s Day of the Dead Event. More photos from the event are available here.

Originally posted with the url: www.englishpen.org/writersinprison/dayofthedeadcampaign2011/

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