Poet, journalist, editor, actor, broadcaster, producer, translator, and Nahua activist Mardonio Carballo recently published La canción de las flores, a book that brings together forty-nine poems printed on paper made from corn leaves and vine, published simultaneously in Nahuatl-Spanish, Nahuatl-English, and Nahuatl-French. In this interview, originally held in Spanish, I spoke with Mardonio Carballo about the experience of writing in Spanish and Nahuatl, the relation of memory and language, and the role of translation in preserving an indigenous language.
René Esaú Sánchez (RES): I was reading some of the poems you wrote in La Canción de las Flores, and many of them are quite synesthetic. So I wanted to ask: what smells, sensations, or tastes do you experience when writing poetry?
Mardonio Carballo (MC): This latest collection is atypical. I had resisted for a long time the theme of nature—this tradition of “Flor y Canto” that is always associated with Nahuatl poetry. To a certain extent, it annoyed me. On this occasion, unlike my previous collections, which have been more combative, expressing Mexico’s painful reality, I chose to step away from that theme of pain, blood, and death. In another book, I asked myself how much the dead weigh, for instance. But I realized the same thing happened to me years ago when making documentaries. I no longer wanted to focus on journalists, activists, and the same topics. So, I embarked on a journey to film a series of documentaries called We Insist on Hope. It turned out that all those defending land, water, and forests were either threatened with death or had been harmed in some way, which led me to a reflection: the one that guides this collection.
Just as there are no languages without people to speak them, there are no territories without flowers. That premise is what nourishes this collection, and yes, the physical book—the way it was designed—makes it seem like the typography changes, like everything is in motion. I believe it pays homage to the flowers, birds, and trees. After the whole COVID situation, I was left with the feeling that we were suddenly writing poems that were too profound, sometimes inaccessible and incomprehensible to most people. So in this collection, I sought the ease of understanding. In fact, one of the lines that deeply inspires me is from a Charles Simic poem: “I write so that dogs can understand me.” That line struck me. Because at some point, we start using grandiose words that make us seem special, fantastic, intellectual… but to me, poets are simply those who pay attention, observing what happens, and find a way to tell it.
So, the simpler the telling is in its craft, the more disturbingly profound it becomes. I had to immerse myself in Nahuatl philosophy to write a poem about a falling leaf while being aware that the leaf’s fall doesn’t carry tragedy but the promise of a future, the hope of a life that renews itself constantly. I moved away from the theme of blood to seek that simplicity, to embrace the metaphor of flowers and trees, and at the same time, find in that possibility another form of struggle. Everyone talks about defending the land, but no one talks about its flowers, no one talks about its trees, no one mentions that we have been the first predators of these forests, flowers, and animals. We think that the depredation comes from elsewhere, but that’s what led me here. I paid attention to what can be heard, how the wind sounds, how a flower blooms and dies.
RES: How does memory blend into poetic creation?
MC: I think we are all memory. Basically, if we didn’t have memory, we couldn’t have this conversation. Because memory is also in sound—the sounds that came before words. Words are a kind of social condition where memory is strictly tied to them so that we can name things. We must have memory. Memory is fundamental.
Another poet who inspires me at this stage of my life is Humberto Ak’abal, a Maya K’iche’ poet, whom I will paraphrase: he says something like, “Sometimes I walk backward, it’s my way of remembering. If I always walked forward, I could tell you what forgetting is.” That kind of memory is in everything—in my writings in Spanish. I think about and look at what I write, and I always find some kind of provocation, a glimpse, a spark that reminds me of the Nahuatl world. I believe that my writings in Spanish, even though someone may be used to reading texts in Spanish, will always find something strange. And that strangeness, which may have to do with rhythm, with music, or even with the themes, is excessively Nahua. Memory is fundamental. Literature is fundamental for memory. Words are fundamental, and memory is fundamental for existence on earth. Whoever lacks memory cannot remember and perhaps cannot imagine. Because without memory, there’s no possibility of a future. No one who is fed up with their reality can want to create a better world; that is done from memory. Memory is an inspiration for the future. Everything I do is memory.
RES: How do you navigate living between these two languages, between these two worldviews, and how have you approached being in constant contact with other languages?
MC: I think what sets me apart a bit from my friends and contemporary writers in Indigenous languages is that I don’t ask myself what language to write in. There is a struggle, but that struggle manifests in my poetry, my documentaries, and my life. But when writing, I think beyond the resistance of Indigenous languages; what interests me is writing itself. Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot in French, and he was Irish. That is to say, a writer has among their many tricks a set of tools, fireworks… a variety of languages to play with. If I spoke and wrote in English, my next book would be in English-Nahuatl, without passing through Spanish.
I find languages fascinating; they are like reservoirs of memory from which we can draw and learn. I have a phrase that says, languages have their secrets. When people romanticize languages, they only want to learn the language but not the worldview that comes with it. But if you truly immerse yourself in a language, you’ll end up adopting that way of seeing the world, because that world was named through that language. There’s a reservoir of memory, sounds that name the world, and those sounds only exist and make sense to the ears of those who speak them.
So, yes, there’s a struggle for the recognition of Indigenous languages in much of what I do, including in writing. But if a poem comes out in Nahuatl, it comes out in Nahuatl; if it comes out in Spanish, it comes out in Spanish. Sometimes I’m tempted to translate a poem I really like into another language, because the process of translating Indigenous languages is done by us, the writers. So you’re always making a poem that transforms—it becomes a twin poem, not an identical one. These are poems that were born on the same day, but with a difference of minutes. They resemble each other, but not too much. They gestated for nine months, or ten years, or three weeks, and only the person who created them can do that. In Mexico, at least, the one who translates is the poet themselves.
RES: And when a text written in an Indigenous language is translated into another language, like Spanish, is it a form of liberation, transformation, resistance, or how would you describe it?
MC: I think it flies differently. I mean, it’s a problem. I say that poems are like birds, right? And that a book traps them—in reality, a caged poem is a problem in the book. One way to free it is to read it and let it fly. And in that flight, it may have different plumage, a different flight, a different speed, a different charm. But the original poem was that bird in that cage. Once you open the cage, it sings differently, and so it sings in French, in English, in Spanish, and so on. Imagine that a bird with a beautiful song suddenly surprises you by singing the same song, but with a sound you’ve never heard before. To me, it’s fascinating that a bird you’ve kept captive can sing in those ways.
RES: That ties into the sense of my last question because I wanted to ask if translating works in Indigenous languages helps preserve them or dilutes the cultural richness they carry.
MC: It diversifies them. I’m not a purist in that sense. The other day, I read someone saying, “I’m here with poets who write in non-hegemonic languages,” but I want my language to be hegemonic because that way it can be valued, heard, and sung in many places. I don’t take pride in resistance or in the poverty we’ve been driven into—not at all. To begin with, I hope my books are translated into as many languages as possible, and I hope that those translations help raise awareness of the situation of Indigenous languages because I think that’s important. My language is not lesser. My language resists because it was oppressed, but it’s as beautiful as Japanese, Latin, French, or English. My language is not an ordinary one—it’s a language that has been subjugated. So if it can fly, let it fly, right? And if one day bookstores are filled with books in Indigenous languages and people flock to buy them, I would be very happy. I reject the idea of resistance and resilience that many people are proud of. That resistance is for fighting, not for settling.
RES: I was struck by the idea of a language being subjugated. What differences are there between a conquering language and one that has been subjugated? How does each construct its view of the world?
MC: Well, you can’t stop seeing your world with pain, or with the conviction that another world is possible, right? I think the difference with the languages that conquered is that they had a lot of power, a large army, and a lot, a lot of money behind them. That’s why, if we’re speaking in Spanish now, it’s because Spanish is one of the most powerful languages in the world.
Languages don’t exist by themselves, no. Languages exist with public policies, armies, and international treaties. That’s why I really hesitate to speak of indigenous languages as something isolated, because they exist under an economic regime, under a political regime, a social regime that, in some way, provides them with the elements for a publishing industry. Just think about why we’re reading Murakami in Mexico: it’s because Japanese is a powerful language. Without that, it wouldn’t reach the corner, whether you’re Murakami or Mardonio Carballo.
Yes, in short, the difference is that one has money and an industry that creates editorial needs. Those needs create readers, and those readers preserve the language itself. It’s something much more complex.
RES: It’s a whole system, right? It’s something very structural.
MC: Exactly.
RES: And to wrap up, I have one more question that’s more out of personal curiosity. I’m really intrigued by how you transitioned from poetry and writing to owning restaurants. I understand they’re both ways to indulge, but I also understand that both could be different forms of resistance.
MC: Well, Maíz de Cacao is a school for those who want to see it that way. If you go and order a Tamal Tlacolula, a Huejutleña, a Mizi i kampan, and a Xamitl, without realizing it, you’ve already ordered four things in Nahuatl. That’s why they’re written like that on the menu. And it’s also a form of pedagogy about how we extract flavor from the earth. Maíz de Cacao is a restaurant that has the face of a restaurant to carry out its pedagogy. But behind it is a group of people who cultivate corn with respect, dealing with the hardships of droughts or too much rain. If we push it a little further, I always say that taste is an extension of language.
RES: And it also participates in being memory, right?
MC: Yes, absolutely. Recipes are memory: of celebrations, of your mother, of your grandmother, of your town. And trying to get people, in a context like Mexico City, to want to somehow reclaim their taste for corn, seems fascinating to me. Yes: food is memory.
Mardonio Carballo (Veracruz, México, 1974) is the author of several books, including Xolo (2012), Las plumas de la serpiente (2013), and Las horas perdidas (2014), as well as his most recent poetry collection La canción de las flores, published by the French publisher JBE Books in three editions (Nahuatl-Spanish, Nahuatl-English, and Nahuatl-French). Awarded the Medal of Merit by the Universidad Veracruzana in 2018, he has collaborated with artists from various styles and genres. As a film actor, he has been directed by Salvador Aguirre (La escondida, 2006), Jorge Fons (El atentado, 2010), Guita Schyfter (Huérfanos, 2012 and El águila y el gusano, 2023), and Ernesto Contreras (Sueño en otro idioma, 2015). He has also worked with prominent musicians from Mexico and around the world, including Alejandro Sanz, Lila Downs, Eugenia León, Alonso Arreola, Denise Gutiérrez, San Pascualito Rey, Juan Pablo Villa, and Todd Clouser.
René Esaú Sánchez (Guerrero, México. 1997). Journalist and translator. He writes about politics and culture weekly for the Mexican magazine Vértigo. He has translated Iris Murdoch into Spanish and Rosario Castellanos into English. He has also collaborated with publications such as Periódico de Poesía, Reflexiones Marginales, and the Trinity Journal of Literary Translation. Currently, he serves as an editor-at-large in México for Asymptote Journal and studies an MLitt in Comparative Literature at the University of St. Andrews.
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