"At eight years old I wrote a story. When my maternal grandmother read it, she cried with emotion." Perhaps that was the exact moment when Mariana Orantes decided, more or less consciously, that she was going to be a writer. "I realized the capacity words have to stir, to bring someone to tears," she recalls, after treating herself to a tapas meal of 'ensaladilla' and "very spicy" 'bravas', now crowned by a Santa Teresa rum enjoyed at the bar to the rhythm of Los Cogelones' Yaotecatl.
Raised on the outskirts of Mexico City, in the bosom of a family not particularly fond of reading ---"with the exception of my aunt Coti, who always gave me books, and my paternal grandmother, who had always wanted to be a writer"---, she honed her skills writing short stories and poetry and, later, in the faculties of Hispanic Literature and Creative Writing. "But in both cases I stopped short of getting my degree, because I didn't want to bend to the bureaucracy of theses and final projects. Academia gave me, and still gives me, an allergy."
And she laughs, with a deep, ungovernable laugh, just like her, willing to always remain on the margins and, from there, be able to shout her hatred against those above. To be able to disobey everything but her literary appetites, "and be, as Merton says in Incursions into the Ineffable, small enough to be free from power."
This ungovernability has led her to develop an extensive body of work that includes novels, such as El día del diente de leche or La casa vertebrada, and essays, with titles like Huérfanos, La pulga de Satán or Los caballeros se quedan a descansar. "For consistency, I always try to work with independent publishers," she clarifies. She has received scholarships such as that from the Young Creators program of the National Fund for Culture and Arts of Mexico, that from the Foundation for Mexican Letters, and that from the Montserrat Roig Creative Writing scholarship.
Some stories of violence
With a pronounced taste for crafting and developing stories that subvert the common notion of normality from small details, and with violence ---physical, but also systemic--- as the hinge on which her work turns, Mariana Orantes gives words and names to those "ineffables" of Merton. And she does so without asking anyone for permission.She saw her first corpse at eight years old, "it was a baby that the mother had killed and left in a bush, near where we lived," she recalls, shuddering. Shortly after, the first major setback arrived: her best friend, Claudia, was murdered. "She was eleven years old, like me." From then on, her pre-adolescence and adolescence were in free fall. "A long depression from which I emerged at sixteen, punk, dark and rebellious," she explains with a sad smile.
Years later, in 2022, she addressed Claudia's death in her book Visita guiada al mundo de los muertos (Guided Tour to the World of the Dead), which talks about the three episodes of death that left the deepest mark on her, with illustrations by Rosario Lucas. Now, she talks about her again in her new novel, Caer bajo tierra (Falling Under Earth) (Candaya), an dreamlike descent into the world of the absent, guided by four women who intertwine their paths in a universe of mythological forests, subversive arts, and Mexican cultural heritage.
"My next work, however, is not so focused on violence, but will be an essay that explores non-academic artistic processes not linked to AI," she announces. The vindication of an organic and free art that stems from the writer's passion for the work of Joan Brossa, after delving into it at the MACBA.
Love and Strangeness
"I visited Barcelona for the first time in 2019. I fell in love with the city and wanted to settle here." After the obvious delay caused by the pandemic, the writer managed to string together scholarships and jobs that have made her a Barcelona resident since 2022. Here she lives with her partner and her cat Pipo, "who embodies my ideal of life."In love with libraries ---"especially the Agustí Centelles"---, with neighborhood life, "with the elderly and children, who are the ones who most need us to protect them," she feels the city's streets as her own. "My relationship with Barcelona is one of much love and strangeness, and, although it is true that in some cases there is racism, I am very grateful to all those wonderful people who have opened their arms to me," she decrees, downing the last sip of rum.
--- Would you like another one? You're invited!
Mariana Orantes momentarily stops her cigarette rolling operation to smoke outside. She looks around. The afternoon progresses without yet reaching dusk, the bar's clientele livens up, and the chords of Demolición, by Los Saicos, echo in the air.
"I accept ---he finally replies, with a wide smile---, but this time let it be a Nicaraguan Flor de Caña rum, which I also like very much."