Charras: a true story of the assassination that roiled the yucatan
Part of The Global Reading Series.
Nuestra Palabra presents Christopher Louis Romaguera, translator of Charras: a true novel of the assassination that roiled the Yucatán written by Hernán Lara Zavala.
This is also the launch of the first chapbook published by NP Books, titled My Mother's Garden by Tony Diaz, El Librotraficante, which honors the legacy of Casa Ramirez Folk Art Gallery and its decades-long tradition of honoring Día de los Muertos long before it was a Disney film. This features the essay Diaz wrote for his altar to his mom, Maria Anita Diaz, 23 years before, to the day.
Special Guest:
Linda Morales is a long-time labor and community organizer whose work has shaped Houston and the state. She will provide a personal and historical perspective on the sacrifices community members make to support workers, their families, and the community as a whole. This is a powerful bridge from Houston to Mexico.
Charras is the true story of Efraín “El Charras” Calderón Lara, a twenty-six-year-old union leader and student activist, and the Yucatecan government’s successful plot to kidnap and murder him. Acclaimed Mexican novelist Hernán Lara Zavala combines real-life newspaper articles and interviews with renderings of key events, laying the state-sanctioned narrative of Charras’s death beside the actual experiences of those involved. To kaleidoscopic effect, Zavala enters not only the mind of the hero but also those in his orbit: the governor of the Yucatán, Charras’s bureaucrat brother-in-law, even the mercenary hired to carry out the kidnapping—the chilling “you” whose point-of- view the reader must inhabit to unravel what took place during that fateful spring of 1974.
Master of Ceremonies: Professor Tony Diaz, El Librotraficante, founder of Nuestra Palabra. Author of THE TIP OF THE PYRAMID: Cultivating Community Cultural Capital.
Sponsors:
Casa Ramirez Folk Art Gallery
American Leadership Forum
The BIPOC Arts Network and Fund - BANF
The Brown Foundation
The Law Office of Carolina Ortuzar-Diaz, PLLC
Que Onda Magazine