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 Rose Mary Salum
Interviews C.M. Mayo about the Translation of Francisco I. Madero's
Spritist Manual of 1911.
Literal
Magazine Blog, January 30, 2012
 Rose Mary Salum: You
decided to translate Francisco I. Madero's Spiritist
Manual 100 years after it first was published. What triggered
your desire to work on this project when, even at the time the
book was released, he was mocked in newspapers as a crazy man
who talked until he was blue on the face?
C.M. Mayo: The decision was not something I thought out--
it was intuitive, sudden, and strangely compelling. Though I'd
been living in Mexico on and off for over two decades, I hadn't
given much thought to Madero
or the Revolution; my interest in recent years has been the French
Intervention (the subject of my novel). What happened was, to
make a long story short, I had the opportunity to view Madero's
archive in Hacienda (Mexican Ministry of Finance), and when I
saw the Manual espírita, I knew it needed to be
translated. Before I could stop myself, I offered to do it. Because
of my previous
research on the French Intervention, I had a keen appreciation
for the need to translate basic works. So much history is badly
misunderstood or not even acnowledged for want of a translation!
And the fact is, Madero was the leader of Mexico's 1910 Revolution
and his Spiritist Manual, completed in that same year,
though published in early 1911, is a statement of his personal
and political philosophy. Ergo, it is a basic document for understanding
both Madero himself and the Revolution. . . .CONTINUE
READING
RMS:
What is your personal opinion on Madero´s beliefs and this
book after you´ve gotten so close to it?
CMM: I really had a rollercoaster of a ride with this,
from thinking he was naive, wise, good, nuts, way ahead of his
time, an old fuddy-duddy, heroic, daring... If you were to ask
me a year now I might say something very different but right
now, January 2012, my take on him and his beliefs is this: I
don't think he was crazy; he would not have been able to achieve
what he did as a businessman and political leader without his
druthers. As for his Spiritism, whatever one may think of it,
the fact is it was not something he invented but adopted. (Note:
it is similar to but not precisely the same as Anglo American
Spiritualism.) Though always at the far esoteric margins
of mainstream thinking, in the late 19th century when he was
studying in France and first took it seriously, Spiritism had
developed a large following and the main books by Allen Kardec
were all relatively easy to find. (Madero's own father had a
subscription to the Spiritist magazine, Revue esprít.)
Apart from reading the classics by Kardec (Book of the Spirits,
The Book on Mediums, and others), Madero also adopted ideas
from Eduoard Schuré, who claimed to have relied on a Greek
medium to channel information about Hermes, Krishna, and Jesus,
among other "divine messengers." Much better known
in France than in the US or Mexico, Schuré was a close
friend of the composer Wagner and also a friend and colleague
of Rudolph Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy and the Waldorf
schools. In sum, Madero's Manual espírita should
be considered as a work solidly within Anglo American and European
esoteric traditions.
RMS: Allow me to pose the same question you ask in your
video: can a secret book get its author killed? Why?
CMM:
I pose it as a question, suggesting that this may have been the
case. What we do know is that when Huerta staged the coup and
had President Madero arrested, he and U.S. Ambassador Wilson
discussed what to do with the prisoner-- put him in a lunatic
asylum? I think a good argument can be made that, like many people,
Huerta and Wilson held Spiritism in deep contempt and that very
contempt made it that much easier to kill Madero. When I say
"secret" book I mean it in the sense that Madero tried
to keep his identity as author secret by using a pen name, Bhima.
But the book itself was not meant to be secret, quite the contrary:
it had a print run of 5,000— very substantial for the time—
and its very purpose was to evangelize.
RMS: What were the consequences of publishing this book
at that time?
CMM: I
don't think there is a definitive answer because I think it is
the nature of a book-- a thoughtform in a package (whether paper
or digital) that allows it to travel through time and space--
to enter into reader's mind individually and privately. Who actually
reads it? When do they read it? Where do they read it? How attentively,
and how thoughtfully? I just finished reading War and Peace.
Well, how do you know I actually read it? You just have to believe
me. And here I am in 2012 in Mexico City-- far from being the
reader Tolstoy envisioned when he published it in 1869! But OK,
I'll take a flying guess: I think the consequences of Madero's
publishing the Spiritist Manual were extremely damaging to his
political career and personal prestige because any and all Spiritist
activity was extremely disturbing to most people in positions
of authority at that time. I should underline here that the Catholic
Church considered the seance, a key ritual in Spiritism, to be
communing with the Devil and the Vatican had banned all works
by Allen Kardec, Spiritism's founder. For any political leader
in Mexico at that time, accepting, never mind espousing Spiritism,
was to venture far beyond the pale of the acceptable. That said,
Spiritism did have adherents, among them, Ignacio Mariscal, and
in France, such well-known intellectuals as Victor Hugo and Flammarion.
No doubt, somewhere in Mexico, some people, perhaps a few hundred,
read the Manual espírita and found it both convincing
and consoling. Perhaps someone else could answer this question
better than I can.
RMS:
You mention in your introduction that Madero´s book is
one of the earliest Spanish language manifestos of this new religion.
What other books on the same subject were printed in Mexico after
that?
CMM: I am more familiar with what was published before
that, primarily translations of works by Allen Kardec and other
French Spiritists. After Madero, Spiritism in Mexico, as in Brazil
and the Philippines, has taken on its individual character, mixed
in with indigenous and other traditions, over the 20th and into
the 21st centuries. Apart from Madero himself—and also in
a distinctly more rustic vein—El Niño Fidencio is
considered Mexico's best known Spiritist, though it would more
accurate to say that he was associated with Spiritism. I talk
about this at length here.
RMS: This is a question from an editor´s point of
view: Is there a market for this book in the English speaking
language?
CMM: There is a market for anything on Madero and the
Mexican Revolution in English, albeit a slender one, and this
is why I decided to do a digital edition. I have had some interest
in the book from Spiritists, but as I have not been connected
with that community it is hard for me to gauge. I am thinking
about other editions and possibilities; I would like to see it
in paper with a proper spine.
RSM: How has your experience been so far with your first
eBook?
CMM: After having published several books with various
pubishers, it was wicked fun to design the covers and the website
without having anyone second guess or even block my choices.
On the other hand, I have a renewed appreciation for the sometimes
ginormous amount of tedious work editors and marketing staff
do for a book. It's encouraging to see how quickly and easily
one can sell a book on amazon.com, however. I am also thrilled
to see what iBooks are turning into— much more interesting
than amazon's Kindle.
RSM: Will you publish more eBooks?
CMM: Yes, and in fact I have two almost ready right now--
a short story, "Manta Ray," and Marie de la Fere's
My
Recollections of Maximilian, a brief eyewitness memoir
of Maximilian von Habsburg. Right
now the way I see it, each book has its own destiny: some may
be best off placed with a commercial publisher, while others
may be best self-published, and perhaps only digitally. What's
exciting is that with the very low cost of digital publishing,
so many books that would not have been feasible to publish can
now come out of their boxes and drawers and musty old archives.
As a reader, I am in heaven!
RSM: Could you advise our readers when and where to get
this and the other books you plan to launch?
CMM: The website for my publishing endeavors is www.dancingchiva.com
The ebooks are available on amazon.com's Kindle and will also
be available soon as iBooks on iTunes. I also post links and
information about all my works on my website, www.cmmayo.com
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