Reading one of Jose Emilio Pacheco's poems aloud at Guanajuato tribute

Jose Emilio Pacheco died this year shortly before his 75th birthday which would have occurred today. The University of Guanajuato, along with universities in Mexico City, prepared a special tribute to this marvelous poet and novelist. The local event started with a short documentary about his life, then Guanajuato people were invited to read a favorite poem.

The news of Pacheco's death came through instantly on my cell phone. 

Many of Pacheco's poems are about animals, concrete instances of their cruel fate in a world dominated by humans. I picked a short poem called "Inmortalidad del Cangrejo" - The Immortality of the Crab - describing the fragility of the individual crab but still the species continues. After I read, the man behind me borrowed my book, choosing to read about the fate of an octopus that meets its death on a beach littered with plastic.

I moved to Mexico for many reasons but one push came from hearing a Mexican farm worker recite a long poem he knew by heart in front of an attentive audience in the Oregon countryside one Cinco de Mayo.

 I found the poem I read in the Spanish quality paperback edition I bought in Mexico City of Album de Zoologia,, a book of Pacheco's animal poems illustrated by the distinguished Oaxaca artist Francisco Toledo. Earlier the University of Texas Press published a bilingual edition.