“There is no crime or fraud,” defends Montiel Figueiras after award revocation

I want to clarify that I did not publish this book, as I have not published any of my previous books, thinking of sending it to a contest. I don’t write for contests. If I have a finished book and I think that it can participate in a contest, it is very different. There are colleagues who have the national awards scheduled and are meeting deadlines”,

Mauricio Montiel Figueiras, writer.

Last Friday, the National Coordination of Literature of the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL) announced the revocation of the Ibero-American Fine Arts Prize for Poetry Carlos Pellicer for Published Work 2022, which it convened together with the Secretary of Culture of Tabasco, to the collection of poems Cuaderno del sur, by Mauricio Montiel Figueiras under the Mano Santa Editores imprint, whose ruling in favor he had announced 12 days earlier.

The reason for the revocation, explained INBAL Literature in a statement, was due to “inconsistencies in its editing and publication.” The dependency argued that, once the jury’s decision was published, the convening institutions were informed that the ISBN of the book presented corresponds to 2022 and this, it argued, contravenes a clause of the call that specifies that the first edition of the book presented must correspond to 2021. He also explained that this ISBN does not correspond to the publishing house Mano Santa Editores but to the Los Libros de Caronte label.

Subsequently, Montiel Figueiras began a defense campaign on social networks. He made it publicly known that the ISBN request before the Indautor was made on December 16, 2021 and this was finally granted on January 4, 2022.

“There is no crime”

To specify information about the ownership of the ISBN and the dates of publication and application, Montiel Figueiras declares to this newspaper:

“Yes, indeed, the ISBN was requested by my small publisher, Los Libros de Caronte. That stamp belongs to me and Alejandro Borrego. In previous publications we had had the fortune that our label was granted the ISBN quickly, so it occurred to me to propose, without any fraud, that Los Libros de Caronte request the ISBN for Cuadernos del sur, to be published by Mano Santa. This is quite a common practice for small independent labels, there is no crime, I already found out about this. I reiterate, there is no crime or fraud in having requested the ISBN through my small publishing house. That has been ignored by INBAL, it is another flaw in its argumentation because it would seem that something strange is being done”.

The author argues that at no point in the 2022 call is it specified that the ISBN of the book that is sent to the contest must belong to the publishing label that sends to the contest. “That’s why I allowed myself to apply for the ISBN like this. If I had seen that a clause in the call said that the ISBN has to match between the applicant and the publisher, I would rule out applying for the book. I could have perfectly clarified this before INBAL if I had been given the right to a hearing, which I did not have”.

He explains that, indeed, the first print run of 30 copies was published in the first week of 2022, after the ISBN was granted, “as the culmination of 2021, because it was already ready, waiting for the ISBN. “Although, I have been informed, the date that should be contemplated is that of the ISBN request and not its granting. The request is made in a timely manner. I even found out that there was a demand on the part of the National Literature Coordination to give me a public moral lesson, but this was stopped within the jury ”.

“A bureaucratic apparatus”

Mauricio Montiel Figueiras was head of the National Literature Coordination from 2015 to 2017. “I was in charge of that coordination for three years and I knew perfectly well how the award mechanisms and some other things operate. When I arrived, I ran into a number of irregularities that make for some Kafkaesque memories. It is a bureaucratic labyrinth where you see the absurdities of a bureaucratic apparatus that has been poorly managed for decades. And these people who entered made it even more Kafkaesque”.

He points out that “we must not ignore the detail that I worked as a public official for a previous administration. As the days go by I think it is curious that a former National Literature coordinator has come out involved in all this scandal from the unit where he was. I find it weird, to say the least. The anonymous complaint from someone who has noticed the ISBN sounds very suspicious to me. It sounds like I was headed to look for something to see if he could trip me up.

The only moment in which he had the opportunity to present his arguments, he declares, was during a telephone call from the deputy general director of Fine Arts, Laura Ramírez Rasgado, on December 7, where he was informed that it was probably going to give way to the anonymous complaint. There, the author says that he could only present captures of the dates of request and granting of the ISBN.

“I have nothing to hide. I am not going to take my finger off the line of the possibility of taking legal action, ”she concludes.

The position of INBAL Literature

Chronology of events according to the author

ricardo.quiroga@eleconomista.mx