2023-04-22 03:01:00
May 10 marks the 90th anniversary of one of the episodes that showed the world the horror of the incipient Nazism: the burning of books at the Opernplatz in Berlin. More than twenty thousand copies were set on fire in front of some seventy thousand people who approved of this madness. Books defined as anti-German were burned, although the list included all kinds of works, because censors tend to have a fairly broad view when it comes to destroying. The ungrateful phenomenon was replicated in different German cities. They lit a fire of hatred, death and persecution that lasted for more than a decade.
With less press at the time, but with equal ferocity, the Argentine civic-military dictatorship also had its own destruction of books. The most important was the one that occurred in June 1980, when twenty-four tons of books and fascicles from the Latin American Publishing Center were burned. It was not the only destruction of books during the dictatorship. As part of a systematic plan, other burns had already been carried out in the Federal Capital, Córdoba, Rosario and Entre Ríos. To these acts must be added the books that many threw into the fire in their homes for fear of reprisals.
Neither the Nazis nor the Argentine coup leaders invented anything. Since the book exists in any format (tablets, papyrus, parchment, paper) there have always been people interested in ending its existence. There is no civilization that has not destroyed or been the victim of the destruction of its writings, not only artistic, but also social, legal or historical records. Those interested in taking a tour of this disastrous custom can consult the well-documented Universal history of the destruction of booksby Venezuelan Fernando Báez. In his introduction, Báez states: “A book is destroyed with the intention of annihilating the memory it contains, that is, the heritage of ideas of an entire culture. The destruction is fulfilled against everything that is considered a direct or indirect threat to a value considered higher. The book is not destroyed because it is hated as an object. The material part can only be associated with the book to a circumstantial extent.
Destroying books is trying to erase historical memory and anticipates other forms of social destruction. As the German poet Heinrich Heine wrote in the 19th century: “Where books are burned, they end up burning people.”
In these times, suppressing literary or social works seems to be a distant phenomenon, which can occur in the hands of religious extremist groups on the other side of the planet, or some fanatic who owns a circus against the odds. Few suspect that the destruction of books is something daily in Argentina. If the devil’s secret is to make us believe that he doesn’t exist, the secret of capitalism is to make us believe that true atrocities are normal.
First of all, a little personal anecdote. Between January and March, we authors anxiously check our e-mail inbox in the hope that the previous semester’s book sales will arrive. Generally, books sold between July and December are paid for in February or March, never before. And at the price sold at the time (nothing to update for inflation). With some concern, I noticed that one of the publishers in which my work is published had not sent me the semi-annual statement. I sent an email to find out the reason and the answer was that, as the two books had expired contracts, they had been removed from the system. So I asked them what had happened to the more than 7,000 copies that remained as of July of last year. After several days of silence, they sent me the settlement that, by mistake, they had not done. He had to collect a little more than 700 books sold. But the disturbing fact was that they had ordered the destruction of 3,700 copies because the contracts had expired and the time for sale had passed. They never told me, obviously, that they were going to “chop” books, according to the jargon of the publishing world.
Let’s not dwell on the fact that the author does not control if they really got bitten or if they were sold and their settlement “was lost”, as it would have happened if they did not claim. Let’s get to the wild act of destroying books. Because this publishing house is not the only one that does it, but all the important stamps have that custom. It is done when a contract is no longer valid, but also when there are large balances of copies. Two or three years after the book appeared, the usual thing is that if there are, say, 4,000 copies in storage, about 3,000 are destroyed and a sufficient quantity is left to meet the orders of bookstores or of any reader who dares to buy books. out of the news. This does not prevent these same books from being reprinted or reprinted in another collection from the same publisher. Because it’s nothing personal with the book. Space is needed for the most recent titles. The deposit cost is very expensive. Better to destroy them and, if warranted by some circumstantial interest, reprint them.
In general, the author is notified and allowed to take copies. No publisher offers the possibility of donating these books to the thousands of public libraries in Argentina. For that, logistics would have to be put together that they are not willing to do. Because giving away books is not good for the publishing market. Destroy them yes.
Surely there are statistical data on how many books are destroyed in Argentina every year due to lack of space in the warehouses of publishers and distributors. Those thousands of copies do not usually cause concern, as if destroying copies in the name of God, Allah, Communism, or the Roman Empire, was more serious than doing it because the capitalist system needs to generate new consumption all the time.
There is no difference with what happens in other areas. The United States and the European Union used African countries as a dump for their expired or expiring covid vaccines, instead of donating them in time for their application. The Chilean Atacama desert became a graveyard of branded clothing never sold or used. The waste of those who have and that never reaches those who have nothing.
Perhaps within a century, what today seems normal for the publishing world, the health business or the fashion industry to work, will be observed with the same horror with which we see the burning of books carried out by the Nazis. ninety years ago.
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