Writing off the writers?

Should writers be placed on the level of the archangels or the humble bricklayer? It sounds like a Byzantine question, but in Mexico, it’s at the center of a bread and butter issue, a dispute for beans and tortillas.

Until recently, writers have occupied an exalted -- and tax-free -- plane in the culture, which has traditionally treated its intellectuals with the utmost respect. They are, Octavio Paz has written of his fellows, “the critical conscience of the people.”

Some, like Carlos Fuentes and Elena Poniatowska, continue to enjoy high status in some sectors of society, but their tax-free ride ended this year. A new law imposed a series of taxes on the literary community and set off a debate in the media, on the floor of the Mexican Congress and in the offices of the Treasury that threatens to go on indefinitely.

Along with eliminating the writers’ long-standing tax exemption, President Vicente Fox’s administration also reversed a policy that reimbursed publishers for the taxes they pay on paper, ink and other materials needed for manufacturing books, thus prompting an increase in the price of books, which were already more expensive in Mexico than in the U.S.

Was this an attack on the country’s intellectual life and ideals? Or was it an egalitarian reform aimed at benefiting the average Mexican by erasing an entitlement for an increasingly irrelevant elite? Both arguments, as they play out in the political arena and in discussion in the online version of one of Mexico City’s highbrow intellectual magazines, have vocal backers. And in those arguments is an unfolding description of how Mexico sees the future of its intellectual and artistic class.

Favoring tradition

Lining up in favor of tradition and against the new law is a coalition of left-wing politicians and old-time intellectuals. From the comfort of his house in Mexico City’s posh Lomas de Chapultepec district, Homero Aridjis, current president of PEN International, decried the change in writers’ tax status. “They treat us as if we were bricklayers,” he said, with a bluntness that pushed him into the headlines.

Never mind the gaffe, it’s likely that Aridjis, a poet and novelist who has written about archangels, was trying to speak for the vast majority of Mexican writers, who find it hard to make a decent living practicing their craft. In his “bricklayer” interview with cultural reporters from the newspaper Reforma, Aridjis also mentioned that most writers in Mexico have no medical insurance, no retirement fund and no access to the social benefits to which other workers are entitled.

A few privileged Mexican intellectuals can live a very good life teaching full time at an academic institution, their earnings supplemented by a weekly column in the local press, a monthly magazine piece or commentary on radio or TV. But they’re the rare exception. The rest will feel the impact of the income tax, which is being imposed on those who make more than $3,000 a year.

It’s their cause that the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, and the left wing of the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution, or PRI, will make when they push to rescind the new taxes in the Mexican Congress.

But the “don’t tax us, we’re writers” argument doesn’t fly with some of the country’s younger intellectuals. In a column in a local newspaper, Jesus Silva-Herzog Marquez, one of the top guns in the more youthful group, took Aridjis to task. Affirming that no group should be granted a tax privilege, Silva-Herzog, a newspaper and television columnist, professor and third-generation member of an illustrious family of economists, poked fun at Aridjis, suggesting that he had pictured himself as one of the archangels he has written about.

U.S. intellectuals

In the United States, the idea of granting a tax privilege to intellectuals may sound ludicrous. Intellectuals do not enjoy the same prestige in the U.S. that they do in other parts of the world. (In Ireland, for example, the government has exempted writers and artists from paying income tax since 1969, in hopes of creating “a sympathetic environment here in which the arts can flourish by encouraging artists and writers to live and work in this country,” wrote then-Minister for Finance Charles J. Haughey. The Irish law shelters not only those who write books and plays but also those who compose music, paint and sculpt, as long as their work has “cultural or artistic merit.”)

The current discussion on tax versus culture in Mexico is part of a larger battle between modernity and tradition.

“In modern Mexico there should be no room for exemptions, as these foster disputes for privileges,” says Hector Aguilar Camin, a novelist, essayist and television anchor for an influential and popular weekly talk show.

“There are traces here of old-style politics,” he says. “My fight for the guild, whichever union it may be, whether it’s carpenters or writers, makes me a hero, because the members of the guild want privileges. That’s wrong. Intellectuals, who must be demanding accountability from authorities, should also be accountable, and what renders more accountability than paying taxes?”

These are sweet words to Fox, who signed the new taxes into law and who is -- not incidentally -- desperately seeking ways to improve tax revenues. This particular approach to meeting the fiscal needs of the country, however, has stirred a bitter debate that pits culture providers against the Fox administration.

A press release, circulated by the PRD on behalf of a group of relatively famous movie stars, called on Fox to solve what they perceive as contradictions between his tax and cultural policies: “Fiscal exemptions to writers, publishers and books should be considered an investment in education. To say, like the government says, that they are promoting reading while imposing taxes on books is incongruous.”

Political analyst Luis Rubio has a different take. “The real problem is that Mexicans do not read. That’s why the government is right emphasizing tax collection from writers and everyone else in order to create literacy and ‘love to read’ programs in Mexico.”

Indeed, reading is not a favorite pastime in Mexico. Although statistics on the number of books read by Mexicans are hard to compile, the consensus among analysts is that, on average, Mexicans read less than one book a year. In Mexico City and its suburbs, where more than 18 million people hardly manage to thrive, the highest-circulation newspaper sells about 100,000 copies. And the two top national intellectual magazines each sell perhaps 15,000 copies monthly.

Fox is well aware of the reading deficit in the country, and that is why he has just launched a $140-million program to turn Mexico into a country of readers. The program includes the goal of placing a mini-library in every classroom in Mexico, so students can read and take books home on loan. Another presidential initiative is to build a $60-million state-of-the-art national library in Mexico City.

Predictably, the announcement of the “mega-library,” coming on the heels of the tax discussion, caused another controversy. “This is sheer nonsense,” says social critic and prolific author Carlos Monsivais. “Are we going to have a ‘mega-library’ without books?”

Beyond financial issues, the debate over the new taxes highlights a dramatic change in the government’s perception of the role of intellectuals in society. In the 1920s, a young intellectual-turned-politician named Jose Vasconcelos facilitated the birth of a Mexican school of painting by lending support and ceding the walls of public buildings to painters such as Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco. A hundred years before Vasconcelos, politicians sought advice from former mentors and teachers, who were repaid with jobs in the government. The Secretariat of Foreign Affairs was a haven for poets and writers who found ways to pursue their craft while representing their country abroad.

A majority of the most respected intellectuals found no fault working for the government. Enlightening government was a moral duty for “the best and the brightest” and served to root out corruption. It also provided them with the steady income their craft denied them. The great Mexican poet Jaime Torres Bodet served as minister of foreign affairs in the 1960s.

Paz, who joined the foreign service in 1944, was ambassador to India until the massacre of Mexican university students in 1968 made him break with the government of President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz. Until that time, the job had a price, and those working for the government had to give up their freedom to confront those in power.

But that generation is vanishing. With limited exceptions, including Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda and Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Mexico’s ambassador to the United Nations, intellectuals are no longer sought in government. Now they seek new niches not only in academia but also in the market and the media.

Ironically, they are discovering that although they once were paid to be silent, now it pays to speak out critically. Open confrontations between intellectuals and the government have become daily occurrences.

In a country like Mexico, where more than half the population lives in poverty, whether intellectuals pay taxes is neither a relevant nor a popular topic. But to most people, having to pay more for the few books they might buy does matter, especially to the young urban generation.