Infrarealism

Infrarealism (Spanish: Infrarrealismo) is a poetic movement founded in Mexico City in 1975 by a group of twenty young poets, including Roberto Bolaño, Mario Santiago Papasquiaro, José Vicente Anaya, Rubén Medina, José Rosas Ribeyro, Guadalupe Ochoa, Vera and Mara Larrosa, Claudia Kerik, Darío Galicia and José Peguero.

The Infrarealists, also known as "infras", took for their motto a phrase from the Chilean painter Roberto Matta: "Blow the brains out of the cultural establishment". Rather than a defined style, the movement was characterised by the pursuit of a free and personal poetry, representative of its members' attitude towards life on the fringes of conventional society, in a similar manner to the Beat Generation of the 1950s.

The origin of the phrase is French. The intellectual Emmanuel Berl attributes it to one of the founders of Surrealism, the writer and political activist Philippe Soupault (1897–1990), who was also one of the driving forces behind Dadaism. According to Bolaño, however, the name was originally coined in the 1940s by Roberto Matta, after André Breton expelled him from the Surrealists. Cast out, Matta became an "Infrarealist", and the only one up until the term's rebirth as a literary movement. A third account for the name's origin can be traced back to Russian writer Georgy Gurevich's sci-fi novella Infra Dragonis, originally published in 1959, and mentioned by Bolaño in the first Infrarealist manifesto.

The initial phase of Infrarealism, its most important, lasted until the departure of Papasquiaro and Bolaño to Europe in 1977, who were the initiators and primary leaders of the movement. However, on Papasquiario's return to Mexico City in 1979, the movement continued once more under his leadership until his death in 1998. At present, the movement is maintained by a mix of new and original members.

History of the movement

In 1968, at a time when the future Infrarealist poets were still children and adolescents, the so-called Dirty War began to take shape in Mexico during the presidency of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (Institutional Revolutionary Party, 1964–1970). Amongst its principal consequences was the Tlatelolco Massacre in the Ciudad Universitaria of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where an estimated 300 to 400 students and civilians were murdered by military and police. The movie Roma, sheds light to the CIA involvement in the massacre. .Roberto Bolaño, 15-years-old, arrived in Mexico City from Chile with his family this same year.

In 1970, Luis Echeverría Álvarez (Institutional Revolutionary Party, 1970–1976) took up presidency in Mexico. He was the ex-Secretariat of the Interior in the government of Díaz Ordaz, who was considered by the majority of the Mexican population as one of the principal culprits of the Dirty War. To recapture Mexico's youth, the new government set up a series of cultural scholarships, in addition to the creation of artistic and cultural workshops in universities and public institutions. Some of these were run by renowned writers such as Augusto Monterroso and Alejandro Aura. The Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the UNAM organised prose and poetry workshops and published the Punto de Partida magazine through the Department of Cultural Diffusion, which also ran prose, poetry, drama and essay workshops. Further workshops were held at the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), courses run at the Casa del Lago cultural centre, and scholarships granted to study literature at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Institute of Fine Arts).

Infrarealism emerged at the end of Luis Echeverría's government in the midst of this effervescence of literary workshops in Mexico City, which were allowing many young people to begin to develop as poets and novelists. Determined to create a new literary movement based on expressive freedom, the liveliness of language and the breaking of conventions. After fleeing from the 1973 events in Chile which saw Augusto Pinochet take power from Salvador Allende in a coup, Bolaño (a Chilean who had previously spent 5 years living in Mexico) met Santiago Papasquiaro in the Café La Habana in Mexico City, beginning a long friendship between the two which marked the beginning of infrarrealismo. The movement was formally founded in Bruno Montané Krebs's house. There were forty people at the meeting, which was led by Bolaño. Roberto Bolaño and Mario Santiago Papasquiaro began to meet with other friends and poets they considered fit for the project.

Founding of the movement

The group began to form mainly at the initiative of Chilean Roberto Bolaño and Mexican Mario Santiago Papasquiaro. Both poets met at the Café La Habana in the capital city, shortly after Bolaño returned from Chile, where he went with the purpose of supporting the government of Salvador Allende and the Popular Unity, which was finally defeated by the coup d'état that gave rise to the military dictatorship. From then on they began a close and long friendship. Determined to create a new literary movement, based on freedom of expression, vivid language and the breaking of conventions, they began to meet with other friends and contact well-known poets they considered suitable for the project. 

After some previous meetings, several of them at the home of José Vicente Anaya, the movement was formally founded in 1975 at the home of Chilean Bruno Montané Krebs, in a dark, windowless room located on Argentina Street in the Zócalo sector, in the historic center of the city. This meeting, attended by about forty people, was led by Bolaño. Among the attendees, in addition to the future infrarealists who would form the movement from then on, were some close friends and supporters such as Carla Rippey or the brothers Ricardo and Juan Pascoe, as well as some curious onlookers. 

According to a list compiled by José Vicente Anaya on the "Founding Poets of Infrarealism", the group was initially formed by the following twenty poets: 

Mario Santiago Papasquiaro

Roberto Bolaño

José Vicente Anaya

Juan Esteban Harrington

Jorge Hernánez "Divine Skin"

Rubén Medina

Ramón Méndez Estrada

Cuauhtémoc Méndez Estrada

Lisa Johnson

Mara Larrosa

Vera Larrosa

Gelles Lebrija

Pedro Damián Bautista

Victor Monjarás-Ruiz

Bruno Montané

Guadalupe Ochoa

José Peguero

Estela Ramírez

Lorena de la Rocha

José Rosas Ribeyro

In addition to all of them was Darío Galicia, a friend of Bolaño's from his adolescence, who did not want to officially belong to the movement, even though he was informally recognized as another infrarealist. 

All of them were Mexican, except for the Chileans Bolaño, Harrington and Montané, and the Peruvian Ribeyro. As for their kinship, both the Méndez and Larrosa families were siblings, while Lebrija was a cousin of the latter. Ochoa and Peguero were a couple at the time and remained so. Lisa Johnson was Bolaño's greatest love in Mexico, and the breakdown of this relationship was one of the main reasons why he later left the country forever. 

Most of them came from Juan Bañuelos ' poetry workshop at UNAM and Alejandro Aura 's workshop at Casa del Lago. Roberto Bolaño, Mario Santiago, Rubén Medina and Claudia Kerik met at the latter. The rest were friends of some of them, such as Piel Divina, Rubén Medina's university classmate in the philosophy degree. Most of them were 22 years old like Bolaño; the youngest was Harrington, at 15, and the oldest Anaya at 28. Some of them were studying, while others had dropped out or had not continued higher education. 

First readings

The first poetry reading by the Infrarealists took place in late 1975 on the second floor of the Gandhi Bookstore, located on Miguel Ángel de Quevedo Street next to Tagle Park, thanks to the efforts of Anaya, who secured a space to hold readings every Friday for two months. This first reading was packed and considered a success. Anaya and Bolaño read, with the latter providing some ideas for what would later appear in the first Infrarealist manifesto. The reading was accompanied by live music performed by Mara Larrosa, Lorena de la Rocha, and Darío Galicia, a friend of the Infrarealists. Other close friends also participated, such as visual artists Carla Rippey and Rodolfo Sanabria. The debut sought to resemble the Beats ' debut in 1955, led by Jack Kerouac. 

The Infrarealists also gave two poetry readings at the Casa del Lago, which between 1974 and 1976 was directed by Hugo Gutiérrez Vega, a Mexican poet, writer and academic, president of the Committee to Support Popular Unity in Chile, who got along well with the members of the group. At one of these readings the Infrarealists took the photographs that appear in the only issue of their first literary magazine, Correspondencia infra, the periodical journal of the Infrarealist movement. 

Sabotages

According to the Chilean writer Carlos Chimal, president Luis Echeverría's measures to promote cultural activity in the country polarised Mexico's artistic society into "two worlds: high culture and popular culture, and there was no way that the two would touch". The first of these worlds referred to artists who were granted scholarships or received benefits in some way from the Institutional Revolutionary Party's government – among them, for example, José Luis Cuevas and Fernando Benítz. For the Infrarealists, this group also included writers and intellectuals of world renown, such as Octavio Paz or Carlos Monsiváis, who, despite not needing Echeverría's direct support, cultivated a dedicated readership, ran important literary magazines, and also benefited from tax revenues. At the other extreme was the world of popular culture, which the Infrarealists associated with the left-wing revolution and was made up of artists that opposed the buying and selling of talent. While members of the first group sought to identify themselves with Octavio Paz, members of the second were closer to the poet Efraín Huerta. The Mexican writer Carmen Boullosa, a contemporary of the Infrarealists, agrees that both groups were exclusive, and recalls that the only poets who traversed between the two groups were Juan Pascoe and Verónica Volkow, a friend of Bolaño and granddaughter of Trotsky. Despite this, Boullosa maintains that the two groups were not entirely dissimilar.

Rather than for their own readings, the Infrarealists were known for their sabotaging of the readings, book launches, awards ceremonies and general literary activities of poets belonging to this world of "high culture". The first of these sabotages took place prior to the movement's foundation. Towards the end of 1973, Mario Santiago Papasquiaro and his friend Ramón Méndez attempted to throw Juan Bañuelos out of his own poetry workshop in the Department of Cultural Diffusion at UNAM by acquiring the signatures of participants; though in the end it was them who were thrown out.

The Infrarealists planned these acts in meetings. They sabotaged the events of different writers, including Octavio Paz himself. At the beginning of 1976, they sabotaged a reading by David Huerta, son of Efraín Huerta. While they got along well with his father, they considered David a privileged author who was destined to succeed under the sheltered protection of his surname. Only Bolaño participated in Huerta's sabotaging. He later distanced himself from these acts, though still asked friends for details after the acts were carried out. Years later, Carmen Boullosa confessed to having been afraid the Infrarealists would sabotage the prize ceremony where she was to receive the Salvador Novo scholarship, awarded to those under 21, which Darío Galicia had also obtained the year before.

Other poets began to both fear and hate them for these attitudes. They treated them as arrogant and disrespectful, and managed to isolate them from the established publications of the time. In 1975, in the La cultura en México supplement of Siempre! magazine, edited by Carlos Monsiváis, a number of columns appeared in which a young Héctor Aguilar Camín, José Joaquin Blanco and Enrique Krauze spoke of a drop in standard in contemporary Mexican literature, which they viewed as resulting from socialist fashion, excessive sexuality and the appearance of so many new, novice writers. Blanco began to explicitly criticise the Infrarealists in these columns, and they confronted him directly, though this time with Bolaño in tow.

Publications and separation

In mid-1976, after Octavio Paz left Plural magazine due to political problems in what became known as the "Excélsior coup", Robert Rodríguez Baños was named as the magazine's director and the Infrarealists once again had the opportunity to publish in established magazines. In October of the same year, in Plural number 61, Mario Santiago Papasquiaro published a review and translation of poems by the beat poet and novelist Richard Brautigan. Then, in December, in number 63, the magazine published Seis jóvenes infrarrealistas mexicanos (Six Young Mexican Infrarealists), with editing and introduction from Papasquairo and featuring Darío Galicia, Mara Larrosa, Rubén Medina, Cuauthémoc Méndez, José Peguero and Papasquairo himself. In January 1977, Roberto Bolaño was published in number 64.

The Infrarealists also published their own anthology in 1976, Pájaro de calor, ocho poetas infrarrealistas (Bird of Heat, Eight Infrarealist Poets), which contained a prologue by the Spanish poet and journalist Juan Cervera Sanchís. Based in Mexico, he was a regular of Café La Habana, where Bolaño and Papasquiaro held their Infrarealist meetings, and sympathised with the youthful energy of the infras.

Shortly before the publication of Pájaro de calor, and made clear in a poem of said publication, Bolaño's girlfriend Lisa Johnson broke up with him. This was one of the main reasons for Bolaño's departure to Barcelona, where his mother had been living since leaving Mexico in the mid-1970s. Before leaving, however, he reached an agreement with Editorial Extemporáneos to publish Muchachos desnudos bajo el arcoiris de fuego. Once jóvenes poetas latinoamericanos (Naked Boys Under the Rainbow of Fire. Eleven Young Latin American Poets), an anthology of poems featuring Luis Suardíaz, Hernán Lavín Cerda, Jorge Pimentel, Orlando Guillén, Beltrán Morales, Fernando Nieto Cadena, Julián Gómez, Enrique Verástegui, Mario Santiago Papasquairo, Bruno Montané and Bolaño himself. Published in July 1979, the book is prefaced by Miguel Donoso Pareja, contains a piece by Efraín Huerta, and was the first from that era of Infrarealists to be paid for entirely by the publisher, rather than themselves.

Roberto Bolaño left Mexico in 1977, shortly followed by Bruno Montané, whom he would meet up with again in Barcelona. Mario Santiago Papasquiaro, on the other hand, went to Paris and Israel for a while. Rubén Medina and José Peguero, trying to regroup the infras who had remained in Mexico City and at the same time as a symbolic act of farewell, managed the publication of a single issue of the magazine Correspondencia Infra in October/November of that year. The magazine had a circulation of five thousand copies, of which very few original copies remain, and includes the Manifiesto Infrarrealista (Infrarealist Manifesto), written by Bolaño, and a poem by Papasquiaro titled Consejos de un discípulo de Marx a un fanático de Heidegger (Advice from a disciple of Marx to a Heidegger fanatic). Written in the days when Papasquiaro frequented the Alejandro Aura's workshop in Casa del Lago, the poem served as inspiration for the title of the first novel by his friend Bolaño, now living in Spain: Consejos de un discípulo de Morrison a un fanático de Joyce (Advice from a disciple of Morrison to a Joyce fanatic), written in collaboration with A. G. Porta. The magazine's poems were characterised by their stylistic variety.

The following years

Various other Infrarealists decided to leave Mexico City in the years following the departure of Bolaño, Papasquiaro and Montané. Only some continued with literary careers, although the majority dedicated themselves to artistic activities. Rubén Medina went to study literature in the United States; Harrington returned to Chile to study film; Gelles Lebrija went to live in Tijuana; Piel Divina to Paris; the Méndez brothers returned to their hometown Morelia, where they worked in journalism, and for a time as bakers; José Vicente Anaya dedicated himself to travelling around Mexico for four years; Lorena de la Rocha chose classical music composition and theatre; and the Larrosa sisters stayed in Mexico City, with Vera devoting herself to dance and theatre, and Mara to painting.

Though the first phase of the movement ended with Bolaño and Papasquario's departure to Europe in 1977, when Papasquario returned to Mexico City in 1979 he began to meet up with both old friends and new Infrarealists. Between April 1980 and February 1981, poems from this new group of Infraealists appeared in three issues of Le Prosa magazine, edited by Orlando Guillén. The sabotages also continued through the 80s, with Octavio Paz the victim of one in January 1980 at an event called the "Meeting of Generations" in the UNAM bookshop.

Between November 1984 and July 1990, the Infrarealists published a poetry pamphlet titled Calandria de tolvaneras, which also included poems from older members like Roberto Bolaño and Bruno Montané. Between March 1992 and January 1993, various Infrarealists were published in several issues of Zonaeropuerto magazine, which was also edited by Orlando Guillén. In March 1992 they published the magazine La zorra vuelve al gallinero, with two further issues in 2000 and 2002. The later issues, however, were without Papasquairo, who died in 1998. A decade after his death, Mario Raúl Guzman and Rebeca López, Papasquario's widow, published Jeta de santo. Antología poética 1974-1977, which compiled 161 of Papasquario's poems.

Bolaño undoubtedly achieved the greatest international prestige out of the older Infrarealists, establishing himself as a novelist in Barcelona and publishing numerous works for Editorial Anagrama. The standout successes of these publications were The Savage Detectives, a novel which won Spain's Premio Herralde and was directly inspired by his life with the Infrarealists in Mexico City; and 2666, which won awards in Spain, Chile and the United States and was also set in Mexico.

Continuation of the movement

Although the movement for Roberto Bolaño ended with his and Papasquiaro's departure to Europe in 1977, in 1979 Mario Santiago returned to Mexico City, where he reunited with his old friends and new infrarealists. 

With Mario Raúl Guzmán, Rafael Catana and other young people, he managed to revive the movement while increasing its secrecy and literary extravagances. He used to make phone calls in the early morning to friends and acquaintances such as Carla Rippey or Juan Villoro to read poems to them, or write on different surfaces, including the walls of his house. He also increased his drug and alcohol consumption, so he sometimes became aggressive and violent with those who were not his close friends. He also adopted the habit of crossing streets without looking to the sides, which earned him a hit-and-run in 1980, which would force him to walk from then on with the help of a cane.

Between April 1980 and February 1981, poems by the new infrarrealist group appeared in three issues of the magazine Le prosa, directed by Orlando Guillén. Later, between November 1984 and July 1990, they continued with a poetry sheet called Calandria de tolvañeras, which also included poems by former infrarrealists such as Roberto Bolaño and Bruno Montané. Later, between March 1992 and January 1993, several infrarrealists published in six issues of the magazine Zonaeropuerto, also by Guillén, and in March 1992 they published La zorra vuelve al gallinero, of which two other issues later appeared in 2000 and 2002, now without Mario Santiago. 

Sabotage also continued during the 1980s, as was the case of one carried out on Octavio Paz in the UNAM bookstore in January 1980, on the occasion of the "Meeting of Generations" event. 

Mario Santiago died in 1998, run over by a car, due to his habit of crossing streets blindly. He wrote constantly but made very few publications. The Mexican writer Juan Villoro, a contemporary of the below, especially highlighted the latter and Bolaño - whom he met in 1976 and with whom he forged a friendship that would continue in Europe - as quality writers. Together with Papasquiaro's widow, Rebeca López, she has sought to rescue the poet's work. A decade after his death, Rebeca and Mario Raúl Guzmán published in 2008 the book Jeta de santo. Poetic Anthology 1974-1977, which compiles 161 poems from the work of Mario Santiago. A year later, his book Beso eterno was reissued through the independent publishing house Lanzallamas Libros. 

Later, Edgar Altamirano, creator of the Infrarealists website, joined the movement, while Rebeca López, Mario Santiago's widow, although she does not write, is also considered one of them. Until the mid-2000s, the most active original Infras who continued with the movement were Ramón Méndez, Guadalupe Ochoa and José Peguero; the first located in Morelia, where he writes poetry and narrative, while the couple in Mexico City, dedicated to film, documentaries and production. Also continuing to participate was Piel Divina, who sent poems from Paris, where he lived as a sculptor, and José Vicente Anaya, who in addition to continuing his career as a poet, dedicated himself to research and worked as editor of the poetry magazine Alforja. Ramón's brother, Cuauthémoc Méndez, died in May 2004 of an epileptic seizure. 

The Savage Detectives

The infrarealist movement gained worldwide recognition through Roberto Bolaño 's award-winning novel The Savage Detectives (1998), where the writer recalls the poetic movement, portraying himself, his friend Santiago Papasquiaro and other infrarealists of the time. The American critical press, for its part, sometimes called infrarealism "visceral modernism" and "visceral realism", the latter being the term used by Bolaño in his work.

According to the poet, professor and critic Matías Ayala: 

"Infrarealism is more literary than real, or rather, it became real to the extent that it was fictionalized in The Savage Detectives."

Matías Ayala

A similar opinion to Ayala's is that of the Mexican writer Jorge Volpi, for whom infrarealism was never in itself a literary movement. 

Style and influences

According to the journalist and scholar of the movement, Montserrat Madariaga, infrarealism was never characterized by having a particular style or aesthetic, but rather by a way of approaching the poetic act, a fact that she summarizes as follows: 

"Infrarealism is more a union of attitudes, a stance toward life than a form of poetry."

Montserrat Madariaga

This idea is supported by the poet and critic Matías Ayala,  and is reinforced by what was declared in 2006 by the infrarealist José Vicente Anaya himself: 

"I think formally, we didn't all write the same way, but we were convinced of creating living poetry, of life-giving experiences. That is, not inventing that you're making love, but actually doing it in your poem, truly seeing extraordinary things and not using images as a literary device. What you experience makes poetry."

José Vicente Anaya

The movement was markedly influenced by the poets of the American Beat Generation of the 1950s. The infrarealists were able to read the poets of this movement thanks to the bilingual beat poetry magazine El corno emplumado / The plumed horn, edited in thirty-two issues between 1962 and 1969 by the husband and wife team formed by the Mexican poet and writer Sergio Mondragón and the American beat poet Margaret Randall. In particular, the infrarealists read a lot of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. 

Madariaga wrote the following about it:

"Infrarealist poetry is born from that need to liberate oneself from all the conventions and limits that society imposes in the name of order."

Montserrat Madariaga

The scholar clarifies that by "that need" she means one analogous to that sought by the Beat Generation. 

They also felt sympathy for the Estridentistas, a Mexican avant-garde movement of the early 1920s, led by Manuel Maples Arce, who many considered their predecessors, to the extent that both sought to introduce European avant-garde movements into Mexican culture. In 1928, Los Contemporáneos appeared, grouped around the magazine Contemporáneos, but which nevertheless were not a movement in its own right, as they did not have a manifesto or an aesthetic, ethical or cultural cohesion. The Infrarealists did not feel a special appreciation for the latter. 

The infrarrealists were left -wing, with Trotskyist and revolutionary ideas. Although most were not political activists, there were some exceptions, such as the Méndez brothers and Piel Divina, members of the Socialist League, heir to the Leninist Spartacus League, founded by José Revueltas in 1960. Cuauhtémoc was also a union leader of Section 87 of the Ministry of Health. 

José Revueltas was not only a political leader for some, but a literary guide for others. Of the infrarealists, the closest to him was Mario Santiago, who would visit him at his house —through Mario he also received Ramón Méndez— to talk about literature. After Revueltas's death, Mario Santiago —whose real name was José Alfredo Zendejas Pineda— expanded his stage name by adding the surname "Papasquiaro", after Santiago Papasquiaro, a municipality in the state of Durango where his mentor was born. 

Another older poet who was also considered a master by the movement was Efraín Huerta, who was frequently visited at home by young poets, as he lived on Lope de Vega Street, on the way to the Casa del Lago. In this case, the infrarealist who frequented him most was Roberto Bolaño, with whom he developed a friendship, despite their political differences. Revueltas and Huerta did not exercise a stylistic influence on the infrarealists, but rather an ideological empathy, as they were both considered "rebel poets" by them. 

Another influence, this time coming from Peru, was the Hora Zero Movement, an avant-garde poetry group founded by Jorge Pimentel and Juan Ramírez Ruiz in 1970. Papasquiaro had been corresponding with Ramírez even before the creation of infrarealism. In fact, he wrote an entire section about them in a magazine called Zarazo 0, published in a single issue in January 1974. On the other hand, the only Peruvian infrarealist, José Rosas Ribeyro, had ties with Hora Zero before moving to Mexico for a time, which further strengthened the bond and allowed them to get to know their works firsthand. The influence with this movement was such that Bolaño wrote in the first infrarealist manifesto: "Hora Zero precedes us." 

Finally, Hugo Gutiérrez Vega, who knew the infrarealists personally, stated that while he identified in them an attitude similar to that of the surrealists and dadaists, and that the literary history of Mexico did not give them the notoriety they deserved, he doubts whether they have really managed to be an avant-garde group like the two previous ones. 

Organization

The leaders of the movement in its early stages were Roberto Bolaño and Mario Santiago. Although they did not follow a formal organization, according to Rubén Medina it was Bolaño who planned the publications and recitals, contacting visual artists and editors, while Mario Santiago was the one in charge of finding new members for the group, although Bolaño also fulfilled this role on certain occasions. Bolaño was also in charge of first defining the foundations of the movement, and then consulting Mario Santiago and some others about them. 

Guadalupe Ochoa, for her part, stated in a 2006 interview that despite considering themselves liberals and rejecting social norms, the group did not escape the prevailing machismo at the time, with the women of the group being marginalized from decision-making in the editions of their publications. 

Bolaño was also the one who wrote the first "infrarealist manifesto", published in the magazine Correspondencia infra, the periodical of the infrarealist movement, although Mario Santiago and José Vicente Anaya also wrote their own versions. This self-imposed leadership of Bolaño in the group sometimes led to arguments between him and other members, such as Vicente Anaya, Ramón Méndez and Juan Esteban Harrington. 

The Infrarealists used to meet at the Café La Habana, on the corner of Bucareli and Morelos streets, and at the Casa del Lago, where poetry readings were held. Sometimes they chose Chinese cafes and downtown taverns, or they met at some of their own homes: Anaya's in the Nápoles neighborhood, the Larrosa sisters' in the Hipódromo Condesa neighborhood, or Montané's in El Zócalo. Additionally, they also met at the home of Carla Rippey, who lived next to the printing press where Juan Pascoe worked as a printer and editor, christened by Bolaño as the Taller Martín Pescador,  and which they often used to print their works. All these meetings often ended in parties that extended well into the night. 

Works

Bolaño and Papasquiaro, without knowing French, ventured to translate Matthieu Massagier and Michel Bulteau, French poets who founded the Electric Generation after the creation of Manifeste Électrique aux paupières de jupes in 1971. Likewise, with little English, they translated works by Jeff Nuttal, Henry Graham, Jim Lucas, among other well -known writers such as the Liverpool Pop group with whom they felt they had a similar style. Lisa Johnson wrote about the latter in the publication Diorama de la cultura, a Sunday supplement of the newspaper Excélsior. They also studied the Angry Young Men of England, playwrights and novelists from the mid-1950s, contemporaries of the Beat Generation. 

All works listed below were published in Mexico City, unless otherwise indicated.

Magazines

1977 - Correspondencia infra, menstrual magazine of the infrarealist movement, no. 1, October/November.

1980 - Le prosa: A Journal of Literary Writing, No. 1, April/June. 

1980 - Le prosa: A Journal of Literary Writing, No. 2, November. 

1981 - Le prosa: Literary Writing Magazine, No. 3, February. 

1992 - The Fox Returns to the Henhouse, No. 1, March. 

1992/3 - Zonaeropuerto (six issues between March 1992 and January 1993). 

2000 - The Fox Returns to the Henhouse, No. 2, Spring. 

2002 - The Fox Returns to the Henhouse, No. 3, Winter. 

2009 - "The Fox Returns to the Henhouse", No. 4, Winter.

Anthologies

1976 - Galicia, Darío; Larrosa, Mara; Medina, Rubén; Mendez, Cuauthémoc; Peguero, José; and Santiago, Mario. Six Young Mexican Infrarealists, selection and introduction by Mario Santiago Papasquiaro, Plural, no. 63, December.

1976 - Anaya, José Vicente; Bolaño, Roberto; Larrosa, Mara; Mendez, Cuauthémoc; Montané, Bruno; Medina, Rubén; Peguero, José; and Santiago, Mario. Bird of Heat, Eight Infrarealist Poets, 1st ed., prologue by Juan Cervera.

1979 - Bolaño, Roberto. Naked Boys Under the Rainbow of Fire. Eleven Young Latin American Poets, 1st ed., Mexico, Editorial Extemporáneos.

2014 - Medina, Rubén. Dogs Inhabited by the Voices of the Desert. Infrarealist Poetry between Two Centuries, 1st ed., Mexico City, ALDVS Publishing.

Poetry sheets

1984 - The Calandria of Tolvañeras, No. 1, November 2. 

1984 - Calandria de Tolvañeras, No. 2, November 16 

1985 - Calandria de Tolvañeras, No. 3, May 

1985 - Calandria de Tolvañeras, No. 4, June 17 

1985 - Calandria de Tolvañeras, No. 5, December 2 

1985/6 - Calandria de Tolvañeras, no. 6 

1986 - Calandria de Tolvañeras, No. 7, May 13 

1986 - Calandria de Tolvañeras, No. 8, May 

1986 - Calandria de Tolvañeras, No. 9, November 

1986 - Calandria de Tolvañeras, No. 10, November 

1988 - Calandria de Tolvañeras, No. 11, June 

1988 - Calandria de Tolvañeras, No. 12, December 

1990 - Calandria de Tolvañeras, last sheet, July 

Individual publications 1975-1977

Books

1976 - Roberto Bolaño, Reinventing Love, published by Juan Pascoe.

Journal publications

1976 - Roberto Bolaño, Starting Point, no. 47-48, March. 

1976 - Lisa Johnson, Diorama of Culture, Excelsior newspaper, May 2. 

1976 - Mario Santiago Papasquiaro, Plural, no. 61, October. 

1976 - Roberto Bolaño, Starting Point, no. 49-50, November. 

1977 - Roberto Bolaño, Plural, no. 64, January. 

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