Article published by Leonardo Robles in El Mercurio de Valparaíso (June 13, 2010).
Nacional Editora publishing Quimantú reached about twelve million books from January 1971 until the military shut the September 11, 1973.
was one of the cultural projects of greater impact created by the Popular Unity government, led by journalist and Joaquín Gutiérrez. It worked
writers like Alfonso Alcalde, José Miguel Varas and Alfonso Calderon, and aimed to end the concept of book as if it were a commodity, in carrying out production and distribution policies to reduce the price obtained in the volumes to a minimum.
Quimantú During the military government renamed Editorial Gabriela Mistral, but had neither the strength nor the spirit of the original idea. And it would take more than 30 years to regain the initiative. Only last year began to appear books under the imprint of legendary project, which flooded the country for two years with the major works of world literature and Chile, thereby transforming the texts as tools for empowerment, dissemination and education broad sectors of scarce resources in what would be a democratizing experience of culture, unique in its kind.
THE REBIRTH OF THE IDEA
Like its predecessor, the new Quimantú , has chosen to dispense with large libraries to use as distribution channels for social organizations, fairs and popular activities, as well as the network of independent booksellers (Library Crisis in Valparaiso).
At the same time, have sought to maintain social line that characterized the proposed truncated, giving space and incorporating emerging and neglected areas such as youth and the residents.
THE NEW OFFERS
books publisher, arising from the proposal itself, only reach a value that ranges between one thousand and five thousand dollars for every copy of its various collections, which cover topics historical and also comics, fiction and poetry.
One of the most important books
the current corresponds to Quimantú Tenants an excellent novel written by Marco Fajardo, a young Chilean journalist since 2003 lies in Buenos Aires. His book reflects all disappointed by the ambiguous decadent democracy arrived in the country in the '90s, through the narration of political demonstrations, police violence, sexual fantasies and multiple stories of repression that occurred during the military dictatorship. Tenants you part of the series "Creating In-Sign" as the comic High Hospice Rodrigo Ramos , which enters the series of murders perpetrated in the small and poor town nortino, which was the focus of attention in recent years by the brutality of the acts, but, above all-the apathy with which the authorities dealt with the issue.
Other key books in the popular revival of this project is unfinished poems Inhabitant Viluñir Hernán; the novel by Mario Rojas, Tango Oedipus, the biography Rolando Alarcón written by Carlos Valladares and Manuel Vilches, and the comic Weichafe Carlos Carvajal and Juan Vasquez, where the saga of the Mapuche in the English conquest, is extrapolated to the current conflict between the Mapuche, the state and logging companies.
