Breathe
By Claudia Pérez Atamoros
Last November 12, Helen Krauze opened her wings to immortality.
A good day to die.
The day the Tenth Muse was born, a woman of letters and a lover of life, just like her.
Book Day, dedicated to the written word that she exercised and inherited.
Helen Krauze belonged to that generation of women journalists who opened the way for the social sections to put aside frivolity and in their pages made room for tourism and cultural journalism. She was one of those professional women who overcame the disdain of the intellectuals of the time who considered them dull and frivolous, without talent or future.
1959 was the year of his debut as a journalist in the Novedades newspaper. There, Daniel Dueñas, the director, and Fernando Gaytán, the person in charge of the social section, gave him the opportunity to put his talent into practice. He wrote social chronicles and published two columns at different times: Espejo y Quién en esta semana, or La semana con Helen Krauze.
There, in that same place, she made her first steps as an interviewer, which led her to talk to more than a thousand personalities from the artistic, intellectual and social world and to select those that were the most resonant to be included in the book Pláticas en el tiempo ( 2011).
Thus, we were able to get to know other facets of characters as diverse as Carlos Monsiváis, Emilio "El Indio" Fernández, the photographic artist Nadine Markova, the immortal Chabuca Granda, Lupe Rivera Marín or the eccentric Duchess of Alba. He interviewed former President Portes Gil, Julio Iglesias and many Mexican ambassadors around the world.
Regarding his mother's work in journalism, the writer Enrique Krauze wrote in Letras Libres, a few years ago, an emotional acknowledgement: "She could have been a film or television actress, where she was offered roles. Or a good and traditional 'Jewish mother'?
...She could have been a frivolous and spendthrift wife...
...But, more than fifty years ago, my mother chose something different, a worthy and meritorious social journalism, especially in those times when the only scenario reserved for middle-class women was the home".
Throughout his career he wrote for other media such as The News and magazines, Kena, Actual, Claudia and Siempre. In 1989 she began writing for El Heraldo de México, which in 2005 became Diario Monitor. In 2009 she began to publish her articles in El Sol de México, Wendy Coss' magazine Protocolo and in Contenido.
In addition to interviews and some general interest articles, Helen Krauze also dedicated herself to travel journalism, today known as tourism journalism. In 1997 she published Viajera que vas, a compilation of the trips that most impressed her, including Panama, Chile and Argentina, India, Hong Kong, Spain, Great Britain, the United States, Canada, France, Russia and Israel, her promised land.
The eagerness to know and participate in different scenarios led the very restless Helen Krauze to design and coordinate costumes for some films in which she dressed Daniela Romo, Juan Ferrara, María Sorté, Helena Rojo and Julissa, among others. He was in charge of public relations for Vuelta magazine. In 1975, she participated as hostess along with Manola Saavedra, Sara Lovera, Martha de la Lama, Socorro Díaz, Lupe Marín, La China Mendoza... and many more, in a program on Channel 13 called A Media Tarde, the first of its kind not to give women advice on how to make gelatins or shave their hair, but with substantive content in which all topics were discussed from a woman's cultured point of view.
In 1967, Helen Krauze was awarded the Premio de los Voceadores de México and joined the group Veinte Mujeres y un Hombre (Twenty Women and One Man), a group of women journalists who, leaving the social, entertainment and police newsrooms, gave lectures on interviewing politicians, businessmen, artists and intellectuals in Mexico and the world; in 1975 she was vice-president of the Mexican Association of Tourist Press and that same year she chaired the Mexican Chapter of the World Association of Women Journalists and Writers; In 2009 the Primera Plana Club recognized her 50 years of uninterrupted work in the professional practice of journalism and Ampretur awarded her the Raíces distinction for 50 years of promoting tourism through her writings.
Inactivity was not at all a characteristic of the woman and professional that Helen Krauze was. She was always looking for here and there, what to do, how to contribute... She belonged to the Association of Israeli Ladies. She was also a member of the Association of Publicists. In her youth she presided over the Mexican Council of Israeli Women, and at some point she was also a member of the committee of Tribuna Israelita.
He based his entire journalistic career on his own definition of an interview. "Put string in to get ribbon out" and she seasoned it with that advice from her first boss at Novedades: "You can't describe all the fretwork of the Persian rugs, you only have to show the most striking ones". And so she did. She always showed the most glittering ribbon, the most sobering, the most alive as she who loved life so much, as her grandson León Krauze expressed it so well in X:
"Yesterday my grandmother, Helen Krauze, died.
It was close to reaching the century mark.
And I'm not surprised, because he liked to live....
...The biggest lesson? His zest for life.
...I say this because of his attitude towards life: he had a universal curiosity. He made friends everywhere and with ease. He wrote, he described, he understood. "If there's an opportunity, take it," he told me many years ago. It was much more than professional advice. It was an invitation to live boldly, to take a step even if the consequences of the step are not always ideal."
Without memory and gratitude there is no present. If only all women today had the opportunity to know the story of each and every one of you, those who came before us and believed it.
Until then Helen Krauze.
See you always.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
Comments ()