Breathe
By Claudia Pérez Atamoros
Hand in hand with my mother. That's how I met her. The Social Studies journalist, the mother of them all. None before her. Like her, not one. After her, no one. With her death, the social sections in "her image and likeness" died. Never again none, not one, no one. She was the "quintessential cheesiness" of the social chronicle in Mexico after 1937 and for the next three decades.
-To get rid of the hiccups, hold your breath," he said and squeezed my hand.
I had no chance to obey. As soon as I saw that huge woman, letting herself come slowly but steadily towards us (in spite of being loaded with years, many years, wiggling, singing without any shame, with that huge thing on her head, full of feathers -the thing, not her head-) the hiccups disappeared, not magically, but because of the shock I got. Until then, in my very short life, I had never seen someone so, so... so... overwhelming. It was the year of the Olympics, Mexico 68. Her name: Rosario Sansores.
I DO NOT LIE
She was the queen of social journalism. She could and did write the genealogy of the "socialites". She knew it, she rummaged through their lives. Nothing was lost on her. She didn't lie in her notes. If at an event they said they gave caviar and served charales, they served charales, she wrote. She reported as if her life depended on it. Never by phone. He loved cheesiness. She hated clichés and clichéd phrases, as much as she hated Elvira Vargas, the other star of journalism -not social journalism- at Novedades, whose story I have already told. They didn't like each other, I guess, because they were both feisty and in their own way sought to break through for women. Elvira covered politics with tenacity and even with "manliness" while Rosario, through social media and her column "Rutas de Emoción", transmitted to the generations the value of "behaving like ladies".
WOMEN DO NOT DANCE WITH WOMEN
Conservative to the core. Elena Poniatowska tells how, during a cruise together in the Caribbean, she asked her to dance and Sansores refused her hand and the dance: "women don't dance with women! Those were, then, "good manners, knowing how to behave in society".
She was a woman who "held her own". She was always described in a hurtful way, for her way of writing, dressing and living: "The moldy of the social genre"; "the joyful lyricism of a chronicler like Rosario Sansores; "the ridiculous sentimentality", "the vulgar cheesiness of that parrot bent on singing that is Rosario Sansores". She did not even flinch. She was clearly happy being who and how she was, and the world went on with its course!
CORNY, CORNY...
To Elia D'Acosta he confessed that "women have to love, because without love you can't live". Corny and traditional, yes, to the marrow. She married at the age of 14. She was widowed with 2 daughters at the age of 29. "Married, she lived in Havana, Cuba, where she started as a journalist in the Diario de la Marina and Bohemia." When widowed, she returned to Mexico in 1932. "A female pioneer of the social chronicle, she collaborated in the magazines Hoy and Todo, and since 1937 in Novedades, with her column "Rutas de emoción"; she wrote in El Pueblo, La Familia and in the Diario de la Tarde, in the Revista de Yucatán and in the Eco del Comercio, of Mérida, Yucatán, and in some publications in other Latin American countries."
"Rosario Sansores, poet and journalist, is considered the creator of the social note in newspapers". Everyone wanted to imitate her. Not in vain did she write the most read column in Novedades for three decades. A little justice. The melcocha never took away her social conscience.
The Blue Book of Mexican Society is a directory of his authorship with biographical and social information about Mexico. In his text,"Indulgencias con rosario ajeno", published in El Pueblo, 1937, he shows his nationalism and his anti-imperialist position. He writes a severe criticism of the agrarian distribution carried out by the then president Cárdenas; "these lands are not his but a sacred inheritance that, from fathers to sons, has been passed down for many generations, these farms represent money and are money that is taken away from their legitimate owners [...]".
On the other hand, "In Puebla, the ex-consul Mr. Jenkins continues in possession of his nine haciendas without a single hectare of land being taken from him. In Chihuahua, a North American owns a hacienda, which according to a friend of mine who has been in those places, it takes three long days to cover its entire length, and in that time he has not had a bad time, since he continues to exploit and earn money hand over fist, how they must laugh to see how we are stripped of everything while they are respected.
WORLD FAMOUS
His poetry transcended borders. Several of his poems were set to music. Surely you have heard his poem "Cuando tú te hayas ido" written in 1933 and which was part of his collection of poems "La novia del sol". This is perhaps the most famous since it was retaken, in 1936, by the Ecuadorian musician Carlos Brito (who would later put music to two others: Alas rotas and Imploración) and made into a song under the title Sombras. Interpreted throughout 89 years by several singers around the world. What not? Listen to and you will see that it is.
In El breviario de eros, a collection of poems with an erotic theme, "he gives free rein to the intoxication of the senses, while identifying love with beauty as an end in itself". Spanish musician Enrique Belenguer also set another poem to music, Nostalgia. Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona set to music the poem Little White Dove
Rosario Sansores Prén was born in white Mérida, Yucatán, on August 25, 1889 and died in the then Federal District on January 7, 1972.
She belonged to a generation of women journalists and poets who became an example and emblem. She rubbed shoulders with Concha Urquiza, Laura Méndez Cuenca, Beatriz Carlota Portugal... Concha de Villarreal, Elvira Vargas, Adelina Zendejas and Indiana Nájera. She was part of the group "Veinte Mujeres y un Hombre" founded in 1967. Her journalistic and poetic writing always corresponded to the education that women received at that time. She was educated and instructed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
NOT EVERYTHING WAS BANAL
In addition to the opinion articles where she criticized presidents and public servants, Rosario Sansores was also characterized by the generosity of her pen, which she used time and again in favor of all those who asked for help or who she knew needed some kind of support. Friends, readers, the indigent...
This was recorded in the story "Chimalistac, la cuna de Santa"(Chimalistac, the cradle of Santa) in which he gave an account of the precarious economic situation in which the writer Federico Gamboa lived.
On the other hand, he also asked for help for his former love, the Colombian author Barba Jacob, whom he accompanied until his death, because he was in serious condition and urgently needed an operation.
His love for his profession was exemplary. Day after day she wrote consuetudinarily and even obsessively. She was an inveterate romantic. "Girlfriends look like clouds of tulle (...). I accept my romanticism as a counterpart to the intellectual snobbery that invades so many (...)".
Several documents refer to the envy of her contemporaries for being such a corny but much read and commented journalist. Her readers eagerly awaited the publication of her column. She had advice for everyone that called for rescuing lost values, as she wrote at the end of her column Divorce, a businessHe wrote at the end of his August 1969 column, "We live in an era of mercantilism in which everything is bought and sold. Even friendship, that beautiful feeling of the soul, is subordinated to convenience, which does not fail to cause sadness to the few romantics who still have faith in a friend and trust him, without looking to see if he has a bank account".
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